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The PBMC Metacompendium / 30 WBL Maximum on One item
« on: October 08, 2018, 07:28:14 PM »
DMGp43: Non level 1 characters can't spend more than 50% WBL on a single item.
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C's no random battles sounds like you used a hack and D's lack of consumables sounds like how people joke about never spending their items anyway.You can just run all the time before you get the moogle charm. D is how people do C.
Also you could just cast Vanish & Doom on Atma to instantly kill him before he acts.Absolutely not in BNW. It's a bug patch / retranslation / system overhaul and difficulty mod with a dark souls-esque community that insists its not too hard, you just need to git gud.
which shows new threadsI've never been able to keep up with any forums' all threads posted. Maybe I was too thorough before or maybe these boards have slowed down now. I don't know. But good for your for keeping up with all of them.
I despise bans because it wreaks of kneejerk reactions and lack of thought. Because I can usually figure out how to replace something with a more balanced version of the idea fairly easily.Please do try to get creative lieu of me. I've been devoting brain power to other things for months now. But keep in mind that I have 2 fair restrictive other considerations. 1) It has to still be the thing that it was trying to be, just balanced. So for instance Skarrunks weren't mention to cause Pun Pun. They were just meant to cause small mutations. So most of the Manipulate Form text can stay and Skarrunks will still feel like they are using Manipulate Form the way it was designed post-fix. 2) The fix itself has to be applied to something that resembles D&D. This might sound nebulous but just take it at face value. For instance, you can balance thought bottles by saying something like 'We aren't using XP anymore, and thought bottles now do something completely different.' Well that is balanced and it avoids a ban, but it doesn't feel like D&D anymore. It might be great. It might be better than D&D in a certain way. But I'm not making something new. I'm just fixing what is there.
you go and remove Rogue's immunity to Dex-to-AC-deprivation to replace it with Ref-save-against-saveless-spellsDid I? That should have been an option/addition rather than a removal. I'm still in the middle of dumping, so I'm going to request a quote so I can trace it.
If you err on the side of modularity, why have a ban list?I don't. Although if you'd like to collate those things so I can triple-check them, it might be a good idea. At least for people who knee-jerk hate for me to ban / give up fixing something, it will tell them where to look to help.
you're trying to make a fair and balanced game out of a system that is literally intended to be unfair and imbalanced. Or at the very least copies far to much from a system designed to be (TSR era D&D) to make it fair and balanced without a complete rewrite of the classes and/or spells. You're doing a lot of small, fiddly changes filled with catches and exceptions that get increasingly convoluted and nonsensical in universe. A Bard taking levels in Sublime Chord has no logical reason, anywhere, to be suddenly losing a bundle of ability score points they chose in character generation.I'd be interested if you can find proof that 3rd edition was meant to be as imbalanced as it is. I'm not aiming for total starcraft-level balance. Just a close enough approximation of how I see it played.
You're commiting the very same act of balancing that made people despise 4e by making the rules bend over for balance, instead of changing them to be balanced by default.Uh. No people didn't like 4e because it starts them balanced by default, not because it was 3e with rules changed to bring balance.
Some people like playing ludicrously overpowered characters, you know?Yes I do.
Furthermore, a lot of your anti-caster measures aren't actually solving any real problems, as the fundamental problem is the spells. If you've fixed the spells, then no other fix is needed, because then the casters are then balanced. If you haven't fixed the spells, and the casters still retain access to the full 9th level spells, then the game is wildly imbalanced.Aside from that italicized part there in the middle you are a walking advertisement for my fixes. I want to thank you. The truth is, there are ways to break RAW 3rd edition even if all casting classes are banned. That's too harsh for me, obviously and more balanced then otherwise, but still not even close to fool-proof.
penalizing ... tier, it's mechanically unusable because the DM has no possible way to judge where a player's casting will stop with multiclassingIalready address above with asking for full ECL20 builds.
By penalizing the higher tiers in a blanket fashion, you kill a lot of character concepts because of the fact that too damn many are fused to t1 classes at the hip.Such as? You're previous example was pretty lose and can be accomplished with a feat to use a spellbook and a feat to swap to more of an int caster. That hasn't changed.
If you want to balance the game, then rewrite the classes and their ability lists.No. Absolutely not. That is a good way to make the game no feel like D&D, be a nightmare to keep track of for mental consistency, and make translating build ideas like you mentioned above very problematic. I'd like to draw your attention to your previous quote.
You also seem to fail to understand the feel of D&D 3.X, given the flat-bans on large categories of items for the side rules based on them, rather than digging into those side rules to work out the problems with them to render the item acceptable.Slights aside, you are welcome to point to specifics.
Take everything that exists for PCs and work out how to balance the idea of it. Thought Bottles are a problem for negating XP costs, so make them do a different thing based on the same idea, like undoing negative levels and mental score damage, something attainable through regular spells, made easy with a small XP cost attached.That first part is a little weak logically. Balancing "ideas" of PrCs don't tell DMs what to do when a Lifedrinker and a Planar Shephard are in the same campaign. As to your specifics that's not really what thought bottles do. They are very different, RAW, from a little restoration spell. Feel free to try again with exact text.
There's also some problems with interactions between your own altered rules. What's the "penalty" for players to take a dead PC's items, and therefore wealth, when they get the XP to match it, like you mentioned in Strict WBL Guidelines by saying that Profession of all things gives XP to keep you on track for WBL?I would say "yay some better specifics" here but... there's no problem here. There is no penalty. If you take said items, it counts against WBL (probably in lieu of monster treasure or whatever). If you generate WBL with a non-combat method, your XP matches because you are doing something useful. There's no beef here that I see.
Furthermore, how do you solve all the problems wealth generation making XP gives? You'd have to remove every fast wealth loop, and I see nothing about Fabricate on hereFurthermore, tisk tisk. Getting ahead of ourselves are we? I already said I haven't dumped the spell stuff yet. You are welcome to go dig up my previous download if you are impatient with me posting things here.
a Wizard can powerlevel forever by mass-producing Masterwork Full Plate and keeping it in their armory. And Wealth by Level is a fucking guideline. Just like the Custom Magic Item "rules". Actually identify this before you make rules respecting it, because people are not going to ever use rules that give a strict XP to GP ratio mandating that you be locked to a line on a graph with no deviation.Whoa. Don't go off the deep end here. What's more balanced, a Commoner 1 with ECL 20 WBL, or a Commoner 20 with ECL1 WBL? It's a plot with a straight regression. You can still stay in 100% statistical congruence with that point plot while having non-discrete inflexion points. I never said the second derivative had to be locked at 0.
What the heck happens when you Wish for an item within the cost limit?Patience, young padawan. Remember your training:
[if] casters still retain access to the full 9th level spells, then the game is wildly imbalancedGood. Now focus. Maybe we can address. Maybe we already have and it's just not in front of you yet.
What if a DM wants to break the guidelines of WBL to give underperforming characters items that make up for minor deficiencies?I'm pretty sure I mention in several places that it's fine for lower performing (tier, build choice, etc) characters to have individual-only rules bent for them (LA, prereqs, combos, etc). Higher performing players should expect that. DMs should also be up front about how much was bent for whom, even if the details are insignificant and likely to change between campaigns. But I'll mention this again in the strict WBL area, though.
You're not understanding that the point of 3.X is to play a role, and it's built from a system that respects the utterly plausible result of Sword Guy ending up utterly useless in a fight between reality warping madmenThat seems plausible to me. You're welcome to quote me otherwise, though. For someone I've only spoken to once, you seem to know a lot about me.
Honestly, I'm just grumpy that he claims to be keeping the feel of 3.X while trying to be throwing out the caster's supremacy. Which is literally an intended part of the game design, or at the very least had no actions to correct that explicit design choice from 2e (and several actions that exaggerated 2e's acts of assuring it).It's the second option. Don't be grumpy! I'm not going to fully overcome caster supremacy; it's going to be there. It will just be manageable enough that when you have a wizard, a cleric, a fighter, and monk in a party, half the players won't think there's no point in playing. You seem to reference GitP a lot, so maybe you'll remember that "how much should you go play super smash bros. in the other room" explanation to caster supremacy that was over there a while ago.
Pathfinder has a vastly more conservative focus on the core of the d20 system than even 3.X did, introducing vastly lower diversity in rules than D&D proper ever did. It still lacks a first-party caster-alike that uses an alternate resource system.Well of course PF was core-centric. Core is, in general, less balanced pound for pound than material outside core. Diverse classes are good. You're doing a good job of strengthening my argument. If you like PF because of balance, then I could say your "claims are utterly contradictory to [your] goals."
How about you consolidate things to particular topicsBecause then it's too difficult to find. I've looked through others' (who throw the baby out with the bath water) and think. Okay, let's test if everything is fixed. And then I ctrl+f and find no reference to thought bottles. But I know they have to be thrown out because they break one of the major currencies in D&D: XP.
Do you want several hundred threads with the only search tool being the site?Ideally, no. I'd prefer the ability to use subboards to organize things as I have in my already released download. But it was taxing to the already generous mods, and I was also told I should 'stop caring' so much about what others might think of my organization. I promptly put this down for a month; perhaps I did care too much. I figured some distance would help. I haven't decided either way. But a least this way I have confidence that I can link individual fixes for any particular fix. I am also wary of trying to overload information in clumps; I err on the side of modularity.
That's potentially annoying to everyone on the site, factually including me, which is why I made this post.Why is what I do over here a problem? Are you implying there's a limit to how much may be posted per day? For months before and during my hiatus, I've made no secret about my intention to dump a lot at once.
that you're still at it.Yeah my spouse was wondering why I spent all day doing this. I didn't have a good answer of than, "It will help other people" access the information more easily. Also I have, like, a years worth of threads that I need to dump as well. I estimate that there's maybe 1+1+1+2= a full work week of manhours left before I'm 100% "free" of D&D. After that I think I'll capstone run DS3.