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Messages - RelentlessImp

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41
Min/Max 3.x / Re: Help with Petal Gish
« on: July 14, 2014, 10:05:43 PM »
Quote from: vaz on July 14, 2014, 09:58:34 PM
I thought that was a 3.0ism that was phased out - Knowledge (Local) is a self contained skill, there's no Knowledge Local for each locale.

Page 8, Forgotten Realms Player's Guide (the 3.5 one), Regions & Feats, Regions and Skills, paragraph 2, first sentence:
Quote
When you take ranks in Knowledge (local), you must designate the region to which your local knowledge pertains.

At the very least, in a Forgotten Realms game, it works.

42
Min/Max 3.x / Re: Help with Petal Gish
« on: July 14, 2014, 08:24:45 PM »
Quote from: linklord231 on July 14, 2014, 08:07:19 PM
Only elves, spirit folk, and Deep Imaskari can take Otherworldly.

Two ranks in Knowledge (local) Underdark, Evermeet, Sildëyuir, or Ashane qualifies you, as per FRCS on Regional Feats. (EDIT: Page 28, to be specific.)

43
Min/Max 3.x / Re: Help with Petal Gish
« on: July 14, 2014, 07:38:43 PM »
Quote from: Lorrdernie on July 14, 2014, 06:44:48 PM
It doesn't seem hugely relevant to the build overall in any case.

It's fairly relevant as to whether or not you can actually make a Petal PC. But, assuming that, we'd also need to know the sources you have available. If you can finagle flaws, I'd highly recommend the Otherworldly feat at first level, as your choices of Alter Self are minimal for assuming small size (hybsil, young redcap, spriggan, nixie and pixie). With Otherworldly and the Outsider type, Dwarf Ancestor opens up, letting you terrorize even harder with your lockdown.

EDIT: Nix the Dwarf Ancestor, forgot it was a Large creature. There's still a larger assortment of 5-or-less HD Small Outsiders, though.

44
Gaming Advice / Re: What is the general consensus on how much LA is acceptable?
« on: July 14, 2014, 07:10:51 PM »
Quote
So why are you going on about LA being more broken than everything else is?

You keep answering your own questions.

Quote
WRONG. The point is supposed to be that you sacrifice class abilities for a hypothetically-equivalent boost via racial abilities and modifiers. You're not supposed to be 'behind' in the sense of being weaker than everyone else; LA exists to stop characters with exotic races being stronger.

It's broken because these hypothetically-equivalent boosts via racial abilities and modifiers don't exist when compared to class features, hitdie, BAB, saves, etc. It's 'broken' because 'it doesn't work', not because 'it's powerful'. This is why I said to get it to work you'd have to scrap all LA races and templates and start from scratch.

45
Gaming Advice / Re: What is the general consensus on how much LA is acceptable?
« on: July 14, 2014, 07:05:14 PM »
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Where are you getting the assumption that LA is supposed to be power-for-later-sucking? I've always seen it proposed as a balance mechanism--e.g., you get a boost, but it weakens your base chassis and delays class features. I've certainly never seen it proposed to mean 'you should be crappier than another race beyond this point'.
You just said where. It weakens your base chassis and delays class features. When, you know, class features are the defining characteristics of your character (in conjunction with FEATS, which are also level-locked), you are paying for basically "Be better than non-LA race at this level but be behind them forevermore".

Quote
Well, something like Aasimar lets you use Alter Self in terrible and hilarious ways.
This is getting more into the territory of what spells do than what LA does. Dwarven Ancestor is what it is, and I did say there were exceptions - the permutations of the system are such that introducing any single thing has ripple effects through the system as a whole and leads to powerful/broken/pants-on-head stupid interactions.

46
Gaming Advice / Re: What is the general consensus on how much LA is acceptable?
« on: July 14, 2014, 06:58:26 PM »
Quote from: Unbeliever on July 14, 2014, 06:07:54 PM
Quote from: RelentlessImp on July 14, 2014, 05:27:29 PM
The Aasimar is very nearly a good base point for what +1 LA should be worth, because it's almost equivalent to a Fighter level (with, arguably, getting free armor proficiencies if you describe your character wearing them). Almost. It's missing a 2nd level character's HP, but its resists to certain energies are almost on par with a class feature (that class being Warlock), and the extra ability score bonuses bring it all the way up to being a very good example of Level Adjustment.

If this had been the baseline for level adjustment +1, then the LA system would not be as awful as it is right now. But it's not. It's not the baseline because there is no baseline, not one that's heeded anyways. So you wind up with shit like Fiendish, which is worse than Aasimar, and Lolth-Touched, which is fucking ridiculous. By taking level adjustment as a whole, you can see the system is, if not broken, then very severely warped by what came later and paid zero heed to balancing it at all with what came before.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the observations above.  But, I think the conclusion is a bit problematic.  It's a thread that pulled applies much more generally than LA. 

A class level of Fighter does not equal a class level of Druid does not equal a class level of Warblade and so on.  Further, it doesn't really account for the way some abilities complement and add to each other, the most obvious one being spellcasting.  That is, a level of Druid spellcasting is more valuable if you have 3 other levels of Druid casting than if you had 0 other ones, for example. 

Summary: (1)  why is LA, if it's not correctly calibrated, any worse than say, D&D as a whole?  (2) general consensus is that in most builds a level adjustment isn't worth it.  A good build benefits more from a class level than a level adjustment, especially a substantial one, in the vast majority of cases.  So, isn't the firepower concern at best overstated?  I don't know of that many powerful builds that have ECLs at all, let alone a log of them.

My previous conclusions were all predicated on the assumptions that 3.5 lays out (Human is baseline, level adjustment should be worth power now for sucking later, classes are marginally equal [yes, it says that somewhere]) and taking the system as it is.

To be honest, you could scrap LA (and RHD) entirely and just let people take whatever they want for a race and you wouldn't get very unbalanced at all. There are some exceptions, like Ethergaunts and Adult+ Dragons and template stacking and such, but in the end, it's stat adjustments for the most part, occasionally an SLA, sometimes a different movement mode or two, which are, well, pointless in the face of class features like spellcasting (which, let's be honest, gives you any physical stats you want anyways).

47
Min/Max 3.x / Re: Help with Petal Gish
« on: July 14, 2014, 06:00:45 PM »
Well, off the top of my head, Petal isn't a PC-usable race as denoted by (Cohort) in its Level Adjustment listing.

48
Gaming Advice / Re: What is the general consensus on how much LA is acceptable?
« on: July 14, 2014, 05:27:29 PM »
Okay, here. Let's see if I can simplify:

Human = Baseline.
Humans get: +1 Feat, +1 Skill Point (*4 at first level)

Anything beyond that needs to equal a class level.

Let's take Aasimar, for example:
Aasimar gets:
+2 Cha, +2 Wis (above-average 3.5 ability bonuses)
+5 Resist Fire, Cold, Electricity (Equivalent to a Feat)
+2 Spot, Listen (Equivalent to Skill Bonus)
Outsider Type (Darkvision, All Martial Weapons Proficiencies)
Daylight 1/day (nobody cares)

The Aasimar is very nearly a good base point for what +1 LA should be worth, because it's almost equivalent to a Fighter level (with, arguably, getting free armor proficiencies if you describe your character wearing them). Almost. It's missing a 2nd level character's HP, but its resists to certain energies are almost on par with a class feature (that class being Warlock), and the extra ability score bonuses bring it all the way up to being a very good example of Level Adjustment.

If this had been the baseline for level adjustment +1, then the LA system would not be as awful as it is right now. But it's not. It's not the baseline because there is no baseline, not one that's heeded anyways. So you wind up with shit like Fiendish, which is worse than Aasimar, and Lolth-Touched, which is fucking ridiculous. By taking level adjustment as a whole, you can see the system is, if not broken, then very severely warped by what came later and paid zero heed to balancing it at all with what came before.

49
Gaming Advice / Re: What is the general consensus on how much LA is acceptable?
« on: July 14, 2014, 05:11:59 PM »
Quote from: Raineh Daze on July 14, 2014, 05:07:09 PM
Quote from: RelentlessImp on July 14, 2014, 04:58:26 PM
Quote from: Raineh Daze on July 14, 2014, 04:54:44 PM
+1LA should be worth one level, not the racial bonuses provided by being a human.  Because you get LA templates. And because you lose, you know a level. <_<

Except even the PHB races refute that. One feat is clearly worth immunity to sleep and +2 saves against enchantment (because you get functionally the same thing taking the Dragonwrought feat, or Otherworldly). +2 to certain skills is worth a feat because we have feats that do that (like Sneaky or whatever that gives +2 to Hide/Move Silently). It's about opportunity cost; if you play an Elf, you're losing the opportunity to choose that free feat, and which skills your racial bonuses go into. So you need to compare Apples to Apples against a Human, and in consideration of Level Adjustment, anything beyond Feat+Skill also needs to be worth losing the opportunity of an extra level, unless you make LA Buyoff baseline (which it isn't - it's an optional rule from an optional rulebook), in which case you can be a little more lax.

No.  This does not make sense.

You are saying that +1 LA--that is, despite having only one class level, I gain XP as if I am a second level characters, and am expected to contribute to a party of second-level characters--should be equivalent to the benefits gained by being human, then you cite elves for some reason. I'm not sure why.

A complete lack of level adjustment should equal a feat and a skillpoint. Because an LA 0 race should be equal to a human, all things considered. Thus, an LA +1 race should equal a LA 0 Race, plus one class level. An LA +1 template should equal a class level. Because if I am for all intents and purposes treated as second level, I should be able to function as a second level character--and not as a first level human.

We're more or less saying the same thing here but in different ways. You should be able to contribute to your party at Level 1+1LA as if you were a second level character. Unfortunately, with human setting the baseline, this means contributing as a second level character means bonuses that are equal to a Feat (Elves getting immunity to sleep) and a Skill Bonus (Elves getting +2 to certain skills, like a skill feat), and then a class level. If your LA race is worse than a human in all ways and doesn't get anything to make up for it, then there is no reason to take it - otherwise just write 'Human' on your sheet and call yourself an Aasimar or something (see: Lesser Aasimar).

50
Gaming Advice / Re: What is the general consensus on how much LA is acceptable?
« on: July 14, 2014, 04:58:26 PM »
Quote from: Raineh Daze on July 14, 2014, 04:54:44 PM
+1LA should be worth one level, not the racial bonuses provided by being a human.  Because you get LA templates. And because you lose, you know a level. <_<

Except even the PHB races refute that. One feat is clearly worth immunity to sleep and +2 saves against enchantment (because you get functionally the same thing taking the Dragonwrought feat, or Otherworldly). +2 to certain skills is worth a feat because we have feats that do that (like Sneaky or whatever that gives +2 to Hide/Move Silently). It's about opportunity cost; if you play an Elf, you're losing the opportunity to choose that free feat, and which skills your racial bonuses go into. So you need to compare Apples to Apples against a Human, and in consideration of Level Adjustment, anything beyond Feat+Skill also needs to be worth losing the opportunity of an extra level, unless you make LA Buyoff baseline (which it isn't - it's an optional rule from an optional rulebook), in which case you can be a little more lax.

51
Gaming Advice / Re: What is the general consensus on how much LA is acceptable?
« on: July 14, 2014, 04:51:52 PM »
Quote from: linklord231 on July 14, 2014, 04:44:17 PM
You can't call the system broken because there are some elements that are imbalanced.  That's like saying speed limits are a broken system because sometimes the highway engineers get it wrong and the posted limit is too high. 
That's a faulty analogy. Let's try this one: "Speed limits are a broken system when highway engineers generate two identical roads going the same route, one with a 30mph speed limit and the other at 60mph."
Quote from: linklord231 on July 14, 2014, 04:44:17 PM
The system may be broken (I've seen arguments both ways), but you can't hold up individual races or templates and say "Look at this massively overpowered character I made via templates!  Clearly the system doesn't work."  You have to look at the system as a whole to determine if it could accomplish its stated or implied design goals:  namely, does it allow characters to play exotic races with intrinsic abilities that are more powerful than the abilities of standard races, without giving access to said abilities much earlier than they could otherwise be accessed?  Is a character with a given Level Adjustment balanced against an equal-ECL character without a Level Adjustment?
Here's what the base should be: +1 level adjustment should be worth one feat, one skill point, and one hitdie. Because the Human should be the baseline, since 90% (from the institute of pulling numbers out of my ass; but it's fairly high) regard Humans as one of the best race in 3.5, and throughout the text human is referred to as the 'baseline' other races should be measured against. Now when you take that into consideration, the LA system is broken in its representation because none of the level adjustments are worth that. Not even the MM Tiefling or Aasimar, despite them getting all Martial Weapons Proficiencies, which are probably the closest to the baseline as you can get.

Now, could level adjustment be reworked to be worth it? Absolutely. You just need to trash all templates and all level adjusted races and start from scratch. But saying it's not broken is saying that "in a vacuum, it isn't broken" because in its execution, it is broken, because +1 level adjustment is a bullshit standard between even OFFICIAL things like Lolth-Touched and Fiendish.

52
Off Topic Fun / Re: Webcomics Discussion Thread
« on: July 14, 2014, 04:35:27 PM »
Allow me to present Prequel, a story about the very worst Khajiit Cyrodiil, and possibly all of Tamriel, has ever seen.

53
Gaming Advice / Re: What is the general consensus on how much LA is acceptable?
« on: July 14, 2014, 04:26:35 PM »
Quote from: Raineh Daze on July 14, 2014, 04:20:55 PM
Quote from: RelentlessImp on July 14, 2014, 04:12:33 PM
Quote from: Raineh Daze on July 14, 2014, 03:52:53 PM
Quote from: RelentlessImp on July 14, 2014, 03:32:38 PM
Just going to pipe in for a moment; level adjustment is not 'safe'. It's a stupid idea, and always has been, and the writers have been pumping out ways to break the LA system since 3E's inception. For instance - before Half-Giant was a Race rather than a Template, you could stack Half-Minotaur, Half-Giant on a Small creature, wind up Large sized, and get the templates' stat adjustments (around +8 Str, +6 Con IIRC) and an additional +12 Str, -4 Dex, +4 Con for moving from Small->Medium then Medium->Large for the low, low cost of +2 level adjustment, which was gone by 10th level.

It does not work like that. This is listed in the monster advancement rules--e.g., what happens when you add HD to monsters and they grow in size.

Both Half-Minotaur and Half-Giant had a clause that stated you got the stat adjustments for moving up a size.

Then those are badly designed in and of themselves (as Linklord said), with the low LA suggesting someone completely failed to notice what they're just put into the template.

...And which part of this contradicts what I've already said? Here, I'll help you, you yourself quoted and helped prove the point: "writers have been pumping out ways to break the LA system since 3E's inception".

There's no standard. There's things that shouldn't need an LA, things that should, things priced too high, priced too low, and overall just a colossal clusterfuck of shit. Level Adjustment is broken, in that it doesn't even achieve its stated design goal, because +1 LA means nothing in and of itself as a standard, which means other level adjustments mean nothing if the base means nothing.

54
Gaming Advice / Re: What is the general consensus on how much LA is acceptable?
« on: July 14, 2014, 04:12:33 PM »
Quote from: Raineh Daze on July 14, 2014, 03:52:53 PM
Quote from: RelentlessImp on July 14, 2014, 03:32:38 PM
Just going to pipe in for a moment; level adjustment is not 'safe'. It's a stupid idea, and always has been, and the writers have been pumping out ways to break the LA system since 3E's inception. For instance - before Half-Giant was a Race rather than a Template, you could stack Half-Minotaur, Half-Giant on a Small creature, wind up Large sized, and get the templates' stat adjustments (around +8 Str, +6 Con IIRC) and an additional +12 Str, -4 Dex, +4 Con for moving from Small->Medium then Medium->Large for the low, low cost of +2 level adjustment, which was gone by 10th level.

It does not work like that. This is listed in the monster advancement rules--e.g., what happens when you add HD to monsters and they grow in size.

Both Half-Minotaur and Half-Giant had a clause that stated you got the stat adjustments for moving up a size.

55
General D&D Discussion / Re: Help; How to Counter a Teleporter
« on: July 14, 2014, 03:39:33 PM »
Quote from: Raineh Daze on July 14, 2014, 02:46:31 PM
Quote from: Darbius Maximus on July 14, 2014, 02:31:10 PM
Quote from: Raineh Daze on July 14, 2014, 08:06:11 AM
Quote from: Darbius Maximus on July 13, 2014, 11:47:52 PM

Quote from: Raineh Daze on July 12, 2014, 07:53:13 PM
I'm not going to bother with Skype to find out why elemental powers and a flying ship are 'weaboo'. <_<

I'm saying it's like that because it was all based on obscure anime. the elemental powers were far to alien to anything I had experienced. They were nothing like how elemental magic is presented in traditional fantasy works, they didn't even function like how they do in Avatar which I'm not counting as Weaboo because that's a lot more masterfully crafted than the animes  that the DM and her family get their ideas from, which are all obscure hipster animes nonetheless. I may be a bit harsh using the term weaboo but it felt like that when she ignored the fact she would be creating plotholes and just dropped Oriental Adventures on our heads.


Avatar is totally better written just by not being Japanese. That isn't a bad argument at all. :rolleyes

Chance they're not actually obscure hipster things, just not the stuff that gets dubbed to entertain ten year old boys: high.

To further describe what it was like, while we were in the ship, the DM pretty much said, "Hey there's an island on the way to where we're going", party leader replies, "Got no time for pit stops we gotta activate the temple-" DM pretty much says, "Fuck you, you're going to Japan" and we get stuck on an island of Varans (or whatever the Monkey people are), Nezumi, and friendly nagas for a day. It also meant doing the wrong things with magic could incur taint.

... so they're basically just using OA? Bad GMing, certainly, but nothing to do with 'obscure hipster anime'.

No, but everything to do with early 70s/80s wire-fu films and John Woo-style films. So it's not Record of Lodoss War, it's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Bulletproof Monk. Unfortunately that also includes Warriors of Virtue, so it's a wash.

56
Gaming Advice / Re: What is the general consensus on how much LA is acceptable?
« on: July 14, 2014, 03:32:38 PM »
Just going to pipe in for a moment; level adjustment is not 'safe'. It's a stupid idea, and always has been, and the writers have been pumping out ways to break the LA system since 3E's inception. For instance - before Half-Giant was a Race rather than a Template, you could stack Half-Minotaur, Half-Giant on a Small creature, wind up Large sized, and get the templates' stat adjustments (around +8 Str, +6 Con IIRC) and an additional +12 Str, -4 Dex, +4 Con for moving from Small->Medium then Medium->Large for the low, low cost of +2 level adjustment, which was gone by 10th level.

Exchanging 'power later' (Hitdice, BAB, Saves, class progression) for 'power now' (big stat boosts) is not a safe thing, but pretty much everyone wants to stack templates if they're allowed, because they can easily move off the RNG. Not that people don't already do this just by playing the game with a little forethought. Most races with a level adjustment are not worth the cost; a small number of templates are hideously abusable things at low levels. There's the rare middle ground where something might feel worth the LA. For a specific concept.

Honestly, if you wanted to balance LA, you would discard the stupid notion of 'power now for sucking later' and instead judge each template/LA race on its own merits, and when the low-level abilities granted by a race or LA cease mattering you take the LA away and give them straight up class levels for free to fill in the LA gap. You could do the same thing with Racial Hitdice, exchanging on a 1:1 basis with a character class.

57
Gaming Advice / Re: Morality of baiting- Is telling players to roll for Init baiting them to combat?
« on: July 14, 2014, 08:05:13 AM »
Quote from: Sjappo on July 14, 2014, 07:52:02 AM
Quote from: Unbeliever on July 08, 2014, 09:07:56 AM
As to the actual question in the OP.  You roll for initiative when a fight begins.  Not before.  So, there's no initiative rolling until someone, PC or NPC, declares "I throw a punch."  So, there's no forcing someone into a fight by initiative.  If it's being rolled it's b/c somebody wants to fight.  That somebody might not be a given PC, who might prefer alternatives to fighting, but he has to pursue those alternatives in the structure of combat rounds. 
Does it say anywhere that you have to wait with the ini roll when the first punch is thrown and that when ini is rolled combat is the only option?
Aside from Initiative being a subset of the Combat rules (Chapter 8, PHB), having Initiative's description explicitly mention battle, and only be referenced throughout 3.5's plethora of source material in terms of combat? No, not really.

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At the start of a battle, each combatant makes an initiative check. An initiative check is a Dexterity check.

58
Gaming Advice / Re: Morality of baiting- Is telling players to roll for Init baiting them to combat?
« on: July 13, 2014, 05:58:18 PM »
Derp, completely forgot about Lady Vol. Technically she's a 23rd level character if you care about LA, too. (And an illegal character, but we won't get into that.)

EDIT: She's basically whatshisface, Szas Tam from FR. If your characters ever encounter her, there is something seriously wrong and you can expect to meet the afterlife in a couple of rounds.

59
Min/Max 3.x / Re: Seafaring Campaign
« on: July 13, 2014, 05:59:19 AM »
You're multi-classing. Your familiar officially blows. Trade it away for something and take the CArc feat Obtain Familiar, where it levels up with your character level rather than Wizard class level. The aforementioned Amphibious Template would be good to take. Finish it off with four more levels of Incantatrix, the abilities from 4-7 are actually kinda useful.

60
Min/Max 3.x / Re: Pathfinder Tetori Monk
« on: July 13, 2014, 05:54:38 AM »
I'd be interested in hearing how long it takes your Dhampir to say 'fuck it' and join the ravening hordes of undead and horrors of the Demiplane of Dread.

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