Alternative Class Feats

[Shauctar]

So, just started back into the Dnd world after a long hiatus. We used to play just core 3.0 (was before 3.5). We're playing 3.5 and have access to many of the core supplements. The problem is almost every nice alternative class feature my DM has been calling too powerful.

I have a rogueish halfling and the two acf's that we've been particularly arguing about is Spell reflection (CM) and Penetrating Strike (DS). His claim is that a level 2 rogue with spell reflection could kill a level 20 wizard so its overpowered. His idea is to limit it to spells near your level.

Penetrating strike he claims would nerf fighters because the ability to hurt things immune to sneak attacks is the only advantage over rogues. I don't buy this argument. His idea is to limit it to one type of creature but you gain a another creature type each time your trapsense would have gone up. The problem I have is that I'm not sure if I'm gonna get that many levels of rogue.

Thoughts?

[Flickerdart]

Penetrating Strike only works when flanking and only lets you deal half damage. Fighters still have an edge when it comes to hurting immune things - a massive edge if being played properly.

As for Spell Reflection, the level 20 wizard would have to miss on a touch attack with a ray; 10 BAB and at least 18 Dexterity means that he doesn't need to roll above a 2 to hit the rogue. It's already too easy to hit on touch attacks, no point in nerfing an already weak feature.

[gorfnab]

I have a rogueish halfling and the two acf's that we've been particularly arguing about is Spell reflection (CM) and Penetrating Strike (DS). His claim is that a level 2 rogue with spell reflection could kill a level 20 wizard so its overpowered. His idea is to limit it to spells near your level.

Spell Reflection is situational at best and touch AC is easy to hit. A smartly played Wizard of that level would think along the lines "That enemy over there is lightly armored and nimble (high dex) which means he is likely to have a high touch AC (most of the spell that would be affected by Spell Reflection tend to be rays or ranged touch). That enemy over there is in Full Plate and would be a much easier target to hit (low dex = low touch AC). For the lightly armored character I would hit their most likely weakest saves of Fort and Will." Also a 20th level wizard has a lot better things to do with his spells than to waste one spell to blast one character for some damage (unless you're playing a Mailman). A 20th level wizard should also have many ways to deal with having a ray casted back at them (High touch AC, multiple miss chances, immunities, resistances, and other stuff from various buff spells).

A character lives to level 20 by being the most ruthless, lucky, capable, and paranoid bastard around. A wizard is throwing around a 30+ Int score and has, entirely in character, planned contingencies for his contingencies. He may well be running around with flat out total immunity to harm, he does not walk outside without an entire bevy of defensive magics around him and enough magic items to buy himself a nation.




Penetrating strike he claims would nerf fighters because the ability to hurt things immune to sneak attacks is the only advantage over rogues. I don't buy this argument. His idea is to limit it to one type of creature but you gain a another creature type each time your trapsense would have gone up. The problem I have is that I'm not sure if I'm gonna get that many levels of rogue.

Penetrating Strike only works while flanking (so no ranged sneak attack) and it is only for half the normal amount of sneak attack dice. A well built fighter type can out pace a rogue when it comes to damage.

[Curmudgeon]

Your DM has a poor understanding of the relative power of various classes. Spellcasters have power because they have many spells available; each spell provides flexibility: a different option for the spellcasting class. Non-spellcasters, in comparison, have fewer things they can do well (a short list of class features). ACFs allow some increased flexibility by losing one option and gaining another. Very few ACFs change the power of a class significantly.

Let's look at a bit more at Spell Reflection. To take that, the Rogue must give up evasion, a significant class feature. Evasion lets the Rogue, with excellent Reflex saves, entirely escape damage from most area effect spells. Evasion is huge. Getting a small chance to serve back some of what spellcasters dish out is pretty weak stuff in comparison. The Rogue is my favorite D&D class, and I've made up literally hundreds of Rogue characters. I have only used Spell Reflection when my character acquired evasion twice or more and I had to choose an ACF or gain nothing for the character.

If your DM wants to limit options for characters regarding ACFs, he should also limit options for primary spellcasters (i.e., those who get to cast 1st level spells at level 1 of the class). One suggestion: at every character level, randomly choose a (new) letter of the alphabet and permanently remove the spellcaster's ability to cast any spells starting with that letter.

[LTwerewolf]

Spell reflection: 1. Wizard casts an area spell, you cannot reflect even on save. 2. Wizard casts spell that requires no attack roll, you do not get to reflect it. 3. Like 2, except you're hit with a save or die from a lvl 20 wizard at lvl 2, and slams you with a will/fort save that you cannot possibly make.

Yep, I can see the overpowered features of the ACF now.


Penetrating strike: 1. Wizard casts save or suck spell on undead/construct/ooze/etc. and instantly wins the fight. 2. Uber charger deals twice your maximum sneak attack damage dice in one shot. 3. You are in a situation with no flanking buddy.

Yep, that one too.

[JeminiZero]

Point out to him that in the same book that Rogues get Penetrating Strike, Fighters also get Dungeon Crasher, so its all good.

Yessirree, Dungeonscape is truly a useful book. Everyone should have a copy for their collection. Yessirree. :smalltongue:

[Curmudgeon]

Point out to him that in the same book that Rogues get Penetrating Strike, Fighters also get Dungeon Crasher, so its all good.
With this DM I'd stay clear of Dungeonscape for Penetrating Strike. The original Lighbringer Penetrating Strike ACF in Expedition to Castle Ravenloft (page 208) gives the Rogue 1/2 the normal dice of sneak attack while flanking a sneak-immune foe. Dungeonscape chopped out a couple of lines of text from the original and just has the ACF deal damage (not sneak attack damage specifically) when flanking the sneak-immune. If it's not sneak attack damage, sneak attack add-ons (Craven, all the [Ambush] feats, & c.) don't work. But since they also shortened the name, you can still select Lighbringer Penetrating Strike instead of the Dungeonscape ACF.
Yessirree, Dungeonscape is truly a useful book. Everyone should have a copy for their collection. Yessirree. :smalltongue: If you're collecting books based on really poor editing, I agree wholeheartedly. :smallbiggrin:

[Shauctar]

Thanks for the reply guys. These are many of the same arguments I made with him. I think much of the argument stems from the fact that he is used to core only and hasn't wrapped his mind around the features offered by the supplements. I would get evasion from multiple sources so I think his concern is that I would avoid aoe and touch attacks. Which I then pointed out that a mage would probably just use a will save spell against a rogue. His counter was slippery mind which isn't much of a defense. Also with multiclassing would be a much higher level char before being able to get slippery mind anyways so kind of a moot point against his level 2 rogue argument.

In his defense he hasn't outright made a negative decision yet and said he wanted some time to look into it.

Speaking of getting evasion from multiple sources the description for Spell Reflection only lists the core classes. Would this limit it to those classes only or could you swap out a prestige classes' evasion for it?

[Shauctar]

That's a good point about the dungeonscape penetrating strike that I hadn't noticed or considered.

[Thumpa]

As the evil dm that Shauctar referenced (and for the record he’s my dm in return when I play my character) I feel obliged to at least express my concerns, perhaps in a better way than he did. As he noted, I haven’t made any decisions yet; I’m still looking at a lot of the supplements and it seems if any of the new stuff for certain classes are added without doing the same for all the stuff found in supplements for other classes than the classes with the supplements dwarf the other non-supplement characters in power. (Maybe it was WotC’s marketing stratagem to encourage players to buy them just like buying rare Magic the Gathering or Pokiemon cards.) Anyways, I can’t at this time adequately judge game balance based on comparison to other class supplements; I can only try to base them on comparison to how the classes are in core rules.

First, penetrating strike. For starters, there’s no real tradeoff for most rogues; many characters already splash with rogue just for a few levels. So, one gives up a whopping +1 to trap sense (which won’t ever go up since you’re not raising rogue levels later anyways for most character splashes) to overcome the main weakness rogue characters have in combat (enemies immune to sneak attacks). Other issues such as being situational (flanking) etc.. really aren’t as big a deal as some may make them out to be as long as one isn’t running around solo. So basically, acquiring this instead of Trap Sense becomes a no-brainer and violates a fundamental rule of game balance as per DM handbook (3.0) pg. 11 “If I add this to the game, is it so good that everyone will want to take it?” At the moment, the answer seems to be yes. Having said that, perhaps there’s even meaner acf one could use in its place that would at least lead to some choice, although still making Trap Sense irrelevant for 99% of the characters created. Also, perhaps this feature wasn’t balanced as per prior rogue abilities but was only designed to allow the rogue to help keep up with all the other features added to all the other classes. Perhaps all the new features for fighters allow them to still out damage rogues on sneak immune enemies (dungeon crasher, or the 4 pt damage per -1 pt attack conversion for power attack) etc.. I haven’t looked into most of them in depth with the exception of dungeon crasher which I also have some concerns about. Anyways, I was toying with the idea of making each +1 to Trap Sense a rogue would get to give a rogue instead one more enemy type (undead, oozes, constructs, plants, elementals) that he’s studied and learned to sneak attack. This seems in balance with other feats/abilities such as ranger favored enemies and would reward the character that actually puts more than 3 levels in rogue. I might add that this nerf affects my own character (who’ll become an arcane trickster with just 3 levels in rogue) far more than it will affect Shauctar’s character who’ll have far more levels in rogue. Granted, without having another class that increases sneak attack damage (arcane trickster, assassin, others?) this feat stays relatively benign (doing 1d6 sneak on skeleton instead of 2d6 at just level 3 rogue splash). My main concern is game balance, regardless of whether it helps or hurts my own character designs more.

Second, spell reflect. Even though there might seem to be a tradeoff, for any class with multiple sources of evasion there becomes no tradeoff; you get them both. Secondly, let’s give a more reasonable example. A level 11 wizard with 14 dex shoots/touches a Halfling rogue that’s level 2. (The wizard doesn’t know the players level or class or whatever, that would be meta-gaming, so the wizard doesn’t scale down his spell level for the attack. The ranged touch attack is +5 base attack +2 so +7. The touch ac of the rogue is 10 + 5 (for 20 dex) + 1 dodge + 1 for size (as per Shauctar’s character at level 2). That’s a 17. So on a 10 or higher the wizard hits, 9 or less a miss. On a miss, it’s reflected at the same modifier, a +7 (why is caster’s own dex used against him? Guess it’s better than using the rogue’s stats.. still seems kind of screwy). This goes against the mage at 10 + 2 = 12. so a 5 or higher the mage gets hit. So, every time a mage shoots a bolt, there’s a 9 / 20 x 16/20 chance of hitting himself. That’s a 36% chance of hitting himself. This also applies to both ranged and melee touch attacks, which amount to very big chunk of the spells (i.e. evil cleric spontaneous inflict wounds). This brings up several issues.
Decent characters with evasion already have awesome resistance to any aoe reflex spells. Mage type casters aren’t likely to risk over 33% chance of hitting their already squishy hp (perhaps one shotting themselves) with their own spell. So take away every touch or ray or orb etc.. After all, they don’t find out if their target has spell reflect until _after_ they already screwed up and killed themselves. Whereas with evasion, you learn from the failure and adapt. The only way for casters to adapt is just frankly not even bother with casting touch / range touch spells (or having tons of time to buff up resistances before the fight). After all, as it’s written you don’t even need light armor to use spell reflect. So that fighter in full plate that the caster is melee/ ranged touching against might have spent two levels in rogue. Or any monster with a couple levels in rogue. Monks would even get their wisdom to help on touch attacks so even more likely for a reflect (Small monk with dodge and 18 dex + 16 wis = 19 touch ac?).
At the moment, we’re running a small party (just Shauctar and an npc to help). Relying heavily on “save or you’re basically dead” spell mechanics (such as many of the will/fortitude saves) would kind of trash the campaign. Mechanics that result in hp loss and what-not instead are more viable in this regard, yet once you strip away reflex saved spells, touch / ranged touch spells, any mind stuff if mind-immune items are common (they are in Neverwinter Nights), death type spells if deathward type stuff is common (also in Neverwinter Nights), then options become more limited. I guess every caster could just try to remain invisible and summon monsters although that seems kind of cheesy. And even if options exist (which they probably do with all the supplements for mages), I try _NOT_ to metagame my monsters. Yet, in a campaign where an enemy caster could have a 36% or greater chance of killing him/herself against opponents 9+ levels lower just from touch attacks (not every enemy is running around with high con, max hp builds), enemy casters would have somehow adapted - never bothered learning those spells or made versions to overcome this weakness. One idea I’ve toyed with is just to cap the reflect part to a caster 4 or less levels higher. This seems in balance with other mechanics I’ve read such as the rogue’s ability to avoid being flanked by other rogues (doesn’t work on rogue’s 4+), or clerics ability to turn/kill undead (no more than 4 levels over the cleric).

And yes, I’ve looked at dungeon crasher. 4d6 damage + 2x strength modifer at level 2? Ignoring all armor/shields/ natural armor? (Guess no one told Ironman that after all the times he’s smashed or been smashed into stuff.) There’s obviously serious flaws with the mechanic. Perhaps it was necessary to help balance fighters with other classes but the mechanic still is flawed (doesn’t scale well at low and possibly high end levels.) Lower level warriors in plate armor and shields would have just stopped using their weapons and started trying to bash each other against walls long ago. Anyways, if dungeon crasher is the baseline for balance that’s being used to compare the rogue stuff I mentioned, then I’m not sure it’s a good baseline. (Do you even need to move the enemy at least 5 feet for the damage or are you supposed to be allowed to wall-hump them on the same wall every turn for 8d6+4x strength at level 6, once again ignoring all their shield, armor, and natural armor bonuses???? )

Yet, many of the spellcaster stuff seems really mean. Sorcerers using spell slots to absorb damage, etc.. So, I’ll have to take all of this into consideration before deciding if some of this new stuff is balanced. Yet, I feel it’s definitely _not_ balanced with core rules by themselves.

I could just ignore whether things get imbalanced since I could always meta-game monsters to insure the only player is challenged. (still cheesy). Yet, once we get a feel for 3.5, we would like to expand to include some other people that have played with us in the past. So preserving game balance among all the characters classes is still essential, so I can’t just ignore any game balance issues since no one’s currently complaining, and it’s a lot harder/frustrating for all to take away some overpowered stuff later than to curtail it from the start. Also, if we switched to 4.0 (or even the 5.0 that’s in the works), will characters feel completely gimped if all these ultra-powered supplements are no longer supported in any possible valid conversion? Spoiling the characters with messed up balance now and stripping it back down later could be a disaster morale-wise.

This also completely ignores monsters getting these abilities.. I'm sure our low level ac 20ish fighter would love being wall humped about 1/2 the rounds by that level 2 orc that could only normally hit him on a 20 (and for much more damage than using his weapon). Or even a high level fighter having the same happen (and all his even higher ac's ignored.) Or every player caster worried about a large chunk of their spells backfiring on every monster that could have invested a couple levels in monk or rogue. Or every palemaster investing heavily in feats and finding out that sneak attacks still chop him up. Balance can be tricky.

[Flickerdart]

If you're collecting books based on really poor editing, I agree wholeheartedly. :smallbiggrin:
If you're collecting books based on really poor editing, you'd own most of 3.5, I'm afraid.

[Daftendirekt]

As the evil dm that Shauctar referenced (and for the record he’s my dm in return when I play my character) I feel obliged to at least express my concerns, perhaps in a better way than he did. As he noted, I haven’t made any decisions yet; I’m still looking at a lot of the supplements and it seems if any of the new stuff for certain classes are added without doing the same for all the stuff found in supplements for other classes than the classes with the supplements dwarf the other non-supplement characters in power. (Maybe it was WotC’s marketing stratagem to encourage players to buy them just like buying rare Magic the Gathering or Pokiemon cards.) Anyways, I can’t at this time adequately judge game balance based on comparison to other class supplements; I can only try to base them on comparison to how the classes are in core rules.

First, penetrating strike. For starters, there’s no real tradeoff for most rogues; many characters already splash with rogue just for a few levels. So, one gives up a whopping +1 to trap sense (which won’t ever go up since you’re not raising rogue levels later anyways for most character splashes) to overcome the main weakness rogue characters have in combat (enemies immune to sneak attacks). Other issues such as being situational (flanking) etc.. really aren’t as big a deal as some may make them out to be as long as one isn’t running around solo. So basically, acquiring this instead of Trap Sense becomes a no-brainer and violates a fundamental rule of game balance as per DM handbook (3.0) pg. 11 “If I add this to the game, is it so good that everyone will want to take it?” At the moment, the answer seems to be yes. Having said that, perhaps there’s even meaner acf one could use in its place that would at least lead to some choice, although still making Trap Sense irrelevant for 99% of the characters created. Also, perhaps this feature wasn’t balanced as per prior rogue abilities but was only designed to allow the rogue to help keep up with all the other features added to all the other classes. Perhaps all the new features for fighters allow them to still out damage rogues on sneak immune enemies (dungeon crasher, or the 4 pt damage per -1 pt attack conversion for power attack) etc.. I haven’t looked into most of them in depth with the exception of dungeon crasher which I also have some concerns about. Anyways, I was toying with the idea of making each +1 to Trap Sense a rogue would get to give a rogue instead one more enemy type (undead, oozes, constructs, plants, elementals) that he’s studied and learned to sneak attack. This seems in balance with other feats/abilities such as ranger favored enemies and would reward the character that actually puts more than 3 levels in rogue. I might add that this nerf affects my own character (who’ll become an arcane trickster with just 3 levels in rogue) far more than it will affect Shauctar’s character who’ll have far more levels in rogue. Granted, without having another class that increases sneak attack damage (arcane trickster, assassin, others?) this feat stays relatively benign (doing 1d6 sneak on skeleton instead of 2d6 at just level 3 rogue splash). My main concern is game balance, regardless of whether it helps or hurts my own character designs more.

Second, spell reflect. Even though there might seem to be a tradeoff, for any class with multiple sources of evasion there becomes no tradeoff; you get them both. Secondly, let’s give a more reasonable example. A level 11 wizard with 14 dex shoots/touches a Halfling rogue that’s level 2. (The wizard doesn’t know the players level or class or whatever, that would be meta-gaming, so the wizard doesn’t scale down his spell level for the attack. The ranged touch attack is +5 base attack +2 so +7. The touch ac of the rogue is 10 + 5 (for 20 dex) + 1 dodge + 1 for size (as per Shauctar’s character at level 2). That’s a 17. So on a 10 or higher the wizard hits, 9 or less a miss. On a miss, it’s reflected at the same modifier, a +7 (why is caster’s own dex used against him? Guess it’s better than using the rogue’s stats.. still seems kind of screwy). This goes against the mage at 10 + 2 = 12. so a 5 or higher the mage gets hit. So, every time a mage shoots a bolt, there’s a 9 / 20 x 16/20 chance of hitting himself. That’s a 36% chance of hitting himself. This also applies to both ranged and melee touch attacks, which amount to very big chunk of the spells (i.e. evil cleric spontaneous inflict wounds). This brings up several issues.
Decent characters with evasion already have awesome resistance to any aoe reflex spells. Mage type casters aren’t likely to risk over 33% chance of hitting their already squishy hp (perhaps one shotting themselves) with their own spell. So take away every touch or ray or orb etc.. After all, they don’t find out if their target has spell reflect until _after_ they already screwed up and killed themselves. Whereas with evasion, you learn from the failure and adapt. The only way for casters to adapt is just frankly not even bother with casting touch / range touch spells (or having tons of time to buff up resistances before the fight). After all, as it’s written you don’t even need light armor to use spell reflect. So that fighter in full plate that the caster is melee/ ranged touching against might have spent two levels in rogue. Or any monster with a couple levels in rogue. Monks would even get their wisdom to help on touch attacks so even more likely for a reflect (Small monk with dodge and 18 dex + 16 wis = 19 touch ac?).
At the moment, we’re running a small party (just Shauctar and an npc to help). Relying heavily on “save or you’re basically dead” spell mechanics (such as many of the will/fortitude saves) would kind of trash the campaign. Mechanics that result in hp loss and what-not instead are more viable in this regard, yet once you strip away reflex saved spells, touch / ranged touch spells, any mind stuff if mind-immune items are common (they are in Neverwinter Nights), death type spells if deathward type stuff is common (also in Neverwinter Nights), then options become more limited. I guess every caster could just try to remain invisible and summon monsters although that seems kind of cheesy. And even if options exist (which they probably do with all the supplements for mages), I try _NOT_ to metagame my monsters. Yet, in a campaign where an enemy caster could have a 36% or greater chance of killing him/herself against opponents 9+ levels lower just from touch attacks (not every enemy is running around with high con, max hp builds), enemy casters would have somehow adapted - never bothered learning those spells or made versions to overcome this weakness. One idea I’ve toyed with is just to cap the reflect part to a caster 4 or less levels higher. This seems in balance with other mechanics I’ve read such as the rogue’s ability to avoid being flanked by other rogues (doesn’t work on rogue’s 4+), or clerics ability to turn/kill undead (no more than 4 levels over the cleric).

And yes, I’ve looked at dungeon crasher. 4d6 damage + 2x strength modifer at level 2? Ignoring all armor/shields/ natural armor? (Guess no one told Ironman that after all the times he’s smashed or been smashed into stuff.) There’s obviously serious flaws with the mechanic. Perhaps it was necessary to help balance fighters with other classes but the mechanic still is flawed (doesn’t scale well at low and possibly high end levels.) Lower level warriors in plate armor and shields would have just stopped using their weapons and started trying to bash each other against walls long ago. Anyways, if dungeon crasher is the baseline for balance that’s being used to compare the rogue stuff I mentioned, then I’m not sure it’s a good baseline. (Do you even need to move the enemy at least 5 feet for the damage or are you supposed to be allowed to wall-hump them on the same wall every turn for 8d6+4x strength at level 6, once again ignoring all their shield, armor, and natural armor bonuses???? )

Yet, many of the spellcaster stuff seems really mean. Sorcerers using spell slots to absorb damage, etc.. So, I’ll have to take all of this into consideration before deciding if some of this new stuff is balanced. Yet, I feel it’s definitely _not_ balanced with core rules by themselves.

I could just ignore whether things get imbalanced since I could always meta-game monsters to insure the only player is challenged. (still cheesy). Yet, once we get a feel for 3.5, we would like to expand to include some other people that have played with us in the past. So preserving game balance among all the characters classes is still essential, so I can’t just ignore any game balance issues since no one’s currently complaining, and it’s a lot harder/frustrating for all to take away some overpowered stuff later than to curtail it from the start. Also, if we switched to 4.0 (or even the 5.0 that’s in the works), will characters feel completely gimped if all these ultra-powered supplements are no longer supported in any possible valid conversion? Spoiling the characters with messed up balance now and stripping it back down later could be a disaster morale-wise.

This also completely ignores monsters getting these abilities.. I'm sure our low level ac 20ish fighter would love being wall humped about 1/2 the rounds by that level 2 orc that could only normally hit him on a 20 (and for much more damage than using his weapon). Or even a high level fighter having the same happen (and all his even higher ac's ignored.) Or every player caster worried about a large chunk of their spells backfiring on every monster that could have invested a couple levels in monk or rogue. Or every palemaster investing heavily in feats and finding out that sneak attacks still chop him up. Balance can be tricky.
tl;dr 10char

[Kazyan]

If you're collecting books based on really poor editing, you'd own most of 3.5, I'm afraid.

"Hey, guys, I know we're near deadlines for Magic of Most Excellent Gimmickry to blue up D&D, but should we once-over how things work with the interns? And probably get, like, at least one black person's opinion on the Dusklings?"

"No time! Quick, throw together a dragon and punt this thing out the door!"

[Curmudgeon]

... it seems if any of the new stuff for certain classes are added without doing the same for all the stuff found in supplements for other classes than the classes with the supplements dwarf the other non-supplement characters in power. ... Anyways, I can’t at this time adequately judge game balance based on comparison to other class supplements; I can only try to base them on comparison to how the classes are in core rules.
You're very far off the mark, I'm afraid. The most powerful stuff is in the core rules, and it's specific to the primary spellcasting classes. Non-core ACFs which switch around class features might give a slight boost to some classes (and Lightbringer Penetrating Strike is certainly more useful for a Rogue than trap sense), but even the best optimization won't put a Rogue in the same class as a Druid with Natural Spell — a purely core option.

There's an informative post I encourage you to read on this topic: Tier System for Classes (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=266559). Once you understand how much more power the primary spellcasting classes (Tier 1 & Tier 2) have over the martial classes (Tier 4 & Tier 5), you should never again worry that some ACFs for martial classes are "too powerful".

[barna10]

I could just ignore whether things get imbalanced since I could always meta-game monsters to insure the only player is challenged. (still cheesy). Yet, once we get a feel for 3.5, we would like to expand to include some other people that have played with us in the past. So preserving game balance among all the characters classes is still essential, so I can’t just ignore any game balance issues since no one’s currently complaining, and it’s a lot harder/frustrating for all to take away some overpowered stuff later than to curtail it from the start. Also, if we switched to 4.0 (or even the 5.0 that’s in the works), will characters feel completely gimped if all these ultra-powered supplements are no longer supported in any possible valid conversion? Spoiling the characters with messed up balance now and stripping it back down later could be a disaster morale-wise.


Why not try out the new stuff and get rid of it later if it proves too powerful/unbalancing for your group. Even some core stuff might not work for your group. There's no harm in trying stuff with the understanding you may restrict it later.

[Story]

Also, your Spell Reflection example assumes a completely unoptimized Wizard with no defences. A real Wizard would most likely open with something like Web or Stinking Cloud. And if you want to blast an opponent with unknown defences, there's always Reserve of Strength'd Maximized Fell Drain Hail of Stones. Eat 37 damage with no save, no sr, no attack roll, and no immunities.

[DEMON]

First, penetrating strike. For starters, there’s no real tradeoff for most rogues; many characters already splash with rogue just for a few levels. So, one gives up a whopping +1 to trap sense (which won’t ever go up since you’re not raising rogue levels later anyways for most character splashes) to overcome the main weakness rogue characters have in combat (enemies immune to sneak attacks). Other issues such as being situational (flanking) etc.. really aren’t as big a deal as some may make them out to be as long as one isn’t running around solo. So basically, acquiring this instead of Trap Sense becomes a no-brainer and violates a fundamental rule of game balance as per DM handbook (3.0) pg. 11 “If I add this to the game, is it so good that everyone will want to take it?” At the moment, the answer seems to be yes. Having said that, perhaps there’s even meaner acf one could use in its place that would at least lead to some choice, although still making Trap Sense irrelevant for 99% of the characters created. Also, perhaps this feature wasn’t balanced as per prior rogue abilities but was only designed to allow the rogue to help keep up with all the other features added to all the other classes. Perhaps all the new features for fighters allow them to still out damage rogues on sneak immune enemies (dungeon crasher, or the 4 pt damage per -1 pt attack conversion for power attack) etc.. I haven’t looked into most of them in depth with the exception of dungeon crasher which I also have some concerns about. Anyways, I was toying with the idea of making each +1 to Trap Sense a rogue would get to give a rogue instead one more enemy type (undead, oozes, constructs, plants, elementals) that he’s studied and learned to sneak attack. This seems in balance with other feats/abilities such as ranger favored enemies and would reward the character that actually puts more than 3 levels in rogue. I might add that this nerf affects my own character (who’ll become an arcane trickster with just 3 levels in rogue) far more than it will affect Shauctar’s character who’ll have far more levels in rogue. Granted, without having another class that increases sneak attack damage (arcane trickster, assassin, others?) this feat stays relatively benign (doing 1d6 sneak on skeleton instead of 2d6 at just level 3 rogue splash). My main concern is game balance, regardless of whether it helps or hurts my own character designs more.

Penetrating Strike > Trap Sense, agreed.
Helps make Rogue useful when fighting sneak immune stuff, without him needing to go out of his way, agreed.
Does not hurt game balance, because the game is not balanced at all, when it comes to comparing various classes.


Second, spell reflect. Even though there might seem to be a tradeoff, for any class with multiple sources of evasion there becomes no tradeoff; you get them both. Secondly, let’s give a more reasonable example. A level 11 wizard with 14 dex shoots/touches a Halfling rogue that’s level 2. (The wizard doesn’t know the players level or class or whatever, that would be meta-gaming, so the wizard doesn’t scale down his spell level for the attack. The ranged touch attack is +5 base attack +2 so +7. The touch ac of the rogue is 10 + 5 (for 20 dex) + 1 dodge + 1 for size (as per Shauctar’s character at level 2). That’s a 17. So on a 10 or higher the wizard hits, 9 or less a miss. On a miss, it’s reflected at the same modifier, a +7 (why is caster’s own dex used against him? Guess it’s better than using the rogue’s stats.. still seems kind of screwy). This goes against the mage at 10 + 2 = 12. so a 5 or higher the mage gets hit. So, every time a mage shoots a bolt, there’s a 9 / 20 x 16/20 chance of hitting himself. That’s a 36% chance of hitting himself. This also applies to both ranged and melee touch attacks, which amount to very big chunk of the spells (i.e. evil cleric spontaneous inflict wounds).

Wizards have tons of other options how to defeat this kind of characters. Reflex save attacks and AC attacks against Rogues are bad tactics on their side. Same goes for Clerics and other primary spellcasters.

Also, getting Evasion from 2 sources and trading one for Spell Reflection. Well, that way you at least get something from the other class instead of nothing, which, in my opinion, would not be fair (the latter option, that is).


And yes, I’ve looked at dungeon crasher. 4d6 damage + 2x strength modifer at level 2? Ignoring all armor/shields/ natural armor? (Guess no one told Ironman that after all the times he’s smashed or been smashed into stuff.)

What is it with Dungeoncrasher and people mentioning Marvel Universe characters? This is the second time in the last two days. Just asking...

[HalfGrammarGeek]

Also, if we switched to 4.0 (or even the 5.0 that’s in the works), will characters feel completely gimped if all these ultra-powered supplements are no longer supported in any possible valid conversion?
If you have the kind of players who like to really cheese things up and walk all over your campaign, then yes they'll probably be disappointed in 4e. But I don't think you have that problem. :) Some players who try 4e become disappointed when they realize that it doesn't have exactly the same options as 3.x, but that's a failure of expectation. For the most part, every 3e character has a close thematic 4e counterpart.

Really, I can't recommend 4e enough for the balance-concerned DM. There are occasional issues, but it's much more balanced than 3.x; since I started DMing it in 2008, I've hardly given balance a second thought. I ban feat taxes (a small subset of 4e's feats), and let my players have at the rest. And I've never once regretted my open door policy!

But if 4e isn't in the cards for you, I second barna10's suggestion: announce that you'll allow new character options, but that you reserve the right to nerf or ban broken stuff at any time. Also, don't be a stranger! If you think something might be broken, come here to get a second opinion and suggestions on nerfs/bans, if necessary.