3.0 -> 3.5 changes

[Username17]

Natural Spell was in Sticks and Stones, yeah.

Righteous Might was basically just never used, no one cared about it because it gave bonuses that weren't good and you had o be 17th level to Persist the dam thing. Remember, even with the expansion craziness, there was no Divine Metamagic in 3e.

-Username17

[Juton]

Celerity, Dire Tortoise, Craft Contingent spell are all 3.5 creations, but contact other plane was around in 3.0. Where Wizards in 3.0 more restrained, or where there other powerful options that 3.0 phased out?

[Murtak]

The term CoDzilla applies to just walking all over normal challenge ratings without even optimizing all that much, right? If so, nothing much has changed. Clerics got a little weaker, druids got a little stronger. They still stomp all over fighters (and most monsters) while doing nothing more than actually sitting down to read their spell list and actually picking good spells and picking a few key feats.

Granted, core druids were not nearly as strong in 3.0. But add MoW, MoF and DoF and that changes rapidly.

[hogarth]

Celerity, Dire Tortoise, Craft Contingent spell are all 3.5 creations

None of those existed (maybe Craft Contingent Spell?) when the term "CoDzilla" was coined.

[Wyzzard]

No Codzilla in 3.0? XD

Well, Druids had Wildshape + Animal Growth, so their city-leveling abilities were certainly there.

[Murtak]

No Codzilla in 3.0? XD

Well, Druids had Wildshape + Animal Growth, so their city-leveling abilities were certainly there.

Druids were not animals while wildshaped in 3.0, so no. But druids did have healing, resurrection, damaging spells, save-or-dies targeting all 3 saves, battlefield control, transportation, scouting, offensive and defensive buffs on par with clerics and wizards, combined with 4 skill points, single-attribute-dependency, a d8 and 2 good saves. It was a bit of work though, to find those spells.

[Korwin]

Cleric Archer was stronger in 3.0 (greater magic weapon on bow and Arrow stacked, and they got their + earlier)


BTW. Roman Cathapracts (spelling) fought on horse with bow and melee weapons. (granted my source is an David Drake book)

[Wyzzard]

Druids were not animals while wildshaped in 3.0, so no.

I though the TaB errata changed that? Or am I just confused?

I probably am.

[Username17]

Druids were not animals while wildshaped in 3.0, so no.

I though the TaB errata changed that? Or am I just confused?

I probably am.

Just confused. Andy Collins and Ed Stark teamed up to do the form shifting changes from 3e to 3.5. Very approximately, they were:

• Form Changing granted Supernatural Abilities where before it did not.
• Form changing changed your type, while before you kept your own type.

So Wildshape + Animal Growth cheez was a creation of 3.5. So was Phoenix Duplication. Polymorph was still broken, and you could still make a Solar or whatever the fuck using any edition of Polymorph Any Object. But the revamp to Polymorph and Wildshape and Shapechange were pretty much across the board power-ups.

Cleric Archer was stronger in 3.0 (greater magic weapon on bow and Arrow stacked, and they got their + earlier)

The Cleric Archer was a creation of me personally during an argument about the Arcane Archer being shitty back in early 3e. And yes, Archers in general benefited greatly in those days from GMW on arrows stacking with magic bows. Hell, in those days I would seriously have my Wizard enchant peoples' arrows so that they would get the bonus. It was +1/3 levels back then. 3.5 hit the spell pretty hard (+1/4 levels and it no longer stacks with magic bows). That hurt all archers, not just the Clerics.

In fact, I wouldn't say that self buffing Clerics suffered at all. Divine Metamagic + Night Sticks is basically better than anything that the self buffing Cleric of 3e days could dream of. There was no Cheater of Mystra or whatever before 3.5 came around and gave Clerics that bullshit ability to cast in their own anti-magic fields.

The term CoDzilla applies to just walking all over normal challenge ratings without even optimizing all that much, right?

The term CoDzilla was coined early in 3.5's run as a term that was basically interchangeable with "Cleric Archer." It means a Divine Caster who buffs themselves so much that they outfight any of the warrior classes. It frankly isn't even as good as battlefield control casters, but it clearly and demonstrably outshines the Fighter. This has been used as "proof" that the Cleric is overpowered or that the Fighter is weak sauce since before the term was even made.

Why did it come out as an accepted term in 2004 or so when the original Cleric Archer writeups came out in 2000? Because the CharOp board was a very insular place, and they only recognize ideas when they come from one of their own.

Celerity, Dire Tortoise, Craft Contingent spell are all 3.5 creations, but contact other plane was around in 3.0. Where Wizards in 3.0 more restrained, or where there other powerful options that 3.0 phased out?

Planar Binding, Lesser, normal, and Greater had larger hit die caps. So you didn't need to spend a feat to bind an 8 HD Outsider. Also, the feat in question doesn't exist. So I guess everyone has it for free. The Free Vacation didn't have a cost, so the marginal benefit of forcing your enemies to hand roll tacquitos on the Negative Energy Plane (no save) was higher.

A bunch of power loops exist. I can't think of any that were removed (Spelldancing got back end removed by making Eagle's Splendor non-Empowerable, but it came right back in as the Artificer Class). And they added:

• More Wishes
• Phoenix Duplication
• Balor Mining
• Reawakening

-Username17

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Why can't we just have more threads of the Count versus Crissa? Those were always good for a laugh. Instead we get crap where people are all like, "All elements in this set are equivalent," and then other people are like, "Nuh uh," and then I'm like, "Les sigh."

Crissa seems pretty happy in her thought patterns. I don't have the ability nor the desire to yank her out of them.

[souran]

BTW. Roman Cathapracts (spelling) fought on horse with bow and melee weapons. (granted my source is an David Drake book)

Assuming your curious:

Catharphacts were basically the last in the line of professional soldiers who traced their history back to the roman legions.

Although often called byzantine knights they usually were not. They were professional soliders and like the legions before them they were not an instituational part of the social heirarcy.


They trained with a multitude of weapons and were considered to be really nasty with all of them.

Each man was armed with:

A Single handed Axe
A single handed mace (usually with a leather thong to tie it to the wrist so it can be "thrown" out of the hand a few inches as its swung)
A straight sword that was modeled after the swords brought into the empire proper by german "barbarians" in the late period of empire. however, the sword retained the large triangle shape at the tip that is seen on roman era swords like the gladius.
A horsemans thowing lance that was an evolution of the roman javalin
A horsemans lance that seems to have been derivative of the ones brought into the Byzantine empire by norman mercenaries
A recurve horsemans bow stolen wholesale from the bedouwin/arab peoples in the eastern edge of the empire who likely stole it from encounters with mongols.

In addition he wore armor and carried a body sized oval shield.


Now did each man carry all this shit with him to every battle? I find that unlikely. However, each man knew all of these weapons, and the emperor was on the hook for arming each man with all of that equipment.

They were the most bad ass guys that that Byzantines could put in the field.

[K]

And that's the problem: "all things being equal." Skill only matters when you have the exact same build as your opponent and you are fighting in the same style with the same weapons and luck plays no part.

That's a load of BS and you know it.

You can't have a unit of bowmen firing ten shots per minute without training or acquiring skills. Likewise you can't have pikemen advancing in formation without developing skills. Swordsmen won't know how to penetrate phalanx formations without acquiring skills.

I was going to let this drop, but instead I am going to take this opportunity to laugh at you. Having done archery for years, I can tell you that I can teach a child to fire ten arrows a minute in about the time it takes to drink a nice, hot cup of coffee. It's really not a feat of skill.

And this is why fighters can't have nice things in RPGs. There is always some wanker waving the sticky pages of his copy of the Five Rings and his sixth grade history report who tells you that your game about fire-breathing dragons is unrealistic because he's been taking kendo for a month at the community college and he knows which weapons should be better and worse. Sometimes that wanker is Andy Collins.

Lucky for us that wanker just got fired with most of the design team for 4e.

Speaking of terrible things Andy did, have people mentioned that for 3.5 he made Natural Spell a core feat? Or that Sorcerers got explicitly boned with Quicken? Or that Dwarves got a bunch of crap because he plays dwarves.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Someone post me the link to the article saying that Andy Collins and the rest of the fuckers got fired.

With Skip, Ed, Sean, and Andy out of the picture all we have to do is take down Mike, Bill, and Bruce.

YOU'RE NEXT, BITCHES.

[Juton]

I was going to let this drop, but instead I am going to take this opportunity to laugh at you. Having done archery for years, I can tell you that I can teach a child to fire ten arrows a minute in about the time it takes to drink a nice, hot cup of coffee. It's really not a feat of skill.

As someone who has done archery for a few years this is retarded. Ok, they may be able to fire the arrow, but is it going to go any where near the target? How long do you think it takes someone, on average to be able to shoot a 150 or a 200? Remember that back in ye olde days they didn't shoot with sights, and they would really arc those suckers to get them as far down range as possible, that's not something you learn in an afternoon.

[Username17]

I was going to let this drop, but instead I am going to take this opportunity to laugh at you. Having done archery for years, I can tell you that I can teach a child to fire ten arrows a minute in about the time it takes to drink a nice, hot cup of coffee. It's really not a feat of skill.

As someone who has done archery for a few years this is retarded. Ok, they may be able to fire the arrow, but is it going to go any where near the target? How long do you think it takes someone, on average to be able to shoot a 150 or a 200? Remember that back in ye olde days they didn't shoot with sights, and they would really arc those suckers to get them as far down range as possible, that's not something you learn in an afternoon.

We're talking about a battlefield. Noone gave a flying fuck whether something landed anywhere close to the target. It was just supposed to go "that way" because that's where the giant fucking enemy army was.

This sort of individual thinking is why Frederich the Great took the damn stocks off the guns of his troops. By making the guns harder to use accurately, he got them to stop trying that accuracy nonsense, because it didn't make any fucking difference when there were tens of thousands of enemies in a big pile.

-Username17

[mean_liar]

We're talking about a battlefield. Noone gave a flying fuck whether something landed anywhere close to the target. It was just supposed to go "that way" because that's where the giant fucking enemy army was.

It's not quite that simple; you're basically wrong. Direct-fire accuracy wasn't a main concern - ie, hit that guy right there - but indirect-fire accuracy was.

Archers were medieval indirect fire weapons - most of the archers couldn't actually see their target. Their training centered on being able to fire "that way", but also a specified, called-out distance, sight unseen. Their practice centered around being able to drop an arrow X meters away from themselves consistently.

So, training a kid to fire quickly isn't going to be enough. An archer had to be able to fire on command at something in particular.

[Crissa]

Now did each man carry all this shit with him to every battle?

Probably. His horse did most of the carrying, after all.

-Crissa

[souran]

Now did each man carry all this shit with him to every battle?

Probably. His horse did most of the carrying, after all.

-Crissa

Probably not the horse the guy fought on, but all that equipment was hauled to the place of battle. I agree. It might even have been worth carrying every bit of it just because that many weapons probably looks scary.

[K]

We're talking about a battlefield. Noone gave a flying fuck whether something landed anywhere close to the target. It was just supposed to go "that way" because that's where the giant fucking enemy army was.

It's not quite that simple; you're basically wrong. Direct-fire accuracy wasn't a main concern - ie, hit that guy right there - but indirect-fire accuracy was.

Archers were medieval indirect fire weapons - most of the archers couldn't actually see their target. Their training centered on being able to fire "that way", but also a specified, called-out distance, sight unseen. Their practice centered around being able to drop an arrow X meters away from themselves consistently.

So, training a kid to fire quickly isn't going to be enough. An archer had to be able to fire on command at something in particular.

It takes me about an hour and a half to finish a cup of coffee. I could totally teach a child to do that in that time.

Damn shame they don't have the upper body strength for long-range fire, or my enemies would have to watch out for my child army.

[Parthenon]

Heres the thing: how the hell does it take so long for people to drink coffee? It might be about 250ml at the most, its probably room temperature after half an hour, yet they can still be drinking the same cup of coffee for an hour or more.

Unless you're using insulated mugs of like a pint or so, how does it take 90 minutes to drink it? I mean, I can just about understand a large mug of tea or coffee while you're focused on something else or doing some handiwork and taking sips when you remember it, but it still ends up cold with about a quarter left in it after 45 minutes.

Sorry, just sperging out a bit there.

[Crissa]

It's hot, it's bitter, and why would you want to guzzle it?

Learn to sip.

-Crissa

Also, I don't like coffee. But I know how to keep K wired ^-^

[Zinegata]

I was going to let this drop, but instead I am going to take this opportunity to laugh at you. Having done archery for years, I can tell you that I can teach a child to fire ten arrows a minute in about the time it takes to drink a nice, hot cup of coffee. It's really not a feat of skill.

Using an English Longbow?

Dude, the average modern child does not even have enough strength to pull the Longbow, much less fire it. If you don't fire it at full strength, then it won't pierce armor nor will it fly at long range, making it something that just makes the French Knights angrier instead of killing them.

Hell, the average child is even shorter than an English Longbow. For most kids, it's not just hard to fire a Longbow. It's actually physically impossible.

You're talking shit here. Because like your supposed swordsmanship, what you're using are the modern bows that are easy to reload and any idiot can fire them.

And this is why fighters can't have nice things in RPGs. There is always some wanker waving the sticky pages of his copy of the Five Rings and his sixth grade history report who tells you that your game about fire-breathing dragons is unrealistic because he's been taking kendo for a month at the community college and he knows which weapons should be better and worse. Sometimes that wanker is Andy Collins.

Again, it's a fantasy RPG. You can fucking handwave it. Don't confuse reality with fantasy.

[Zinegata]

We're talking about a battlefield. Noone gave a flying fuck whether something landed anywhere close to the target. It was just supposed to go "that way" because that's where the giant fucking enemy army was.

This sort of individual thinking is why Frederich the Great took the damn stocks off the guns of his troops. By making the guns harder to use accurately, he got them to stop trying that accuracy nonsense, because it didn't make any fucking difference when there were tens of thousands of enemies in a big pile.

-Username17

The English Longbow was primarily used as an indirect-fire weapon at long range, this is true. However, thinking they just fired blindly is the words of a moron backing up another moron.

Why? Because of two words: Friendly fire.

One of the biggest and most important reasons why missile troops were trained constantly was to prevent them from shooting each other. Seriously. Imagine trying to fire a bow or gun while there are a lot of guys around you. If you fumble firing a bow, you might take off the head of the guy in front of you.

We're talking about reality here where hitting your buddies is a very real risk even if you're not using fucking AoEs.

[Crissa]

Zinegata, there's more bows in the world than the English Longbow. And I'm pretty darn sure...

K[/url]]Damn shame they don't have the upper body strength

...Yep, there it is. You spent more than half your post on something he replied about hours ago.

-Crissa

[Zinegata]

Zinegata, there's more bows in the world than the English Longbow. And I'm pretty darn sure...

K[/url]]Damn shame they don't have the upper body strength

...Yep, there it is. You spent more than half your post on something he replied about hours ago.

-Crissa

The English didn't have any other bows at Agincourt . In fact, if they had used any other bows they'd be fucking screwed.