Intentionally giving people metagame abilities.

[RiotGearEpsilon]

The enemy cleric is an NPC.

[hogarth]

The enemy cleric is an NPC.

So NPC fighters use one set of justifications for their Foil ability and PC fighters use another? That seems unnecessarily complicated.

[Chamomile]

Personally, when my Fighter levels up and learns Foil Action, I want it to be because he's gotten really good at fighting, not because he's gotten luckier.

[Archmage]

The enemy cleric is an NPC.

So NPC fighters use one set of justifications for their Foil ability and PC fighters use another? That seems unnecessarily complicated.

It's flavor text. Who cares?

Furthermore, you bother giving NPCs levels in Tome Fighter?

[Kaelik]

The enemy cleric is an NPC.

Maybe I'm speaking from the point of view of the fucking God he worships.

It doesn't matter, Fighter abilities do not get to change what the other Cleric thinks unless they have the Mind Affecting tag.

[Omegonthesane]

The enemy cleric is an NPC.

Maybe I'm speaking from the point of view of the fucking God he worships.

How is a cleric's god able to do a damn thing about metagame abilities possessed by the player as opposed to the player character?

It doesn't matter, Fighter abilities do not get to change what the other Cleric thinks unless they have the Mind Affecting tag.

Why do you care so much about the flavour text accompanying "Fighter spends an action, Cleric's spell fails"? Personally I'd prefer that line of fluff text to all be Fighter skill rather than Fighter luck, but making it a metagame ability in no way prevents a given player using the ability from saying when he uses it it's always triggered by something Fighter does in-character.

[fbmf]

?

Furthermore, you bother giving NPCs levels in Tome Fighter?

How else would they compete with Tome characters?

Game On,
fbmf

[icyshadowlord]

No offense to Prak's idea here, but if the Fighter's Foil Action works like the way he had suggested on the previous page, that Fighter would also be something of a Reality Warper...it might be less derp if the DM does it, but a Player Character always causing sudden calamities to foes just by being a Fighter seems a little out there for me.

[A Man In Black]

No offense to Prak's idea here, but if the Fighter's Foil Action works like the way he had suggested on the previous page, that Fighter would also be something of a Reality Warper...it might be less derp if the DM does it, but a Player Character always causing sudden calamities to foes just by being a Fighter seems a little out there for me.

It's a metagame ability. The player has control over it, but the character is merely benefiting from a lucky random event beyond his control.

[Prak]

Yeah, it's supposed to represent luck. It's basically the same exact idea as hero points in other games, but only the fighter has it. I was just thinking about it in the context of a Modern setting game and how you foil a gunman ("his gun jams", "the wind shifts", "a bird suddenly flies in the path of the bullet")

[Psychic Robot]

Basically, instead of the player having to say how his character foiled the opponent's action, he takes a very small control of the narrative and narrates why the action failed. So it's not always "I throw sand in my opponent's face" or "I punch him in the nose just as he starts casting (and yet deal no damage)" but, rather, can be "The sun was in my opponent's eyes," or "the enemy cleric's faith wavers just a moment, wasting his spell at a critical point."

this is not how D&D works. please try again.

[fectin]

Hey, guess what? Tome Fighter isn't how D&D works either!

Once you're in houserule territory, "this is not how D&D works" is a non-sequiter.

[Josh_Kablack]

I fail to see how giving a class "reality warper" abilities is somehow new within the context of D&D

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/wish.htm

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/power ... vision.htm

[Archmage]

How else would they compete with Tome characters?

I was pretty sure that the goal of the Tome character power-ups was to make everyone competitive versus what's in the Monster Manual according to the system of "this is an appropriate challenge for you at level X." Not broadly raise the overall power of characters to the point where you have to start throwing homebrew monsters and NPCs at the players because the stock MM critters don't provide interesting obstacles.

[Neurosis]

Archmage that...doesn't make sense.

Assuming Tome is 100% successful, it should put PCs EVEN with Monster Manual critters. But considering that PCs were EVEN with NPCs to begin with, having Tome PCs and non-Tome NPCs puts Tome PCs WAY AHEAD of NPCs, and non-Tome NPCs are no longer an appropriate challenge for you at Level X.

Now, I think I can agree that homebrewing more powerful monsters to provide a challenge to Tome characters is retarded. But giving NPCs levels in Tome classes definitely makes sense, rather than Fighter and less good Fighter. We already had less good Fighter in the form of the Warrior NPC only class, and it sucked.

[Swordslinger]

Archmage that...doesn't make sense.

Assuming Tome is 100% successful, it should put PCs EVEN with Monster Manual critters. But considering that PCs were EVEN with NPCs to begin with, having Tome PCs and non-Tome NPCs puts Tome PCs WAY AHEAD of NPCs, and non-Tome NPCs are no longer an appropriate challenge for you at Level X.

Now, I think I can agree that homebrewing more powerful monsters to provide a challenge to Tome characters is retarded. But giving NPCs levels in Tome classes definitely makes sense, rather than Fighter and less good Fighter. We already had less good Fighter in the form of the Warrior NPC only class, and it sucked.

The thing you have to understand is that the Tomes weren't about balance, they were just about creating a bunch of EZ mode classes that would totally rip through monsters of equal CR.

[Chamomile]

A monster of equal CR is supposed to drain about 20% of the resources of a party of 4. Which means if you have 4 Tome PCs, it should take about five monsters of equal CR to stand even chances of killing them from full strength.

[Archmage]

The thing you have to understand is that the Tomes weren't about balance, they were just about creating a bunch of EZ mode classes that would totally rip through monsters of equal CR.

Uh, have you even read the DMG? Equal CR encounters are pretty much supposed to be speedbumps. The party is intended to have basically no chance of losing.

Some of the classes in 3.x lived up to that standard. Others didn't. Tome material attempted to fix that by pulling the weaker classes up to that level. How is that NOT about "balance?"

If you don't accept the premise IN THE DMG that parties are supposed to steamroll equal CR encounters, I guess your assertion might make some sense, but as it is, you just sound ignorant.

[Swordslinger]

Uh, have you even read the DMG? Equal CR encounters are pretty much supposed to be speedbumps. The party is intended to have basically no chance of losing.

A monster of your CR in a 1v1 fight is supposed to be an even battle. Tome characters pretty much destroy a fight that's supposed to be even. Take 4 tome chars against 4 monsters of equal CR to their level, they will destroy that encounter, even though its supposed to be a deadly encounter.

[Archmage]

Uh, have you even read the DMG? Equal CR encounters are pretty much supposed to be speedbumps. The party is intended to have basically no chance of losing.

A monster of your CR in a 1v1 fight is supposed to be an even battle. Tome characters pretty much destroy a fight that's supposed to be even. Take 4 tome chars against 4 monsters of equal CR to their level, they will destroy that encounter, even though its supposed to be a deadly encounter.

Will they? You assert this, but you talk like someone who's never read the Tomes nor played a game with Tome material.

Also, 4 monsters with CR equal to average party level only works out to ECL+2, and roughly 25% of your encounters per day are supposed to be in that range. They're by definition not really all that deadly unless you want a pile of dead adventurers.

The CR system doesn't work perfectly anyway, but the fact is that the game can't work if some classes have almost no chance of winning an "even" encounter and others are significantly better than the projected 50-50 odds. A character built by anyone with respectable system mastery is going to have better than even odds just because that's the difference between a strong character and a weak one in 3.x. Tome just makes it require less system mastery to create characters on par with what a good optimizer would build.

Edit: Stupid phone, screwing up my post.

[hogarth]

Furthermore, you bother giving NPCs levels in Tome Fighter?

Because this isn't 4E where one set of characters have "PC" tattooed on their foreheads at birth whereas the rest of the world has "NPC" tattoos, I presume. But if by "you", you mean me personally, I don't use Tome stuff.

[Swordslinger]

Also, 4 monsters with CR equal to average party level only works out to ECL+2, and roughly 25% of your encounters per day are supposed to be in that range. They're by definition not really all that deadly unless you want a pile of dead adventurers.

Actually I don't think you understand the way encounter levels work.

4 monsters of a given CR is an EL of CR+4. Everytime you double the number of monsters, the EL increases by +2. So 2 CR 3 monsters, becomes an EL 5, and 4 CR 3 monsters becomes EL 7. And EL+4 is an even match. That only makes sense because in 1v1, a monster of your CR is supposed to be an even fight. So if you have 4 PCs, 4 monsters of their level should also be an even fight.

The CR system doesn't work perfectly anyway, but the fact is that the game can't work if some classes have almost no chance of winning an "even" encounter and others are significantly better than the projected 50-50 odds. A character built by anyone with respectable system mastery is going to have better than even odds just because that's the difference between a strong character and a weak one in 3.x. Tome just makes it require less system mastery to create characters on par with what a good optimizer would build.

While reducing the impact of system mastery is a good thing, the Tomes did it the wrong way.

The Tomes hand out way too much power. They're not consistent to any balance paradigm, they're just broken the other way where most classes are overpowered instead of underpowered. That doesn't mean that the tomes are any less imbalanced than core, it just means that the Tomes make the game a cakewalk for the PCs.

They're really just D&D EZ mode.

[Archmage]

Doubling monster number increases encounter CR by one.

Core is already way busted. You can't reduce the power of the most powerful classes without rewriting basically every spell ever written. Tome targets the biggest offenders, wish and planar binding, then tries to make classed like Fighter actually playable instead of shitty trap options.

If your group isn't full of optimizers, you aren't going to see a need for Tome classes because people aren't playing the wizards, clerics, and druids to anywhere near their potential. And if your DM does stuff like have balors melee instead of using spells and teleporting, you're not going to understand why the other classes need a boost.

Tome is incomplete and far from perfect, but your classification of it as ez mode is hilarious considering that you have to be a pretty advanced player to understand why the fixes are helpful or even needed.

[Kaelik]

Doubling monster number increases encounter CR by one.

You are an idiot, and you should learn to read before you start talking.

"In general, if a creature's Challenge Rating is two lower than a given Encounter Level, then two creatures of that kind equal an encounter of that Encounter Level. Thus, a pair of frost giants (CR 9 each) is an EL 11 encounter. The progression holds of doubling the number of creatures for each drop of two places in their individual CR, so that four CR 7 creatures (say, four Hill Giants) are and EL 11 Encounter, as are eight CR 5 creatures (such as shadow mastiffs)."

This is also born out on the table. What you said also makes no sense, because as we have gone over several thousand times, an NPC level 11 Wizard is a CR 11 creature, so the point where you tell me that 4 level 11 Wizards is only an EL 13 encounter, and therefore four level 11 Wizards should easily defeat four level 11 Wizards with basically no chance of failure, you are smoking fucking crack.


As for whether Tome is actually balanced against monsters... no. Or at least, not unless you optimize the shit of of regular monsters, giving them Tome feats, and playing them to absolute maximum of their ability. It started as balancing them up to Wizards, but blew itself all of of proportion in Races of War, even though it had already been on that track before. As we established the last time the CR debates occured, pretty much every Races of War class (Knight excepted, but we know why that is) scores between 90-100% on SGTs. That is not balanced against the MM at all.

[Dogbert]

Currenly I'm love with such concepts as "metagame abilities" and "metagame currency." Actually, they help my immersion, but then I go for -story- immersion, not necessarily -character- immersion.

Love the paradigm, not going back.