Why the Dark Chaos Shuffle Hate?

[magicalmagicman]

ASSUMING OTYUGH HOLES AND SUCH ARE NOT ALLOWED, why the DCS hate? It requires level 8 spells, xp cost, and 3.5 is already mega feat starved, so letting someone get rid of their low level feats for better ones seems ok.

Some DMs I've talked to just ignored me straight out saying it is TO stuff.

[Max Caysey]

ASSUMING OTYUGH HOLES AND SUCH ARE NOT ALLOWED, why the DCS hate? It requires level 8 spells, xp cost, and 3.5 is already mega feat starved, so letting someone get rid of their low level feats for better ones seems ok.

Some DMs I've talked to just ignored me straight out saying it is TO stuff.

There are a few ways of retraining. PHBII and the Psion power...

As I have understood. Dark Chaos Shuffle grants feats... So you are effective buying feats... thats not the same as retraining old... Lets assume a long high level game... by level 30 the wizard could theoretically have 100 feats!

[magicalmagicman]

There are a few ways of retraining. PHBII and the Psion power...

As I have understood. Dark Chaos Shuffle grants feats... So you are effective buying feats... thats not the same as retraining old... Lets assume a long high level game... by level 30 the wizard could theoretically have 100 feats!

You only buy feats if otyugh holes and such are allowed.

Retraining doesn't let you flat out replace old feats with powerful feats.

[Max Caysey]

[QUOTE]Retraining doesn't let you flat out replace old feats with powerful feats.

Yes it does... Assuming a you meet the requirements!

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/psychicReformation.htm

[Troacctid]

You only buy feats if otyugh holes and such are allowed.

Retraining doesn't let you flat out replace old feats with powerful feats.

The DCFS trick typically involves shuffling out things like weapon and armor proficiencies, which you get a bunch of for free and are technically feats. So yes, you are effectively buying feats. This is obviously not the intent.

Furthermore, it is a huge flavor fail, as it represents major philosophical whiplash each time you embrace and subsequently shun the Dark Chaos.

[weckar]

Furthermore, it is a huge flavor fail, as it represents major philosophical whiplash each time you embrace and subsequently shun the Dark Chaos.It's kinda like saying 'Nah' on a cosmic level. Oddly, probably the most Chaotic action possible.

[Crake]

[QUOTE=magicalmagicman;20788032]



Yes it does... Assuming a you meet the requirements!

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/psychicReformation.htm

That's not retraining though, it's honestly just another method of doing what the DCFS does. Retraining rules from phb2 specifically require that you select things that you qualified for at the level you are retraining, so you, for example, can't retrain the toughness feat you took at level 1 into something like leap attack, which requires 8 ranks in jump, because you could not have possibly qualified at level 1:


You can exchange one of the feats you previously selected for another feat. If the new feat has prerequisites, not only must your character meet them in his current state, but you must also be able to show that he met them at the time you chose the previous feat.

The only difference between psychic reformation and the DCFS though is that the DCFS lets you retrain ANY feat. Even before you include infinite feat shenannigans with stuff like heroics or otyugh hole feats this lets you trade out say, fighter bonus feats for regular feats, or elf proficiency feats for regular feats, or even exalted bonus feats from vow of poverty into normal feats, which is where people start to see it as a bit cheesy.

[magicalmagicman]

I see, retraining proficiencies is justified hate.

[ILM]

I've always found that treating proficiencies as feats was stretching it. I mean, isn't it like treating every batch of 5 skill points you get from class levels as a feat, just because there's the Open Minded feat? Or treating every increment of 3 hp as a feat because Toughness? The class/racial entries say "X is proficient in Y", not "X has the Y proficiency feat" - as laid out for classes/races with odd assortments of proficiencies such as rogues.

Anyway. At my table I restrict DCFS to explicit feats acquired from class levels and HD progression, and I also include the retraining's provision that the character must have qualified for them at the time the replaced feat was initially acquired. That makes it an instantaneous expanded retraining (since it also works on fixed feats gained from class levels, like a Marshal 1's Skill Focus Diplomacy) that costs XP. This seems to close most loopholes.

[Efrate]

Since martial weapon proficiency is a feat, if your class is proficient with ALL martial weapons, doesn't that give you by raw like a zillion feats alone with a 1 level dip/prestige into something with full martial? Horridly cheesy I know but I think that works by RAW.

[magicalmagicman]

Since martial weapon proficiency is a feat, if your class is proficient with ALL martial weapons, doesn't that give you by raw like a zillion feats alone with a 1 level dip/prestige into something with full martial? Horridly cheesy I know but I think that works by RAW.

I disagree actually. Its more of a class feature than a feat. By RAW I'm sure its a class feature.

Just like how Skill Focus is a feat that gives you skills, martial proficiency is a feat that gives you proficiency. The proficiencies themselves aren't feats, which is perfect RAW ruling.

You can argue your logic too but RAW doesn't say your version is definitively correct.

[Crake]

I've always found that treating proficiencies as feats was stretching it. I mean, isn't it like treating every batch of 5 skill points you get from class levels as a feat, just because there's the Open Minded feat? Or treating every increment of 3 hp as a feat because Toughness? The class/racial entries say "X is proficient in Y", not "X has the Y proficiency feat" - as laid out for classes/races with odd assortments of proficiencies such as rogues.

Anyway. At my table I restrict DCFS to explicit feats acquired from class levels and HD progression, and I also include the retraining's provision that the character must have qualified for them at the time the replaced feat was initially acquired. That makes it an instantaneous expanded retraining (since it also works on fixed feats gained from class levels, like a Marshal 1's Skill Focus Diplomacy) that costs XP. This seems to close most loopholes.

Oh, calling class proficiences feats wouldn't fly at my table, that's a class feature, not a feat, but elves specifically have bonus feats for martial weapon proficiency longsword, longbow, rapier and shortbow (i think those are the right ones anyway), but yeah, those ones are actually bonus feats, not just some class or racial feature.

PHB page 16:


Weapon Proficiency: Elves receive the Martial Weapon Proficiency feats for the longsword, rapier, longbow (including composite longbow), and shortbow (including composite shortbow) as bonus feats. Elves esteem the arts of swordplay and archery, so all elves are familiar with these weapons.

[Eldan]

The elf thing really is the worst.

[RoboEmperor]

The elf thing really is the worst.

To be fair though, 4 Dark Chaos Shuffle-able feats is still not worth the -2CON the race provides unless you're starting at a much higher level.

[Mr Adventurer]

To be fair though, 4 Dark Chaos Shuffle-able feats is still not worth the -2CON the race provides unless you're starting at a much higher level.

If 1hp per level were that important, everyone would take Improved Toughness.

[RoboEmperor]

If 1hp per level were that important, everyone would take Improved Toughness.

Well... for casters, that 1hp per level is 22% of their max hp.

[weckar]

As someone who just introduced a character with a CON of 6 to my table... Those missing HPs add up.

Seriously, constitution as a dump stat??

[Mr Adventurer]

And you can tell how important that is by how many people take Improved Toughness to make up for it

If +1 hp per level isn't worth spending 1 feat on, -1 hp per level should be worth getting 4 feats. IF that's the whole of your equation.

[ILM]

To be fair though, 4 Dark Chaos Shuffle-able feats is still not worth the -2CON the race provides unless you're starting at a much higher level.
How about -2 CON and Improved Toughness, then 3 free DCFS feats?

[weckar]

How about -2 CON and Improved Toughness, then 3 free DCFS feats?
And this is why whenever anyone attempts DCFS at my table, I make them get up and dance the ACTUAL shuffle.

[AvatarVecna]

1) As a pure retraining thing (just turning existing feats into new ones), it's expensive. You either have to find a 15th level spellcaster who has both of these spells in their repetoire (despite the inherent philosophical implications of both spells being literally opposites), who is willing to cast multiple 8th level spells on you while taking a significant XP cost themselves, and who isn't going to abuse the fact that you're trusting them to cast two spells on you in a row that you're not going to try and resist at all, seek out two such casters who have one spell each and get them to work together for your sake (despite their clear philosophical opposition)...or you have to convince a party caster (possibly yourself) to take that XP penalty for your sake. As far as retraining goes, if I haven't found a way to dodge the XP cost myself, I'd prefer to just use retraining; it doesn't run the risk of becoming some NPCs puppet, doesn't lose me a ton of gold or XP, and doesn't have any RAI issues.

2) When you do dodge the XP cost, you're approaching TO. The ability to change your feats to any other feats on a whim costs XP for a reason: namely, to keep you from doing it all the freaking time, especially since to dodge the XP cost you basically have to be a high-level caster yourself, and you're already game-breaking enough without help.

3) Using these spells feels like something that's only super "In-Character" for a morally neutral person; while there's no [Evil] tag, you're still gaining power by embracing the power of the Abyss; even if you give it back because your plan was, from the beginning, to pull off this shuffle by ******* around with the Dark Arts, it's still the kind of thing that gives DMs leeway to rule 0 an [Evil] tag on there, or at least to screw around with your character.

4) If you can find a way to gain extra, temporary feats, and you're dodging the XP cost, it officially enters TO territory: your total feats are now only limited by your spells per day (and to a lesser extent, your money), and while it's fairly easy to get more of the former in TO, it's ridiculously easy to get infinite of the latter in TO, which means you effectively can have infinite feats pretty easily if you're willing to abuse this.

[thethird]

See armor proficiencies (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#armorProficiencyLight).


All characters except wizards, sorcerers, and monks automatically have Armor Proficiency (light) as a bonus feat. They need not select it.

[Cosi]

How about -2 CON and Improved Toughness, then 3 free DCFS feats?

Technically, you should probably take Great Fortitude too, if you're looking for the full offset (also, Fort saves are roughly a thousand times more important than hit points).

Also, even without the Dark Chaos Shuffle, being an Elf is a fine choice for a Rogue and straight up good for a Wizard (with Grey Elf and/or Elf Generalist).

[torrasque666]

Anyway. At my table I restrict DCFS to explicit feats acquired from class levels and HD progression, and I also include the retraining's provision that the character must have qualified for them at the time the replaced feat was initially acquired. That makes it an instantaneous expanded retraining (since it also works on fixed feats gained from class levels, like a Marshal 1's Skill Focus Diplomacy) that costs XP. This seems to close most loopholes.

This is basically what my table did when we had a guy abusing DCFS. What we did specifically was say that each feat has a "slot" and that "slot" can only be filled by other feats capable of being in that "slot". We'd allow the semi-instantaneous nature of the combo to ignore that, but that doesn't mean that you're replacing Fighter Bonus feats with Reserve Feats or the like. Any bonus feat that a class granted that had a specific list could only be satisfied by other feats on that list. We did allow it to be used to wipe old feats for new one that you couldn't qualify for at the level taken though.

We essentially allowed it to be used to retrain feats to keep a character at peak condition, rather than be weighted down by a bunch of useless feats at higher levels. This was our allowance rather than just outright banning it after we had a player get a bit too zealous with its application.

[Ruethgar]

I've always found that treating proficiencies as feats was stretching it. I mean, isn't it like treating every batch of 5 skill points you get from class levels as a feat, just because there's the Open Minded feat? Or treating every increment of 3 hp as a feat because Toughness? The class/racial entries say "X is proficient in Y", not "X has the Y proficiency feat" - as laid out for classes/races with odd assortments of proficiencies such as rogues.

Actually, the class proficiencies are not feats they are class features. The cheese comes in because the feats themselves specify that they are automatically granted to certain classes. So a Fighter gets (Tower)Shield Proficiency, Heavy/Medium/Light Armor Proficiency, from both a class feature and because the corresponding feats are granted to them automatically due to the feats' descriptions. If you went instead for a Crusader or Commoner, you would only get Light Armor proficiency as a bonus feat despite having more or less proficiencies than that as a class feature because Light Armor Proficiency is the only one that lists class exclusions rather than inclusions.


Since martial weapon proficiency is a feat, if your class is proficient with ALL martial weapons, doesn't that give you by raw like a zillion feats alone with a 1 level dip/prestige into something with full martial? Horridly cheesy I know but I think that works by RAW.

It doesn't actually, the only reason you get armor proficiency feats as bonus feats is because the feats themselves specifically call out as such, the weapon proficiency feats do not say anything to that effect, instead saying various classes are already proficient and need not take the feat. The actual class features are irrelevant, the proficiency feats are not being granted by the class feature, simply the proficiency itself.

[Telonius]

To be fair though, 4 Dark Chaos Shuffle-able feats is still not worth the -2CON the race provides unless you're starting at a much higher level.

If someone is already Dark Chaos Shuffling around a bunch of Elven proficiencies, I would assume he's also got a Constitution of 4, the Frail flaw (for an extra feat), and will shortly be a Necropolitan. (Which will also give him nice and easy access to Tainted Sorcerer without the pesky downsides)

[Eldariel]

As someone who just introduced a character with a CON of 6 to my table... Those missing HPs add up.

Seriously, constitution as a dump stat??

Well, undeath, Unholy Toughness, Faerie Mysteries Initiate & co. are things to circumvent that issue. It's also possible to be 100% damage immune (e.g. Troll-Blooded plus non-lethal immunity such as Gheden template or Favor of the Martyr as a persistent spell; or more broadly, any source of regeneration and any source of non-lethal immunity, or some swarm shenanigans, or Delay Death + ability to act while in negative HP or any number of such options), which makes it far less problematic - basically only relevant for Power Words and few other effects that you can have immunities for. For a one-layer vanilla defense character though, yeah, Con 6 is a suicide.

[Cosi]

For a one-layer vanilla defense character though, yeah, Con 6 is a suicide.

Not really. For the most part, if you get hit by someone optimized for damage output, you die. A Mailman, Ubercharger, or DPS Rouge/DFI Bard/Swift Hunter/Whatever can toss out a couple hundred damage in a round. The 20 or 40 HP you're missing out on as a result of your 6 CON doesn't matter in that context.

The real reason you don't dump stats that low is ability damage.

[Flickerdart]

Not really. For the most part, if you get hit by someone optimized for damage output, you die. A Mailman, Ubercharger, or DPS Rouge/DFI Bard/Swift Hunter/Whatever can toss out a couple hundred damage in a round. The 20 or 40 HP you're missing out on as a result of your 6 CON doesn't matter in that context.

The real reason you don't dump stats that low is ability damage.
Typically, a party's enemies are monsters out of the book, which are not mailmen/uberchargers/etc. Most DMs don't try to kill their PCs.

[Cosi]

Typically, a party's enemies are monsters out of the book, which are not mailmen/uberchargers/etc. Most DMs don't try to kill their PCs.

True, but I would expect that most games where the Dark Chaos Shuffle gets used are highly optimized enough that you would expect those kinds of tactics.

[Eldariel]

Not really. For the most part, if you get hit by someone optimized for damage output, you die. A Mailman, Ubercharger, or DPS Rouge/DFI Bard/Swift Hunter/Whatever can toss out a couple hundred damage in a round. The 20 or 40 HP you're missing out on as a result of your 6 CON doesn't matter in that context.

The real reason you don't dump stats that low is ability damage.

That's not the point, with Con that low and no additional layers of defense you'll die to random dragon breaths/environmental hazards/AOE spells (wings of flurry, maw of chaos, etc.)/etc way too easily. The point of HP is very rarely to take hits from something optimized for damage as by very definition, things optimized for damage are generally designed to pulverize things relying on health defenses if they can hit you. There are plenty of lesser damage sources particularly on the monster/hazard side of the spectrum that get free AOE damage toys and they tend to be rather hard to avoid for a whole game entirely unless you're immune though, and for those HP is very convenient unless you can expect to be immune to damage.

[Cosi]

That's not the point, with Con that low and no additional layers of defense you'll die to random dragon breaths/environmental hazards/AOE spells (wings of flurry, maw of chaos, etc.)/etc way too easily. The point of HP is very rarely to take hits from something optimized for damage as by very definition, things optimized for damage are generally designed to pulverize things relying on health defenses if they can hit you. There are plenty of lesser damage sources particularly on the monster/hazard side of the spectrum that get free AOE damage toys and they tend to be rather hard to avoid for a whole game entirely unless you're immune though, and for those HP is very convenient unless you can expect to be immune to damage.

Your HD matters a good deal more than your CON in this context. At 10th level, a Wizard is dieing to most AoE unless he has 16+ CON, and any successful full attack regardless (a Fire Giant is looking at an average of 76.5 damage, which a Wizard would need a CON of 20 to survive). Conversely, a Barbarian can tank most AoE with 10 CON and surviving the Fire Giant with 12.

[Eldariel]

Your HD matters a good deal more than your CON in this context. At 10th level, a Wizard is dieing to most AoE unless he has 16+ CON, and any successful full attack regardless (a Fire Giant is looking at an average of 76.5 damage, which a Wizard would need a CON of 20 to survive). Conversely, a Barbarian can tank most AoE with 10 CON and surviving the Fire Giant with 12.

That's a strange way of looking at it; I'd rather say the smaller your HD, the more you want Con. Con is a linear addition to the base; the greater the Con, the lesser the relative significance of the HD and the relative difference between the classes. With magic bonuses, a base 14 Con already gives 16 Con on these levels most likely, or much more if going with greater magic. The differences are exacerbated in negative Con-scores; at Con 6, Wizard will average 1.25 HP per level and start at 2 while the Barbarian is still 10/4.5. Of course, Wizard will most likely add False Life or some other source of Temp HP (if this is his level of defenses), which will add a further slight buffer but with base HP of 2 it's not going to be enough to survive a dragon breath even on a successful save.

In general, classes with lower HDs benefit relatively more of the extra HP but given how low HP in this game is compared to the amount of damage you can be taking, one can never have too much of course unless one is actually again immune.

[Thurbane]

I would dispute that there is a universal hate for DCS.

In a medium to high-op game, and assuming you don't abuse infinite feat loops, it's fine.

In a lower op game (i.e. beatstick fighters, healbot clerics) I can see where it would be frowned upon.

Each to their own.

[Cosi]

In general, classes with lower HDs benefit relatively more of the extra HP but given how low HP in this game is compared to the amount of damage you can be taking, one can never have too much of course unless one is actually again immune.

Classes with lower HD need more to benefit at all. You need about 100 HP at 10th level to survive a round's worth of attention from a DPS monster. It doesn't really matter if your HP is 20 or 80 or 40, because you still get shredded. So you need to get to that threshold for HP to matter, which is easier to do with a larger hit die.