is half Minotaur actually balanced for a melee type?

[CyberThread]

Just tossing this out...

Wizards blow stuff up, bards charm everyone and well clerics spank demons and tell them to behave, while druids have bear armies.


Is letting a player in my group, have half minotaur if they are a fighter not really all that unbalanced when the others can bend reailty?

[tyckspoon]

If the entire rest of the party is Tier 1/2 and knows what they're doing with it? Not really. Relative to pretty much anything else a melee character could do with that point of ECL? Yes, it's extremely unbalanced.

[Amnestic]

Is letting a player in my group, have half minotaur if they are a fighter not really all that unbalanced when the others can bend reailty?

That really depends - are your other players (the wizard, the bard, the cleric, the druid) actually doing all that stuff you said before?

[Kazyan]

Just say the magic words, "melee can't have nice things," and suddenly nothing is unbalanced.

[Ernir]

Depends on your definition of imbalanced/overpowered.

It is almost definitely overpowered in the context of "what template should my melee type take?" - there, it is too powerful an option compared to the other available ones. It might be overpowered in the context that it makes encounters where a powerful melee presence can be applied trivial. It might be underpowered in a game where such situations do not arise frequently, and thus facilitates hyperspecialization into an unused niche. I find it unlikely that it is imbalanced in the context that other (here: spellcasting) party members might be overshadowed or have their niches invaded.

[Eslin]

The sentinel of Bharrai gets, in addition to full casting and a bunch of other stuff, unlimited. bear form with spells, talking and gear enabled that goes all the way from black bear (Str 19, Dex 13, Con 15, medium) to dire polar bear (Str 39, Dex 11, Con 23, huge).

Melee classes would never get such things - the closest, bear warrior, replaces the raging benefits with non-dire forms and has that as almost the only class feature - simply because the designers give far, far nicer things to spellcasting classes as a manner of course.

If you're playing with only non casters, don't do it unless they're optimising similarly. But if you're having to keep up with a wizard or druid, or hell even a beguiler or ardent, do it. Shuffle feats, minmax, grab imperious command and zhentarim fighter and dungeoncrasher, get half minotaur and robilar's gambit and a spiked chain and use mercantile background and item familiar to get more cash and xp and generally do whatever it takes to stay relevant. Casters get much nicer things right out of the box and keep getting shinier and shinier things, levels of optimization which would make a DM cry foul if a cleric did them should be encouraged for you.

[dantiesilva]

Yea that is ok as I am playing a DMM Cleric that walks around all day and dose over 500 damage a turn and almost always crits. Oh and he is at level 14, so halfminotaur is nothing really. Hell let him take goliath as well at least then with a huge weapon he may be able to deal the same amount of damage as the casters.

[Urpriest]

The sentinel of Bharrai gets, in addition to full casting and a bunch of other stuff, unlimited. bear form with spells, talking and gear enabled that goes all the way from black bear (Str 19, Dex 13, Con 15, medium) to dire polar bear (Str 39, Dex 11, Con 23, huge).

You don't get Dire Polar Bear. You get Dire Bear. Not Dire (any type of bear), not Dire (previous types of bear), Dire Bear.

As for whether it's better than Bear Warrior, there is the point to be made that one replaces stats while the other stacks. I'll agree that the overall build is more potent, though.

To the OP: Half-Minotaur is unbalanced because of the dumb precedent it sets for size increases, independently of its actual effect on melee competence. Allowing it also encourages melee to keep doing boring melee things rather than actually addressing the tier disparity by playing more versatile or qualitative classes.