Archmage Joda wrote: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.
There are lots of ways to break caster levels, many expressly legal, but the real question is "who cares?"
I mean, it's one of the easier and most obvious ways to make an unplayable character that your DM will refuse to allow in his game. Where's the fun in that?
K wrote:There are lots of ways to break caster levels, many expressly legal, but the real question is "who cares?"
I mean, it's one of the easier and most obvious ways to make an unplayable character that your DM will refuse to allow in his game. Where's the fun in that?
No kidding, the number of times I've seen or had Druid power arguments in which someone said "but they aren't as powerful as a Cleric, because Clerics can Persist Consumptive Field, and then Use Blasphemy."
Great... and Druids can Wish for an item of +400 to CL, and Cast Word of Balance. If you are breaking the game with shitty CL shenanigans, then it doesn't really matter how you get them.
Between this thread and a few others I've read, I've once again learned why TO is fun for me at times. It's not about breaking the game for me, really, it never has been. It's always been about coming up with some setup or combo that does something wholly unexpected, something where players look at it and say "damn". Sure, someone can come up with some character that breaks the game into tiny pieces through the same old tired incantatrix, or wish, or whatever, but the things that inspired me, like the old H.I.V.E., it was all about combining a few pieces to take things in a new direction.
Hell, a lot of my favorites of the old tricks didn't even rely on entire specific builds, it was all just a few feats or something, and I liked them not because they were broken, but because they were interesting, and sometimes blew my mind. After all, any bloke with a PHB knows about Wish, but as my personal preference, I like monkeying around with other things to see if I can recreate that old feeling of elegance and creativity.
Going back to the Shadow Miracle thing, from what I see, the main argument is that since Arcane Disciple says "add the chosen domain's spells to your class list of arcane spells" that if you are a sorcerer or wizard, adding it to your class list means it becomes mimicable via shadow illusion.
But while so many other forums say that it works just fine, I've also seen reason to not accept their words at face value, so instead, I want to ask out of need of assuaging my own ignorance, is there a flaw in that argument, and what exactly is it?
I'm too lazy to read the text and I don't remember it exactly, but running off memory it goes something like this:
1) The shadow thing lets you imitate spells on the sorcerer/wizard list, not spells you know and can cast as a sorcerer/wizard.
2) Miracle is not on the sorcerer/wizard list.
3) Arcane disciple means fuck all, because changing your personal list does not change the sorcerer/wizard list.
This is all based on exact wordings which I don't accurately remember, so... who knows.
Archmage Joda wrote:Going back to the Shadow Miracle thing, from what I see, the main argument is that since Arcane Disciple says "add the chosen domain's spells to your class list of arcane spells" that if you are a sorcerer or wizard, adding it to your class list means it becomes mimicable via shadow illusion.
But while so many other forums say that it works just fine, I've also seen reason to not accept their words at face value, so instead, I want to ask out of need of assuaging my own ignorance, is there a flaw in that argument, and what exactly is it?
Putting spells onto your personal spell list is not the same as putting them onto the Wizard/Sorcerer list.
The ability works only on spells on the Wizard/Sorcerer list.
Archmage Joda wrote:Going back to the Shadow Miracle thing, from what I see, the main argument is that since Arcane Disciple says "add the chosen domain's spells to your class list of arcane spells" that if you are a sorcerer or wizard, adding it to your class list means it becomes mimicable via shadow illusion.
But while so many other forums say that it works just fine, I've also seen reason to not accept their words at face value, so instead, I want to ask out of need of assuaging my own ignorance, is there a flaw in that argument, and what exactly is it?
Putting spells onto your personal spell list is not the same as putting them onto the Wizard/Sorcerer list.
The ability works only on spells on the Wizard/Sorcerer list.
This is that same old question of whether being able to cast blindness/deafness and obscure object means that you can cast '3rd level cleric spells'.
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Out of curiosity, what is the general feeling about psionics? There are those who feel they're overpowered, those who feel they're underpowered, and those feel they're fine as they are (me). I know the general feeling here is that Complete Psionic is better called Complete Pshit, but in general what's the feeling.
Thinking about it, I would expect them to be considered roughly on par with spellcasters.
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Prak_Anima wrote:Out of curiosity, what is the general feeling about psionics? There are those who feel they're overpowered, those who feel they're underpowered, and those feel they're fine as they are (me). I know the general feeling here is that Complete Psionic is better called Complete Pshit, but in general what's the feeling.
Thinking about it, I would expect them to be considered roughly on par with spellcasters.
Oh, they might be if the base powers were worth a shit.
Instead you have to augment the fuck out some of the powers--and augmentation only affects specific things--to do something on a par with a wizard or sorceror of your level, but you can't max-augment very often.
Or, rather, you'd blow through your points quickly. Even powers of your highest level will chew through them.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
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Prak_Anima wrote:Out of curiosity, what is the general feeling about psionics? There are those who feel they're overpowered, those who feel they're underpowered, and those feel they're fine as they are (me). I know the general feeling here is that Complete Psionic is better called Complete Pshit, but in general what's the feeling.
Thinking about it, I would expect them to be considered roughly on par with spellcasters.
Overpowered? Only if you don't understand how it actually works. Though, to be fair, I can see it wreaking a little bit of havoc if you're not using transparency and the setting/campaign hasn't been adapted to account for it (i.e., the PC is the only psionics in the game).
Underpowered? maybe compared to wizards. I've always seen psions as being on par with sorcerers (both in conception and in actual play).
Complete Psionic was shit for 2 basic reasons:
- wasn't properly thought out (seemed like the just slammed a bunch of shit together to satisfy a publishing quota)
- a bunch of stealth nerfs that weren't really needed.
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Yeah, psionics are the equivelant of normal spellcasting. Many powers are different from spells, but not necessarily better or worse...Of course spellcasters in a game could potentially have far more resources available (rule book resources).
The main complaint that I have heard against psionics is that they are too metagamey. Oddly, some people I know have an issue with tracking power points and augmentation, but no such problem with spell preparation and metamagic.
There are a few differential exploits with psionics, mainly to do with various interactions of powers and the Psion's pet rock, but I have not experienced any issues with this system in a game (aside from beardy fuckers pissing and moaning about book keeping).
The real problem is just that power point systems can't really work.
How many castings of Magic Missile (each taking its own action) would you have to be given for you to sacrifice a casting of Acid Fog?
If your answer was a number, rather than "Fuck you", your answer was wrong.
So you're a fool to use your points on weak (low level) powers, because unlike a Wizard who blows his level 1 slots on long-lasting buffs or weird edge-case utility things, but still has his level four spells for winning forever, you'd actively be denying yourself uses of your good high-level powers.
Which means inexperienced players will think "I have played Final Fantasy, using MP makes much more sense to me than keeping track of weird spell slots!" then fuck themselves. And experienced players just blow through the high-cost ones and need to take an early nap.
Without even being as powerful as a Wizard (though at least being able to contribute at all).
I'm sure someone on the Den could make a working Psion class with a system of resource management that worked, but I don't happen to care very much so it won't be me. And in general people don't particularly care to make new D&D content here, so it will probably never happen. And no-one will give a shit about this.
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Koumei wrote:
I'm sure someone on the Den could make a working Psion class with a system of resource management that worked, but I don't happen to care very much so it won't be me.
Well, as an aside, someone on one of the Wikis made a sphere'd out Psychic class. been a while since I looked at it. I remember thinking it was too strong.
Edit: Huh. Guess I was misremembering. The only thing really eyebrow-raising is the rate at which you gain spheres. Even then, it's reasonable.
Last edited by Maxus on Thu Aug 11, 2011 8:00 am, edited 1 time in total.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
Kaelik wrote:Oh Koumei, there's an entire forum that proves you wrong. It also has a Psion in it.
Oh, there's a Tome Psion? And seriously, I had the impression the Den was largely focusing on other games these days (or talking about the future of D&D), rather than doing more Tome work.
At any rate, it wasn't the first time I was mistaken and corrected, and won't be the last.
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Kaelik wrote:Oh Koumei, there's an entire forum that proves you wrong. It also has a Psion in it.
Oh, there's a Tome Psion? And seriously, I had the impression the Den was largely focusing on other games these days (or talking about the future of D&D), rather than doing more Tome work.
At any rate, it wasn't the first time I was mistaken and corrected, and won't be the last.
It is nowdays, but if you read your post, you didn't qualify with a recently.
Dominicius wrote:Really with psionics they should have got rid of power levels entirely and made it completely augmentation based.
It still suffers the same problem, though.
Increase the points or the augmentation mechanics, one.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
psionics has a major problem in the "who cares about this" department.
The real issue is that D&D already has 2 kinds/grades of magic. Granted those two systems are functionally pretty similar, but the sort of spells you can get from each one are fairly varried.
Further, arcane magic itslef devides up into a bunch of different ways of doing stuff You can honestly play a wizards who blasts things (although we know this sucks but not so much as to be unplayable), a wizard who summons things, a wizard who uses less obvious combinations, and this is just wizard stuff.
The only setting that needs psionics is dark sun and thats because they don't have divine magic.
This is usually compounded by the fact that most of the time there are one (maybe 2) players who want to play psionic characters and the DM wants to run a more typical D&D game or a game from published modules, or maybe he just doesn't care enough to incorporate a lot of bad guy psionics. This makes the whole system seem really tacked on.
Mister Sinister made a Psion and a Nightmare Seeker class. They're both in the community material thread, I think.
Both are basically just a Conduit+some extra stuff. Which is probably okay since Conduits are a bit on the weak side for Tome characters.
One of my players was a Nightmare Seeker was a bit, but then he died for some reason. I can't remember the context, but he found the character to be fairly enjoyable.
Out beyond the hull, mucoid strings of non-baryonic matter streamed past like Christ's blood in the firmament.
The 3.0 Psionics Handbook was really shitty. The base psi classes were worse than core casters yet probably had more infinite loops and poor wordings - meaning that playing one was an exercise in what you could get away with. You could play a character who got Mind Blast at 3rd level as your single trick. Instead of something sensible like making a Save vs Stun or having attacks against one of your ACs, you instead got into a needlessly complicated system of rock/lizard/spock with added power point burn and loss of your enhanced attributes whenever a psionic monster showed up.
That the same guy wrote the web supplements, the 3rd party OGL product and the 3.5 Expanded Psionics Handbook and Complete Psi was enough to keep me from reading them. I haven't even bothered to read those, not even after they made them OGL and stuck them in the SRD.
Of course, I've got a bias against magic and psi as distinct forces in the same setting - that only happens notably in superheroic source material (or that which is derived from earlier editions of D&D). It offends my delicate sensibilities much less if you call it "mind magic" or "mentalism" or something similar.
Honestly, the Monster Manual treatment of Psionics as "these are spell-like abilities" was much better in that it offered more clarity, more genre appropriate, and resolved faster than the crappy power-point system Cordell came up with. So giving out sphere or other sources of spell-like abilities is an outright better way to handle Psi powers in your game than the official one.
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Thu Aug 11, 2011 7:55 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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