PHB-2 ... early list of contents nearly 2 weeks early.

[MrWaeseL]

If you are flat footed, you can't attack unless you are flat footed.

Huh?

[Username17]

Teach me to write late at night.
Should say "unless you have combat reflexes.

Sorry for the confusion.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1146549951[/unixtime]]You know, that whole "no flanking bonus" thing just doesn't make any sense. The idea behind flanking is that being surrounded makes the defender have to split his attention to evade blows. How exactly can you just choose *not* to do that? It might work the other way(people don't get flanking bonuses with the Knight), but the Knight not getting the bonus is just implausible.

Yeah, I think it's pretty stupid too.

Classes with combat ethics so to speak just don't make much sense to me in the first place. I mean, basically how they did it, the knight can flank someone and help the rogue, but he doesn't benefit by it himself. And that's just pretty much contrary to the flavor of the class.

Just beacuse he's not the one taking the cheap shot, if he's letting his companions do it, that should be a violation of his code nonetheless. Otherwise it's pretty much the same thing as the paladin turning his back while the rest of the party tortures a prisoner.

[User3]

Here is the excerpt on the WoTC site.

Check out the feats. It looks like Rogues and Fighters just got a power-up.

While Rogues were perfectly awesome as is, it looks like someone might actually play a Fighter in the future.

On the sad side, it looks like the Barbarian has finally morphed into the Diablo Barbarian. Sigh. I know it was a good game, but I'd like to play DnD if you don't mind.

[Username17]

Check out the feats. It looks like Rogues and Fighters just got a power-up.

That's not what it looks like from here. While it looks like Rogues got some things to spend feats on later in life (Acrobatic Strike, for a melee character, deadeye shot for an archer), from what I can tell, Fighters merely pick up the ability to throw good money after bad.

Now they can throw an extra feat away on Spring Attack at 12th level to make it fall slightly less far behind. They can throw another feat away at 18th level to delay their inevitable fall some more. These feats don't evenlet you catch up - you stop gaining power (you throw your feats in a hole and never see them again) and in exchange your expensive combat style goes obsolete more slowly.

They provide much the same for Weapon Focus, now you can throw another feat down the hole and never see it again in exchange for being able to roll your wasted Weapon Specialization over into whatever weapon you found in the dragon's cave. But you still aren't pulling ahead, you just aren't losing any more.

Partly, the list seems poorly editted. Melee Evasion requires Combat Expertise, but it says that it gives you bonuses if you fight defensively. FTW?!

-Username17

[power_word_wedgie]

Actually, as a person who enjoys playing fighters from time to time, there are some feats that I really do like. Yeah, I'll have to take Endurance (yeah ...), but that's not a problem if I can get Steadfast Determination. Also, taking Shield Specialization and Shield Ward is excellent as well. Thus, as a 2nd level fighter, when Bob the Cleric was casting Hold Person or such on me, I was pretty much dead - even with the extra save attempts because my Wisdon score sucked. Now, with Constitution as my highest ability, I'll have a fighting chance against illusions and hold/domination spells. With the shield combos, I can at least try to get my touch AC to be decent with a little work.

edit: However, I do agree that this doesn't mean that the fighter is on par with the Cleric, Druid, or Wizard in power at high levels. However, this does get them at least a little closer than they current are.

[User3]

Well, I’m looking at the feats like Brutal Strike that dazes foolios with a blunt weapon, is available at 6th level, and only requires Power Attack. That’s fvcking DAZING, the status condition that affects every monster in the game.

Then, take a look at Intimidating Strike. That’s a shaken effect with an attack, which means it stacks with a crap-ton of other effects that make dudes shaken for actual fear effects .Thats pretty neat.

I don’t even know what Flay does, but if it works on any enemy not wearing the object form of armor, its probably some exciting penalties on your enemy. On the same note, Lunging Strike gives reach with an attack. If that can be combined with other stuff, you could get some crazy hook-ups with that.

Then you’ve got feats that boost numbers of attacks like Robilar’s Gambit, which causes enemies who are attacking to provoke attacks of opportunity in exchange for giving them bonuses to hit and damage. With a decent Combat Reflexes build and maybe Elusive Target and/or Melee Evasion, I can see some nifty options opening up.

Armor specialization is also some stackable and untyped DR for one feat. When is that ever a bad trade?

Of course, the actual write-ups of the feats may include stupid condition dependant conditions that make this all moot, or even just give things less cool than the little write-ups on the chart.

------------------------

I like how Arcane Accompaniment requires Bardic Music of Bardic Music.

[Hey_I_Can_Chan]

While I agree the feat list looks kinda dumb, I am more struck by (what a surprise) more polymorph dumbness, such as this from the Polymorph preview…

In all other ways, the target's normal game statistics are effectively replaced by those of the new form. The target loses all of the special abilities it has in its normal form, including its class features (even if the new form would normally be able to use these class features).

Now, I know there have been some horrific, game-twisting, gutwrenching modifications to polymorph since it appeared in 3.0, but, seriously, spellcasting is a class feature, right? Doesn't that mean, like, someone who uses polymorph as presentend in PHB2 just got stuck that way if it's used on himself?

Worse (and I use the word relatively), doesn't this mean the polymorphed fighter loses his bonus feats, the polymorphed barbarian loses his rage, the polymorphed rogue loses sneak attack, et-fvcking-cetera?

Dammit, who are these people?

[Oberoni]

Any gear worn or carried by the target melds into the new form and becomes nonfunctional.

Doesn't that include pants? Shirts? Underwear?

For this reason (among others), I propose we call this new and exciting subschool of magic "Boobymorph."

[RandomCasualty]

actually I don't think the polymorph change is all that bad, it looks like they're going with the paradigm of making poly like a summon spell, only the caster tags out when he casts it. It's a much better paradigm than their current one.

[dbb]

Holy jumping Jesus on a pogo stick, those new Polymorph rules are batshit nuts.

Unless stated otherwise in the spell's description, the target of a polymorph spell takes on all the statistics and special abilities of an average member of the new form in place of its own except as follows:

In all other ways, the target's normal game statistics are effectively replaced by those of the new form.

What, is Ed Stark's character falling behind again? It's like someone decided that druids having to wait until 17th level to get shapechange was clearly making them too sucky to live. Insanity!

--d.

[Username17]

The PHB2 Polymorph version is indeed setup like a Pokemon or FF Summon. The Caster vanishes and a creature appears. That's almost a better paradigm than the current one. The only problem really is that you don't swap out your entire character. You still retain all the spells you've cast on yourself ahead of time. Andyou retain all your magic items that you had the presence of mind to dump on the floor before you transform.

So some abilities persist, other abilities don't. It's like the old Druid problem where Gray Elves keep their Int Bonus and Half-Orcs don't keep their Strength bonus. Only bigger because it applies to class features as well. If you can figure out how to turn your class features into effects with a duration that happens to be long or into bonuses which are item dependent - you win D&D. Otherwise the spell is nearly balanced.

-Username17

[Desdan_Mervolam]

1146616282[/unixtime]]
Dammit, who are these people?

I'd venture to guess that they are people who don't really like the paradigm where at a certain level, Fighters have to begin every fight by polymorphing into something nasty and Wizards can outfight Fighters by choosing the right poly.

Others would say this is treating the symptoms and not the illness, but there ya go.

-Des

[RandomCasualty]

1146619140[/unixtime]]The PHB2 Polymorph version is indeed setup like a Pokemon or FF Summon. The Caster vanishes and a creature appears. That's almost a better paradigm than the current one. The only problem really is that you don't swap out your entire character. You still retain all the spells you've cast on yourself ahead of time. Andyou retain all your magic items that you had the presence of mind to dump on the floor before you transform.

Well, the spell does have a duration of 1 round/level now, which means that dumping items is probably a non issue. If people want to spend the first few roudns of a combat dropping and picking stuff up, I'd be ok with that.

Long term buffs are still going to be a problem, but that's a problem with long term buffing, and not polymorphing. I mean long term buffs are problematic for people who don't polymorph anyway.

[MrWaeseL]

I'm personally really fucking interested to see what the hell master manipulator does. How much better does Diplomacy need to be?

[User3]

1146654668[/unixtime]]I'm personally really fvcking interested to see what the hell master manipulator does. How much better does Diplomacy need to be?

There's been a number of recent WotC mechanics that have "boosted" Diplomacy capabilities by minimizing its combat application penalty (i.e. the 1-round quicky diplomacy).

So that might be part of what M.M. does.

Book

[Username17]

Of course, it is equally likely that the feat will be a stealth nerf on ths kill by having the feat "allow" your character to do what the skill already does - thereby implicitly limiting the basic use of the skill.

There's ample precedent for that in feats lke Hear the Unseen (use lisen checks to guess the location of invisible enemies) or Investigator (use Search to find clues).

So I'd give it a 50/50 shot of being a feat that ups the power of Diplomacy and being a feat whose purpose is to add ammunition to aguments reducing the effectiveness of Diplomacy. Same for Wanderer's Diplomacy.

-Username17

[The_Matthew]

Actually, according to this:

For the purpose of adjudicating effects that apply to polymorph spells, any spell whose effect is based on either alter self or polymorph should be considered to have the polymorph subschool. However, note that the spells' existing rules text takes priority over that of the subschool. Alter self, for instance, does not change the target's ability scores (unlike normal for spells of the polymorph subschool)

There is basically no change in current polymorph spells. Alter Self explicitly states you keep your class levels, your supernatural and spell-like abilites that don't require body parts you no longer have, your extraordinary attacks and abilities from class levels, and your spell-casting. So we are simply left still wondering if the fighter gets to keep his bonus feats.

[Username17]

Indeed, the giant errata that came out a few weeks back that took absolutely every effect in the game out of Polymorph now makes a lot of sense. They saw that someone in the de team had gone all crazy with a new polymorph setup and then they minimized the damage by making absolutely nothing contingent on polymorph anywhere.

-Username17

[User3]

I've spent the last three years advocating complete character replacement as a fix for Polymorph, and now it seems they are going to do that. Wizards are still better fighters than fighters since they now can pick up the BAB, saves, and feats of powerful "fighter" monsters, but whatever.

The thing that ticks me off is that they still want druids to be more awesome than you. Really. Skip is even doing another look
at Polymorph to reiterate how more awesome druids are going to be. Druid use Alternate Form which is just like old Polymorph where your druid spent his days in Ape form(or something better, if he spent feats) and he had high mental stats and high monster stats and he cast Flamestrike and used monkey-fu.

Whatever. Now, we get the thing where spellcasters have taken a hit. We still have the problem of "if we cast all our buffs now, we can invade this castle really easily", but we have lost the spellcaster problem of "yeh, I just spend my adventuring days in Troglodyte form because +6 base natty armor is really awesome for a 2nd level spell". Since the buff problem has been in DnD since the red box, I'm not even tripping about that.

We've also lost the "and now I turn into a troll and Wraithstrike your socks off."

I'm pretty sure that using their legalesey rules paradigm they want you to your lose all your class features even in a Alter Self. This means that fighters are not going to be polymorphed...ever.

Also, remember that you become a monster as statted up in the MM; this means that you get monster equipment, which is either awesome(night hag) or suck (orc's nonmagical weapons). It at least means that you get pants(when possible).

Did anyone notice that the 9th level Dragonshape spell they have is almost in all ways in all ways worse than Shapechange?

[RandomCasualty]

1146680703[/unixtime]]Indeed, the giant errata that came out a few weeks back that took absolutely every effect in the game out of Polymorph now makes a lot of sense. They saw that someone in the de team had gone all crazy with a new polymorph setup and then they minimized the damage by making absolutely nothing contingent on polymorph anywhere.

Honestly though, that errata pissed me off. I mean they're finally fixing polymorph to some degree after all this time and they just had to take their favorite nature boy out of the blast radius of the nerfage.

Gee there's a fuckin' surprise.

The new poly mechanics may not be perfect, but they're way better than what we've got now. Simply going to monomorph spells with 1 round/level durations is damn awesome. No longer do we have to worry about people dumpster diving for new monsters everytime a new MM comes out.

Turning them into a shared life summon style spell is another great idea. I mean that paradigm is actually remotely balanceable.

I'd really prefer they used thier new books to make big changes to broken spells/mechanics like this instead of producing new material. I mean seriously, we've got enough material by now to do all sorts of shit, we really don't need any more new classes and feats, unless there's some purpose to them. It's time to make the material we already have actually work. This may well be a polymorph mechanic that I can actually play with out of the box, and that to me is something useful and appealing.

This polymorph change is the most exciting thing they've done in a very long time. I wish they'd just produce a big book of problematic spell variants. Fix planar binding, fix gate, fix teleport/scry, fix buffs. That's something I would actually buy in a heartbeat. Anything that makes it so I have to write fewer house rules and can just say "We're using the variants from Book X", that'd be so awesome. That's a game supplement I can actually use as opposed to the more-crappy-abilities'n'PrCs-that-were-too-sucky-to-make-the-last-ten-books series. I've already got enough crazy broken material. I'd like to see some of it fixed instead of piling more crap on me.

[User3]

1146686304[/unixtime]]Since the buff problem has been in DnD since the red box, I'm not even tripping about that.

Really? Maybe I'm mis-remembering, but I thought clerics had almost no good buff spells before Third Edition. AD&D Druids had Barkskin but not much else. Wizards definitely had a few nice spells like Invisibility, but buffing definitely did not have the promininent role that it has today.

[Crissa]

...Yeah, but where's the spell that makes you look like an orc so you can wander around orc-town for a bit?

-Crissa

[dbb]

They had some good buff spells in Second Edition, but much fewer. There was no Magic Weapon or Greater Magic Weapon, no Divine Power or Divine Favor, and Magic Vestment sucked (didn't work on armor or shields at all, just normal clothes -- though dual-class cleric/wizards loved it).

First edition Clerics had Bless, Chant (which was like Bless but prevented you from doing pretty much anything else for the duration), and Prayer. That was about it for cleric buffs, at least until you brought Unearthed Arcana in the equation.

Buffing in 1st Edition amounted to "we cast Prayer, then bust down the door". Sometimes the fighters would get Enlarge or Strength (which were wizard spells exclusively, and generally not as good as they are now). Once in a blue moon you'd blow a Haste if it was a battle you absolutely had to win, or you'd use it more often if you were in a very short campaign, or if the DM ignored aging effects. Ironically, illusionists had the two best buffs in AD&D, Improved Invisibility and Dispel Exhaustion (which gave the effects of Haste once per 10 rounds, but didn't cost any aging) -- so if you had an illusionist you might do a little more. The rules for illusions were so vague and contradictory that most people didn't bother.

So while it's true that buffing has been with us since the start, the "I buff up and triple or quadruple my power" style of buffing is kind of an innovation.

--d.

[Neeek]

1146705932[/unixtime]] Sometimes the fighters would get Enlarge or Strength (which were wizard spells exclusively, and generally not as good as they are now).

Um...While Strength sort of sucked, Enlarge was much better than it is now. It gave you strength based on caster level, and back them a 22 strength was insanely good.