Feats OR Prestige Classes, Not Both

[Username17]

Assuming that anyone anywhere in the system can do poison damage, I see no reason why tiger masters couldn't be balanced by spending an action to sick a tiger on someone and then having that tiger continue to maul them until they are dead. That would just plain be functional - it's like Spiritual Weapon or any other second string DOT effect that happens to make an attack roll each turn.

The problem with conjurers in 3rd edition is not that they spent a round summoning a monster and sicking it on their foes, it's that they spent a round directing their monster to attack their foes before the foes actually appeared. Sicking pets on enemies in combat is just like cursing foes - it's an action now and if combat drags on long enough that action investment will pay dividends. Ordering pets around while you are not in combat is like buffs - the in-combat action cost is zero so the benefits per action are infinite and thus hard to balance.

Buffs and contingency orders for summonings are incredibly sketchy. Curses and in-combat orders for summonings are not.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Here are some good examples of feats:

Elusive Target
Polearm Gamble
Heavy Blade Opportunity
Shock Trooper
Whirlwind (3.0E version)
Spring Attack, even if it required too many bullshit prerequisites
Improved Shield Bash (Defenders of the Faith version)
Stunning Fist
Improved Trip
Off-Hand Parry

[PhoneLobster]

I don't know where you're getting that interpretation, PhoneLobster.

I recall WOTC sources mentioning it frequently, especially when defending criticism of any given prestige class or article about them. Similarly it is repeated by dumb asses in "how to make prestige class" guides on RPGnet, WOTC, and all over the internet.

And from the 3.0 DMG...

These special roles offer abilities and powers otherwise inaccessible to PCs and focus them in specific interesting directions. A character with a prestige class is more specialized yet perhaps slightly better than one without one.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Huh.

You know what? That line isn't in the 3.5E DMG at all for the prestige class section.

Which means that your money-grab theory was totally correct. Fucking slackers, man!

[TavishArtair]

Assuming that anyone anywhere in the system can do poison damage, I see no reason why tiger masters couldn't be balanced by spending an action to sick a tiger on someone and then having that tiger continue to maul them until they are dead. That would just plain be functional - it's like Spiritual Weapon or any other second string DOT effect that happens to make an attack roll each turn.

The problem with conjurers in 3rd edition is not that they spent a round summoning a monster and sicking it on their foes, it's that they spent a round directing their monster to attack their foes before the foes actually appeared. Sicking pets on enemies in combat is just like cursing foes - it's an action now and if combat drags on long enough that action investment will pay dividends. Ordering pets around while you are not in combat is like buffs - the in-combat action cost is zero so the benefits per action are infinite and thus hard to balance.

Buffs and contingency orders for summonings are incredibly sketchy. Curses and in-combat orders for summonings are not.

-Username17

Rigidly enough defined, you could easily do a summoning mechanic that, instead of giving you quality time with your pets and being balanced on how much quality time with your pets you have, hinged on orders and the duration of those orders. Kind of like how Shadowrun does it, except with a slightly different structure. Summons would be essentially free, getting them to do something would not be. Certain orders at certain levels could become understood. A high level conjurer, for instance, could easily have a summoned wind elemental he can ride indefinitely, and a particular demonic bodyguard that he can always order around in addition to his actions, but pulling his attack thunderbird out and then siccing it on something would cost him actions. Just having it look pretty might not cost anything significant.

A low level one, of course, might have to spend command juice to get most anything of interest, aside from just petting his Bulbasaur on occasion.

[Draco_Argentum]

Buffs and contingency orders for summonings are incredibly sketchy. Curses and in-combat orders for summonings are not.

What if a class spent all its combat actions supporting its summons? Say a skeleton is crap on its own but if the necromancer is pumping actions into buffing it its doing level appropriate things. That way you wouldn't get the double your actions deal that 3.x gives.

[Mask_De_H]

Then you run into the problem that the necromancer ends up a) shite without the skeleton because that makes him level-appropriate or
b) The necromancer has better things to do with his actions and rarely if ever uses the thing.

[Previn]

Here are some good examples of feats:

I had not thought much on what a feat should thematically fit, and this seems to make a lot of sense. Out of curiosity, can you give some examples of what you consider bad feats as well?

[Username17]

Here are some good examples of feats:

I had not thought much on what a feat should thematically fit, and this seems to make a lot of sense. Out of curiosity, can you give some examples of what you consider bad feats as well?

Spell Focus
Weapon Focus
Improved Bullrush
Toughness
Greater Two Weapon Fighting
Lightning Reflexes

Any numeric bonus to something you can already do or heroin shot to keep an ability from becoming less level appropriate is a bad feat.

-Username17

[zeruslord]

Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization are the canonical examples of bad feats. Dodge is at least as bad. Frank and K had a really good explanation of why feats suck now and what they should look like in Races of War.

The Failure of Feats
"How about instead of being able to travel anywhere in the multiverse, transform yourself into anything you can think of, stop time, and slay everyone you can see, we just give a nice +1 to hit with your secondary weapon? Deal?"

Feats were an interesting idea when they were ported to 3rd edition D&D. But let's face it; they don't go nearly far enough. Feats were made extremely conservative in their effects on the game because the authors didn't want to offend people with too radical a change. Well, now we've had third edition for 6 years, and we're offended. Feats are an interesting and tangible way to get unique abilities onto a character, but they have fallen prey to two key fallacies that has ended up turning the entire concept to ashes in our mouths. The first is the idea that if you think of something kind of cool for a character to do, you should make it a feat. That sounds compelling, but you only get 7 feats in your whole life. If you have to spend a feat for every cool thing you ever do, you're not going to do very many cool things in the approximately 260 encounters you'll have on your way from 1st to 20th level. The second is the idea that a feat should be equivalent to a cantrip or two. This one is even less excusable, and just makes us cry. A +1 bonus is something that you seriously might forget that you even have. Having one more +1 bonus doesn't make your character unique, it makes you a sucker for spending one of the half dozen feats you'll ever see on a bonus the other players won't even mention when discussing your character.

We all understand this problem, what do we do about it? Well, for starters, Feats have to do more things. Many characters are 5th level or so and they only have 2 feats. Those feats should describe their character in a much more salient way than "I'm no worse shooting into melee than I am shooting at people with cover that isn't my friends." This was begun with the tactical feats, but it didn't go far enough. It's not enough to add additional feats that do something halfway interesting for high level characters to have – we actually have to replace the stupid one dimensional feats in the PHB with feats that rational people would care about in any way. Spending a single feat should be enough to make you a "sniper character" because for a substantial portion of your life you only get one feat. Secondly, we have to clear away feats that don't provide numeric bonuses large enough to care about. The minimum bonus you'll ever notice is +3, because that's actually larger than the difference between having rolled well and having rolled poorly on your starting stats. Numeric bonuses smaller than that are actually insulting and need to be removed from the feats altogether. 3.5 Skill Focus was a nice start, but that's all it was – a start.

Furthermore, the fundamental structure of feats has been a disaster. The system of prerequisites often ensures that characters won't get an ability before it would be level appropriate for them to do so, but actually does nothing to ensure that such characters are in fact getting level appropriate abilities. Indeed, if a 12th level character decides that they want to pursue a career in shooting people in the face, they have to start all over gaining an ability that is supposed to be level appropriate for a 1st level character. Meanwhile, when a wizard of 12th level decides to pursue some new direction in spellcasting – he learns a new 6th level spell right off – and gets an ability that's level appropriate for a 12th level character.

[Starmaker]

I think tier-seperation is a good idea. And it should work fine for 3.5 as well.

Yes, let's remake v3.5 again. That sounds like time well-spent.

um... Dungeon Crusade? Did Koumei travel to the future to get inspiration for it, or did you guys just not read the thread? It's all about tiers, and it's [awesome].

[Wulf]

I read a little, and it was about genesplicer, so I thought it was some kind of warhammer remake 8)

[zeruslord]

It is. It's also a tiered D&D 3.5 mod/rebuild where Spess Mehreens crash on Greyhawk or whatever.

[Judging__Eagle]

It's.... not about genesplicers. Genesplicers are a Rifts thing.

You probably mean genestealers, and those aren't the core part of DC!

The core part is that it's classes and gear for how to play 40k in a table top setting, and not have it be retarded.

[Quantumboost]

The initial design of Dungeon Crusade was that you play Imperium units - Imperial Guard in lower-tier games, Space Marines/Battle Sisters/Imperial Assassins in higher-tier. Koumei only just recently added stuff for playing Genestealers and Tyranids.

Now to get "Eldar" to convert into Protoss...

[Wulf]

Dungeon crusade is nice, but it doesnt feel like D&D 3.5 to me anymore. The classes are too short (3 levels) only, so it feels more like that FF-tactics thing Frank told about before.

Classes should have minimal of 5 levels in 3.5 to represent tiers.

Also, I do not want a complete rewrite of the whole damn system. All rewrites/additions should still be compatible with 3.5. It still should use BAB, saves and seperated in 4 tiers that D&D 3.5 use. It should still run from level 1 to level 20. Also ,I like to stay in-theme ..ie, fantasy.

So you can write new feats, new classes, new prestige classes, and even new subsystems that act like modules or additions, rewrite the skills if you want ,but you can't touch the tiers of power of 3.5 as it will get out of whack. I still want to fight orcs at low levels and kills demons at level 15+ without a disconnection between tiers.

[Meikle641]

...But, it does use 3.5 rules. Srsly. Whether the classes are short or not doesn't really matter, as they get a shtick done.

And since when is 3.5 divided into 4 tiers? Mos tof what you're saying here doesn't seem to make sense.

[Ganbare Gincun]

Are we talking about these tiers?

[ubernoob]

Are we talking about these tiers?

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww

[Psychic Robot]

oh god not this shit again

[Leress]

Classes should have minimal of 5 levels in 3.5 to represent tiers.

Racial Paragons and Exotic Weapons Master PRC disagree.

There about two tiers mugglesville and crazy town.

[Wulf]

Are we talking about these tiers?

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww

No, ,not class power tiers. Although I do not understand why there is an "ewwww" reaction either.

No, I am talking about the power tiers based on character level.
Level 1 to 5: Realistic
Level 6 to 10: Heroic
Level 11 to 15: Supernatural
Level 16 to 20: Epic

or whatever labals you want to give them. This based on the precept that level 1 to 5 actually simulate realistic human abilities pretty well for a dice game. (from level 1 ordinary people to level 5 exceptional talented individuals)
Here is a link talking about the realistic tier of D&D.
http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations ... ating.html

Here is a link of another talking about power tiers in D&D: http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1090227

[Lago PARANOIA]

Do levels 6, 11, and 16 come with huge jumps in power? And I mean absolutely enormous jumps in power. I mean it should be the difference between playing Phantom and Iron Man.

There is absolutely no point in having a tier system if level progression remains linear. That shit in 4E where you get to paragon and you gain a new feat (which is shit such as polearm gamble), class and AP ability (which is bullfuck such as a +1 bonus to AC and +10 extra damage once every two combats), and encounter attack power (which is leperjizz such as a melee basic attack, but with an extra 10 damage) and the game crows about how your game experience is SO COOL AND DIFFERENT AND IMPORTANT NOW needs to stop.

[Wulf]

The only "hard" tier in D&D is between level 1-5 and 6+. But rather then power scaling, it more based on what power supports you. Assuming that you want an explanation why you can suddenly go beyond human limits.

1-5 can be natural power, 6+ is all supernatural, wether you have supernatural powers through magical items or pure mental energy or your soul overflows from your body is besides the point really. You still have a "power" behind you that propels you beyond humanity's limits.

Sure, tiers doesnt not have to be every 5 levels, but if you seperate D&D in power tiers, every 5 levels makes a lot of sense and easy to remember. Making each tier a different number of levels is silly and messy looking, not to mention not following the power scaling of D&D (which is doubling every 2 levels or so). In other words, if you put a different number of levels for each tier, the different tiers do not give the same power scaling anymore. But they do if you keep al the tiers in equal in the number of levels they have.

In 4th edition, tiers are hard-coded and you get benefits from reaching the next tier. In 3.5, tiers are simply guidelines to see what you are capable of and perhaps guide you in how to roleplay your character.

[Lago PARANOIA]

In 3.5, tiers are simply guidelines to see what you are capable of and perhaps guide you in how to roleplay your character.

If you don't actually do new bullshit then there's no reason to actually change how you play your character.

If the relative growth in power between level 5 and level 6 is the same as level 3 and 4 then there is no reason to play your character more differently at level 6 than at level 4.

Which is fine, but adding tiers and going 'things will be different now!' is just pretentious and laughable.