How fair or unfair is half-minatour

[CyberThread]

In a super group, where you have wizards, druids, and whatever.


Would you blink twice if you allowed the melee person to have half minatour on a character?


Now normal friends playing around, with not much optimiazation, I can see where half minatour would be tad bit much, but what during moderate or high op situations, and the melee not being dwarfed?

[lycantrope]

Even at lower levels casters can neutralize melee types with little effort. I have zero problems with half-minotaur.

[Deox]

Even at lower levels casters can neutralize melee types with little effort. I have zero problems with half-minotaur.

My sentiments exactly.

[Alabenson]

For me it would depend on the general optimization level of the party. On one hand, if you have wizards slinging crowd control debuffs left and right and a druid who is a bear that rides a bear whilst summoning bears, then half-minotaur would be just fine. On the other hand, if you have a wizard who's essentially playing a war mage with fewer spells per day and a druid who leaves his animal companion at home and melees with his scimitar, then half-minotaur might be a bit much.

[Urpriest]

It sets a bad precedent. Go for something like Lolth-Touched instead.

[Spuddles]

I have little problem with it in parties where casters are allowed to use polymorph or summon nature's ally.

If greenbound summoning or metamagic abuse are going to be used, I will encourage melee to hunt for good templates.

[AmberVael]

In a super group, where you have wizards, druids, and whatever.

Would you blink twice if you allowed the melee person to have half minatour on a character?

Now normal friends playing around, with not much optimiazation, I can see where half minatour would be tad bit much, but what during moderate or high op situations, and the melee not being dwarfed?

It's important to recognize exactly what half-minotaur does, and what it doesn't do. What half-minotaur does is grant some impressive bonuses for a low cost- particularly to strength.

What it doesn't do is add in new options. A fighter with half-minotaur is more powerful, but his situation doesn't ultimately change. If he can't defeat someone by running at them and beating them with a stick, half-minotaur will do nothing for him.

As such, under some particular styles of optimization, half-minotaur will do absolutely nothing to help the melee characters... and contrary to what one might initially think, end up causing more problems through imbalancing the games in completely different avenues. Improperly sized bonuses can harm the underlying system even if they can't overcome other lacks.

Because of this, I probably wouldn't allow Half Minotaur unless everyone else had similarly notable bonuses. It's simply too much for too little, and given exactly how most of the high power classes tend to operate and obtain their power, it wouldn't actually help the problem. I'd be more inclined to simply toss the melee characters something like phrenic or half-fey for a reduced cost or for free, or allow them access to a limited gestalt system to broaden their options.

[Spuddles]

It's important to recognize exactly what half-minotaur does, and what it doesn't do. What half-minotaur does is grant some impressive bonuses for a low cost- particularly to strength.

What it doesn't do is add in new options. A fighter with half-minotaur is more powerful, but his situation doesn't ultimately change. If he can't defeat someone by running at them and beating them with a stick, half-minotaur will do nothing for him.

As such, under some particular styles of optimization, half-minotaur will do absolutely nothing to help the melee characters... and contrary to what one might initially think, end up causing more problems through imbalancing the games in completely different avenues. Improperly sized bonuses can harm the underlying system even if they can't overcome other lacks.

Because of this, I probably wouldn't allow Half Minotaur unless everyone else had similarly notable bonuses. It's simply too much for too little, and given exactly how most of the high power classes tend to operate and obtain their power, it wouldn't actually help the problem. I'd be more inclined to simply toss the melee characters something like phrenic or half-fey for a reduced cost or for free, or allow them access to a limited gestalt system to broaden their options.

It adds reach, scent, track, a second attack, and large enough bonuses to str, con, and wis that MAD classes like monk, paladin, or wis/cha based gishes can point buy 8 str and still end up with 20 str.

The bonuses are large enough that it reduces feat dependence and item dependence for getting a large enough attack bonus to stay relevant.