Min/Max Boards

I'm confused about what the actual concern for this feat is from a lot of people. Is it the unlimited damage? Is it the level of acquisition? Something else?

I personally don't really care about the unlimited damage part. It looks a lot like a reserve feat in terms of all day damage and debuffs that partially scale (with attacks if not with character level), and I don't have a problem with those in general. The acquisition level seems off though. I don't think it would be problematic on a level 6 or maybe even level 3 character, but level 1 strikes me as a bit too low for the benefit the feat is granting.

If you're going to make me wait for fighter abilities until 11th level, I don't want to see any abilities in the list with "level 1" (or any level less than 11 really) as a prereq in there. It's a waste of space, and somewhat frustrating. If I'm supposed to be able to take them before 11th level by spending feats on them instead, the ability needs to be reworded.

How do you feel about this idea? Each feature could incorporate a chain of maneuvers, so that initiators of varying levels can get appropriate effects out of them, or it could be more ad-hoc.

On Environments: Yes please. Probably not scaling though. I don't know that a level 20 guy should be better able to use a chandelier than a level 3 guy, but some sort of level or BAB minimum might be appropriate.

On Items: I like the idea of giving weapon guys power chains based on which weapon they're holding. It may not be worth doing if you're just trying to broaden options with swappable sets because of DnD's specialization fetish. Axe people just aren't going to use sword people maneuvers because of the loss of bonuses from their feats. It might work ok with weapon groups, but it just seems like there's a lot of inertia against it you'd need to overcome if you want swappable stuff. The elemental or weapon property idea seems similarly useful, and way more interesting than default weapon properties, but likely to suffer similar inertia problems. If you're down with just boosting options and not expecting lots of swapping, then I think it's an idea worth exploring in more detail.

You can be more explicit about the economic disconnect and item pricing if you want. You can retain a smith for 4 sp a day, and have him craft whatever you want for that price plus the cost of raw materials. Unless you want him to craft something specific, and then it jumps to the full price of the item. It takes about 1 1/2 weeks to craft a greatsword per SRD craft (which isn't actually a bad time frame if you're going for realism, though you would normally be able to do other things at the same time), and that costs you about 4.2 gp. Toss in the cost of raw materials, which are likely lower than the recommended 1/3 of the weapon's final price, and you're still substantially lower than the 50gp selling price for the item. But you're still supposed to pay the smith the extra, for some reason.

Medieval town smiths had to equip the guards, the nobles, and do all sorts of other things that get ignored. Some of these they might get paid for, but it's just as likely that they just had to do it for free. But fantasy smiths also have to pay taxes, repair their stuff after the town gets smashed by monsters or careless adventurers, and they may need to pitch in to hire adventurers to help the town (if that doesn't just come out of their taxes in the first place). And those things cost money, potentially lots of it. But that also means that adventurers generally have lots of money. So here's an alternate way to look at the cost of that item. It's an "adventurer tax". It's a bullshit cost, but everyone knows that it is and they pay it because that's how the world works. But regular people in a town don't pay those prices, and an adventurer who became well known and respected in the city probably wouldn't pay them either. An adventurer who was lord of the city probably wouldn't pay at all. But these adventurers are also expected to have huge piles of cash on hand to pay adventurers for any assistance that the town needs that they can't cover themselves.

I don't know if that resolves the economy concerns for you or not, but it's probably worth considering where else their money goes, what other obligations living in a medieval fantasy town would place on a person, and whether the people in the town are actually paying the prices indicated.

I think the idea of a divinely ordained warrior has a lot of traction, but the narrow vision of the paladin has been a bit stale for a while now. In DnD land, there's lots of different faiths to go out and champion or fight for, but the various adaptions have never been particularly good ones. So there's lots of idea space left to use there, and the cleric doesn't fill it so well IMO.

I co-wrote a martial  2/3s divine caster over on the wiki to fill the void, work with a variety of alignments and faiths, and replace the paladin along the way. They don't have a particularly wide selection of spells (which should be mostly relegated to utility anyway), and they don't get a pile of bonus feats. What they do get is a bunch of selectable vows to convey the "divinely ordained" aspects of their character and allow them to cover lots of different faiths. And a choice of fighting styles as well to allow them to cover the "warrior" part of things and fill a combat role or two reasonably well.

So it should be a rather broad class that's able to fill many roles within a variety of parties, while staying solidly within the divinely ordained warrior design space. And hopefully mid-high T3 or low T2. If that sounds like an idea you want to discuss, I invite you to check it out on the wiki. Feel free to leave comments here though.

Here be the link: The Templar

Currents too strong to swim in could be used as "walls" of some sort. Or currents could just be used as hallways that get you from one "room" to another. Fiendish jellyfish and anemones could also be used as walls and encounters. A MacGuffin trapped in the center of a shifting mass of jellyfish could make for an interesting 2- or 3-d maze / encounter.

Traps in the traditional sense are probably out unless you include solidified analogues of things for them to be used on, but area of effect things or environmental dangers could certainly be included. Being pushed by a current into an anemone or entangled by grasping sea weed or whatnot could work. And if there are random areas with magical triggers that cause you to be moved into or attacked by these things, then you might still have something for the trapfinders to do.

Quote from: Tarkisflux on September 05, 2012, 01:26:59 PM

I like the idea of boosted damage from BAB (and am doing something similar in a different system), and the idea of swings is an interesting one. I don't know if "shots" would work for ranged or not, mostly since I don't know if you want people to use multiple pieces of ammunition to try to hit a target.

Yeah, not sure. Considering this is replacing the full attack mechanic, I'm thinking it's not a bad trade-off to expend ammunition which a 3e-style full attack would have spent anyway. And the first shot might actually hit, and then you don't even need to worry about the other 3 or 4 arrows.

Still need another term for the swing/shot unit because the term should apply for both..

Don't have any ideas for that name I'm afraid.

Quote from: Tarkisflux on September 05, 2012, 01:26:59 PM

How do weapon properties interact with the damage boosts from BAB? Do the flaming / frosting / shocking properties get boosted with the rest of the damage?

My main thought is no, since I want the wielder to be the more important aspect of the attack, not so much the magic of the weapon. On the other hand, I'm also thinking there might be better enchantments that increase the damage added. (I'm somewhat partial to the 4e style for flaming/etc weapons, where the base weapon's damage adds the energy type rather than increasing standard hit damage, but then adds the energy burst damage on a critical hit.)

That seems like it could work rather well in a game without lots of hit point inflation (or at least similar things do in my work that lacks lots of hit point inflation). Something to keep in mind when you're designing monsters for it I guess.

Quote from: Tarkisflux on September 05, 2012, 01:26:59 PM

For the immediate actions, did you consider making them use left over actions from the previous round instead of actions from a future round? For example, if you wanted to have an immediate standard between this turn and your next turn you would have to forgo your normal standard (in effect readying it or whatever) or spend AP for it. It seems like that might help you better balance the action economy than by allowing people to spend future actions that they might not even need.

Well, there lies the problem people have mentioned with the 5e Combat Superiority dice, with trying to save the whatever-it-is from their turn for an event that might not even happen. The idea here is to keep someone from wasting their action and feeling frustrated when it all comes to nothing.

Using the upcoming action for the opportunity attack, for instance, means that you are making the attack you would have made on your turn, if only they hadn't moved away, it's just shuffling the timing a little. Or, you can choose to forego the attack, if you have something planned for your action, such as casting a spell. Its now an active choice, possibly now or reliably later, versus if you're spending unused actions, which is a more passive choice, reliably now or possibly later.

I think that if you told people they have to ready / reserve actions or spend action points on between turn stuff, they would probably use their actions on turn and spend AP for off turn stuff. We can see that with readied actions already even. They don't happen a lot in games, but they do happen and I don't know a lot of people who get frustrated when they wind up not getting the action after all. If you don't have anything good to do with your action in a round, it gives you something to do with it later possibly. I'd argue that it's an active choice either way really, with one way costing you current actions or resources for off turn stuff, and the other costing you future actions you might not even need for future stuff.

Forcing out the last bits of fluff for ToP before I leave it alone for while. Probably do a third and final edit pass for consistency / tone / weirdness in a while after I 've had a bit of time away from it for perspective. Also working on an all-alignments paladin replacement on the wiki with another user that is pretty close to done, just needs the spell list pruned a bit and one lase ability written and a general cleanup edit pass.

May move on to a spells / spellcaster overhaul, I've had the basics sorted for a while now and just need to chew through it. I've also got some combat changes sort of based on the ToP measured success resolution mechanic that I might do instead, but tuning the numbers to support CR equivalencies and combats that don't scale in length with hit points requires chewing through a lot of variables and is somewhat slow going.

Tarkisflux's idea is closer, but I don't want adventurers starting with 20 ranks in a skill.

1) You don't have to let profession ranks go to 20. You can stop them at 10 or wherever you like if they're not following the normal skill rules. Holding yourself to normal progressions and other skill rules when you're not using other parts of them is a handicap you don't need. Alternately, you can just write up rules for how people acquire those ranks (time, training, etc.), and then set you campaign starting conditions such that players don't have more ranks than you want them to. Like starting gold or whatever.
2) Why don't you want adventurers to start with 20 ranks in Profession (cook) or Profession (sailor) at level 1? It just means they were actually good at doing something less interesting before their town was raided and they picked up a sword or they lost it all in a storm and became a pickpocket. So what if they happen to be nice to have around a campfire at night before you start magicking up your food or can pull their weight during a sea transport when things get crappy? I have a really hard time caring about 20 ranks in those sorts of things (and some other skills too, but they need a bit more finesse).

As to your feat, I do not understand your desire to make "normal" people suck more. If you can already advance whatever professions you want without also advancing your level, then you can just leave all of your "normal" people at level 1. They suck just fine on their own at that point, and the feat is entirely redundant.

Spellcasting question -

Despite the fact that the Blackguard class is only 10 levels long, the Blackguard spell progression extends to 20 levels. Add your Paladin and Whiteguard levels to your Blackguard level to determine your effective Blackguard level for the purposes of spellcasting.

If you have 10 levels of paladin and you take a level or White/Blackguard, you get 11 levels of White/Blackguard spellcasting. Do you also retain your 10 levels of paladin spellcasting, or does it get replaced with this?