Balancing custom abilities

[Angry Bob]

Dropping abilities that I'll be giving to my PCs here for review, in case I've missed any big game breakers.

A githzerai pirate using thrown-weapon cheese, for something like 18 attacks on a full attack and dex to damage twice, gets permanent "(Su) Take an additional standard or move action during your turn."

A goliath warblade gets permanent (Ex) "you are never surprised or flat-footed" and "Once per turn, as an immediate action, you can expend a readied maneuver to give yourself or an ally a full round's worth of actions." Flat-footed allies are still flat-footed and unable to act.

A pixie sorcerer/initiate of the seven veils gets "3/day, cast a spell as a supernatural ability"(though spells requiring XP costs/matierial components/Foci still require them) and "1/day spend a spell slot to cast any spell on any list of that slot's level or lower." Except the trapsmith list. Can't combine these two abilities. Probably permanent Arcane sight, too, just as a thing.

All characters are lvl 18 and intended to go into early epic before the campaign ends.

[Diarmuid]

Define "once per turn" for the Goliath's ability?

Also, the Goliath's ability is basically a free 18 attacks for the Pirate or a Quickened and Standard spell for the Pixie.

Breaking action economy is probably the worst thing you can do, especially when you have epic casters.

[OracleofSilence]

almost all of these are over power. for example. if you are boosting character power, you succeed, but nevertheless this is going beyond the normal levels of cheese. if this is what your are shooting for, just let them use the Tomes (broken that their classes and feats are) and be done with ir

[Telonius]

Dropping abilities that I'll be giving to my PCs here for review, in case I've missed any big game breakers.

A githzerai pirate using thrown-weapon cheese, for something like 18 attacks on a full attack and dex to damage twice, gets permanent "(Su) Take an additional standard or move action during your turn."

A goliath warblade gets permanent (Ex) "you are never surprised or flat-footed" and "Once per turn, as an immediate action, you can expend a readied maneuver to give yourself or an ally a full round's worth of actions." Flat-footed allies are still flat-footed and unable to act.

A pixie sorcerer/initiate of the seven veils gets "3/day, cast a spell as a supernatural ability"(though spells requiring XP costs/matierial components/Foci still require them) and "1/day spend a spell slot to cast any spell on any list of that slot's level or lower." Except the trapsmith list. Can't combine these two abilities. Probably permanent Arcane sight, too, just as a thing.

All characters are lvl 18 and intended to go into early epic before the campaign ends.

Your Goliath is now the most popular person in the multiverse, and will have deities and epic-level Wizards fighting over him. At that power level, it's rocket tag, and the Goliath can now give his best friend an "I win free every time, nyaah nyaah!" button.

[myancey]

Yeah, nerf that once per turn for the Warblade down to once per day. That would be crazy broken for high level casters--or the 18 attacks per round dude.

Same with the githzerai--as the others stated above, messing with action economy is going to destroy your game.

Compared to the others, the pixie seems to have the least broken additions. I'm not sure what supernatural abilities do to spells though.

[Fiery Diamond]

Define "once per turn" for the Goliath's ability?

Also, the Goliath's ability is basically a free 18 attacks for the Pirate or a Quickened and Standard spell for the Pixie.

Breaking action economy is probably the worst thing you can do, especially when you have epic casters.

I've never understood that. Breaking action economy is probably the most powerful thing you can do, but I fail to see why that makes it the worst, or even bad. And besides, epic as borked already, so it doesn't really matter.

I've always wanted to experiment with giving a boss double or triple actions, either all at once or spread throughout the round (by giving him multiple initiative counts). That would make it easier to have a scary boss without having him need to be so powerful that he could off any character by blinking or, on the other hand, not live long enough to use his abilities.

[Angry Bob]

The pirate's ability is to give him an edge when he goes to solo two devastation centipedes and possibly a phane. And then later when the party faces a boss gauntlet consisting of even worse stuff.

Thanks for the feedback on the warblade's ability. It will be cut back. Likely to "1/day, expend a maneuver as an immediate action to grant a full round's worth of actions to an ally." Unless someone has a better idea for an ability to go on a character whose title will be "Paragon of War." Really. Bring it up. I need suggestions.

Last time I pitched this a few months ago, the pixie's ability was the one considered most broken. I'll assume from your silence that I nerfed it appropriately.

These abilities are essentially the method one who despises the existing divine rank rules to make my players demigods.

Speaking of which, they'll all also be getting max HP per HD, but that's a drop in the pond compared to the other stuff.

[ffone]

The question you should be asking is - "why is granting these abilities a better idea that 'just leveling them up once/twice extra' ". Is there any reason than homebrew for the sake of homebrew (i.e. the fun and power trip for the DM of bequeathing exactly what he wants to and holding the fate of the PC's abilities in his hands).


These three are radically different in power, with the Warblade's being the most ridiculous by far. The first guy's is roughly equivalent to "free movement / move + full attack", like a Travel Devotion Cleric dip on steroids, since a single standard action is vastly less useful for him than a full attack (1 attack vs 18) - whereas an extra standard action would roughly double the power of a caster. In other words, for that character, it's fabulous but on par with a high-op 1 level dip.

The pixie's seems a bit odd - making a spell a Su but keeping the components is basically saying "ignore SR, dispels, somatic, and verbal components for certain spells." Seems easier just to throw out free feats like Spell Penetration, Spontaneous Still/Silent spell, etc. And the "1/day cast any spell, ever" thing is a bad idea, because it will encourage the player to spend tons of time thinking about her next move.

Vancian casting is an old but brilliant part of DnD because it speeds up gameplay, by giving a player a fixed list of available options at a given time (and you can cross off the prepared spells / slots as you use them, rather than keeping track of numerical MP like in most CRPGs - except psionics reintroduced MP as PP into DnD).

[Salanmander]

The pirate's ability is to give him an edge when he goes to solo two devastation centipedes and possibly a phane. And then later when the party faces a boss gauntlet consisting of even worse stuff.

Thanks for the feedback on the warblade's ability. It will be cut back. Likely to "1/day, expend a maneuver as an immediate action to grant a full round's worth of actions to an ally." Unless someone has a better idea for an ability to go on a character whose title will be "Paragon of War." Really. Bring it up. I need suggestions.

Last time I pitched this a few months ago, the pixie's ability was the one considered most broken. I'll assume from your silence that I nerfed it appropriately.

These abilities are essentially the method one who despises the existing divine rank rules to make my players demigods.

Speaking of which, they'll all also be getting max HP per HD, but that's a drop in the pond compared to the other stuff.

How about letting the warblade use strike maneuvers below a certain level (like 6th level maneuvers or lower, maybe?) as iteratives in a full attack?