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

[Archmage Joda]

Speaking of unconventional wisdom, what does the den think of the otherwise lauded Blue Mage class?

Edit: Why in the name of Sheogorath can I not get the link to display properly?

[Josh_Kablack]

Speaking of unconventional wisdom, what does the den think of the otherwise lauded Blue Mage class?

Edit: Why in the name of Sheogorath can I not get the link to display properly?

reserved characters. you have to use numeric codes for the underscores

But even having found the thread on WotC, I don't see most of the class abilities - I get the list of class skills (for which they are missing the Knowledge skill which lets them know about humanoid monsters) and then a Q&A section with nothing in-between. So I have to hate it for being unreadable.

In general I have to wonder about the viability of FF-style blue mages in group RPGs where the combats are usually decided inside 2 rounds and lethality is high. Unlike a CRPG, You can't just go spend a night farming Tonberries unless the rest of the PCs are down with that being the night's adventure. And unlike a CRPG, getting hit by a critter spell or SLA in a real fight means that you're likely useless for the rest of the fight instead of just requiring one of the other party members to burn an action and a phoneix down. On the upside it might possibly plug into some interesting loops to get additional castings of out-of-level stuff from charmed or summoned monsters.

[Archmage Joda]

Ok, let's try this again, but with a slightly better forum.

Once more, Blue Mage

Holy Schneikeys, it worked!

[Kaelik]

Blue Mage is stupid Trash. The idea of a class that can never learn a spell it isn't affected by makes no sense. It could have been remotely salvageable as a class if they hadn't added all the bullshit "if you have SR/make the save you can't learn the spell" retard shit.

Flesh to Stone is a spell that exists, the idea that the only Blue Mages that can learn that spell are ones who lose the fight and get rescued is stupid.

The example fight in the description is perfect. Great, if you have a badass spell that for some reason you can survive getting hit in the face with, you can learn it, but since Fireball is actually terrible, try that fight again where it's a Wizard casting Flesh to Salt.

To say nothing of the problem of spells that are really going to change fights being higher level than the Blue Mage can cast, it still has the problem where it can't be Color Sprayed and then Color Spray the attacker, because he's fucking unconscious.

Not only is my Invoker a better Blue Mage than that class, the fucking Spell thief is a better Blue Mage, and more viable as a class as well.

[K]

Ok, let's try this again, but with a slightly better forum.

Once more, Blue Mage

Holy Schneikeys, it worked!

They should probably just use the FFTA version of the Blue Mage where you auto-learn any spell used. Josh has already pointed out why.

Second, it also is going to learn woefully few spells. Five spell levels per level is a really tiny amount of spells. Sorcerers are going to crank call in the middle of the night to laugh at you about the very few spells you know. It doesn't even matter if the list is flexible because most monster abilities are dumb on their merits or only decent with at will use limits and you'll be keeping a static list most days.

Third, all the feats are stupid. All. The. Feats. Are. Stupid. They are super tiny things like +2 vs spells or +2 on Spellcraft to learn spells. Those are the feats that people don't take.

Fourth, all the abilities are meta and stupid, except Turquoise Efficiency which is ok.

Fifth, the auto Wis damage for learning too many spells is dumb. Completely unnecessary.

Sixth: it's a Blue Mage...... you really don't need to make it's clothes blue or name everything some kind of blue word. That's lame.

Seventh: what, no abilities from the FFXI Blue Mage or the vast amount of backstory there?

Eighth: Where is the sword proficiency?

Ninth: Not learning actual monster abilities unless there is a PHB spell matching it is super dumb. You know how the example of a spell you can't learn in the write-up is the mind flayer's Mind Blast.... well, in FFXI you learn Mind Blast from flayers. Learning actual monster abilities is the cool part about learning monster abilities. Learning spells off the arcane/divine list is pretty common and not as cool as learning monster abilities.

Overall: Back to the old drawing board.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Special Attacks versus Special Qualities is still a useful distinction due almost solely to the shapechanging rules.

Or would be if shapechanging rules weren't so fucking awful...

Changing the shapechanging rules to not be awful means you need to change the monster rules to not be awful. I mean, 3e monsters are still made like 2e monsters where someone randomly assigns all the stats and the makes up new powers and then eyeballs the overall power level.

That's a recipe for failure.

So, the Tome polymorphs were a wasted effort?

[K]

Or would be if shapechanging rules weren't so fucking awful...

Changing the shapechanging rules to not be awful means you need to change the monster rules to not be awful. I mean, 3e monsters are still made like 2e monsters where someone randomly assigns all the stats and the makes up new powers and then eyeballs the overall power level.

That's a recipe for failure.

So, the Tome polymorphs were a wasted effort?

Mostly. They had value in that they were a experiment that proved that no one likes "pick off a list" powers or "complete transform" shapechanging. The fact that they are more balanced than previous versions means they are a solution, but still not the best ones since they still don't hit the marks you'd want (feels good, very balanced, etc).

The Tomes in general proved to me that you can patch for only so long before running into fundamental problems with your game engine that require a full redesign of that engine. Polymorph was one of the issues that pointed it out to me.

The point where I quite Tome work was when I was seriously considering rewriting the whole Monster Manual and Player's Handbook and DMG and completely abandoning the idea of backwards compatibility.

At that point, I decided that I might as well just write a new game so that I could get the credit and money instead of WotC.

[Archmage Joda]

Not only is my Invoker a better Blue Mage than that class, the fucking Spell thief is a better Blue Mage, and more viable as a class as well.

Where may I find this Invoker of yours?

[Ice9]

Man, I sort of remember the Blue Mage not sucking. Maybe it was better before it got fiddled with, or maybe I just didn't take too close a look at it back then.
I still like the concept, but yeah - how exactly was this balanced? It's like a crappier Sorcerer with one decent ability that doesn't make up for the tiny spell selection.

It wouldn't take too much to salvage it, I think - just fix the number of spells known, let learning happen on successful saves, and allow learning monster abilities (slot = 1/2 CR, maybe?). Sure, this probably allows some highly broken combination, but whatever, it's not like that isn't already a problem with spellcasting. Maybe give it better saves as well, or one of those "save again the next round" abilities.

[Archmage Joda]

Apologies for the thread necromancy, but I feel it's better than spawning a whole new one to essentially continue the topic.

Anyway, any ambient hatred of psionics aside, what breaks if I uncap the psion's powers known, allowing them to learn new powers beyond the 36 or so their leveling progression gives them over 20 levels? Personally, I don't see anything wrong with it, but then, I am also quite talented at being wrong.

[Maxus]

Well, they pick up some versatility. But it's the psion. Its major issue is in the power point/augment point structure itself, not the powers, what they do, or how many the psion learns.

[Josh_Kablack]

Apologies for the thread necromancy, but I feel it's better than spawning a whole new one to essentially continue the topic.

Anyway, any ambient hatred of psionics aside, what breaks if I uncap the psion's powers known, allowing them to learn new powers beyond the 36 or so their leveling progression gives them over 20 levels?

Then they would get as many powers as WIZARDS and CLERICS!!! And they wouldn't have to spend gold on getting scrolls energon cubes soul edges Power stones if they wanted to increase their versatility. We can't have classes like the Wizard and Cleric in this game! Because then Wizards wouldn't be the only two choices!!1!!1

[K]

Wizards and clerics can handle the extra versatility because they prepare spells and your actual daily amount of versatility is capped by preset spell slots.

If a Psionicist or Warlock or Sorcerer or other at-will caster was uncapped, you'd reach a saturation point where versatility was capped by total number of spell slots, and after a while it'd feel like "do whatever you want X number times a day."

Basically, it's a crazy power imbalance instead of a merely huge power imbalance.

[Josh_Kablack]

Right, doing whatever you want without taking 15 minutes in-game time to change your mind is TOTALLY CRAZY BROKEN AND YOU CAN'T ALLOW IT!!! ZOMG! CATS AND DOGS WILL GO BEYOND LIVING TOGETHER AND START OPENING COFFEE SHOPS!!

[...You Lost Me]

Right, doing whatever you want without taking 15 minutes in-game time to change your mind is TOTALLY CRAZY BROKEN AND YOU CAN'T ALLOW IT!!! ZOMG! CATS AND DOGS WILL GO BEYOND LIVING TOGETHER AND START OPENING COFFEE SHOPS!!

A psion with uncapped powers known is like a sulliin sorcerer--it will have whatever is the most useful in any given situation, except IN ADDITION to that, it also has more of those powers per day.

So yes, borken.

[K]

Right, doing whatever you want without taking 15 minutes in-game time to change your mind is TOTALLY CRAZY BROKEN AND YOU CAN'T ALLOW IT!!! ZOMG! CATS AND DOGS WILL GO BEYOND LIVING TOGETHER AND START OPENING COFFEE SHOPS!!

Basically, yeh.

Having a fixed spell list in-combat and an uncapped spell list out-of-combat if you reduce your in-combat choices is less terrible than an uncapped spell list in-combat AND uncapped list out-of-combat.

It gets kind of stupid when you are at 20-30 choices per spell level, but even at moderate amounts it also leads to crippling option paralysis.

[icyshadowlord]

Am I the only one who can't see the Blue Mage in the link?
It keeps demanding me to log in, and when I click cancel, it just says "401 Authorization Required, Invalid login credentials!"

Edit: I did see an entry on the Blue Mage on the WotC forums, but all the class features were removed so that didn't help much either.

[RobbyPants]

Am I the only one who can't see the Blue Mage in the link?
It keeps demanding me to log in, and when I click cancel, it just says "401 Authorization Required, Invalid login credentials!"

The BG forums are currently down due to a spam attack, or something. They've been down since Saturday.

[ishy]

Well a psion can kind of change all his powers if he wants to anyway with:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/power ... mation.htm

Depends a bit on how your group handles xp gains I guess though

[hogarth]

Apologies for the thread necromancy, but I feel it's better than spawning a whole new one to essentially continue the topic.

Anyway, any ambient hatred of psionics aside, what breaks if I uncap the psion's powers known, allowing them to learn new powers beyond the 36 or so their leveling progression gives them over 20 levels? Personally, I don't see anything wrong with it, but then, I am also quite talented at being wrong.

It would be the same thing as allowing a sorcerer to learn unlimited spells (since the psion is really just a slight variation on the sorcerer).

If a sorcerer can know unlimited numbers of spells, who would play a wizard? Does the wizard class really need buffing?

[Winnah]

Anyway, any ambient hatred of psionics aside, what breaks if I uncap the psion's powers known, allowing them to learn new powers beyond the 36 or so their leveling progression gives them over 20 levels? Personally, I don't see anything wrong with it, but then, I am also quite talented at being wrong.

Independant research for psionics. Similar to the optional rule for wizards conducting research. Relies on DM permission and downtime, so that is a limiting factor.

[fectin]

If a sorcerer can know unlimited numbers of spells, who would play a wizard? Does the wizard class really need buffing?

People who Wanted more than five feats ever?

And no, it doesn't.

[Quantumboost]

Independent research only necessarily allows you to *create* a new power - whether it lets you actually learn that power without spending a "spell known" slot is a separate question, the answer to which is probably going to often be "no".

[Josh_Kablack]

If a sorcerer can know unlimited numbers of spells, who would play a wizard?

Anyone who wanted

• To gain top level spells one level earlier
• To sacrifice low level spell slots and a school or two in order to gain a greater number of top-two level spells at odd numbered levels
  • Sorc 3: 6/5
  • SpecWiz 3: 5/3/2
  • Sorc 5: 6/6/4
  • SpecWiz 5: 5/4/3/2
  • Sorc 7 :6/6/6/4
  • SpecWiz 7: 5/5/4/3/2
  • Sorc 9: 6/6/6/6/4
  • SpecWiz 9: 5/5/5/4/3/2
  Note that in each case, the Spec Wiz can just cast prepare Top-1 level spells in their high level slots and comes out with more spells of that level than the Sorc does at odd levels after 3rd.
• More Skill Points
• The Wizard Bonus Feats

It gets kind of stupid when you are at 20-30 choices per spell level, but even at moderate amounts it also leads to crippling option paralysis.

Still not seeing a meaningful difference between the number of choices a mid-level wizard looks at doing spell preparation. One eats up time on the initiative count, the other eats up time sooner in the session, but they both happen at the game table.

So yeah, people are crying because such changes might make another class an actually fair consideration in place of playing a wizard instead of an inferior nonstarter choice.




That said, I've personally banned not only Psionics, but also Wizards, Sorcerers, Druids and Clerics in my current game - Nuking vancian casting from orbit, it's the only way to be fair.

[Kaelik]

Josh, you are being an idiot.

Psions get powers at the new levels.

So would you rather be a Wizard 11 or a Sorcerer 11 with Sorcerer 12 casting, and every spell in every fucking book ever printed as a spell known?

That's way the fuck more powerful, and also, more powerful in a shitty way that is unfun for most people.