things that tick us off.

[big teej]

Greetings Playgrounders

I'm sure it's happened to all of us at some point.

we're reading through our rulebooks, delighting in our hobby, when we come across something that is simply not okay.

something that is simply an abomination.

something that makes us rage to the core of our nerdy hearts.


this is a forum to share these things. if you have something you did to fix it, by all means share that as well.


my moment came last night while reading through Complete Divine.

the cause of my pain is that the Druid can take a feat that essentially replicates the Knight's capstone

the feat is Boar's Ferocity, which essentially lets you keep going for up to a minute (as long as you don't die) by expending a wildshape use.

the Knight's capstone is "Loyal Beyond Death" which allows you to keep going as long as you have Knight's Challenge uses left.

and this perturbs me greatly. (it certainly doesn't help that the knight is my favorite class)

so. what makes you rage?

[Flickerdart]

I hope you never find Delay Death, then, or the Frenzied Berserker...

[Fouredged Sword]

Or layering extended persisted delay death to just keep going.

[Hunter Noventa]

Or that the same Druid's Animal Companion is busy being a better fighter than the fighter while the Druid is not dying.

[Telonius]

Weapon Finesse's +1 BAB requirement is like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. "But ... but ... it's a Rogue feat! That he can't take at first level!"

The other one that immediately springs to mind... the fact that tree-hugging hippies Druids don't get Knowledge (Geography) as a class skill. "Oh, yes, I'm at one with the natural world, but I have no idea what the landscape is like around here." Not that anybody but Horizon Walkers ever actually takes ranks in Knowledge (Geography). But still!

[Kelb_Panthera]

Not something I read in one of the books but something I frequently read here; that Crusader, Swordsage, and Warblade REPLACE Paladin, Monk, and Fighter. Grrr :smallfurious:

If anything those classes compliment each other more than anything else. A paladin/crusader/ruby knight vindicator is awesomesauce and so is a monk/swordsage/shadow sun ninja. Sure they're not the most optimal build choices but they're nothing to sneeze at either. Nevermind how staggeringly limiting the martial adepts are in regards to PrC's. There're only a half dozen or so PrC's that advance maneuvers.

Don't get me wrong. ToB is an excellent supplement that I'd recommend to anyone that asked about it but it emphatically does not negate all the martial options that came before.

[Venger]

Soulborn.

(reads incarnate)

Wow! look at all those melds! pity about the BA, but there's always skillful weapons.

(reads totemist)

Cool! better beef up on the natural attack rules. not much overlap with incarnate (3 melds). I wonder what kind of unique melds soulborn has

(reads soulborn)

(cries forever)

a meldshaping class. that can't meldshape until level 4. it gets less melds, binds, and essentia at 20 than the other two get at 10. and it only has 5 unique melds, the rest of its tiny list being poached from incarnate.

it's a perfect storm of laziness (not giving it unique melds), stupidity (thinking that full BA is good enough to require no melds for 4 lvls as a balancing factor) and just overall mediocrity (everything else) that I feel is unparalleled with any other class in the game.

[Krobar]

I hate the heavy feat tax and penalties for Two Weapon Fighting. It's ridiculously expensive for what you get.

[The Viscount]

Duskblade makes me mad sometimes, but it's not really about duskblade itself. It's that WotC took so long to make a character like duskblade, that has full BA and actually casts (if only up to 5ths) with a positively generous number of spells per day, and proficiency with armors. The result is a rather middling power level. Duskblade is good, but it's not gamebreaking. I only wish they had realized this earlier, and gone easier on classes like the poor hexblade.

[eggynack]

Frigging monks. There's this cliche about everyone around these parts hating monks, and I live that cliche to the fullest. Somewhere in between their attractiveness to new players, their intrinsic potential, and their horrible and asynergistic abilities, lies a class that I hate more than any other. No one can even really tell you what you're supposed to do with a monk. I'm never really sure if they're supposed to be a front line melee, a guy that darts in and out of combat to deliver swift blows, or a wizard's worst nightmare, but what I am sure of is that they fail in all of these roles. It's probably my least favorite class in the game, if only for the vast gulf between the immediate perception of them, and the truth of their existence.

[Carth]

Also monks, but for somewhat different reasons. They're my favorite kind of character to play, and indeed were my first character. Early on I would alternate between monk and then something else. But then as I got to playing other kinds of characters...well, yeah. I still love playing monk types, I'm just saddened that the base class is so pathetic. Pathfinder had an opportunity to significantly change it, but alas, dumpster diving is still required for them to keep up with other classes.

[Metahuman1]

Duskblade spell and skill list: Why, oh why, couldn't he just have a few more nice long acting buffs, nice effective touch spells to channel, and maybe a few spells that decent crowd control/out of combat effectiveness items? I'm not looking for all the best spells. Delay access to some of them compared to other casters. And maybe give it some social skills as class skills to give it the opton of doing something other then DPR and Knowledge Monkey.

[The Ravensong]

Weapon Finesse's +1 BAB requirement is like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. "But ... but ... it's a Rogue feat! That he can't take at first level!"!

This. This is why I hate starting out at level one, and when I do play rogue characters I'm always tempted to dip into something else first.

Also, monk special weapons that require monks to take exotic weapon proficiency. (House ruled away)

[BWR]

1) Fighters and feats. Fighters get lots of feats. I can understand that early on in the game, the idea that getting a lot of feats was considered powerful enough to be the entirety of the class. But when they realized that it wasn't enough, they didn't fix it enough. The Tactical feats and Weapon Mastery feats presented in Complete Warrior were a nice idea, but didn't really work well enough.
Instead we got ToB, which I don't like at all.

Instead of making new subsystems they could easily have created a number of strong, fighter only feats that actually made the fighter good.

2) Mostly useless feats. Things like Mobility. How the hell was this considered good enough to be a standalone feat? Why wasn't it removed in PF? Shove it in with either Dodge or Spring Attack.
Or Endurance? Does anyone take it other than as a prereq? Why not just meld it together with Diehard?

[XmonkTad]

I hate how spontaneous casters get their higher level spells a level later than the prepared casters. I get that there were balance and design reasons why it is this way. I still hate it.

[pyromanser244]

exotic weapon proficiencies. for all the awesome exotic weapons that have rules none of them are worth feats to get.

[Invader]

Nonsynergistic feat taxes. Really it's just lazy game design/balance.

[TypoNinja]

Sorcerer and Favored Soul.

I like the Spontaneous method of magic over prepared casting, but the way the game gave them to us is just so terrible.

Sorcerer gets slower spells, his per day gain is not as good as it should be thanks to the strength of wizard ACF's, gets hosed for metamagic, and loses the precious bonus feats. Doesn't have nearly as many, or nearly as awesome ACF's, and there are some very nice PrC's that a wizard can get into a sorc can't.

For all that he gets a very limited spell list, but can cast what he want off it. The trade offs are not equal.

Like wise the favored soul, gave up far far too much in exchange for spontaneous casting.

No Domains, no Turn undead, loses the heavy armor prof even though its supposed to be a fighty type based on getting free weapon feats. Its class features are terrible, (I have cleric casting and you thought energy resistance would be something I lacked?) and the loss of domains does a good job cutting into its spells a day advantage, not to mention domian powers, and the ability to get access to spells that only appear as domain spells for a cleric. And of course no turn undead attempts shuts you out of a lot the awesome divine stuff.

Loss of turn undead is really baffling to me, as it seems like channeling pure holy power is pretty much perfectly in line with the classes flavor, and there are so many extras based around alternate uses of turn undead attempts.

Both of them are classes you PrC out of as fast as possible, as long as it still gives full casting literally anything is better than the base class, and that's just not right.

[dspeyer]

Speaking of Knowledge(geography), why don't clerics of Fharlanghn get it? They literally spend their entire lives travelling and helping others to travel.

On the subject of skills, barbarians get neither knowledge(nature) nor perform. Any barbarian should be able to distinguish among 20 species of mushrooms and recite the history of his clan as an epic poem.

As for favored soul, it bugs me how little difference your patron deity makes. It's all about being favored by a deity, but favored souls of Pelor and St Cuthbert get the *exact same abilities*.

[lord pringle]

Monk's capstone. Look you can almost cast a first level spell.

[Kuulvheysoon]

True Dragon LA. It makes me sad.

Also, agreed on the soulborn. Horrible, horrible nightmare. And most of Complete Psionic.

Especially the Lurk. So awesome in concept, yet they managed to screw it up.

Oh, and the soulknife. Oh gods, the soulknife.

[Amphetryon]

I'd really like the unofficial Hexblade Fix from Mike Mearls to be the OFFICIAL Hexblade Fix. As it is. . . so much wasted potential for cool.

[eggynack]

Monk's capstone. Look you can almost cast a first level spell.
I toss a few agreement points at this one. Monks aren't the only class with a lame capstone either. Most PHB classes have a pretty terrible capstone, particularly the rogue. You could replace that level with nearly anything in the game, and you'd be doing better, particularly if you run fractional BAB and saves. They just weren't really considering a reward for reaching level twenty when they put those classes together.

[GoddessSune]

Bad and/or no editing. It really ticks me off that the creators of the game can't hire anyone to take even just an hour to flip through the books before they print. There is so much that gets missed.

And even more, why can't they have a game player look over the stuff. After all, any game player could spot all the 'holes' and have them add a whole sentence or two that would fix them.

[Tuki Tuki]

I hate race perquisites that make no sense, like wild runner. Why do you have to be an elf to run faster?

[Invader]

True Dragon LA. It makes me sad.



Ooh yeah this. I've always wanted to play a dragon and this pretty much ruins it.

[Karnith]

Ooh yeah this. I've always wanted to play a dragon and this pretty much ruins it.
Honestly, the LA/ECL put on pretty much every creature or template is pretty frustrating. It's rare to find monsters with ECLs that aren't vastly inflated.

[Grommen]

Cure spells on a bard. Just P##@$#ed me right off. I've gotten over it now though. Still don't get it it should be part of the divine only but it is what it is.

Right behind that was the concept of Wizards wearing armor. Just a hole lot of no happening right there. :smallannoyed:

The Tier system. No I don't need someone to tell me how much I suck, I'll figure that out on my own. (please note this is not up for debate if you like it more power to you). :smalleek:

When Reading Pathfinder's "Second Darkness" campaign :smallfurious:

When you get to the part where your party is going under cover and the elves think it's ok to use a necromancy spell to removed the flesh off a dead Drow and put it on you. Their is exactly zero ways that will ever happen. Even Vecna would say, "Dude that is just wrong". What the hell were they thinking. Just hearing that proposal should cause a Palidian to fall.

[Augmental]

Right behind that was the concept of Wizards wearing armor. Just a hole lot of no happening right there. :smallannoyed:

Sounds like a recipe for a balanced wizard to me.


The Tier system. No I don't need someone to tell me how much I suck, I'll figure that out on my own. (please note this is not up for debate if you like it more power to you). :smalleek:

The tier system isn't a value judgement of classes, it's a ranking of their relative power and versatility. Just because someone's playing a fighter doesn't mean they suck.

[angry_bear]

Eberron fluff... Ye gods do I hate the Eberron fluff. It has some good feats, and lends a hand toward fixing damaged classes like the monk with those feats. But, the campaign setting, and even the fact that anything out of the MM can basically be any alignment is just... No, it's stupid.

Same goes for Warforged.

...I never actually noticed that weapon finesse requires a BAB of +1. That means I've been cheating with every single rogue I've played at level 1. :smalleek:

[gurgleflep]

Improper wording, typos and improper punctuation in any of the books. Annoys the heck outta me far more than it should! :smallmad: I can't recall which books I've seen them in, but I know I've seen them!

Also, the Dragon Shaman. They're an interesting class, but are also way underpowered. I mean c'mon! For people worshipping dragons, they need more to them than wings at 19th level :smallannoyed:

[Kuulvheysoon]

Eberron fluff... Ye gods do I hate the Eberron fluff. It has some good feats, and lends a hand toward fixing damaged classes like the monk with those feats. But, the campaign setting, and even the fact that anything out of the MM can basically be any alignment is just... No, it's stupid.

Same goes for Warforged.

...I never actually noticed that weapon finesse requires a BAB of +1. That means I've been cheating with every single rogue I've played at level 1. :smalleek:

You know, I was the same way, then it just started to grow on me.

Oh, sure, 3.x Realms will always hold my heart, but I'm come to quite enjoy Eberron.

[angry_bear]

You know, I was the same way, then it just started to grow on me.

Oh, sure, 3.x Realms will always hold my heart, but I'm come to quite enjoy Eberron.

See, I do like some stuff out of Eberron. Stuff like the Astral Stalker, and a number of feats and a few PrC's are actually kinda neat. But I'm not sure if I'd ever want to actually play in another Eberron campaign...

[Venger]

See, I do like some stuff out of Eberron. Stuff like the Astral Stalker, and a number of feats and a few PrC's are actually kinda neat. But I'm not sure if I'd ever want to actually play in another Eberron campaign...

which books have you read? there are dozens of them. if one isn't to your liking, you're sure to find one you like elsewhere in the eberron umbrella (not because THEY'RE SO AMAZING AND YOU JUST DON'T GET IT but because they display a great deal of variety)

one of my favorites are eberron explorer's handbook (teaches you how to make traveling fun! tells you how to avoid the problem in every dnd game:)

dm "you get quest at location x"
wizard "i will teleport us there"
dm (tears up notes) "mind if I take a five?"

it doesnt' just say teleport-lock everythign, but gives fun ideas for travel campaigns (along with al kinds of cool stuff about eberron geography)

another is five nations. it's got the kickass bone knight prc and has the history of eberron so you can figure out what the deal is (which, even I, someone who loves eberron more than any other setting, will admit is hard to piece together from the ECS alone)

[angry_bear]

That does sound interesting... I've read the core Eberron stuff, I think it was mostly just the core book, and Races of Eberron that I had access to at the time; but the material just didn't appeal to me much as a whole.

A friend of mine has the complete selection of 3.5 Eberron books though, I'll have to borrow a few off of him and try to give it another chance.

...Still hate Warforged though. That'll never change. lol

[ddude987]

I hate that fighters only get feats. Sure feats are absolutely awesome but only feats... its so boring. Fixed (as op asked) with homebrew from sig. DM let's the party use it and they all love it.

[Kelb_Panthera]

That does sound interesting... I've read the core Eberron stuff, I think it was mostly just the core book, and Races of Eberron that I had access to at the time; but the material just didn't appeal to me much as a whole.

A friend of mine has the complete selection of 3.5 Eberron books though, I'll have to borrow a few off of him and try to give it another chance.

...Still hate Warforged though. That'll never change. lol

Please tell my you at least thought changeling psychology was interesting enough to provoke absolutely fascinating contemplations.

Part of the reason they're one of my favorite races is because they're such damaged people.

Identity crisis in a mid-teen adolescent who can change his appearence at will, Hah!

[angry_bear]

Please tell my you at least thought changeling psychology was interesting enough to provoke absolutely fascinating contemplations.

Part of the reason they're one of my favorite races is because they're such damaged people.

Identity crisis in a mid-teen adolescent who can change his appearence at will, Hah!

I don't have any real issues with Changelings. I've played a few, and had fun with it.

[Venger]

Please tell my you at least thought changeling psychology was interesting enough to provoke absolutely fascinating contemplations.

Part of the reason they're one of my favorite races is because they're such damaged people.

Identity crisis in a mid-teen adolescent who can change his appearence at will, Hah!

mine too!

great to play around with gender identity/sexual orientation.

[Snowbluff]

Monks. Oooooh monks. My oldest foe. With my last breath, I will strike at thee.

[sonofzeal]

...Still hate Warforged though. That'll never change. lol
I've heard this before but never really understood it. I mean, D&D has had constructs, even intelligent constructs and clockwork/steampunk whatsits, for ages. Warforged are somewhere between those and treants. The "Living Construct" type is novel, but the fluff isn't exactly carving out bold new territories here.

So why do people seem to get so worked up about it? I'm honestly confused.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I've heard this before but never really understood it. I mean, D&D has had constructs, even intelligent constructs and clockwork/steampunk whatsits, for ages. Warforged are somewhere between those and treants. The "Living Construct" type is novel, but the fluff isn't exactly carving out bold new territories here.

So why do people seem to get so worked up about it? I'm honestly confused.

Because robots in medieval fantasy.

I don't feel this way myself but I understand the reaction.

[BobVosh]

I hate the summoner in pathfinder basically being a pet master. You only summon if your pet is somehow banished.

+1 more for prereqs on my weapon finesse.

I for one don't like the culture or design of warforged. Then again I'm not much of a fan of Eberron really. I do wish we could see what Rich designed instead.

TWF feat taxes.

[TypoNinja]

Ooh yeah this. I've always wanted to play a dragon and this pretty much ruins it.

This really depends on the average optimization level of your group. I'm playing a dragon currently and I gotta say, I'm the biggest bad ass in the party by a good margin. I'm even outshining the casters. I deliberately stopped taking feats to make me more effective because It was starting to get silly.

And now I'm starting to get caster levels....

[Snowbluff]

I've heard this before but never really understood it. I mean, D&D has had constructs, even intelligent constructs and clockwork/steampunk whatsits, for ages. Warforged are somewhere between those and treants. The "Living Construct" type is novel, but the fluff isn't exactly carving out bold new territories here.

So why do people seem to get so worked up about it? I'm honestly confused.Well, steampunk for starters.

In my experience, it's a race where subpar role players can act even more robotic and wooden than they normally do. They will do everything they can to ensure their special snowflake character from the Mary Sue race will be imposed over every fragment of your game.

Yes, I do mean the silly voices.

If they insist in acting like an NPC, treat them like one. Robot don't get loot. If he complains, point out the war forged wil not have emotions to care. If he calls you a meatbag, throw him in a pit full of rust monsters.

Viva la flesh! Long live the ugly bags of mostly water!:smalltongue:

[erikun]

Weapon Finesse's +1 BAB requirement is like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. "But ... but ... it's a Rogue feat! That he can't take at first level!"

The other one that immediately springs to mind... the fact that tree-hugging hippies Druids don't get Knowledge (Geography) as a class skill. "Oh, yes, I'm at one with the natural world, but I have no idea what the landscape is like around here." Not that anybody but Horizon Walkers ever actually takes ranks in Knowledge (Geography). But still!
Want to be an archer at level 1? Want to do something neat? Well too bad; you're probably going to be a human or a fighter, just to pick up Precise Shot so you don't face a crippling penalities trying to hit opponents attacking you allies (which all will certainly be doing).

Other annoyances? Search is thoroughly examining the area for anything unusual. Knowledge [Local] is knowing the laws, customs, and inhabitants of the area. And yet, both are so rarely class skills for anything! I could see an explanation for Search (although I really question it) although I am not understanding why a Fighter or Sorcerer would need to put in extra study to know what's happening in their hometown.

[sonofzeal]

Because robots in medieval fantasy.

I don't feel this way myself but I understand the reaction.
But... golems! Robots are Core. Every campaign setting I'm aware of has them around in some capacity. Nobody seems to bat an eye at golems, but suddenly Warforged break immersion? Wut?

[Snowbluff]

But... golems! Robots are Core. Every campaign setting I'm aware of has them around in some capacity. Nobody seems to bat an eye at golems, but suddenly Warforged break immersion? Wut?

Correction. Those are golems, as seen in mythology. Not wooden metal whichicmabobber androids with an AI. The inevitables are closer to what I would be complaining about, but they come from another plane, and we don't have to interact with them.

Not that I particularly care. :smalltongue:

[Kelb_Panthera]

But... golems! Robots are Core. Every campaign setting I'm aware of has them around in some capacity. Nobody seems to bat an eye at golems, but suddenly Warforged break immersion? Wut?

Not robots, as in autonomous mobile analogues to creatures, but robots, as in artificial people. Androids really.

It's not magic giving a doll or statue mobility that's the problem but magic giving that doll or statue a mind that's equivalent to a human. It trips the sci-fi/fantasy crossover trigger in a way that golems and even homonculi don't.

Again, I can wrap my head around it a bit but I really don't give the argument much weight. I like warforged just fine. Their psychology can be almost as interesting as changelings'.

[Siosilvar]

Cure spells on a bard. Just P##@$#ed me right off. I've gotten over it now though. Still don't get it it should be part of the divine only but it is what it is.

What it is is a holdover from when bards were fighters of a certain level dual-classed into thief up to a certain level and then dual-classed to "druid" which wasn't really druid but was actually a special bard progression. Yes, you dual-classed into three classes, don't worry about it.

2nd edition at least had the sense to make them into their own class instead of this strange amalgamation, but gave them wizard casting instead of druid casting.

The spell list you see in 3.X lies somewhere between the two approaches, with an emphasis on illusions and enchantments because music.

[sonofzeal]

Not robots, as in autonomous mobile analogues to creatures, but robots, as in artificial people. Androids really.

It's not magic giving a doll or statue mobility that's the problem but magic giving that doll or statue a mind that's equivalent to a human. It trips the sci-fi/fantasy crossover trigger in a way that golems and even homonculi don't.
A Golem isn't an Animated Object though. You can "give a doll or statue mobility" with a core spell, possibly several, but a Golem is a robot by almost any definition.

If a construct with an Intelligence score is a problem, those have been in Greyhawk at minimum since 3.0. There's even playable construct races in 3.0.

I just... don't get it.

[Saintheart]

(1) Bastard swords, or Swords of Bastardry as I call 'em. Any twit able to put a helmet on his head with the faceplate forward can use a dagger, short sword, long sword, or butter knife so long as it fits in one hand and has a modestly sharpened edge. And said twit also has no problems using a greatsword, which is so awesomely complex it requires two hands to use.

But a hand-and-a-half sword, which by definition falls right in the middle of those two? OHHH, EXOTIC WEAPON PROFICIENCY, YOU MUST SPEND EXTRA YEARS TRAINING TO BE ABLE TO PICK UP THIS WEAPON AND NOT SUCK.

(2) Scouts do not trigger skirmish damage when their mount is moving. Hate it. Hate. This single issue eliminates horse archers as a real force in D&D, and I hate that.

[sonofzeal]

(1) Bastard swords, or Swords of Bastardry as I call 'em. Any twit able to put a helmet on his head with the faceplate forward can use a dagger, short sword, long sword, or butter knife so long as it fits in one hand and has a modestly sharpened edge. And said twit also has no problems using a greatsword, which is so awesomely complex it requires two hands to use.

But a hand-and-a-half sword, which by definition falls right in the middle of those two? OHHH, EXOTIC WEAPON PROFICIENCY, YOU MUST SPEND EXTRA YEARS TRAINING TO BE ABLE TO PICK UP THIS WEAPON AND NOT SUCK.
Actually, I believe anyone with martial proficiency can use a bastard sword in two hands just fine. It's only when weilding it in one hand that you need a feat. Which, honestly, makes some sense - it's bigger than most one-handed swords, and that can make it harder to control and use effectively. Speaking as someone who's trained IRL in bastard swords, I don't have an objection to that setup.

[eggynack]

But a hand-and-a-half sword, which by definition falls right in the middle of those two? OHHH, EXOTIC WEAPON PROFICIENCY, YOU MUST SPEND EXTRA YEARS TRAINING TO BE ABLE TO PICK UP THIS WEAPON AND NOT SUCK.

Actually, you must spend extra years training to be able to pick up this weapon and suck less. I frigging hate bastard swords. I've stated outright that I wouldn't even use the thing on a CW samurai, and they get it for free, and get bonus feats when using it. I think you're still much better off using a great sword. There's even a part of me that would consider not using it over a strictly worse long sword, even if I got the bastard sword for free, just based on the principle of the thing. The weapon is just that stupid.

[Kelb_Panthera]

A Golem isn't an Animated Object though. You can "give a doll or statue mobility" with a core spell, possibly several, but a Golem is a robot by almost any definition.

If a construct with an Intelligence score is a problem, those have been in Greyhawk at minimum since 3.0. There's even playable construct races in 3.0.

I just... don't get it.

I never said it made a whole helluva lot of sense.

Btw, what are these 3.0 playable constructs?

[Saintheart]

Actually, I believe anyone with martial proficiency can use a bastard sword in two hands just fine. It's only when weilding it in one hand that you need a feat. Which, honestly, makes some sense - it's bigger than most one-handed swords, and that can make it harder to control and use effectively. Speaking as someone who's trained IRL in bastard swords, I don't have an objection to that setup.

I'd foam at the mouth a lot less if the Monkey Grip feat did not exist, which allows you to wield Greatswords with one hand at -2, but which still forces you to use a smaller weapon -- the Bastard Sword -- at -4 unless you have EWP :smallbiggrin:

EDIT: It's also more just the inconsistency to me personally: the Fighter can kill reliably with just about any edged weapon he can get his hands on, presumably by dint of long training with them, but part of that training does not include how to handle the hand-and-a-half sword (the prime point of which seems to be to use either one hand or two. Don't get me wrong, EWP in some cases seems appropriate -- spiked chains for one -- but this one just gets my goat.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I'd foam at the mouth a lot less if the Monkey Grip feat did not exist, which allows you to wield Greatswords with one hand at -2, but which still forces you to use a smaller weapon -- the Bastard Sword -- at -4 unless you have EWP :smallbiggrin:

Monkey grip doesn't actually do that and you could use it to wield the bastard sword at the same -2 if it did.

[Sylthia]

Mine is inconsistent use of pronouns. It seems in an attempt to be PC, many RPG books have sprinkled many third person feminine pronouns, which is not bad in and of itself, but it seems rather arbitrary and when it goes from "he" to "she" and back again in the same paragraph, it just makes it hard to follow.

It's times like that that I wish English would just adopt "they" as the accepted third person pronoun for neutral gender.

[eggynack]

All this talk of monkey grip has made me remember to add monkey grip to the list. It's a feat that's practically guaranteed to make a new player think it's crazy broken, and it's equally guaranteed to make an experienced player think that the character taking it is crazy broken, but in the opposite way. I hate things in the game that are like that. In the same vein, I'm also adding vow of poverty. Like monkey grip, it looks overpowered, and is actually underpowered. Traps for new players are just mean. Ooh, also the mystic theurge. Not as much as the other two, because a mystic theurge can be legitimately powerful, but it's such a boring class.

[Yondu]

When I read on every forum that spellcasters replace every class in the game....
That make me furious as D&D is a cooperative game and, sure, spells can be very efficient but they can run out quickly and they have to be launched before the fight or the action, and moreover, they have to be prepared... Fighter, Rogue are ready to act on the spot, without delay, sure they will be less efficient sometimes....
For EWP, my point of view is that taking one feat for one weapon is a cost that most character do not want to pay as feats are scarce.... the idea of NWN2 to give access to all EWP with one feat was an idea...(Same idea for Exotic Armor or shields), especially when you see that some races have exotic racial weapon for free...
Same on Weapon Finesse you can't take on level 1 if you are not a melee class...

[eggynack]

When I read on every forum that spellcasters replace every class in the game....
That make me furious as D&D is a cooperative game and, sure, spells can be very efficient but they can run out quickly and they have to be launched before the fight or the action, and moreover, they have to be prepared... Fighter, Rogue are ready to act on the spot, without delay, sure they will be less efficient sometimes....
Well, here's another thing that annoys me. First, is the assumption that our understanding of balance is somehow predicated on a non-cooperative game. Every aspect of the tier system is expressly based on a classic game of D&D, and it explicitly eschews the idea of arena fighting.

Second, is the idea that wizards tend to run out of spells quickly, or need to do things in a way that makes them inefficient. Once you get to somewhere between levels two and five, you have enough spells to easily last the whole day. Moreover, wizards tend to act either on the spot, or with all day buffs. There is absolutely nothing about solid fog that requires any time out of the wizard's day that exceeds a standard action. The wizard's command of the action economy is actually much greater than that of a fighter, because they mostly use standard actions and have access to swifts, while a fighter relies on getting into position and making full attacks. On a surprise round, the wizard is going to act with nearly maximum force immediately, while the fighter is left either plinking away with arrows, or doing absolutely nothing.

So, what ticks me off is basically inaccurate criticisms of our understanding of balance. The fact that this tends to go hand in hand with my hatred of monks adds to the whole situation.

[sonofzeal]

Btw, what are these 3.0 playable constructs?
Fiend Folio (technically 3.0 though it tried to anticipate several 3.5 changes) had Maugs, an ECL 5 construct race. Granted that they're stone, rather than metal, but they're still "constructs" rather than "elementals" or "outsider" or something. I don't know of any playable robots in 3.0, but there were playable constructs, and construct robots.

[Jeff the Green]

It's times like that that I wish English would just adopt "they" as the accepted third person pronoun for neutral gender.

It kind of has. If it was good enough for Shakespeare, it should be good enough for English teachers.

I really hate the poor layout of ToB and MoI. They're awesome subsystems, but the layout makes them hard to use. Ditto for the factotum. It's mostly useable, but not without a hefty dose of interpretation (e.g. when does an encounter start? Do you get IP outside of battle? How often?)

[Carth]

When I read on every forum that spellcasters replace every class in the game....

Holy hyperbole Batman!

[Jeff the Green]

Holy hyperbole Batman!

Well, strictly speaking, they can. Summoning does beatsticking as well or better than a beatstick class, clerics can find and disable traps with the appropriate domains (or even with find traps and summon dead monkey), and spells give better bonuses to skills than ranks can. All-cleric, all-druid, all-wizard, and all-sorcerer parties are perfectly viable, particularly with .

That's not to say playing a mundane class is bad. I don't usually have the urge, but I certainly understand the desire to play someone who doesn't have magic abilities.

[Gwendol]

Feat trees: they're basically made to give the illusion the fighter has class features. Most of them are utterly horrible.

[Grim Reader]

Ur-priest. Fairly easy to enter, 9th level spells in 9 levels. Not just didn't they get that this was badly balanced when they first made it, they were so happy with their work that they reprinted it in Complete Divine!

Its just...I can see things not working the way they were intended, the occasioal accident in design and playtesting, but not noticing that that is broken and reprinting it!?

Ranger animal companion. The Druid has wildshape and full spell progression. The Ranger had full BaB, half casting and a few mandatory feats. Clearly we must cripple the ranger animal companion to insure balance!! At least they got the Beastmaster-fix.

Cleric - Favored Soul. Lets make a class that is exactly like the Cleric only worse in every way, and can do nothing the Cleric cannot do better. After years of the Wizard - Sorcerer.

[Invader]

This really depends on the average optimization level of your group. I'm playing a dragon currently and I gotta say, I'm the biggest bad ass in the party by a good margin. I'm even outshining the casters. I deliberately stopped taking feats to make me more effective because It was starting to get silly.

And now I'm starting to get caster levels....

What type of dragon are you playing? I find it hard to believe saddled with their ridiculous LA and RHD you're that powerful unless you're in a group with low tier martial classes.

[Krazzman]

Sorcerer - Wizard.

I remember having read somewhere that one of the creators didn't like sorcerers and therefore they have these problems... could be a hoax or something but... yeah if it is true then you know why this aggravates me.

Pathfinder did some nice things to the sorcerer, in my opinion.

[BobVosh]

What type of dragon are you playing? I find it hard to believe saddled with their ridiculous LA and RHD you're that powerful unless you're in a group with low tier martial classes.

Or messing up how RHD and LA work. I know I did when I first started.

[Felandria]

Enlarge Person

So, let me get this straight, you double in size, in every sense, and yet you get a negative to AC with no natural armor compensation?

Look, if I hit someone with an axe, and then that person doubles in size and I hit them again, IT SHOULD BE LESS EFFECTIVE, NOT MORE!

How does being bigger make you EASIER to hurt?

Your skin is twice as thick, surely some natural armor is in order.

Righteous Might and Divine Vessel at least gives you things to compensate for the lower AC.

Alter Self

No matter what, you can't look like anyone specific.

Then why does this spell exist?

If you're wanting to magically change your appearance, most of the time it's to disguise yourself as someone else.

Why is is so impossible to pretend to be someone specific?

[Kelb_Panthera]

Enlarge Person

So, let me get this straight, you double in size, in every sense, and yet you get a negative to AC with no natural armor compensation?

Look, if I hit someone with an axe, and then that person doubles in size and I hit them again, IT SHOULD BE LESS EFFECTIVE, NOT MORE!

How does being bigger make you EASIER to hurt?

Your skin is twice as thick, surely some natural armor is in order.

Righteous Might and Divine Vessel at least gives you things to compensate for the lower AC. No argument here. It doesn't really bug me that much but it doesn't make a lot of sense either.


Alter Self

No matter what, you can't look like anyone specific.

Then why does this spell exist?

If you're wanting to magically change your appearance, most of the time it's to disguise yourself as someone else.

Why is is so impossible to pretend to be someone specific?

That's what disguise self is for. Alter self is for gaining minor qualities of other creatures such as movement modes and natural armor.

Also note that both alter self and disguise self give untyped +10 bonuses on disguise checks to simply look like not-you. Together they can make it nearly impossible to pierce your disguise.

[TypoNinja]

What type of dragon are you playing? I find it hard to believe saddled with their ridiculous LA and RHD you're that powerful unless you're in a group with low tier martial classes.

Fang Dragon, the LA hurt quite a bit until after 8thth level or so, my HP was kind of low, but d12, and lots of racial con increases made up for it fast. Once I passed 9 HD the nat armour started stacking to useful levels, and well, I just never miss things, and now I'm at the point where even bruiser type enemies miss me frequently. Magic is my only real weakness, but I've got obscene saves, and silly amounts of HP, so not much is very effective.

I've got 6 attacks, my racial for Fang Dragon is my natural attacks do more damage, pair that with improved natural attack, and a Str score of "Oh my GOD", combined with improved multi-attack so I've got no penalty on any of my attacks, which all do lots of damage.

If it starts a turn in Melee range of me its probably about to die. I love it when the enemy goes first, cause then I get to full attack the poor SOB who walked into melee with the Dragon.

RHD was the point, Dragon HD are actually pretty good on a True Dragon.

d12, skill points coming out your ears, a racial exception to the rule about int increases and retroactive skill points, full BAB, all good saves, +1 nat armour per HD, Racial ability increases, and size increases, still get what amounts to class features in the form of special abilities, Blindsense, flight, a fear aura, and if the game goes on long enough, spellcasting on top of it all.

Granted the SR and DR come too late and in too small a value to be useful, but I set out to make something that would just slice things into ribbions.

If I was feeling mean I'd add in Improved Rapidstrike Claws and Wings, for 6 more attacks, but honestly, I've yet to fight anything that needed it. If a fight ever boils down to a game of shot for shot I win. Yes our party wizard vastly outdistances me in terms of utility, when we need something, want to know something, have to do something odd , its his job, but once we figure out who needs to get hit, that's my department.

[Invader]

Fang Dragon, the LA hurt quite a bit until after 8thth level or so, my HP was kind of low, but d12, and lots of racial con increases made up for it fast. Once I passed 9 HD the nat armour started stacking to useful levels, and well, I just never miss things, and now I'm at the point where even bruiser type enemies miss me frequently. Magic is my only real weakness, but I've got obscene saves, and silly amounts of HP, so not much is very effective.

I've got 6 attacks, my racial for Fang Dragon is my natural attacks do more damage, pair that with improved natural attack, and a Str score of "Oh my GOD", combined with improved multi-attack so I've got no penalty on any of my attacks, which all do lots of damage.

If it starts a turn in Melee range of me its probably about to die. I love it when the enemy goes first, cause then I get to full attack the poor SOB who walked into melee with the Dragon.

RHD was the point, Dragon HD are actually pretty good on a True Dragon.

d12, skill points coming out your ears, a racial exception to the rule about int increases and retroactive skill points, full BAB, all good saves, +1 nat armour per HD, Racial ability increases, and size increases, still get what amounts to class features in the form of special abilities, Blindsense, flight, a fear aura, and if the game goes on long enough, spellcasting on top of it all.

Granted the SR and DR come too late and in too small a value to be useful, but I set out to make something that would just slice things into ribbions.

If I was feeling mean I'd add in Improved Rapidstrike Claws and Wings, for 6 more attacks, but honestly, I've yet to fight anything that needed it. If a fight ever boils down to a game of shot for shot I win. Yes our party wizard vastly outdistances me in terms of utility, when we need something, want to know something, have to do something odd , its his job, but once we figure out who needs to get hit, that's my department.

I'm confused, are you getting age categories like class levels? Whats the LA, what age category are you, and have you taken any PC class levels, and whats levels are the people in your party?

Edit I couldn't find the LA for the different age categories just the RHD.

[Gwendol]

Dragon HD are not bad, it's the LA that's (as usual) uncalled for. Any sane DM allowing monster characters will scrap LA altogether.

[Seharvepernfan]

WOTC.

Those psychopathic bastards are the single biggest source of our problems.

[Yondu]

Well, here's another thing that annoys me. First, is the assumption that our understanding of balance is somehow predicated on a non-cooperative game. Every aspect of the tier system is expressly based on a classic game of D&D, and it explicitly eschews the idea of arena fighting.

Second, is the idea that wizards tend to run out of spells quickly, or need to do things in a way that makes them inefficient. Once you get to somewhere between levels two and five, you have enough spells to easily last the whole day. Moreover, wizards tend to act either on the spot, or with all day buffs. There is absolutely nothing about solid fog that requires any time out of the wizard's day that exceeds a standard action. The wizard's command of the action economy is actually much greater than that of a fighter, because they mostly use standard actions and have access to swifts, while a fighter relies on getting into position and making full attacks. On a surprise round, the wizard is going to act with nearly maximum force immediately, while the fighter is left either plinking away with arrows, or doing absolutely nothing.

So, what ticks me off is basically inaccurate criticisms of our understanding of balance. The fact that this tends to go hand in hand with my hatred of monks adds to the whole situation.
First of all, sorry to annoy you, it's was not my purpose, only critism on how the spellcaster are presented by persons on forums was targetted..
Sure a spellcaster can have buff that stay all day long, yes they can throw earthshaking enchantments, you insist on the action economy for wizard and the fact the use standard action / swift action passed a level... that's right with metamagic feats...
My point of view is that in forums, I only see players builds, and as a DM, my job is now to defeat the builds of the player, not be victim of their build to give them a challenge... If they rely too much on spells, I send them a lot of mobs to get rid of them, a high SR BBEG, or a lot of debuff peones... ( a big spell using group attacked by a horde of beholder will be in trouble for example) ... If they choose to have a balanced group, less spell - reliant, the challenge will be different maybe with more fun for everybody.... I personnaly hate TPK but I want to give them the thrill of the near-death experience, "Triumph without peril brings no glory"...:smallwink:

[Eldan]

Divine Mind. Why. Just... why. Not a single sentece of it makes sense.

[DarkEternal]

In terms of classes, druid. I never liked said class in terms of fluff, and I don't think I ever even played it because of that reason. But my personal grievances aside, from what I have seen from others playing it, it is the easiest class in the game to utterly break, even without doing any cheesy shenanigans to do it. While wizard and cleric might have more power with stuff like Divine Metamagic and well...being a wizard with feats and ACF's, druid just gets obnoxiously strong the moment you take that awful feat at level 6 for natural spellcasting.


Paladins and what is required for them to fall. I've been playing DnD on and off for some ten years now and never, EVER have I seen a DM that knew how to deal with a paladin, or a paladin that knew how to deal with himself. The DM's were more to blame here, as they expected them to be the most righteous, fantastic person in the world, which naturally led them to act the lawful stupid route. And if you saw a rogue from your party use means of getting into a suspects house to get their stuff which would incriminate you? Yeah, you fallen. You can't let rogues do that, even if it is for the greater good, even if said person was shining with the most evil of auras to your detect evil(that was one of the actual examples I had).

[Amphetryon]

Divine Mind. Why. Just... why. Not a single sentece of it makes sense.

Divine Mind: WotC's way of apologizing for Paladins being too strong in 3.5.

[Rethmar]

What really ticks me off?

Some of the art. Sometimes a prestige class is ruined for me because I can't get rid of the image.

Wayne England has murdered several prestige classes, weapons, and armor for me.

edit: typos.

[gr8artist]

The fact that Evasion does nothing to help you actually avoid the effect that triggers it. You just kind of... blink out of existence, unaffected but not needing to move or avoid or anything. :smallconfused:
We've considered using a rule to let you move up to 1/2 your speed after a successful reflex save. If you clear the area, then you take no damage. Otherwise, you take half. If you fail the save, you're boned.

Also, the carrying capacity rules for large creatures. Our large PC regularly lifts obscenely heavy items, and then throws them at puny, unsuspecting creatures. :smallfurious:

[Vedhin]

The fact that the game is based on a party of:

1. A fighter

2. A sneak-attack focused Rogue

3. A healbot (with occasional buffs thrown in for variety) cleric

4. A blaster wizard

Everything makes so much more sense (in a twisted way) when you realize this. Martial feats with useless prerequisites. Spontaneous cating being worse in general. Unbalanced non-damaging spells. And many others

Also, I loathe what WOTC did to the Truenamer. Fluff is awesome, but the class is unplayable broken.

[Flickerdart]

Alter Self

No matter what, you can't look like anyone specific.

Then why does this spell exist?
You can transform into creatures with huge natural AC bonuses, good natural weapons, exotic movement modes...it is not a spell intended for disguising yourself, it's mini polymorph.

[Eldan]

And most annoyingly, it is also better than several other buff spells of the same level.

[The Viscount]

Heroes of Horror in general, Dread Necromancer in specific in regards to writing. I don't know what happened here, but too many things are written, vaguely, wrongly, or simply not using the correct terminology. Playing one has only brought an increasing number of problems to light.

[pyromanser244]

the inconsistent and often nonsensical "Evilness" of necromancy. for that matter, the aligned summon X spells.

turn/rebuke undead. either broken powerful or completely useless.

[Amphetryon]

Heroes of Horror in general, Dread Necromancer in specific in regards to writing. I don't know what happened here, but too many things are written, vaguely, wrongly, or simply not using the correct terminology. Playing one has only brought an increasing number of problems to light.

Aside from the silly RAW duration of the Fear aura, what other problems have you found with Dread Necromancer, specifically? I'm curious because I'm on record as listing DN as my favorite base Class in 3.5, not because I think you're mistaken.

[Theoboldi]

Aside from the silly RAW duration of the Fear aura, what other problems have you found with Dread Necromancer, specifically? I'm curious because I'm on record as listing DN as my favorite base Class in 3.5, not because I think you're mistaken.

There's also that silly thing with not actually getting the lich template at 20th level, but otherwise I don't know what he is talking about.

Anyway, since I'm already here, I loath prestige classes getting entry requirements that are impossible to aquire with the suggested entry method. I'm looking at you, fiendblooded sorcerer. You'd think it was easy enough to understand how the skill system works.

[Ignominia]

Less a mechanical issue and more of a publishing issue.

The first party stuff is full of errors and omissions. I hate owning a book that has just plain wrong information in it.

I own EVERY 3.5 book. I like to think that means that I own 3.5, but the fact of the matter is, with the number of online supplements and errata I really DON'T own everything, unless I print it all off. Then my beautiful collection of hardcover books are all stuffed with black and white printed pages.

What ever happened to proof reading? Why do I own books with misprinted tables?! Who forgot to look that over?

Lets not get started on class balance. Someone mentioned how long it took WotC to realized that you CAN have a caster with full BAB and armor without it being a super god. That puts classes published at the beginning at a disadvantage. Same goes with races, when WotC originally thought that in order to have a +2 physical stat you needed TWO -2 mental stats to balance it. Ugh. Poor Half Orc...

By far my BIGGEST piss off?

Truenamer. A class that has such a cool concept but is broken to the point of being unplayable. Not even broken in a sense that a wizard is "broken" or the Samurai is "broken" Those classes are PLAYABLE, (over and under powered respectively, but playable) Someone just threw together something that sounded like it made sense, but nobody ever checked the math? Seriously? Ultra Lazy.

[Venger]

Aside from the silly RAW duration of the Fear aura, what other problems have you found with Dread Necromancer, specifically? I'm curious because I'm on record as listing DN as my favorite base Class in 3.5, not because I think you're mistaken.

as the viscount's dm in the game where he plays a dread necro, here are a few things we've noticed so far:

- the planar binding line is on your list, but you are missing any of the magic circle spells that are necessary to use them properl
- you have death ward as a 3rd and 4th
- dread necros have access to all corrupt spells, but this is not mentioned in the spells section, but is instead crammed at the end in advancement, so is extremely easy to miss
-if you prc out from 8 onwards, your undead pool never increases again, since it is now keyed off your DN level

and things that aren't dysfunctional per se, but are just weird:

-your skill list is strange. hide but no ms. bluff and disguise on there randomly and not enough skill points to put ranks in anything
-the way your spell list is set up, you're kind of crippled against undead until well into mid levels. almost none of your spells can kill, hurt, or even affect undead at all due to so many of them dealing negative energy damage, inflicting statuses undead are immune to, or requiring a fort save.

it's his favorite class too, and I also really enjoy it, but it's got some serious problems when it comes to its lack of proofreading.

[Big Fau]

Well, steampunk for starters.

In my experience, it's a race where subpar role players can act even more robotic and wooden than they normally do.

Players being bad roleplaying should not be a reason to hate a race. You can literally say the same about Dwarves, Drow, Orcs, and numerous other races that have ubiquitous stereotypes. Warforged, as presented in RoE, are significantly more complex and interesting than what your personal experiences dictate. The players you gamed with did not understand that Warforged are not machines, they are people with actual personalities.

Blame the players for not understanding the race they selected.

[Deepbluediver]

Level 0 spells.

Specifically, the fact that they are numbered as "zero", and the spell levels go up to 9, instead of from 1 to 10.

It mandates that anything based on spell-level include an extra caveat for how it treats level 0 spells, which just gets frustrating and annoying after a while. I've been told that it's a holdover from earlier editions when casters where "teh suck" in early gameplay, but it's one of the things I really think they should have changed upon converting to 3.0

[Big Fau]

Level 0 spells.

Specifically, the fact that they are numbered as "zero", and the spell levels go up to 9, instead of from 1 to 10.

It mandates that anything based on spell-level include an extra caveat for how it treats level 0 spells, which just gets frustrating and annoying after a while. I've been told that it's a holdover from earlier editions when casters where "teh suck" in early gameplay, but it's one of the things I really think they should have changed upon converting to 3.0

I'm more annoyed about spells in general.


One thing that really gets my goat is the Thief of Life Prc in Faiths of Eberron. The only support for Incarnum outside of Dragon Magic and the MiC is literally a couple of throwaway lines on a PrC that is utterly useless for a Meldshaper. And that several PrCs in Magic of Incarnum itself are absolutely horrible for a Meldshaper (Incarnum Blade, Witchborn Binder...).

[Deadline]

Fiend Folio (technically 3.0 though it tried to anticipate several 3.5 changes) had Maugs, an ECL 5 construct race. Granted that they're stone, rather than metal, but they're still "constructs" rather than "elementals" or "outsider" or something. I don't know of any playable robots in 3.0, but there were playable constructs, and construct robots.

Also, I think the Golemoids were from dragon magazines of that era. The half-machine template was certainly from a dragon magazine of that era. And I don't remember when the dragon mag that updated the Modrons to 3rd ed came out, but they've been around since 2nd ed at least.

[Amphetryon]

as the viscount's dm in the game where he plays a dread necro, here are a few things we've noticed so far:

- the planar binding line is on your list, but you are missing any of the magic circle spells that are necessary to use them properl
- you have death ward as a 3rd and 4th
- dread necros have access to all corrupt spells, but this is not mentioned in the spells section, but is instead crammed at the end in advancement, so is extremely easy to miss
-if you prc out from 8 onwards, your undead pool never increases again, since it is now keyed off your DN level

and things that aren't dysfunctional per se, but are just weird:

-your skill list is strange. hide but no ms. bluff and disguise on there randomly and not enough skill points to put ranks in anything
-the way your spell list is set up, you're kind of crippled against undead until well into mid levels. almost none of your spells can kill, hurt, or even affect undead at all due to so many of them dealing negative energy damage, inflicting statuses undead are immune to, or requiring a fort save.

it's his favorite class too, and I also really enjoy it, but it's got some serious problems when it comes to its lack of proofreading.
The Planar Binding issue could be read as a Feature, not a bug. Indeed, I think it's not out of line for a PC that deals with death on a "friendly" basis to be marginally less concerned about the proper safeguards for dangerous spells. I will grant that opinions vary.

Death Ward looks like a simple typo/copy-pasta error; DN is not the only PC to suffer this issue. See also: "Check ToEE."

Given that I've seen many games that didn't allow Corrupt spells, it doesn't surprise me that they chose not to list them in the default spell-list, because doing so would strengthen the argument of the whiny Player who would insist that she be allowed to use spells that are otherwise off-limits "because they're on the spell-list" as opposed to tucked away as an aside. As it is, the section on Corrupt spells reads, to me, more like "if you're allowing these spells, DN is allowed to have them."

If you desperately need your Undead Pool to be larger than it would be at 8th level, there's nothing requiring you to PrC out. I've never seen the "limit" as an issue unless one is trying to raise a literal Army of Undead. That said, I'm of the opinion that none of the base Classes in any of the books were written with the explicit intent that you PrC out at a particular level.

I find the Skill list thematically consistent, and neither too small nor outsized by the DN's use of CHA as a casting stat rather than INT. Opinions vary.

If Rebuke Undead, Hide From Undead, Summon Swarm, the DN's built-in DR and self-healing, your Martial Weapon proficiency and Light Armor proficiency, and the rest of your party are insufficient to deal with the amount of Undead your DM is throwing at you before "well into mid-levels" and leave you "kind of crippled" against them, our experiences are vastly different. As an anecdotal disclaimer, my Players consider that I run a fairly high ratio of Undead monsters at them, and have never expressed this concern.

[dysprosium]

Also, I think the Golemoids were from dragon magazines of that era. The half-machine template was certainly from a dragon magazine of that era. And I don't remember when the dragon mag that updated the Modrons to 3rd ed came out, but they've been around since 2nd ed at least.

Half machine template was in Dungeon 91.

The modrons were updated to 3.5 in Dragon 354 up to the pentadrones.
All of the modrons were updated to 3.0 in the Manual of the Planes web enhancement.
Modrons first appeared in D&D in the first edition Monster Manual 2.

But on point: I agree with all of the editing mistakes by WotC. But that's what you get when you are owned by a publicly traded company that cares more about profits than customer (player) satisfaction.

[Arbane]

Level 0 spells.

Specifically, the fact that they are numbered as "zero", and the spell levels go up to 9, instead of from 1 to 10.

It mandates that anything based on spell-level include an extra caveat for how it treats level 0 spells, which just gets frustrating and annoying after a while. I've been told that it's a holdover from earlier editions when casters where "teh suck" in early gameplay, but it's one of the things I really think they should have changed upon converting to 3.0

IIRC, Cantrips/zero-level spells didn't even exist until fairly late in AD&D's life-cycle. I think they first showed up as a house-rule in Dragon.


Things that tick me off: D&D's completely borked economy, where your typical mid-level adventurer's gear has about he same value as a medium-sized town. Plus the fact that WBL _has_ to be enforced, or else PCs will spend their way to near-godhood (too much money) or be horribly gimped (too little).

[Deepbluediver]

IIRC, Cantrips/zero-level spells didn't even exist until fairly late in AD&D's life-cycle. I think they first showed up as a house-rule in Dragon.

All the more reason to not have them be a core aspect of gameplay then.

Unlimited use cantrips also tick me off, but for different reasons.


Things that tick me off: D&D's completely borked economy, where your typical mid-level adventurer's gear has about he same value as a medium-sized town. Plus the fact that WBL -has- to be enforced, or else PCs will spend their way to near-godhood (too much money) or be horribly gimped (too little).

This seems likes is a combination a the christmas-tree effect AND a really weird power curve. Fixing it is always hard because you have to account for all the little different interconnected variable.

Personally, I always preferred games where there wasn't a magic-market style system in place. We usually found new gear as part of loot, and if we wanted something specific we needed to go track down an NPC crafter and haggle out some sort of trade. Old gear could never be sold for more than a few hundred to a few thousand GP (DMG be damned) because very few people had that much money available, and almost no one besides adventurers had a real use for it.

[Urpriest]

The Truenamer, but not for the normal reason. The Truenamer ticks me off because of its terrible fluff. The Truenamer is someone who uses words of power to alter the world around them...which is precisely how every Vancian caster was already supposed to work. The existence of the Truenamer makes people think that Wizards and Sorcerors have some sort of magical batteries in them or something, rather than just knowing the right words and gestures to affect the world.

I also don't really get what the Shadowcaster is supposed to be for. They've got cool tricks, but shadowcasting doesn't seem like something that needs a distinct casting mechanic like Binders do.

[Flickerdart]

The existence of the Truenamer makes people think that Wizards and Sorcerors have some sort of magical batteries in them or something, rather than just knowing the right words and gestures to affect the world.
Arcanists cast magic through miniaturized rituals - chants, gestures, sacrificial components and totems - which produce a codified result. Truenamers skip that part, and dictate to the universe what they want to happen in a language that it can understand. It's the difference between electroplating metals with chemistry and holding some gold and tin together while saying "now kiss".

[Deepbluediver]

I also don't really get what the Shadowcaster is supposed to be for. They've got cool tricks, but shadowcasting doesn't seem like something that needs a distinct casting mechanic like Binders do.

Wasn't the Shadowcaster in the same book as the Binder and Truenamer? I guess the WotC wanted to come up with some different magic systems, but ran out of steam and good ideas after doing the first.

My understanding of shadow magic is that rather than having "total spells per day" you can use each spell Mystery a certain number of times per day. It seems to be a halfway point between standard vancian casting and the Truenamer. I kind of wonder what the story is behind that, and if there isn't some way we could fix them both with a similar mechanic.

Maybe convert Shadow Mysteries and Truename (spells, whatever they're called) into Warlock-style invocations?

[Flickerdart]

Maybe convert Shadow Mysteries and Truename (spells, whatever they're called) into Warlock-style invocations?
Mysteries are too strong to be used at-will; the best thing to do to Shadowcasters is honestly to just give them normal Sorcerer casting except with mysteries. Truenamer utterances, on the other hand, would be perfectly fine as invocations.

[Urpriest]

If you desperately need your Undead Pool to be larger than it would be at 8th level, there's nothing requiring you to PrC out. I've never seen the "limit" as an issue unless one is trying to raise a literal Army of Undead. That said, I'm of the opinion that none of the base Classes in any of the books were written with the explicit intent that you PrC out at a particular level.

You misunderstand. The problem is not that you don't get enough undead if you PrC out, nor even that PrCing out should be supported. The problem is that spell effects are supposed to depend on caster level, and (accidentally, as far as I can tell) realigning them to class level borks up their proper scaling and indicates that the writers didn't understand what caster level was for.


Arcanists cast magic through miniaturized rituals - chants, gestures, sacrificial components and totems - which produce a codified result. Truenamers skip that part, and dictate to the universe what they want to happen in a language that it can understand. It's the difference between electroplating metals with chemistry and holding some gold and tin together while saying "now kiss".

The only reason why the rituals work though is because they communicate with the universe in a language it can understand. Unless the rituals are bargaining with sentient entities (the baliwick of Divine folks and the Binder), that's the only way the rituals could work.

[Flickerdart]

The only reason why the rituals work though is because they communicate with the universe in a language it can understand. Unless the rituals are bargaining with sentient entities (the baliwick of Divine folks and the Binder), that's the only way the rituals could work.
There's no reason that there can't be more than one way to reach the same power. Psionics, invocations, truenaming, divine magic, and arcane magic can all produce the same result (for example, a flight effect). They go about it different ways, but they all get there in the end. Why is it so wrong that a truenamer shouts some words while a sorcerer fiddles with a feather while a psion thinks really hard?

[killem2]

The bold and italic parts.

Stonecunning: This ability grants a dwarf a +2 racial bonus on Search checks to notice unusual stonework, such as sliding walls, stonework traps, new construction (even when built to match the old), unsafe stone surfaces, shaky stone ceilings, and the like. Something that isn’t stone but that is disguised as stone also counts as unusual stonework. A dwarf who merely comes within 10 feet of unusual stonework can make a Search check as if he were actively searching, and a dwarf can use the Search skill to find stonework traps as a rogue can. A dwarf can also intuit depth, sensing his approximate depth underground as naturally as a human can sense which way is up. Dwarves have a sixth sense about stonework, an innate ability that they get plenty of opportunity to practice and hone in their underground homes.

and

An elf who merely passes within 5 feet of a secret or concealed door is entitled to a Search check to notice it as if she were actively looking for it.

[The Viscount]

Aside from the silly RAW duration of the Fear aura, what other problems have you found with Dread Necromancer, specifically? I'm curious because I'm on record as listing DN as my favorite base Class in 3.5, not because I think you're mistaken.

Oh, I have a great fondness for Dread Necromancer, which is why it bothers me so that it was not written better. Most of the Dread Necromancer dysfunctions in the handbook are ones I posted. I'm spoilering for length, because I'm going to be thorough. Some of these will probably sound overly nitpicky or opinionated.
Bluff and Disguise are good, but I'm not sure why DN has them. Hide as a class skill is kind of weird, especially without it's buddy move silently and the fact that DN has only 2 skill points. Two skill points means you have to choose between your required skills like concentration and cool skills like disguise.

Charnel touch doesn't say what kind of action is required to touch an opponent offensively (presumably a standard) and gives nothing about interaction with other attacks. If I attack with a sword in one hand, can I make a charnel touch as well? Do I need to have a BA of +6/+1 before I can do this? When the DN becomes a lich, does the charnel touch exist alongside the lich touch? Is it folded into the lich touch? It's important because lich touch offers a save for half, but paralyzes, while DN touch can heal undead. Interaction with spells is also left unclear. If I cast a touch spell, can I throw this on there, too?

Rebuke undead isn't really a problem so much as it's written oddly. a phrase about "as a cleric of her DN level" would be called for here. This is one of those ones where we have to assume it, but every other class that gives turn/rebuke I've seen has some mention of what their level is in regards to cleric. The ability itself is fixed with a quick does of common sense, but it leaves room for the persnickety to say "DN has no effective cleric level, no rebuking." Another isn't something that bothers me, but is telling about this class. Other than DN, I believe turning and rebuking is a purely Divine thing. The fact that they gave it to an arcane caster without batting an eye suggests a degree of unfamiliarity. I don't mean to bash the writers, but HoH is a weird book. The dysfunctions from it are of a different sort. All the undead say in undead traits they can be resurrected if willing, which appears in no other books.

The negative energy burst is written in such a manner that the DN is subject to the damage from the burst. This is one where a lack of normal terminology is to blame. Of course Tomb tainted Soul DNs and Necropolitan DN love it, but the theoretical DN that goes neither route is still harmed. More importantly the familiar you have near you might be hurt by it.

The fear aura, unlike most other auras, is not passive and must be activated. That's abnormal.

Scabrous touch and enervating touch both seem to suggest the target also takes charnel touch damage, but it's unclear. The heavy reliance on spectral hand for everything until you get your familiar is also weird. Why don't we just have a class feature for it? At low levels it's an especially big pain to have to waste a 2nd level slot just to attack people safely.

You can get an incorporeal familiar, the only one I know of. I'm not sure what this does to familiar rules. Can he still make touch attacks? Ghostly visage sort of has the ability to make a touch attack already, but I'm not sure.

Undead mastery is silent on its interaction with plague of undead. If the control cap isn't expanded, then it becomes much less useful.

Negative energy resistance is vague. The "some ability drain" likely indicates protection from drain caused by undead, but not by poisons or other stuff. Could they not say something to this effect? Again, RAI is clear enough, but it leaves room for the persnickety.

Light fortification says it applies to critical hits, but says nothing about sneak attack. It then says it's "the equivalent" of the armor property, which does apply to sneak attack. Which is it then? Does that bit about equivalence just mean no stacking, or does it also mean resistance to SA?

As mentioned by Theoboldi, it doesn't RAW give the lich template. I am of course of the opinion that a DN does, as it says the word "lich," but again, room for the persnickety.

Death ward appears as both a 3rd and 4th level spell. Planar binding infamously exists without any magic circle spells. Poison unfortunately has a different save calculation keyed off of wis, which non-arcane disciple DN's don't need. Fire in the Blood and Oath of Blood are on the DN list, but the description for the spells does not list them as being DN spells. Not sure which to trust here

The playtips text seems to think that d6, light armor, and DR make you a gish, thinking you will enter melee despite being given two separate means to deliver touch attacks from afar.

The Advancement section is 75% fluff and backstory instead of actual advice. Then it tells you that Corrupt spells are somehow spells you can learn and cast. Does that mean that you treat all corrupt spells as valid for advanced learning, even if they're not Necromancy? Does that mean they're simply added to your list? Most importantly, how are you supposed to cast corrupt spells when only prepared casters can cast corrupt spells without the feat to do it?Edit: Ninja'd mostly by Venger. :smallsigh: This is why I should have been brief instead of writing a manifesto.

In response to DN and PrCs as being discussed above, while no base class is made with the intention that you'll PrC out, DN turns a spell into a class feature, meaning that if you like having lots of undead, you cannot leave.

Something about 0 lvl spells that bothers me is when classes with truncated casting get 0 lvl spells as 1sts. 0 lvl spells are not worth the 1st lvl slots. Would it be so wrong to give these poor classes some 0 slots?

[Necroticplague]

The spiked chain always rubbed me the wrong way. When you picture "spiked chain" in your head, what do I get? And image of some thug in an alley, holding a long length of chain, which he swings like harsh compromise between whip and flail. But then I realize that the spiked chain is two-handed, and wonder how the heck its supposed to be wielded. so i looked up what it looked like, and it is wielded in the least practical and most idiotic way possible. Instead of having you at one end, and spikes on the other, the spikes are on both ends and you're in the center. How it's possible to wield this without killing yourself is beyond me. And since it has two ends to it, why isn't it a double weapon?

[Flickerdart]

How it's possible to wield this without killing yourself is beyond me.
That's what makes it an exotic weapon. :smallbiggrin:

[Deepbluediver]

How it's possible to wield this without killing yourself is beyond me.

I'd ask the same question about most of the double weapons, actually. Darth Maul's lightsaber sort of worked (it was still insanely dangerous) because a lightsaber slices through nearly anything like a hot knife through butter. But many of the double weapons, particularly the bludgeoning-based ones, require force more than finess, and I don't see any good way to achieve that. Ok its fantasy, yes I get that, but it's so contradictory to common sense it breaks immersion.

[Kuulvheysoon]

I'm confused, are you getting age categories like class levels? Whats the LA, what age category are you, and have you taken any PC class levels, and whats levels are the people in your party?

Edit I couldn't find the LA for the different age categories just the RHD.

Fang Dragon - Draconomicon, page 159
Wyrmling: +3
Very Young: +4
Young: +5
Juvenile: +5
Others: -


Divine Mind. Why. Just... why. Not a single sentece of it makes sense.

I tend to think of it as they all have a collective delusion.

[SethoMarkus]

... A dwarf who merely comes within 10 feet of unusual stonework can make a Search check as if he were actively searching, and a dwarf can use the Search skill to find stonework traps as a rogue can. ...

and

An elf who merely passes within 5 feet of a secret or concealed door is entitled to a Search check to notice it as if she were actively looking for it.

I always interpreted this to mean that the DM roll a secret check for the character. I can understand the complaint, since alerting the player to such a roll would ruin immersion, essentially broadcasting "THERE'S A SECRET DOOR HERE!", but if the roll is done in private it can still account for in-character intuition without giving the player meta-knowledge. (Especially so if making hidden rolls behind the DM screen is standard practice!)

[Urpriest]

I always interpreted this to mean that the DM roll a secret check for the character. I can understand the complaint, since alerting the player to such a roll would ruin immersion, essentially broadcasting "THERE'S A SECRET DOOR HERE!", but if the roll is done in private it can still account for in-character intuition without giving the player meta-knowledge. (Especially so if making hidden rolls behind the DM screen is standard practice!)

I think you misunderstand.

The issue, if I'm understanding it right, is that Dwarves have an ability here that is better than that which Elves get, despite Elves being the iconic "I can detect secret doors" people.

[Flickerdart]

Why would elves be better at detecting things? We all know that cats use their whiskers as part of their senses. Now compare elves and dwarves. Elves cannot grow facial hair. Dwarves have luxurious beards. Of course dwarves should be better at detecting stuff.

[SethoMarkus]

I think you misunderstand.

The issue, if I'm understanding it right, is that Dwarves have an ability here that is better than that which Elves get, despite Elves being the iconic "I can detect secret doors" people.

Ah, that does make slightly more sense, though I still don't personally have an issue with it. This would merely apply to secret doors carved from a stone wall (I know, the vast majority tend to be exactly this), but it still leaves hidden doors behind a bookshelf, hidden wooden doors, invisible/illusory portals, etc.

Just as much as Elves are iconic "I can detect secret doors" people, Dwarves are iconic "I know my stone" people.





Why would elves be better at detecting things? We all know that cats use their whiskers as part of their senses. Now compare elves and dwarves. Elves cannot grow facial hair. Dwarves have luxurious beards. Of course dwarves should be better at detecting stuff.

Mind if I Sig this?

[killem2]

I should have clarified.

it is because if it is not handled right it can turn into, I search this square and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square, and this square,

[SethoMarkus]

I should have clarified.

it is because if it is not handled right it can turn into, I search this square and this square, and this square, and ...

Ah, see, I see these racial traits as preventing exactly that. They don't need to declare they are searching, they are automatically assumed to always be searching for such objects/portals. And actually, what's preventing any rogue or other search-centric class from doing just that, without a Dwarve's Stonecunning or Elf's Detect Secret Door traits? Or, similarly, this (http://agc.deskslave.org/comic_viewer.html?goNumber=54).

[Rater202]

My Pet peeve in Rpgs or any thing really, is when their is an option that makes a Character really powerful, but with a Bulls*** weakness tacked on. especially when the weakness makes no sense, or is something that logically would render the power Useless.


The most extreme example was a Homebrew prc I found a few years ago. after 9 levels of sucking eggs, you get Wish, as a Spell like ability, a will with no Xp cost. But You, your companions, and none of the people you intend to help can benefit from the wish, and each time you use it you are put under a permanent non dispellable greater curse effect, and they stack with each other.


Why would you give someone a powerful ability and then punish them for using it. I don't mind a Kryptonite factor, but when the entire planet is made of Kryptonite it gets ridiculous.

[Invader]

Fang Dragon - Draconomicon, page 159
Wyrmling: +3
Very Young: +4
Young: +5
Juvenile: +5
Others: -


That's what I assumed so I'm supposed to believe that even as a wyrmling and 6 RHD he's outshining 9th level casters and it gets worse the old the dragon. I just don't believe it. I can't help but feel something is off here.

[Amphetryon]

You misunderstand. The problem is not that you don't get enough undead if you PrC out, nor even that PrCing out should be supported. The problem is that spell effects are supposed to depend on caster level, and (accidentally, as far as I can tell) realigning them to class level borks up their proper scaling and indicates that the writers didn't understand what caster level was for.

I understand. I haven't seen this particular "issue" be an actual problem except in hypothetical discussions on the internet. That's all.

[killem2]

Another thing that ticks me off, is the complete lack of support for profession skills.

They could make and entire book around it!

[SethoMarkus]

Another thing that ticks me off, is the complete lack of support for profession skills.

They could make and entire book around it!

Now THAT I can get behind 100%! Unless you're a sailor, Profession tends to be fairly useless, when it should be a great addition!

[killem2]

In age of worms there is a profession mortician and gambler lol. at least they are referenced for bonuses

[Jeff the Green]

- the planar binding line is on your list, but you are missing any of the magic circle spells that are necessary to use them properl

I'm pretty sure that's intentional. You're supposed to bind an outsider, kill it, and then animate the corpse.

[Big Fau]

Another thing that ticks me off, is the complete lack of support for profession skills.

They could make and entire book around it!

DMG 2 has an entire chapter about using the Profession skills to run a business (not that those rules are particularly good due to the 5% chance of those rules utterly screwing you over).

[Flickerdart]

Mind if I Sig this?
Feel free.


Another thing that ticks me off, is the complete lack of support for profession skills.

They could make and entire book around it!
There are a couple of useful Profession skills (beyond qualifying for stuff): Siege Engineer lets you operate siege weapons, and Herbalist lets you gather ingredients for Primitive Caster.

[eggynack]

First of all, sorry to annoy you, it's was not my purpose, only critism on how the spellcaster are presented by persons on forums was targetted..
And here's another thing that annoys me. People apologizing for annoying me with things they've said. Grawvah!



Sure a spellcaster can have buff that stay all day long, yes they can throw earthshaking enchantments, you insist on the action economy for wizard and the fact the use standard action / swift action passed a level... that's right with metamagic feats...
The standard action part is true at all levels. The swift action part is sometimes true at low levels, but is a bit more tricky to pull off. The thing is, just as a generic, featless, wizard, you have a better command of the action economy than a fighter. Let's go down some levels, instead of looking way up there. Color spray takes a standard action, and can disable an entire encounter at once. That's at level one, and your options only get better from there. Look at something like web, and imagine the havoc you're creating with a single standard action. Your claim that fighters can somehow act on a whim, while wizards are stuck building elaborate traps for every encounter, is just patently incorrect. I don't know where that idea came from, but I've seen it before, and it never makes sense to me.



My point of view is that in forums, I only see players builds, and as a DM, my job is now to defeat the builds of the player, not be victim of their build to give them a challenge... If they rely too much on spells, I send them a lot of mobs to get rid of them, a high SR BBEG, or a lot of debuff peones... ( a big spell using group attacked by a horde of beholder will be in trouble for example) ... If they choose to have a balanced group, less spell - reliant, the challenge will be different maybe with more fun for everybody.... I personnaly hate TPK but I want to give them the thrill of the near-death experience, "Triumph without peril brings no glory"...:smallwink:
Wizards don't really need builds though. They're awfully nice, but wizard 20 is far more viable for the wizard than fighter 20 is for the fighter. Druid 20 is the second best level configuration for a druid, and the best is so ridiculous that it's basically theoretical optimization on its own. The idea of "builds" is often viewed in an incorrect manner, and you seem to be viewing them in this manner here. Stopping people from taking a pile of dips, prestige classes, and things from obscure source books, does little to stop the wizard. What it is actually hurting is the fighter, who needed those things to keep up. Also, SR and AMF are surprisingly mediocre tactics against a wizard. A lot of a wizard's best tactics work fine against both of those things, and I think that a fighter is shut down more by an AMF than a wizard is.

The thing is, a "balanced party" as you describe it is not balanced at all. You don't want a group that has half the party relying on spells, and half on stabbing, because you end up either killing the fighter, or being destroyed by the wizard. Ideally, you want your entire party to hover around the same tier, such that the game's balance is maintained.

[Venger]

Feel free.


There are a couple of useful Profession skills (beyond qualifying for stuff): Siege Engineer lets you operate siege weapons, and Herbalist lets you gather ingredients for Primitive Caster.

A DC 20 profession cook check will allow you to detect poison in food and drink nonmagically. Useful in certain kinds of games.

[Norin]

I'm pretty sure that's intentional. You're supposed to bind an outsider, kill it, and then animate the corpse.

I like the way you think. :smallamused:

[Rethmar]

Also, it's annoying when there's an asterisk and nowhere on the page (or near) is the footnote.

[Sith_Happens]

I'm pretty sure that's intentional. You're supposed to bind an outsider, kill it, and then animate the corpse.

The problem being that most outsiders dissolve into nothingness when they die.

[Flickerdart]

The problem being that most outsiders dissolve into nothingness when they die.
Do they? I don't know of any general rules about what happens to an outsider's body when it dies, and most of them don't have specific rules listed in their entries.

[Kuulvheysoon]

Another -

We have Sandstorm (It's Hot Outside), we have Frostburn (It's Cold Outside), we have Stormwrack (It's Wet Outside), we have Cityscape (It's Crowded Out Here) and we have Dungeonscape (It's Dark In Here).

Why is there no (rain)forest/jungle book?

[Rater202]

The problem being that most outsiders dissolve into nothingness when they die. That is only Outsiders summoned to a plane that is not their native one. an outsider on it's native plane, or one brought to a plane by a calling effect( Gate, Planer binding, etc.) leaves a corpse Just like anything else, if there was no way for an outsider to leave a corpse than things Like fiend grafting and demonflesh golems would be impossible.

[Venger]

Another -

We have Sandstorm (It's Hot Outside), we have Frostburn (It's Cold Outside), we have Stormwrack (It's Wet Outside), we have Cityscape (It's Crowded Out Here) and we have Dungeonscape (It's Dark In Here).

Why is there no (rain)forest/jungle book?

it's called "secrets of xen'drik." it's one of the eberron ones.

[TuggyNE]

Also, it's annoying when there's an asterisk and nowhere on the page (or near) is the footnote.

Yeah*, really.

[Eldan]

Another -

We have Sandstorm (It's Hot Outside), we have Frostburn (It's Cold Outside), we have Stormwrack (It's Wet Outside), we have Cityscape (It's Crowded Out Here) and we have Dungeonscape (It's Dark In Here).

Why is there no (rain)forest/jungle book?

I prefer "It's Not Outside" for Dungeonscape.

[Boci]

I prefer "It's Not Outside" for Dungeonscape.

This is somewhat tongue in cheek, but not entirely untrue: I'm starting to get annoyed by peoples' insistance on shoehorning these "nicknames" in. For 2 reasons:

1. They are confusing. Mostly for the reasons above (people cannot agree on what name to give city and dingeonscape. However, even for the trio whose nickname would be obvious:

2. They don't need a nickname. They aren't as ingrained into the D&D culture as gish or munchkin are to justify it, so all it is is some people inisting on inefficient communication for the sake of a joke whose humour is based on the fact that deserts are hot, ice is cold and the sea is wet.

[TypoNinja]

I'm confused, are you getting age categories like class levels? Whats the LA, what age category are you, and have you taken any PC class levels, and whats levels are the people in your party?

Edit I couldn't find the LA for the different age categories just the RHD.

I take age categories as the LA levels. So for example, a Wyrmling is 3HD and 3LA. After some checking I determined that RHD play catch up to age catagory, so next level I added 1 to my LA, and took the benefits of aging up to very young. So I was 3RHD and 4LA.

The next 3 levels were RHD, Dracomonicion details what you gain from them in the PC's as dragons section. So I had 4HD and 4LA, then 5HD and 4LA, then 6HD and 4LA. Then age up to Young for 6HD and 5 LA, with the benefits of that age category.

Fang Dragons happen to be 3HD per age catagory, so that made that easy. the LA stops at 5 and Juvenile, because you are an epic level character at that point and the game has pretty minimal support for epic level play.

Age categories are mostly stat bonuses but some come with special abilities, or even size increases, spellcasting doesn't come till Epic levels alas.

As a house rule my DM allowed me to use LA buyoff, RHD aren't supposed to count but since I only have RHD he said go for it. We treated each age category as its own template since I had a sliding LA. so I had 3 "templates" to buy off at LA 3, LA 1, and LA 1. Or HD numbers 9 15 18 21 and 24 for the buyoff points.

I didn't take any class levels, the idea from the start was to be a Dragon. the Party has always been the same level and is 24th currently. Early on I was quite the glass canon 3HD at 6th level (where we started) left me with not much HP, and a very low AC. On the other hand, I had 5 attacks at 6th level. If I didn't go down first, you damn sure what I was fighting was going to.

[mattie_p]

Another -

We have Sandstorm (It's Hot Outside), we have Frostburn (It's Cold Outside), we have Stormwrack (It's Wet Outside), we have Cityscape (It's Crowded Out Here) and we have Dungeonscape (It's Dark In Here).

Why is there no (rain)forest/jungle book?

I picked up a copy of the 3rd party book Dreadmire which handles swamps (It's Damp Outside?) In my opinion, it's not very good.

I had a thread a few months ago (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=272316) to explore options, didn't really pick any suggestions up yet, though.

[sonofzeal]

This is somewhat tongue in cheek, but not entirely untrue: I'm starting to get annoyed by peoples' insistance on shoehorning these "nicknames" in. For 2 reasons:

1. They are confusing. Mostly for the reasons above (people cannot agree on what name to give city and dingeonscape. However, even for the trio whose nickname would be obvious:

2. They don't need a nickname. They aren't as ingrained into the D&D culture as gish or munchkin are to justify it, so all it is is some people inisting on inefficient communication for the sake of a joke whose humour is based on the fact that deserts are hot, ice is cold and the sea is wet.
There is a subtle purpose - to link those books together. Most of us here know exactly what you're talking about when you refer to the "It's X Outside" books, and that's a useful category to have from time to time. I've heard people calling them the "-scape" books, but that really doesn't cover half of them.

[Torben Raibeart]

I'm pretty sure that's intentional. You're supposed to bind an outsider, kill it, and then animate the corpse.

That's what I always assumed to. But there is one problem to that. Under Calling, it states that

The spell grants the creature the one-time ability to return to its plane of origin, although the spell may limit the circumstances under which this is possible.

So your called creature can just return itself to its own plane, unless you have some way to stop dimensional travel. Which a DN does not. Unless of cause you mean that this does not count as dimensional travel, so that it can't be used to escape the planar binding, in which case you are probably safe.

[Kelb_Panthera]

That's what I always assumed to. But there is one problem to that. Under Calling, it states that

The spell grants the creature the one-time ability to return to its plane of origin, although the spell may limit the circumstances under which this is possible.

So your called creature can just return itself to its own plane, unless you have some way to stop dimensional travel. Which a DN does not. Unless of cause you mean that this does not count as dimensional travel, so that it can't be used to escape the planar binding, in which case you are probably safe.

The individual calling spell specifies when the creature gains that 1 time free ticket home. In the case of planar binding, it's -after- the creature performs the agreed upon task.

If you, instead of bargaining, immediately attack the called creature that aspect of calling spells never triggers. The creature -is- free to use any dimensional travel capabilities of its own to escape, rather than fight, however.

[Invader]

I take age categories as the LA levels. So for example, a Wyrmling is 3HD and 3LA. After some checking I determined that RHD play catch up to age catagory, so next level I added 1 to my LA, and took the benefits of aging up to very young. So I was 3RHD and 4LA.

The next 3 levels were RHD, Dracomonicion details what you gain from them in the PC's as dragons section. So I had 4HD and 4LA, then 5HD and 4LA, then 6HD and 4LA. Then age up to Young for 6HD and 5 LA, with the benefits of that age category.




I can see how that's more beneficial than the way you're supposed to do it which would make a dragon more powerful if I'm understanding you correctly. I still maintain if you play a dragon with LA and RHD as RAW dictates , they're really suboptimal.

[Kuulvheysoon]

I prefer "It's Not Outside" for Dungeonscape.

That's what it's called. I can never remember that one. Thanks.


*stuff*


I can see how that's more beneficial than the way you're supposed to do it which would make a dragon more powerful if I'm understanding you correctly. I still maintain if you play a dragon with LA and RHD as RAW dictates , they're really suboptimal.

That's... not how it works. I'm in complete agreement with invaderk2 here (on the RAW), but I wish that I could find a DM as willing as yours.

[Amphetryon]

There is a subtle purpose - to link those books together. Most of us here know exactly what you're talking about when you refer to the "It's X Outside" books, and that's a useful category to have from time to time. I've heard people calling them the "-scape" books, but that really doesn't cover half of them.

Folks I know generally lump them into "the environment books" without much confusion. There is still reference to "the Book of Bad Latin," though.

[Deepbluediver]

The recent conversation has reminded me: can we complain about LA in general? Is that a thing? Have we done it yet today?

Personally I prefer using RHD instead, even if it pushes a few races a little higher.

If you really wanted to put in the effort though, I'd prefer to skip the LA and just have a version of creatures that added in abilities at the appropriate levels, so you could start at anything at level 1, but as a juvenile or something, so you don't get the OPness until it's no longer OP.



I picked up a copy of the 3rd party book Dreadmire which handles swamps (It's Damp Outside?)

Maybe "It's muddy outside"?

[TypoNinja]

I can see how that's more beneficial than the way you're supposed to do it which would make a dragon more powerful if I'm understanding you correctly. I still maintain if you play a dragon with LA and RHD as RAW dictates , they're really suboptimal.

Err, how is that not how I'm supposed to do it? I've read through the draconomicon, did I miss something?


Also, sub-optimal compared to what? Since we don't get spellcasting till epic levels, a dragon is going to be a melee choice. I'm not competing with a CoDzilla, yes full OP casters will wreck my day, but I don't play in games with those, the average level OP in my group is no where near the TO that gets discussed on these boards.

On that scale, we get lots of racial Str and Con, size increases built in, a large number of natural attacks, comes with flight, enough skill points to make a Rogue jealous, natural armour equal to HD. Full BAB, all good saves and d12 HD. And some miscellaneous special abilities based on your type, and unless you take a really exotic dragon like I did, you probably got an elemental subtype and immunities.

LA's hurt when you are a caster, if your a 'hit it still it stops moving' type LA's can be worth it if they come with enough strength to keep your to hit numbers high. RHD, usually complete crap, are actually the whole point as a Dragon, they give you access to those age category boosts, and dragon HD don't actually suck. Think of the Dragon special abilities as my Class features.

I don't think you appreciate how strong you can make a melee focused Dragon. Here's the high points of my Fang Dragon at 22nd level.

My to hit on all attacks is +47. 22 BAB, 20 Str mod, and a +5 amulet of natural attacks.

My attack routine is Bite Claw Claw Wing Wing Tailslap. With Free trip attemps on the Claws and tail. That I'm probably going to win, considering my Str and Huge size.

Damage on these attacks is 4d8+25 4d6+15 4d6+15 2d6+15 2d6+15 2d8+34, for a whopping 6d8 + 12d6 + 119. Average damage just shy of 200. On the off chance it lives, now its probably been tripped and is stuck prone in front of me. On the off chance I really really want it to die Belt of Battle and full attack again. Things miss me frequently, I do more damage than any foe we've faced, and I have silly amounts of HP, and I don't miss. On the off chance I might, I can cast wraithstrike on my self since I picked up spell casting at 18 HD. If you manage to come up with something truly scary to do to me, Wings of Cover gets me out of just about anything.

I had originally planned to take Rapidstrike and Improved Rapid Strike, for 8 more attacks (4 each claws and wings) but at that point I stopped because frankly I was getting too strong. The plan was also to add Large and in charge, which combined with my reach, and ability to trip would have been simply disgusting.

I have saves of 30 26 28, and thanks to a +13 con mod and d12 HP I'm just shy of 500HP. 22 nat armor jacks my AC all the way up to 52 with just BoA +8 and RoP +5. Rules for retroactive skill increases for int bonuses on dragons gives me a whopping 375 skill points.

I've done nothing special to optimize the character, my shopping has been limited Stat, boosting items, a belt of battle, an necklace of natural attacks. Improved Multi-attack feats so no penalty on attacks, and improved natural attack to up my damage dice. At that point I stopped out of concern for party balance. No Dips, no crazy multiclass shenanigans, to get lots of powers. Hell I didn't even need a billion source books or dragon mags. Just the Draconomicion. Even something as bog standard as a barbo dip for pounce has been avoided.

I'm essentially a single classed dragon, I don't think a single classed anything else melee can really compete with that. Maybe something from ToB but its one of the few books I don't have so I don't know.

[Flickerdart]

TypoNinja: BAB 22 at level 22? Looks like someone forgot to add the LA. And looking at the Fang Dragon entry, the highest LA listed is for a Juvenile 12HD dragon (+5) meaning that anything older is not appropriate as a player race. Also none of the Fang Dragon age categories have 22HD.

Were you just taking Dragon HD and adding yourself the corresponding stats whenever you hit the next age category? Because that's not even close to what you are supposed to do.

[TypoNinja]

TypoNinja: BAB 22 at level 22? Looks like someone forgot to add the LA. And looking at the Fang Dragon entry, the highest LA listed is for a Juvenile 12HD dragon (+5) meaning that anything older is not appropriate as a player race. Also none of the Fang Dragon age categories have 22HD.

Were you just taking Dragon HD and adding yourself the corresponding stats whenever you hit the next age category? Because that's not even close to what you are supposed to do.

No, I said already what I'm doing, as per the PC's as dragons section in the draconomicon. You level up by taking dragon HD, but every so often you get an LA instead, at your age ups. Kindly tell me a better source for Dragons as PC's than the Draconomicon, or show me how I've misunderstood the Draconomicion text.

Yes the list stops at 12 and +5, that's because any after that would be an epic character and no monster entry anywhere lists LA's if it would make the character over 20th level. Because Epic level play gets practically no support. My DM ruled that given the general ridiculousness of any Epic level play, my LA would max out at +5 even for the older ages.

As I mentioned my DM allowed LA buyoff, so I don't have any anymore. And 22 BAB at 22 HD is correct for a dragon, since monstrous HD don't follow the Epic BAB and save rules for past 20th level.

Looks like somebody just skimmed my previous posts. I covered all of this.

[Flickerdart]

No, I said already what I'm doing, as per the PC's as dragons section in the draconomicon. You level up by taking dragon HD, but every so often you get an LA instead, at your age ups. Kindly tell me a better source for Dragons as PC's than the Draconomicon, or show me how I've misunderstood the Draconomicion text.
Except you don't actually have LA in the build.



Yes the list stops at 12 and +5, that's because any after that would be an epic character and no monster entry anywhere lists LA's if it would make the character over 20th level. Because Epic level play gets practically no support. My DM ruled that given the general ridiculousness of any Epic level play, my LA would max out at +5 even for the older ages.
Your DM ruled massively in your favour.



As I mentioned my DM allowed LA buyoff, so I don't have any anymore. And 22 BAB at 22 HD is correct for a dragon, since monstrous HD don't follow the Epic BAB and save rules for past 20th level.

Looks like somebody just skimmed my previous posts. I covered all of this.
That's not how LA buyoff works. You need class levels to buy off LA, and dragon RHD are not those.

So what have we learned? Dragon PCs are only powerful if you and your DM don't understand the rules on playing them.

[CRtwenty]

Another thing that ticks me off, is the complete lack of support for profession skills.

They could make and entire book around it!

A crafting and profession sourcebook would have been great. Add some more info for creating business and trade organizations, some crafting based prcs. I'm surprised they didn't publish one.

[mattie_p]

A crafting and profession sourcebook would have been great. Add some more info for creating business and trade organizations, some crafting based prcs. I'm surprised they didn't publish one.

No, crafting and profession skills are a sucker's game unless you are a caster.

Let's say you want to make a Chain Shirt. Retail price 100 gp. The DC to make it is 10 + the AC bonus (4) or 14.

Cool. Let's say I'm a level 3 with skill focus (craft armorsmithing), max ranks (6), and to be generous a +3 bonus from int. I also have a masterwork tool for an additional +2.

Let's say I want to take 10 all the time, I can have a check of 24.


To determine how much time and money it takes to make an item, follow these steps.

Find the item’s price. Put the price in silver pieces (1 gp = 10 sp).

Find the DC from the table below.

Pay one-third of the item’s price for the cost of raw materials.

Make an appropriate Craft check representing one week’s work. If the check succeeds, multiply your check result by the DC. If the result × the DC equals the price of the item in sp, then you have completed the item. (If the result × the DC equals double or triple the price of the item in silver pieces, then you’ve completed the task in one-half or one-third of the time. Other multiples of the DC reduce the time in the same manner.) If the result × the DC doesn’t equal the price, then it represents the progress you’ve made this week.

Record the result and make a new Craft check for the next week. Each week, you make more progress until your total reaches the price of the item in silver pieces.


OK, step 1: (1000 sp)

Step 2: (14, except I voluntarily add 10 to the DC to decrease crafting time)

Step 3: (33 gold, 3 sp, 3 cp)

Step 4: weekly progress will be 24 x 24 = 576 sp of progress, so it takes about 2 weeks to make a chain shirt.

If I wanted to make a mithril chain shirt, it would take about 19 weeks.



With all the ways casters have to pimp skills, they can do it better and faster if they chose. Not to mention at level 9 a wizard can just fabricate it in a matter of rounds.

[Devronq]

This always really bugged me about 3.0 MM I don't know if this is well know but the colossal scorpion which was CR.10ish could basically kill any non-epic creature ever written that wasn't immune to poison. I don't have my 3.0 book anymore but if I remember correctly he had like +48 to hit on his sting and did a fort.50ish poison that did 3d8 str twice.... and he had like 300-400hp and descent other stuff. In general the dozens if not hundreds of things like that, that are clearly not fair at all even skimming it you should obviuosuly see that its stupid and should be changed.. they did fix a few in 3.5 but ya.

[TuggyNE]

That's not how LA buyoff works. You need class levels to buy off LA, and dragon RHD are not those.

What's more, even if RHD counted, which they explicitly don't, you'd need a whole lot of levels to buy off all that LA. Let's take the white dragon's LA progression for an example, since I don't know what LA the Fang starts off with (+2? +3?). At ECL 5, you have +2 LA, and need 6 (class) levels to buy off a point. Let's be generous and say the RHD count. You'll be level 6 by the time you buy off your first point, which would come to ECL 7, except that you're already in Young territory, for another point of LA, so you're ECL 8. OK, so you still have +2 LA to buy off, which means another six levels; doable, right? Well, no. Six more levels puts you into Juvenile, which dumps another 2 LA on, so you're now ECL 15, and you can't try to buy off again until ECL 24. Which your ECL 22 dragon has not yet reached.

So, unless you started with +1 LA and conveniently got +1 every three levels, full buyoff is not possible even with the given houserules.

[BasketOfPuppies]

A DM I played with made a complete party-wipe monster and set it on us. It was a Half-Dragon Ogre Were-Triceratops. CR 10, 400 HP. And Str.49. He would grapple you, pick you up, and wear you as a hat, stabbing you with it's horns. Oh and his assassin buddy put some Dragon Bile on the horns, so that's 1d3 Con. Damage a round from the horns, plus 3d6 Str. Damage from the Dragon Bile, plus he got a free action to shake his head one per round, doing 2d12+19 dmg.:smallmad:

[Kelb_Panthera]

A crafting and profession sourcebook would have been great. Add some more info for creating business and trade organizations, some crafting based prcs. I'm surprised they didn't publish one.

It's not that exclusively, but didn't powers of faerun have some stuff in that vein?

Edit: Got one of my own.

Gate. Holy crap-on-a-stick, gate.

The -intention- of the spell is clear as day. It was meant to be the player's choice of super plane shift, summon monster X, or superior planar binding all rolled into one spell.

The problem is that they only got the text for the first of those right. The second part of the spell (and it really should've had three parts) simply cannot be used without houseruling.

****ing wizards of the coast.

Disclaimer: before someone decides to "correct" me about how clear gate is, I'll be happy to link either of the last two times I discussed it for 4-5 pages. My thoughts haven't changed on the matter since either of those discussions, mostly because noone could come up with a compelling argument that was any stronger than my own.

[TuggyNE]

Disclaimer: before someone decides to "correct" me about how clear gate is, I'll be happy to link either of the last two times I discussed it for 4-5 pages. My thoughts haven't changed on the matter since either of those discussions, mostly because noone could come up with a compelling argument that was any stronger than my own.

I have to admit that those discussions were of the variety where everyone involved ended up silenced, but not convinced. Kind of annoying, really.

[TypoNinja]

Except you don't actually have LA in the build.


Your DM ruled massively in your favour.


Please, I do 200 damage a round at 22nd level. That's hardly spectacular and still doesn't hold a candle to the kind of reality warping shenanigans a caster can pull off. My favour? Yes, Massively? not so much.



That's not how LA buyoff works. You need class levels to buy off LA, and dragon RHD are not those.

So what have we learned? Dragon PCs are only powerful if you and your DM don't understand the rules on playing them.

Apparently we've learned that you can't read.

For the third(fourth? I've lost count) time. My DM let me use RHD to qualify for LA buyoff since I was never going to take anything other than RHD and it would leave me fairly screwed compared to the rest of the party (Everyone has/had LA), so it was deemed only fair.

Further since the steadily rising LA would have played merry hell with determining what level I buyoff at he told me to treat each age as its own template so +3 at wrymling, and two more a +1. I could have sworn I said this already at least once, oh wait, I totally did! (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=15427926&postcount=139)

[yougi]

Why would elves be better at detecting things? We all know that cats use their whiskers as part of their senses. Now compare elves and dwarves. Elves cannot grow facial hair. Dwarves have luxurious beards. Of course dwarves should be better at detecting stuff.

This makes so much sense.

I now need to grow a beard so I won't need new glasses!


Please, I do 200 damage a round at 22nd level. That's hardly spectacular and still doesn't hold a candle to the kind of reality warping shenanigans a caster can pull off. My favour? Yes, Massively? not so much.



Apparently we've learned that you can't read.

For the third(fourth? I've lost count) time. My DM let me use RHD to qualify for LA buyoff since I was never going to take anything other than RHD and it would leave me fairly screwed compared to the rest of the party (Everyone has/had LA), so it was deemed only fair.

Further since the steadily rising LA would have played merry hell with determining what level I buyoff at he told me to treat each age as its own template so +3 at wrymling, and two more a +1. I could have sworn I said this already at least once, oh wait, I totally did! (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=15427926&postcount=139)

The problem is that you are arguing about two different things:

Your hypothesis: LA + RHD are viable as per RAW.
Their hypothesis: the opposite.
You submit a houseruled character as proof.
They say they're right, because houserule =/= RAW.
You then argue that those houserules are not broken.

The problem is that you switched your hypothesis halfway through your argumentation.

Back to the main point:

What annoys me (and has not been covered yet) is how WotC acts as if every 3.5 book had been the one and only book outside of Core: for instance, no non-core classes get new spells in books aside from theirs; only one book covering maneuvers, or Binding, or Warlocks; no PrCs that progress the abilities of Dragon Shamans, or Knights, or Factotums (or Factoti, or Factotae, or whatever).

And especially, Variants offered which are just put in there as a "hey, be-tee-dub, you could do it that way", and then leave you with the task of figuring everything out on your own. Recently, we switched from Turn Undead to the CD Damage version: how does it work with these feats, or these class features? "Ask your DM to figure it out".

How Clerics are all the same. I mean, Domains are nice, but I can't believe that Followers of Vecna and Tiamat and Heroneous and Corellon are exactly the same, except for 2 minor abilities (which they might end up sharing anyway).

The Magic Mart system/necessity/mentality. Especially when coupled with rules for custom-made items.

[Yondu]

And here's another thing that annoys me. People apologizing for annoying me with things they've said. Grawvah!



Wizards don't really need builds though. They're awfully nice, but wizard 20 is far more viable for the wizard than fighter 20 is for the fighter. Druid 20 is the second best level configuration for a druid, and the best is so ridiculous that it's basically theoretical optimization on its own. The idea of "builds" is often viewed in an incorrect manner, and you seem to be viewing them in this manner here. Stopping people from taking a pile of dips, prestige classes, and things from obscure source books, does little to stop the wizard. What it is actually hurting is the fighter, who needed those things to keep up. Also, SR and AMF are surprisingly mediocre tactics against a wizard. A lot of a wizard's best tactics work fine against both of those things, and I think that a fighter is shut down more by an AMF than a wizard is.

The thing is, a "balanced party" as you describe it is not balanced at all. You don't want a group that has half the party relying on spells, and half on stabbing, because you end up either killing the fighter, or being destroyed by the wizard. Ideally, you want your entire party to hover around the same tier, such that the game's balance is maintained.

My education is, when we have a discussion on a matter, my point of view annoy somebody (When I translate in French, my language, it is a pretty rough word), I apologize for this when it is not my objective...

Concerning SR, Maybe you can enlight me if a SR 40 - 45 does not bother a wizard ?
In my experience of RPG, SR was always an big issue for magic, but I'm not as familiar in D&D 3.5 than I was in AD&D.
I agree on the fact that the fighter need a lot of differents books and dips to be efficient, and a core wizard is way more efficient than a core fighter...
I will not discuss you view on Druids, as It is a complete mistery for me, I do not know the class feature (Allergic reaction from AD&D 1st edition).
I think we do not share the same view on balance but if you can tell me what is balance for you, maybe it'll be clearer for me

[JaronK]

My annoyance: the Swashbuckler. They're not proficient with bucklers. IT'S RIGHT THERE IN THE NAME!

JaronK

[Kelb_Panthera]

Back to the main point:

What annoys me (and has not been covered yet) is how WotC acts as if every 3.5 book had been the one and only book outside of Core: for instance, no non-core classes get new spells in books aside from theirs; only one book covering maneuvers, or Binding, or Warlocks; no PrCs that progress the abilities of Dragon Shamans, or Knights, or Factotums (or Factoti, or Factotae, or whatever).

And especially, Variants offered which are just put in there as a "hey, be-tee-dub, you could do it that way", and then leave you with the task of figuring everything out on your own. Recently, we switched from Turn Undead to the CD Damage version: how does it work with these feats, or these class features? "Ask your DM to figure it out".

How Clerics are all the same. I mean, Domains are nice, but I can't believe that Followers of Vecna and Tiamat and Heroneous and Corellon are exactly the same, except for 2 minor abilities (which they might end up sharing anyway).I can actually understand this mentality. Part of it is that WotC couldn't simply assume that everyone that played the game bought every one of their supplements (though a web enhancement for SpC that was simply expanded spell-lists for other casters would've been nice). For a lot of groups that would have resulted in piles of extraneous material that they'd have to gloss over.

The other part is the business aspect. Printers charge by the page and including any unnecessary information would've inflated page counts which, in turn, would've dug into the profit margins.

It may have caused a few hiccups with synergistic material in different sources occasionally getting out of hand (DMM: persistent spell, for example) but it's at least understandable.


The Magic Mart system/necessity/mentality. Especially when coupled with rules for custom-made items.

This, too, isn't that hard to wrap your head around if you think about it. Magic items -had- to be included in the game (legacy if nothing else) and they were trying to make a reasonably balanced game (even if they failed miserably).

If they had balanced the game in a way that didn't account for magic items then all magic items would push things out of balance. They, therefore, chose to account for items when balancing the game and assumed that the piles of treasure that virtually everything that's not a vermin or an animal in the monster manual left when you killed them would be spent on magical gear.

Thus; christmas tree effect becomes part of the baseline game.

[eggynack]

My education is, when we have a discussion on a matter, my point of view annoy somebody (When I translate in French, my language, it is a pretty rough word), I apologize for this when it is not my objective...

Concerning SR, Maybe you can enlight me if a SR 40 - 45 does not bother a wizard ?
In my experience of RPG, SR was always an big issue for magic, but I'm not as familiar in D&D 3.5 than I was in AD&D.
I agree on the fact that the fighter need a lot of differents books and dips to be efficient, and a core wizard is way more efficient than a core fighter...
I will not discuss you view on Druids, as It is a complete mistery for me, I do not know the class feature (Allergic reaction from AD&D 1st edition).
I think we do not share the same view on balance but if you can tell me what is balance for you, maybe it'll be clearer for me
I know I should have clarified that one. Blue text is sarcasm. Anyway, on SR, the trick is to bypass it entirely. Many of the best spells in the game never even think about SR. Look at stuff like solid fog, or orb of fire, or even something non-interactive like fly. There's other stuff too, like black tentacles, polymorph, web, glitterdust, basically the majority of spells you see optimizers looking at. For druids, try just about any summoning spell, their animal companion, and wild shape, engaging the SR having enemy simultaneously. That's a trick that they can pull off, no matter what they're prepared for. They also get a good amount of SR: no battlefield control, like entangle, stone shape, and other things along those lines. The standard plan of casting animal growth on a bunch of summons, along with your AC, is one that works most of the time.

[Devronq]

My education is, when we have a discussion on a matter, my point of view annoy somebody (When I translate in French, my language, it is a pretty rough word), I apologize for this when it is not my objective...

Concerning SR, Maybe you can enlight me if a SR 40 - 45 does not bother a wizard ?
In my experience of RPG, SR was always an big issue for magic, but I'm not as familiar in D&D 3.5 than I was in AD&D.
I agree on the fact that the fighter need a lot of differents books and dips to be efficient, and a core wizard is way more efficient than a core fighter...
I will not discuss you view on Druids, as It is a complete mistery for me, I do not know the class feature (Allergic reaction from AD&D 1st edition).
I think we do not share the same view on balance but if you can tell me what is balance for you, maybe it'll be clearer for me

Sure someone will already say this by the time i finish typing but alot of good spells dont even apply spell resistance. Example. the orb line of spells all very good damaging spells that dont apply spell resistance. Even if a spell does there's assay spell resistance which gives you a +10 bonus to beat SR.

[Jeff the Green]

Okay, here's another thing that bothers me: the tauric template. No, not the fact that the LA is wonky.

It's that the name means "like a bull," but has nothing to do with cattle. Yes, it comes from centaur, but centaur only has "taur" in it for a very roundabout reason*. Name it a centauric creature or something entirely new, but don't mangle Greek.

In the same vein, Libris Mortis. "Of** the book of the dead," or possiby "Death's Book's (sic)" Would it have killed WotC to email a classics professor to make sure they weren't making asses of themselves?

*It comes from the name of a people from Thessaly who were either herders or bull-fighters, and "kentauros" means "bull wounder."

**This can't mean "regarding"; that would use "de libro". Nor "selections from," which would be "ex libro."

[Yondu]

I know I should have clarified that one. Blue text is sarcasm. Anyway, on SR, the trick is to bypass it entirely. Many of the best spells in the game never even think about SR. Look at stuff like solid fog, or orb of fire, or even something non-interactive like fly. There's other stuff too, like black tentacles, polymorph, web, glitterdust, basically the majority of spells you see optimizers looking at. For druids, try just about any summoning spell, their animal companion, and wild shape, engaging the SR having enemy simultaneously. That's a trick that they can pull off, no matter what they're prepared for. They also get a good amount of SR: no battlefield control, like entangle, stone shape, and other things along those lines. The standard plan of casting animal growth on a bunch of summons, along with your AC, is one that works most of the time.

OK no offense, I was not aware that blue text was sarcasm...:smallsmile:
I thought (as I've seen played ) that invocated matters (Summoned Creatures, or things magically created like tentacles..) has to defeat the SR first in order to affect the target...

[eggynack]

OK no offense, I was not aware that blue text was sarcasm...:smallsmile:
I thought (as I've seen played ) that invocated matters (Summoned Creatures, or things magically created like tentacles..) has to defeat the SR first in order to affect the target...
Nope. If you check the spells, there's a little majig that says either spell resistance: yes, or spell resistance: no. The stuff I've listed is universally of the latter category. Conjurers are just jerks like that.

Edit: Also transmuters, because their best stuff tends to bypass the target by hitting themselves. The fact that these spell schools are pretty much never banned is just a bonus. There's also the list of stuff that can work against anti-magic fields. It's shorter, but it's enough. For that, you mostly need conjurations with an instantaneous duration. That's stuff like a wall of stone, or an orb of fire.

[Devronq]

Okay, here's another thing that bothers me: the tauric template. No, not the fact that the LA is wonky.

It's that the name means "like a bull," but has nothing to do with cattle. Yes, it comes from centaur, but centaur only has "taur" in it for a very roundabout reason*. Name it a centauric creature or something entirely new, but don't mangle Greek.

In the same vein, Libris Mortis. "Of** the book of the dead," or possiby "Death's Book's (sic)" Would it have killed WotC to email a classics professor to make sure they weren't making asses of themselves?

*It comes from the name of a people from Thessaly who were either herders or bull-fighters, and "kentauros" means "bull wounder."

**This can't mean "regarding"; that would use "de libro". Nor "selections from," which would be "ex libro."

The first thing that popped into my mind was kintaro from mortal kombat 2:P

[TuggyNE]

For the third(fourth? I've lost count) time. My DM let me use RHD to qualify for LA buyoff since I was never going to take anything other than RHD and it would leave me fairly screwed compared to the rest of the party (Everyone has/had LA), so it was deemed only fair.

Further since the steadily rising LA would have played merry hell with determining what level I buyoff at he told me to treat each age as its own template so +3 at wrymling, and two more a +1. I could have sworn I said this already at least once, oh wait, I totally did! (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=15427926&postcount=139)

For whatever reason, I didn't see the detailed calculations the first two times. However, note that there are, what, three separate favorable houserules in play? First: that age categories higher than Juvenile have LA, and what's more that the LA is the same as Juvenile's. Second: that RHD qualify for LA buyoff levels. Third: that applying the LA for later age categories can be done after you finish buying off the current LA, even if you gained that extra LA before you finished (the numbers simply do not match, since you wouldn't have reduced your LA even by one point before getting the rest of it, which forces it back even further).

Finally, of course, as you note yourself, you were only able to get up to reasonable competence with the effect of all these houserules. Without them, as is normally the case, and the source of the complaints? "it would leave [one] fairly ***** compared to the rest of the party", as you said.

Yeah, normal RHD/LA interactions are definitely worth being ticked off about.

[eggynack]

Apparently we've learned that you can't read.

For the third(fourth? I've lost count) time. My DM let me use RHD to qualify for LA buyoff since I was never going to take anything other than RHD and it would leave me fairly screwed compared to the rest of the party (Everyone has/had LA), so it was deemed only fair.

Further since the steadily rising LA would have played merry hell with determining what level I buyoff at he told me to treat each age as its own template so +3 at wrymling, and two more a +1. I could have sworn I said this already at least once, oh wait, I totally did! (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=15427926&postcount=139)
So, what you're saying is that the rules for playing dragons are stupid, underpowered, and illogical, and so you changed them? That sounds a lot like an agreement with the original argument to me. If you're using a bunch of house rules to keep yourself on par with other party members, then you can't later use that as an argument for how reasonable the actual rules are.

[Turion]

In the same vein, Libris Mortis. "Of** the book of the dead," or possiby "Death's Book's (sic)" Would it have killed WotC to email a classics professor to make sure they weren't making asses of themselves?

**This can't mean "regarding"; that would use "de libro". Nor "selections from," which would be "ex libro."

To be fair, the translation they were going for was "from/of the book of the dead," with a note that this was possibly a bastardization. Check the sidebar on page 4.

Also, it's in Celestial, not Latin. TOTALLY different!

For my own pet peeve, I'm going to have to go with LA as well. Why couldn't they have just gone with RHD, or, heck, even CR? Not to mention those few stupidly good races that have no adjustment at all (looking at you, whisper gnomes/humans)

[Kazyan]

Every limitation a Wizard used to have at the beginning of 3.5 was eventually "fixed" with a feat or spell. Precious Appentice, Mindsight, True Casting/Assay Spell Ressitance, Reseve feats... :smallmad:

[Kuulvheysoon]

Back to the main point:

What annoys me (and has not been covered yet) is how WotC acts as if every 3.5 book had been the one and only book outside of Core: for instance, no non-core classes get new spells in books aside from theirs; only one book covering maneuvers, or Binding, or Warlocks; no PrCs that progress the abilities of Dragon Shamans, or Knights, or Factotums (or Factoti, or Factotae, or whatever).

And especially, Variants offered which are just put in there as a "hey, be-tee-dub, you could do it that way", and then leave you with the task of figuring everything out on your own. Recently, we switched from Turn Undead to the CD Damage version: how does it work with these feats, or these class features? "Ask your DM to figure it out".

How Clerics are all the same. I mean, Domains are nice, but I can't believe that Followers of Vecna and Tiamat and Heroneous and Corellon are exactly the same, except for 2 minor abilities (which they might end up sharing anyway).

One of the reasons I like Dragon Magic so much: It has support for other books (notably Tome of Magic, Complete Arcane and Magic of Incarnum). Magic of Incarnum itself also has a few new (mostly horrendous) invocations.

And don't forget the second round of Complete Series (Champion, Mage, Scoundrel) that build off of the first round.

[Xervous]

Every limitation a Wizard used to have at the beginning of 3.5 was eventually "fixed" with a feat or spell. Precious Appentice, Mindsight, True Casting/Assay Spell Ressitance, Reseve feats... :smallmad:

I fail to see how precocious apprentice fixes something about wizards or otherwise fills a gap that previously existed, unless you count 'not being able to drastically circumvent prestige pre-reqs' as a gap.

I will add my voice to the group complaining about how bungled LA was/is.

[Boci]

I fail to see how precocious apprentice fixes something about wizards or otherwise fills a gap that previously existed, unless you count 'not being able to drastically circumvent prestige pre-reqs' as a gap.

Kazyan did say "limitation" though, which requirements for PrC were.

[Kazyan]

Kazyan did say "limitation" though, which requirements for PrC were.

I'm referring to how it jumps over the otherwise-strict levels at which you get new spell levels.

[sonofzeal]

I will add my voice to the group complaining about how bungled LA was/is.
Honestly, I think the idea was a good one, they were just overly-cautious when assigning values, especially in the early days. But honestly, I'd rather see a system like that where things are at least open to be played, and those interested in using them can try to finagle something up. Gnolls are pretty rough to play compared to a straight Fighter, but a TWF Flind Gnoll Ranger/Fighter with Improved Critical and feats to boost disarm checks can be viable and distinct. Maybe not Ubercharger or Lockdown 2.0, but justifiable and potentially fun.

And LA buyoff helps a lot too, once they rolled that out.

Contrast this with PF, where advanced monstrous races are generally notably-to-massively OP for players. In 3.5 a good player could be aware of the obstacles and work to mitigate them and find unique strengths, but in PF it's pretty much just a no-brain win button for frontliners. Granted, frontliners needed the help, but then you've got things like Couatls, which can be played in a lvl 10 game and have massive base stats, 12 HD (with d10 hd, full BAB, 6+int skills, and two good saves), and cast as 9th level sorcerers except with total access to the Cleric list. Because that's obviously balanced with a human Sorcerer 10, right?

I'll take 3.5's erring on the side of caution, thank you very much.

[The Dark Fiddler]

Mine is inconsistent use of pronouns. It seems in an attempt to be PC, many RPG books have sprinkled many third person feminine pronouns, which is not bad in and of itself, but it seems rather arbitrary and when it goes from "he" to "she" and back again in the same paragraph, it just makes it hard to follow.

It's times like that that I wish English would just adopt "they" as the accepted third person pronoun for neutral gender.

I... can't say I've ever noticed this, at least not changing in the same paragraph. Are you talking about how they change pronouns based on the gender of the example character being discussed (so that, for example, cleric gets "he" but rogue gets "she")?


Other annoyances? Search is thoroughly examining the area for anything unusual. Knowledge [Local] is knowing the laws, customs, and inhabitants of the area. And yet, both are so rarely class skills for anything! I could see an explanation for Search (although I really question it) although I am not understanding why a Fighter or Sorcerer would need to put in extra study to know what's happening in their hometown.

The odd difficulty of getting knowledge, profession, craft, and perform as class skills is really annoying and led to me throwing class skills out the window entirely.


The fact that Evasion does nothing to help you actually avoid the effect that triggers it. You just kind of... blink out of existence, unaffected but not needing to move or avoid or anything. :smallconfused:
We've considered using a rule to let you move up to 1/2 your speed after a successful reflex save. If you clear the area, then you take no damage. Otherwise, you take half. If you fail the save, you're boned.

Evasion is an odd one... it makes sense for some characters, and some attacks... but not others. Evading a fireball without moving? Makes sense, just finding a gap in the flames (or, hell, cutting a gab in the flames with your sword). A slightly magical character who can open up small doors to alternate dimensions or slightly translocate? Makes sense.

Avoiding a physical area attack, though? Yeah...


Another -

We have Sandstorm (It's Hot Outside), we have Frostburn (It's Cold Outside), we have Stormwrack (It's Wet Outside), we have Cityscape (It's Crowded Out Here) and we have Dungeonscape (It's Dark In Here).

Why is there no (rain)forest/jungle book?

It's already Hot and Wet outside... what would you call it? It's Humid Outside? :smalltongue:

[Flickerdart]

Please, I do 200 damage a round at 22nd level. That's hardly spectacular and still doesn't hold a candle to the kind of reality warping shenanigans a caster can pull off. My favour? Yes, Massively? not so much.

You do understand that the argument from my side is "dragons are crap as PCs", right? You got three hugely lenient houserules to help you and you're still "hardly spectacular" in your own words.

[The Viscount]

I... can't say I've ever noticed this, at least not changing in the same paragraph. Are you talking about how they change pronouns based on the gender of the example character being discussed (so that, for example, cleric gets "he" but rogue gets "she")?

It does happen in some books that they'll change pronouns with no warning or reason, saying something like "to use this ability, the [class] must target a foe of her choice. If this foe makes the save, he can try again" as a made up example. I'm sure someone can find a real one.

[CRtwenty]

It does happen in some books that they'll change pronouns with no warning or reason, saying something like "to use this ability, the [class] must target a foe of her choice. If this foe makes the save, he can try again" as a made up example. I'm sure someone can find a real one.

Usually it occurs when they copy and paste stuff from previous books.


No, crafting and profession skills are a sucker's game unless you are a caster.

Let's say you want to make a Chain Shirt. Retail price 100 gp. The DC to make it is 10 + the AC bonus (4) or 14.

Cool. Let's say I'm a level 3 with skill focus (craft armorsmithing), max ranks (6), and to be generous a +3 bonus from int. I also have a masterwork tool for an additional +2.

Let's say I want to take 10 all the time, I can have a check of 24.




OK, step 1: (1000 sp)

Step 2: (14, except I voluntarily add 10 to the DC to decrease crafting time)

Step 3: (33 gold, 3 sp, 3 cp)

Step 4: weekly progress will be 24 x 24 = 576 sp of progress, so it takes about 2 weeks to make a chain shirt.

If I wanted to make a mithril chain shirt, it would take about 19 weeks.



With all the ways casters have to pimp skills, they can do it better and faster if they chose. Not to mention at level 9 a wizard can just fabricate it in a matter of rounds.

You proved my point actually. Crafting needs more love so that things can be made faster and easier. Things like feats or PRCs would go a long way towards fixing this. Plus it'd make Leadership even more OP when you decide to make your cohort a crafting genius.

[Kuulvheysoon]

Evasion is an odd one... it makes sense for some characters, and some attacks... but not others. Evading a fireball without moving? Makes sense, just finding a gap in the flames (or, hell, cutting a gab in the flames with your sword). A slightly magical character who can open up small doors to alternate dimensions or slightly translocate? Makes sense.

Avoiding a physical area attack, though? Yeah...

Roguespace?


It's already Hot and Wet outside... what would you call it? It's Humid Outside? :smalltongue:

It's Raining Outside, clearly.

[137beth]

1) Fighters and feats. Fighters get lots of feats. I can understand that early on in the game, the idea that getting a lot of feats was considered powerful enough to be the entirety of the class. But when they realized that it wasn't enough, they didn't fix it enough. The Tactical feats and Weapon Mastery feats presented in Complete Warrior were a nice idea, but didn't really work well enough.
Instead we got ToB, which I don't like at all.

Instead of making new subsystems they could easily have created a number of strong, fighter only feats that actually made the fighter good.

2) Mostly useless feats. Things like Mobility. How the hell was this considered good enough to be a standalone feat? Why wasn't it removed in PF? Shove it in with either Dodge or Spring Attack.
Or Endurance? Does anyone take it other than as a prereq? Why not just meld it together with Diehard?
I'll agree with this, but what actually ticks me off even more is when people say "ooo, no, subsystems that work like magic but not are the ONLY way to make powerful classes, it's impossible to make powerful martial class features, even though people have done it before..."


What really bothered me: Deities and Demigods seemed to be written with the assumption that you did not have access to epic rules. So they assume you are going to fight a greater deity, but you don't know how to have more than 20 levels in one class:smallconfused:

[MirddinEmris]

What really bothered me: Deities and Demigods seemed to be written with the assumption that you did not have access to epic rules. So they assume you are going to fight a greater deity, but you don't know how to have more than 20 levels in one class:smallconfused:

Well, if you look at the stats of those "deities", it actually make sense :)

[Karnith]

What really bothered me: Deities and Demigods seemed to be written with the assumption that you did not have access to epic rules.
To be fair, people didn't have access to epic-level rules when Deities and Demigods was released. 3.0 didn't have set or well-described epic-level rules (just vague, weird mentions in other books) until the Epic Level Handbook came out, several months after Deities and Demigods.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I'll agree with this, but what actually ticks me off even more is when people say "ooo, no, subsystems that work like magic but not are the ONLY way to make powerful classes, it's impossible to make powerful martial class features, even though people have done it before..."I don't follow. :smallconfused:



What really bothered me: Deities and Demigods seemed to be written with the assumption that you did not have access to epic rules. So they assume you are going to fight a greater deity, but you don't know how to have more than 20 levels in one class:smallconfused:

That's becauase, at the time of it's publication, you didn't. The 3rd ediition core rulebooks didn't have epic rules, if I'm not mistaken, and the epic handbook was released after D&DG.

[Talakeal]

Mine is inconsistent use of pronouns. It seems in an attempt to be PC, many RPG books have sprinkled many third person feminine pronouns, which is not bad in and of itself, but it seems rather arbitrary and when it goes from "he" to "she" and back again in the same paragraph, it just makes it hard to follow.

It's times like that that I wish English would just adopt "they" as the accepted third person pronoun for neutral gender.


I have found that they generally use the gender of the iconic character who would be performing the action. So, for example, they use female when describing rogues or things a rogue might do because Lidda is a she, while they use male pronouns for clerics or clericy things because Jozan is a he.

[137beth]

To be fair, people didn't have access to epic-level rules when Deities and Demigods was released. 3.0 didn't have set or well-described epic-level rules (just vague, weird mentions in other books) until the Epic Level Handbook came out, several months after Deities and Demigods.
I am aware of this. I would have preferred if they had been developed together, or in some way which allowed the only book with stats for gods to use epic rules.


I don't follow.
There are homebrew fixes for the fighter, monk, barbarian, and rogue which don't use any pseudo-magic-like subsystems. However, WotC never printed a tier 3 martial melee base class. Some people on the forum have claimed that ToB is "necessary" because something about the framework of 3.5 somehow makes tier 3 martial classes impossible. This is a verifiably false claim, as tier 3 martial classes can be seen on the homebrew forum. So seeing people make such mistakes irritates me.

[Deepbluediver]

There are homebrew fixes for the fighter, monk, barbarian, and rogue which don't use any pseudo-magic-like subsystems. However, WotC never printed a tier 3 martial melee base class. Some people on the forum have claimed that ToB is "necessary" because something about the framework of 3.5 somehow makes tier 3 martial classes impossible. This is a verifiably false claim, as tier 3 martial classes can be seen on the homebrew forum. So seeing people make such mistakes irritates me.

I don't like it when people try to draw a definitive line between what is or isn't magic, and who should have access to each.

I find it very silly to try and distinguish between superhuman and magic in most cases, and to declare that a characer-type either can't have something or insist that it be labeled "Ex".

[The Viscount]

You proved my point actually. Crafting needs more love so that things can be made faster and easier. Things like feats or PRCs would go a long way towards fixing this. Plus it'd make Leadership even more OP when you decide to make your cohort a crafting genius.

There's always the dedicated wright. Once you start crafting anything and invest an hour, you can have the little dude finish it for you. Granted, this doesn't fix the crafting rules, but it helps, and he's pretty cute.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I am aware of this. I would have preferred if they had been developed together, or in some way which allowed the only book with stats for gods to use epic rules.So you're annoyed the two design teams didn't crib from each other's notes during production. There may be some merit in that. I don't see any reason to be particularly annoyed over it, myself, but whatever.



There are homebrew fixes for the fighter, monk, barbarian, and rogue which don't use any pseudo-magic-like subsystems. However, WotC never printed a tier 3 martial melee base class. Some people on the forum have claimed that ToB is "necessary" because something about the framework of 3.5 somehow makes tier 3 martial classes impossible. This is a verifiably false claim, as tier 3 martial classes can be seen on the homebrew forum. So seeing people make such mistakes irritates me.

I do agree that the ToB addition wasn't -strictly- necessary. I'm certainly not upset over it though. It was a good, solid addition to the game that made some very interesting additions to the melee game.

I still don't really buy warblade or (especially) crusader as T3 though. A warblade is good at smashing faces and can be good at helping his allies smash face, but that's it. The crusader can't do anything a paladin can't do just as well. (I'll be happy to link to a discussion on the matter if anyone's interested.)

The insistence, by some, that it's "magic" just because it's broken down into 9 levels and 9 disciplines kinda gets on my nerves, TBH. Some of the abilities in shadow hand and devoted spirit that should be marked as SU aren't but beyond that the mechanics are dramatically different from vancian casting in many ways and most of the maneuvers, that aren't already labeled as such, don't have even a hint of supernatural elements to them.

[Flickerdart]

The crusader can't do anything a paladin can't do just as well.
Commit evil acts. :smallwink:

[Karnith]

So you're annoyed the two design teams didn't crib from each other's notes during production. There may be some merit in that. I don't see any reason to be particularly annoyed over it, myself, but whatever.
And, honestly, given that they tried the whole "here's a preview of epic levels" thing in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, and the actual mechanics ended up getting changed pretty radically between the time that was published and when the Epic Level Handbook came out, it may have been just as well that they didn't include it.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Commit evil acts. :smallwink:

Paladins of Tyranny and Slaughter

(It makes me physically ill that these variants exist but there they are.)

[TheCrowing1432]

Rogues dont get Knowledge (Dungoneering)

COME ON.

Unless you are a social rogue, YOU MAKE YOUR ENTIRE LIFE SAVINGS IN DUNGEONS. YOUR CLASS IS LITERALLY BUILT FOR TRAVAILING DUNGEONS.


HOW THE BLOODY HELL DO YOU NOT KNOW THINGS ABOUT THEM?

[Snowbluff]

I could rant about the ToB bashing and why "pseudo magic" is an awful terms, but I think if you understand the game, you know you are acting silly. Abilities with a limit for uses with access restricted by level? Yeah, that pretty much describes everything in the game.


Paladins of Tyranny and Slaughter

(It makes me physically ill that these variants exist but there they are.)

Commit good acts in that case.

[Karnith]

Paladins of Tyranny and Slaughter

(It makes me physically ill that these variants exist but there they are.)
Come to think of it, was the Paladin of Slaughter ever intended to be playable (for PCs)? Its code of conduct is so insane and silly that I assumed it was meant strictly for NPCs, but I've had players who wanted to play the class as written.

[Snowbluff]

Come to think of it, was the Paladin of Slaughter ever intended to be playable (for PCs)? Its code of conduct is so insane and silly that I assumed it was meant strictly for NPCs, but I've had players who wanted to play the class as written.



Code of Conduct

A paladin of slaughter must be of chaotic evil alignment and loses all class abilities if she ever willingly commits a good act. Additionally, a paladin of slaughter's code requires that she disrespect all authority figures who have not proven their physical superiority to her, refuse help to those in need, and sow destruction and death at all opportunities.

Okay, I don't know how this is supposed to work.

1) You start the game. You have to sow destruction and death, so you try to kill someone.
2) Someone tries to make you stop. You say no until he bests you.
3) He kills you or you kill him.
4) Go to 2 if you survive.

The not committing a good act is even hard that not being evil, I think. Not that it ticks me off. As the silliest possibility "Code" of conduct, it is my favorite.

[Flickerdart]

Paladins of Tyranny and Slaughter

(It makes me physically ill that these variants exist but there they are.)
Unlike the paladin variants, a crusader doesn't need to rebuild his character every time he wants to perform deeds of another alignment, though.

[TuggyNE]

It's Raining Outside, clearly.

Offtopic: funny thing about tropical rainforests is the rain can be cold. Freezing cold, in fact. (This from semi-personal experience in South America; temperature around 100 F and humidity near 100%, but then it rains and you start to shiver if you stand around outside.)

[Jeff the Green]

The not committing a good act is even hard that not being evil, I think. Not that it ticks me off. As the silliest possibility "Code" of conduct, it is my favorite.

I don't know that it's that hard. I'm pretty sure that "good" acts for evil reasons are either evil or neutral. So you can save the orphanage from burning down as long as you're doing it so the orphans will grow up to be thieves, prostitutes, and murderers and create misery.

[Snowbluff]

I don't know that it's that hard. I'm pretty sure that "good" acts for evil reasons are either evil or neutral. So you can save the orphanage from burning down as long as you're doing it so the orphans will grow up to be thieves, prostitutes, and murderers and create misery.

If that's the case and how morality works in DnD, then a paladin's code is never a problem. You could justify anything with what you think the consequences are. It is not. :smalltongue:

[Arbane]

If that's the case and how morality works in DnD, then a paladin's code is never a problem. You could justify anything with what you think the consequences are. It is not. :smalltongue:

It ticks me off that D&D's alignment system mixes with anything resembling real-world morality like oil and water.

Or possibly oil and open flame. :smallannoyed:

I remember reading about some fantasy heartbreaker which had the idea that the alignment-equivalents were those of the Elder Gods, and thus were a: only really important to users of divine magic, and b: didn't HAVE to make any sense from a mortal POV.

[Crasical]

There's always the dedicated wright. Once you start crafting anything and invest an hour, you can have the little dude finish it for you. Granted, this doesn't fix the crafting rules, but it helps, and he's pretty cute.

And you have to sink three feats into getting one, as the eberron book says they're never sold, and you need Craft Construct, which requires Craft Arms and Armor and Craft wonderous Item, to make it.

[Humble Master]

The lack of support for truly humungous battles always ticked me off in D and D. The DMG mentions war as a possible calamity but offers no advice for actually having a war between two kingdoms and playing it out. I don't know about you but I don't want to roll initiative for 20,000 foot soldiers.

[Jeff the Green]

If that's the case and how morality works in DnD, then a paladin's code is never a problem. You could justify anything with what you think the consequences are. It is not. :smalltongue:

Good and evil work differently that way, though. Quoth BoED:

When a village elder comes to a good character and says, “Please help us, a dragon is threatening our village,” the good character’s response is not, “What can you pay?” Neutral characters might be that mercenary, and evil characters would certainly consider how to collect the
most benefit from the situation. For a good character, however, helping others is a higher priority than personal gain.

So a PoT or PoS* can help people out so long as they're thinking about their own (or their evil god's) benefit, while a paladin can't kill innocents for the greater good.

*I just noticed how perfect that acronym is for the class.

[Deepbluediver]

The lack of support for truly humungous battles always ticked me off in D and D. The DMG mentions war as a possible calamity but offers no advice for actually having a war between two kingdoms and playing it out. I don't know about you but I don't want to roll initiative for 20,000 foot soldiers.

There is at least one splatbook that includes details for group-based combat; I'll try and find it for you.

It's kind of funny though; D&D came from a large-scale campaign Warhammer-style game, right? And first we scale it down, and then we need to find ways to move back to the original version, right?

[Elderand]

The lack of support for truly humungous battles always ticked me off in D and D. The DMG mentions war as a possible calamity but offers no advice for actually having a war between two kingdoms and playing it out. I don't know about you but I don't want to roll initiative for 20,000 foot soldiers.

You could try to get your hands on the black company campaign setting book, I seem to recall it having rules for large scale battles

[Kelb_Panthera]

Unlike the paladin variants, a crusader doesn't need to rebuild his character every time he wants to perform deeds of another alignment, though.
Performing a deed of an alignment opposed to your own should always be a drastic last resort anyway, at least for a champion of their alignment. Good people should avoid doing evil things, unless they want to become neutral. Only a (X)N crusader should be regularly commiting both good and evil acts so the paladins, who must be either good or evil, aren't really bothered all that much by that particular restriction.

The lack of support for truly humungous battles always ticked me off in D and D. The DMG mentions war as a possible calamity but offers no advice for actually having a war between two kingdoms and playing it out. I don't know about you but I don't want to roll initiative for 20,000 foot soldiers.

Both Heroes of Battle and The Miniatures Handbook would like a word with you.

[ArcanistSupreme]

The lack of support for truly humungous battles always ticked me off in D and D. The DMG mentions war as a possible calamity but offers no advice for actually having a war between two kingdoms and playing it out. I don't know about you but I don't want to roll initiative for 20,000 foot soldiers.


There is at least one splatbook that includes details for group-based combat; I'll try and find it for you.

It's kind of funny though; D&D came from a large-scale campaign Warhammer-style game, right? And first we scale it down, and then we need to find ways to move back to the original version, right?

Heroes of Battle (http://www.amazon.com/Dungeons-Dragons-Fantasy-Roleplaying-Supplement/dp/078693686X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371257414&sr=1-1&keywords=heroes+of+battle)?

[eggynack]

Performing a deed of an alignment opposed to your own should always be a drastic last resort anyway, at least for a champion of their alignment. Good people should avoid doing evil things, unless they want to become neutral. Only a (X)N crusader should be regularly commiting both good and evil acts so the paladins, who must be either good or evil, aren't really bothered all that much by that particular restriction.

Yeah, but there are different lines for different characters. Some good characters are going to feel comfortable taking evil actions for a good cause, and some are absolutely not. Some characters might have a completely different definition of evil from another character. Maybe one guy thinks that poison and undead use are just natural combat methods, and another thinks that they're both an abomination. Good and evil are pretty broad categorizations, especially when you consider the number of things that exist more on the neutral ends of those categorizations. Paladins take those broad moral definitions, and paint them in harsh red lines. Poisoning someone is just not OK, and ravages are fine. Things are just evil, and there's no way around that. Paladins have to avoid doing things that they may not even consider evil, and that's a pretty harsh restriction.

[Venger]

Positoxins, ravages, and afflictions.

If you multiply by -1, then it's good, right? :smallfurious:

Using poison isn't (or shouldn't be) an evil act since you can use it to kill bad guys, can use poisons that just KO enemies or deal ability damage other than con so it's possible (in theory) to capture/arrest them. Plus animals do it, and the rules dictate they don't have alignments and are thus incapable of evil acts.

I'm not rustled because "using poison is evil and when you call it a positoxin then it's not" I'm rustled because it never should have been an obstacle to overcome in the first place. Then wotco pretty much just flat-out ignored it anyway because you can do whatever evil things you like as long as it says "good" somewhere on your sheet.

so add to the list emissary of barachiel, apostle of peace, and sanctify the wicked.

you know what? BoED. just... all of it.

[Kazyan]

Factotum. I can't really itemize it in a way that won't be nitpicked to death, but that class is a trainwrack of poor design to my eyes. Font of Inspiration, Cunning Surge, Int-SAD, overuse of "cunning"...

[Kelb_Panthera]

Yeah, but there are different lines for different characters. Some good characters are going to feel comfortable taking evil actions for a good cause, and some are absolutely not. Some characters might have a completely different definition of evil from another character. Maybe one guy thinks that poison and undead use are just natural combat methods, and another thinks that they're both an abomination. Good and evil are pretty broad categorizations, especially when you consider the number of things that exist more on the neutral ends of those categorizations. Paladins take those broad moral definitions, and paint them in harsh red lines. Poisoning someone is just not OK, and ravages are fine. Things are just evil, and there's no way around that. Paladins have to avoid doing things that they may not even consider evil, and that's a pretty harsh restriction.

Poisons that deal ability damage are unneccesarily cruel*, and their use is, consequently, considered evil unless you produce it naturally and deliver it via an associated natural weapon.

Any champion of good, one of the tenets of which is respect for life and the dignity of sentient creatures (including foes), should shy away from using such a tool unless it's absolutely necessary, which it virtually never is. Note that poisons that do HP damage, apply temporary penalties, or otherwise do something other than ability damage, are perfectly fine and that ravages, in spite of their similarities to poison, are available and usually more potent anyway. Ravages also have a built in safety in that they don't work against creatures that aren't evil.

As I've pointed out a number of times in the past, only the creation of undead is evil. Using existing undead, while potentially quite distasteful, is not. They should be destroyed as soon as they've outlived their usefulness if they're mindless but, otherwise, go nuts.

That said, there's a difference between a character that's good and a character that's a champion of Good. Any character of the latter category certainly shouldn't be okay with using evil methods or taking evil actions under any circumstance. Using tools of evil is one thing. Using evil tools is another.


*An explanation (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=13856253&postcount=245)

[Karnith]

Oh, has anyone mentioned Epic Spellcasting yet? If no one has, I'd like to suggest that it is the worst-designed thing in 3.5, an absolute nightmare to actually try to work with, and best fixed by ignoring its existence entirely.

[eggynack]

Poisons that deal ability damage are unneccesarily cruel*, and their use is, consequently, considered evil unless you produce it naturally and deliver it via an associated natural weapon. Any champion of good, one of the tenets of which is respect for life and the dignity of sentient creatures (including foes), should shy away from using such a tool unless it's absolutely necessary. Note that poisons that do HP damage, apply temporary penalties, or otherwise do something other than ability damage, are perfectly fine and that ravages, in spite of their similarities to poison, are available and usually more potent anyway. Ravages also have a built in safety in that they don't work against creatures that aren't evil.

As I've pointed out a number of times in the past, only the creation of undead is evil. Using existing undead, while potentially quite distasteful, is not. They should be destroyed as soon as they've outlived their usefulness if they're mindless but, otherwise, go nuts.

That said, there's a difference between a character that's good and a character that's a champion of Good. Any character of the latter category certainly shouldn't be okay with using evil methods or taking evil actions under any circumstance. Using tools of evil is one thing. Using evil tools is another.


*Link incoming. Wait for the edit. (XXX)
That makes perfect sense. There's totally a difference between only using a poison against evil guys, and using a poison that only works against evil guys against evil guys. It also makes sense that dealing ability damage is always an evil act, unless you're a wizard doing it. There're absolutely no ways of dealing damage of that kind without being evil at the same time. Also, your post gives several completely logical reasons for why creating undead is necessarily evil. My heart has been purified on this account. Additionally, every spell with the evil descriptor has a completely reasonable reason to be that way. Deathwatch? Crawling with evil. I can't even come up with a use of that spell that's not evil. Finally I have been shown the light, for every use of alignment in dungeons and dragons makes complete sense, and having a character that relies on acting purely within that alignment isn't supremely problematic.

[Kelb_Panthera]

That makes perfect sense. There's totally a difference between only using a poison against evil guys, and using a poison that only works against evil guys against evil guys. It also makes sense that dealing ability damage is always an evil act, unless you're a wizard doing it. There're absolutely no ways of dealing damage of that kind without being evil at the same time. Also, your post gives several completely logical reasons for why creating undead is necessarily evil. My heart has been purified on this account. Additionally, every spell with the evil descriptor has a completely reasonable reason to be that way. Deathwatch? Crawling with evil. I can't even come up with a use of that spell that's not evil. Finally I have been shown the light, for every use of alignment in dungeons and dragons makes complete sense, and having a character that relies on acting purely within that alignment isn't supremely problematic.

This seems a bit over the top. I didn't actually show any of the logic that explains why creating undead is evil (I can if you like) and I certainly didn't say anything about spells with the evil descriptor being properly associated with evil in every circumstance (WotC is absolutely horrid when it comes to applying appropriate spell descriptors and placing spells in the appropriate schools.)

So why all the venom? :smallconfused:

Edit: It's the frowny face in my sig, I bet. It makes me come off as grumpier than I usually intend, I think.

[eggynack]

This seems a bit over the top. I didn't actually show any of the logic that explains why creating undead is evil (I can if you like) and I certainly didn't say anything about spells with the evil descriptor being properly associated with evil in every circumstance (WotC is absolutely horrid when it comes to applying appropriate spell descriptors and placing spells in the appropriate schools.)

So why all the venom? :smallconfused:

Edit: It's the frowny face in my sig, I bet. It makes me come off as grumpier than I usually intend, I think.
It's not that venomous, though it might be my highest ever concentration of sarcasm. Still, the point stands. Things that are given the descriptor "evil" aren't always that evil, so stopping a character from taking actions with that descriptor can be unnecessarily restrictive. Also, ravages are dumb. That's just a true thing. I've never really understood why anyone considers poison or undead use evil, and ravages just make the whole issue make even less sense.

[Bakkan]

Eh, it seems like treatments of good and evil fall into one of at least three broad categoriesm including:

An act is good/evil because it results in good/evil things (so, perhaps, poisoning a mass murderer in his sleep is good because you've stopped his evil deeds),
An act is good/evil in and of itself (so, perhaps, poisoning is simply and always evil)
An act is good/evil depending on the intentions of the actor (so, perhaps, poisoning a mass murderer for the sake of "justice" is good, but doing so for revenge is not)

It seems form discussions on this forum that many posters prefer to use the first category, but most of the D&D books seem to use the second. The difficulty is that the two outlooks are not reconcilable with each other, since the second one says that it's possible for good actions to have undesirable outcomes and evil actions to have desirable outcomes, while the first defines the moral quality of an action based on its outcomes.

So if we use the second characterization of good and evil actions, it is not necessarily inconsistent that poisons that deal ability damage are evil and spells that deal ability damage are not since the result (the ability damage) is not what determines whether the action is good or evil, but some other metric. Determining what that metric is is the difficult part.

So I guess it ticks me off that D&D didn't spell out more clearly which philosophical view of morality they were subscribing to. If they couldn't decide, I wish they would have left the subject alone entirely.

[Kelb_Panthera]

It's not that venomous, though it might be my highest ever concentration of sarcasm. Still, the point stands. Things that are given the descriptor "evil" aren't always that evil, so stopping a character from taking actions with that descriptor can be unnecessarily restrictive. Also, ravages are dumb. That's just a true thing. I've never really understood why anyone considers poison or undead use evil, and ravages just make the whole issue make even less sense.

Again, not all poison use is evil and neither is the use of undead, only their creation*.

There's one key difference between poison and ravage that comes to mind, other than ravages being magical substance (they work on undead you know); fallout.

A creature killed by poison or killed with poison in its body will, subsequently, poison whatever scavanging creature eats the corpse. Because of ravages' inability to poison non-evil creatures it doesn't endanger the various carrion creatures that feed on the fallen evil creature. (I admit this one's a bit flimsy.)

*Why undead are associated with evil (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=15422832&postcount=30)

[Flickerdart]

Oh, has anyone mentioned Epic Spellcasting yet? If no one has, I'd like to suggest that it is the worst-designed thing in 3.5, an absolute nightmare to actually try to work with, and best fixed by ignoring its existence entirely.
I like the idea of epic mages being so epic that they can stitch together new spells on a whim, but the implementation was pretty rubbish.

[Karnith]

I like the idea of epic mages being so epic that they can stitch together new spells on a whim, but the implementation was pretty rubbish.
What, you don't like choosing between variations of DC 0 "I win" and DC 10^18 fireballs?

[big teej]

well this certainly took off a lot more than I thought it was going too from those initial responses.

having read through the first few pages, I have another one to add to the pile.

The Order of the Bow initiate's fluff text

I can feel my blood pressure rising just thinking about it.

*goes back to lurking*

[Kelb_Panthera]

well this certainly took off a lot more than I thought it was going too from those initial responses.

having read through the first few pages, I have another one to add to the pile.

The Order of the Bow initiate's fluff text

I can feel my blood pressure rising just thinking about it.

*goes back to lurking*

What? That fluff is basically the philosophy behind the modern practice of Kyudo. Why is that so infuriating?

[Kazyan]

What? That fluff is basically the philosophy behind the modern practice of Kyudo. Why is that so infuriating?

Personally, I find it more ham-fisted than a Pork Golem's full attack action.

[mattie_p]

Personally, I find it more ham-fisted than a Pork Golem's full attack action.

Don't you mean the Calzone Golem?

[Karnith]

Don't you mean the Calzone Golem?
Guys, guys, I think that you're both clearly thinking of the Ham Demon (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX3kW1PI5BM).

[The Viscount]

I don't like deathless. I just don't. Non-evil undead have existed before. Non-evil undead have been introduced since. Their explanation also doesn't make sense. They're a corpse reanimated with positive energy, with an animating soul. When you return a soul to a body and pump it full of positive energy, that's casting raise dead.

On a separate note, I am bothered by the fact that being a lemure is supposed to be a humiliating and debasing punishment and that they long for the escape promotion brings. Why? Because they're mindless. They don't know or understand anything.

[Karnith]

On a separate note, I am bothered by the fact that being a lemure is supposed to be a humiliating and debasing punishment and that they long for the escape promotion brings. Why? Because they're mindless. They don't know or understand anything.
Mindless creatures in general having alignments is a weird concept. How a skeleton or a zombie (or a lemure) makes a moral or ethical choice is beyond me, particularly as animals explicitly get let off the hook.

Animals and other creatures incapable of moral action are neutral rather than good or evil. Even deadly vipers and tigers that eat people are neutral because they lack the capacity for morally right or wrong behavior.

[Humble Master]

I don't like deathless. I just don't. Non-evil undead have existed before. Non-evil undead have been introduced since. Their explanation also doesn't make sense. They're a corpse reanimated with positive energy, with an animating soul. When you return a soul to a body and pump it full of positive energy, that's casting raise dead.

On a separate note, I am bothered by the fact that being a lemure is supposed to be a humiliating and debasing punishment and that they long for the escape promotion brings. Why? Because they're mindless. They don't know or understand anything. Yah, the deathless always bothered me because of the fact that in all contexts of D and D positive energy was basically the 'energy of life'. So you make undead with life? I just said that in my world undead don't have to be Evil. Undead, like Constructs have the alignment of their creator.

Edit: For me, most mindless creatures don't get an alignment. The exception is undead because I rule that they can 'remember' some of what they encountered in life. After all people who died of madness turn into insane Allips.

[Amphetryon]

Again, not all poison use is evil and neither is the use of undead, only their creation*.

There's one key difference between poison and ravage that comes to mind, other than ravages being magical substance (they work on undead you know); fallout.

A creature killed by poison or killed with poison in its body will, subsequently, poison whatever scavanging creature eats the corpse. Because of ravages' inability to poison non-evil creatures it doesn't endanger the various carrion creatures that feed on the fallen evil creature. (I admit this one's a bit flimsy.)

*Why undead are associated with evil (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=15422832&postcount=30)The "fallout" rationale would appear to have the logical followup that any AoE spell is also evil, as it catches living things (grass lives, so do insects) within the blast radius. This is before we get into discussions of "friendly fire."

[russdm]

I have found in my own experience that nearly everything about the system ticks me off, but i have two that are really big.

1) The alignment system is borked. Seriously borked.

2) Monster design is crappy. Bad CRs for monsters, and some not really make sense, plus alot of monsters have stuff like skills/feats/features/abilities/qualities that serve no purpose, because they weren't designed to simulate a world but solely as opponents to deal with.

The one that breaks the game for me....

D&D basically encourages people to go around and act like thieving murder-hobos and everything is written to give the players free rein to act as horrible as possible with no pangs of conscience or anything.

Oh and according to raw/rai?, paladins don't fall for murdering chromatic dragon children because all chromatics are all something evil. Its the same with pretty much every other race.

[Jeff the Green]

Oh and according to raw/rai?, paladins don't fall for murdering chromatic dragon children because all chromatics are all something evil. Its the same with pretty much every other race.

Not true. A) Killing evil creatures without provocation or cause (e.g. they're killing people, plan to kill peope, have been sentenced to death for killing people) is evil. B) Not all chromatic dragons are evil. "Always Evil" doesn't mean that; there's even a succubus paladin (the LG kind) statted up somewhere.

[Snowbluff]

It ticks me off that D&D's alignment system mixes with anything resembling real-world morality like oil and water.

Or possibly oil and open flame. :smallannoyed:

I remember reading about some fantasy heartbreaker which had the idea that the alignment-equivalents were those of the Elder Gods, and thus were a: only really important to users of divine magic, and b: didn't HAVE to make any sense from a mortal POV.
It doesn't mix it like that. Just because you may have a consequential morality doesn't mean other people conform to it. Especially considering the people who care about this sort of thing (Gods and their paladins/clerics) are people following a dogma in the first place, a non-consequential perspective makes a lot sense.

The alignment system works great. There is no problem, RAW, with it to begin with in most cases. And when it is, it's because your DM has spent time fabricating instances to screw with you intentionally, or you failed as a group to make sure this would work ahead of time. It's like bringing in high level magic or another subsystem without working out the consequences first.

[CRtwenty]

Yah, the deathless always bothered me because of the fact that in all contexts of D and D positive energy was basically the 'energy of life'. So you make undead with life? I just said that in my world undead don't have to be Evil. Undead, like Constructs have the alignment of their creator.

Edit: For me, most mindless creatures don't get an alignment. The exception is undead because I rule that they can 'remember' some of what they encountered in life. After all people who died of madness turn into insane Allips.

Deathless always seemed more like Star Wars Force Ghosts to me rather than true Undead. If you read most of their fluff text a lot of them temporarily descend from their afterlife to fulfill a purpose and then go back to being dead. In fact a lot of them are explicitly sent down by higher powers.

[Kelb_Panthera]

This is really petty, but since this is a gripe-fest anyway; it bugs the hell out of me when people spell "yeah" without the "E" and use the wrong one of to/too/two gramatically.

"To" is in relation to something else.

"Too" means also.

"Two" is how you spell the number "2."


More on-topic:

People moaning about the alignment system being garbage because they keep trying to insist that only results matter with no concern for intent or only actions matter with no concern for intent.

It's somewhere in between. Intent almost always matters. Only a very few actions are defined as always good or evil and even they have rare exceptions. For the rest, what the character intended and what actually happened as an immediate consequence of that action are measured, not counting actions taken by other characters in response.

I don't understand why people have so much difficulty comprehending this.

[yougi]

I can actually understand this mentality. Part of it is that WotC couldn't simply assume that everyone that played the game bought every one of their supplements (though a web enhancement for SpC that was simply expanded spell-lists for other casters would've been nice). For a lot of groups that would have resulted in piles of extraneous material that they'd have to gloss over.

The other part is the business aspect. Printers charge by the page and including any unnecessary information would've inflated page counts which, in turn, would've dug into the profit margins.

It may have caused a few hiccups with synergistic material in different sources occasionally getting out of hand (DMM: persistent spell, for example) but it's at least understandable.

First, I get why they did it, but (1) I disagree that it was a good move for business, and (2) it still annoys me. I mean, if you number the book (or warn people), then people are expected to have to know the material from prior books. I mean, I get it for a single series to be set like that: they most probably were working on all the Completes together, and might not have known the order in which they were going to get published. However, they can come back to them in future series. They even started doing so in the end: I mean, MM4 and 5 have creatures with non-Core classes!


This, too, isn't that hard to wrap your head around if you think about it. Magic items -had- to be included in the game (legacy if nothing else) and they were trying to make a reasonably balanced game (even if they failed miserably).

If they had balanced the game in a way that didn't account for magic items then all magic items would push things out of balance. They, therefore, chose to account for items when balancing the game and assumed that the piles of treasure that virtually everything that's not a vermin or an animal in the monster manual left when you killed them would be spent on magical gear.

Thus; christmas tree effect becomes part of the baseline game.

I get that they needed to balance for a game with items, I mean, I wouldn't play the game if it weren't for all the PHAT LEWTZ (pardon my WoW-language). I remember playing in a 1E game where we could not buy any magic items stronger than potions, which were so dangerously scarce we had to take years of brake in-game to go around the world to get some, and asking myself why the heck we were keeping all this gold if we couldn't spend it on anything. Still, there's a difference between that and saying that in a city of size X, ALL objects with a value under X are considered to be readily available. There's a difference between telling DMs "don't be a prick, give your party useful loot in the amount of X", and telling players "go crazy, take everything you want, and if you don't see something you want, use those rules to CUSTOMIZE YOUR OWN ITEMS".

Magic-Marts also make it no different to say "you get 4000gp" and "you get Gauntlets of Dexterity +2", as if they wanted the GoDs, they'd have bought them, and if they didn't, they'd trade it for whatever is the exact item they want. It makes looting items uninteresting. I makes magical items uninteresting: before that mentality, we named our items, kept them, even after we had gotten a better weapon, and we enjoyed having dozens of +1 daggers, while in the MM mentality, they'd be traded away for a +3 longsword (or +1 corrosive magebane greatsword, most likely) without batting an eye.


Monster design is crappy. Bad CRs for monsters, and some not really make sense, plus a lot of monsters have stuff like skills/feats/features/abilities/qualities that serve no purpose, because they weren't designed to simulate a world but solely as opponents to deal with.

And even as opponents to deal with, the design is terrible. I mean, 90% of monsters are melee bashers, many of them lack any special "flavor" behind the mechanics. I really like what 4E did with monsters design.


D&D basically encourages people to go around and act like thieving murder-hobos and everything is written to give the players free rein to act as horrible as possible with no pangs of conscience or anything.

That is also annoying. XP being acquired solely by defeating enemies makes the murdering a tad too present.

[137beth]

I do agree that the ToB addition wasn't -strictly- necessary. I'm certainly not upset over it though. It was a good, solid addition to the game that made some very interesting additions to the melee game.
Yes, I agree. I liked ToB. I like having a variety of subsystems in the game. I don't think ToB is somehow "more important/necessary" than the other supplements. It's nice, but it is just one book in the stack of a bunch of "completes," the PHBII, the magic item compendium, ToM, XPH, MoI, etc. Honestly, in the long run I got more out of ToM than ToB, because while ToB provided three minor variations on a single new subsystem, ToM provided two completely different new subsystems. On a side note, I did think it was weird that ToM only had two new subsystems...I really expected a third, but sadly it only gave us pact and shadow magic (http://xkcd.com/566/):smalltongue:


Oh, has anyone mentioned Epic Spellcasting yet? If no one has, I'd like to suggest that it is the worst-designed thing in 3.5, an absolute nightmare to actually try to work with, and best fixed by ignoring its existence entirely.
It was...problematic. A big issue is that skill bonuses are one of the cheapest to get onto magic items, and they have everything based on one skill modifier, so...yea. I could deal with that, sort of, but my least favorite part was that most epic spells did not scale well. You had to spend a bunch of resources developing a cool custom spell that you then threw out 5 levels later. This is actually something that bothers me about a large portion of 3.5 content--nonscaling abilities (and non-scaling maneuvers are probably the main thing I would change about ToB)...
I was also generally disappointed with the lack of epic support overall. I got more use from the ELH than any other single sourcebook, as it was pretty much the only one with a lot of useful resources for epic level play. I would have loved to see a system for epic pact magic, epic shadow magic, epic psionics, epic maneuvers, etc, though hopefully better executed than the epic magic system.
EDIT:

but I think if you understand the game, you know you are acting silly. Abilities with a limit for uses with access restricted by level? Yeah, that pretty much describes everything in the game.
So then what exactly makes ToB so much better than the other books:smallconfused:

EDIT 2:
I could rant about the ToB bashing and why "pseudo magic" is an awful terms,
You displayed perfectly the thing that I was initially complaining about:
I like ToB, but it is just one book among many. It is not my favorite sourcebook. And that, in your mind, counts as ToB bashing:smallconfused:

[eggynack]

This is really petty, but since this is a gripe-fest anyway; it bugs the hell out of me when people spell "yeah" without the "E" and use the wrong one of to/too/two gramatically.

"To" is in relation to something else.

"Too" means also.

"Two" is how you spell the number "2."

Totally with you on that one. Also, in a more site specific issue, the mass proliferation of spoiler tags has gotten annoying. People have put a few sentences into a spoiler tag before, and I have no idea why. It's just super weird.



More on-topic:

People moaning about the alignment system being garbage because they keep trying to insist that only results matter with no concern for intent or only actions matter with no concern for intent.

It's somewhere in between. Intent almost always matters. Only a very few actions are defined as always good or evil and even they have rare exceptions. For the rest, what the character intended and what actually happened as an immediate consequence of that action are measured, not counting actions taken by other characters in response.

I don't understand why people have so much difficulty comprehending this.
Yeah, sure, in most cases you're right. Paladins are different though. They lose their powers if they ever willingly commit an evil act, and there's no loophole for intent. Paladins take all of the issues with the alignment system, and shines a massive glaring spotlight on them. Suddenly, after somehow using a wand of deathwatch, you're losing your powers. It's an evil act to use an evil spell, so your god must forsake you for the cruelty that is knowing whether nearby things are undead or not. Intent always matters, unless you're a paladin. That sucks, and I don't see much of a way around it.

[Yahzi]

Poison. Because if it doesn't kill you in 60 seconds, it never will.

More generally: the lack of debilitating injury, or really, the lack of any non-magical effect that lasts more than a combat encounter.

[Kelb_Panthera]

@yougi:

Custom items are -always- a matter of DM purview. The charts and formulas are explicitly guidlines for making a starting estimate. The DM gets final say on whether a custom item is even possible in the RAW.

As for the open magic market in a town of a given size; inclusion of such rules as a baseline is a very useful tool for a GM that doesn't want to have to carefully pick, choose, and place every piece of useful loot the party gets. It's easier to ignore or modify existing rules than to make up rules when there's a gap.

Since the DM is the one building the world he is free to modify the size of towns the party can reach, the gp caps for those towns, and even whether or not magic items -are- openly traded or what degree of items (minor, intermediate, or major) are regularly traded. I repeat: it's easier to ignore or modify existing rules than to make up rules to cover a gap.

To use an automobile analogy, alot of people would rather get a running car and tune it or add after-market modifications than get an empty frame and have to find or fabricate all the parts themselves.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Totally with you on that one. Also, in a more site specific issue, the mass proliferation of spoiler tags has gotten annoying. People have put a few sentences into a spoiler tag before, and I have no idea why. It's just super weird.


Yeah, sure, in most cases you're right. Paladins are different though. They lose their powers if they ever willingly commit an evil act, and there's no loophole for intent. Paladins take all of the issues with the alignment system, and shines a massive glaring spotlight on them. Suddenly, after somehow using a wand of deathwatch, you're losing your powers. It's an evil act to use an evil spell, so your god must forsake you for the cruelty that is knowing whether nearby things are undead or not. Intent always matters, unless you're a paladin. That sucks, and I don't see much of a way around it.

As I mentioned, there are -exceedingly few- always evil acts; torture, the damaging and destruction of souls, casting spells with the evil descriptor, genocide (though exceptions are made for evil outsiders and certain other always evil creatures), animating the dead, murder (which has a specific-to-D&D definition; the snuffing of a life for a nefarious purpose), and that's about it. Literally any other action than the ones on this list have to be measured by both intent and immediate consequence.

As for the spells with evil descriptors bit; A) WotC has an absolutely horrid track-record when it comes to properly assigning descriptors to spells and spells to the appropriate school, and B) there aren't any on the paladin's spell-list anyway so he's got to go more than a little out of his way for that to even be a concern.

Edit: Sorry for the double-post but I can't copy-paste when I would normally edit in another quote and response.

stupid wii

[eggynack]

Well, there's also the poison thing, which I've always thought was dumb. It's not like it's a game killing issue. It's just a regular annoying issue. I've also never really understood the evil animation of undead thing either, as a partially separate issue from spells like deathwatch. That's more of a problem for clerics, though.

[Tar Palantir]

As I mentioned, there are -exceedingly few- always evil acts; torture, the damaging and destruction of souls, casting spells with the evil descriptor, genocide (though exceptions are made for evil outsiders and certain other always evil creatures), animating the dead, murder (which has a specific-to-D&D definition; the snuffing of a life for a nefarious purpose), and that's about it. Literally any other action than the ones on this list have to be measured by both intent and immediate consequence.

As for the spells with evil descriptors bit; A) WotC has an absolutely horrid track-record when it comes to properly assigning descriptors to spells and spells to the appropriate school, and B) there aren't any on the paladin's spell-list anyway so he's got to go more than a little out of his way for that to even be a concern.

Edit: Sorry for the double-post but I can't copy-paste when I would normally edit in another quote and response.

stupid wii

Deathwatch is on the Apostle of Peace class list, though, and they have to follow Exalted morality (so no evil acts, ever).

[eggynack]

Deathwatch is on the Apostle of Peace class list, though, and they have to follow Exalted morality (so no evil acts, ever).
I think that there comes a time when we just have to put deathwatch in its own category. It's just that stupid.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Well, there's also the poison thing, which I've always thought was dumb. It's not like it's a game killing issue. It's just a regular annoying issue. I've also never really understood the evil animation of undead thing either, as a partially separate issue from spells like deathwatch. That's more of a problem for clerics, though.
I did link to an explanation I made on the relationship between undead and evil.

Deathwatch is on the Apostle of Peace class list, though, and they have to follow Exalted morality (so no evil acts, ever).

I think we can all agree that the evil tag on deathwatch is an example (if not, perhaps, the ur-example) of my comment on poorly assigned descriptors.

We can all agree that it's a mistake and that deathwatch (crap-tastic as it is) shouldn't have that descriptor.

edit: ninja'd

[pyromanser244]

now that I think about it "X save negates" is one of the most consistently annoying things I've had to deal with. often the effect is outrageous because it had to be balanced against the chance of nothing happening. the whole things boils down to one side or the other being trivialized. :smallyuk:

sure you can balance this. but wouldn't partial success being the norm remove the need of truly game breaking effects?
meh, my 2 cents.

[Saidoro]

Using poison isn't (or shouldn't be) an evil act since you can use it to kill bad guys, can use poisons that just KO enemies or deal ability damage other than con so it's possible (in theory) to capture/arrest them. Plus animals do it, and the rules dictate they don't have alignments and are thus incapable of evil acts.
It's not that they're incapable of evil acts, it's that they can't make moral decisions because they act only on instinct and therefore can't be evil. You know, just like mindless undead. Or Lemures.

Yes, Kelb, I've read your explanation of why undead or evil and I entirely failed to understand how something being "natural" could in any way be relevant to its morality.

[Kelb_Panthera]

It's not that they're incapable of evil acts, it's that they can't make moral decisions because they act only on instinct and therefore can't be evil. You know, just like mindless undead. Or Lemures.

Yes, Kelb, I've read your explanation of why undead or evil and I entirely failed to understand how something being "natural" could in any way be relevant to its morality.

I'm guessing that "or" was intended to be an "are," in which case you entirely missed my point. I wasn't saying undead are evil. I was saying that creating undead is a metaphysical slap to the face of one of the core tenets of good.

Every time an undead creature is created it creates a blight on the world and ultimately -will- cause harm to living creatures, directly or indirectly, in the long run, unless it's destroyed.

The creature itself, however, is no more inherently evil than any other usually evil creature, or always evil creature that lacks the evil subtype, once it's created.

Making them is evil, using them once they're made is not.

My point was that there was a correlation between the undead and evil, not that undead were inherently evil. It's a subtle but important distinciton.