Author Topic: Hello.  (Read 1414 times)

Offline magic9mushroom

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Hello.
« on: March 05, 2019, 09:27:49 AM »
Hi. I'm magic9mushroom. I've been hanging around the Internet for over a decade under this handle, and now I've made an account here. I'm a fan of D&D 3.5, have actually played it a few times, and am a near-compulsive optimiser.

I don't mind people abbreviating my username as "m9m", "mushroom", "mushy" or "shroomy", but I generally get annoyed by people calling me "magic". So if you could not use that particular one, that'd be great.

Also, I have a long list of heterodox opinions on 3.5, so since I can't be off-topic by talking about myself here, here I go totally destroying my credibility:

- Dragonwrought Kobolds ain't True Dragons. They literally qualify for the definition of Lesser Dragons from Draconomicon, and there's the whole thing about "these eggs are spotted with the color of whichever true dragon influences the dragonwrought kobold within" and "proof of your race's innate connection to dragons".
- Incantatrix's Metamagic Effect is for Effect spells only. "Spell effect" is subject to varying definitions within the rules, I'll admit, but the language used in Metamagic Effect's description and the list of examples are a pretty solid hint as to what they meant. Incantatrix has plenty of hax anyway.
- Walker in the Waste is garbage as written, because it pretty explicitly gives you the LA for Dry Lich. Would houserule it away if I were DMing, though.
- I don't really get why people think IotSV is ridiculous. You need quite a few levels in it before you can block spells, and even then there's nothing saying you can cast out. It's certainly still good - veils that don't block your spells are murder for mundanes, the panic button is nice, and you're not losing anything - but it's not as good as some think (and the Cube of Force can do a lot of the same stuff).
- I think a lot of Hulking Hurler builds miss the big picture. It's fairly easy to get your damage to "enough", and at that point further boosting it isn't very productive. A level in Hulking Hurler is worthwhile, but spending a second for Overburdened Heave and then sinking ten levels into War Hulk is overspecialising (on the other hand, investing in something to boost range isn't a bad idea, as the max range of Really Throw Anything tops out at 125 ft and is more like 50 or 75 before Giant Size rolls around).
- Wings of Cover lets the person blocked re-decide their action, and it doesn't block area effects outright due to only blocking LoE caster -> victim (whereas area requires LoE caster -> origin and origin -> victim). This is right there in the spell but people ignore it for some reason. Still rather powerful for dragonblood casters (who can give it to the whole party, preventing a simple re-target from doing anything).
- Using variant rules in a build, even a theoretical one, is kinda cheating and cheapens it. Half the character builds I see around these kinds of forums use flaws, UA races, LA buyoff and other variant stuff (not always from UA; Hidden Talent and a lot of the WE kobold traits are variant). Psionics is, obviously, an exception here.
- Forgotten Realms material tends to make me roll my eyes, in a similar manner to variant rules, because there's just so much cheesy shit from its books. Incantatrix, Hathran, Magical Training, Mercantile Background, Militia, Initiate of Mystra, Nightscale, Thaalud Stone Armour, Halfweight, phaerimms, sarrukhs, strongheart halflings, lesser planetouched (though these are technically variant, and a lot of people forget that), and so on. I mean, yes, there's plenty of cheesy shit outside it (though a decent proportion of it was imported from FR, such as Beholder Mage and Dweomerkeeper), but come on, some of those are just ridiculous.
- I think a lot of optimisers focus overly much on capabilities at level 20. You don't spend any longer at level 20 than at level 18, 19, or 21, so saying that losing three caster levels is acceptable because "you still get 9ths" while losing four means "you miss out on 9ths" is idiocy. There is a kind of breakpoint at losing four versus five caster levels, because three insanely-good 21st-level feats (Improved Spell Capacity, Multispell, Epic Spellcasting) all require 9ths, but even then there are a couple of others that are almost as good (Epic Leadership if you can hit the Cha requirement, and Master Staff if the abuse is allowed).
- I don't like Spawn of Tiamat and the Dragonfall War. Dragons are interesting as individuals, but the whole Good Dragons vs. Evil Dragons thing is just boring. Cosmic struggle between the alignments is what outsiders are for, and chromatic dragons don't really work well as a monolithic threat.

Anyway, hi everyone, and I look forward to a long stay here.
« Last Edit: March 17, 2019, 10:36:19 PM by magic9mushroom »

Offline JohnnyMayHymn

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Re: Hello.
« Reply #1 on: May 12, 2019, 12:39:33 AM »
Hi welcome, shroomy!
The Emperor
Can you find the Wumpus?