Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - Maelphaxerazz

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 [7] 8
121
idk whether d20 or 5e would be better or not or what.
Of the two, 5e would be better, or at least easier to do. d20 has too much magic item dependency built into it. One could still do it, but it would require either having a shockingly large number of magic items (by Middle Earth standards) or writing an entirely new Monster Manual that is not fully compatible with "normal" D&D 3.5, due to the differences in CRs, AC, AB, HP, DCs, and so on.

122
Feats that give scimitar proficiency: Horse Nomad, Otherworldy, and Militia.

La +0 races that give scimitar proficiency: Desert Elves, Neraph (Planar Handbook page 12), Glimmerfolk (Dragon Magazine 321), Savage Progressions tieflings and aasimar (you don't have to take the levels), and Incarnate dustform anthropomorphic huge viper snake or baleen whale: Sandstorm 161 (dustform creature), Savage Species 120 (incarnate construct), Savage Species 214 (anthropomorphic animals). Special thanks to Maat Mons for his la+0 non-humanoids handbook.

Alternatively, you can convince your DM to use the weapon group feats variant, in which case your bard would have the weapons of his choice.

123
In fact, perhaps D&D would be a better game if we got rid of the entire idea of there being a separation between the magical and the mundane
D&D "mundane" is pretty magical already. Given a high enough skill check, one can swim up waterfalls, squeeze through holes smaller than their head, balance upon a cloud, or track the day-old trail of a penny toad across wet granite during a thunderstorm. Therefore D&D Ex vs Sp isn't so much about mundane vs magical, but very hard magic vs very easy magic.

124
Why make a D&D Middle Earth game? The obvious answer is that Middle Earth is the most famous fantasy setting and D&D is the most famous fantasy game. I.e.: it will make money.

Now, as for how low-magic Middle Earth is. You are absolutely right, middle-earth is nothing like D&D in that regard! However, Wizards of the Coast does not have to make an accurate representation of the setting. Apply a liberal layer of artistic license, and voila! A sourcebook with some middle-earth maps and some movie-inspired illustrations around what is otherwise normal D&D rules. The only thing shocking about it is that they didn't do it every edition.

So relax, and approach it as a generic fantasy expansion. It might have something fun and new in it for your own D&D campaigns. I doubt that people playing this will worry overmuch about whether their magic-user is more powerful than Gandalf.

125
D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder / Re: D&D tools (.pw version) gone.
« on: March 14, 2016, 04:22:59 PM »
Now its down again. and moments later, back up! Phew.

126
The other route is to house-rule Combat Expertise out of the prerequisites of any feats that do not directly involve Combat Expertise in its Benefits.

127
Min/Max 3.x / Re: Fighter vs Wizard Power Growth
« on: March 14, 2016, 01:27:41 PM »
 
How much is a feat worth? Excluding extremes like Leadership, I would gather its worth a 1st or 2nd level spell, depending on the feat. Feats tend to be balanced differently than spells: a first level fighter that gave +20 to hit the next round would be considered far too powerful, but a first level spell that did so would be fine.
It depends, since there are feats that give multiple spells, and they're considered none too great. For example, touch of summoning, touch of deception, touch of captication, spell hand, soul of the north, night haunt, necropolis born, and insightful each give one 1st level spell and two cantrips, Summon Earth Elemental gives a 2nd-level spell if you work alone but higher if you get help, master of shadow and highborn drow both give a cantrip, a 1st level spell, and a 2nd level spell, godsight gives two 1st level spells and three cantrips, celestial bloodline gives four 1st-level spells, and Lolth's Blessing gives four 3rd-level spells.

Then there are dragonmarks. The least mark of detection actually offers True Strike at 1st level (not as a fighter bonus feat, but as a feat nonetheless), and the higher dragonmarks offer higher-level spells, up to 7th level in the case of Greater dragonmarks. It is a general rule that the higher up in the "feat chain", the more powerful the feat, which needs to be accounted for in any feat-to-spell comparison. Fiendish Presence gives a 1st-level spell, a 2nd-level spell and a 3rd-level spell and Fey Presence gives a 1st, 3rd, and 4th; but their higher-up counterparts Fiendish Legacy and Fey Legacy give three 4th-to-5th level spells each.

Furthermore, all these spells are actually spell-like abilities, which means they are silenced, stilled and eschewed of materials. That has some value as well.

Therefore, I would recommend valuing feats higher in value compared to spells. The weakest of these spell-granting feats are a least dragonmark giving one 1st level spell, but even that is worth a 2nd level spell due to the benefits of spell-like abilities. The rest are worth more.

Note than I am not disputing your basic thesis. All I am saying is that the assumed value in the calculation is too low, which exaggerates the results. Everyone agrees that wizards gain power much faster than fighters, yet the calculation has to fairly assess the value of a feat to be useful or accurate or the reader.

Good work, anyhow.  :tongue

128
Having wizards play only some of the time does not even solve balance: either the party has a wizard to do all the wizardy things that wizards do, who is exactly as powerful in your described system as 3.5's standard Wizard, or the party has no wizard for this adventure because he's busy memorizing spells. That's not like game balance, that's like forcing a player to flake out. And notice I said the players will leave your table, not the player. No-one, not even the fighter player, will enjoy the game if some of the group is forced to go play cell phone games in the corner because you decided to implement bad house rules. They will either choose not to have a wizard in the party at all, or choose not to have you as the DM. The wizard players are not your enemy. They are as much part of the group as everyone else, and any balanced solution is balanced by playing alongside each other, not balanced by playing only some of the time. And back in the AD&D era, no-one ever left their wizard at home, they just did more downtime to let him prepare.

The existence of tier 3 classes does not make Tome of Battle sulfurous. Rather, if one is to make more tier 3 classes, it is better to look at how existing tier 3 classes do it (including ToB), just in case what one is doing is a worse solution than the ones already there.

In your case, you want tier 2 clerics, druids and wizards. Tier 2 has classes that are a lot like clerics, druids and wizards, so see how they do it. They do not heap inconveniences onto the classes, and in fact have less hoops than tier 1 classes. It is the ability to prepare for many different situations that makes tier 1s distinct from tier 2s, and not anything else. That is why I was drawing your attention to tier 2. You were trying to make tier 1s into tier 2's without paying attention to what makes a tier 2 class tier 2. You could make Clerics and Druids tier 2 with an existing variant, which gives them a spell system more like a Sorcerer's. As for Wizards, I did say that limiting the number of spells they can learn is the one thing on your list that works. I merely think that if you do so, and do some of the other things you listed as well, then people would just not play a wizard, so why not skip the middleman?

When WotC acquired TSR, it had a long existence and loads of products. TSR was also practically bankrupt. The products were mouldering in warehouses, unsold and worthless. Its long existence was propped up by desperate, shady deals. More than anything, Ryan Dancy points to TSR's unwillingness to listen to players as why it failed, and failed hard. And among other things, the players found D&D too restrictive, limited their creativity, and wasn't fun to play. 2e has more claim to the "failed system" title than any other edition of D&D, because under 2e, D&D nearly died forever. So be careful what you copy: WotC changed the things it changed for a good reason.


Quote
Look, I'm not telling you to make a new magic system.
Then what alternative are you suggesting?
I was suggesting that you reduce the power of the spells, as that is the root of the divide. However, that was before you indicated that you are fine with tier 2's power level. Now my suggestion is to use tier 2 classes as the source you draw ideas from, instead of AD&D.

129
I'm not looking to recreate a failed system, just to tweak the excesses of a system gotten too out of control.
Then you aren't going about it very well. No matter its nostalgic charm, 2e has more claim to the "failed system" title than 4e has.

Look, I'm not telling you to make a new magic system. However, your method for addressing the issues of tier 1 amounts to telling the players "Please do not play tier 1," and it is easier and more effective to just say that sentence than putting a lot of onerous restrictions on existing classes.
Take this, for example:
So they wait and the adventure passes them by... at a certain point the rest of the players are likely to get sick of waiting for the spellcaster to ready his list and learn to wander off and adventure without him.
Wrong. At a certain point, unless you can engage the whole group, your players get sick of the game and wander off to play something else. Any game element that depends on part of the group not playing the game has already failed. "You can play this, but I'll make the group play without you" is a dishonest way of saying "Do not play this because I will hate you if you do."

Quote
I'd like to look at ways to moderate the gap with less complex revisions/retrogressions.
Tier 2 classes exist. For clerics and druids, there is even an unearthed arcana variant that drops them down a tier. For wizards, the Sorcerer exists (and the generic Spellcaster class, for another option). So if your goal is merely to remove tier 1... then all you have to do is say "don't play tier 1". That is the most simple thing.

130
Back in the AD&D era, there were indeed some additional difficulties. However, I do not believe that these peripheral things are where the "balance" is to be found, for various reasons. If your goal is to achieve balance between casters and noncasters, I believe it is best to look forward, and not backward.

I'll go from last to first.

   •  "Spell Memorization Time" is not a restriction for wizards. Instead, it is a bother for the entire party, because they will simply wait for him to finish. A wizard is part of the party, and it is poor strategy (and no fun) to have part of the party sit out the action. Even if they have to wait days, they will wait.

   •  For all the power of wild shape and animal companions, druids are not tier 1 for those things. They are tier 1 because they are full spellcasters with access to a wide list. Wild Shape is basically just another spell, and animal companion another fighter in the party.

   •  When I play a wizard in AD&D and I need to carry my spellbook, I buy a mule. The size and weight of the spellbook are the least of anyone's worries. As for the WBL thing, WBL is for the whole party. PCs distribute the treasure evenly (it would be odd to give the wizard less), so counting spellbooks against WBL does not increase party balance, and will probably make it worse because the fighters cannot afford to buy the magic items they need.

   •  Codes of conduct are roleplaying guides. Played properly, it means that a cleric needs to act like a cleric, which isn't hard to do. Played improperly, it is the DM looking for an excuse to remove a party member, which will satisfy exactly no-one, including the nonmagical party members.

   •  The number of spells available is a function of book selection; there are few spells to choose from in core-only 3.5 for example, and that does not make core 3.5 balanced.

Finally, the limited spells known. This is the one that has a real effect, though it can be gotten around in AD&D by researching new spells (spells you invent yourself do not count towards the cap). In d20, however, you need look no further than tier 2 classes if you want something similar: they too have a limited number of spells per level. If you remove tier 1, the argument merely turns into "Sorcerers are uber broken" instead of wizards, because you do not actually need that many spells to cause the balance hissifits.


- - - - - - - - - - - - -  - - - - - - - - - - - - -  - - - - - - - - - - - - -  - - - - - - - - - - - - -  - - - - - - - - - - - - -  - - - - - - - - - - - - -


Where am I going with all this? The answer is that if you want balance between "BatmanDOCTOR DOOM, CoDzilla and mortals" then the way to do it is directly dealing with what spells can do, compared to what nonmagic classes can do. The most effective way to balance is to look to 4e, not 2e. In 4e, spells simply aren't as good any more, and run on the same system as the mortals. To give a 3.5 example, the warlock is rated the same as the rogue, despite having unlimited magic per day, no need to deal with spellbooks or components, no code of conduct, and no prep time! Why?
Because the warlock's magic isn't all that great.

The root of the spellcaster's power is his spells. Changing everything but the spells themselves is missing the point.

131
A mad scientist is necessarily Chaotic, as a neutral or lawful scientist would be insufficiently mad. Furthermore, the mad scientist would doubtless be Tainted (a la Heroes of Horror), with the Taint Suppression class feature (see Tainted Scholar). They gain some Depravity as soon as they enter the class, at level 1. He can add half his Depravity score to Intelligence-based skill checks.

The Mad Scientist would have skill points as per Rogue and class skills as per Factotum (i.e. all of them) as you never know what direction their schemes will go. Riding mutated super-beasts? Growing dangerous toxic weeds? Creating monomolecular filament traps? All in a day's work for a mad scientist.

As already mentioned, a mad scientist would have a henchman at level 1, and minions later on. Furthermore, they would have an item creation class feature as per Artificer, but with some key differences: one is that they gain Craft Construct instead of Scribe Scroll and the other is that the results are nonmagical, bulky, and unreliable (i.e. roll every time you use it on a mishap table). Instead of Use Magic Device, they use Disable Device for the skill check.

132
I'll make you even more of the "in" crowd. Here, a free upvote! Warm and fuzzies for all.

133
I thought the Noble Drow with a half fiend template for a total of 2 LA took the 1st place ribbon
This is Pathfinder, there's no LA any more. So if you want to get into templates for the brokenness, might as well take nearly all of them at once.

134
DMs tend to ban magic items more easily than feats or PrCs.
...
How exactly would you justify that to your DM?
Oh, absolutely, any DM would shut these tricks down before you can say "go." The thing is, "DMs tend to" ban anything that would end the game on the spot, no matter if it is from a magic item, Wish, wizard, psion, completely legit feat or PrC, or a hobo with a shotgun. That's what makes this stuff Theoretical Optimization. We're all mucking about here with thought experiments and we know it, because of course no DM running an actual game would allow an infinite spell or PP loop, even if all rulebooks said "This is allowed" in every other paragraph.

TO threads are based on the idea of a robotic DM that allows anything technically permissible in the rules. It is about as silly as drowning a character to heal them from -9 to 0 hp, or using Sarrukhs to give yourself salient divine abilities, or any other nonsense we could think up.

135
I am waiting for someone to explain to me how the Psion can manifest a costless Ice Assassin as a standard action.
No-one suggested it did. You misread SorO's statement. He wasn't suggesting that the infinite PP trick for psions uses Ice Assassin. He was using Ice Assassin as an example of supposed "infinite spells" tricks for Wizards, which are actually non-infinite. The infinite PP tricks for psions do not use Ice Assassin at all.

Nobody stated or implied that psions can use Ice Assassin infinitely without XP costs.

136
General D&D Discussion / Re: What Ten Things?
« on: February 29, 2016, 06:10:41 PM »
I do not think it takes much for a game to be "D&D", at least in my eyes and the eyes of most people I know. Talk about a tabletop RPG, and after a few puzzled looks their eyes will open up and they'll say "Oh, you mean like D&D! I get it."

Dark Heresy is Warhammer 40k D&D. RuneQuest is low-powered gritty D&D with talking ducks. Eclipse Phase? Transhumanism D&D. Edge of the Empire? D&D in Star Wars. 4e? D&D except it is shit. You get the picture.

If it came to distinguishing the main D&D from the other D&Ds, my list would come down to this:

1) Funky dice.
2) Classes
3) Levels
4) There must be wizards in it.
5) Silly pseudo-medieval fantasy setting.
6) Treasure
7) Monster Manuals full of bizarre strange things to kill
8) Dungeons
9) Dragons
10) Dragon-related accessories

137
My only argument was that the Wizard is superior to the Psion because he can create a costless copy of him as a standard action. That is, after casting Time Stop as an immediate action (Celerity). I'm not sure that this argument has ever been countered, but if it has I apologize for the spam.
It has been countered by pointing out the Erudite, which is a variant Psion and therefore counts. The Spell-to-Power variant Erudite can learn spells as powers, which means psions (of a sort) can learn Ice Assassin, Time Stop and Celerity just fine.

I'd further add that if one wishes to use the spells as standard psions, one can learn the power in various ways from an erudite (for example, using Psychic Chirurgery). Therefore particular spells available to wizards cannot be used to argue that wizards are more broken than psions, because any spell the wizard can cast the psion can learn too, if necessary.

138
D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder / Re: Thoughts on UA's sanity variant?
« on: February 13, 2016, 09:41:05 PM »
Robby, the percentile ranges on page 200 and 201 are the same as the ones in the SRD. Table 6-9 and 6-10 determine whether you get a phobia or an aberrant sexual desire or one of number of other things. They do not determine what you are actually phobic of, or what manner of aberrant sexual desire you have, or anything else on the list which requires specifying something that the disorder is related to. The list with the different phobias (on page 206) does not have percentile numbering, it is just a list of examples. So while you can get a phobia from an encounter with a giant tentacle monster, the particular phobia will not be randomly determined.

The rules are: you fail a sanity check, you roll to determine the length of your temporary insanity (usually short), you roll to determine what broad category of insanity you'll be afflicted with, and then the DM determines which form of that category of insanities is appropriate to that situation. So you will never gain a phobia of cats from an encounter with a tentacle monster. This is not a matter of it being rule 0'd, it is a matter of the randomness ending when it chooses a category of disorders then explicitly telling the GM to choose whichever one (in that category) fits the situation at hand.

I hope that clears things up.

139
D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder / Re: Thoughts on UA's sanity variant?
« on: February 13, 2016, 07:58:14 PM »
Also, you get situations that make no sense. If you see a giant tentacle monster come out of a cave, this system might output stuff like "now you're afraid of cats" or "now you like to have sex with monsters".

While it is possible to get a phobia or aberrant sexual desire from this system, there is no chance that a tentacle monster will cause you to be afraid of cats. The big list of disorders is a list of examples, not a table for randomly determining which one you get. It does not even have numbers for you to roll randomly. So if a character fails a Sanity check against a giant tentacle monster, the result would be more like "now you are afraid of tentacles" or "now you like to have sex with tentacled creatures," both of which make sense in context (yes, including the second one: Japan told me so). The most likely results, however, are in line with what you wanted on your shortlist: fainting, screaming, panic, hysterics, etc.

140
Gaming Advice / Re: [3.5] Erudite Power Purchasing
« on: February 13, 2016, 06:27:47 PM »
RAW, no. Nonstandard wondrous items are up to the GM's discretion, and there is nothing in RAW that requires or suggests that this is a thing that can (or cannot) be done. There is no rule in any book that says you can pay GP=5*XPcost instead of XP in all circumstances. What the Erudite does is, as you pointed out, not a spell, power, item or graft, so there is no rule written anywhere that asks or requires this to be allowed. Furthermore, in terms of "hiring someone else to give you powers," there is an actual power for that: Psychic Chirurgery. The problem? Psychic Chirurgery is a 9th level power and costs a whopping 1000 XP per power level. That is the most direct comparison if you use the "hiring an NPC caster" as a parallel, and hiring an NPC psion to give an erudite powers with Psychic Chirurgery is usually more expensive than 5×20×Erudite level (unless your Erudite level is very high).

RAI... maybe. The 5GP per point of XP alternative does come in more than one place, so it could be applied as a standard. Apart from hiring NPCs to cast spells, it shows up in power components to cast spells yourself (Dragon 317), and as an alternative to XP costs for prestige race alterations (Dragon 304 p49, sidebar). It certainly wouldn't be like hiring an NPC to give you powers because the XP cost for an erudite to learn powers is based on the erudite's level, not the level of another character. However, it could be compared to using power components: the erudite in question purchases special psychically-charged objects and drugs to learn the power.

In short: RAW no, RAI maybe, allow or disallow at your discretion.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 [7] 8