[D&D 3.5] The Unconventional Wisdom of the Den

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

True but it doesn't make the inclusion of persistent spell TO by default because it isn't always used in that way. The same thing with magic items or wealth by level. Just cause I have excess gold to spend doesn't make it such that I buy a candle of invocation and thus gold and magic items become TO

This is a dumb argument.

Firstly, persistent spell is a character feature. Buying magic items is a game subsystem. Comparing a character feature to a game subsystem is a bad analogy right from the get go, especially for the way you're using it.

Secondly, buying magic items is a broken game subsystem, if by broken we mean 'does not work without player ignorance, player restraint, or DM restriction,' and you have already explained why: candles of invocation exist, and have a price in gold. So even if we allow that your analogy works, what
it actually tells us is "buying magic items is broken, persistent spell is like
buying magic items, so persistent spell is broken too."

. The response was to K's saying that using persistent spell is TO by default which blatantly false. Persistent spell us used consistently in 3.5/of games to this day. How one defines broken is a different matter. And on that vein most players do act with restraint when utilizing persistent spell, humping themselves or otherwise.

[Koumei]

I bet it's Tim. He's still butthurt at Purple, so he decided to get it out of his system by "cleverly trolling" (in the shittiest attempt ever) his most hated site.

[Gx1080]

Heh. I knew that you were that sup/tg/ mod that got butthurt and went power crazy (and failed at that lol).

[K]

The response was to K's saying that using persistent spell is TO by default which blatantly false. Persistent spell us used consistently in 3.5/of games to this day. How one defines broken is a different matter. And on that vein most players do act with restraint when utilizing persistent spell, humping themselves or otherwise.

I honestly think Persistent Spell spends a lot more time in theoretical gameplay than actual gameplay.

I mean, it either does broken things or boring things, and neither appeals to people who expect to play actual games. The same applies to any game that allows Nightsticks.

[Grek]

I honestly think Persistent Spell spends a lot more time in theoretical gameplay than actual gameplay.

I'm playing in a game with DMM Persist'd cleric archer right now. I'm using the build because the DM is a bit derpy and has everyone at different levels based on how long they've been in the campaign. I'm 3 levels lower than the highest level dude, so I powergame a bit to keep from being dead weight. Likewise, the highest level dude is intentionally playing a retarded gish-sorcerer-evocations build so he doesn't overshadow everyone else.

[K]

I honestly think Persistent Spell spends a lot more time in theoretical gameplay than actual gameplay.

I'm playing in a game with DMM Persist'd cleric archer right now. I'm using the build because the DM is a bit derpy and has everyone at different levels based on how long they've been in the campaign. I'm 3 levels lower than the highest level dude, so I powergame a bit to keep from being dead weight. Likewise, the highest level dude is intentionally playing a retarded gish-sorcerer-evocations build so he doesn't overshadow everyone else.

You understand that you are in an abnormal situation, right? Three levels difference between players is literally someone being less powerful than a cohort.

At that point the power metric is completely borked and people need to do all kinds of weird things to manage the DM's expectations of the challenges you can face.

[Username17]

Similarly, when you're a 9th level Wizard in a 12th level party, you might be tempted to Lesser Planar Bind a Succubus or two in order to lay down some Charm spam to keep from letting the party down.

-Username17

[Koumei]

Similarly, when you're a 9th level Wizard in a 12th level party, you might be tempted to Lesser Planar Bind a Succubus or two in order to lay down some Charm spam

And of course for personal use.

[Grek]

It isn't unusual for DMs (at least the ones I've played with) to do retarded shit like that. It's not good, and it isn't standard, but it is a situtation that comes up that someone might plausably want advice for. It's all about knowing how to sandbag up or down to match the correct power level for your game.

[CapnTthePirateG]

I honestly think Persistent Spell spends a lot more time in theoretical gameplay than actual gameplay.

I mean, it either does broken things or boring things, and neither appeals to people who expect to play actual games. The same applies to any game that allows Nightsticks.

I'm honestly not sure, everyone on bg/giant in the playground seems to use it, but I've never seen it in a game,not counting the game where we decided to try to break the system really, really bad.

[fectin]

On the wizard side, basically everything you can get without tricks is cosmetic. "I can see invisibility" is cool, but it's not exactly game-breaking. Same for alter self, or shrink person, or tongues. those are things that flavor a character, but just aren't going to be game-breaking, especially at six slots higher. I mean, protection from evil is really good, but not as a seventh level spell.
Cleric is mostly the same (you could turn into a tree all day instead of just hours), but has a couple buffs.

Also, I just found a way for archivists to be worthwhile (maybe). They prepare spells instead of getting them at a specific time of day. That means that unlike clerics, They can just live inside a persistent Time Stop all the time. Literally, all the time. Takes that tiresome "interacting with other players" aspect right out of the game!

[CapnTthePirateG]

I thought persistent time stop was debunked.

Also, don't you need to play Mother May I to get a time-stopping archivist in the first place?

[Kaelik]

I thought persistent time stop was debunked.

Also, don't you need to play Mother May I to get a time-stopping archivist in the first place?

1) yes, but you don't need to Mother May I a timestop Cleric or Timestop Wizard, who can be Incantatrix, or take Holy whatever.

2) Persistent Time Stop was "debunked" by people claiming that the duration can't be persisted because... they don't want it to be.

The duration is X rounds (apparent time). Persist brings the duration as long as it is not instantaneous, to Y. X is not instantaneous. Therefore it becomes Y.

[K]

.

2) Persistent Time Stop was "debunked" by people claiming that the duration can't be persisted because... they don't want it to be.

The duration is X rounds (apparent time). Persist brings the duration as long as it is not instantaneous, to Y. X is not instantaneous. Therefore it becomes Y.

The main 3rd edition FAQ says that Time Stop can not be made persistent because it is not eligible.

Whether that means anything to you is another issue entirely. I mean, questions answered in the 3rd edition FAQ aren't generally repeated in the 3.5 FAQ, so one wonders what should be used. The fact that books like the Epic Level Handbook is supposed to be 3.0, but material from it shows up in other 3.5-compliant rulebooks means that one should probably use both 3.0 and 3.5 rules and rulings unless the 3.5 rules (or FAQ) contradicts the 3.0 material.

In this case, it wouldn't.

A lot of FAQ rulings are also terrible, so that also leads people to ignore them.

[fectin]

I thought persistent time stop was debunked.

Also, don't you need to play Mother May I to get a time-stopping archivist in the first place?

1) yes, but you don't need to Mother May I a timestop Cleric or Timestop Wizard, who can be Incantatrix, or take Holy whatever.

2) Persistent Time Stop was "debunked" by people claiming that the duration can't be persisted because... they don't want it to be.

The duration is X rounds (apparent time). Persist brings the duration as long as it is not instantaneous, to Y. X is not instantaneous. Therefore it becomes Y.

A timestop cleric has to stop eventually and wait for dawn/dusk; an archivisit can rest and recover spells inside his timestop. In this one specific way, the archivist is strictly superior. Also, you don't have to mother-may-I it any more than you do any other item; timestop is already divine (Trickery 9), so you can just buy a scroll of it. So once you can cast one of those per day, you're living in the moment forever.

At that point though, you're playing a solo game where you don't get to interact with anyone else or with a lot of the world. And this goes off at a point where you can cast 9th-level spells, so the train has already arrived at crazytown station and the game is unplayable in any serious way.

[Aharon]

Say, what is the wisdom of the den on the topic of Leadership? I see it cropping up from time to time in threads here, when on other boards, i.e. BG, it is seen as a TO thing that almost never sees play.

[Maxus]

Say, what is the wisdom of the den on the topic of Leadership? I see it cropping up from time to time in threads here, when on other boards, i.e. BG, it is seen as a TO thing that almost never sees play.

Leadership is a good argument for re-thinking hybrid classing. If I'm going to be, say, an arcane-magic-using fighter, I could put two levels in fighter, three in wizard and then Wizards of the Coast and Paizo tells me I need to take something with, like, medium BAB and missing three caster levels over ten levels for a grand total of being five levels below what I could be if I'd just stayed a damn wizard.

Or, I could be a fighter and take Leadership with a wizard cohort-girlfriend, who will do all the casting for me without me losing any rounds fighting. And my cohort takes Leadership and her cohort is her apprentice. My cohort's apprentice has caster level 4 below what a wizard of my level would have.

So, that's right. Leadership demonstrates that if you take Eldritch Knight or Arcane Trickster or Mystic Theurge, you are worse off than the apprentice of the girlfriend of the fighter who took leadership. And that's a good argument for PrCs getting a tune-up and re-thinking how they're handled.

[Kaelik]

A lot of FAQ rulings are also terrible, so that also leads people to ignore them.

The FAQ does not have the authority to contradict rule text. Where it disagrees with the actual rules, it is wrong. It disagrees with the actual rules, and therefore is wrong.

A timestop cleric has to stop eventually and wait for dawn/dusk; an archivisit can rest and recover spells inside his timestop. In this one specific way, the archivist is strictly superior. Also, you don't have to mother-may-I it any more than you do any other item; timestop is already divine (Trickery 9), so you can just buy a scroll of it. So once you can cast one of those per day, you're living in the moment forever.

At that point though, you're playing a solo game where you don't get to interact with anyone else or with a lot of the world. And this goes off at a point where you can cast 9th-level spells, so the train has already arrived at crazytown station and the game is unplayable in any serious way.

Um... That's what Mother May I is. Mother May I is where you have to convince the DM to let you find a scroll of a spell made by a specific cleric with trickery domain, who made it to sell. Which is weird, much weirder than for example a scroll of Gate.

Say, what is the wisdom of the den on the topic of Leadership? I see it cropping up from time to time in threads here, when on other boards, i.e. BG, it is seen as a TO thing that almost never sees play.

Pretty sure based on the fucking Barbarian Class feature, and the Command feat, that most people disagree with me, but I think Leadership is terrible, and no one is ever fucking allowed to take it ever for anything.

[K]

A lot of FAQ rulings are also terrible, so that also leads people to ignore them.

The FAQ does not have the authority to contradict rule text. Where it disagrees with the actual rules, it is wrong. It disagrees with the actual rules, and therefore is wrong.

Time Stop has a "Duration: 1d4+1 rounds (apparent time); see text" which already means something is weird with the duration. From that, it's plausible that Persistent Spell won't work on it since it won't work on instant duration effects and we learn from the text that to the rest of the universe the duration is instant, but to you it is not.

With the FAQ clarifying in absolute terms, you'd be hard pressed to get a DM to agree to the clearly broken interpretation the FAQ is barring.

Hell, I think you'd also be hard pressed to find someone willing to abandon a FAQ ruling even when it contradicts original text (and in this case it doesn't, so good luck).

[Josh_Kablack]

Leadership is a feat that either everyone in the game should have a version of or no one in the game should take.

According to the CR system, a cohort two levels below you is roughly half as powerful as you are. So by that rubric, it's a feat that increases your effectiveness by roughly 50%. Compared to other feats, that's crazy-go-nuts good, at least on par with the best Tome feat combos and lightyears ahead of Core where +2 to 2 skills is supposed to be meaningful.
But leadership also comes with followers, who are low level enough not to matter on the battlemat, but who can help with logistics and out-of-combat challenges. So it's a 50% combat upgrade with added noncombat use, which makes it very likely the best feat ever.

But setting power level aside, just having an extra character on the battlemap means that your turns take twice as long - and that takes time away from other players' turns. Even if the MC is treating the cohort as an NPC that the player does not controll directly, the MC still has to take the time to decide and adjucate the cohort's actions - which is again time that the other players are not taking their turns. This results in a lopsided amount of time for players to actually play in games where some have cohorts and others do not. But if *everyone* has a cohort, then everyone takes twice as long for their turns and it balances back out - with either each player taking a double-length turn or coming up twice in the initiative order.

Where it gets crazy, and why D&D probably needs something like the mess that is the current Leadership is that 3.x D&D has literally dozens of other similar abilities where PCs acquire minions, but Leadership is the one that the most classes have access to. The game also includes Animal Companion, Special Mount, days-long Charms, Control Undead, Improved Familiar, Shield Guardian, golem creation, Animate Dead, Diplomacy, Planar Binding / Ally spells, animal handling training rules, prices for various mounts in the MM, etc, etc.

If I were doing a major revision of the 3.x rules, I would put all of these on the same damn limit somehow - so that a Lord who trained his hunting hounds and rode his noble steed or you could be a necromancer with a skeleton horde and a lead ghoul or an enchantress with her familiar and her charmed men-at-arms all worked the same way and had the same limits on number and level. Because being able to be a cleric with a planar ally and who creates undead that your cohort sorcerer (who has an improved familiar) uses extended control undead on when she's not at her charm monster limit means that's you're no longer playing a character - you're playing a platoon. And that's problematic on multiple levels when Joe is just playing a thief with a magic dagger in the same group - effectively two players at the same table are gaming at different scales.

[Swordslinger]

Hell, I think you'd also be hard pressed to find someone willing to abandon a FAQ ruling even when it contradicts original text (and in this case it doesn't, so good luck).

Any DM with half a brain should ban something that would totally ruin his game. A DM who lets something like permanent time stop in play should retire from DMing.

[DSMatticus]

Time Stop is really weird. Let's just compare it with Bull's Strength, a very straight forward spell with a duration.

The spell grants a +4 enhancement bonus to Strength, adding the usual benefits to melee attack rolls, melee damage rolls, and other uses of the Strength modifier.

Benefit: +4 enhancement bonus to strength.
Duration: 1 min/level

You are free to act for 1d4+1 rounds of apparent time.

Benefit: 1d4+1 rounds of apparent time with special rules
Duration: 1d4+1 rounds

Bull's Strength gives you +4 strength for 1 min/level. Time Stop does not give you 1d4+1 rounds of apparent time for 1d4+1 rounds. The duration line of each of these spells is doing something completely different.

If you want to get into RAW dickery, it's really not even certain Time Stop does what everyone thinks it does. With Bull's Strength, the duration is its own individual thing which describes how long the spell text's described effects last. With Time Stop, the duration is just a reference to a piece of the spell text which describes the extent of an effect. What does the duration line do, mechanically?

If we were going for mechanical consistency, Time Stop should have been written as an instantaneous spell which gave you 1d4+1 rounds of stuff to do, OR a spell with a duration of 1d4+1 rounds which froze everything except you. As is, Time Stop is inconsistent with the model set by most of the other SRD spells. Or rather, if we did a consistent interpretation it would do something completely different than what everyone expects.

[Koumei]

Leadership in all honesty is a massive power boost, more than other Tome feats individually are (though it doesn't have a cool synergy with any of them like they might), but it's pretty easy to decide for your game whether or not players are allowed to tick the "Has a Cohort" box.

For games with kingdom building and squad tactics and so on, it's handy - everyone can take their choice of Leadership feat and the PCs are a small gang on the tactical battlefield, ideal for fighting a dozen or so foes at a time. For a lot of other games... it slows things down and increases the chances that player X will roll high on Initiative twice and thus kill the monster between his two characters before player Y gets to do anything at all.

In Disgaeagame I allow it, and the knight just has his mount that he always rides (so he has two pools of HP that can be independently targeted, and extra attacks in close combat), and the rock star effectively brings her cohort out of a pokeball to heal the party but not really get involved in combat. Which is really handy.

[fectin]

Um... That's what Mother May I is. Mother May I is where you have to convince the DM to let you find a scroll of a spell made by a specific cleric with trickery domain, who made it to sell. Which is weird, much weirder than for example a scroll of Gate.

Finding a core spell isn't that weird. It's not like you're looking for a divine version of some obscure FR wizard spell, it's right there in the main book. That's assuming you don't believe that domain spells are cleric spells to start with. Even if it is weird: Miracle to duplicate Planar Binding, "Something with a Scroll of Time Stop". Done!

But fundamentally, it doesn't matter. It's a stupid trick, even assuming it works, it makes that game worse for everyone. And arguing whether a specific broken trick works at level where everything is broken enough that the game is unplayable anyway is going just a little bit too far down the rabbit hole for my taste.

[Archmage Joda]

I just remembered something else: What of the Master Spellthief thing, for stacking caster levels for absurd numbers?

Edit: Funnily enough, there's a thread about caster level and whatnot on BG that sprung up, but personally I'm starting to feel a little...disillusioned....there.