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Messages - Bauglir

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1
D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder / Re: 3.5e invisibility and collatoral damage
« on: March 13, 2014, 12:14:15 PM »
I'd rather just say "Fireball: Attack". It's much better to choose break conditions based on easily identifiable game mechanics than to make players' brains do the heavy lifting, when it comes to interpreting your intent as a designer. If you cast Fireball as a signal flare and there happens to be a bird you didn't see in the area, does that break invisibility? If so, how is that dependent on the character's intent? If not, does that mean there's a valid optimization reason to blind yourself? If you cast a Wall of Fire and somebody charges through it to break your invisibility, does that mean that whether your spell counts as an attack is up to other creatures as much as you?

EDIT: And I'd consider firing an arrow into the air an "attack" for similar reasons. An action's qualities can't depend on consequences that haven't happened yet, which the context you're insisting on requires. If I push a button, whether it's an attack or not shouldn't depend on whether I know what it does.

2
D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder / Re: 3.5e invisibility and collatoral damage
« on: March 11, 2014, 05:23:51 PM »
I don't like that "in the round it was cast" wording. It implies the spell is prescient. If an immediate action moves something out of or into the range, it somehow predicts that? And you still have the problem of Fighters throwing themselves into its path just to break invisibility, you just limit it to the first round. And does the invisibility break when you cast, or when it becomes counted as an attack?

No, I think the root of this problem is trying to make this at all dependent on outcomes. Whether or not you break invisibility should be entirely dependent on the action you take, not what consequences it has for other entities. I prefer any spellcasting at all, but did mention those alternatives for people who prefer something a little more flexible and/or hate mundanes just a little more. If nothing else, though, casting cloudkill or wall of fire should either break invisibility, or not, end of story. No mincing about "Well is somebody in its path?"

If you absolutely must tie it to "Did I hurt somebody", have it check as you cast, though. If nobody's in the cloudkill when it's initially conjured, you don't break invisibility, no matter how many people go charging through it later on.

EDIT: And I think letting BFC work with invisibility but not anything else is a terrible design decision, so that's coloring my suggestions a bit. It's not like BFC has gotten the short end of any other stick in the game.

3
D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder / Re: 3.5e invisibility and collatoral damage
« on: March 11, 2014, 01:28:37 AM »
I'd recommend any spellcasting or attack roll breaking the spell. This has the advantage of giving you clear rules constructs and clear in-game flavor to reference, allowing you to dodge the whole "Well, some spells work, and some don't, and sometimes one spell can work in one context but not in another" quagmire.
This is what I'd go with. You break invisibility under two conditions:

1) You make an attack roll.
2) You cast a spell/manifest a power/use an invocation/initiate a maneuver/use a vestige's granted abilities, etc.

You can do anything else without worrying about breaking the spell. You might consider making an exception for abilities that are a swift or move action with Personal range, if you want to allow funky movement powers (not much else is going to fall into this category*). You may also want to consider abilities with the (Harmless) tag in their saving throw lines, if you like the idea of going invisible to buff and heal, and find it arbitrary that buffers just need to cast invisibility last in order to get their nice things (personally, I wouldn't do this, but it's an option).

*EDIT: Other than short-term buffs that will usually expire when you do something to break invisibility anyway. You'd want to include words to prevent Quickened things, though, probably.

4
D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder / Re: 3.5e invisibility and collatoral damage
« on: March 10, 2014, 01:24:19 PM »
The problem is the devs had a vague idea of "I'll know it when I see it" and assumed everyone else would have the same vague idea. That's kinda the end of the story - there's no RAW way to settle this because there is no relevant RAW. It's as well-defined as your inability to sing I'm a Little Teapot and recover your hit points, only unlike that it isn't a question that common sense can answer (as demonstrated empirically by this thread).

You'll need to make a house rule to cover it. There are three ways you can do this, as I see it. I hope my preference is clear:
1: Effects continuously check to determine their attackiness. Once it's considered an attack, it breaks invisibility. This means an action can spontaneously become an attack, even without the intent of the actor, and leads to Fighters tossing themselves into Walls of Fire to break invisibility.
2: Effects check to determine their attackiness at creation time. Only if it meets the critera at this time does it break invisibility. This means that an action's qualities are known at the time of acting, and leads to Wizards doing things that by all common sense and decency ought to be "attacks" by fluff, but technically aren't by crunch.
3: You redefine the conditions for broken invisibility. This would also allow you an opportunity to even the footing between casters and non-casters in this situation. I'd recommend any spellcasting or attack roll breaking the spell. This has the advantage of giving you clear rules constructs and clear in-game flavor to reference, allowing you to dodge the whole "Well, some spells work, and some don't, and sometimes one spell can work in one context but not in another" quagmire.

5
General D&D Discussion / Re: Making casters MAD...
« on: February 07, 2014, 12:09:36 PM »
I think you're being told Grease is useless for this particular application because it only helps you escape a grapple, and if you need to escape a grapple that you started then you've necessarily wasted your time. And time is one of the most valuable resources in the game.

6
General D&D Discussion / Re: Making casters MAD...
« on: February 04, 2014, 11:28:24 AM »
Uh, no, grappling a wizard is literally groveling at their feet begging them to kill you quickly.
Well, let's not be too hasty. I mean, in all fairness, if you've managed to grapple a wizard past level 5, it's because the wizard wanted you to, obviously. So in that sense, yes. Assuming you've somehow pulled it off against the wizard's will, however, then I figure it's no more groveling than any other strategy for fighting them, because that's what you'll be doing as soon as Dimension Door (one of the few specific spells I'm okay with assuming a wizard will always have). And if the wizard doesn't want to be grappled and doesn't have a spell prepared to escape the grapple, then you're probably in decent enough shape, honestly, but then again that's probably because you live in Magical Christmas Land.

EDIT: Or a low-op game I guess those happen too

7
Homebrew and House Rules (D&D) / Re: Iconic animals and incarnum
« on: February 01, 2014, 11:18:45 PM »

8
D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder / Re: Could a Beguiler replace a Wizard?
« on: January 31, 2014, 12:09:15 PM »
i feel like in repeating my self, but...

Acorn?
Doubt it. Acorn is magical, gets shut down by the Dead Magic Zone. I don't think it'd protect itself, or at least I'm reasonably confident a DM would have to arbitrarily decide whether or not it does, and I know which one I'd pick if DMZs were relevant to the campaign.

10
What if we specify an actual mode of movement must be involved? Basic land speed, fly speed, burrow speed, etc. That seems to be more or less the intent here.

11
General D&D Discussion / Re: D&D 5e: For real this time?
« on: December 14, 2013, 08:58:00 PM »
https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/398897952724238336

So apparently everything remotely-related to Evil will be in the DMG...including spells, because allowing (or not) my neutral wizard to prepare Protection from Good should be a 'DM option' WTF :???
While I like that they're hardening their position on what the game is supposed to do (You're The Good Guys), instead of continuing to pursue the Game For All Games path of inevitable ruin, they probably should have put these in a separate section of the PHB (to emphasize that they're not part of the default playstyle). Putting it in the DMG implies it's an issue of DM authority, instead of playstyle, which is absolutely the wrong way to go about it. Anything that enhances the impression that the DM should dictate character concepts beyond the minimum for campaign functionality is not something I like, and this only improves functionality if you think Evil is "Trololol, I kill my allies in their sleep for the evulz".

I'm terrified that the dev team thinks that's what Evil is, and that they think DM authority should be entirely unlimited.

12
General D&D Discussion / Re: Making casters MAD...
« on: December 12, 2013, 12:07:26 PM »
I'd also point out that, depending on how the spellbook vs spells known thing is implemented (IE you should really have some significant downtime in order to use a spellbook to change spells known, say a month of study), restricting your spell access with Int does cut down on some of the always-have-the-right-spell cheese that wizards are known for. If you set it up so that the numbers provide bonus spells known over baseline Sorcerer progression for a high Int, then you're probably helping equalize the caster classes a bit, if not doing jack for casters vs mundanes balance.

That said, the anti-drain buffer is probably more important, and easier to analyze.

13
General D&D Discussion / Re: Making casters MAD...
« on: December 10, 2013, 03:20:08 PM »
Just as a heads up, you'd need to modify how SR works. Probably let creatures add their Wis to it or something. You don't currently get ability modifiers to SR checks. You should probably also have Charisma modify touch attacks made with spells or something, so that it's harder to get out of needing the stat by focusing on certain kinds of spells. Might be a replacement for the SR idea, or an addition.

That noted, I'm not sure how effective it'll be. I doubt it will help balance meaningfully - the problem there has always been the Nice Things dichotomy between spells and not-spells, but it will help mirror the "Need All The Physical Stats" thing that mundanes have to deal with, and encourage more diverse character-building by forcing you to choose what you want to focus on the most.

14
Homebrew and House Rules (D&D) / Re: [3.P] AoO = standard action?
« on: December 05, 2013, 11:41:09 PM »
Interesting.  Normally, that rule ought not come up because you only have 1 standard action anyway, and swift and free action spells don't count against your one spell limit.  So in a normal game, the only character who would even notice would be a Factotum or someone with a Belt of Battle. 

Do any "alternative casting" systems have such a restriction?
Psionics does not seem to. I guess all the haters were right, in the end, for all the wrong reasons. Psionics really is broken.

15
Yeah, I'd say a single feat would be fine. Something like:

Wind Slash[General]
Prerequisite: Base Attack Bonus +6.
Benefit: At the beginning of your turn, as a free action, you may choose a 5-foot square within 25 ft., plus 5 feet per 2 points of base attack bonus you possess. Until the beginning of your next turn, that square is considered to be within your reach, regardless of its actual location. Thus, you may make melee attacks against creatures occupying that space, and a creature that leaves that space provokes an attack of opportunity.
Special: A fighter may select this feat as one of his fighter bonus feats.
Special: You may take this feat multiple times. Each additional time you take this feat, double the number of squares you may choose at the beginning of your turn, instead of gaining its normal benefit.

16
We should get rid of the d20. Bell curves 4 lyfe!

... But seriously, yeah, Clerics of Pelor (for example) aren't monotheistic, he's just their patron. That's like saying Dominicans reject the existence of all non-Dominic saints.

17
Look, if swinging a metal stick around was enough to let you be awesome, why would anybody ever become a wizard? And if nobody ever became a wizard, what would that say about adventuring nerds, and by extension somehow, the value of our own life choices?[/Please Don't Be Real Thinking]

18
That's for figuring out what the class skills are for published monsters, so that you can assign skill points properly while modifying them. It's not for anything presented as a race for PCs. IIRC, context makes that clear, but I don't really know what the source on your quote is. Just ask the DM - either they'll give it to you for free, or the quote will be unconvincing.

19
Min/Max 3.x / Re: Fun Finds v5.0
« on: October 18, 2013, 01:54:57 AM »
You run into the invisible guy, thus triggering the will save.

But... invisibility does not work that way, was my point. Its save is not "Will disbelief (if interacted with)" but "Will negates (harmless) or Will negates (harmless, object)", which is entirely different.
Aye, but the feat adds additional rules, likely because the author doesn't know how the spell works and thought it was clarification. So now its save is "Will negates (harmless) or Will negates (harmless, object) or Will disbelief (if interacted with)".

20
Min/Max 3.x / Re: Fun Finds v5.0
« on: October 15, 2013, 10:16:08 AM »
Who actually has the transformation ability for a Changeling Wizard's familiar?

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