Amechra
2012-10-30, 06:05 PM
Alright, I'm going to throw this out here:
I am saddened by 3.5; most of this sadness stems from a single source.
Namely, the lack of things that mess around with descriptors.
"Wait, what?", I hear you say, as you look up from your screen in disbelief. "THAT's what upsets you? Get a life, chump."
But, I'll go on. To talk about my point, I would like you to go look at, let's say, Exalted's charmsets.
Now, count up how many times the descriptors of effects actually matter; I'll guarantee you that you'll see several things that interact with Crippling, at the very least, even though most of them are just "remove it."
Exalted is a strongly typed ruleset; then again, so is D&D. Every type of ability falls into one of 5 sets of "ability types" (Supernatural, Natural, Spell-Like, Extraordinary, and Spell). Then, on top of that, about half of the spells and such have Descriptors that indicate how they function (if something has the [Fear] descriptor, it inflicts Shaken or better; it's kinda obvious in that case.)
Now, that's how I like my systems, because it let's me write out stuff like "Being struck by an effect with the [Fire] descriptor affects you as the spell Haste for X rounds", or some equivalent, in my homebrew.
What saddens me is that, when you get down to it, all that 3.5 (and most homebrewers) have done with this system is stuff like "you are immune to it" or "you deal X extra damage of the proper type."
What makes this worse is that, every so often, you get effects like Adoration of the Frightful (anyone under the effect of a fear effect within the radius of the spell is treated as if they were Friendly towards you), Lionhearted (ignore fear effects, and you get a +2 to attack rolls), and several effects that alter what you treat as a suicidal order for the purpose of stuff like Dominate Person.
So you know that both the official designers and homebrewers have so much more potential for working fun effects in there with more mundane effects.
Seriously, be creative; hell, I'm going to start using Garryl's effect definition (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=10068.60) and damage descriptor (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=10068.0) concepts in my 'brew, just so that I can reference back to damage types for fun stuff.
Because I know that I just start smiling when I see stuff that let's me, for example, treat effect X as if it were effect Y.
Also, I do believe that this would help melee, for the simple expedient that you could more easily define synergistic stuff for them ("Hey... this ability let's me, a Paladin, make attacks with my Aura of Good that's treated like Smite Evil for the purpose of abilities; oh, I can see fun things with this...")
Alright, if you please would, add your own two small units of currency.
I am saddened by 3.5; most of this sadness stems from a single source.
Namely, the lack of things that mess around with descriptors.
"Wait, what?", I hear you say, as you look up from your screen in disbelief. "THAT's what upsets you? Get a life, chump."
But, I'll go on. To talk about my point, I would like you to go look at, let's say, Exalted's charmsets.
Now, count up how many times the descriptors of effects actually matter; I'll guarantee you that you'll see several things that interact with Crippling, at the very least, even though most of them are just "remove it."
Exalted is a strongly typed ruleset; then again, so is D&D. Every type of ability falls into one of 5 sets of "ability types" (Supernatural, Natural, Spell-Like, Extraordinary, and Spell). Then, on top of that, about half of the spells and such have Descriptors that indicate how they function (if something has the [Fear] descriptor, it inflicts Shaken or better; it's kinda obvious in that case.)
Now, that's how I like my systems, because it let's me write out stuff like "Being struck by an effect with the [Fire] descriptor affects you as the spell Haste for X rounds", or some equivalent, in my homebrew.
What saddens me is that, when you get down to it, all that 3.5 (and most homebrewers) have done with this system is stuff like "you are immune to it" or "you deal X extra damage of the proper type."
What makes this worse is that, every so often, you get effects like Adoration of the Frightful (anyone under the effect of a fear effect within the radius of the spell is treated as if they were Friendly towards you), Lionhearted (ignore fear effects, and you get a +2 to attack rolls), and several effects that alter what you treat as a suicidal order for the purpose of stuff like Dominate Person.
So you know that both the official designers and homebrewers have so much more potential for working fun effects in there with more mundane effects.
Seriously, be creative; hell, I'm going to start using Garryl's effect definition (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=10068.60) and damage descriptor (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=10068.0) concepts in my 'brew, just so that I can reference back to damage types for fun stuff.
Because I know that I just start smiling when I see stuff that let's me, for example, treat effect X as if it were effect Y.
Also, I do believe that this would help melee, for the simple expedient that you could more easily define synergistic stuff for them ("Hey... this ability let's me, a Paladin, make attacks with my Aura of Good that's treated like Smite Evil for the purpose of abilities; oh, I can see fun things with this...")
Alright, if you please would, add your own two small units of currency.