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Beelzebub1111
2009-12-02, 12:07 AM
How do I explain to one of my players that the casting limits (like a max of 10d6 on fireball and lightning bolt) are in place for a reason.

He doesn't seem to believe me that they're worth having in.

Tavar
2009-12-02, 12:08 AM
Generally, they aren't. I mean, the casting limits generally only make blasting even more of a subpar choice.

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-12-02, 12:11 AM
How do I explain to one of my players that the casting limits (like a max of 10d6 on fireball and lightning bolt) are in place for a reason.

He doesn't seem to believe me that they're worth having in.

They are in place for a reason. Not necessarily a good reason.

Thrice Dead Cat
2009-12-02, 12:20 AM
Well, when Red Wizards walk around with CL NI, he'll be glad there is a limit to the madness.

EDIT: To be fair, direct damage is fairly jank, anyhow.

Edge of Dreams
2009-12-02, 12:25 AM
The reason they're there, at least as far as I can tell, is to make sure that a spell of higher level that scales at the same rate of damage-per-caster-level as a low level spell has higher potential damage. E.g. there's gotta be a reason a given blast spell is 5th level instead of 3rd or whatever. In general, blasting isn't a terribly impressive choice anyway (at least not until disintegrate, which does viable damage, imho), so removing those caps wouldn't really be a big deal, unless the rest of the party is pretty darn un-optimized in comparison.

Sliver
2009-12-02, 12:34 AM
Spellcasting? Limits? What are you talking ***- Oh these limits... Ahh.. They exist...

PairO'Dice Lost
2009-12-02, 02:25 AM
The reason they're there, at least as far as I can tell, is to make sure that a spell of higher level that scales at the same rate of damage-per-caster-level as a low level spell has higher potential damage. E.g. there's gotta be a reason a given blast spell is 5th level instead of 3rd or whatever. In general, blasting isn't a terribly impressive choice anyway (at least not until disintegrate, which does viable damage, imho), so removing those caps wouldn't really be a big deal, unless the rest of the party is pretty darn un-optimized in comparison.

And even that reason is bad. If your 3rd level spell and your 5th level spell are both 1d6/level, don't cap the 3rd level, give the 5th level something else! Darn writers....

Anyway, if he really hates the limits, he can take the Reserves of Strength feat from Dragonlance to get over them, with a few drawbacks.

Myrmex
2009-12-02, 02:34 AM
And even that reason is bad. If your 3rd level spell and your 5th level spell are both 1d6/level, don't cap the 3rd level, give the 5th level something else! Darn writers....

Or they should have left all the good spells out, or gave them hefty costs for casting, like potentially killing your character forever.

Doc Roc
2009-12-02, 02:36 AM
Or he could play a Psion after reading the rules carefully.

You know, a system not designed by frothing madmen.

Myrmex
2009-12-02, 02:38 AM
Or he could play a Psion after reading the rules carefully.

You know, a system not designed by frothing madmen.

That too.
I really like psionics. I think it's a very elegant system (compared to the rest of it, anyway). It also hasn't suffered from the bloat the rest of 3.5 has, as it's only had a handful of writers work on a handful of supplements.

Milskidasith
2009-12-02, 02:47 AM
That too.
I really like psionics. I think it's a very elegant system (compared to the rest of it, anyway). It also hasn't suffered from the bloat the rest of 3.5 has, as it's only had a handful of writers work on a handful of supplements.

It hasn't suffered from bloat, but it hasn't had any good supplements, either. The one major supplement is a massive tumor with almost no useful powers (save a few ardent only ones), and, well, the ardent (if you don't abuse the whole "ML = powers known" thing to dip in it at first and 20th level and get all the benefits of the class, anyway.)

It also has a few missing powers that would be useful and thematic, although generally you can just houserule equivalent spells in pretty easily (to use a random and terrible example, mindrape becomes a 9th level telepath specialist power.) Still, I do like it more than magic, at least for actual play.

Doc Roc
2009-12-02, 02:51 AM
Dreamscarred Press has a number of excellent and verrrrry nice supplements for psionics.

Milskidasith
2009-12-02, 02:55 AM
Dreamscarred Press has a number of excellent and verrrrry nice supplements for psionics.

Third party, though. I'd like to try them out, for sure, but there's practically no DM's that allow that kind of stuff. They are dirt cheap, though... how are they even making money on books that are a few bucks a piece? One of them was 80 cents, though it was only six pages of material.

Myrmex
2009-12-02, 03:32 AM
It hasn't suffered from bloat, but it hasn't had any good supplements, either. The one major supplement is a massive tumor with almost no useful powers (save a few ardent only ones), and, well, the ardent (if you don't abuse the whole "ML = powers known" thing to dip in it at first and 20th level and get all the benefits of the class, anyway.)

It also has a few missing powers that would be useful and thematic, although generally you can just houserule equivalent spells in pretty easily (to use a random and terrible example, mindrape becomes a 9th level telepath specialist power.) Still, I do like it more than magic, at least for actual play.

I'm not that familiar with Comp Psi in it's entirety, but it seems to serve the same purpose Comp Magic or Arcane does- have one or two must have feats & powers. I actually like that all their prcs require lost manifester levels. I just wish stuff like Metamind was worth half progression.

In your opinion, what ARE good supplements? The complete series is all pretty bad, imo. The only ones I feel are a step in the right direction are Complete Adventurer & Complete Scoundrel. I also am a big fan of Dungeonscape and ToB. Outside of those, though, I feel most splatbooks, from a player's perspective, offer choices to just make your characters more powerful in the wrong places, rarely address fundamental mechanical issues, and in many places, introduces things that shouldn't exist. I mean, splatbooks are great for having fighter do more damage and wizard be more invincible, but that's... that's not really all that spectacular. I guess what I'm saying is, for only two books dedicated to psioncs, half bad is actually a pretty good ratio.

As a DM, stuff like It's Cold Outside, FCs, and LoM have a lot of fun, useful material, and a handful of extremely powerful additional things for characters. It's not like anyone is going to play a bunch of stuff out of Frostburn- they're going to pick up shivering touch and continue their advancement in Iot7FV.


Dreamscarred Press has a number of excellent and verrrrry nice supplements for psionics.

I don't think I've read any of their stuff. Seen it mentioned. I am uncertain how to interpret your endorsement.


Third party, though. I'd like to try them out, for sure, but there's practically no DM's that allow that kind of stuff. They are dirt cheap, though... how are they even making money on books that are a few bucks a piece? One of them was 80 cents, though it was only six pages of material.

If it's distributed online, there's very, very little overhead or production cost. They could pay a couple people $400 dollars each, then only have to sell 1,000 copies to break even.

Prime32
2009-12-02, 04:58 AM
Third party, though. I'd like to try them out, for sure, but there's practically no DM's that allow that kind of stuff. They are dirt cheap, though... how are they even making money on books that are a few bucks a piece? One of them was 80 cents, though it was only six pages of material.Generally, Hyperconscious is considered to be the real Complete Psionic. What WotC released was a web enhancement, along with a few hundred pages of random words. :smalltongue:

Cyclocone
2009-12-02, 08:32 AM
As has been mentioned, the caps on blasting spells are teh Fail. They are a leftover from 2e where hp was pretty much hard capped as well.

But in 3e, where enemies have exponantially scaling hp, direct damage is gimped into uselessness.

WotC tried to bring blasting back up with metamagic -and failed miserably, since empower and maximize both scale the spell linearly and thus fail to provide anything meaningfull for blasting unless you're getting them for +0 adjustment.


Now, for other spells the caps are more reasonable. But still, the caps frequently either cripple spells horribly (fireball, chain lightning) or fail to meaningfully reign them in (shapechange, gate).

-Ofcourse, the fact that CL is so laughably easy to pump is reason enough to cruelly hardcap absolutely everything, just in case.

PhoenixRivers
2009-12-02, 08:40 AM
It hasn't suffered from bloat, but it hasn't had any good supplements, either. The one major supplement is a massive tumor with almost no useful powers (save a few ardent only ones), and, well, the ardent (if you don't abuse the whole "ML = powers known" thing to dip in it at first and 20th level and get all the benefits of the class, anyway.)

It also has a few missing powers that would be useful and thematic, although generally you can just houserule equivalent spells in pretty easily (to use a random and terrible example, mindrape becomes a 9th level telepath specialist power.) Still, I do like it more than magic, at least for actual play.

Are you kidding? CompPsi has two of the most powerful powers in the game.

Everyone agrees that Celerity is a good spell.

Anticipatory Strike is that... for psionics, and better... Take a whole turn, complete with refreshing the immediate action you took to manifest it.

Readied Actions are a powerful mechanic, though they require a bit of good guesswork or engineering. Synchronicity allows you to bypass all of that. A level 1 power that loosens the restrictions on ready actions, and, by upping it to 3pp, rips the mechanic apart and dances on its corpse.

Some of the updates and stealth nerfs were less than stellar, but it's still good stuff.

In addition, it has Erudite, which is another solid class.

Emmerask
2009-12-02, 08:48 AM
How do I explain to one of my players that the casting limits (like a max of 10d6 on fireball and lightning bolt) are in place for a reason.

He doesn't seem to believe me that they're worth having in.

They are there because other party members (the melee chars) need to have a job on the battlefield too (dealing damage)...

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-12-02, 10:45 AM
Are you kidding? CompPsi has two of the most powerful powers in the game.

Everyone agrees that Celerity is a good spell.

Anticipatory Strike is that... for psionics, and better... Take a whole turn, complete with refreshing the immediate action you took to manifest it.

Readied Actions are a powerful mechanic, though they require a bit of good guesswork or engineering. Synchronicity allows you to bypass all of that. A level 1 power that loosens the restrictions on ready actions, and, by upping it to 3pp, rips the mechanic apart and dances on its corpse.

Some of the updates and stealth nerfs were less than stellar, but it's still good stuff.

In addition, it has Erudite, which is another solid class.Almost everything in CPsi is either brokenly good or brokenly bad. There are a few decent things, but the majorit of the book is unusable.

Aharon
2009-12-02, 10:55 AM
Actually, the Anticipatory Strike in CompPsi is nerfed. It originally appeared in Races of Destiny as a second level power with identical text...

jiriku
2009-12-02, 10:55 AM
For the OP, I would agree with your player that the damage caps limit something that doesn't really need limiting (or should be limited differently), but I would also agree with you that the damage caps should remain in place.

For the reasons described by other posters, the casting limits are serving a purpose that no longer exists, and doing a bad job of it besides. However, the classes that are casting those capped spells tend to be THE most powerful classes in the game. They do NOT need more toys.

My advice to your player would be, "Your character is already God's juvenile delinquent little brother. Suck it up and go back to warping the laws of physics to suit your every whim."

Eldariel
2009-12-02, 12:17 PM
Third party, though. I'd like to try them out, for sure, but there's practically no DM's that allow that kind of stuff. They are dirt cheap, though... how are they even making money on books that are a few bucks a piece? One of them was 80 cents, though it was only six pages of material.

I don't think it's going to be a problem with a reasonable DM provided you have access to said books, he has access to said books (through you) and you aren't using said books to break anything. Given how excellent additions to 3.5 they are, given access and Psionics in the gameworld, they should be allowed by default.

PhoenixRivers
2009-12-02, 12:28 PM
Almost everything in CPsi is either brokenly good or brokenly bad. There are a few decent things, but the majorit of the book is unusable.

Well, Erudite isn't horrible, unless you go Spell2Power...
Ardent is useful and powerful, without being overly so.

The energy power nerfs in it were needed... Like, needed bad.

Morty
2009-12-02, 12:37 PM
Because in a group in which a wizard commits the unforgivable sin of not playing by TLN's guide, it might mean Fireball doing too much damage for a 3rd level spell. Or at least that's the idea. Dropping them would cause a mess.

Krrth
2009-12-02, 12:42 PM
Look at it this way: If the lower level spells continue to scale, it removes the need to use higher level slots to do damage. That opens more higher level slots to do rude things to others with. As previously mentioned, wizards already have nice toys. Do they really need more?

Doc Roc
2009-12-02, 04:13 PM
Actually, dreamscarred press is one of the few third party publishers that's regularly allowed by GMs. They possess truly massive kung fu, and great wisdom regarding its use.