Core Principles: Your Turn Undead and resistances mean jack.

[souran]

Point of Order: DR only applies against "physical" damage, it never reduces elemental damage or damage from spells. "DR 20/fire" is nonsensical because fire always bypasses DR, but so does cold and electric.

Crap, reading that I messed up all my game terms really badly.

What I mean is DR 1/- compared to Fire Resistance 5

I do understand that DR 5/fire written this way acutally means damage reduction 5 voided by fire. However, I apperently lost my mind posting earlier. And while DR X/fire is not a standard DR reduction "material" it would seem to imply that a physical attack with a fire component would void the DR. So a flaming sword or even a lit torch, basically converting it into exactly the opposite of the point I was trying to make.


Basically you need Elemental Resistance 10/20/30/all to compete against even a much smaller damage resistance or amor increase.

The point was supposed to be simple:

A fire resist cape that absorbs 5 fire is a pointless trinket.
A fire resist cape that protects you from Half/All fire damage is a magic item that you might actually wear over some more general piece.

[RandomCasualty2]

Sure, undead are crazy popular, but I doubt even DMs who love them put them in more than 1/4th of their encounters. Most will probably use them a lot less.

And an ability you have in even 1/4th of encounters is not a real ability.

Well, I would say it is if the ability lets you dominate in those combats.

This isn't 4E, and honestly I don't really want a game where every ability you have literally has to be relevant all the time. In fact, I don't think it's good game design to do that because it leads to ability spamming. I'm totally okay with saying "Your sneak attack doesn't work here" or "This shit is immune to fire."

The thing is that characters need to be robust enough to allow them to adapt to that shit without becoming useless. Making an ability useless is fine, making a character completely useless generally is something you have to do sparingly.

In fact, in any given encounter, I'd say there should always be certain abilities rendered useless. No ability should help you all the time regardless of situation.

An ability you use 1 in 8 battles is fine honestly. I don't see why that's even a big deal, unless it's an ability that the entire class is centered around.

[K]

Sure, undead are crazy popular, but I doubt even DMs who love them put them in more than 1/4th of their encounters. Most will probably use them a lot less.

And an ability you have in even 1/4th of encounters is not a real ability.

Well, I would say it is if the ability lets you dominate in those combats.

This isn't 4E, and honestly I don't really want a game where every ability you have literally has to be relevant all the time. In fact, I don't think it's good game design to do that because it leads to ability spamming. I'm totally okay with saying "Your sneak attack doesn't work here" or "This shit is immune to fire."

The thing is that characters need to be robust enough to allow them to adapt to that shit without becoming useless. Making an ability useless is fine, making a character completely useless generally is something you have to do sparingly.

In fact, in any given encounter, I'd say there should always be certain abilities rendered useless. No ability should help you all the time regardless of situation.

An ability you use 1 in 8 battles is fine honestly. I don't see why that's even a big deal, unless it's an ability that the entire class is centered around.

There is always a tension between "always useful" and "not useful in some situations."

If you are using something 1/8 times, you shouldn't even have to pay for it. It honestly should come free when you bathe in a mystic pool or something. I mean, at the point where it comes up 1/8 times you will have to remind people that they have it. The campaign might even end before they get a chance to use it, so paying any kind of character resources for it is just dumb even if it's an auto-win.

By the same token, nothing should be always good. I'm actually fine with oozes and elementals being immune to sneak attacks and crits, but when undead (who classically have always been killed by crits to head or heart) and constructs (who are killed by jamming gears or smashing gems on their foreheads) are immune, you suddenly start trumping someone's main thing often enough to make them want a new character.

I mean, DnD has always suffered from ability-inflation and immunity-inflation, and one of the few improvements of 3e was that it started to rein that in. DR as an idea cleaned things up dramatically, and the problem is that elemental damage didn't get a matching improvement.

Heck, the whole system needs another pass of consolidating things. Turning would be fine if we just let it affect all things as a mind-affecting ability that scares and kills people, and works very well on Undead (with mindless crap like vermin and constructs being immune).

[RandomCasualty2]

There is always a tension between "always useful" and "not useful in some situations."

If you are using something 1/8 times, you shouldn't even have to pay for it. It honestly should come free when you bathe in a mystic pool or something. I mean, at the point where it comes up 1/8 times you will have to remind people that they have it. The campaign might even end before they get a chance to use it, so paying any kind of character resources for it is just dumb even if it's an auto-win.

Why? Seriously, I mean 1/8th of the time... sounds like... well, your average wizard utility spell. I mean how many encounters are you using knock? Or using blink to go past a wall?

I certainly don't think they should be free. Otherwise you're saying basically any situational ability is effectively free, even if it's crazy awesome. Which means that basically you just want to collect situational abilities for every situation in the game. Because seriously, you could just play a guy who relies on having shark-repellent bat spray at the right time. Having that doesn't necessarily mean you aren't also carrying beholder-blinding spray and dragonslaying explosive either.

Now when you get into free abilities are effectively stuff that may not ever realistically happen in a campaign, the general stereotypical example of something like that is an ability that is only useful in a capture scenario, such as the monk's ability to fight unarmed. That advantage may seriously never come up ever. Things like that are effectively a flavor ability.

And at that point you're well past 1/8th of the time, and are probably into something more like 1/80th of the time.

By the same token, nothing should be always good. I'm actually fine with oozes and elementals being immune to sneak attacks and crits, but when undead (who classically have always been killed by crits to head or heart) and constructs (who are killed by jamming gears or smashing gems on their foreheads) are immune, you suddenly start trumping someone's main thing often enough to make them want a new character.

Well I can agree with the undead and construct thing for flavor reasons, I don't feel like there's anything innately wrong with trumping various abilities, so long as you hand someone stuff to compensate. In fact, I believe it's generally bad game design to create one trick pony classes in the first place. Characters should probably have 3 schticks minimum that they can use. At the very least people should be saying "Well if it can resist my mind powers, then I'll use illusions. If it can see through those, I'll buff my party."

Heck, the whole system needs another pass of consolidating things. Turning would be fine if we just let it affect all things as a mind-affecting ability that scares and kills people, and works very well on Undead (with mindless crap like vermin and constructs being immune).

I mean honestly I don't see the need. Turning is a very minor ability anyway. Clerics are still full spellcasters who can wear heavy armor and wield weapons... I really don't give a fuck if turning only applies to 1/8th of their encounters, cause they can totally do lots of other stuff. I mean fuck you have a huge spell list of shit and you automatically know every fucking spell on the list. If the best thing the player can think of every encounter is "I use turn undead" then he really shouldn't even be playing a cleric.

If anything, the cleric can do too much, not too little.

If turn undead doesn't work, he has like a dozen other things he can do.

[Crissa]

But that's just it, RC. The mage gets these situational abilities basically free, while everyone else is paying full price for them.

-Crissa

[RandomCasualty2]

But that's just it, RC. The mage gets these situational abilities basically free, while everyone else is paying full price for them.

That's largely a flaw between casters and noncasters, because noncasters quite frankly don't get enough abilities.

Now, yeah if you're talking about characters who deliberately are made with few options, then those options do need to be more useful. If you're running something with as few powers as 4E, where someone literally wants to use that one encounter power in every single encounter, then 1/8 times is totally unacceptable. Hell, even 1/3 times is pretty bullshit. But as far as a wizard goes, I honestly don't really care if neutralize poison or turn undead only helps for 1 encounter in 10. It really doesn't matter.

The main issue is that specialized stuff is better than nonspecialized. So you should benefit from having daze dragon rather than color spray if you're fighting a dragon.

[Kaelik]

But that's just it, RC. The mage gets these situational abilities basically free, while everyone else is paying full price for them.

-Crissa

But Ks argument isn't that the Barbarian should get energy resistance for a lower cost, maybe like, energy resist 30 to two elements for a feat, or as only part of a feat.

He's literally claiming that something that automatically wins one out of eight fights is something not even worth a feat, not even worth part of a feat, and not even worth a single class ability, it should just be free to everyone.

I don't fucking understand how he can look at the game and say:

"Undead are 1/8th of all encounters. Dragons are 1/8th of all encounters. Ect."

I have an ability that instantly causes all Dragons to explode when they see you. No save.

I have the same ability for every other type of enemy. I think that the Barbarian should get all of theses abilities for no cost whatsoever, and automatically win all fights without even trying.

Yeah, that's how it should be. But no, he shouldn't have to spend even a single character resource on the ability to win every single fight he will ever enter.

Literally, writing "Barbarian" on his Character sheet was a waste of time, because he's a Dragon exploder, undead exploder, ect. So he's just automatically level infinity.

[Crissa]

I don't think Kaelik is reading what K is writing.

Also recall that K wrote the Tomes. It is his solution that such things that win (or give screen time) less than a quarter of the time are not worth paying full price for.


-Crissa

[RandomCasualty2]

I don't think Kaelik is reading what K is writing.

Also recall that K wrote the Tomes. It is his solution that such things that win (or give screen time) less than a quarter of the time are not worth paying full price for.

K said this.

If you are using something 1/8 times, you shouldn't even have to pay for it. It honestly should come free when you bathe in a mystic pool or something. I mean, at the point where it comes up 1/8 times you will have to remind people that they have it. The campaign might even end before they get a chance to use it, so paying any kind of character resources for it is just dumb even if it's an auto-win.

Yes, he said it should be totally free. As in you have to pay nothing for it. At all.

[Crissa]

Yeah. As in, it should be fluff.

So? So are magic items. They're 'free'. So are wishes and stat books and whatnot.

-Crissa

[Kaelik]

I don't think Kaelik is reading what K is writing.

Yes, I am, I think you are reading through rose colored glasses.

He is not saying "cost less" he is saying "cost literally nothing." If things cost literally nothing then all players have them automatically. That's retarded.

The Tomes do a good job of giving out, for example, energy immunity, for a cost, in class features, in abilities, in feats.

That's good. Way to go.

Fire resist 5 is certainly not worth +1 LA, but you'll notice when making an LA +0 Aasimar, they didn't give it the following ability:

Fire resist 30, Electricity Resist 30, Cold Resist 30, Acid Resist 30. Undead Turning, Dragons explode on the sight of an Aasimar.

Because all those things are things that only come up 1/8th of the time or less, but things that come up 1/8th of the time or less still have to fucking cost something, or you'll just have 8 abilities that come up 1/8th the time, and you'll actually have spent zero resources to win every single fight.

EDIT: No, Magic Items aren't free, they take up one of your eight magic item slots.

That's the kind of stupid that you could just as easily say "Class abilities are free" or "Feats are free"

They have an opportunity cost and a limit to how much you can have, and are therefore, not fucking free.

If K wants to give Energy Resist on a Magic item, Good. Because that's a fucking cost. Energy Immunity for a Feat? Fine, because that's a freaking cost.

Energy Resist or Immunity as class ability? Fine, because that's a freaking cost.

Energy Resist for no resource cost at all so everyone in the universe has it for every single element all the time? Failtastic murder.

[Crissa]

But you might not have a magic item, either.

Don't we actually have a class (several really) that outright can take any new ability (spell) and have it in their book?

-Crissa

[Prak]

But you might not have a magic item, either.

Don't we actually have a class (several really) that outright can take any new ability (spell) and have it in their book?

-Crissa

yes, Wizard (who has to find an arcane version, but that's not hard) and Archivist.

[Kaelik]

But you might not have a magic item, either.

Don't we actually have a class (several really) that outright can take any new ability (spell) and have it in their book?

-Crissa

You might not have a character. You might not have any stat above 3. You might not have a second level.

You will in fact have all those things. And you will in fact have eight magic items at minimum, and therefore be using eight of them, and Magic items are not free, just like feats are not free, just like class abilities are not free.

WTF does free mean you lying bitch?

Do you honestly think Ks argument is that "it's not fair that people can't have a magic item that grants Energy resistance."

Or do you think it's more likely that he wants for example, anyone who can claim in their backstory "I bathed in the pool of Fuck That Lying Bitch Crissa" to have Energy Resistance that doesn't cost a magic item slot, takes away from no class abilities, and doesn't cost any feats?

And every Mage with Diviniation and Teleport can say "I've divined the location of the rainbow pools, and teleported the party to each one, and then we fucking all bathed in all of them and have energy resistance 30 against all elements at level 9."

[Prak]

there needs to be a specific list of things that are free, and it needs to be carefully made so they're actually minor things

Dr 5/magic or cold iron is fine. Especially around level 3 or so.
Fire resist 5 is fine. Fire Resist 30 at level 5 isn't.

[K]

I don't think Kaelik is reading what K is writing.

Also recall that K wrote the Tomes. It is his solution that such things that win (or give screen time) less than a quarter of the time are not worth paying full price for.

K said this.

If you are using something 1/8 times, you shouldn't even have to pay for it. It honestly should come free when you bathe in a mystic pool or something. I mean, at the point where it comes up 1/8 times you will have to remind people that they have it. The campaign might even end before they get a chance to use it, so paying any kind of character resources for it is just dumb even if it's an auto-win.

Yes, he said it should be totally free. As in you have to pay nothing for it. At all.

But, I didn't say "and so everyone should have everything I consider free." That's a leap of logic I was not making.

Basically, it's obvious that if you have enough situational abilities they synergize until you have a real ability. Stack enough immunities together and you get blanket immunity to stuff.

My final evaluation on these abilities is that they are flavor abilities that you should hand out at whatever rate you hand out flavor abilities. Considering that players should have real abilities and you want to avoid option paralysis, they are conservatively placed.... I mean, too much flavor and you get nonsense (just ask my 2e Elven Swashbuckler Fighter/Mage/Thief who specialized in Necromancy).

But, being flavor abilities means that you don't have to track them as carefully as real abilities. You honestly can just give out Water Breathing to the party rogue after he has sex with a Nixie and you don't have to give anyone else in the party some offsetting benefit or start buffing up monsters. I mean, a Wand of Fireballs kinda sucks but it changes your character in a real way that a Ring of Fire Resistance doesn't.

I'm a great fan of flavor abilities. I mean, I get a little upset that 3e no longer tells you things about monster's lives in the MM description like lifespan or diet or preferred organization.

-------------------------------
And for the record, I have never cast Knock and I use Blink for 50% immunity to everything and only rarely for walking through a wall. When I want doors open I blast them open.

And clerics are, and always will be, heal-bots. Actual player anger will be directed at players of clerics who are not healbots, and so this is why I think they should have actual abilities.

[Kaelik]

And for the record, I have never cast Knock and I use Blink for 50% immunity to everything and only rarely for walking through a wall. When I want doors open I blast them open.

And clerics are, and always will be, heal-bots. Actual player anger will be directed at players of clerics who are not healbots, and so this is why I think they should have actual abilities.

Yeah, Knock = 0, Blink = defense, (though, I do love me some Earthglide/Blinking through walls).

But 1) Maybe you play with too many people stuck thinking in 2e terms? Because in my experience "I bought a wand of Lesser Vigor" is literally all it takes to make people never ask for you to prepare a healing spell.

2) How exactly do you plan on preventing people from all bathing in the magic fountain of Fire Resist? Or for divining other such locations?

But yeah, you become insanely less crazy when you definition of flavor ability is "something I make up during play, and carefully ration" instead of "Otyugh Hole" or "Should just get free."

[K]

And for the record, I have never cast Knock and I use Blink for 50% immunity to everything and only rarely for walking through a wall. When I want doors open I blast them open.

And clerics are, and always will be, heal-bots. Actual player anger will be directed at players of clerics who are not healbots, and so this is why I think they should have actual abilities.

Yeah, Knock = 0, Blink = defense, (though, I do love me some Earthglide/Blinking through walls).

But 1) Maybe you play with too many people stuck thinking in 2e terms? Because in my experience "I bought a wand of Lesser Vigor" is literally all it takes to make people never ask for you to prepare a healing spell.

2) How exactly do you plan on preventing people from all bathing in the magic fountain of Fire Resist? Or for divining other such locations?

But yeah, you become insanely less crazy when you definition of flavor ability is "something I make up during play, and carefully ration" instead of "Otyugh Hole" or "Should just get free."

The nice thing about flavor abilities is that you can add or deny them for flavor reasons.

So maybe the Ice Queen only wants to anoint the Paladin, and that means the that the Paladin is the only person who can't bath in the Lake of Dissolved Flame.

Eyeballing only really works when the things you are eyeballing don't have real mechanical power. This means you can really run a gladiator adventure and have the fighting guys learn some flavor fighting techniques, and then a few adventures later have the wizards find some dark magic. The power differential is zero, so it doesn't really matter if the players spend a few levels without flavor stuff.

[Thymos]

I think this is more of an argument for limited types of damage more than an argument against resistances.

Especially with mechanics that seem to be beaten about lately like the WoF roll.

Also this talk about resistances is actually overlooking an important thing; overlap with other characters.

If everyone in the party who goes into melee grabs fire resistance this gives the Fire Mage a lot more leeway in where he throws his fireball. I don't think this is a bad thing, but I feel like I should point out that fire resistance is nice in this instance, especially if the characters can somehow obtain fire absorption.

Now absolutes like immunities probably have very little place in the game. Oozes and elementals are good examples of monsters that should be immune to critical hits, but this also means that almost nothing else should be immune; it's ok for fire elementals to be immune to fire, but not fire giants.

So basically if we limit it to 4-6 types of damage with some being more common than others (physical being most common probably) then resistances can be worth something.

[RandomCasualty2]

My final evaluation on these abilities is that they are flavor abilities that you should hand out at whatever rate you hand out flavor abilities. Considering that players should have real abilities and you want to avoid option paralysis, they are conservatively placed.... I mean, too much flavor and you get nonsense (just ask my 2e Elven Swashbuckler Fighter/Mage/Thief who specialized in Necromancy).

I think of flavor abilities as crap like:

-Knows how to play the flute
-Can forge swords.
-Grew up in the temple district of waterdeep and is familiar with it.

That's crap that you can literally toss out in abundance and you wouldn't even care. Even if you have some dude that can play every musical instrument out there, it seriously won't change your game at all.

I don't feel like resistances belong in that category. They're notable power changes, which may or may not matter. If your quest is to fight Kangraxx the pyromancer and his army of fire elementals, then fire resistance is gonna be damn good. Getting a bonus to turn undead may be super helpful if you're running a vampire slayers campaign, it could also be super useless too.

They really belong in their own sorta category with an ability value determined by how useful they are in that world. Probably with some kind of three value system. Rarely used, average and very useful. So like an endless waterskin would be very useful on Athas, but only average on most worlds. On modern day earth, it'd probably end up being rarely used, since you can just go to a water fountain and drink something for free.

[Crissa]

Yeah, but Res:5 is horrible any time, but Res:30 isn't, even if you don't use it often.

But if there are freebie slots, then you can easily give the team Res:30 when they need it, instead of making them pay for it.

-Crissa

[Kaelik]

Yeah, but Res:5 is horrible any time, but Res:30 isn't, even if you don't use it often.

Technically, pretty sweet at level 1. For goddam Fiendish X.

/cries the poor Dragonfire Adept.

[hogarth]

I don't feel like resistances belong in that category. They're notable power changes, which may or may not matter. If your quest is to fight Kangraxx the pyromancer and his army of fire elementals, then fire resistance is gonna be damn good. Getting a bonus to turn undead may be super helpful if you're running a vampire slayers campaign, it could also be super useless too.

They really belong in their own sorta category with an ability value determined by how useful they are in that world. Probably with some kind of three value system. Rarely used, average and very useful. So like an endless waterskin would be very useful on Athas, but only average on most worlds. On modern day earth, it'd probably end up being rarely used, since you can just go to a water fountain and drink something for free.

My rule of thumb would probably be: If an ability is so negligible in effect and/or infrequently used that you completely forget you have it, then it's a bad ability, i.e. it's not even good "flavour". For instance, I have a character who has a +2 bonus to saves vs. poison, but I'm suspect both I and the DM will forget that the next time the character gets poisoned (which may not be for months [years?] of real time). Now if it was immunity to poison, that's slightly more memorable. But keeping track of a +2 bonus in some tiny proportion of cases? Screw that. Similarly, 4E is chock full of those piddly +1 conditional bonuses that I keep forgetting about.

[violence in the media]

My rule of thumb would probably be: If an ability is so negligible in effect and/or infrequently used that you completely forget you have it, then it's a bad ability, i.e. it's not even good "flavour". For instance, I have a character who has a +2 bonus to saves vs. poison, but I'm suspect both I and the DM will forget that the next time the character gets poisoned (which may not be for months [years?] of real time). Now if it was immunity to poison, that's slightly more memorable. But keeping track of a +2 bonus in some tiny proportion of cases? Screw that. Similarly, 4E is chock full of those piddly +1 conditional bonuses that I keep forgetting about.

You know, along these lines, I've always wondered why bonuses are largely accumulative? Why doesn't the game instead provide more large bonuses that simply override all smaller bonuses to [thing] or [action]?

I'm not talking about the rules against bonus stacking, I'm talking about a situation where the +10 bonus from your Codpiece of Wooing just flat replaces the +4 bonus from Impending Dangerous Quest, which replaces the +3 bonus from your Shiny Pants, which replaces the +1 bonus from Recent Bathing? You have a +10 to Wooing, as opposed to a +18 if you get total everything up. Like, the Codpiece is so impressive that the fact that you're clean, well-dressed, and heading off to the Golan Heights tomorrow has no bearing on your attempts to Woo whoever.

This way, characters might not have to worry about hunting down every +1 bonus they can find, as level-appropriate stuff will automatically grant level-appropriate bonuses. However, if, after your successful Wooing, the person's spouse (or parent) busts into the room and your Codpiece is on the chair over there, you can still fall back on your +4 Impending Dangerous Quest bonus as you negotiate not having to marry him/her/both of them.

Basically, you're giving people explicit permission to forget about any bonus they have to something that is smaller than the largest one, regardless of where it comes from.

[TavishArtair]

You know, along these lines, I've always wondered why bonuses are largely accumulative? Why doesn't the game instead provide more large bonuses that simply override all smaller bonuses to [thing] or [action]?

...

This way, characters might not have to worry about hunting down every +1 bonus they can find, as level-appropriate stuff will automatically grant level-appropriate bonuses. However, if, after your successful Wooing, the person's spouse (or parent) busts into the room and your Codpiece is on the chair over there, you can still fall back on your +4 Impending Dangerous Quest bonus as you negotiate not having to marry him/her/both of them.

Basically, you're giving people explicit permission to forget about any bonus they have to something that is smaller than the largest one, regardless of where it comes from.

Weapons of the Gods, a wuxia-oriented game, actually has this as an explicit rule. Highest bonus, highest penalty. There's one named bonus in the game which itself can have a bonus towards it, or penalty, but even with that, it's only a total of four different modifiers. The named modifier, which can have a bonus and penalty to it, and an additional bonus or penalty, depending on whether the result of the named modifier is positive or negative. There's lots of subtle modifiers to how things work, but with the fact that you're only doing a maximum of four operations if you're so unlucky as to have all four modifiers at once, the ways you can rearrange things on top of that are much easier to figure out, as compared to, say, calculating your Armor Class in a D&D game with lots of buffs flying around.