Trailblazer

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Sun May 31, 2009 2:16 pm

Has anyone looked at Trailblazer? It seems to be another 3.5 fix, and I'm wondering how it compares to the Pathfinder nonsense.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun May 31, 2009 2:59 pm

I didn't even know about it. Link?

-Username17

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Sun May 31, 2009 3:07 pm

Here 'tis. His sig has a couple of relevant links as well, including a free pdf download from rpgnow.

I don't know if anyone here has any bad history with this guy, but I hope not, because I invited him to come look at the Tomes and discuss his ideas with us.

TOZ · Post by **TOZ** » Sun May 31, 2009 4:08 pm

The preview promises great things, and his 10 minute rest proposal seems useful. I'd be willing to give the finished product a read through.

TarkisFlux · Post by **TarkisFlux** » Sun May 31, 2009 6:44 pm

I have my reservations...

Trailblazer in the 'CoDzilla' sidebar wrote:Quite unsurprisingly, the Cleric and Druid rule the pack, followed closely by the Sorcerer, which comports with the experience of many seasoned 3e players, whom we have to thank for the term “CoDzilla.” Equally unsurprising is the observation that the Fighter and Rogue rank dead last.

[Emphasis added]

... but it's probably worth a look. The 10 minute rest proposal is interesting anyway.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun May 31, 2009 7:08 pm

Honestly, I'm not especially surprised if he ranks rogue at the bottom of the list, depending on what kind of encounters he was used to and what expansion material was allowed.

If the rogue is a regular member of a campaign with lots of undead/elementals/plants/constructs, they're not going to do very well. They'll whup a lot of asses but then attain sub-bard levels of asskicking when they fight these large swatches of enemies. If the rogue is using Andy's dumbass 'you have to reach a vital spot to sneak attack' houserule as well, then they're going to be doing some major cat penis sucking.

The Sorcerer being ahead of the wizard is no excuse. If you don't understand why sorcerer is behind wizard (despite the fact that the wizard has a much better chassis) then you'll never understand why cleric and druid was at the top of the pack.

(edited for the creation of more vulgarity)

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Sun May 31, 2009 7:19 pm

Man, people keep forgetting oozes when they go off the list of anti-rogue monsters

Anyway, a number of those creature types are surmountable with a rogue through various spells (iffy as to whether DMs allow such), and ACs are never a real problem once you fling out the acid flasks. However, using flasks is a technique I had NEVER heard of until Frank brought it up.

With 3rd party supplements, splatbooks, & Paizo, I really doubt many games look at all the same anymore because of the wide difference in characters created depending on what you allow beyond the core set of rules.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Sun May 31, 2009 7:24 pm

Even if you don't consider all that stuff, Monks. Also, Paladins. Both are still lower.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Sun May 31, 2009 7:57 pm

I like how he has five decimal places of "accuracy" on how much various class's spellcasting is worth. E.g., wizard spellcasting is worth 0.4095 CR per level, and sorcerer spellcasting is worth 0.61425 CR per level. Scien-tastic!

Roy wrote:Even if you don't consider all that stuff, Monks. Also, Paladins. Both are still lower.

To be fair, the paladin is basically tied with the fighter and rogue in his evaluation. To be unfair, he ranks the monk in the top 50% of classes, just after the wizard.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Sun May 31, 2009 8:23 pm

Well, so much for any and all merit in THAT project.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sun May 31, 2009 8:39 pm

The monk just looks really good. You can converse with fish and fowl, throw a huge number of punches, heal yourself, and you will not age until you die. Sounds awesome at first. And a lot of otherwise intelligent people think the Monk is the business at humanoid-on-humanoid violence.

So I'll forgive him that much. It wasn't until I saw the Dungeonomicon Monk that I realized the SRD monk was doing it wrong.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Sun May 31, 2009 8:45 pm

Maxus wrote:The monk just looks really good. You can converse with fish and fowl, throw a huge number of punches, heal yourself, and you will not age until you die. Sounds awesome at first. And a lot of otherwise intelligent people think the Monk is the business at humanoid-on-humanoid violence.

So I'll forgive him that much. It wasn't until I saw the Dungeonomicon Monk that I realized the SRD monk was doing it wrong.

The problem is that you can't break the various classes down into a linear progression of power. Especially a class like the monk that's hugely front-loaded. Using his formula, adding two levels of monk class features to a monster increases its CR by 0.44. Is that true? Probably not, in most cases.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Sun May 31, 2009 8:46 pm

Even if it did do that (hint: humanoid casters own its face, and the non casters other than Monks do the same) humanoids are inferior to comparable monsters at the same level. So that would at most be saying they can do the things anything can do. Well that's nice, but the other guys can also do unique and useful stuff. So it still doesn't mean anything. And really, the only reason they win over NPC Monks is the gear advantage. Except that there are far too many people drinking the 'Monks don't need gear' koolaid. You can guess how that goes.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun May 31, 2009 8:50 pm

Well, the first two levels of monk are a bundle of goodness to monsters, especially at higher levels.

Giving some high-WIS, naked monster with a natural attack routine + manufactured weapon a level of monk will cause its AC to spike and some extra fukken attacks. Plus the ability to stun on a hit atop of that.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Sun May 31, 2009 8:53 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Well, the first two levels of monk are a bundle of goodness to monsters, especially at higher levels.

Giving some high-WIS, naked monster with a natural attack routine + manufactured weapon a level of monk will cause its AC to spike and some extra fukken attacks. Plus the ability to stun on a hit atop of that.

That's my point; either it's worth more than 0.44 CR, or it's worth less. Narrowing it down to some kind of formula is silly (let alone a formula with 5 decimal places of accuracy...).

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Sun May 31, 2009 8:58 pm

He basically just typed random numbers. It's like a Monk's Belt, except better and cheaper. I'm having a hard time thinking of a monster that wouldn't get a disproportionate benefit from Wis to AC, evasion, +3 all saves and some extra attacks that doesn't increase its level at all no matter how you spin it. Just a Monk's Belt is rather crazy for the cost efficiency. Of course the other 18 levels are made of fail.

TarkisFlux · Post by **TarkisFlux** » Sun May 31, 2009 9:04 pm

Yeah... while I generally like numerical analyses, it looks like they used it exclusively and missed some of the more subtle problems and synergies. Plus, I don't know if those numbers are inclusive of their 10 minute recharge thing, or their updated classes, which would skew our expectations. So I really don't know what to do with those weird looking final numbers...

The idea isn't bad though, and it lets you do some interesting things. They've basically turned it all into point buy, with all of the good and bad that entails, and written easily exploitable rules for bolting on additional class features or abilities to characters and monsters. And while I would appreciate a working way to measure the CR increase of bolting 7 levels of cleric casting onto a hill giant, it looks like it only works properly in the simpler cases. You can still completely screw a monster by adding 4 levels each of sorcerer, wizard, cleric, and druid casting, and while the resulting creature would have a high CR it would probably still suck ass (dependent on additional casting and '10 minute recharge' play changes). Likewise, adding 2 levels of sorcerer casting to a CR 18 monster does not make it a CR 19 one, the change in power barely even registers. It's better than it was, but it's not great yet. Like you're saying hogarth, static numbers aren't the whole story.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Sun May 31, 2009 11:46 pm

Is the link dead, or is it just me?

TOZ · Post by **TOZ** » Sun May 31, 2009 11:49 pm

It's not just you PR. Was working before but I'm getting nothing now.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 12:03 am

Here's the download link:
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=60479

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 12:26 am

Thanks for the link. Just from reading the preview, it looks like the supplement is largely designed with Core-only in mind and the focus is on the "casual" crowd.

For instance... wrote:Healing is a chore for clerics; they’d rather be doing something else with their actions and their spells.

Good clerics aren't healing in combat.

Sneak attack doesn’t pay off often enough for the rogue.

lol twf amirite?

Wizards have no good options when they run out of spells.

Good wizards don't run out of spells.

However, despite the fact that this project will ultimately end in fail, I am intrigued by it. The writer makes a lot of good points about the things wrong with 3.5 (rounds take forever, lol grappling, iterative attacks are a hindrance, buffs mean bookeeping, and so on). Some things I'm noting as I'm reading along:

Per rest mechanics. Good for paladins; not so useful for barbarians, since they're 1/encounter anyhow.

Rest period. Healing surges. I'm still not a fan of the autoheal option.

Rote spells. They're basically your at-wills. Fireball still gets shat on, and finger of death becomes better.

I'm meh on this so far. Seems like they're cramming 3e into a 4e box. Or vice-versa.

EDIT: Inb4 Failblazer.

Absentminded_Wizard · Post by **Absentminded_Wizard** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 3:06 am

You know, a couple of months ago, I came across the Trailblazer preview pdf and almost linked it here so everybody could laugh at it. Unfortunately, I was too lazy, because I forgot what comedy gold that pdf is.

PR's criticisms of their rest system are pretty much right on, and also:

In addition to thinking that damage-capped, expiration-dated mass-target evocations should be harder to refresh than single-target SoDs, the Trailblazer designers show clear signs of 4e mentality. The spells they put in their most restrictive category (Ritual Spells) are the spells that give lazy DMs a headache (teleport, divinations, resurrection magic) instead of the spells that most make casters own the game.

The one exception to this trend is that they allow DMs to designate the economy-wrecking permanent-goods spells as rituals. The problem is that the restrictions put on refreshing Ritual spells are, at best, very minor inconveniences to the wizards plans for world economic domination. With all the other radical changes they made to the rules, they couldn't just do something simple like slap a duration on the existence of "permanent" created goods.

sake · Post by **sake** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 9:01 am

hogarth wrote:I like how he has five decimal places of "accuracy" on how much various class's spellcasting is worth. E.g., wizard spellcasting is worth 0.4095 CR per level, and sorcerer spellcasting is worth 0.61425 CR per level. Scien-tastic!

Oh dear... That's almost quaint really, I thought all the 'spontaneous casting is overpowered!' crowd was long gone. I bet he thinks the Psion, Favored Soul, and Spirit Shaman are more powerful than the wizard as well.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 5:16 pm

sake wrote: Oh dear... That's almost quaint really, I thought all the 'spontaneous casting is overpowered!' crowd was long gone. I bet he thinks the Psion, Favored Soul, and Spirit Shaman are more powerful than the wizard as well.

Yeah, it's really pretty sad. Especially given the sorcerer has that delayed casting bullshit where he doesn't get 2nd level spells until level 4. I mean that alone really fucks the sorcerer bad.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 5:37 pm

To be fair, the sorcerer technically isn't fucked if you're not comparing him to wizards, clerics, or druids. He's still a powerhouse, no matter what. He's just less so than the Three Sodomizers. And archivists.