The Gaming Den

I understand that blindsight beats the concealment but why does true seeing? From the srd on true seeing: "It does not negate concealment, including that caused by fog and the like." The ability is just called total concealment.
And for being incorperal it says: "Nonvisual senses, such as scent and blindsight, are either ineffective or only partly effective with regard to incorporeal creatures." whatever that means it also says: "Incorporeal creatures do not leave footprints, have no scent, and make no noise unless they manifest, and even then they only make noise intentionally."

The thing to understand about the definition of concealment is that it has its head up its ass. Deeper Darkness provides total concealment and true seeing let's you see through it, but true seeing states that it doesn't let you see through total concealment. What the heck?

The secret is that total concealment is actually defined as having a complete interuption in line of sight without having a complete interuption in line of effect. Everything that provides concealment actually provides the benefits of concealment without technically providing the concealment itself. You can start scratching your head now if you want.

So true seeing won't let you see people who are concealed, but it will negate magical effects that provide concealment without providing physical objects. So it will let you see through a Monk's concealing technique, but it won't let you see throuh a wall of fire. And if that sounds like an exceptionally shady shell-game of semantics, that's because it is.

As to scent, that really has to do with the latest overhauls of the incorporeal subtype by Skip Williams. Apparently, things removed from you become corporeal. So if you happen to be a human, the chemicals that leave your body as drying sweat become corporeal. So even though the troll can't smell you, he can smell your sweat which is exactly the same thing. Unless of course, you pass without trace, in which case there's nothing to smell and you can go about your day.

-Username17

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1153117218[/unixtime]]
As to scent, that really has to do with the latest overhauls of the incorporeal subtype by Skip Williams. Apparently, things removed from you become corporeal. So if you happen to be a human, the chemicals that leave your body as drying sweat become corporeal. So even though the troll can't smell you, he can smell your sweat which is exactly the same thing. Unless of course, you pass without trace, in which case there's nothing to smell and you can go about your day.

Where did Skip say this crap? Was it buried in a rules of the game article or what?

Consider the Revenge of the Bag o' Rats style, a master fighting style which does the 5d6 sonic damage to everything in 30' effect and grants slam attack bonuses to a weapon, with one other fighting style ability to taste. Get Whirlwind Attack and some reach weapon; proficiency really doesn't matter.

Get someone with the spell mass resist energy and cast it on a bunch of rats at caster level 11th. Have an unseen servant haul the bag around. When combat comes, the unseen servant drops the bag. Go into Revenge of the Bag o' Rats, hitting each rat in reach and dealing 5d6 sonic damage to everything in 30', for a total of around 60d6 sonic damage, counting one attack against whatever the real target is. The damage scales with castings of mass resist energy, so it's likely possible to deal "enough" damage to kill whatever it is you're trying to kill.

It's not that bad, as weird power combos go. I don't know if you care.

We actually call that one the "Bell Rat Technique" where you whip out a bunch of rats and play them for huge damage.

It's so incredibly vulnerable to so many things that it honestly does not bother me. Fo one thing, it's Sonic Damage, so it actually blasts you through the floor if you try to take it too far.

-Username17

Why don't you just hit the floor instead of a rat?

And isn't the whole problem with Cleave that the additional attacks don't have attack rolls that matter? Wouldn't it just be easier to slightly reword it, even if it was that you didn't get to choose which target it counted against?

-Crissa

Crissa at [unixtime wrote:1154033001[/unixtime]]Why don't you just hit the floor instead of a rat?

The floor isn't a "creature" so even 'dropping' it below 0 HP won't trigger a cleave.

Any other D&D definitions of "dropping" besides taking below 0 HP? Like grappling a creature, flying 5' into the air, and dropping it?

Knocking out/unconscious/sleeping, perhaps? It's a word that's literally not mechanically defined anywhere, TTBOMK.

Knocking out/unconscious/sleeping, perhaps? It's a word that's literally not mechanically defined anywhere, TTBOMK.

Funnily enough, SWd20 did define 'knocked out' and 'Unconscious'. Of course, they defined them as DIFFERENT THINGS. 'Knocked out' meant you couldn't take any actions, but you were not helpless. Unconscious meant what just what you'd think - You were unconscious and helpless.

I'll dine on the flesh of anyone that thinks that was a good idea.

Okay, I didn't say hitting the floor for the cleave, I meant for the bell rat effect. If there's no reason for there to be a character, then there's no reason for the first target to be a creature and not the floor.

What I didn't understand about the bag of rats thing is how did using up your one attack give you more than one attack? How could you have written it so badly?

-Crissa

When is the next "-Omicon" due out, Frank?

Game On,
fbmf

Crissa at [unixtime wrote:1154461822[/unixtime]]
What I didn't understand about the bag of rats thing is how did using up your one attack give you more than one attack? How could you have written it so badly?

Bag of rats works like this.

Basically you need an attack that can affect something else other than your target, whether via a contingent attack like a cleave or by radius sonic damage or somtehing as in the bell rat example.

And then you basically find a way to get a lot of attacks. Usually this is achieved through great cleaving through a chain of easily hittable small targets (like rats).

So basically you strike rat A, activating your contingent effect on hitting or killing rat A, which in turn damages your real target. You of course kil rat A, which triggers great cleave, allowing you to now hit rat B with a free attack, this in turn damages your real target due to the contingent effect, it also creates a new attack from great cleave when rat B falls, and now you move to rat C. You keep repeating until you run out of rats or your real target dies.

Here are some existing bag of rats exploits beyond bell rat:

-(3.0 Only) BoR classic: Whirlwind attack + great cleave. This one actaully uses great cleave as the contingent effect to damage your target and WWA to get lots of attacks on each rat.

-Cleave off AoOs: This entails having a bunch of rats run past you, provoking AoOs. You take each one out and cleave off the AoO to strike your real target.

-Warmind Sweeping strike: Sweeping strike lets you hit multiple squares at once, so combined with something like whirlwind attack or cleave, it can potentially give you a bunch of free attacks.

As far as poorly worded abilities, it's generally two wording problems.

1) Cleave: Cleave's basic premise is that you "get back" the attack you used to kill an opponent, whcih is ok. Unfortunately, cleave doesn't check to see that your extra attack target is a legal target. Thus if you have a way to get extra attacks on small targets (by having them provoke for instance, or by WWA), you can get tons of extra attacks against a main foe. The fix for this is to simply require that cleave targets be legal targets for the original attack.

2) Multiopponent Attacks: Any ability that lets you damage people beyond the creature you're attacking has the potential for abuse with cleave. In this case, cleave doesn't serve as the damaging medium but rather the feat to perpetuate the chain. The easy fix to this is to not allow cleaving on multiopponent attacks.

I thought you don't draw an attack of oppertunity if all you do is run away. So how does the AoO Bag'o'Rats tactic work?

-Desdan

Desdan_Mervolam at [unixtime wrote:1154467448[/unixtime]]I thought you don't draw an attack of oppertunity if all you do is run away. So how does the AoO Bag'o'Rats tactic work?

OK basically it works like this.

your fighter is fighting a bad guy and has combat reflexes and great cleave.

You then send a bunch of creatures (Rats, charmed goblins, whatever) running past the melee from your fighters side, so he gets to AoO them as they move through his threatened area. After inevitably killing them, he takes his cleave attack on the bad guy he's fighting.

It's not nearly as effective as most BoR tactics because it requires that the rats run in a certain direction, but it's not too difficult to set up if you say have someone intimidate them with a torch or something as they're released from the bag. If you're feeling sadistic you could just hire a bunch of peasants to pick up stones directly behind you (as picking something up provokes an AoO).

However you choose to do it, it's a way to turn a 1 hit dice creature into a free attack by a high level fighter type. And you can get as many free attacks as you have AoOs per round. It's obviously most effective in the hands of a reach weapon user.

-(3.0 Only) BoR classic: Whirlwind attack + great cleave. This one actaully uses great cleave as the contingent effect to damage your target and WWA to get lots of attacks on each rat.

I'd like to point out that people were so afraid of the Bag O' Rats tricks that they completely nerfed Whirlwind into uselessness for D&D.

Goddamn it. A lot of splatbook-light fighters and TWFers NEEDED that feat to work properly.

There was probably some solution out there (i.e. you only get one bonus attack from great cleave ever while using this feat) that's sane and allowed you to still get your bonus attack from haste, TWFing, improved trip, etc.

So Cleave would be easily fixed to say that it only worked on your standard attack sequence.

And just ditch AE affects/feats or just allow them to be triggered any once per turn.

Seems pretty simple fix, honestly...

-Crissa

fbmf at [unixtime wrote:1154462364[/unixtime]]When is the next "-Omicon" due out, Frank?

Game On,
fbmf

This may have gotten lost in the shuffle.

Game On,
fbmf

fbmf at [unixtime wrote:1154644061[/unixtime]]

fbmf at [unixtime wrote:1154462364[/unixtime]]When is the next "-Omicon" due out, Frank?

Game On,
fbmf

This may have gotten lost in the shuffle.

Game On,
fbmf

Right. So the document is 33 thousand words right now, and it basically has the feats, classes, armor and weapon rules, and so on that we want. So I would think that it would be up in a few days at max. Maybe tomorrow if I get cracking.

Flavor text is still cut off in a few places, but that goes by quickly. Formatting is a pain on a document this size.

-Username17

Carry on.

Game On,
fbmf

Hm, I have a question about Jester. A player of mine is taking it in my game, and I'm a bit worried about the potential for cheese with the intimidate skill, so I was curious. What would you recommend replacing Killer Clown with?

I'm no expert on balance, but I don't really see much cheese possible with this. Consider:

Fear
Necromancy [Fear, Mind-Affecting]
Level: Brd 3, Sor/Wiz 4
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: 30 ft.
Area: Cone-shaped burst
Duration: 1 round/level or 1 round; see text
Saving Throw: Will partial
Spell Resistance: Yes
An invisible cone of terror causes each living creature in the area to become panicked unless it succeeds on a Will save. If cornered, a panicked creature begins cowering. If the Will save succeeds, the creature is shaken for 1 round.
Material Component: Either the heart of a hen or a white feather.

This special ability is pretty well inferior to Fear or perhaps equal to fear, as it comes with no area-of-effect, no shaken-if-saved, and is given out at level 12, a level by which the casters already beat the noncasters in RAW core-only by a pretty big margin. And you get it well after a wizard gets Fear. So... I don't see it as likely to break the game horribly.

Guest (Unregistered) at [unixtime wrote:1154901473[/unixtime]]
This special ability is pretty well inferior to Fear or perhaps equal to fear, as it comes with no area-of-effect, no shaken-if-saved, and is given out at level 12, a level by which the casters already beat the noncasters in RAW core-only by a pretty big margin. And you get it well after a wizard gets Fear. So... I don't see it as likely to break the game horribly.

Well, the jester fear is much better than the spell, mainly because it's a skill check, and skill checks can be bonus whored to insanity, making your check an autosuccess. It's also a move action to activate as opposed to a standard action. Pretty insane if you ask me. If you don't have immunity to fear, you're just fucked.

I'd really recommend instead of using an intimidate check, just use the standard will save DC 10 + 1/2 character level + charisma mod.

So, I just read this.

I am really amused by the portrayal of Myconids as basically militant hippies. They stay in their happy little commune, living off the land dropping hallucinigenic spores and just grooving until someone has something they've decided needs to be free (Read: They have something we want) and then they totally kill everything Manson style.

-Desdan

Locked until these needledicks stop spamming us.

-The Great Fence Builder

I have a question.

I really like the idea of thinking of D&D heroes as Classical Age heroes; this seems to be exactly right.

My question is about one of the works you reference in relation to the points you made. Your example of someone who wanted to take revenge by killing all the goblins responsible for his anguish being unthinkable doesn't make sense to me in the context of the Classical Era's moral system. How do you reconcile this idea with, for example, The Illiad, in which Homer pretty clearly praises the Greeks for killing or enslaving all the Trojans. The true history of the Trojan War(s) here is irrelevant; what I am interested in is the fact that Homer praises an act that is, according to your definitions of the properly conceived D&D morality, abhorrent.

Really, I am just curious here. D&D obviously needs a reconception of its morality to something like what you have outlined to have any kind of consistency. The game just can't be fun otherwise. But that is also part of my problem: isn't the genocidal character a pretty standard "revenge for my family" adventurer? Shouldn't that be playable without being evil?