Min/Max Boards

It looks like your solution to the dearth of high-level effects produced by this system is to write a list of combinations that can produce those effects. So the costs of this system seem to be:

• Someone needs to write out enormous tables of interactions in order to produce the spell effects that would be considered par at high levels.
• Players will need to reference said enormous table when they try to cast their spells.
• Someone will likely minmax the hell out of the system and produce crazy broken things, while someone else could pick bad combinations and perform abysmally.

The benefits of this system seem to be:

• No spell slots
• If you put in all of the work writing & vetting those tables, you could theoretically bring casters to a manageable level
• Theorycrafting is fun

The 3 problems are pretty huge, each one being enough to turn me off a subsystem entirely. The benefits can all be accomplished by something else, like adopting the Spellcasting Codices or writing new Invocation-using classes. I would be hard-pressed to accept this as a workable starting point for a new ability subsystem.

Also, this has nothing to do with Vancian magic. It looks like a new casting system that you want to substitute for standard casters, which is a different topic. I know it's the sequel to the thread, but it's a little weird to use that title.

I'm not sure what you mean, exactly. But yeah, most games, people won't be crafting or have a lot of items. A huge amount of items in 3E is the stuff you need to stay on the RNG and my system tries to do away with that.

I should have been clearer -- I meant that there isn't a lot of offensive capability in the class outside of making magic items (wands, staves, etc), and your system limits the number of magic items a character can have to 1/4 of their level. So for most realistic play, the gadgeteer is going to have 0-3 crafted magic items, and without investing one of those few magic items in an offensive spell (which will fall off fairly hard) or begging the DM, the gadgeteer doesn't have much to do in a fight that's actually rewarding.

Yes. I think the wording in the abilities is "if he takes damage".

Just wanted to make sure that's what you intended, because I could imagine some people crying abuse at that.

I'm not sure what you mean. If he makes a suit and is at a high enough level, it can become invisible.

Sounds good. I was just wondering if certain suits like aquatic would work with cloaking.

Yes, he moves when he activates is. I suppose the wording is really weird on that.

Is there a way to make that better? Like give him a fly speed, but if he doesn't move using his fly speed or hover for a turn he starts to fall?

I disagree with Captanq's take on the mechanized guardian. It's already a weak class feature as-is, giving you a cohort 3-4 CR behind your level. Nerfing it further makes the thing only good for using magic items and stealth (which you could do anyways).

• Incarnum maneuvers you can invest essentia into
• Rushes
• Attack-action maneuvers (instead of standard / full-round strikes)
• For things like IHS, a non-action maneuver would be nice

I think design wise it's generally assumed you're taking more than one school.  Warblades and Crusaders only learn two 9th level maneuvers.  Only Swordsages get more, but they're designed to be used with multiple schools.  Also, it was a common wish that being able to rebuild the current schools using this system would be retained, and they all have more than 3 maneuvers per level at lower levels.

It's true that current ToB classes are designed to make use of multiple schools, but the proportion of maneuvers that an initiator can know from a given school (within the window that said maneuvers are optimal to learn) is twice as large for 9th level maneuvers.

For example, a crusader learns 1 8th-level maneuver and retrains one maneuver to 8th so he has 2/3 of the total maneuvers available to him. But he gains 2 9th-level maneuvers and retrains 2 maneuvers to 9th, so he has 4/2 of the total maneuvers available to him. I'm only using a single discipline's ideal # of maneuvers known because multiplication is hard, but what this demonstrates is that initiating classes will have twice as many opportunities available to them to pick up 9th-level maneuvers, so it makes sense to me that there be more 9th-level maneuvers instead of less.

The large number of low-level maneuvers makes sense. I forgot classes granted so many at level 1.

This feels a whole lot like a zhentarim fighter with stricter bonus feats, slightly better skills, and some interesting fear-related bonuses. If that's what you're going for then I suppose it's fine, but I don't think there's anything here that can't be replicated with some feats and a fighter/ranger ACF instead. This seems to clash with the first commandment of brew.

This also doesn't give me the "samurai" vibe. Instead of having epic sword attacks and crazy speed, this guy just feels like a capable warrior that scares people. Even a quick fix could do stuff with crits, 5' steps, or mind games.

That said, I don't want to tell you that your ideas are bad. It just seems like your samurai fix would be better serviced by handing the player a copy of the Zhentarim fighter and telling them to talk about honor.

I think it's fine so long as you recognize that. I know players (and am one of the players) who would see a bardizard casting and immediately turn to buffs and no-save-just-lose spells. I also know players who would still use fireball and magic missile because it's cool (and then perform about as well as a monk). As a DM, I think those outcomes are bad to the point that I wouldn't want the bardizard at my table. But my life certainly isn't the only data point that fixes should be designed around, so if your fast method works for your table then I can't really contend with that.

And this is where things go sideways -- it misses the thrust of what the OP was getting at.  This doesn't even lose a spell level (@ lvl-20, that is) -- that was my point of contention with that example.

I don't even think the OP mentioned losing a spell level at level 20. Checking again, I can see he definitely didn't mention losing a spell level at any point. What he did say was "tossing out the spell slot progression at a few levels", which means a caster at level 10 casts as though they were level 10-X, where X is the number of levels that were tossed out. I picked X = 2 because it's a serious hit to the sorcerer that will probably make them feel bad for playing no matter where you put the 2 dead levels, but you could make that number bigger and the problems will get delayed to higher levels.

Yes, they essentially have what amounts to an at-will death effect -- that's how hard they're swinging their sword (more so for warblade; psywar simply has more versatility).

Uh, no. They have one ability (that they might pick up) which requires them to be adjacent to an enemy, use a full-round action to make a jump check, then make an attack roll, then let the opponent make a fortitude save based on the initiator's strength (no other stat), and then it doesn't even work against enemies immune to critical hits or death effects. At will be used at best once per round. It is in almost all ways worse than the ability our MT got 2 levels ago.

A level sorc 4 / favored soul 4 / MT 9 can literally build a crude fortress, pierce almost all illusions, shut down most non-flying, non-ethereal mooks, or make fighting without FoM effectively impossible. And because he's got a gazillion slots he can drop one of his highest-level spells every round in most fights with room left over to solve every puzzle his party could even dream of dealing with.
Okay, so you've got some Batman going on; but 1) I think you're being a bit hyperbolic with your frequency, 2) nothing you've mentioned is inherently game-breaking. 
I mean, seriously -- Move Earth is a nifty, imagination-dependent utility/BFC spell ... not a HUGE deal, and at that level, is not exactly a Gordian Knot.  Also, if you haven't got FoM (or at least a serviceable substitution thereof) by level 17, you have failed at life -- just go home and cry yourself to sleep.  That Wall of Iron?  Yeah, that "death effect" I mentioned above also works for knocking that shit down, and in pretty short order.

1 more level on that build gives you 7th-level spells; which, at that level, there are plenty of defenses against .... though I will admit that this is where things are getting a bit dicey.  The rails don't completely come off for 2 more levels when 8th-lvl spells come on line ... which is why my suggestion stops at spell level 7.

You can't handwave move earth by saying "it's not game-breaking". A standard action single-target SoD isn't gamebreaking at this level of play, but our candidates here don't get that either. This terrible version of the MT controls the battlefield better, kills targets harder, and provides stronger defenses than any other tier 3 class. And it does that with only it's top 2 levels of spells.

And remember, this isn't about the MT fighting the warblade (in which the MT wouldn't waste iron walls because he's not a fool). This is about how much the MT contributes to the adventure/fight compared to the warblade. And the answer to that is: "Way the fuck more". And I'm glad you can see that 7th and 8th level spells really do leave tier 3 characters in the dust. Even though that sort of thing can happen with 4th level spells and a little creativity, I'm glad we can agree that the MT does not drop classes to tier 3 or tier 4 as I originally said.

Actually, it seems like that is what you're arguing.  Just sayin'.

I recommend looking at the TLDR in my original response to this thread. My responses here are about how clean the process will be. I'm not dumb enough to think that if you nerfed the wizard's casting by 18 levels he wouldn't be about as useful as a fighter or monk, but that has no bearing on whether or not the process would be considered "clean" because then it would also make wizard players feel awful and dumpster dive for abusive spells.

Bard casting on a wizard makes them worse than a sorcerer, but they can probably still outperform the beguiler.  Bard casting on a druid makes them laugh because they're still miles beyond any tier 3 class.

I used it as the comparison because the beguiler is the strongest of the "tier 3" classes and indeed deserves a lot more credit than its given. But that wizard is still beating the beguiler.

I think you're getting caught up on the "Less levels, less powah" idea. It's simply untrue. 90% of a class's power comes from the spell list. If the bard was given fullcaster gems it could go up a tier with certainty. A wizard's huge flexibility, powerhouse spell list, and enormous array of potential solutions definitely makes them stronger than the beguiler until you do crazy things like force them down to ranger access. Now this change also makes wizards feel terrible because they'll probably suck even worse at lower levels, but in the long run their spells at 2/3 the beguiler's level can be used a hell of a lot better. This assertion of yours is actually what's untrue.

EDIT: Also, I'm talking specifically about the wizard and druid (though I think the cleric works too). If a sorcerer got nerfed to 2/3 casting, the best "tier 3" classes like beguiler and dread necro could probably beat him, but the bard and psywar would still look bad.

Stances are an awesome mechanic for encouraging round-to-round flexibility, but if you give a player more than 5 options they're probably going to suffer serious decision paralysis. So granting a big chunk (2-5) at level 1 isn't so bad, but you don't want to grow that number very fast unless you plan on having higher-level stances just be objectively better than others.

Wow. I can see how adding more bundles of dice could definitely be a problem. You could poke him on the request thread and see if he'll write something else up. But it looks like he didn't finish the last PrC he worked on there, so maybe not...

Sorry, YouLostMe, but by your logic and your very own examples, why is bard not T1?

Because it scales slower, is more MAD, has a lower max spell level, has fewer spells per day, uses a spells-known mechanic, and its spell list is worse. When the bard is ready to use freedom of movement, he's level 10, gets one use per day, and it's one of only 2 level 4 spells he can ever cast. Of course freedom of movement is cool, but it's one of the best spells a bard can learn at that level.

When the sorcerer gets freedom of movement at level 10 (2-level nerf), he can use it four times a day. But it's nowhere near his strongest spell -- he could instead pick up black tentacles or solid fog. When the favored soul gets freedom of movement, it's in competition with divine power and lesser planar ally. And this is just as the edge of the acceptable range. At level 20, the nerfed sorcerer could be throwing around time stop and mage's disjunction while the bard's best trick is irresistible dance at DC-3 (or worse since he's more MAD).

Now I don't want to comment on what "tier" the nerfed casters would be. I would still consider the nerfed sorcerer "tier 2", but it's obviously worse than the regular sorcerer despite its power. All I can say is that this kind of fix is definitely not clean. There are problems at both edges of play, there are problems with class features not getting dropped, and there's the problem of encouraging no-save-just-lose tactics even harder which I would argue is worse for the game's health overall. All in all, I think the elegance of simply delaying spell access is far outweighed by the difficulties it presents, and (to go a step further) would argue that any successful fix of those classes will require a lot of dirty work.