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Messages - deanruel87

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The Spellshaping Codices / Re: Discussion and Suggestion Thread
« on: December 15, 2011, 02:24:37 AM »
Quote from: DonQuixote on December 13, 2011, 11:46:32 AM
The other point, for obvious reasons, is much more in-depth.  Especially given my rather limited experience with D&D, I don't fully understand all of the sides of your argument--I rolled my first character in September of 2010

HOLY CRAP!!!

That is goddamned astounding Don! I seriously just need to lead off by saying that.  I mean it is seriously an absolutely astonishing feat to have only been playing for a year and to have already put together and (essentially) completed a project of this magnitude.  That is amazing and I think that is speaks of a bright future in game design for you from here forward.  Really: Bravo.

Alright on to the actual questions posed.

First of all I'll say I didn't read through or use codex 2 so I didn't use any metashaping feats.  Honestly those seem incredibly important in bridging the gap.  The difference in being able to fly for 3 rounds with being able to fly for 6 is huge (or potentially all rounds, at later levels).  That is a really really big deal and a good way to go about it.  The only thing I would say now is move it into the main book.  I think you can push one product to people as "Your cool homebrew thing" but not 2 with anywhere near the rate of success.

So if you move the metashaping feats into the main rulebook the only problem you really have left in terms of power is a lack of available slots for your troubleshooting powers (I.E. your flight, ghost touch, invisibility type powers).  See if by 12th level you only have some 4 prepared slots for about half of your classes they just can't use them up with troubleshooting options AND valid combat spellshapes.  I think this is a problem.  I believe you could solve this either by increasing the number of available prepared slots to people OR an option I like better: Allowing people to do some sort of swift action, once per encounter switch out of some (or all) maneuvers.  That way you are always able to handle a flying opponent by suddenly switching in your flight spell instead of always keeping it on as one of your 4 ready maneuvers.

My apologies for this post being so brief, more later.  It is quite late here, but I think there's some semblance of a point there so far : )

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The Spellshaping Codices / Re: Discussion and Suggestion Thread
« on: December 11, 2011, 11:38:11 AM »
I do dislike warlocks.  Warlocks were very close to being one of the most interesting classes produced in 3.5 and as a class concept it had tremendous traction.  People wanted to play the warlock.  Warlocks are conceptually awesome.  But they were bland, underpowered, and under-capable of performing at an appropriate level in a party.  They were also a miss in the sense that their abilities can be far too easily separated into "Good" and "Shit" piles which means any three Warlocks will probably run just about the same.  This is not really a personal opinion either as Warlocks underpowered nature was a regular forum point in late 3.5.  In fact I will cite that the third result that you get in google when you type in "3.5 Warlock" after the two Warlock wiki entries is the forum topic "Is the 3.5 Warlock underpowered".
Source: http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-legacy-discussion/243648-3-5e-warlock-underpowered.html

But as to our points
1: Sure, your system, do your thing.
2: It is a pretty clearly worse system.  I mean one can be pretty objective about this in the sense that, again, in a traditional index you simply look up one piece of information in one step and in the ToB method you look up two across two steps.  And you are incorrect.  Their are 13 books published after the Tome of Battle in 3.5.  They are Dragon Magic, Cityscape, Complete Mage, The Fiendish Codex 2, Dungeonscape, Complete Scoundrel, The Magic Item Compendium, Complete Champion, Drow of the Underdark, The Monster Manual 5, Exemplars of Evil, The Rules Compendium, and Elder Evils.  All of these used the more traditional index system for ordering their spells.  But YMMV.
3: But getting to add an extra stat to armor is a feature that is thrown around all over the place and it is almost always accompanied by the ability to just also wear light armor.  Swordsage does it in the book you are trying to replicate and he wears light armor.  When designers give out an extra stat to AC bonus it is to help lightly armored characters use their shtick and be just as effective as at least medium armored characters.  In DnD Armor is a standard so not wearing armor is a big loss, this is one of the primary reasons why a good Swashbuckler class has never really been done.  Armor has very few negatives, huge positives, and was a conceptual standard for the designers when making the game.  So the name for characters who don't wear armor is not "Fencer" but "NPC".
4: Cool. Shame your not a fan of Impetus though.  I thought that finally being able to make a cool force using characters was one of the big selling points of what you had.  DnD just somehow never ever managed to get it right.  Primarily I think because they repeatedly shackled the entire concept to the telekinesis spell which is terrible.
5: Perhaps we are.  But the balance point I'm aiming for for your classes is the same I aim for for all classes; equal to monsters.  People who make classes fight each other are sort of missing the point.  Equal CR Monsters are something a class should be competitive against and that's really all that matters.  I have no doubt that your classes would do really nicely in the beginning 5 levels or so but then they will start losing ground and they won't stop until whatever campaign ends.  And to your two points about range and buffs; In range I actually added up the average range of powers in the Shocking Current Discipline which I chose at random.  The average range all totaled for ranged powers is 56 feet, so I was under by 10 with my guess.  I still believe the point stands perfectly however that the class suffers from a lack of good ranged options.  If you are trying to emulate the Warlock then I would recommend including things to improve their actual ranged capability, as the Warlock has a single effect which makes all his attacks 400 feet long.  As to buffs I will assume you know more than I.  I don't feel like they have enough powerful buff capability but despite my fondness for testing rigor I'm not gonna go through every maneuver.  The maneuvers I've seen on my read through tend to be not quite powerful enough for the characters level, situational, possessing a short duration, and need to be pre-chosen for encounters which means taking up space from directly effective combat choices.  So  your flight troubleshooting maneuver and your teleportation troubleshooting maneuver both compete with space with your awesome doing-things maneuvers.  And magic flight or teleportation items do exist, but yes you are correct.  Melee characters WERE screwed forever in 3.5.  Famously so.  It was all anyone really ever talked about.  We even had phrases for it.  DMF: Dumb melee fighter comes to mind.  High level monsters didn't have to interact with fighter characters that just swung swords, you really had to bring a lot more to the fight or else you literally couldn't play in the big leagues.  And the idea that this imbalance is in any way fixed by the idea of making every 1oth level barbarian spend 27,000 gold of his total 49 on some boots of flying and a cape of the mountebank is pretty offensive.  I mean at that point your really talking about a huge handicap being put onto what are already the worst and least performing classes in the game.  But as I said, if you think your classes buff paradigm is up to snuff I won't argue it further as I will assume, rightly, you have a finer mastery of your system than I do.  However I do urge you to at least look at some of these concepts, any one really roll a dice, when revising your product.  I think you have something that has a lot of potential here.  That's why I've written like 3 billion words over just 3 days of playtesting.  I think you could produce something that could be seen on a lot of tables and I would like that.  The concepts that you are attempting to realize are strong ones but I think some revision is required, and if I may be somewhat forward here, I think the concept of reading a tremendously lengthy series of in depth critiques on your product and saying that every single one of them is without merit is....well....really unlikely.  It's dishonest to the idea of publishing the strongest product you can to slough off critique.  At least consider these things, strong products require revision and require rigor.  And I think you could have one.
Happy designing, and good luck on your finals bromie.

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The Spellshaping Codices / Re: Discussion and Suggestion Thread
« on: December 10, 2011, 02:46:07 PM »
Hello Don, I did some playtesting last night and figured I would post some thoughts that occurred to me during the process.  Obviously you have no need to use anything I write but I thought I would at least inform you of some balance considerations for the classes and the system you have clearly put a tremendous amount of effort into.

Alright let's start at the top with minor or aesthetic critiques:
*All spellshape attacks should be the same.  It should be called a spellshape attack or a spellblast.  The fact that I need to know and differentiate between whether I'm using galvanic charge, gusting zephyr, searing.....whatever or telekinetic double-whatever is a waste of time and conceptual space.  There is no benefit gained from having 12 very tremendously slightly different spellshape attacks to run probably one maneuver apiece in actual battle.  There is just not enough difference to necessitate me remembering 12 discrete pieces of information about the system where 1 would absolutely do the job.

*This one may seem unfortunate but it is absolutely true.  You have chosen to use Tome of Battle's arrangement system for maneuvers in your book.  Of breaking each school of maneuvers into their own little sub-chapter with each maneuver listed alphabetically therein.  This is terrible.  It was a terrible idea then and it's no better now.  See in something like the PHB all spells are listed alphabetically, the same with every other D&D book except ToB.  There is a reason why they only did this once.  See in the PHB format you only need to know one piece of information to be able to look up your spell; it's name.  In the ToB format you need to identify 3 pieces of information across 2 seperate steps.  You need to know the maneuver's school, it's location alphabetically in the index, and then after going to that section of the book you need to go to the spell name.  It is in every way worse and was a considerable mistake in the formatting of the ToB.  Something to consider.

Next we have minor design issues.
*Two minor things about the Impulse mage.  The Impulse Mage should be proficient and able to wear light armor.  Every character in D&D is expected to be able to use at least light armor because it is a mandatory part of the games expectations for the combat RNG.  Additionally the 8th level ability Shift-Slip is very good and very interesting but comes too suddenly.  You go from being 7th level and never having used the ability before in your life to making it a absolutely integral part of your combat tactics at 8th.  The ability should be gained in steps.  1 use every 3 levels or so seems reasonable.

*The Telekinetic path's third level ability "Marionette" is both far too good and too vague.  In most combat situations it is a save or die effect.  Most characters are armed with a weapon and if the character can literally just mime stabbing themselves in the eye to kill anyone who fails the first save then it's too good.  Not too good -ever- just too good for a third level effect.  It's an auto include as written so you might want to modify it. (As a note as well the comatose thing if they save is probably the real problem.  Someone who's helpless in 3.5 for 1d4 rounds is deceased so you really can't save against the suicide application of the effect)

And Finally: Major Design Concerns
The classes you've made here simply are not able to enter high level combat excepting only the spellsage.  There are three reasons for this: Lack of range, Lack of versatility, and Lack of Buffs.  The first problem is simple, the range on spellshaping effects is usually about 45 feet or so on average, generally capping at 60.  That just isn't enough to compete with real high level monsters.  By 10th level these characters are mages with mage saves, mage armor, and mage hp who are expected to get up close and personal with things like Fire Giants.  They just can't cut it.  It also means mobile threats like ranged fliers can completely shut them down by just staying out of a 40 foot bubble.  Most ranged characters are effective out to much farther range so this is a considerable problem.  Second is lack of versatility.  Thinking of ranged fliers again the only class that could let you easily handle fliers is the Spellsage.  The Spellshaping classes entire flight abilities are relegated to a couple of air maneuvers which means your average character has a good chance of being without.  Besides flying the class has no answer for lots of tactical problems that can arise because while they look like spellcasters they actually more resemble archers in terms of actual tactical diversity.  They shoot and that's about it.  Steps should be taken if you want the classes to be able to operate at high level to give them effects they can apply to themselves to troubleshoot problems.  Which leads directly to a Lack of Buffs.  This one is simple.  All high tier classes can buff.  Even Tome of Battle characters have buffs in the form of various stances that they can activate to modify their characters abilities.  Spellshapers just don't have this which means they're out of place in the "Big Dog leagues" of D&D classes.  The Spellsage can choose Buff spells which let him compete.  A spellsage can have by 8th level Stoneskin, Fly, Invisibility, and Shield.  Letting him prepare for equal leveled opponents.  I think that with increased average range to their abilities, an ability to buff in some fashion, and some access to tactical effects like spells or innate abilities the Spellshaping classes would be absolutely on par with the best material out there.  I think that adding these effects and changes is something you should at least consider.

Thanks for your time.

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The Spellshaping Codices / Re: Discussion and Suggestion Thread
« on: December 07, 2011, 03:02:44 PM »
Is there a way to download the work that's been done so far, primarily I am speaking of the Codex 1 material, in PDF.  It is simply unusable in it's current format here on the forum.  It really seems like genuinely interesting and potentially valuable work being done here but unless it can be read as a PDF or in the very least as a wiki I can't see anyone anywhere being able to use it.  Certainly as a beginner it is the most intimidating as to even get the basic rules and words and classes down I've had to open a dozen different forums at least.

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Introduce Yourself / Yeah hi
« on: December 07, 2011, 02:58:39 PM »
Hello.  I am required to say hi to use these boards properly which is weird and feels like it's an uncomfortable family reunion or something

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