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ShneekeyTheLost
2010-11-20, 06:11 PM
Shattering the Power Curve,
or: Why T1's do not play nice with the game

Okay, there's been a lot of discussions and debate about 'broken' or 'OP!', and a good amount of discussion on the 'tier chart' and 'why T1's are, in fact, T1'

I've seen some commonalities, and some abilities, which, quite bluntly, break the game.

1) Breaking the Action Economy.

Normal characters have 1 full-round action, which can be broken down into one standard action and one move action, plus one swift action. That's about it.

Back when I was involved in the Test of Spite, the characters who won most often generally had ways of breaking the action economy. To the point where homerules were created to limit how badly you can break it. Effectively, if you couldn't break the action economy to that point, and your opponent could, you *would* loose. Period. Every single character in ToS that I saw the sheet on had a Belt of Battle.

It doesn't matter if you are abusuing Free Actions (see: The Habadasher), Minionmancy to have minions have more actions (see: Hive Mind), or just plain getting more rounds per round (see: fission). Getting more actions per round = win.

2) Breaking the Form Economy. Druids, I'm talkin' ta you here. Basically, most PC races aren't really all that strong, or if they are, generally have exceedingly obnoxious Level Adjustment to compensate. These people? Ignore that. Some do it by 'template stacking', from which was born the Ikea Tarrasques, some simply choose to turn the whole party into something obnoxious (Team Solar, for example), others simply have a number of broken forms to choose from (like MoMF Druids/Wildshape Rangers).

The basic thing which breaks this is that you are effectively getting Free Stuff, which normally comes at an enormous LA cost, or simply should not be available to PC's. Sometimes, it also helps break action economy (Cloaker, or Cryohydra for examples), sometimes, it's just flat out OP.

3) Breaking the Ability Economy. This is being able to do 'yes'. Sometimes at once. There's typically more than one person in the party, but these guys really don't need the rest of them. The Wish/Miracle/Alter Reality type abilities are what *really* hurt this, because it lets you use whatever you want to from anyone's spell list.

Lycar
2010-11-20, 06:58 PM
3) Breaking the Ability Economy. This is being able to do 'yes'. Sometimes at once. There's typically more than one person in the party, but these guys really don't need the rest of them. The Wish/Miracle/Alter Reality type abilities are what *really* hurt this, because it lets you use whatever you want to from anyone's spell list.

That. So much that.

There really is no problem in the fighting types not being able to alter reality on a whim or rather, do their supposed job without the help of magic after a certain point. That is what the caster types are for after all.

The problem is that, after a certain point, caster types don't need anyone at all to do everything there is to do.

Ideally, the arcanists/channeler (divine magic) types should help the mellee guys do their job, either by buffing them or debuffing the enemy or both.

Unfortunately, that is not how the rules work out and that really breaks the game since any non-casters aren't good for anything but scroll/wand-caddies after a while.

Or in summary:

Ideally: Fighter + Wizard > Wizard + Wizard or Fighter + Fighter

In reality: Wizard > *everything else*

Lycar