Core-Only Balance Problems

[Reogan]

Dark Continent players (Patchwork Plane too) stay out please

Hi, Playground. I run a core-only+ campaign, which is to say I allow outside feats and spells and such on only a case-by-by case basis. For the most part, there's little problem. The party consists of a cleric, two wizards, a rogue, and a homebrew class that rages like a barbarian, can smite evil, and has favored enemies like a ranger. He's the problem. That is, his situation is the problem.

Everyone else has a very solid role. The cleric is a healbot, but the party is in need of one because reasons. The wizards work very well, one blasting, one battlefield controlling. The rogue both handles traps and gets good sneak attack damage frequently.

The homebrew takes about eight damage, falls over, and waits for healing.

The problem is twofold:

1. The homebrew has very little health. He has a d10, but his con is average. All his stats are. The entire party is 23 point buy because of reasons. This cripples him.
2. The player is bored of playing the character, but not bored of the character. That is, he is invested in the character's story, but is bored to death of "move, attack, wait, full attack, fall over, get healed, repeat".

I know very little about non-magic classes. Frankly, I'm bad at the game. I'm just a storyteller. According to something I read on these forums, core-only hurts melee the most. So I want to blur the lines for him, somehow. I want to improve his game experience and power.

TL;DR: In a mostly core party of three tier ones, a four and a five, the five is a brittle meat shield and nothing more. How do fix it?

[Zach J.]

Are your casters throwing him any support in the form of buffs? A single Bear's Endurance spell will give him 6-40 extra HP for a short time. Then there are spells like Prayer and Haste which will help the entire party, but especially a melee bound warrior. However, they don't really add to his options in melee. Maybe you could look into the Tome of Battle? There are feats which allow characters to take martial maneuvers. Many grant extra options to melee characters like throws or adding to existing maneuvers like improvingbull rushes a bit.

Then there are existing maneuvers. Give him a reason to do something other than full attack. Find opportunities to include options to bull rush, grapple, etc.

[Rebel7284]

Give him items that will give him alternative defenses like miss chance. +Con item probably can't hurt either.

You can also ask the cleric to do more tanking. He is probably better at it. =)

[Reogan]

The casters have never touched buffing. I don't know why. Or how to encourage them to do so.

It's a very low wealth campaign, but seeing you actually suggest a con item is inspiring. I can't control what they spend their gold on, but I can provide them with non-gold loot. Yes.

The player is aware of Tome of Battle. He plays a warblade in this campaign's sister campaign. He does not seem inclined to request the use of anything within it.

EDIT: The cleric tanking would just deprive the homebrew of any purpose in the party. Execpt secondary melee. With awful damage output.

[eggynack]

Make him different. If your player likes this character, but doesn't like anything about the way he's built, then use a different class, or homebrew this one to be better. You could even let him change up his stats. Flavor is mutable, so a character that was once represented by a fighter could easily be represented by a warblade, and he could keep just about everything he likes.

For example, you could make the character a druidic avenger (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#druidVariantDruidicAve nger) swift hunter (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#druid) druid, and that'd get you both favored enemy and rage attached to some divine casting that could easily substitute in for smite evil. That'd be a much more powerful character, with approximately infinite options (though significantly less than a straight druid), and you'd get pretty much all of the flavor. That's just my first run at it too. With more definition of who this character is, and what he's meant to do, models can become closer and closer to the player's desires.

[Zach J.]

Maybe throw a wand in the game along with that Con enhancing item. Just pick a buff spell, but don't give the item too many charges. Just enough that someone in the group is allowed to play with supporting spells a bit. They may be more inclined to prepare similar spells in the future.

Barring that, why not talk to the casters' players?

Remaking the character is a good idea as well.

[Big Fau]

The casters have never touched buffing. I don't know why. Or how to encourage them to do so.

It's a very low wealth campaign, but seeing you actually suggest a con item is inspiring. I can't control what they spend their gold on, but I can provide them with non-gold loot. Yes.

Take the Cleric aside and ask him to help out the homebrew character (either OOC, or have it be an IC request from the Cleric's deity/representative thereof).

Low-wealth screws noncasters hardest, especially in Core-only. Magic items are vital, and the WBL guidelines were used as part of the CR system's expectations of PC power (not that it did a very good job, but it really does show with the noncasters). Giving your players wealth, or alternatively giving the casters in the party a way to craft magic items without using their personal XP (the Artificer, from the ECS, would be a decent basis for this), is something you should be doing.

[Telonius]

The "Whack, Rinse, Repeat" problem is pretty common for melee characters. The reason Tome of Battle gets suggested in a lot of these instances, besides being flat-out more powerful than regular Fighter, is that they give them some flashy moves that they can do - interesting things to do - on top of regular full attacks. There are some other sorts of "battlefield control" builds like Saph's Horizon Tripper that let people do things that are similarly interesting, but ToB bakes all of that into three classes.

I'd agree with getting the player's input on this. What sorts of things would he like to be doing? Delivering status effects to enemies? Combining spells and melee attacks? Something else entirely? If he wants to change something, I'd strongly suggest working in a rebuild quest somehow. There are lots of different flavorful ways to do this. You can go with the classic, "Meet crazy old hermit and carry water up and down the mountain for a month." Or it could be something stranger, like realizing he's being inhabited by the spirit of a long-dead warrior, or is specially chosen by a deity, or touches some magical thingamajig that scrambles his stats.

[Reogan]

With more definition of who this character is, and what he's meant to do, models can become closer and closer to the player's desires.

The character was originally a Paladin of Heironeous. When his apprentice fell in battle around level 5, the paladin slaughtered everything present. He fell. He took two or three levels of barbarian, before divine intervention made him this homebrew. He is fanatic in his quest to destroy all evil, but does not let mercy or forgiveness interfere. He would slaughter an orc village without evidence against their inherent evil.


Maybe throw a wand in the game along with that Con enhancing item. Just pick a buff spell, but don't give the item too many charges. Just enough that someone in the group is allowed to play with supporting spells a bit. They may be more inclined to prepare similar spells in the future.

Barring that, why not talk to the casters' players?

Remaking the character is a good idea as well.

The wand idea is ingenious. Very yes. I will use that. Talking to the casters is something of a last resort plan for me. I like to allow the players complete agency, avoiding even suggestions. Do you think it necessary?


Take the Cleric aside and ask him to help out the homebrew character (either OOC, or have it be an IC request from the Cleric's deity/representative thereof).

...giving the casters in the party a way to craft magic items without using their personal XP (the Artificer, from the ECS, would be a decent basis for this), is something you should be doing.
The gods have already interceded to create this class, though it may be a 'stepping stone' on the way to something better. In the same intervention, one wizard received xp free crafting. However, all his goals revolve around an effigy army, not buoying the party.


The "Whack, Rinse, Repeat" problem is pretty common for melee characters. The reason Tome of Battle gets suggested in a lot of these instances, besides being flat-out more powerful than regular Fighter, is that they give them some flashy moves that they can do - interesting things to do - on top of regular full attacks. There are some other sorts of "battlefield control" builds like Saph's Horizon Tripper that let people do things that are similarly interesting, but ToB bakes all of that into three classes.

I'd agree with getting the player's input on this. What sorts of things would he like to be doing? Delivering status effects to enemies? Combining spells and melee attacks? Something else entirely? If he wants to change something, I'd strongly suggest working in a rebuild quest somehow. There are lots of different flavorful ways to do this. You can go with the classic, "Meet crazy old hermit and carry water up and down the mountain for a month." Or it could be something stranger, like realizing he's being inhabited by the spirit of a long-dead warrior, or is specially chosen by a deity, or touches some magical thingamajig that scrambles his stats.
The problem with ToB is that in the other campaign I run, this player is a Warblade. He only has melee characters, his main interest is playing a spellcaster, and he feels that there is no need for one in this Cleric, Wizard, Wizard, Rogue party. In fact, he feels as though he needs to be a meat shield. Would Crusader give something of variety? It matches his sorta-Paladin outlook.

[eggynack]

I'd probably go with crusader then, as you mentioned. One of the tankiest class in the game. Alternatively, for more druid fun, you could use druid entering lion of talisid (BoED, 65), which captures both the good part and the savage part, with some degree of tanking. You may want to houserule the whole thing to lawful good though.

[Reogan]

Will the introduction of a crusader cause problems in power balance or in the opportunity for fulfilling encounters? That is, will this martial class somehow unbalance a party with three tier ones? I expect not, but I must plead ignorance as to its powers (though I am now researching carefully).

[eggynack]

Will the introduction of a crusader cause problems in power balance or in the opportunity for fulfilling encounters? That is, will this martial class somehow unbalance a party with three tier ones? I expect not, but I must plead ignorance as to its powers (though I am now researching carefully).
Seems unlikely. The big thing to look out for is white raven tactics, and there are a couple of TO tricks like the d2 crusader and the idiot crusader that you should make sure aren't happening. Apart from that, tier ones are tier one, and if they're feeling outshined, then there's a whole list of spells right there, ready and waiting to be abused.

[Reogan]

I will keep an eye out for that, then. Thank you all very much. I think you just fixed one of my campaigns larger problems. Crusader and items to train the casters seem the answer. Thank you.

[Eldest]

Well, could you link/post the homebrew that he's using? Also, a suggestion for if you go with the rebuild quest, look at this class. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=190289)

[Komatik]

2. The player is bored of playing the character, but not bored of the character. That is, he is invested in the character's story, but is bored to death of "move, attack, wait, full attack, fall over, get healed, repeat".

This sounds 100% the problem that Tome of Battle was built to solve, solves, and that few other melee/mundane-related things in 3.5 manage to solve at all.

Recommendation: Even if the player isn't atm inclined to re-use ToB material, try to see if you could. Because even if the build itself won't be that exciting, the actual combat will be much more so.

The homebrew class itself sounds a lot like something that's fun to imagine, a class that just has it all. But really, that's just words on a paper and does nothing for the issue of 3.5 melees being boring as **** to play because they have no actual interesting choices to make in combat or encounters in general. That problem can only be solved by giving them interesting choices to make in the encounters themselves, even if the new build won't be that interesting on paper. The only things that do that are ToB and casters.

[Seerow]

If the player doesn't go for Crusader, you could always go the AD&D route of dropping ridiculously powerful magic artifacts for the melee dude that just mysteriously don't work if someone else tries to use them.


Because seriously, a mundane with low point buy and low wealth is basically screwed. Even if he does go Crusader, without at least level appropriate magic gear, he's going to have a really hard time.

Also, you mentioned he wants to play a caster but doesn't feel there's a need with 3 full casters in the party already. Consider pointing out to him that there's a ton of caster classes, and each one has more variety than any mundane class, there's nothing wrong with having a 4th caster in the party. He could even go for a Gish build with a focus on buffing (assuming you allow 1-2 non-core prestige classes to make it viable), or just a straight up melee Cleric, and still fill the bruiser role but do so much more effectively given the constraints of your campaign.

[Komatik]

Also, you mentioned he wants to play a caster but doesn't feel there's a need with 3 full casters in the party already. Consider pointing out to him that there's a ton of caster classes, and each one has more variety than any mundane class, there's nothing wrong with having a 4th caster in the party. He could even go for a Gish build with a focus on buffing (assuming you allow 1-2 non-core prestige classes to make it viable), or just a straight up melee Cleric, and still fill the bruiser role but do so much more effectively given the constraints of your campaign.

I second this. Casters can do whatever, so whatever the group needs a caster class can do. If he thinks they need tanking or something, a caster can be built to provide.

[Reogan]

Well, could you link/post the homebrew that he's using? Also, a suggestion for if you go with the rebuild quest, look at this class. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=190289)

I like this. It doesn't tread on the caster's toes, has options, and the Order of the Righteous Blade seems made for him. Maybe Crusader isn't the best option.



The problem with going caster is that the character is not built in any way to accommodate it, and we want to fix his class, not change his character

EDIT: I'm sorry, I forgot to post the homebrew. By which I mean, I don't have the specifics on hand. I know it's rage as a Barbarian, Favored Enemy as ranger, smite as a paladin, and some minor DR/Evil and weapons counting as good later on.

[Falcon X]

There is nothing lost going non-core Tome of Battle. He could either rebuild the character or multi-class with nothing lost. The flavor is pretty much the same with the Warblade.

Making up for low HP: A hard one outside of basic strategies (Fight defensively, Improved Trip, get your cleric to buff you).
A few ideas:
- Turn him undead (Necropolitan FTW, plus Anima Toughness) other acquired templates like Mineral Warrior or Lycanthropy can be done through roleplaying and not require a re-build.
- Rebuild the character as a Barbarian, Crusader, Swashbuckler, Duskblade, etc.

[Reogan]

The party is strongly good, so undead won't work. I've just talked to the player, and the dawnblade linked above seems to his liking. Thanks again, everyone.