Still more Threads that make us Laugh, Cry, or Both

[Lago PARANOIA]

Yeh, the core conceit of "money=power" basically tainted 3e and when taken to it's logical conclusion it ruined 4e.

However, it is not a surprise that people working in corporations can't even believe in a world where money does not equal power.

I will never understand why money should equal magic.

That shit is annoying enough in Shadowrun, but it's at least a little justifiable. The game is supposed to more or less resemble society 20 years into the future and now like then more powerful gear costs more money. But Shadowrun is at least sane with what you can spend your money on and how much it costs.

Similarly, in heroic fantasy, I don't mind spending 20 or even 2000 gold pieces for a kick-ass sword. Peasants not being able to get full-plate even if they save up with a lifetime of hard work is part of the genre. Kings having better swords than knights is also part of the genre.

But D&D takes the bullshit to a new level, and I mean a whole new level. The game expects you to shell out hundreds of thousands of gold pieces for another plus to your sword, and then the plus doesn't even do anything to the setting other than a bonus only an explicitly metagaming character would notice.

That's bullhonky. If Dungeons and Dragons insists on people shelling out that kind of bread for magic swords, then they should actually have an effect that justifies this kind of thing.

Like a +3 staff of cockmoonforest, in addition to its normal combat bonuses, will resurrect an extinct species to a sustainable population and adapt it to its current biome. A +4 quarterstaff of cockmoonforest will, once a week, make a forest spring up from nowhere in a 5 mile radius and magically sustain it. This means that you can have an arboreal forest in the middle of the fucking desert. Merry Christmas, fucknuts.

Stuff like that.

[Maxus]

Yeah...I had to explain the Halfling Hurler to somebody yesterday.

Which is a good time to check myself...

Am I right in thinking the Halfling Hurler is playing as a Halfling Rogue, maxing Dex, taking TWF and Point Blank Shot (at the least) and then going around chunking Acid Vials or Alchemist Fires at people, right? And as soon as you can afford to, you grab an invisibility item and spam the Sneak Attack.

[Bigode]

Yeah...I had to explain the Halfling Hurler to somebody yesterday.

Which is a good time to check myself...

Am I right in thinking the Halfling Hurler is playing as a Halfling Rogue, maxing Dex, taking TWF and Point Blank Shot (at the least) and then going around chunking Acid Vials or Alchemist Fires at people, right? And as soon as you can afford to, you grab an invisibility item and spam the Sneak Attack.

If you're playing RAW, have the decency to pick Rapid Shot too; I advise getting your hands on divine power too (don't forget, to do it decently, you do need UMD anyway: creation, [creature type]-strike, and maybe some Dex denial, though rings of blink seem to take care of most of that).

[Username17]

And blink is key rather than nvisibility, because it's much hardr to defend against and comes at the "cost" of merely of penalizing your melee attacks (that you aren't even making).

The Ring of Blink is available at like 8th level with pocket change per standard rules.

-Username17

[Maxus]

Thanks.

Oh, the Halfing Hurler somehow led to a discussion of what Drizzt's build is.

So for the exercise, I ended up trying to do him under Tome rules and came up with Fighter 9/Barbarian 5-6/Ranger 3-4, for a total of Character Level 18.

Known Feats:
Weapon Finesse
Two-Weapon Fighting
Rapid Shot
Probably some feat that lets him parry.

...I forget the rest. There were some skill feats in there, too. And he probably gets some weird bonus when he goes all Hunter, because when Drizzt gets pissed, he definitely does not get easier to hit.

And doing a quick check around tells me Drizzt has...

Str 13
Dex 20
Con 15
Int 17
Wis 17
Cha 14

...And he's due a lot more treasure than he's gotten.

[Talisman]

Yeh, the core conceit of "money=power" basically tainted 3e and when taken to it's logical conclusion it ruined 4e.

However, it is not a surprise that people working in corporations can't even believe in a world where money does not equal power.

I will never understand why money should equal magic.

I believe it's a good idea taken to its illogical extreme.

When they were developing 3e, the designers - quite rightfully - realized that:
people like magic gear + not all magic gear is even remotely equal in power + this is a level-based system = we need some method to determine the power level of magic gear.

Unfortunately, they chose to tie that power level to the (inexplicable) gp cost to create said gear...and then come wealth-by-level charts and Christmas-tree Batman characters.

Really, all you need is a level tag: "Characters should be at least xth level before they acquire a +99 Sword of Kickassery." The stuff devalues quickly enough that you literally don't care about items more than a few levels below yours. I mean, when was the last time a character of moderate level got excited over a +1 cloak of resistance?

[JonSetanta]

http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards ... pic=2091.0

We've got traces of Paizo there.

.... damn it.

[K]

Yeh, the core conceit of "money=power" basically tainted 3e and when taken to it's logical conclusion it ruined 4e.

However, it is not a surprise that people working in corporations can't even believe in a world where money does not equal power.

I will never understand why money should equal magic.

I believe it's a good idea taken to its illogical extreme.

When they were developing 3e, the designers - quite rightfully - realized that:
people like magic gear + not all magic gear is even remotely equal in power + this is a level-based system = we need some method to determine the power level of magic gear.

Unfortunately, they chose to tie that power level to the (inexplicable) gp cost to create said gear...and then come wealth-by-level charts and Christmas-tree Batman characters.

Really, all you need is a level tag: "Characters should be at least xth level before they acquire a +99 Sword of Kickassery." The stuff devalues quickly enough that you literally don't care about items more than a few levels below yours. I mean, when was the last time a character of moderate level got excited over a +1 cloak of resistance?

Well, they recognized the problem, but their solution was to go the Diablo route where gold was made fun because it bought items.

The problem with that is that in video games there are only a few things you can do with gold, where in a tabletop game I can think of hundreds or awesome things.

But hey, if they didn't realize that some items are like class features and some are like really good mundane objects and that by not tying them to the level system you are breaking it....well, there is nothing I say to them.

[Maxus]

Not a thread, but I laughed.

http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Red_Mage_%28DnD_Class%29

Looks interesting, mechanically.

Except Doublecast is horribly clunky.

Edit: And Weapon Bond sucks, especially since the next ability down is "Feat".

...Is it me, or should a Bonded Weapon be doing something personal rather than just Weapon Focus?

Maybe it automatically becomes magic, you get a bonus to attack rolls with it, and it's cheaper to enchant, as long as you're the one doing it.

[RandomCasualty2]

Really, all you need is a level tag: "Characters should be at least xth level before they acquire a +99 Sword of Kickassery." The stuff devalues quickly enough that you literally don't care about items more than a few levels below yours. I mean, when was the last time a character of moderate level got excited over a +1 cloak of resistance?

Well, not really. I mean, a +1 bonus is a +1 bonus, and if you didn't have a cloak of resistance at all, a +1 cloak is just as good as getting your +1 cloak upgraded to a +2.

Also magic items that let you do stuff generally don't devalue unless the attack itself devalues. An item that can generate a 5d6 fireball generally becomes less and less valuable. Boots of flight, on the other hand, are just as valuable at low level as they are at high level, at least for someone who doesn't have any flight abilities on their list.

The only time magic items really become devalued is if you can do the ability elsewhere for cheaper, which is often true for a lot of wizards, but not so true for anyone else.

The real difficulty is balancing something like boots of flying to a wand of fireballs.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The real difficulty is balancing something like boots of flying to a wand of fireballs.

I really think that all magic items should scale, unless they're specifically planned to be obsolete at a certain point in time. Then you should be able to cheaply trade them for something better.

For example, last month's shocking grasp becomes this month's lightning bolt becomes next month's chain lightning becomes next year's storm of vengeance.

Similarly, boots of flying should only let you fly for a little bit at a time, giving poor manueverability and penalizing your attack and AC bonuses. If your game supports such DBZ tomfoolery, then you might want to get rid of the penalties and improve the speed/manueverability bonuses as the characters gain levels. Or not.

[JonSetanta]

Not a thread, but I laughed.

http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Red_Mage_(DnD_Class)

Looks interesting, mechanically.

Except Doublecast is horribly clunky.

Edit: And Weapon Bond sucks, especially since the next ability down is "Feat".

...Is it me, or should a Bonded Weapon be doing something personal rather than just Weapon Focus?

Maybe it automatically becomes magic, you get a bonus to attack rolls with it, and it's cheaper to enchant, as long as you're the one doing it.

Old news. That's been on the Wiz forum for a while.
I like the theme, but that incarnation of Red Mage wasn't too hot IMO.

Proper link is

Code: Select all

http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Red_Mage_%28DnD_Class%29

For example, last month's shocking grasp becomes this month's lightning bolt becomes next month's chain lightning becomes next year's storm of vengeance.

Nurrrp nope nup. Too powerful, too much power to spellcasters that have enough power as it is.
/sarcasm

[Username17]

http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards ... pic=2091.0

We've got traces of Paizo there.

.... damn it.

Ugh. It goes on for pages and pages until my eyes glaze over. Does no one know what a frickin Bonus Feat is?

-Username17

[RandomCasualty2]

For example, last month's shocking grasp becomes this month's lightning bolt becomes next month's chain lightning becomes next year's storm of vengeance.

Yeah, this basically entails items that gain levels, which opens up a new can of worms in that now, character power can move unpredictably based on magic items.

Theoretically in a D&D set up, characters are always gaining new items. That's the point of the game, to get more treasure. Now this is controlled currently by low level items ideally becoming weak or even useless and having to be constantly upgraded, Diablo style.

Now if you get rid of that and have magic items that auto upgrade, then the model has to be changed to something else. Now I'm not saying that this may not be a good thing, but a lot of people like the constant acquisition of stuff that comes with D&D. So while it's nice to have a lightning bolt wand that upgrades with you, people also want to be able to find the wand of Megashock and other "better" items than what they have.

Of course, it may well be better for the game to remove this sort of thing, a lot of players do the treasure hunt to be fun.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Now if you get rid of that and have magic items that auto upgrade, then the model has to be changed to something else. Now I'm not saying that this may not be a good thing, but a lot of people like the constant acquisition of stuff that comes with D&D. So while it's nice to have a lightning bolt wand that upgrades with you, people also want to be able to find the wand of Megashock and other "better" items than what they have.

Then what's the whole point of getting mad that wands of fireball doing only 5d6 damage for the rest of your life? Your wand of fireball sucks? Fuck you, pal, that's so last dungeon. We're on to wands of delayed blast fireball, buttmongrel.

[CatharzGodfoot]

For example, last month's shocking grasp becomes this month's lightning bolt becomes next month's chain lightning becomes next year's storm of vengeance.

Yeah, this basically entails items that gain levels, which opens up a new can of worms in that now, character power can move unpredictably based on magic items.

It doesn't entail that at all. It means that you're getting better at using the wand.

[JonSetanta]

Ugh. It goes on for pages and pages until my eyes glaze over. Does no one know what a frickin Bonus Feat is?

-Username17

Well I mean I just started participating there when I noticed so many members I discussed with back in The Wiz before the mass exodus.
We have some interesting modular weapons and armor concepts battering around lately, but I had no fucking idea such bad CharOp asshattery was going on next door.

You guys shouldn't bop in like that to correct them just because the link is here, though.

That kind of fragile realm can't sustain your presence. It will collapse.
(to paraphrase the Lucifer comic)

[Username17]

The thing is that it goes on for five frickn pages. There's a cleric with the War Domain in the Monster Manual, this argument has been over for years. It's just jaw dropping that this could still be dragging on.

Yes, class features of character classes which provide bonus feats allow you to use them if they don't mention that fact, because Clerics don't start with the prereqs of Weapon Focus. And yes, the MM text on bonus feats applies to class feature bonus feats because they actually show it applying to class feature bonus feats on page 148 of the Monster Manual.

There's a walkthrough with a human cleric in the actual rules. The Human's extra feat is an "extra feat" and doesn't get the free pass from prereqs, and the bonus feat from the War Domain is a "bonus feat" and it does.

-Username17

[JonSetanta]

The thing is that it goes on for five frickn pages. There's a cleric with the War Domain in the Monster Manual, this argument has been over for years. It's just jaw dropping that this could still be dragging on.

Yes, class features of character classes which provide bonus feats allow you to use them if they don't mention that fact, because Clerics don't start with the prereqs of Weapon Focus. And yes, the MM text on bonus feats applies to class feature bonus feats because they actually show it applying to class feature bonus feats on page 148 of the Monster Manual.

There's a walkthrough with a human cleric in the actual rules. The Human's extra feat is an "extra feat" and doesn't get the free pass from prereqs, and the bonus feat from the War Domain is a "bonus feat" and it does.

-Username17

How did you even extract that from the 5 pages?!?
I saw ubernoob pay respects to you and Bigode, Judging Eagle's post(s), and maybe a few hundred extended BAWWWWWWs, but specific information?
Damn.
My eyes glazed over. I'm off to play StarCraft and wonder why I'm staying up so late.

Oh yeah that's right; I'm concerned that McCain & Friends will win this year and the re-election, and I'm jobless and undertrained in a collapsing and poorly managed American economy. Fuck.
So much for sleep.
Palin-induced nightmares.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Actually, most of the stuff where they discuss the actual rules about bonus feats is on the first couple of pages. Then again, I stopped reading when the whole thread became a debate about ubernoob's posting style, so I didn't make it past page 2.

[Draco_Argentum]

How many people here have independently discovered the bonus feats bug? I suspect its only one or two even here. Thats what RC means when he says min/max is hard.

[Fuchs]

There's also the fact that playstyles vary a lot, and house rules and even DM preferences can have a lot of impact on minmaxing options.

[Judging__Eagle]

There's also the fact that playstyles vary a lot, and house rules and even DM preferences can have a lot of impact on minmaxing options.

Yeah, most DMs and Players fucking cheat without realizing that they are doing so.

I once had a DM that was about to allow some really questionable shit to go on in character builds until I put my foot down.

One was the Radiant Servant PrC, which states that the creature must "have access to the Sun Domain"; which was twisted to mean "if the creature could get the sun domain" even if they didn't already have it on their character.

The other was that someone thought that mixing casting classes would keep progressing other casting classes. The DM thought that was true.

I'm sure you guys can realize what would happen if a cleric started taking Druid levels, and his cleric spell-casting would keep advancing with his new druid levels.

On the other hand, mentioning stuff like the above means that the DM tended to listen when I told him that he couldn't do stupid railroading bullshit like ignoring how grapple works when he wanted an NPC to be kidnapped in the middle of a fight.

So yeah, there are people that are very clueless about how the game works.

[Talisman]

For example, last month's shocking grasp becomes this month's lightning bolt becomes next month's chain lightning becomes next year's storm of vengeance.

Yeah, this basically entails items that gain levels, which opens up a new can of worms in that now, character power can move unpredictably based on magic items.

Basically you'd have two categories of items: static and dynamic. Static items would be all the single-uses, including potions, scrolls and wands (yes, I count wands as single-uses for these purposes). Each of these items mimics a specific spell at a specific level and that's it. They "scale" in the sense that spells scale - there are better and better ones available as you go up in level. They never become obsolete because you use 'em and then they're gone - no maintainence issues.

Dynamic items would be just about any permanent item, and their powers would scale based on the wielder's character level. If Lord Dragonhacker gave his +4 vambraces of cold immunity to his squire Trusty, Trusty would treat them as +1 vambraces of cold resistance 10, because Trusty is massively lower in level. It would be a matter of powers unlocking when you reach sufficient experience/strength of spirit/awesomeness. No rituals, no XP/gp cost (damn you, Weapons of Legacy!): it just happens.

You could still have arbitrarily better and worse items - some would be better starting out, some would have higher or lower caps on their abilities, and some would grant different powers. Lots of options: but your paladin no longer goes through 17 different swords - or has to spend a mountain of gold just to keep his sword competitive - over the course of his career.

[RandomCasualty2]

Dynamic items would be just about any permanent item, and their powers would scale based on the wielder's character level. If Lord Dragonhacker gave his +4 vambraces of cold immunity to his squire Trusty, Trusty would treat them as +1 vambraces of cold resistance 10, because Trusty is massively lower in level. It would be a matter of powers unlocking when you reach sufficient experience/strength of spirit/awesomeness. No rituals, no XP/gp cost (damn you, Weapons of Legacy!): it just happens.

The problem is that basically you can't have NPCs that use magic items if this is true, because if NPC gear is as good as PC gear, then your PCs are going to be totally loaded up on magic gear that all scales with them, so they'll literally have a batcave of auto scaling gear after a few levels.

In normal D&D this isn't as much a problem since generally NPC gear sucks compared to yours, so you just sell it. But if the gear scaled, it might be especially problematic because there's very little reason to attack dragons for good items when you could simply ambush low level adventurers.