Min/Max Boards

It's pretty Feat extensive through. Iron Will, Spell Focus, Endurance, Track, and either Rapid Shot (which requires point blank) or Two-Weapon fighting. But on the upper end of the optimization spectrum, you can Chaos Shuffle away the Elf's four expressly bonus Feats, take some Flaws, sell your soul off through an Insidious Pact, and worship an Elder Evil and shuffling those out for like ten bonus Feats before you PrC out. Throw something like Dark & Rogue into it and boom uber stealth archer.

You can also use the otyugh hole for iron will and perhaps gloves of the balanced hand for TWF. Y'know, for something less high end than chaos shuffling and elder evil worshiping.

I thought so...well thats a big negative in my book

It's the negative and positive all in one. Such is the nature of fancy independent fast progression casting. If it weren't independent, then you'd just be progressing bard and wouldn't be going fast.

Drow Paragon: The only class to give casting at 1st.  For Drow Clerics 1 level is better than a 5th level of Cleric.  For Wizards, it replaces the 3rd level in a builds using Master Specialist.  Only worth the one paragon level though.

Drow paragon is weird, because its casting loss is kinda front loaded into the race itself, through LA. So, yes, drow paragon is the likely second best if you take as assumed that you're already the race in question, but if you're considering the value prior to making that racial decision it goes way down. Lesser drow probably gets it back to its second place status though.

Once again, a simple attempt to edit a post goes horribly awry. Damn that single dangling unquoted sentence. I shall eliminate it, even if it takes me a hundred tries.

Not at all and yes, the intent always been there but outside of the RC it was never a stated rule to handle things like that, only implied or called a policy in the Errata.

Indeed, the rule was largely present only through implication and intent. And, of course, through the past behavior of games. But making that information explicit does not strictly imply that the old explicit rule ceases to be. That implication would have to be separately proved, and I can't see any evidence for such a proof.

But now you'll incur a problem of double standards because you want to start arguing that policy or RAI concept gleam from how the books handle them selves should be treated as a rule and it cannot be replaced, ever, because your bias blinds you from treating them equally.

Are you referring to specific versus general or primacy here? In the former case, that's not how these books happen to handle themselves so much as the way all games have worked in the past, to the point where it's just an unstated rule of rule sets. Rules don't even work without that underlying concept in the vast majority of cases. In the latter case, there's obviously no double standard because I'm citing explicit text where there is none for the  FAQ.

You can only have one method to handle contradiction, any other rule that attempts to say otherwise would either have to agree or it's self become a contradiction to the other.

Not necessarily the case, and, in fact, not the case here. In particular, the two rules could, and do, handle different sorts of contradictions. If that's the case, then two rules for contradictions could easily exist. I'll go into a lot more detail on how that works in the next part.

But in this case they don't disagree with each other because they are the same things. The RAI concept, Primary/Secondary policy, and the rule about the Order of Rules all handle them selves identically. Outside of exceptions, the primary rule is the most specific rule. It's just one of them simply calls it's self an update that trumps the rest while the others take second place "historical" prizes for not being as clear and laying the groundwork.

They do not handle themselves identically. The order of rules specifically sets forth a hierarchy of rules by specificity, where an individual rule is given an arbitrary specificity label (I say arbitrary because more than three could easily exist, and I could probably point to actual examples of that if necessary), and rules with labels indicating greater specificity get precedence. The proof of this meaning of the text is rather trivial, as I need only note that variations in specificity are always applied directly to the rules. Primacy, meanwhile, doesn't care at all about the specifics of the rule itself and the labels on that rule. It only cares about the source of that rule, and the broad nature of that rule (where, say, the general nature of special attacks gets the same labeling as some specific special attacks). So, under this rule, you give each rule a label, either primary or secondary, based solely on whether the book in question is the primary source for that rule, and primary rules get precedence (I don't think there are more than two primacy labels). Again, this can be easily shown by considering the primary source rule. I mean, it's right there in the title. Primacy modifies source and not rule, and the text supports that reading.

These two rule sets could theoretically be equivalent, were primary sources always more specific or something, but they're not. To show this, just consider some applications. Let's take one we know, the arcane thesis situation, but modify it a bit. In particular, we'll imagine that arcane thesis is in the PHB, with that errata text included, and the text from the FAQ is instead in, I dunno, races of eberron. Neither piece of text is more specific than the other, because each is saying things on the exact same level. "You do get this lower spell level adjustment," is just as specific as, "You don't get this lower spell level adjustment." We're not talking about a specific situation where you lose the lower adjustment, after all. In this case, the PHB, as the primary source, would win. It's a situation which the general/specific rules have absolutely no way to adjudicate, because the specificity labeling is the same.

Next, consider the inverse situation. Human says you have a 30 ft. base movement speed. Fly says you now have this flight speed, contradicting the fact that your only movement speed is that one along the ground. Fly wins, because it's more specific. And, for the sake of argument, and because it's true, we can assume these things are in the same book. The primacy label does nothing, so we must use specificity. Really easy case, that, which speaks to how fundamental this rule is to game design.

Now we must consider a pair of more problematic cases where these rules don't tell you everything you want to know. First, you have the case where specificity and primacy are both equivalent for a pair of contradictory rules. This situation is fundamentally unresolvable, and arguments about such rules usually involve arguing that one such rule is actually more specific. It's a bit difficult to prove identical specificity, but, again, we can consider that arcane thesis situation except with each piece of text in the same book. Notably, this situation only leads to failure in cases where each individual rule would also lead to failure, so it's not like the extra rule is adding ambiguity. Next, we have situations where one rule is more specific and from a secondary source. It's hard to see which resolution rule would win out here from the rules themselves, but looking at how these rules are applied indicates that specificity wins out. After all, a flight spell from any other source would work as well.

So, if specificity is the dominant rule, then why doesn't the FAQ win? Well, simply because the rules aren't actually more specific. This goes back to the FAQ's nature as a source of rulings. Any entry of the FAQ, as a thing describing how a rule works, is necessarily going to be on the same specificity level as the rule it's based on. The FAQ answers aren't saying, "The way the books say it works is correct, except...", they're saying, "Here's how we read this rule." So, in point of fact, if specificity were the only way to resolve rules conflicts, then the FAQ would simply move from unimpactful source to creator of awful ambiguities all over the place. Step backwards, by my reckoning, though you shouldn't take that bad outcome as the core of the argument.

That's my reading of the pair of rules, anyway. It seems self consistent, at least, and I think it also matches up with the rules as they are presented within the books. Which would make it the correct interpretation. And, of course, the self consistency of that reading would at least resolve your claimed contradiction.

Pretty much. Like saying Ability Damage remains is a very good answer and I'd agree to be the correct one but it really isn't "RAW". Rather we're trying to build a working theory over how it should work using all known precedents and examples and testing it.

But, at the same time, my contention is that such situations are unusual. We deal with them reasonably frequently, because the unresolvable is inevitably going to come up more than things that are just resolved, but true ambiguity isn't a frequent occurrence.

Actually it's pretty easy to discern intent form the rule rules, what is hard is agreeing with someone over them and what is impossible is when one approach the subject seeking RAI and the other only wants to use their own. The latter happens more often than anything else.

Well, it's easy to build your own model, but I don't know if I'd call that discerning. The minds of the game's creators can never be perfectly known to us, and so, for all we know, they intended monks to take a huge penalty with their main weapon. What authority have I to claim that the rules as they are aren't the rules as were intended?

If you understand the rule base well enough many of the FAQ's entries become redundant or sometimes the Sage's explanation isn't as sound as the one you'd like to use but...

What seems none gray to you became an entry because several people asked. What seems like a bad rational to you (and me) is the same thought process that wrote entire rule books. As previously brought up, WotC did a very good thing in hiring out their Sage hat to run their official game rule FAQ and they hired people that wrote large amounts of 3.5's rule base.

I don't disagree that it can be valuable. The rules in this game are complicated. But that doesn't mean much to its nature as a rule source.

Not really, every single one of the books have an error on them that make them wrong about something. One true error, an error that doesn't fall back to your interpretation, or an error that would later pave the way for a rule's update, may not even be possible depending on who is interpreting the matter.

Aside from the directly contradictory stuff, those things weren't errors in the same sense. Like, we can say that having wild shape operate off of polymorph rules was an error that was later corrected, but those were still the rules. Such an error in the FAQ is not still a rule in the same way.

Like at some point the Sage appears to be mistaken that Prone should impose a penalty to Grapple Checks, a concept that appears no where else in the rules outside of adjudication in respect to real life, however the FAQ can, often does, and must inherently expand the rule base every time it makes a ruling. So the question becomes, should Prone impose a penalty on Grapple Checks? Officially, the rule base encourages it and an Author of several books, including the PHB, has said it does in a WotC controlled & published medium. An anonymous opinion on the forum that opposes it does not have the authority to call it wrong no matter how much they disagree.

An anonymous opinion, no. The rules of the game, sure. It's not the random poster that's deciding that the rules work this way. It's that same poster pointing to the fact that the rules work this way. They have ultimate authority in stating the rules of the game, insofar as it maintains perfect parity with the rules of the game, and they have zero authority otherwise.

Then the Rules Compendium was published as the definitive update and it introduce the rule known as the Order of Rules Application for working out contradictions. Like before, designating the primary source was simply a matter of finding the most specific entry such as text over table or full entry over short description. Calling it "Primary & Secondary, with Exceptions" got rebranded into self-describing terms such as general and specific. Now asking what is "primary", or most specific rule, would be asked in plain speak rather than game terms by because the new way to ask the question was what is "specific"?

Primary/Secondary is simply the precursor to the Order of Rules. Same idea, just a better presentation and carries it's self with the respect it should have.

I think you're conflating two entirely different rules for determining how the game operates. It's not like the general/specific/exception rules were suddenly called forth into being with the rules compendium, and that changed primary/secondary. The general/specific rules were always there, because that's just how games work. It's why casting fly allows you to fly in spite of the fact that you ordinarily lack that movement mode. This isn't a re-branding of anything. It's merely making explicit what was always implicit, the fundamental rule underlying most of game design. There is nothing about the order of rules applications that overwrites primary/secondary, nor should it. Because having only the order and not primacy makes it even more difficult to determine the rules. After all, returning to old examples, the FAQ text about arcane thesis isn't any more specific or exceptionish than the errata rules for arcane thesis, and the same applies to that DMG/complete warrior fight. These rules are all on the same level, meaning the weight of the source is the only method of resolution.

Primary/secondary isn't a simple precursor to this rule ordering, one made obsolete with the new release. They're completely different rules that handle completely different things, and I don't know of anything in the text anywhere that indicates otherwise. There can be multiple rules handling rule conflicts. These are two of them, and they coexist just fine.

Yeah but now you're caught up. No more FAQ isn't this or that.

Fair enough. I'm not perfectly certain that the FAQ does have a spot in the game's hierarchy, but it seems like a solid enough premise to work off of.

What grants the FAQ power it multi-sided. The first part obvious is it is a rule's source and thus trumps any none-rule's source comment and ironically this is the hardest thing to accept. You need to understand what RAW really is and it's not about the rules. In it's most common usage it's more accurately called what someone uses when they have lost an argument in order to claim they were not wrong.

I see where you're coming from, but I think that what RAW is transcends the way it's sometimes used. Yes, someone may hide behind the notion of RAW when a rules situation actually turns against them or is ambiguous, but there are still things we know for certain. There are discrepancies we can resolve through logic alone, and, of course, baseline facts that aren't contradicted in the first place. Some aspects of the game are inevitably ambiguous, either because there are two contradictory sources and no way to discriminate between the two meaningfully, or because there's simply no answer. A classic example of this from my analysis of the game is the way that ability damage is treated when you wild shape. The damage might stick around, or the fact that you're changing ability scores could get rid of the damage. It's unclear, and, to my knowledge, has no resolution. In some cases we can extrapolate from surrounding text what was intended, but in some we can't, and either way we're not working with strict RAW. But that doesn't mean that RAW just tosses up its hands. Instead, RAW says, "This situation is ambiguous within the rules," and it's really as simple as that.

To put it simply, RAW really is about the rules, and that RAW is the context in which I'm considering the FAQ. If someone misuses or abuses the term, that's on them.

For the most part, words them selves are meaningless and only the message of those words should be debated whenever possible. And the more times a message is resaid, rehashed, repeated, reexplained, and detailed the clearer the message becomes. And so this is where the typical perpetrator will attempt to downplay or omit any other source that discusses the material in question. And this type of argument, what to ignore, is a sign of danger that you're not walking into a thread that wants to debate the meaning of the rules and how to use them, but you're walking into a debate whose sole purpose is to prove them right.

The problem with RAI, which seems to be the perspective you're advocating, is that it's really frequently impossible to discern intent. From my experience, it gets abused far more often than RAW does. In this sense, RAW is really the best basis we have to go on, and I see threads based around it as predicated on that fact rather than on some underlying incentives. At least to some extent. We all inevitably bring bias into an argument, but, again, that bias would exist in RAI threads too. And, if you're in a RAI arena, then what seems to be one guy's opinion of what the writers probably meant, an opinion that can be proved is completely wrong in some cases, doesn't seem that valuable to me. We could probably start up our own RAI thread, and it wouldn't be meaningfully less valuable.

And it's not strictly about the FAQ either. Like the other month I had to deal with a guy that refused a Feat having two prerequisite entries in two different books. Because his arrangement was based on interpreting a phase a certain way that disagreed with the rest of the rule base he could not, and would not, accept another supplement's revision of the prerequisite. And it's not that the revision changed the message, at least as far as me and the rule's interpreted things, but the revision simply did not use the same exact words that were being disputed as ambiguous and to be taken as they claimed it should be.

Can't rightly say whether that person was rule-crazy or not without knowing the specifics of the argument, but I can say that I've dealt with situations like that, here and elsewhere. It's not a perfect system by any means, but I think it's the best we got.

Anyway, massive block of text aside. To give you a much shorter example. Buried in Complete Warrior was an entry that under a common interpretation breaks the rule base causing several Prestigious Classes to no longer work. Rather than questioning their validity of their interpretation they concluded someone else must be at fault, called it an error, and walked away from it. Later on a rules source, and I think we all know which one I'm talking about, would add an entry that under their interpretation could be seen as incorrect. But again, rather than revisiting their theory of interpretation that had problems before under the new guidance they claimed the FAQ was wrong. Nothing in Complete Warrior's text says the FAQ's ruling is wrong, even it's usage past tense and examples exclude the concept of PrCs invalidating them selves. An interpretation like that does not break the rule base and does not call things nonfunctional. It even fully agrees with the new insight provided by the FAQ. In other words, the problem wasn't the rule's text. The problem was the poster's understanding of the rule's text and under his misconceptions and willful ignorance he called something else wrong instead of his conclusion.

I don't know about the FAQ element of that argument. It may have come up, but, as was the case here, FAQ arguments tend to split off into their own thing. From what I can recall of these arguments, the core of the RAW claim against the CW's text wasn't based on simple inconsistency with existing prestige classes, but rather some discrepancy with the DMG's treatment of prestige classes, which would lead to the CW text lacking sway outside of that book. It's not perfect, because the DMG text doesn't strictly imply that the CW text is incorrect, but the text does define PrC prerequisites in a way different from how the CW defines prerequisites. Specifically, the define a prerequisite as something you need to meet at some specific level.

And this is also one of the largest reasons the FAQ cannot be dub "wrong". Because it typically sticks to grey areas what it disagrees with isn't printed rules but your opinion on the matter. It offers a new restatement that helps quantifies the message in the form of a direct answer. Anyone can just as easily use the troll tactics of calling a few words ambiguous over someone else's strong feelings of what they think it should be and prove any given FAQ entry correct.

Sure, if it's just restating truth, then it's obviously fine, and if it lurks in an area with strict ambiguity, then it has some sway, but my problem is that these "grey areas" aren't necessarily that grey. If there can be determined some truth about the rules of the game, strictly from those rules themselves, and the FAQ says anything different from that truth, then we're not just sticking to grey areas anymore. If, in the above case, the only reason to disagree with CW was that it'd screw stuff up, and then the FAQ came along with a ruling not inconsistent with that rule that didn't cause problems, then that'd be fine, but that there already exists a rule about this could make it not fine, depending on the FAQ entry. Which all gets me back to my main claim, because if you can't support strict ambiguity in a particular case, then we can't define a particular FAQ entry as sticking to grey areas.

And another facet of it's power is simply drawn from fallacies are not a means to prove anything. Attacking the FAQ's credibility does not mean it's entry is wrong. Even if you found a entry you disagreed with and could not wrap your head around why the FAQ ruled the way it did, your disagreeance does not give you the ability to dismiss the FAQ any in other area. A great example is this thread, the FAQ entire was entirely correct. No ands, no ifs, and no buts about it. But Link with his personal baggage wanted to shot gun his fallacy over everyone's face because to him repeated defamation is a perfectly acceptable method to argue. And he thinks this because you in turn tolerate and humor it. The battle being waged here is less about the FAQ to me and more of the shitstain that is your acceptance to prompt ad hominian attacks as validate forms of debating.

The FAQ may well be right or wrong in any particular situation, and, in fact, looking through the entries, it is frequently correct about the rules. However, we are not talking about the FAQ as an expert on rules, but about the FAQ as a source of rules. In the latter role, credibility is important, because it speaks to authority. The PHB can't really be wrong about what the rules are, except where it contradicts itself. That the FAQ can be wrong about what the rules are strongly limits its capacity as a rule source.

And to wrap up a third facet of the FAQ's power to rule as it were comes from the Rules Compendium which recasts the idea of Primary/Secondary in a way for you to clearly designate which is or isn't the priority rules on the matter. Under the Order of Rule's Application the entry of say Trilemma may be the authority of how Trilemma works and the entry of Flunge may be the authority of how Flunge works. But when Eloquacious said Trilemma and Flunge work together then Eloquacious is the authority of how Trilemma/Flunge work together.

But I still don't see how the RC is recasting the idea of primary/secondary. It opens up by talking about its own primacy, which speaks to nothing beyond its own nature as a source, and then it starts talking about general/specific rules, which are completely separate and have far more to do with how a book acts upon itself. Nothing there seems to indicate in any way the FAQ's position in the hierarchy. It certainly wouldn't be in opposition to the FAQ being in the top slot, as it indicates that there are theoretically sources with this sort of sweeping power, but it doesn't indicate that the FAQ has that sweeping power.

Honestly, I get the feeling at this point that we actually have close to the same general opinion on the FAQ. Where the FAQ is in obvious accordance with the rules, it's obviously right, and where there are grey areas, it can inform our decision making. However, where we disagree is that you think there are far more grey areas than I do. In a world with rolling waves of grey consuming the game with its ambiguity, the FAQ makes much more sense as a meaningful rules source than it does in a world where things are mostly pretty clear with the occasional lapse into blurriness.

I agree with a lot of that. The thing is, I do not expect the rules to always have a RAW answer, because they don't. You will not be free of RAW failures if you get rid of the FAQ, and in fact you'll have more, because the FAQ solves more problems than it causes.

Problems are only really complicated because the CO community started treating D&D rules like a programming language. That's probably why WotC felt the need for the fluff/crunch separation and strict formatting in 4e: people's rules-lawyering was getting out of hand. But 3.5 remains the same, and if you expect everything to have a universally-agreed-upon RAW answer, too bad: you will not get it. My answer to all those hard questions is this: you will have to think and implement what is best for the game. That is something you should be doing with any rule, whether FAQ or errata or printed book, because any rule could be in error. The final answer will be the one that makes the most sense, which may or may not be the one in the book or errata or FAQ. Consider all the sources, including the FAQ, and make a rational decision. It does not have to be the same as at every table, because it not Rules As Played Everywhere.

I'm not really sure how this situation is all that helped by the FAQ, is the thing. If we're not going by strict rules, then of course the warlock gets their blast shapes. Why would blast shapes even be if not for the ability to use them? If we are going by strict rules, then this stuff starts to really matter. Beyond that, I think that the rules as they actually exist are important. There's some personal input, but you need a starting point, and determining where that is is about the RAW. If everything's just down to personal opinion, then what's even the point of the rule set? And, yes, there exist unresolvable ambiguities in the text, but I don't think there's anything on this level. By that I mean that there's nothing that attacks the core nature of what rules are, and how sources should operate in the first place.

The job of all rules is answering questions, and all the rulebooks are subject to error. There is no inerrant, God-designed D&D we are trying to discover by sifting the holy words.* Therefore trust is never the issue.

No, the job of all rules is to tell you how the game works. This could be considered answering questions about how the game works, but the FAQ is the source for whom this sort of inconsistency correction would be an explicit job.

I agree with Kaelik's assessment that we should only implement FAQ rulings if they are good, yet our differences come out when I say that the rules work the exact same way. The FAQ functions just like the rules: it is usually right, and sometimes wrong: yet looking at it as something less than that makes it nothing at all. If you can never trust the FAQ to be right, then you can never give a decent answer to questions like Xelights'. In this thread's case, the original source made a person hopelessly confused, while the FAQ made it right, thus proving that the FAQ is as good as rules. Probably better, since it is building on top of the rules and was written after the rules got their "field testing".

But what does it mean for an FAQ ruling to be "good"? You might have the idea that it's in situations like this one, but as Soro said, we don't have any real influence at all about how the RAW works. We know approximately how to adjudicate differences between sources. It's a lot harder when you're adjudicating differences between a source and some sort of external clarifying entity. The pesky internal factors that make the FAQ not really able to make changes also extrapolate out into the real world, in that we don't want the FAQ to make changes.

As I keep saying though, this might be a situation were the ruling could be considered good, because there could just be no answer within the FAQ. By my claim, perfectly unambiguous ambiguity would be the situation where the FAQ could have some rule power behind it. If there are situations where the FAQ can do something, that'd be the criteria for such a situation.

You didn't answer the question, either: which part of the FAQ did you find confusing? Or modifying to current words, which parts did you find in error? Because I'm getting the feeling of hearsay, or making mountains out of molehills.

Didn't know what you meant by confusing. The most egregious error I'm aware of is the following: "Arcane Thesis reduces the total spell level of a metamagic affected spell by one, regardless of the number of metamagic feats applied." This directly contradicts the PHB II errata, which states, "Thus if you were to prepare an empowered maximized magic missile (assuming magic missile is the spell you choose for your Arcane Thesis), it would be prepared as a 4th level spell (+1 level for empowered, down from +2; and +2 levels for maximized, down from +3)." Kaelik apparently has some sorta thing involving FoM. I wasn't personally involved in the history of the FAQ though, so I don't know all of the inconsistencies. Mostly just that one I said here, which is a super weird one.
 

To Eggy: the thing is, the actual rulebooks have multiple cases where they are objectively wrong! They reference each other, they reference themselves, they have examples that are wrong and statblocks that weren't calculated correctly, and sometimes outright rules texts that are clearly in error but were never corrected. If one only accepts sources that have no errors, then one would have to drop D&D as a game altogether. As I said earlier, the law of common sense comes in to play. It is usually clear when a source (ANY source) has something that was a simple oversight.

That's a lot more expected when you're dealing with rule books, which are meant to introduce new rules which could plausibly contradict old ones. It's not so expected when dealing with an FAQ, which is meant to solve these sorts of problems, not just create new ones. What do you even do when a source meant to resolve ambiguities creates new ones? The FAQ's only job is to be careful about how the rules operate, and it failed utterly.