Races of War

[Catharz]

The Jester is totally freaking awesome. After reading about how they might need a power-up I went and read the class (which I hadn't due to "juggalo" connotations).


I almost get the feeling that whoever wrote the Thief Acrobat was trying really hard to make it not look better than the rogue. Level 4: Grapple line, detect magic, +1 BAB, +1 reflex saves. Err... Am I missing something in the utillity of a grapple line?

[AlphaNerd]

Yeah, I'm not quite sure what the thief acrobat is supposed to do that isn't essentially "be a rogue, but not quite". I guess they get a bunch of random stuff, and they're awesome at skills (which don't really *make* a character in D&D, though maybe those [Skill] feats will help).

Maybe they're meant for skill-based city-campaigns, but not your average hack'n'slash combat.

Yeah, jesters are totally awesome, if a bit too widespread in its abilities.

[User3]

RandomCasualty: I think the rage dice were balanced assuming a rogue would always use 2 weapons, so they still can be made to have higher damage potential (or so I think).

That said, I really doubt about the thief-acrobat's utility. The rogue's probably safe with UMD and full sneak attack (besides, its special ability list also benefits from the "power creep" of skill feats).

[Judging__Eagle]

1177156187[/unixtime]]

Yeah, I tend to feel the same way.

The rogue classes especially seem to have kind of got shafted. I mean, the whole point of being a rogue is that you were a fragile damage machine. The RoW barbarian and fighter are both damage machines too, only they're not fragile. So it's almost like sneak attack just isn't as good anymore. Barbarian rage dice alone are equivalent to sneak attack, only you're a raging barbarian instead of a fragile rogue.

Nah, the Rogue classes are just as key.

Mostly b/c the Barbarian can't do the " I throw acid vials as ranged touch attacks a lot of times a round; and I can combine TWF, Blitz, Point Blanks Shot and Sniper in order to attack twice as often, deal double my BaB in bonus damage, get sneak attacks with touch attacks and do it all up 60 feet away" trick that a rogue can.

The barbarian has to either: 1) be really big or 2) have really large reach in order to get this sort of targeting versatility, b/c, unlike the Rogue, can can't make a skill check and use his Rage Dice at range. He's gotta get up close and personal.

Also, if he's blitzing, the enemy will be getting AoOs on him. Plus, he still has to hit their full AC, and has to melee his enemies and some monsters really do have a "horrible rape radius" [thank you VG cats].

A decent rogue and a decent barbarian have different niches.

The Rogue hits a few targets really hard (eventually, being able to hit all targets within his 1st range increment due to PBS and if he multiclasses into something like fighter for the BaB and combat feats, mostly the BaB), from far away.

So, when the rogue uses blitz to add to his PBS BaB-derived damage, he's either on balance or pulling ahead of the melee-guy.

The barbarian needs to do sneaky things like pick up a level of monk for a speed boosting fighting style and pick up Whirlwind, TWF and Combat School and sue something like a pair of Kusari-Gama's or a Spiked Chain or any Reach Weapon and Armour Spikes in order to hit lots of mooks that the Rogue can simply make a pile of acid attacks on.

The rogue classes really haven't gotten shafted, they just need to contend with the fact that Thurskar the barbarian can actually kill The Hoary Liches frozen undead mooks and get a pair of hits in on the Hoary Lich himself before his first round is over. He's no longer stuck waiting forever to kill bajillion mooks every round; with stuff like rage dice and whirlwind, he can wade into a pack of lesser foes and knock them all down.

Which is something that many people can accept, since the "strong hero" who can slay any number of lesser men as he charges the enemy commander is something we can allow a lvl 16 fighter to have.

After that, the rogue's job is to toss half a dozen acid vials onto the Hoary Lich and wait for the Cleric to break the Phylactery or something.

[Crissa]

Dude, they both do lots of damage, I don't understand why a Rogue needs to do more damage than any other melee class?

-Crissa

[Catharz]

I'm still interested in the rock/paper/scissors model where sneaky types pwn the casters.

Which will hold as long as rogues can sneak past blindsight+daylight+truesight+arcane sight.

[Crissa]

I'm not particularly interested in the 'Rogues ownz all' meme.

-Crissa

[Catharz]

1177211144[/unixtime]]I'm not particularly interested in the 'Rogues ownz all' meme.

-Crissa

Was that directed at me?

[Catharz]

Is a small longspear a reach weapon?

[josephbt]

Reach weapons double your natural reach. Small critters usually have a reach of 5'. I guess that you have reach.

[erik]

My understanding is that RoW doesn't use the shitty 3.5 weapon sizes.

If by a small longspear you mean a long pointy-stick usable by a small creature, then you're likely looking at a halfspear, which does not have reach.

My 3.0fu is getting rusty, but I believe the only weapons with reach available to small folk were the lance (when mounted) and the kusari-gama (DMG optional weapon).

If I still had my 3.0 FAQs, I think therein would be a ruling that smaller sized versions of reach weapons did not grant reach.

[CalibronXXX]

1179067990[/unixtime]]My understanding is that RoW doesn't use the shitty 3.5 weapon sizes.

If by a small longspear you mean a long pointy-stick usable by a small creature, then you're likely looking at a halfspear, which does not have reach.

My 3.0fu is getting rusty, but I believe the only weapons with reach available to small folk were the lance (when mounted) and the kusari-gama (DMG optional weapon).

If I still had my 3.0 FAQs, I think therein would be a ruling that smaller sized versions of reach weapons did not grant reach.

Wouldn't then the inverse be true and greater than medium sized reach weapons give increased relative reach? It would just be simpler to have reach weapons that are the same size as the wielder grant double the wielder's natural reach(while not normally threatening the creature's natural reach).

[User3]

Claibron -- IIRC, yes.

Basically, the way it worked in 3.0 was that reach weapons came with a certain amount of reach, based on their size.

So a longspear was a Large stick that gave +5 reach. A human iwht a Large stick had 10 foot reach; an ogre with a Large stick had 15 foot reach. An Ogre could also pick up a Huge stick and have 20 foot reach, or a Medium stick and have 10.

[Catharz]

The strange thing with natural reach and size is the discontinuity at small and medium.

Fine = 0' reach, Tiny = 0' reach, Other itty bitty sizes = 0', Small = 5', Medium = 5', Large = 10', Huge = 15', Yo mama = 20', etc.

If you go by the +5'/-5' (min 0' total), a small longspear should either give +5' reach (which makes sense because people can use fairly long spears one-handed), or a small greatsword should give -5' reach.


Anyway, I like the 'doubling' approach. If your hand is the size of a small longspear, the extra 5" protruding beyond your knuckles should not give 5' more reach.

It would especially work well with a dynamically-grained system in which you deal with the relative size of combatants rather than their absolute size. I really don't care about 5' squares when I'm having a titan and a great wyrm fight, and an ogre fighting a titan might as well have 0' reach.

Actually, that just a little bit like Shadowrun.

[CalibronXXX]

1179079659[/unixtime]]The strange thing with natural reach and size is the discontinuity at small and medium.

Fine = 0' reach, Tiny = 0' reach, Other itty bitty sizes = 0', Small = 5', Medium = 5', Large = 10', Huge = 15', Yo mama = 20', etc.

If you go by the +5'/-5' (min 0' total), a small longspear should either give +5' reach (which makes sense because people can use fairly long spears one-handed), or a small greatsword should give -5' reach.


Anyway, I like the 'doubling' approach. If your hand is the size of a small longspear, the extra 5" protruding beyond your knuckles should not give 5' more reach.

It would especially work well with a dynamically-grained system in which you deal with the relative size of combatants rather than their absolute size. I really don't care about 5' squares when I'm having a titan and a great wyrm fight, and an ogre fighting a titan might as well have 0' reach.

Actually, that just a little bit like Shadowrun.

I'm not sure I understand what it is you are suggesting, or even if you actually made a suggestion.

[JonSetanta]

I understand about the relativity of reach in an RPG...

Friends I game with don't usually use grids, figurines, and measuring squares. That's for Gygax-era tactical rules lawyers.

We mostly go by verbal + pencil sketch of area + little colored glass beads from the Dollar Store to give rough estimates of relative positions.
Distance between characters at the beginning of an encounter is formed either randomly or by sense-detection distance.
Changes in distance are relative, and when complex... slightly randomized.
Over-exactness is hindering for us and bogs down game time, especially for larger groups.
For this gaming style, a relative reach calculation would be best.

I'd like something measuring in feet rather than "weapon sizes"; add the length of a limb to length of the weapon, round down.
That value becomes "reach" and whoever has longer reach gains the benefits.
As an example: an adult caucasian male human might have an arm length equal to 2/5 their height (shoulder 1/5, arms each 2/5), a little more than 3 feet rounded down to 3.
A long metal sword, another 4 feet.

In total, rounded down, 7 foot reach while standing straight.
Factor in that most fighting stances tend to be a bit more steady and wide-legged than standing like a tree, maybe add another half a foot...

[Judging__Eagle]

I prefer the grids for judging where someone can move in tighter spaces, it also allows for tactically savvy people to run past enemies, just out of the reach of their weapons and save themselves from provoking a pile of AoOs.

Measuring individual creatures reach can be a pain. Sicne you have to do it for every creature; the above human with 7-8 feet of reach will stil have people walking in those 9-10 feet away from him, thus not provoking an AoO.

At that point, you're just better off using the size/reach rules as is; if you can't normally threaten the whole distance, then you might as well not threaten it at all.


The fact that small creatures can threaten 5 feet is annoying; I've seen a 2-3 foot human; I could give them a solid kick before they could be effective at all in a fight.


Personally, I think that the 3.0/3.5 rules on small creature reach were developed to te state that they were b/c the designers didn't want to utterly bone small PC races in melee.

Really, the best way to go about fixing that is to give small creatures reach 0', 5' with a polearm and they don't provoke AoOs when they have BaB +5.

[tzor]

1179175406[/unixtime]]Friends I game with don't usually use grids, figurines, and measuring squares. That's for Gygax-era tactical rules lawyers.

Well it's for more than Gygax-era tactical rules lawyers. Because that era had facing rules and had secific weapon armor interaction rules as well. There are a lot of people who still have a war game mentality and want to measure everything to the nearest mm. But there are also a lot of right brain / left brain gamers who want to see some sort of visual representation of what is going on. After all, the common demand from any sci-fi captain is to display the tactical view of the situation. When things are completely description only I tend to get "lost" in combat.

This is not to say you can't have a non map based system that takes into account notions as reach (and ranged weapons) by making personal zones around each character. (This is a common notion in non-verbal communication theory.) You could divide the zones into five types, long range ranged, short range ranged, reach, melee and personal.

The five foot quantum starts breaking down below medium. It gets really bizzare for tiny. (I did a lot of thought experments when trying to make a decent 3E version of lankhmar below with small and tiny rats.)

[Catharz]

I guess I wasn't clear. I think I've been misunderstood and not understood...

Here's what I mean:

• 
  
• 1) You plop down your battle mat covered in pretty hexes, squares, or Escher-esqe tessellations. Or, if it comes to that, use graph paper.
  
• 2) You whip out your beautifully hand-panted miniatures, lego guys, dice, or paper cut-outs.
  
• 3) You determine the sizes of the creatures you want to use, their interactions, and the scale used appropriately. If you're modeling a battle between a mouse (fine) and a cat (tiny), the cat has superior reach, and does not have to enter the mouse's square (which isn't 5') to attack it.
  

There are some optimizations you can do. For one, you don't actually need the "small" size category. As they exists, "small" creatures are really just medium creatures but shorter (and with some bonuses and weapons which deal a lower die type). Small should be reserved for little dogs, cats, and big-ish birds. Tiny is the domains of mice, most lizards, and little brown birds. Diminutive is a silly name, but if we keep it it's anything which little birds and mice should have superior reach to (bugs, little lizards, earthworms).

You can also ignore actual footage to some extent, You still need it when using absolute ranges, but for the most part you can say that 'x threatens an area appropriate for a huge creature,' and 'y (being a small creature) has to get inside of of x's threatened area to attack.'
You still have to come up with some way to deal with moving through other's threatened areas.

[PhoneLobster]

You know even though reach was almost not mentioned at all I'm going to use all this dull square talk to promote my old thread about Big Fat Squares

They'll solve all your problems, make you happy forever and get you lots of girls.

They will however NOT make Murtak happy.

[the_taken]

I like the big squares idea. I'm bookmarking it for future reference.

[JonSetanta]

Well your thread made me happy, PhoneLobster

I'm saving it as HTML to show other players and for further 'digesting of information', as well as preservation in case of forum calamity.

[Dragoloth]

Is there any chance we will see scaleing weapons similar to the armor? Also are more combat feats in the works?
Races of War is great. Awesome book.

[Cielingcat]

Book of Gears will have scaling magic weapons (I think).

[Yahzi]

I have nothing useful to add except... wow.

Dude, this is great stuff. I hope you put it all together in one big Word document that we can print out.