Why Do People Think That Core is Balanced? [Archive]

icefractal

2017-06-26, 02:04 PM

Because it's not core vs other that's being compared, it's core vs core + other, and the latter is obviously going to be potentially more powerful. Also, there's two correlations at work - new players tend to use just core, and new players are seldom the ones ending up with a very powerful character. So you can see how there's an impression created.

Same principle as why people believe roleplaying and optimizing are inherently opposed. From the perspective of a RP-oriented DM, the four groups of players created by those two axes look like:
* No Op, No RP: Forgettable, blends into the background.
* No Op, Yes RP: Remembered as a good RPer.
* Yes Op, Yes RP: Remembered as a good RPer.
* Yes Op, No RP: Remembered as a bad RPer who still ended up in the spotlight a bunch because of cheese.

So even if it's a completely orthogonal distribution, it gets remembered as "good RPers vs dirty optimizers".

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-26, 02:05 PM

Is that a thing that people still think? :smallconfused::smallconfused::smallconfused:

Sadly, yes. I have seen people claim that core is balanced as recently as late 2016.

Jormengand

2017-06-26, 02:06 PM

Because the ridiculous power inherent in alter self, polymorph and the like is a lot harder to appreciate than the ridiculous power inherent in the "Lol, DAMAGE" abilities of ToB, even if it's actually a lot stronger.

Also, because people forget that when the cleric casts Heal on the fighter, everything that the fighter does for the rest of the game is because the party contains a cleric, not because it contains a fighter.

Eldan

2017-06-26, 02:07 PM

Is that a thing that people still think? :smallconfused::smallconfused::smallconfused:.

I play in a group with a kobold druid who spent all his feats on two-weapon fighting who never wildshapes. Some people just don't know how systems work.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-26, 02:09 PM

Fouredged Sword

2017-06-26, 02:14 PM

This is a good point.

A fair amount of system mastery is often necessary to understand what's broken in 3.5 and what isn't.

I too remember when I thought fighter 2 / rogue 3 was the height of optimization.

FocusWolf413

2017-06-26, 02:16 PM

They don't think it's balanced, they just don't want to have to search through 20 books.

DEMON

2017-06-26, 02:19 PM

I play in a group with a kobold druid who spent all his feats on two-weapon fighting who never wildshapes. Some people just don't know how systems work.

And they still mostly like and enjoy it :smallwink:

I've seen a Wizard dual-wielding longswords. He didn't put any feats into it, no Two-Weapon Fighting, no Somatic Weaponry, no Oversized 2WF, no nothing (he might have been an Elf, I think, so at least he wasn't non-proficient... not sure), so his attack bonus was like a negative zillion.

He even had to put one of the damn things away when he was casting spells... but oh boy, was he happy with his character. He enjoyed every minute.

Meanwhile I cried... and my heart bled.

At that point, it's next to impossible to assess balance.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-26, 02:20 PM

They don't think it's balanced, they just don't want to have to search through 20 books.

I've seen people (as recently as last year) claim that non-core is unbalanced.

Edit: Compared to core I mean. I should have added that part in the first place. :smalltongue:

Fouredged Sword

2017-06-26, 02:27 PM

I've seen people (as recently as last year) claim that non-core is unbalanced.

It is. It's just that core is also unbalanced. Non-core doesn't fix the situation though.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-26, 02:30 PM

It is. It's just that core is also unbalanced. Non-core doesn't fix the situation though.

I meant more unbalance compared to core. I apologize if I wasn't clear.

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-26, 02:33 PM

I meant more unbalance compared to core. I apologize if I wasn't clear.

It can be more unbalanced than core, but it can also be more balanced. It all depends on which books you look at.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-26, 02:34 PM

It can be more unbalanced than core, but it can also be more balanced. It all depends on which books you look at.

I'm curious, is there any single 1st party book in 3.5 that's more unbalanced than core?

Nifft

2017-06-26, 02:45 PM

I suspect it's because people are bad at logical deduction, and good at correlation.

So, when they see a player who wants to use all sorts of non-core character stuff, and they see that the non-core created by this guy is stronger than the other PCs, then jump to the conclusion that the non-core content must be why the non-core PC is stronger.

In reality, the non-core player simply has a better grasp on the game, and that's why she wants to use non-core stuff: because she's already played most of the core classes.

But it's much easier to blame the Incantatrix class (which is also unbalanced) than it is to blame your own inexperience with the spellcasting system.

Jay R

2017-06-26, 02:58 PM

The people I know who are on that side of the argument don't believe that Core is balanced. They either think it's not unbalanced enough to be too much of a problem, or (like me) they don't care about balance.

I don't believe any game could be balanced. The person who knows the rules and thinks creatively has a much stronger character than somebody who doesn't, even if they have the same character sheet.

There's a player in our group who is unsatisfied with her Druid, who doesn't seem as strong as other characters, including my Ranger/Fighter/Horizon Walker. The imbalance (which is real) doesn't come from the druid class, but from better knowledge and ideas.

In any event, the higher levels you play, the more imbalance there is. People who play from first level to 13th or so don't usually need to worry about it.

Jormengand

2017-06-26, 03:03 PM

I'm curious, is there any single 1st party book in 3.5 that's more unbalanced than core?

Part of me wants to nominate the XPH for actually having a PC class that makes warrior look good and a borderline T1-T2 not!caster in the same book, as well as having a 9/10 not!casting PrC with immunity to several schools of magic and disciplines of psionics and a couple of other neat abilities, and Leadership: the class, in the same book as someone who... does a little bit of fire damage?

Elder_Basilisk

2017-06-26, 03:04 PM

Probably the primary reason that people think that core is more balanced than core+supplements is that most people are thinking about party vs monster balance in the context of adventure module or adventure path style play rather than intra-party balance in the context of sandboxy semi-pvp play.

90% of forum moaning about balance is intra-party balance: "fighterz suckzorr and Wizards RULEZ" etc. On the other hand, the balance that most players and DMs think about is party vs monster balance. When considering party vs monster balance, it doesn't matter that the fighter doesn't have an easy way to see invisible monsters (for example)--he is counting on the wizard using see invisibility+glitterdust or the cleric having invisibility purge. That is a solution for party vs monster balance even if it is an example of intra-balance issues. A different example is the supposed "cleric or wizard fights better than a fighter" messageboard staple (where fighter is understood to really mean any full-BAB combo). It can be true in some contexts (usually depending upon non-core items like nightsticks+divine metamagic+persistent spell or wraithstrike) but in the core context it is only true (when it is true at all) when party members are considered on their own. In my experience, a full-BAB chassis makes an incredible vehicle for the spellcasters' buffs and the full-BAB character with a full suite of offensive and defensive buffs is often able to kill monsters better than a buff and bash style spellcaster--or a party with a second buff and bash style spellcaster in place of the fighter type. (Particularly in core and in the levels between 1 and 17 that forumites like to ignore).

Likewise, if you are playing a published adventure or adventure path and you just want to play the encounters in order, you have to delve pretty deep into tippyverse style play* in order for the purportedly broken bits of core to make a difference in the balance of the encounters. On the other hand, if you grab a powerful item, feat or class from a supplement, it will usually make a difference to the party vs monster balance that is immediately visible even in a "stay on the adventure's rails" or "kick in the door to room 3A" style of play. For example, divine metamagic, persistent spell, and wraithstrike individually make a much more immediately noticeable difference to the party's ability to kill monsters in pregenerated encounters without changing the game's playstyle than the planar binding does.

*Planar binding is an example of this. If you just summon up a hound archon or a bearded devil and pay him to help you fight, you'll be out a good deal of gold and aren't likely to accomplish much that your party couldn't have done without the summon--especially since you probably won't have sufficient warning of the "really tough fight that can be made easy by planar binding" to actually set up and cast the spell. If you want to do hideously game-breaking things with planar binding, you are probably trolling monster manuals for obscure monsters and/or linking together their spell like abilities in genre defying manners that enable you to avoid the kick-in-the-door or stay on the rails style of play. If you use the game-breaking elements, you almost certainly change the style of play at the same time.

Zanos

2017-06-26, 03:12 PM

That mindset is mostly dead on the forums here. But in general:

Because everyone has core. It's required, that's why it's core. Also, including splats does increase the sheer amount of broken content, it's just the ratio is better. But people rarely crack open splatbooks to pick out bad or average material. Dragon magazine has the same problem just kicked up to 11 because of the obscurity. Most of the content is fine, but people only show up with the really spicy stuff. Hence splats(or dragon) are broken.

Because the ridiculous power inherent in alter self, polymorph and the like is a lot harder to appreciate than the ridiculous power inherent in the "Lol, DAMAGE" abilities of ToB, even if it's actually a lot stronger.
Also this.

Also, because people forget that when the cleric casts Heal on the fighter, everything that the fighter does for the rest of the game is because the party contains a cleric, not because it contains a fighter.
You're leaking there, J.

I'm curious, is there any single 1st party book in 3.5 that's more unbalanced than core?
Not a book, but that teleport through time article was pretty bad. I think you'd struggle to find something worse than shapechange in any case.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-26, 03:15 PM

Not a book, but that teleport through time article was pretty bad. I think you'd struggle to find something worse than shapechange in any case.

Ah, yes, the online articles; they rival Dragon Magazine for broken content.

Teleport Through Time is all sorts of borked. Mostly for introducing time travel into D&D. :smallsigh:

Jormengand

2017-06-26, 03:18 PM

You're leaking there, J.

I'm testing, you see, to see if I can imply that clerics might possibly be better than fighters without an army of angry archers descending from the heavens - or whichever plane is violently chaotic good - to smite me.

That, or I wasn't even thinking of that and was just pointing out the general problem with the buff-pony argument and similar arguments that some people use, and that clerics-as-healers don't look like they're doing as much as they are.

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-26, 03:33 PM

Teleport Through Time is all sorts of borked. Mostly for introducing time travel into D&D. :smallsigh:

My biggest issue is that they introduced Time Travel, but didn't explain how it works.

Nifft

2017-06-26, 03:36 PM

My biggest issue is that they introduced Time Travel, but didn't explain how it works.

Time Travel will be explained in a previous article, which has yet to be written.

DEMON

2017-06-26, 03:40 PM

I'm testing, you see, to see if I can imply that clerics might possibly be better than fighters without an army of angry archers descending from the heavens - or whichever plane is violently chaotic good - to smite me.

That, or I wasn't even thinking of that and was just pointing out the general problem with the buff-pony argument and similar arguments that some people use, and that clerics-as-healers don't look like they're doing as much as they are.

Beastlands and Arborea, I believe.

KillianHawkeye

2017-06-26, 03:58 PM

Time Travel will be explained in a previous article, which has yet to be written.

Bravo! :smallamused::smallamused:

emeraldstreak

2017-06-26, 04:14 PM

It's not that people think Core is balanced. It's that core is at least a smaller set of unbalanced and it tends to be known and predictable unbalanced. It is easier for at DM to keep track of when they are starting out or with a new group. It's easier to tell if someone is doing something outside what you feel comfortable with the power level or doing something that looks good on paper but actually sucks because they don't know what they are doing.

Some people do actually mean that.

Other people, especially the isolated groups that play on their table with zero contact with the outside community, are - more often than not - bad at optimization.

Many of you might not remember, but when 3.0 was new, the older-older-(older?) Wizards' forums were frequented by a great number of players who didn't understand the Fighter was inferior to the Wizard. Back then moderation was very loose, the arguments were heated and full of insults and hurt egos. After much tears, we bludgeoned them into submission by defeating their delusions time and again and again. There were people who for real thought their sword and board fighter will somehow be a match for my wizard, and had very hard time coping with being defeated in any test.

In other words, even cornerstones of understanding the game like the power of wizards and codzilla were at first vociferously denied.

If it's any consolation, other tabletop games' communities are even worse at understanding the game they play. For example, I once challenged a fairly large community with what can be best approximated in their system to a "Commoner 20" vs any "Wizard 20" they could field against it, and I not only won handily, but even knew beforehand my victory is 100% certain, that's how rudimentary their knowledge of the game was even on the forum. By this measure the 3.x community is very advanced.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-26, 04:41 PM

Some people do actually mean that.

Other people, especially the isolated groups that play on their table with zero contact with the outside community, are - more often than not - bad at optimization.

Many of you might not remember, but when 3.0 was new, the older-older-(older?) Wizards' forums were frequented by a great number of players who didn't understand the Fighter was inferior to the Wizard. Back then moderation was very loose, the arguments were heated and full of insults and hurt egos. After much tears, we bludgeoned them into submission by defeating their delusions time and again and again. There were people who for real thought their sword and board fighter will somehow be a match for my wizard, and had very hard time coping with being defeated in any test.

In other words, even cornerstones of understanding the game like the power of wizards and codzilla were at first vociferously denied.

If it's any consolation, other tabletop games' communities are even worse at understanding the game they play. For example, I once challenged a fairly large community with what can be best approximated in their system to a "Commoner 20" vs any "Wizard 20" they could field against it, and I not only won handily, but even knew beforehand my victory is 100% certain, that's how rudimentary their knowledge of the game was even on the forum. By this measure the 3.x community is very advanced.

Very interesting, thanks for sharing.

eggynack

2017-06-26, 04:41 PM

I think that one major reason people see non-core as less balanced than core is that non-core has all the trappings of overpoweredness. In core, even when you're optimizing really hard, things look mostly normal. Builds tend towards only a few classes, often just one, even counting prestige classes. There aren't too many crazy combinations. You are, practically by definition, not book diving. There are good feats, but most are pretty straightforward, and those straightforward ones hang out in well understood spaces. If you're really optimizing, that often means just taking some really good but well known spells and putting them on your list. These things aren't just simpler. They read as less optimized, because they are (in the sense that less optimization is possible or particularly needed), and less optimized means lower power, or at least that's what people think.

Non-core, meanwhile, is frequently the opposite. The best case scenario might actually be an alternate subsystem like ToB, because optimization in those contexts looks quite a bit like core. But said systems obviously have their own issues in these terms. Otherwise, great melee builds have a million classes, feats and abilities that combine together in sometimes unexpected or wonky ways. Even the most familiar classes often run several different ACFs. Casting builds are still single base class, but a ton of complexity finds its way in anyway. The spells come from way more sources, the feats, an actual build element, comprise more of the power present, there's typically one or more prestige classes, the aforementioned ACFs pop up more often, and things just generally go into really unknown territory. It all reads super optimized, and optimized tends to mean imbalanced.

Of course, amenable to high op stuff doesn't necessarily mean less balanced. It turns out that the former set of upgrades, to the melee classes, probably means more than the latter set, to casters. But it feels otherwise, I think, and that drives some conclusions about the relative balance of the book sets.

johnbragg

2017-06-26, 04:43 PM

Some people do actually mean that.

Other people, especially the isolated groups that play on their table with zero contact with the outside community, are - more often than not - bad at optimization.
......
In other words, even cornerstones of understanding the game like the power of wizards and codzilla were at first vociferously denied.

This is true. A couple of years ago, while searching for some old document on my computer, I came across notes I had made around the dawn of 3rd Edition. Overwhelmed by the limitless possibilities opened up by the d20 system, I started to sketch out a complete GURPSification, if you will, a class-less D&D.

Spellcasting and the full BAB/max armor package cost the same number of build points.

We still thought paladins and monks were irritatingly overpowered.

Hackulator

2017-06-26, 04:47 PM

because not everybody has spent hundreds of hours trying to mathematically break the system without any DM oversight

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-26, 04:50 PM

because not everybody has spent hundreds of hours trying to mathematically break the system without any DM oversight

That still doesn't explain why people gloss over spells like Gate, Planar Binding, Time Stop and Simulacrum. All of these (core) spells are completely broken.

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-26, 04:51 PM

because not everybody has spent hundreds of hours trying to mathematically break the system without any DM oversight

You know, you don't always have to take the time to attack us dirty optimizers. You can give your opinion without being antagonistic.

Jay R

2017-06-26, 04:51 PM

Also, because people forget that when the cleric casts Heal on the fighter, everything that the fighter does for the rest of the game is because the party contains a cleric, not because it contains a fighter.

It's not that they forget; it's that that's not what they're concerned with.

Nobody cares how much the party can do as a whole. If they did, they wouldn't care about balance between PCs. [Since I actually am more concerned about the party, I don't care about PC balance. I routinely offer magic items I'd like for my character to another PC who can use it more effectively.] Every "quadratic wizard / linear fighter" discussion is about what cool stuff "my character" can do vs. what cool stuff "the other character" can do.

They care about rolling for cool stuff. The cleric rolled for points of healing. Boring. The fighter rolled for attacking the dragon. Cool!

The fact that the Fighter couldn't have done it without the healing doesn't change who got to roll against the dragon. This is emotional, not rational, and a rational argument won't help.

Jay R

2017-06-26, 04:57 PM

That still doesn't explain why people gloss over spells like Gate, Planar Binding, Time Stop and Simulacrum. All of these (core) spells are completely broken.

Mostly because they are upper level spells. PCs don't get them until level 17, 11, 13, and 17, respectively.

If you don't play at the levels where the game is more broken, then the game is less broken.

johnbragg

2017-06-26, 05:01 PM

Jormengand

2017-06-26, 05:05 PM

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-26, 05:05 PM

Mostly because they are upper level spells. PCs don't get them until level 17, 11, 13, and 17, respectively.

Level 11 is not high end.

If you don't play at the levels where the game is more broken, then the game is less broken.

That's just a variation of the oberoni fallacy.

emeraldstreak

2017-06-26, 05:06 PM

And, if you summon monster (core) a fleshraker dinosaur (noncore), is that "broken" because core, or noncore?

I'd say Core and here's why...

The developers left an open-ended ability to the Druid, knowing full well they'll be printing new monster manuals, and Faerun monsters, and then-yet-undecided setting's monsters (that was almost OotS!) It was obvious this already powerful ability will scale significantly further, but they didn't care.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-26, 05:09 PM

Mostly because they are upper level spells. PCs don't get them until level 17, 11, 13, and 17, respectively.

If you don't play at the levels where the game is more broken, then the game is less broken.

You can pick up Lesser Planar Binding at level 9; that nets you a Nightmare with Astral Projection at will. The ever popular Polymorph comes online at level 7.

I also think that the reason that people tend to take the exceptionally weak burning hands instead of the hilariously powerful colour spray, to pick a lower-level spell that's good, is that people have this idea that damaging spells must be better than status effect spells, because the latter don't actually kill the target directly. So they never actually pick any of the spells which are actually good. On the other hand, when more-damaging abilities are released later, they seem overpowered because they are genuinely better than the core evocations, just not any better than the core transmutations or conjurations or illusions.

I suspect that most people don't use status conditions is that such spells tend to be sub-optimal in most video games (Final Fantasy for example).

nedz

2017-06-26, 05:11 PM

It depends upon the players. I have one guy who always plays Wizards, but his favourite spells are Magic Missile and Fireball — so, in his hands, Wizard isn't particularly broken.

I have other players however ...

zergling.exe

2017-06-26, 05:13 PM

I'd say Core and here's why...

The developers left an open-ended ability to the Druid, knowing full well they'll be printing new monster manuals, and Faerun monsters, and then-yet-undecided setting's monsters (that was almost OotS!) It was obvious this already powerful ability will scale significantly further, but they didn't care.

Well, those have to be added to the list either by the DM, or specifically called out as added (or replacing) to the list like the arrow demon. Most things in the MMs are not called out as valid targets for the summon spells. So then it WOULD be the non-core, because the non-core added it SPECIFICALLY, rather than core being open-ended, since it isn't.

emeraldstreak

2017-06-26, 05:14 PM

Well, those have to be added to the list either by the DM, or specifically called out as added (or replacing) to the list like the arrow demon. Most things in the MMs are not called out as valid targets for the summon spells. So then it WOULD be the non-core, because the non-core added it SPECIFICALLY, rather than core being open-ended, since it isn't.

Didn't mean summons, but wild shape/animal companion.

Coretron03

2017-06-26, 05:26 PM

Small point. The full unbalancing potential of polymorph, wildshaping, summoning, binding, contingency, wall of salt isn't completely obvious. With celerity, craft contingent spell, nerveskitter, ice assassins, dragonwrought kobolds it's what is says on the tin.

And, if you summon monster (core) a fleshraker dinosaur (noncore), is that "broken" because core, or noncore?

Wait, turning into a bear and killing stuff or selling the (permanent) wall of salt isn't obvious but dragonwrought kobolds (Something heavily debated on these forumns when its brought up) is obvious?
:smallconfused::smallconfused::smallconfused:

Zanos

2017-06-26, 05:27 PM

I also think that the reason that people tend to take the exceptionally weak burning hands instead of the hilariously powerful colour spray, to pick a lower-level spell that's good, is that people have this idea that damaging spells must be better than status effect spells, because the latter don't actually kill the target directly. So they never actually pick any of the spells which are actually good. On the other hand, when more-damaging abilities are released later, they seem overpowered because they are genuinely better than the core evocations, just not any better than the core transmutations or conjurations or illusions.
Both of these spells are pretty bad in my opinion, because they're 15 foot cones and you're a level 1 character without armor and a d4 hit dice, meaning that if you're within move + attack range of something that isn't completely helpless, you are dead.

Burning hands has some niche use in finishing off a couple of how HP targets, but color spray sort of bets your life on your opponents will save. I wouldn't take either honestly.

zergling.exe

2017-06-26, 05:31 PM

Didn't mean summons, but wild shape/animal companion.

johnbragg said summons so forgive me for assuming you were talking about the same thing as what you were quoting. Still, things have to be specifically added to the druid's list of eligible animal companions either by the material or the DM, so core isn't creating the problem there. For wild shape you need to be familiar with something to be able to become it, and that's up to the DM if you have ever heard of a creature in-game. And we all know how wild shape was used by the play tester...

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-26, 05:31 PM

Wait, turning into a bear and killing stuff or selling the (permanent) wall of salt isn't obvious but dragonwrought kobolds (Something heavily debated on these forumns when its brought up) is obvious?
:smallconfused::smallconfused::smallconfused:

Even without stuff like Loredrake, Dragonwrought lets you get +3 to all your mental stats. That's pretty good for almost any non-melee character. Take a Desert Kobold and you still have a +1 to WIS.

Jormengand

2017-06-26, 05:37 PM

Both of these spells are pretty bad in my opinion, because they're 15 foot cones and you're a level 1 character without armor and a d4 hit dice, meaning that if you're within move + attack range of something that isn't completely helpless, you are dead.

Burning hands has some niche use in finishing off a couple of how HP targets, but color spray sort of bets your life on your opponents will save. I wouldn't take either honestly.

The fact that colour spray forces probably every opponent to save or lose, and burning hands forces them to save or take... a little bit more damage than they might otherwise have taken, I'll say that colour spray is a lot better.

Especially since you're probably forcing a DC 15 SoL - or even higher than 15 - at level 1, which isn't exactly easy for enemies who might even have will save penalties at level 1.

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-26, 05:38 PM

emeraldstreak

2017-06-26, 05:43 PM

johnbragg said summons so forgive me for assuming you were talking about the same thing as what you were quoting. Still, things have to be specifically added to the druid's list of eligible animal companions either by the material or the DM, so core isn't creating the problem there. For wild shape you need to be familiar with something to be able to become it, and that's up to the DM if you have ever heard of a creature in-game. And we all know how wild shape was used by the play tester...

My mistake then because I somehow glossed over "summons".

On "familiarity"...I've always been confused by that. Imagine you are a druid...you can literally look up the sky, see a bird, become that bird, see a stronger bird, become that stronger bird. Fly over the lands as birds do. We don't think about it much, but actually many birds fly a great deal traveling routinely to other continents, and fairly fast too. A druid spending a single year of her life traveling the world as bird (and occasionally as a marine creature) will be knowledgeable of a great amount of animals.

Agreed on animal companions. Still though, imagine you're a writer for DnD, deadline on your ass and every class must get something, you've just written this awesome new dinosaur...will you really not add it to the list and kill two birds with one stone?

johnbragg

2017-06-26, 05:47 PM

Wait, turning into a bear and killing stuff

Turning into a bear is obvious. Turning into a fleshraker dinosaur, or a desmodu hunting bat, or not so much. (Although I guess those are non-core, so...)

or selling the (permanent) wall of salt isn't obvious but dragonwrought kobolds (Something heavily debated on these forumns when its brought up) is obvious?
:smallconfused::smallconfused::smallconfused:

It's obvious if you're using that sourcebook, isn't it?

emeraldstreak

2017-06-26, 05:51 PM

Yes, but if you're fighting, say an Orc Barbarian then Color Spray will almost certainly down him. But Burning Hands will barely do anything to him.

All these questions have been resolved in low level arenas.

If you are asking if wizards are dangerous, very much so (and yes, Color Spray is deadly in Core-ish).

If you are asking if wizards are the best, no.

***

As for low level gauntlets with a single PC, wizards are again very good, but again not necessarily the best.

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-26, 05:54 PM

Coretron03

2017-06-26, 05:55 PM

Even without stuff like Loredrake, Dragonwrought lets you get +3 to all your mental stats. That's pretty good for almost any non-melee character. Take a Desert Kobold and you still have a +1 to WIS.

Turning into a bear is obvious. Turning into a fleshraker dinosaur, or a desmodu hunting bat, or not so much. (Although I guess those are non-core, so...)

It's obvious if you're using that sourcebook, isn't it?

Sorry, when someone puts a dragonwrought kobold next to something like ice assassin I tend to assume that they mean something high powered like the "get epic feats at level 1" thing they might be able to do, not +3 to mental stats (as thats not anywhere near ice assassin in power). Forgive me for assuming the former. fair point about wildshape but as you mentioned they are non-core, plus bears are perfectly acceptable fighting forms.

Plus, I'm not sure what you mean about Wall of salt. It isn't obvious unless your using the sourcebook, which then it is? I guess that makes sense but it seems to contrdict the previous point and you could say the same thing about everything else thats non-core. Though I'm probably misunderstanding your point.

Nifft

2017-06-26, 05:57 PM

Burning hands is better against mindless stuff like a group of skeletons or a swarm of spiders.

Swarms are legitimately scary at low level.

As you move into the mid-levels, I think color spray remains relevant a lot longer than burning hands -- but at lower levels, it is a valid choice for a significant portion of encounters.

(At high levels, neither spell is a good choice.)

Coretron03

2017-06-26, 05:59 PM

All these questions have been resolved in low level arenas.

If you are asking if wizards are dangerous, very much so (and yes, Color Spray is deadly in Core-ish).

If you are asking if wizards are the best, no.

***

As for low level gauntlets with a single PC, wizards are again very good, but again not necessarily the best.

Since it sounds like they took place on the Internet (as you referenced caster vs everything people before which seems to imply that you don't know them IRL) Could I have some links to these gauntlets? They sound oike a interesting read.

Also, what is the best Low level class for it then in your opinion?

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-26, 06:00 PM

Burning hands is better against mindless stuff like a group of skeletons or a swarm of spiders.

Swarms are legitimately scary at low level.

Swarms are still affected by Color Spray.

EDIT; Never mind, I forgot some swarms had vermin traits.

zergling.exe

2017-06-26, 06:03 PM

My mistake then because I somehow glossed over "summons".

On "familiarity"...I've always been confused by that. Imagine you are a druid...you can literally look up the sky, see a bird, become that bird, see a stronger bird, become that stronger bird. Fly over the lands as birds do. We don't think about it much, but actually many birds fly a great deal traveling routinely to other continents, and fairly fast too. A druid spending a single year of her life traveling the world as bird (and occasionally as a marine creature) will be knowledgeable of a great amount of animals.

Agreed on animal companions. Still though, imagine you're a writer for DnD, deadline on your ass and every class must get something, you've just written this awesome new dinosaur...will you really not add it to the list and kill two birds with one stone?

If you have just "seen" a bird, are you really familiar with it? And this also assumes a druid starting at 5th+ level, or 8th to be able maintain wild shape all day.

Coretron03

2017-06-26, 06:12 PM

If you have just "seen" a bird, are you really familiar with it? And this also assumes a druid starting at 5th+ level, or 8th to be able maintain wild shape all day.

Well, Druids can have high Knowledge scores for nature (Ranks+Int+that class feature that gives +2+synergy bonus for ranks in survival) meaning you could argue that they are. Plus backstory can count for a lot.

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-26, 06:17 PM

Well, Druids can have high Knowledge scores for nature (Ranks+Int+that class feature that gives +2+synergy bonus for ranks in survival) meaning you could argue that they are. Plus backstory can count for a lot.

Actually, simply having Knowledge Nature should be enough to be familiar with most animals.

Sredni Vashtar

2017-06-26, 06:18 PM

Perhaps because it should be balanced.

Speaking as a non-optimizer, "Core" to me, should (and I emphasize should) be fairly balanced against itself. It's not only the player's first experience with the system, it's also somewhat regarded as the basic version of the rules. With most things, you start with the basics and things get more complex as they branch out more. To an extent, D&D 3.5 is like this, but the complexity of a character requiring eleven splatbooks doesn't match up with the expectation of power said complexity suggests. On the other hand, a "simple" core Wizard can be the most powerful thing in the game, to the point of it just not being fun anymore. The answer is simple, to the lay-person, Core is expected to have a simplicity it doesn't have, so it's thought to be balanced.

(Also, regarding the highly powerful Gate spell, it wasn't until reading it on these forums many years ago that I ever thought of the spell as a Summoning spell over a Very Much Improved Teleport spell, and I've been involved in Dungeons and Dragons since I was a very small child. Perception is reality, especially in a game where that reality depends on the audience.)

Nupo

2017-06-26, 06:34 PM

In any event, the higher levels you play, the more imbalance there is. People who play from first level to 13th or so don't usually need to worry about it.
I agree. I suspect the people that complain the most about the game not being balanced are not starting characters at 1st level, or are leveling up quickly, or both. We have always started at 1st level, and level up slower than the 3.5 recommended speed. No one I have ever played with has ever complained about game balance. Back when we played 1st edition it was common knowledge that it was real tough to keep a 1st level Magic-User (Wizard) alive. If you did you were rewarded when you got up to the higher (8th or 9th) levels. No one complained, we just played the game and had fun.

Level 11 is not high end.
It is in any campaign I've ever played in.

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-26, 06:38 PM

I agree. I suspect the people that complain the most about the game not being balanced are not starting characters at 1st level, or are leveling up quickly, or both. We have always started at 1st level, and level up slower than the 3.5 recommended speed. No one I have ever played with has ever complained about game balance. Back when we played 1st edition it was common knowledge that it was real tough to keep a 1st level Magic-User (Wizard) alive. If you did you were rewarded when you got up to the higher (8th or 9th) levels. No one complained, we just played the game and had fun.

That's just a variant of oberoni fallacy though. Simply avoiding the unbalanced stuff doesn't actually make the game balanced.

johnbragg

2017-06-26, 06:39 PM

Plus, I'm not sure what you mean about Wall of salt.

No, I just forgot that Wall of Salt wasn't on the Core "Wall of X" list. But you can run the same wealth-loop with Wall of Iron anyway. "Put magic wall between me and my enemies" and "drop magical wall on my enemies" seems to me written-on-the-tin. "Conjure up magic wall to sell for DMG list price of iron, repeat indefinitely" is not.

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-26, 06:41 PM

InvisibleBison

2017-06-26, 06:45 PM

It is in any campaign I've ever played in.

The fact that many campaigns don't reach high levels doesn't change which levels are the high levels.

Coretron03

2017-06-26, 06:53 PM

No, I just forgot that Wall of Salt wasn't on the Core "Wall of X" list. But you can run the same wealth-loop with Wall of Iron anyway. "Put magic wall between me and my enemies" and "drop magical wall on my enemies" seems to me written-on-the-tin. "Conjure up magic wall to sell for DMG list price of iron, repeat indefinitely" is not.

Fair enough. Wall of salt does sell for 50 times more though and the wall is 1 inch thick per caster level instead of 1 per 4 caster levels, giving you 4 times as much to sell making it 200 times more profitable per casting and is 2 levels lower. Plus, from a strict RAW basis, This line
"Trade goods are the exception to the half-price rule. A trade good, in this sense, is a valuable good that can be easily exchanged almost as if it were cash itself."
means that it is a WBL increase just casting it. Of course, Probably wouldn't fly in a game.

On a personal note, selling a wall of iron was pretty obvious to me as soon as I read the trade good section.

emeraldstreak

2017-06-26, 07:25 PM

Since it sounds like they took place on the Internet (as you referenced caster vs everything people before which seems to imply that you don't know them IRL) Could I have some links to these gauntlets? They sound oike a interesting read.

Also, what is the best Low level class for it then in your opinion?

Casters v Everything (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?282685-Casters-v-s-everything) is here on giantitp (has several iterations by now), and I quoted the organizer (Illven) when I said their first run was ended by shadow...I haven't looked specifically at the fights, but losing to incorporeals is very common for people not used to taking the right precautions/gear.

The gauntlets are gone though, along with old and even older Wizards forums. Some of them (like Lion's) had great atmosphere, others (most where the sides were arguing viability of classes in PvE) were more on the crunch side. They were somewhat alike the Same Game Test, but more detailed in the solutions of the encounters.

Best Low level class...PvP-wise, all arenas featured at least a few bans (ie no Taint, which not only meant no extra feats but no Mad Faith and its combos; obviously no Pun-Pun/infinite loops; usually no Dragon Magazine), however Flaws were often allowed, as well as high-ish point buys.

Next, the layout of the arena matters a great deal...in theory there are three options: you are in LineOfEffect and begin by rolling Initiative, you aren't in LoE but still roll Initiative, or you aren't in LoE and don't roll Initiative until the requirements to do so are met. For whatever reason the second one was the most popular setup, which obviously favored those that would have difficulty obtaining high initiative (say a Whirling Frenzy Barbarian with Mad Foam Rager...the lack of LoE protects him initially, and once his turns comes he'll walk right through plenty of counters and smash...same goes for certain Sorcerers), but also denied superior senses/stealth characters a surprise round. So, within these parameters, there are plenty of powerful builds, be it stealth snipers, chargers, arcane casters that can cast a second level spell (say Invisibility) despite being 1st level themselves and also one-shot many opponents (be it with boosted magic missiles/other spells, or more sinisterly with Fell Drain on a Sonic Snap or something) and also have the option to specialize for Abrupt Jaunt; still, the most powerful build is a particularly well-balanced gish that has the upper hand in matchups against any of these).

Once you go past lvl 1 and up to about lvl 5, wealth becomes more and more of a factor, and so does ability to tap in as many spell-lists as possible. If you're interested in what that looks like I can dig up my Core Coliseum (that was an old arena that existed prior to all splats being published) undefeated champion that climbed fastest to their Great Renown rank. He was both a cleric with magic domain and a psywarrior, using divine/arcane/psi consumables. Within their more limited sources (not all splats were out or allowed), he rounded up by being Deep Dwarf with Travel domain and Monk for better defenses/getting out or forcing sticky situations, by level 4 usually began fights with Invisibility and Flight, but again mostly killed opponents in melee (but could exploit weak saves with consumable Save-or-Sucks).

Past level 5, things become progressively complicated at that level of optimization, so matchups above the low levels were rare.

***

Best Low level-class, PvE-wise...compared to PvP arenas, PvE gauntlets required:

- more varied attacks for swarms, incorporeals, and weird stuff (ie Will'O'Wisp)
- somewhat different defenses (ie less danger of being targeted by Save-or-Suck, but more often at risk for things best dealt with Deathward/Freedom of Movement). Also, you've probably encounter more energy damage types
- senses/stealth remain crucial and some gauntlets featured traps
- more staying power...unlike arenas that at most were free for alls (say 1v1v1v1) followed by rest, most gauntlets test ability to complete several encounters one after another. That's why you could see wizards that could blast fire all day long and not only rely on spells (which wasn't seen in PvP)

Best...really difficult to single out just one, but consistently strong participants included gishes, druids, and wizards built for more staying power.

Nupo

2017-06-26, 07:32 PM

That's just a variant of oberoni fallacy though. Simply avoiding the unbalanced stuff doesn't actually make the game balanced.
True, but it does make the fact that it's unbalanced irrelevant.

The fact that many campaigns don't reach high levels doesn't change which levels are the high levels.
"High" is a relative term. Our campaigns do occasionally reach high levels, it's just that we consider 9th level high.

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-26, 07:34 PM

True, but it does make the fact that it's unbalanced irrelevant.

No, it really doesn't.

Jay R

2017-06-26, 07:41 PM

That's just a variant of oberoni fallacy though. Simply avoiding the unbalanced stuff doesn't actually make the game balanced.

No, but it does make the game they play more balanced.

The question isn't how balanced the game is. The question is why do some people think that core is balanced? [It really is; go look at the thread title.] One answer to that question is that some of them play at the levels where it's not too unbalanced.

That's a true answer to the question, and remains a true answer no matter how many times you say, "oberoni fallacy". I'm not saying the game is balanced. I'm explaining why it appears balanced to some people.

I repeat: If you don't play at the levels where the game is more broken, then the game is less broken.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-26, 07:47 PM

No, but it does make the game they play more balanced.

The question isn't how balanced the game is. The question is why do some people think that core is balanced? [It really is; go look at the thread title.] One answer to that question is that some of them play at the levels where it's not too unbalanced.

That's a true answer to the question, and remains a true answer no matter how many times you say, "oberoni fallacy". I'm not saying the game is balanced. I'm explaining why it appears balanced to some people.

I repeat: If you don't play at the levels where the game is more broken, then the game is less broken.

Many would argue that the game is broken right out of the gate. Certainly by level 6, Wild Shape lets Druids become spell slinging bears.

Cosi

2017-06-26, 07:48 PM

That's just a variant of oberoni fallacy though. Simply avoiding the unbalanced stuff doesn't actually make the game balanced.

There's this weird thing that's happened with D&D.

High level/high power D&D is broken and hard to play.

This leads to people saying "don't worry about it, you can just ignore it".

Naturally, this causes people to ignore it and not play it.

This causes people to look at the game and say "no one plays at high level, it's not an important part of the game, so we don't have to do good work there".

Then they do shoddy work at high level, and it is broken and hard to play.

So the cycle starts over again. This is how you get stupid things like SLA wish destroying the game or 5e's Bounded Accuracy being terrible.

It seems incredibly obvious to me that the solution is to put more effort into designing a good version of high level play, but this seems to have slipped everyone's mind as an option. People didn't avoid playing the second half of the game because they weren't interested in high level characters. If that were true, they wouldn't watch superhero movies or read Sanderson novels. They avoided it because it worked badly. So we should fix it.

Nupo

2017-06-26, 08:10 PM

"no one plays at high level, it's not an important part of the game, so we don't have to do good work there".
The impression I get reading post here, is that most people play at high levels, and most also completely skip over the low levels. That impression may not be accurate, but that's the impression I get. I can't imagine game designers could ever get the impression that no one plays high levels these days.

They avoided it because it worked badly. So we should fix it.
I have always been a fan of, if something doesn't work fix it. I played 1st edition for over 20 years, and by the end it was so house ruled it didn't really resemble the original rules at all. I'm just saying that there are different ways to fix it. Avoiding the problem part is a fix. It might not be the kind of fix you want, and it might not be perfect, but it's still a fix. Also, we don't avoid high levels because we want to avoid the unbalanced part, it's just the style that suits us. And because we have had this style of play, we have never had a problem with balance. I would be one of those that think Core is balanced if I didn't read these forums, because with our style of play it has never seemed unbalanced.

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-26, 08:20 PM

The impression I get reading post here, is that most people play at high levels, and most also completely skip over the low levels. That impression may not be accurate, but that's the impression I get.

I have literally started at level 1 or 3 in every game I've ever played.

I have always been a fan of, if something doesn't work fix it. I played 1st edition for over 20 years, and by the end it was so house ruled it didn't really resemble the original rules at all. I'm just saying that there are different ways to fix it. Avoiding the problem part is a fix. It might not be the kind of fix you want, and it might not be perfect, but it's still a fix.

Avoiding the problem is in no way, shape, or form a fix.

Avoiding a street because it has holes in the road isn't the same as repairing it.

Avoiding a poisoned food product isn't the same thing as removing the poison.

Fixing something requires you to actually, you know, Fix it.

InvisibleBison

2017-06-26, 08:28 PM

True, but it does make the fact that it's unbalanced irrelevant.

"High" is a relative term. Our campaigns do occasionally reach high levels, it's just that we consider 9th level high.

You seem to have missed my point. I wasn't saying that your campaigns never reach levels that you consider to be high. I was saying that, objectively speaking, 9th level isn't high level - it's only 45% of the way through the game. Ignoring high levels doesn't make them cease to exist.

Nupo

2017-06-26, 10:33 PM

I was saying that, objectively speaking, 9th level isn't high level - it's only 45% of the way through the game.So the goal is to get to level 20 and then what...you win? Why is level 20 the end? I honestly don't get it. I think maybe our ideas of what this game is all about are quite different.

AvatarVecna

2017-06-26, 10:36 PM

"I only play the part of the game that's balanced, therefore the game is balanced because I've played the game a lot and it seems balanced enough to me."

EDIT: To be clear, I can understand why this would give you the impression that the game is balanced: when you avoid the unbalanced parts, and they never come up in your game, everything's fine. I'm just asking that you understand that it's difficult to take an objectively and self-admittedly uninformed opinion seriously.

EDIT: To put it a different way, you could just as easily say "My home group plays to 20th level, but it's a no-magic game, and our Fighters are really good at tearing through armies of lower-level Fighters and RL animals, so Fighters aren't underpowered." When you're throwing out a significant portion of the game, it's difficult to believe you when you call it "balanced".

To put it another different way, I could turn your own argument around on you: let's say I play in a group that doesn't like screwing around at low levels and wants to play starting out with the high level capabilities, so our games start out at level 10 and go to level 20. We are objectively playing the same amount of the game that your group does, but because our field of vision is limited to the double-digit levels, our experience will almost universally be "wow, casters sure are ridiculously overpowered".

Necroticplague

2017-06-26, 11:00 PM

This might just be me being a late comer, but I'm confused as to how the problems with the system weren't obvious from the start. Far from 'hundreds of hours to mathmatically break the system', it took me a couple hours into my first session of playing to realize that spamming AoE CC from the casters (Evard's Tentacles, Entangle, and similar to keep them within a Cloudkill, Incendiary Cloud, and similar) was so much more effective than the fighters actually attacking that their job was eventually relegated to 'stand at the edge of AoEs to shove anyone who gets out back in'.

Nupo

2017-06-26, 11:01 PM

EDIT: To be clear, I can understand why this would give you the impression that the game is balanced: when you avoid the unbalanced parts, and they never come up in your game, everything's fine. I'm just asking that you understand that it's difficult to take an objectively and self-admittedly uninformed opinion seriously.
I think you misunderstand me. I meant the game is balanced for our group, and for the way we play. Well balanced enough. Nothing will ever be perfectly balanced, but it's balanced enough for us that no one has ever complained, and we always have fun.

To put it another different way, I could turn your own argument around on you: let's say I play in a group that doesn't like screwing around at low levels and wants to play starting out with the high level capabilities, so our games start out at level 10 and go to level 20. We are objectively playing the same amount of the game that your group does, but because our field of vision is limited to the double-digit levels, our experience will almost universally be "wow, casters sure are ridiculously overpowered".
Probably quite true. For that group and their style of play the game is probably not very balanced. All I was doing is pointing out that for the way we play, game balance is not an issue. If game balance is a problem for you, one way to mitigate the problem would be to play the way we do. If you don't like that solution, don't use it, find another one. I'm not trying to force anyone to do anything, just tying to be helpful and pointing out one possible solution.

I'm not saying I have a solution to fix all the potholes in the road. Just pointing out that if you avoid Jefferson St. and instead take Franklin Ave. you might have a more pleasant journey.

Dr_Dinosaur

2017-06-26, 11:05 PM

Then you're not really contributing to the thread, are you?

Nupo

2017-06-26, 11:12 PM

Then you're not really contributing to the thread, are you?
I offered a solution. That's more than most have done.

I also gave a reason some people probably think Core is balanced, and that is the question this whole thread is suppose to be about isn't it?

RoboEmperor

2017-06-26, 11:12 PM

d&d as a whole is balanced, until a lawyer or a scientist joins the table and starts nitpicking details.

You won't ever see a person come up with a mailman sorcerer or an ubercharger on their own without the help from a lawyer or a scientist.

As for core D&D, there is nothing wrong with polymorph, shapechange, and gate because people generally use polymorph solely to increase their physical stats, or look cool, and virtually no one uses gate because of that 1000xp cost. It's the guys who split hairs that start chain gating solars who make it unbalanced. I have yet to experience a new player using hydras without consulting polymorph optimization threads, and even then it's not that strong.

I've never thought about or even knew the existence of cloakers for polymorph until i looked up online on ways to optimize it. Same with Zodar wishes. All that familiar cheese with alter self only comes from very experienced d&d players who frequents online sources.

The only unbalanced thing I saw new players come to on their own is Efreeti wishes.

Its like the alignment system. The alignments work fine generally, but once you get really specific, everyone knows d&d alignment is bad.

So I guess what i'm trying to say is, d&d is balanced until people go out of there way to break it, or optimize the **** out of it. It's the difference between reading the rule once and playing, and needing to nitpick/dissect every word in every sentence in a spell/class description before playing.

eggynack

2017-06-26, 11:43 PM

d&d as a whole is balanced, until a lawyer or a scientist joins the table and starts nitpicking details.

This is super untrue. A lot of the really powerful things in the game are at least seemingly fully intentional. Just look at my handbook. I'd estimate that, I dunno, 90% of the good stuff in there is just normally using normal stuff as it is written. There's definitely some weird or out of the way stuff in there, and in a lot of optimization discussion, but it's decidedly in the minority when it comes to stuff that's broadly concerning power-wise. I mean, jeez, how lawyerly or scientific do you need to be to find a spell that's good and cast said spell? People talk about the wacky combo stuff and the semi-ambiguous stuff because that's the stuff that's interesting and fun to talk about. Not because that's the only really powerful stuff around.

RoboEmperor

2017-06-27, 12:27 AM

This is super untrue. A lot of the really powerful things in the game are at least seemingly fully intentional. Just look at my handbook. I'd estimate that, I dunno, 90% of the good stuff in there is just normally using normal stuff as it is written. There's definitely some weird or out of the way stuff in there, and in a lot of optimization discussion, but it's decidedly in the minority when it comes to stuff that's broadly concerning power-wise. I mean, jeez, how lawyerly or scientific do you need to be to find a spell that's good and cast said spell? People talk about the wacky combo stuff and the semi-ambiguous stuff because that's the stuff that's interesting and fun to talk about. Not because that's the only really powerful stuff around.

That handbook is long so you're gonna have to give some specific examples for the sake of my sanity @_@.

What are the really powerful things you mentioned relative to the CR of monsters you are fighting? I have read the wizard's handbook by treantmonk, and the way he plays his wizard is balanced imo, at least without all the metamagic and PrC optimization.

Necroticplague

2017-06-27, 12:35 AM

What are the really powerful things you mentioned relative to the CR of monsters you are fighting? I have read the wizard's handbook by treantmonk, and the way he plays his wizard is balanced imo, at least without all the metamagic and PrC optimization.

I previously mentioned some I discovered quickly before: Thick Fog, Incendiary Cloud, Cloudkill, Evard's Black Tentacles, Entangle.

eggynack

2017-06-27, 12:50 AM

That handbook is long so you're gonna have to give some specific examples for the sake of my sanity @_@.

What are the really powerful things you mentioned relative to the CR of monsters you are fighting? I have read the wizard's handbook by treantmonk, and the way he plays his wizard is balanced imo, at least without all the metamagic and PrC optimization.
Well, most of the wild shape optimization stuff seemingly comports with RAI. Dragon wild shape obviously does, and aberration mostly does. I don't see how one can argue that animal companions that were explicitly put on the list can constitute rules lawyering of any kind, so riding dog and fleshraker are obviously great. For spells, I dunno, entangle, control winds, SNA VI for an oread based earthquake, all kindsa stuff that's better than what other party members are likely doing.

Mutazoia

2017-06-27, 01:41 AM

I suppose, if one started gaming with 3.X, they will assume that that is how a game should be, and be lead to believe that it is a balanced system, because they have known no other way.

rel

2017-06-27, 02:07 AM

I think the belief that core is balanced stems from groups playing the game in a particular way that either avoids or mitigates its unbalanced nature while also utilising core only.

When such a group encounters someone else playing in a different way that demonstrates the fundamental brokenness of D&D and said new playstyle also uses non core material the assumption is that non core must be unbalanced and the source of the brokenness.

This has actually happened to me once or twice back in the early days of 3.5.
Back then monks were considered OP due to all those class features and when someone rolled a monk / psion gish we were all convinced that psionics was the most broken thing we had ever seen.

Lord Raziere

2017-06-27, 03:40 AM

In other words, even cornerstones of understanding the game like the power of wizards and codzilla were at first vociferously denied.

If it's any consolation, other tabletop games' communities are even worse at understanding the game they play. For example, I once challenged a fairly large community with what can be best approximated in their system to a "Commoner 20" vs any "Wizard 20" they could field against it, and I not only won handily, but even knew beforehand my victory is 100% certain, that's how rudimentary their knowledge of the game was even on the forum. By this measure the 3.x community is very advanced.

and thus you have forgotten. in your "advanced" state, you forget that point that fighters ARE supposed to be balanced with wizards even though they are not. the cornerstones should've been enough to tell you the system needs fixing rather than further exploitation. what a sorry state of affairs, that all this knowledge is obtained, but all used to break even further rather than fix and help the people who wanted their fighters to be equal with wizards, rather than letting them fall to the way side as the 3.5 community has.

such other communities need not such over-exploitation and "advanced" knowledge. They play their games as intended. they play the rules for the sake of the fluff that things are intended for. Its only when you explicitly start trying to break such things that they become broken and most, surprisingly don't like breaking their games. they respect the spirit of their rules rather than only looking at their letter. you don't see 3.5 breakery in White Wolf rpgs for example, because they know something like their Humanity stat is a soft rule to be used appropriately and with care and flexibility rather than as a hard rule to be nitpicked and torn apart. sure you could theoretically take those rpgs and find a way to start breaking them open, but there would be little point to it, mostly because whats being aimed for is already there and the best way to achieve not what your aiming is not to break the system but to houserule things so that you don't HAVE to break and exploit the system in the first place.

the whole 3.5 optimizer culture seems to pretty much arisen from people not be willing to take the easy solution of just house ruling things to be better and apply the rules reasonably and instead going overboard with weird hax combinations as if they're working to make a deck for magic the gathering as if there is a metagame to compete against someone else when there isn't. which is a very weird solution to the problems you have and of out place considering the solutions people do elsewhere. there are many gamers who take "this X can break the game" as a warning and thus stay from playing them at all costs while warning everyone else about it.

danielxcutter

2017-06-27, 03:42 AM

To be fair, though, most people are sane enough not to bring a TO build to a game.

Manyasone

2017-06-27, 03:53 AM

To be fair, though, most people are sane enough not to bring a TO build to a game.

Well, yes, because most DM's, especially forum frequenters, will give them a million-volt stare when they do

danielxcutter

2017-06-27, 03:54 AM

Well, yes, because most DM's, especially forum frequenters, will give them a million-volt stare when they do

Is that a negative or a positive view on my point? Sorry, a bit tired here so I'm not sure of the context.

Lord Raziere

2017-06-27, 03:56 AM

To be fair, though, most people are sane enough not to bring a TO build to a game.

Thats like saying most people are sane enough not to bring a nuke to a fist right really.

I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about the people bringing the guns. because most other systems? they don't even have the ability to make something like Pun-Pun or Tippyverse wizard overlords, nowhere near even close. such TO things are out of the question by default. thing is in other rpgs, when someone optimizes as hard as they can? the result while nowhere as godly as even a level 20 wizard or level 20 sorcerer, can still ruin the game for everyone else.

danielxcutter

2017-06-27, 04:00 AM

AvatarVecna

2017-06-27, 04:38 AM

Thats like saying most people are sane enough not to bring a nuke to a fist right really.

I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about the people bringing the guns. because most other systems? they don't even have the ability to make something like Pun-Pun or Tippyverse wizard overlords, nowhere near even close. such TO things are out of the question by default. thing is in other rpgs, when someone optimizes as hard as they can? the result while nowhere as godly as even a level 20 wizard or level 20 sorcerer, can still ruin the game for everyone else.

As far as overpowered nonsense goes, Mutants And Masterminds generally keeps a tight lid on things with their Power Level limits, but when you combine some of the things in the system that are allowed to bypass those limits, it can get ridiculous.

Let's say you're playing a PL 10 character who wields a tricked-out semiautomatic laser rifle (+13 to hit, +7 damage, 12-20 crit threat), and your character (through copious points spent on Concealment) is functionally undetectable even when firing a laser gun at point blank range. Take the Improved Aim, All-Out Attack, and Power Attack feats. Have your character Undetectable Bob walk up to Joe Schmoe the unsuspecting supervillain of the week, who is busy plotting evil plots. Bob puts the barrel of his laser gun right to Joe's face and spends several seconds aiming just right, before unleashing a hail of lasers on Joe. All-Out Attack and Power Attack take 5 points out of Defense and put it into damage (you don't need defense, you're undetectable), and aiming in melee with Improved Aim is +10 to hit.

So now, with your +23 to hit against Joe's probably low defense (being good at dodging don't help when you get shot unawares); if you beat Joe's Defense by 10 or more (probably pretty likely, all things considered), you deal another +5 damage. Of course, you've got a pretty good chance of getting a critical for another +5, bringing your total damage up to +22. Joe, having taken a barrage of lasers directly to the face when he wasn't even expecting to get shot at all, needs to make a DC 37 Toughness save with a +14 (he's a supervillain meant for the whole team to fight, after all, so Toughness +14 is probably appropriate). He's got a slim chance of getting away with minimal injuries, a better chance of winding up just flat-out dead, with the rest of his chances being varying degrees of "heavily injured" going into the rest of the fight...and if he can't find Bob before Bob gets another couple rounds to aim and shoot like that again, Joe is probably super-dead.

Now, that's a lot of crap put together, and a rather specific situation, so how could it get broken harder? Have your friendly mage superhero friend pull a bull**** mass summoning power out of his hat and summon up a bunch of angels who are good at working together (all good at Combat and have the Teamwork, All-Out Attack, and Power Attack feats). Have them gang up on your poor hapless targets with Team Attacks and watch your GM's villains crumble under the weight of all the above bull**** combined with action economy abuse!

Now, I can hear you thinking "tons of damage, even via summoning armies, isn't really on par with T1 BS in 3.5", and you're right; those set-ups are expensive and rather specific, even if the latter was just costing a Hero Point, it still took time to put that small army of angels together, and it's ultimately just tons of damage. Fighter can do that, and Fighters not broken, is there anything broken like that in M&M?

Movement 3: Dimension Travel 3 (Innate)

You travel to a dimension almost exactly like the dimension you currently reside in, with the only differences being that the universe you're now in conforms with your desires for how the world should be.

https://youtu.be/evYxx8qjZFs?t=36s

Also, Star Wars Saga, another system I'm familiar with, has combat optimization for basically knocking your target down several places in the condition track and hopefully taking them out in one hit despite not doing nearly enough damage to kill them, but this is also basically the only way non-Force Users can hold their own in a party with well-built Jedi, who will just generally use the power and versatility of Force Powers to knock on the door to D&D's T2 in a system that's largely T4 at best.

danielxcutter

2017-06-27, 04:49 AM

So optimizing isn't D&D specific, but D&D has more potential for OPness? Did I get that right?

Sorry if that sounds rude, but I don't know how to word it better.

Mordaedil

2017-06-27, 04:55 AM

The only thing D&D really has unique is the amount of players due to popularity and brand recognition. Plenty of experience roleplayers can point out far better games, but there's something about nostalgia that D&D has going for it.

danielxcutter

2017-06-27, 05:00 AM

Lord Raziere

2017-06-27, 05:03 AM

So optimizing isn't D&D specific, but D&D has more potential for OPness? Did I get that right?

Sorry if that sounds rude, but I don't know how to word it better.

Pretty much.

@ Vecna: as for the hax dimensional travel power, yeah. thats easily not broken.....because thats not actually solving anything. the problems are still happening in the actual world I'm setting this in, and your just sitting in this other parallel world where its not happening, all the other players are not there and still have to deal with it and even if you bring them along, well then your just running away from your problems. while people with dimension travel can still COME to you the world you traveled to. and thats not taking into account it never specifies whether a dimension like that EXISTS or for how long it exists, just that your capable of traveling TO that dimension. the power doesn't even specify whether or not the dimensions exist, just that your capable of traveling to them. which means that someone might've already destroyed the parallel universe that would've become the desired one a long time ago and you end up in a void that would've been the desired place if it wasn't destroyed.

Edit: Or worse you travel there, and you find your other version of yourself that achieved all of what you desired through hard work without needing the hax magic and looks down on you for trying to steal all he accomplished then sends you back. because that version of you has no reason to help you- if they can achieve it without your hax, why should they help you hax it? send them back, let work hard for it just like that version did and be ashamed that any version of them tried to cheat their way to this.

Cosi

2017-06-27, 06:29 AM

So the goal is to get to level 20 and then what...you win? Why is level 20 the end? I honestly don't get it. I think maybe our ideas of what this game is all about are quite different.

Because that's as much as the game system has? Or you go Epic and it's not? He's not really saying that you have to go to 20th, only that it's false to say that 9th level is high level because you stop there. Some people stop at 1st level.

d&d as a whole is balanced, until a lawyer or a scientist joins the table and starts nitpicking details.

Well it's a good thing lawyers and scientists aren't the kinds of people who play D&D, and that nerds in general never pick apart the things they love for fun, profit, or personal amusement.

This is super untrue. A lot of the really powerful things in the game are at least seemingly fully intentional. Just look at my handbook. I'd estimate that, I dunno, 90% of the good stuff in there is just normally using normal stuff as it is written.

It's not even that. Some of the most broken tricks (SLA wish, shapechange cheese) were explicitly made possible in the transition from 3.0 to 3.5. If you don't let shapechange get SLAs (or stack), it's much less of a problem. If you don't remove the GP cap on wishing for magic items, you can't use SLA wish to win everything forever.

emeraldstreak

2017-06-27, 07:07 AM

and thus you have forgotten. in your "advanced" state, you forget that point that fighters ARE supposed to be balanced with wizards even though they are not. the cornerstones should've been enough to tell you the system needs fixing rather than further exploitation. what a sorry state of affairs, that all this knowledge is obtained, but all used to break even further rather than fix and help the people who wanted their fighters to be equal with wizards, rather than letting them fall to the way side as the 3.5 community has.

such other communities need not such over-exploitation and "advanced" knowledge. They play their games as intended. they play the rules for the sake of the fluff that things are intended for. Its only when you explicitly start trying to break such things that they become broken and most, surprisingly don't like breaking their games. they respect the spirit of their rules rather than only looking at their letter. you don't see 3.5 breakery in White Wolf rpgs for example, because they know something like their Humanity stat is a soft rule to be used appropriately and with care and flexibility rather than as a hard rule to be nitpicked and torn apart. sure you could theoretically take those rpgs and find a way to start breaking them open, but there would be little point to it, mostly because whats being aimed for is already there and the best way to achieve not what your aiming is not to break the system but to houserule things so that you don't HAVE to break and exploit the system in the first place.

the whole 3.5 optimizer culture seems to pretty much arisen from people not be willing to take the easy solution of just house ruling things to be better and apply the rules reasonably and instead going overboard with weird hax combinations as if they're working to make a deck for magic the gathering as if there is a metagame to compete against someone else when there isn't. which is a very weird solution to the problems you have and of out place considering the solutions people do elsewhere. there are many gamers who take "this X can break the game" as a warning and thus stay from playing them at all costs while warning everyone else about it.

Hurr-durr Optimizers CAN'T Roleplay!

Now where have I heard this tired fallacy before?

Here's what it is actually to play in optimizer group. Everything is better. No player is walking into newbie traps. No player can break the game, whether inadvertently or by maliciously sneaking something past a hapless GM. The breath of character concepts that work is far larger because we have so much more synergy building blocks to draw upon. The very fabric of the roleplay is better intertwined with the system fabric, making for a more believable world. Encounters are challenging and interesting and rarely miss their intended mark.

danielxcutter

2017-06-27, 07:09 AM

Hurr-durr Optimizers CAN'T Roleplay!

Now where have I heard this tired fallacy before?

Here's what it is actually to play in optimizer group. Everything is better. No player is walking into newbie traps. No player can break the game, whether inadvertently or by maliciously sneaking something past a hapless GM. The breath of character concepts that work is far larger because we have so much more synergy building blocks to draw upon. The very fabric of the roleplay is better intertwined with the system fabric, making for a more believable world. Encounters are challenging and interesting and rarely miss their intended mark.

That's when the optimizers also care about RP. I'm fairly sure most of them do, but that fallacy had to come from somewhere.

Lord Raziere

2017-06-27, 07:26 AM

Here's what it is actually to play in optimizer group. Everything is better. No player is walking into newbie traps. No player can break the game, whether inadvertently or by maliciously sneaking something past a hapless GM. The breath of character concepts that work is far larger because we have so much more synergy building blocks to draw upon. The very fabric of the roleplay is better intertwined with the system fabric, making for a more believable world. Encounters are challenging and interesting and rarely miss their intended mark.

Thats not what I'm saying.

this has nothing to do with roleplay, it has everything with the out of character rules.

you solutions are complex, taking advantage of glitches in the system. your options are more limited because no one can play something simpler or less than optimized. your solutions close off as many options as they open. you only walk not into the newbie traps, because you have long fallen into them repeatedly until you walk around them automatically every time. you only say you can't break the game, because its already broken beyond repair. the world you play in does not resemble any world that is actually desired by genre conventions. your encounters are all the same, because any other option would allow them to instantly win. Everything is worse.

there is no idyllic thing in this world. your speaking of nothing but taste. Your optimizer culture, held up by rules no one else has time or the ability to follow and acting as if I'm inferior for not following them.

when you could achieve all of what you claim by simply playing with simpler rules, some house rules, being more flexible and reasonable about the rules themselves instead of hyper-focusing on the rules as godlike abstract things to exploit obsessively. simpler rules means less of a learning curve for both GMs and player, less complexity means more blanks to fill in that allow for more character concepts than restrictive mechanics. and believable world is achieved by the rules getting out of the way and allow you to be immersed in it as the simpler mechanics are nothing but servants to what you need them to do rather than what you HAVE to make them do for anything to happen at all.

Manyasone

2017-06-27, 07:30 AM

Is that a negative or a positive view on my point? Sorry, a bit tired here so I'm not sure of the context.

It's an affirmation. So take it positive :smallsmile:

Also, my personal experience, having a character that's PO; as in, damn good at what he does and allowing others to shine as well; does not detract from Roleplaying. If anything, it allows one to enjoy more of the story since remaining alive to enjoy said story will be easier (given value of easy).
At our table, I have the most experience in character creation and I think it's normal to share, when asked, that experience in creating/reviewing characters.

Nupo

2017-06-27, 08:54 AM

Because that's as much as the game system has? Or you go Epic and it's not? He's not really saying that you have to go to 20th, only that it's false to say that 9th level is high level because you stop there. Some people stop at 1st level.First off, we don't stop at 9th level, it's just rare for anyone to ever get that high. Also, why call 20th level high just because you stop there? It's all relative to your group, and style of play.

danielxcutter

2017-06-27, 08:56 AM

First off, we don't stop at 9th level, it's just rare for anyone to ever get that high. Also, why call 20th level high just because you stop there? It's all relative to your group, and style of play.

*Your* table stops at 9th; many others don't. As you said, it's all relative to the group and style of play.

Necroticplague

2017-06-27, 09:18 AM

It doesn't take 'advanced knowlege' to start seeing cracks in the system. It doesn't take sophisticated rules lawyering (I barely knew the rules when I saw problems, certainly not enough to lawyer them). All it takes is a few wrong buttons accidentally pressed. It wasn't the Polymorph (which was never used at first, because having to basically write up a new sheet seemed like a pain), Wish (since we never cast anything with XP costs), or Wall of Iron selling (because none of the shops contained magic items more useful than what we found, anyway). It was using spells for the exact purpose for which they were written. Evard's Black Tentacles did two things: stopped most opponents from moving, and damaged them a bit. And in this, it took over the Fighter's main job in the small rooms and corridors of the many dungeons.

Amphetryon

2017-06-27, 09:20 AM

I'm curious, is there any single 1st party book in 3.5 that's more unbalanced than core?I would count Serpent Kingdoms as qualifying here.

Nifft

2017-06-27, 09:30 AM

I would count Serpent Kingdoms as qualifying here.

IIRC, both Incantatrix and Dweomerkeeper were from the same publication (one in a Web Enhancement to that publication).

That's also a tiny bit more broken than core.

johnbragg

2017-06-27, 09:33 AM

I previously mentioned some I discovered quickly before: Thick Fog, Incendiary Cloud, Cloudkill, Evard's Black Tentacles, Entangle.

Not to rag on you, but to illuminate the thread question.

Solid Fog--4th, Incendiary Cloud--8th, Cloudkill--5th, Evard's Black Tentacles--4th, Entangle--1st. You came into the game at a fairly high level.

Core is more balanced (or less unbalanced) at low levels. With 1st-3rd level spells, it takes much experimentation (or some forum browsing) to figure out the BFC/mass-save-or-suck possibilities of stinking cloud, glitterdust, color spray compared to the more obvious "I'll hide my squishy butt in the background and do ranged damage with my spells" style.

johnbragg

2017-06-27, 09:38 AM

It was using spells for the exact purpose for which they were written. Evard's Black Tentacles did two things: stopped most opponents from moving, and damaged them a bit. And in this, it took over the Fighter's main job in the small rooms and corridors of the many dungeons.

Here we see part of the problem. At mid-level play (7-12?) dungeons with small rooms and corridors are ceasing to be a problem, and mundanes are getting left behind by the power curve.

If you start playing (first game) at level 9, then you see this pretty clearly. If you'd been playing 2E for years, or XP-grinded up from level 1-3 in 3E when the d4 HD Wizard is getting dropped to 0 whenever he can't escape combat, your vision is informed (misinformed) by what you expect to see.

Amphetryon

2017-06-27, 09:47 AM

IIRC, both Incantatrix and Dweomerkeeper were from the same publication (one in a Web Enhancement to that publication).

That's also a tiny bit more broken than core.
This is true; I was thinking about percentage of broken content as a whole. Serpent Kingdoms might have the most broken vs. balanced or neutral (fluff, or rules-based but independent of power) content.

johnbragg

2017-06-27, 09:58 AM

and thus you have forgotten. in your "advanced" state, you forget that point that fighters ARE supposed to be balanced with wizards even though they are not. the cornerstones should've been enough to tell you the system needs fixing rather than further exploitation. what a sorry state of affairs, that all this knowledge is obtained, but all used to break even further rather than fix and help the people who wanted their fighters to be equal with wizards, rather than letting them fall to the way side as the 3.5 community has.

There was much arguing, in ages past, about fundamental premises we're all accepting--caster supremacy and the-most-broken-stuff-is-in-Core. Some of the breaking-even-further was for the purposes of showing recalcitrants and diehard in arguments and challenges what can be done by RAW, with or without stretching RAI.

The reality is, based on now 17 years of 3X tinkering and homebrewing and the rise and fall (mostly fall) of 4E that it's really really hard to bring mundanes up to the level of casters. The best published answer was probably Tome of Battle, which solves the problem by letting mundanes dont-call-it-cast dont-call-them-spells, while still being fighty in spirit.

Its only when you explicitly start trying to break such things that they become broken and most, surprisingly don't like breaking their games. they respect the spirit of their rules rather than only looking at their letter. you don't see 3.5 breakery in White Wolf rpgs for example, because they know something like their Humanity stat is a soft rule to be used appropriately and with care and flexibility rather than as a hard rule to be nitpicked and torn apart.

Sometimes, the fact that 3X is broken in the ways that it is allows or encourages people to have fun breaking 3X in the ways that it lends itself to. It's not my playstyle, but there are people on the forum who take great joy in building 15th to 20th level optimized Tier 1s, fleshing out build strategies and feat trees. I'm not sure how or if any of their games go more than a few sessions without someone ending up replacing the Lady of Pain or something, but thereisnobadwrongfun. They enjoy it, and I respect that.

Summary: (some) People play 3X (sometimes) to build crazy Tippyverse Tier 1 casters designed for challenges presented by other Tippyverse Tier 1 casters. On the other hand, no one plays White Wolf or BESM d20 or Deadlands or Star Wars RPG or Lamentations of the Flame PRincess or Mutans and Masterminds to do that--3X is the ideal environment for building ultimate power, genre be damned.

the whole 3.5 optimizer culture seems to pretty much arisen from people not be willing to take the easy solution of just house ruling things to be better and apply the rules reasonably and instead going overboard with weird hax combinations as if they're working to make a deck for magic the gathering as if there is a metagame to compete against someone else when there isn't.

3X also grew up alongside forum culture. There is totally a metagame of building the better "hax combinations" of Rainbow Servant and Incantrix and Initiate of The Seven Veils on a dragronwrought kobold base, adding a LA + 0 template etc etc etc. Characters which need never be played in an actual game, they only exist to win that forum metagame of who can built the mightiest tower of cheese.

which is a very weird solution to the problems you have and of out place considering the solutions people do elsewhere. there are many gamers who take "this X can break the game" as a warning and thus stay from playing them at all costs while warning everyone else about it.

And they've mostly either moved on to 5E, or E6, or heavily houseruled (mechanically or gentlemen's agreement) 3.5 or PAthfinder, and these discussions are irrelevant to them. (I like these discussions anyway.)

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-27, 10:24 AM

I would count Serpent Kingdoms as qualifying here.

The book that brought us Pun Pun. Note that without core spells like Shapechange and Gate, actually pulling off the accession combo is a lot harder.

IIRC, both Incantatrix and Dweomerkeeper were from the same publication (one in a Web Enhancement to that publication).

That's also a tiny bit more broken than core.

Actually, Dweomerkeeper is in the Complete Divine (web enhancement) and Incantatrix is from Player's Guide to Faerûn.

Grod_The_Giant

2017-06-27, 10:34 AM

Here we see part of the problem. At mid-level play (7-12?) dungeons with small rooms and corridors are ceasing to be a problem, and mundanes are getting left behind by the power curve.

If you start playing (first game) at level 9, then you see this pretty clearly. If you'd been playing 2E for years, or XP-grinded up from level 1-3 in 3E when the d4 HD Wizard is getting dropped to 0 whenever he can't escape combat, your vision is informed (misinformed) by what you expect to see.
So their experience of the game is incorrect because they didn't spend years playing different systems where balance worked differently?

johnbragg

2017-06-27, 10:42 AM

So their experience of the game is incorrect because they didn't spend years playing different systems where balance worked differently?

No, their experience is MORE correct because it's not colored by impressions from other systems where balance worked differently.

An example of what I mean. In the early years of 3X in a midlevel vampire-apocalypse game, my wife's barbarian got dominated every. single. combat. Because she was a Barbarian with a lousy Will save and ungrateful dice fighting Vampires with class levels (Almost always monk levels, adding Wis to AC and giving multiple melee attacks.)

We had all been playing 2E and other RPGs for years, and none of us thought to read the 3.0 spell description of protection from evil and realize that a 1st level spell would solve the problem. A new player probably would have read the new spell description and maybe used it.

Nifft

2017-06-27, 10:44 AM

Actually, Dweomerkeeper is in the Complete Divine (web enhancement) and Incantatrix is from Player's Guide to Faerûn.

It seems I did not recall correctly.

Thanks!

So their experience of the game is incorrect because they didn't spend years playing different systems where balance worked differently?

Your point is valid even if they did play other systems, because game experience is not uniform across any edition.

Even within the same game system, it's quite possible to run campaigns that start at level 1 but do not feature deadly combat until a significantly higher level. A puzzle-based game, or a wilderness exploration game, or a stealthy urban game, or a political game could plausibly go like that.

On the other hand, if you stick with a particularly blood-minded & stubborn DM across all known editions, you might have the same very specific gaming experience in all editions.

D&D is a flexible game.

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-27, 10:59 AM

Florian

2017-06-27, 11:05 AM

I´m with Elder_Basilisk on that one.

Zanos

2017-06-27, 11:28 AM

To help illustrate Core's imbalance I'm going to tell a story.

I was first introduced to 3.5 via OotS. After a while I got curious and decided to look up the spell list from D&D, This is what I found (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Sorcerer/Wizard_Spell_List). I was always interested in things like that. My first impression was to be amazed by the sheer variety and power of the spells listed. My second impression was to be horrifically underwhelmed by Meteor Swarm.

I had exactly zero system experience, and I was able to tell that Meteor Swarm sucked simply by comparing it to the other spells.

It does not take System Mastery or Rules Lawyering to find the imbalance in D&D.
Meteor Swarm isn't the worst spell ever printed. It deals 32d6 damage as ranged touch attacks with no save to a single target and can splash for 24d6 reflex for half in a massive area at level 17. Most damage spells cap at 20d6 and usually require your CL be that high to start. The problem is that fire resistance is super common and even fire resistance 5 shaves 20 damage off the spell and it only gets worse from there, with fire resistance 10 practically cutting your damage in half.

Grod_The_Giant

2017-06-27, 11:31 AM

No, their experience is MORE correct because it's not colored by impressions from other systems where balance worked differently.
My bad. Misread your post and got grumpy at what I incorrectly perceived to be grognardism. Sorry!

The worst stuff in Core is subtle, I think is the issue. Look at the problems. Alter Self. Polymorph. Planar Binding. Gate. Wild Shape. They're all book-diving spells/abilities. Their strength only becomes apparent when you're familiar with the monster manual, and all the strongest things within. That's a lot less apparent than, say, the bonus damage from a ToB maneuver, or the sheer number of spells a Warmage knows, or that sort of thing.

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-27, 11:34 AM

Meteor Swarm isn't the worst spell ever printed. It deals 32d6 damage as ranged touch attacks with no save to a single target and can splash for 24d6 reflex for half in a massive area at level 17. Most damage spells cap at 20d6 and usually require your CL be that high to start. The problem is that fire resistance is super common and even fire resistance 5 shaves 20 damage off the spell and it only gets worse from there, with fire resistance 10 practically cutting your damage in half.

I never said it was the worst spell ever. However Meteor Swarm isn't a very good spell, and I was able to tell that simply by comparing it to other D&D spells. Additionally, it's very underwhelming for a 9th level spell.

AvatarVecna

2017-06-27, 11:49 AM

My bad. Misread your post and got grumpy at what I incorrectly perceived to be grognardism. Sorry!

The worst stuff in Core is subtle, I think is the issue. Look at the problems. Alter Self. Polymorph. Planar Binding. Gate. Wild Shape. They're all book-diving spells/abilities. Their strength only becomes apparent when you're familiar with the monster manual, and all the strongest things within. That's a lot less apparent than, say, the bonus damage from a ToB maneuver, or the sheer number of spells a Warmage knows, or that sort of thing.

Probably the most obvious example of this is the classic Haste vs Fireball. In a PF game of mine, my BFC/Buffing wizard recently picked up a hyper-focused pyromancer sorcerer because one of the other players was complaining that I wasn't dealing much damage in fights, and that tossing cantrip snowballs at people wasn't very interesting. Fact of the matter remains, though, that even a 6d6+22 damage Fireball is still pretty lame compared to giving the Barbarian, Warder, Slayer, Rogue, melee Cleric, and Bolt Ace an additional attack for 8 rounds. Even if the Rogue and Bolt Ace weren't here (Cohorts as well), just putting Haste on the warrior PCs would be enough to do a good bit of damage every round.

This is a large part of why the DM isn't complaining to me about my ridiculous blasting sorcerer who's basically doubling the damage of his fire blasting spells; he gets why it's not broken, and I was kinda wanting something flashy to do in combat anyway, so not much harm in adding the sorcerer.

I never said it was the worst spell ever. However Meteor Swarm isn't a very good spell, and I was able to tell that simply by comparing it to other D&D spells. Additionally, it's very underwhelming for a 9th level spell.

Seconding this. Meteor Swarm is probably cooler than Fireball of the same level, even if Fireball is uncapped, but that doesn't make Meteor Swarm seems worth the slot I'm spending on it. You want an example of a 9th lvl blasting spell that's probably worth the slot, check out "Erupt":

(Serpent Kingdoms, because of course that's where it's from :smalltongue:)

Transmutation [Fire]
Level: Cleric 9
Components: V, S, DF
Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: Touch
Area: Burst with a radius of 100 ft./level
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Fortitude half
Spell Resistance: Yes

You draw molten lava up through the ground.

Every creature within the area that fails a Fortitude saving throw takes 10 points of fire damage per caster level and catches on fire (see Catching on Fire, page 303 of the Dungeon Master's Guide). Furthermore, anyone wearing metal armor who fails the saving throw is also affected as though by a heat metal spell. A successful saving throw negates the heat metal effect and halves the damage. Structures and unattended objects automatically take full damage (no save).

Erupt leaves its entire area a blackened ruin incapable of supporting plant or animal life for a full year.

EDIT: In fairness, it's on the Cleric list, and it takes a minute to cast, but there's ways around both of those. I'm just saying that, when considering whether to cast Shapechange, Wish, Gate, Time Stop, or Meteor Swarm, the answer is very clearly "not Meteor Swarm"; I can't say that Erupt is worth casting compared to that lineup of powerful Core spells, but it's certainly at least worth considering in comparison.

Zanos

2017-06-27, 01:05 PM

Erupt has a 1 minute casting time, making it pretty much unusable in combat. If you want to get into "there's ways around that", there's also ways to make meteor swarm not suck as much.

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-27, 01:06 PM

Seconding this. Meteor Swarm is probably cooler than Fireball of the same level, even if Fireball is uncapped, but that doesn't make Meteor Swarm seems worth the slot I'm spending on it. You want an example of a 9th lvl blasting spell that's probably worth the slot, check out "Erupt":

EDIT: In fairness, it's on the Cleric list, and it takes a minute to cast, but there's ways around both of those. I'm just saying that, when considering whether to cast Shapechange, Wish, Gate, Time Stop, or Meteor Swarm, the answer is very clearly "not Meteor Swarm"; I can't say that Erupt is worth casting compared to that lineup of powerful Core spells, but it's certainly at least worth considering in comparison.

Also it would be very easy to get around the fact that it does fire Damage.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-27, 01:41 PM

Erupt has a 1 minute casting time, making it pretty much unusable in combat. If you want to get into "there's ways around that", there's also ways to make meteor swarm not suck as much.

Iceberg is better; 20d6 damage, no to hit roll or save.

Magi

2017-06-27, 01:50 PM

I think balance is overrated. Especially between party members. I know I'm the minority.

Like, there is that wizard that can stop time, open gates to other worlds and drop meteors from the sky. And then there is that fighter, that can, uh, punch stuff with his metal stick. How in the name of Gygax fighter will be able to compete with mighty arcane might of the wizard? He just can't. Fighters are no match for high level casters in this fantasy world of 3.5. And I seriously don't see any problem here.

In my almost 20 years of DMing and playing D&D/other systems there were practically no situations, in which the difference in power of the classes was an issue. Bob created a rogue because he likes playing rogues, while Mark created cleric cause he wanted to try playing support. John is obsessed with sorcerers, but he also loves minmaxing and being powerful. There is no competition in D&D. If players are adequate, in tough combat Bob the rogue will be only thankful for sorcerer's fireballs or cleric's banishment. But if it wasn't for the rogue, who disabled dozens of deadly traps in their teen levels, characters of Mark and John wouldn't even survived to this day. It's always was a team play for our groups, and everyone knew from the start that some classes would be more powerful at later levels, but they need more protection in the early game. Never did we envy each other, because playing our own hero, with it's flaws and history, was always much more important and fun than powergaming. And even powergamers were welcomed at the table. Maybe I got lucky with my groups, where players haven't constantly tried to steal the spotlight from other players with their abilities (like high level wizard doesn't really need a rogue in his party) and we just had a fun time helping each other and building social interactions, creating a story, killing stuff.

About Players VS Monsters balance - again, I barely see any issue here. Never there was a moment where I, The DM, couldn't come with a solution against munchkins or OP characters. They can throw some weird stuff at your face, sure, but so can you. It's the same rules and same books. Think of something, be creative, there is always at least several ways out of it. If you are experienced DM, you will most likely end really unbalanced stuff and situations before they can even begin, even by banning the supplemental rules and options, if you think they will completely destroy your campaign (but I honestly hate doing so, I like to reward my players for spending countless hours in supplements and allowing them to have that OP powers, if they like them so much, it's that I know that I can think of something to oppose them).

I really love this crazy over-the-top high level 3.5 stuff that I miss so much in 5e. As long as everybody is enjoying the game and having a good time, I see absolutely no problem here. If someone is really pissed that the max level wizard in the party is doing XX% more damage than his barbarian, well, he can try some other game, balance is not happening in 3.5, and I'm really glad it is that way and not the other. There is no balance in real life as well (yeah yeah, "but D&D is a game" etc.), but the absence of balance makes it even more awesome for me personally. Like, it's not a competitive computer game where everything is equal and everyone is artificially balanced even if it makes no sense from the lore standpoint. It's the world of D&D as it is.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-27, 01:59 PM

Shark Uppercut

2017-06-27, 02:54 PM

Whenever I hear "Wizards deserve to be OP because they die so easily at lvl1", I'd tell them to play parties full of fighters until they're level 2-5, then retire and switch to a spellcaster of the same level. Boom, no struggle to survive, easy game.

Being a good way to survive to level two is not what people want Fighters to be, but it's what they are.

Calthropstu

2017-06-27, 02:59 PM

Because I can balance the core 3 books on my head. But all the other books added on? I can't even lift them all, let alone balance them.
But seriously, the more books you add, the more unbalanced the game becomes. More options means more combos ultimately revealing things you may miss or overlook.
I would rather play core only than fully opened myself.

Random Sanity

2017-06-27, 03:01 PM

I never said it was the worst spell ever. However Meteor Swarm isn't a very good spell, and I was able to tell that simply by comparing it to other D&D spells. Additionally, it's very underwhelming for a 9th level spell.

It speaks volumes about Meteor Swarm's (relative) lack of oomph that the 5th edition version was massively buffed over 3.X and it still comes up short of stuff like Time Stop, Wish, et al.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-27, 03:01 PM

Because I can balance the core 3 books on my head. But all the other books added on? I can't even lift them all, let alone balance them.

I'm not sure if you're joking or not, but, balancing 3.5 requires a near total rewrite of the system.

Random Sanity

2017-06-27, 03:04 PM

I'm not sure if you're joking or not, but, balancing 3.5 requires a near total rewrite of the system.

Mechanically, maybe. But physically balancing the rulebooks is just a question of posture. :smallbiggrin:

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-27, 03:10 PM

Mechanically, maybe. But physically balancing the rulebooks is just a question of posture. :smallbiggrin:

Better hit those weights.

johnbragg

2017-06-27, 05:11 PM

Calthropstu

2017-06-27, 06:18 PM

I'm not sure if you're joking or not, but, balancing 3.5 requires a near total rewrite of the system.

I was joking... physical balance etc.
And Pathfinder did exactly that and people still complain about balance. And then there is 4th and 5th editions as well. And yet, 3.5/PF remains as the single most popular system after an amazing almost 20 year run.
So maybe it doesn't need to be "balanced" to be good eh?

Calthropstu

2017-06-27, 06:22 PM

Better hit those weights.
What good will hitting weights do? You'd just break your hand.

AvatarVecna

2017-06-27, 06:25 PM

What good will hitting weights do? You'd just break your hand.

Ah, but when the bones heal back, they'll be stronger! And then, maybe the next time you hit the weights, your hand won't break so easily. :smalltongue:

Calthropstu

2017-06-27, 06:28 PM

Ah, but when the bones heal back, they'll be stronger! And then, maybe the next time you hit the weights, your hand won't break so easily. :smalltongue:

Well, I suppose those weights deserve it... they're so lazy after all. I mean, all they do is weight around...

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-27, 07:12 PM

I was joking... physical balance etc.
And Pathfinder did exactly that and people still complain about balance. And then there is 4th and 5th editions as well. And yet, 3.5/PF remains as the single most popular system after an amazing almost 20 year run.
So maybe it doesn't need to be "balanced" to be good eh?

From what I've heard, Pathfinder really didn't fix 3.5's main issues.

danielxcutter

2017-06-27, 07:17 PM

From what I've heard, Pathfinder really didn't fix 3.5's main issues.

I've heard that it's much more balanced in combat, but casters still have more utility.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-27, 07:19 PM

I've heard that it's much more balanced in combat, but casters still have more utility.

What do you mean by "more balanced combat"? Do Pathfinder's melee characters compare favorably to the Tome of Battle?

danielxcutter

2017-06-27, 07:20 PM

What do you mean by "more balanced combat"? Do Pathfinder's melee characters compare favorably to the Tome of Battle?

IDK, I've just heard that casters got nerfed and martials got boosted a lot. And there's Path of War, which is PF's version of ToB, so... maybe? I don't play PF myself, so I don't have any first-hand knowledge...

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-27, 07:21 PM

IDK, I've just heard that casters got nerfed and martials got boosted a lot. And there's Path of War, which is PF's version of ToB, so... maybe? I don't play PF myself, so I don't have any first-hand knowledge...

I see. I heard that Pathfinder's melee have a even more difficult time keeping up with the casters, and the nerfs to the latter were minimal.

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-27, 07:25 PM

danielxcutter

2017-06-27, 07:29 PM

Path of War isn't First Party I believe.

Oh, didn't know that. I hear that the core martials(especially Fighters) got boosted a lot, though.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-27, 07:29 PM

Oh, didn't know that. I hear that the core martials(especially Fighters) got boosted a lot, though.

I heard it was mostly just numerical boosts; numbers were never really the Fighter's problem to begin with.

Coretron03

2017-06-27, 07:30 PM

IDK, I've just heard that casters got nerfed and martials got boosted a lot. And there's Path of War, which is PF's version of ToB, so... maybe? I don't play PF myself, so I don't have any first-hand knowledge...

Plus, Path of war is 3rd party, not official so it doesn't count for that much. Still a good system though

And Spheres of power is awesome, but also 3rd party.

AvatarVecna

2017-06-27, 08:06 PM

PF fixed some of the more major and obvious balance problems, like Polymorph, and between Skill Unlocks, Master Craftsman, and archetypes, noncasters have access to a pevel of flexibility and power that's mich harder to get in 3.5 usually. Reductions to metamagic cost* and crafting costs are almost completely gone, and XP costs are a thing of the past.

That said, there's a lot of problems that didn't get fixed: slightly more feats doesn't solve the issue of feat chains, the vast majority of spells didn't get very changed at all from one edition to the next, with those that did largely having minor changes, and full casters also got the "real class features" and "archetype combo options" that the martials got. Overall, the system upgrades everybody's power and flexibility while fixing some of the most flagrant and easy ways to break the game...but whule a PF wizard 20 will have a harder time camping in his impenetrable demiplane while throwing armies of clones at his problems, but a wizard in the party is still going to be contributing to fights a great deal more than most any noncaster is, because the wizard still gets to use whichever trick he's got that targets the enemy's weakness, while the Fighter and Ranger and Rogue are still for the most part just grinding through HP until the enemy falls over. Casters generally have a harder time utterly dominating the game, because martials will bave some neat tricks of their own and the casters will need beatsticks to keep monsters back most of the time...but casters have new neat tricks too, even if their most powerful tricks have been nerfed.

*: As is inevitable for any discussion of PF caster balance, mention mist be made of Sacred Geometry, the feat so broken that optimozers tell the DM not to allow it. This feat is basically everything thatcs broken about metamagic reduction, and it tries to balance that out by being a godawful annoying waste of time to use (unless you uae the app somebody made for figuring out how to use it, because of course somebody worked out a way to do that).

Grod_The_Giant

2017-06-27, 08:12 PM

IDK, I've just heard that casters got nerfed and martials got boosted a lot. And there's Path of War, which is PF's version of ToB, so... maybe? I don't play PF myself, so I don't have any first-hand knowledge...
Meh? Some stuff is better (shape-shifting is much more balanced, for instance), and a lot of the really notable 3.5 cheese isn't replicated, but there are still plenty of abuses. (There's an easy way to cast any spell on your class list as a sorcerer, say). Skills are easier, but a lot of feat chains are diluted. And the overall linear warriors/quadratic wizards thing is very much in effect.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-27, 08:16 PM

PF fixed some of the more major and obvious balance problems, like Polymorph, and between Skill Unlocks, Master Craftsman, and archetypes, noncasters have access to a pevel of flexibility and power that's mich harder to get in 3.5 usually. Reductions to metamagic cost* and crafting costs are almost completely gone, and XP costs are a thing of the past.

I thought that there was a Pathfinder class that had free metamagic. The Arcanist, was it?

Also, isn't crafting really OP in Pathfinder?

That said, there's a lot of problems that didn't get fixed: slightly more feats doesn't solve the issue of feat chains,

I heard they made feat chains worse.

the vast majority of spells didn't get very changed at all from one edition to the next,

If I had to guess, Simulacrum and the Planar Binding line are probably the worse offenders in this department.

with those that did largely having minor changes, and full casters also got the "real class features" and "archetype combo options" that the martials got. Overall, the system upgrades everybody's power and flexibility while fixing some of the most flagrant and easy ways to break the game...but whule a PF wizard 20 will have a harder time camping in his impenetrable demiplane while throwing armies of clones at his problems,

Doesn't Mage's Magnificent Mansion accomplish the same thing?

but a wizard in the party is still going to be contributing to fights a great deal more than most any noncaster is, because the wizard still gets to use whichever trick he's got that targets the enemy's weakness, while the Fighter and Ranger and Rogue are still for the most part just grinding through HP until the enemy falls over. Casters generally have a harder time utterly dominating the game, because martials will bave some neat tricks of their own and the casters will need beatsticks to keep monsters back most of the time...but casters have new neat tricks too, even if their most powerful tricks have been nerfed.

I've also heard that melee got nerfed too. Power Attack and Trip are the two that come to mind.

*: As is inevitable for any discussion of PF caster balance, mention mist be made of Sacred Geometry, the feat so broken that optimozers tell the DM not to allow it. This feat is basically everything thatcs broken about metamagic reduction, and it tries to balance that out by being a godawful annoying waste of time to use (unless you uae the app somebody made for figuring out how to use it, because of course somebody worked out a way to do that).

That sounds insane, I'll have to look up Sacred Geometry.

Edit: I just looked it up. What were they thinking?!

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-27, 08:17 PM

Not to be rude or anything, but this isn't a D&D Vs. Pathfinder thread.

Coretron03

2017-06-27, 08:18 PM

Oh, didn't know that. I hear that the core martials(especially Fighters) got boosted a lot, though.
Basicly a 1-4 bonus to attack and damage with a weapon group (Groups of simliar weapons), a pretty pointless capstone that lets you auto confirm crits (Because if 6th level spells don't matter, neither does the capstone), able to be to have a higher dex to ac in armour and removing the movement speed penalty and the nerfing of combat manuavers, like making tripping cost 3 feats instead of 2. Overall, pretty meh. Sorcerers got something like 5e archtypes called a bloodline that can give nice abilities, druids wildshape got smacked with the nerf hammer, Wizards get some school abilities and a lax banning schools method (takes 2 spells to prepare instead of barred in 2 schools) best of which is divination giving immunity to suprise and half your level as an Init bonus.

Overall, alot of changes, not that much more balance.

Nifft

2017-06-27, 08:21 PM

Not to be rude or anything, but this isn't a D&D Vs. Pathfinder thread.

Indeed.

I think the central point was that 3.0e => 3.5e was a major re-write which killed several sacred cows (e.g. Haste, Heal, Harm) but didn't change the overall linear-fighter / quadratic-wizard metagame.

Likewise, 3.5e => Pathfinder was a major re-write which killed several sacred cows (listed above), but didn't change the overall linear-fighter / quadratic-wizard metagame.

== == ==

So, back to the main topic: is the the overall linear-fighter / quadratic-wizard metagame obvious to new players?

If so, what tipped you off?

If not, how long did it take to find out? (Or did you read about the issue online first?)

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-27, 08:24 PM

Indeed.

I think the central point was that 3.0e => 3.5e was a major re-write which killed several sacred cows (e.g. Haste, Heal, Harm) but didn't change the overall linear-fighter / quadratic-wizard metagame.

Likewise, 3.5e => Pathfinder was a major re-write which killed several sacred cows (listed above), but didn't change the overall linear-fighter / quadratic-wizard metagame.

== == ==

So, back to the main topic: is the the overall linear-fighter / quadratic-wizard metagame obvious to new players?

If so, what tipped you off?

If not, how long did it take to find out? (Or did you read about the issue online first?)

Honestly, the first thing I did when I starting playing 3.5 was to do as much internet research as possible. I knew about the Linear Warrior Quadratic Wizards paradigm pretty early on. My experience is probably atypical, though.

danielxcutter

2017-06-27, 08:26 PM

Indeed.

I think the central point was that 3.0e => 3.5e was a major re-write which killed several sacred cows (e.g. Haste, Heal, Harm) but didn't change the overall linear-fighter / quadratic-wizard metagame.

Likewise, 3.5e => Pathfinder was a major re-write which killed several sacred cows (listed above), but didn't change the overall linear-fighter / quadratic-wizard metagame.

== == ==

So, back to the main topic: is the the overall linear-fighter / quadratic-wizard metagame obvious to new players?

If so, what tipped you off?

If not, how long did it take to find out? (Or did you read about the issue online first?)

Probably not unless they've heard of it before. I only learned about it first because of OotS and this forum.

Grod_The_Giant

2017-06-27, 08:28 PM

Edit: I just looked it up. What were they thinking?!
While not the original source of it, that monstrosity is perhaps the single best example of Grod's Law out there.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-27, 08:29 PM

While not the original source of it, that monstrosity is perhaps the single best example of Grod's Law out there.

Agreed. There will always be someone out there insane enough to use an annoying mechanic and reap the benefits.

danielxcutter

2017-06-27, 08:32 PM

Agreed. There will always be someone out there insane enough to use an annoying mechanic and reap the benefits.

Not everyone does, though, which actually makes the problem worse because people will be less prepared for it.

AvatarVecna

2017-06-27, 09:35 PM

While not the original source of it, that monstrosity is perhaps the single best example of Grod's Law out there.

It's my go-to example, when referencing the Law becomes relevant.

Agreed. There will always be someone out there insane enough to use an annoying mechanic and reap the benefits.

Naturally, of course, people have figured out how to make using it less annoying. Not only is there a Calculator (http://d20toolkit.com/tools/sg/sacredgeo.php) for you to plug in your rolls and target spell level and receive a solution with a press of a button, but there's also somebody out there who's managed to prove that, if you have 12+ ranks in Knowledge (Engineering), you're basically guaranteed to have some path to getting your goal. (Still tracking down a link on that, though)

But seriously, this feat is awful and I always recommend against allowing it even in games where balance isn't really a concern; at best, it's tons of free metamagic even worse than 3.5 before about 15th level; at worst, it's free metamagic that you have to spend half an hour working to get on your turn.

Florian

2017-06-27, 11:48 PM

That sounds insane, I'll have to look up Sacred Geometry.

Edit: I just looked it up. What were they thinking?!

Paizo and the overall PF community have a vastly different stance on how to tread 1PP material that´s very different from how WotC got viewed by the community.
- Everything that makes it on the PRD is "safe to use", will get updates and errata.
- Everything in the APs is designed to work only there and under special circumstances.
- Everything from the Inner Sea product line is subject to setting rules and should be seen as that.
- Everything from the Companion line is untested, "player beware" and won´t get support until it moves over to the PRD

That´s one of the reasons everything on the free online sources is explicitly tagged with its source.

So it´s pretty amusing to see talk about some "problem" stuff, like the Blood Money spell and Sacred Geometry, when it´s easy to look up the source and get informed on how to treat them and what to expect from it.

Edit: You can actually identify who uses what site as a source by looking at a build.

Coretron03

2017-06-28, 12:03 AM

Paizo and the overall PF community have a vastly different stance on how to tread 1PP material that´s very different from how WotC got viewed by the community.
- Everything that makes it on the PRD is "safe to use", will get updates and errata.
- Everything in the APs is designed to work only there and under special circumstances.
- Everything from the Inner Sea product line is subject to setting rules and should be seen as that.
- Everything from the Companion line is untested, "player beware" and won´t get support until it moves over to the PRD

That´s one of the reasons everything on the free online sources is explicitly tagged with its source.

So it´s pretty amusing to see talk about some "problem" stuff, like the Blood Money spell and Sacred Geometry, when it´s easy to look up the source and get informed on how to treat them and what to expect from it.

Edit: You can actually identify who uses what site as a source by looking at a build.
Do you mean this Srd?
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/b/blood-money/
Because that has Blood money on it.
If you mean the official one, Is that one updated at all? I thought it only had core...

Also, Being able to fix it doesn't stop it from being broken as written. It like if I made a class in the companion line that was basically a "Wizard 20/Cleric 20/Druid 20/10 mythic ranks" my response to people saying its broken shouldn't be " Well duh, its from the player companion line, if you want it non-broken, go fix it"

JBPuffin

2017-06-28, 12:04 AM

Forgive me for dredging up page 2 (or not), but...

If it's any consolation, other tabletop games' communities are even worse at understanding the game they play. For example, I once challenged a fairly large community with what can be best approximated in their system to a "Commoner 20" vs any "Wizard 20" they could field against it, and I not only won handily, but even knew beforehand my victory is 100% certain, that's how rudimentary their knowledge of the game was even on the forum. By this measure the 3.x community is very advanced.

Which community was this, if you're able to say? I'd love to read the forum arguments of a project at such a proto-stage...

You know, you don't always have to take the time to attack us dirty optimizers. You can give your opinion without being antagonistic.

To be fair - without such people, forums wouldn't even know about the problems for the most part, and while it's a different sort of fun, for some people it just sucks to hear. I'll take ignorant roleplayers over hyper-aware optimizers at a table any day...knowing there's a "right way" has really hampered my enjoyment at times.

Florian

2017-06-28, 12:51 AM

Do you mean this Srd?
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/b/blood-money/
Because that has Blood money on it.
If you mean the official one, Is that one updated at all? I thought it only had core...

Also, Being able to fix it doesn't stop it from being broken as written. It like if I made a class in the companion line that was basically a "Wizard 20/Cleric 20/Druid 20/10 mythic ranks" my response to people saying its broken shouldn't be " Well duh, its from the player companion line, if you want it non-broken, go fix it"

This is the official one: http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/

It has the whole "core line" on it, so all the hardcovers ("Ultimate", "Adventure", "Codex"..), which in turn have the updated and revised material from the Companion lines, if possible/available. That´s why you can find different versions of some things, like the Juju mystery, Lore Warden archetype, and so on. (Nethys even shows the source update history for everything)

Edit: Blood Money is just a good example because it comes up in OP discussions, is not on the "cleared" list and never will be, as the spell has a very specific background. People only using the PFSRD frequently come up with stuff like this, as that site uses material indiscriminately.

Coretron03

2017-06-28, 02:16 AM

This is the official one: http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/

It has the whole "core line" on it, so all the hardcovers ("Ultimate", "Adventure", "Codex"..), which in turn have the updated and revised material from the Companion lines, if possible/available. That´s why you can find different versions of some things, like the Juju mystery, Lore Warden archetype, and so on. (Nethys even shows the source update history for everything)

Edit: Blood Money is just a good example because it comes up in OP discussions, is not on the "cleared" list and never will be, as the spell has a very specific background. People only using the PFSRD frequently come up with stuff like this, as that site uses material indiscriminately.
Thought so. Never really used the official one as the one of linked usually pops up first (Sometimes Nethys if they changed the name from transition)

That still doesn't change the fact that the things are OP though, and that its official. Plus i've never had a Dm that worried whether or not it was on the official site.

rel

2017-06-28, 02:47 AM

Point 1
I've played a pathfinder campaign to level 13 and a few others to level 8.
I've played many 3.5 campaigns, most at low levels, several to about level 13 and a few up past level 17.

In my experience pathfinder is less balanced than 3.5 and setting out to achieve a balanced party of martials and casters is harder in pathfinder.

Point 2
Optimisation is not something unique to D&D. I have personally seen players bring highly optimised builds to most of the other roleplay systems people have touted as free from munchkins in this thread and many more besides.

Of the top of my head, here is a list of systems that I have seen or participated in breaking in half during actual games: shadowrun 3rd and 4th, exalted, owod vampire and mage, nwod standard and mage, BESM 2nd (I think. It was the later non-D20 one), 7th sea, dark heresy and its ilk, hollow earth expedition, star wars edge of empire and the rest of that family.

Now then, getting this thread back on track.

I get the feeling from reading this thread that people that see the 3.5 core rules as at least mostly balanced are not optimisers themselves and have not really explored all that 3.5 has to offer (by playing the game to level 20 for example).

Am I missing the mark here?

Florian

2017-06-28, 02:58 AM

Am I missing the mark here?

By a mile.

System mastery depends on what you do with it. Some have fun identifying the cracks and exploiting them, other identify them to avoid them. Everything else, including all talk about balance, is absolute nonsense as we talk about rules that can never be without flaws, else we´d move from RPG into board games or some such.

lbuttitta

2017-06-28, 06:03 AM

I'm curious, is there any single 1st party book in 3.5 that's more unbalanced than core?
I can think of two: Savage Species, the poorly edited and poorly balanced guide to monsters; or Serpent Kingdoms, origin of Punpun.

Magi

2017-06-28, 06:17 AM

So, back to the main topic: is the the overall linear-fighter / quadratic-wizard metagame obvious to new players?

If so, what tipped you off?

If not, how long did it take to find out? (Or did you read about the issue online first?)
I dunno, when I first bought the books back in 2003 and carefully read them (I was the DM in the group) it got clear pretty fast that casters will rule on high levels. Lots of high level spell slots like fingers of death, harm etc. compared to several attacks with an axe? Please. But at the start I did thought that melee will be good/better than casters up to 9-11 levels, specially in long fights, but I was wrong about it. Players figured it out pretty quickly too. Still, we thought it was pretty cool and how it suppose to be. People kept playing their fighters/rangers/barbarians no matter what even years later, cause they loved the classes and their stereotypes. They felt that they are in the right place and position, if you know what I mean. Hell, even if fighters were more powerful than wizards on all levels, I'd still play a wizard cause I liked the gameplay and having a lot of options.

emeraldstreak

2017-06-28, 06:24 AM

when you could achieve all of what you claim by simply playing with simpler rules, some house rules, being more flexible and reasonable about the rules themselves instead of hyper-focusing on the rules as godlike abstract things to exploit obsessively. simpler rules means less of a learning curve for both GMs and player, less complexity means more blanks to fill in that allow for more character concepts than restrictive mechanics. and believable world is achieved by the rules getting out of the way and allow you to be immersed in it as the simpler mechanics are nothing but servants to what you need them to do rather than what you HAVE to make them do for anything to happen at all.

No, simple games aren't always better than complex games.

Psyren

2017-06-28, 07:13 AM

Why do people think that the core books are balanced? Core contains some of the most unbalanced material in 3.5.

It's not, but at the same time, "balance" doesn't matter nearly as much as forums think it does.

Next question.

Calthropstu

2017-06-28, 08:00 AM

Not to be rude or anything, but this isn't a D&D Vs. Pathfinder thread.

To be fair, Pathfinder made a good number of fixes the op is looking for. Some will argue it didn't go far enough and some will argue otherwise. The two are fairly compatible with each other and you can bring some changes from pf into a 3.5 campaign (ie unchained monk) with little difficulty.

Cosi

2017-06-28, 08:39 AM

I heard it was mostly just numerical boosts; numbers were never really the Fighter's problem to begin with.

Yup. And Wizards get a bunch of free class features for no reason. Also, specialization costs less and gives more. PF probably made the practical problem of it never being worth it to put a Fighter in your party instead of a Wizard worse, but because it "fixed" the theorycraft stuff people talk about, people seem to think it's good.

Indeed.

I think the central point was that 3.0e => 3.5e was a major re-write which killed several sacred cows (e.g. Haste, Heal, Harm) but didn't change the overall linear-fighter / quadratic-wizard metagame.

Likewise, 3.5e => Pathfinder was a major re-write which killed several sacred cows (listed above), but didn't change the overall linear-fighter / quadratic-wizard metagame.

I mean, I think it is relevant why both transitions failed to fix the central issue. The fundamental problem is that nerfing individual spells doesn't really do anything. There are over 5,000 spells. If you nerf the ones in core -- even if you nerf them well past the point of usefulness -- people will just cast other spells. Who cares if you made glitterdust suck? I can just cast cloud of bewilderment now. If you really want to fix imbalance, you have to tackle it structurally. If you want to look like you fixed imbalance while not doing any actual work, by all means nerf whatever dozen or so spells people are complaining about.

Which community was this, if you're able to say? I'd love to read the forum arguments of a project at such a proto-stage...

Probably the WotC boards, but those are probably gone beyond any possibility of retrieval. At minimum, you're looking at two or three forum reorganizations, them shuttering their forums for a year, and more than a decade worth of stuff falling off the web. It's not there anymore unless someone made a serious effort to save it (and that effort probably would have had to happen before there was any real evidence it was going to be necessary).

Calthropstu

2017-06-28, 08:57 AM

Cosi

2017-06-28, 09:03 AM

I am going to have to disagree. My pf group is SERIOUSLY having issues due to lacking a tank. Druid, wizard and magus alike are getting pounded. I rounded them out with an oracle who can provide nearly limitless healing, but they are still getting pounded on a regular basis. A fighter, barbarian or monk would seriously alter that.

"Tank" is not a role in D&D. Monsters are intelligent, and if you show up with a character who hopes to stall them with high defenses, they will ignore him and still go after the squishies. The equivalent role in D&D is battlefield controller, which is something your Wizard (or perhaps your Druid) should likely be able to provide.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-28, 09:33 AM

I can think of two: Savage Species, the poorly edited and poorly balanced guide to monsters; or Serpent Kingdoms, origin of Punpun.

Another poster mentioned Serpent Kingdoms, but I forgot about Savage Species. Oh, yes, the Epic Handbook is pretty bad too.

It's not, but at the same time, "balance" doesn't matter nearly as much as forums think it does.

Next question.

I think you're seriously understating the problem; 3.5 isn't just unbalanced, it's flat out broken.

To be fair, Pathfinder made a good number of fixes the op is looking for. Some will argue it didn't go far enough and some will argue otherwise. The two are fairly compatible with each other and you can bring some changes from pf into a 3.5 campaign (ie unchained monk) with little difficulty.

We spent some time discussing how Pathfinder didn't really address the core issues.

I am going to have to disagree. My pf group is SERIOUSLY having issues due to lacking a tank. Druid, wizard and magus alike are getting pounded. I rounded them out with an oracle who can provide nearly limitless healing, but they are still getting pounded on a regular basis. A fighter, barbarian or monk would seriously alter that.

OK, but without further details, that tells us little.

lord_khaine

2017-06-28, 09:39 AM

I mean, I think it is relevant why both transitions failed to fix the central issue. The fundamental problem is that nerfing individual spells doesn't really do anything. There are over 5,000 spells. If you nerf the ones in core -- even if you nerf them well past the point of usefulness -- people will just cast other spells. Who cares if you made glitterdust suck? I can just cast cloud of bewilderment now. If you really want to fix imbalance, you have to tackle it structurally. If you want to look like you fixed imbalance while not doing any actual work, by all means nerf whatever dozen or so spells people are complaining about.

That just means you need to limit spells outside of core in a case by case basis.

"Tank" is not a role in D&D. Monsters are intelligent, and if you show up with a character who hopes to stall them with high defenses, they will ignore him and still go after the squishies. The equivalent role in D&D is battlefield controller, which is something your Wizard (or perhaps your Druid) should likely be able to provide.

Actually they are not always smart, a lot of monsters are rather dumb. And a solid frontliner can often buy a round or 2 of time to get the defensive buffs up.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-28, 09:44 AM

That just means you need to limit spells outside of core in a case by case basis.

Good luck with that; how many spells are we talking about?

Actually they are not always smart, a lot of monsters are rather dumb. And a solid frontliner can often buy a round or 2 of time to get the defensive buffs up.

I'd bet that most monsters aren't stupid at all. Any foe with even rudimentary intelligence is going to avoid any tank that they can't hit, but also can't really hurt them. It's difficult in 3.5 for melee characters to keep enemies from attacking their party members.

Psyren

2017-06-28, 09:47 AM

I think you're seriously understating the problem; 3.5 isn't just unbalanced, it's flat out broken.

It's really not, and these kind of histrionics help nobody. People play and have fun in 3.5 games, even core ones, all the time. If you simply can't, that's fine, there are lots of other systems out there.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-28, 09:53 AM

It's really not, and these kind of histrionics help nobody.

Really now? This is a system where Pun Pun is a thing. You don't think that means the game is completely broken?

People play and have fun in 3.5 games, even core ones, all the time. If you simply can't, that's fine, there are lots of other systems out there.

I adore 3.5, but I harbor no illusions about how badly designed it is. The fact that people like the system and play it, in now way invalidates the fact that the system has more holes than Swiss cheese.

Psyren

2017-06-28, 09:56 AM

Really now? This is a system where Pun Pun is a thing. You don't think that means the game is completely broken?

No, I don't! Pun-Pun is a thought experiment, nothing more. Nobody in their right mind actually plays Pun-Pun, and even if they did, the GM would just say "Congratulations, you won D&D, can we actually play the game now?" (Assuming a book to the face wasn't their first reaction.)

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-28, 10:01 AM

No, I don't! Pun-Pun is a thought experiment, nothing more. Nobody in their right mind actually plays Pun-Pun, and even if they did, the GM would just say "Congratulations, you won D&D, can we actually play the game now?" (Assuming a book to the face wasn't their first reaction.)

That isn't the point. Pun Pun is possible within the rules, as are a host of other game-breaking builds.

Ignoring the broken content doesn't fix 3.5; it just means that people work around it.

Psyren

2017-06-28, 10:04 AM

That isn't the point. Pun Pun is possible within the rules, as are a host of other game-breaking builds.

Ignoring the broken content doesn't fix 3.5; it just means that people work around it.

"Fixing 3.5" is an impossible goal. None of us has the power to errata any of it, and it's no longer getting new content. "Overlooking the broken content" is all we can do; people do it quite easily every single day and successfully play the game. If you're not willing to do that, why are you even here?

The_Jette

2017-06-28, 10:05 AM

That isn't the point. Pun Pun is possible within the rules, as are a host of other game-breaking builds.

Ignoring the broken content doesn't fix 3.5; it just means that people work around it.

I'd like to point out the most common way of getting Pun Pun to work, summoning Pazuzu, doesn't really work. As written, Pazuzu will show up and read the mind of the person summoning him, and figure out what he's wanted for. If it suits Pazuzu's purpose, he'll show up one minute later. If it doesn't, (like, for instance, becoming an immortal God Slayer) he just won't show up. Other ways might work, I haven't looked into all of them. But, Pazuzu wouldn't be willing to grant someone unlimited strength when his own is limited.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-28, 10:07 AM

I'd like to point out the most common way of getting Pun Pun to work, summoning Pazuzu, doesn't really work. As written, Pazuzu will show up and read the mind of the person summoning him, and figure out what he's wanted for. If it suits Pazuzu's purpose, he'll show up one minute later. If it doesn't, (like, for instance, becoming an immortal God Slayer) he just won't show up. Other ways might work, I haven't looked into all of them. But, Pazuzu wouldn't be willing to grant someone unlimited strength when his own is limited.

That really doesn't matter. At best, you have to wait a few levels to become all-powerful.

Edit:

"Fixing 3.5" is an impossible goal. None of us has the power to errata any of it, and it's no longer getting new content.

I believe I already said as much in this very thread.

"Overlooking the broken content" is all we can do; people do it quite easily every single day and successfully play the game.

I realize that, but it doesn't mean the game isn't broken.

If you're not willing to do that, why are you even here?

I'm here to talk about why people think that core is balanced.

The_Jette

2017-06-28, 10:12 AM

That really doesn't matter. At best, you have to wait a few levels to become all-powerful.

I was just making an observation.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-28, 10:14 AM

I was just making an observation.

Fair enough.

But, you can still use the sacrifice rules to do pretty much the same thing at level 1-2. Truenamers, ironically, excel at this sort of thing.

Psyren

2017-06-28, 10:24 AM

I realize that, but it doesn't mean the game isn't broken.

I suspect we have two different definitions of "broken." I'm going off the definition "no longer in working order." Thus I don't think 3.5 is broken because the game does work, even if parts of it need a (readily used) gentleman's agreement. You seem to be of the opinion that, so long as broken things are possible within the system, even if nobody actually does those things in practice (whether in the abstract, or even at your own tables), then the entire system is unsalvageable. Is that right?

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-28, 10:26 AM

I suspect we have two different definitions of "broken." I'm going off the definition "no longer in working order." Thus I don't think 3.5 is broken because the game does work, even if parts of it need a (readily used) gentleman's agreement. You seem to be of the opinion that, so long as broken things are possible within the system, even if nobody actually does those things in practice (whether in the abstract, or even at your own tables), then the entire system is unsalvageable. Is that right?

I don't think the system is unsalvageable, but I will say that you have a pretty generous definition of broken.

I was thinking more along the lines of broken = really OP.

Psyren

2017-06-28, 10:28 AM

I was thinking more along the lines of broken = really OP.

By "really" do you mean potential or actual? That is the crux of our disagreement. Have you actually played in games with Pun-Pun, and if so, what happened?

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-28, 10:47 AM

By "really" do you mean potential or actual? That is the crux of our disagreement.

That doesn't really matter. Whether or not people avoid the broken bits, doesn't mean the system isn't broken. There are plenty of PO tactics that are quite OP.

Even by your definition of broken, some of the high end TO snaps the game in half.

Have you actually played in games with Pun-Pun, and if so, what happened?

No. That doesn't mean that it isn't possible to create Pun Pun.

I think that designing a game with unbalanced content and then expecting people to avoid it instead of fixing it is terrible game design.

The DM's job is already hard enough, attempting to toss out broken content on top of that only adds to that workload.

That's assuming that the DM even knows what's broken and what isn't. Judging from the thread title, I'd say that isn't always the case.

Grod_The_Giant

2017-06-28, 11:19 AM

I'm curious, is there any single 1st party book in 3.5 that's more unbalanced than core?
I had a thread on this a while back (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?519030-The-worst-balanced-splatbook-in-3-5). (Perhaps the best answer? The Epic Level Handbook. It has Epic Spellcasting, and it has Epic Endurance (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/feats.htm#epicEndurance).

Really now? This is a system where Pun Pun is a thing. You don't think that means the game is completely broken?
Theoretical optimization like Pun Pun has nothing to do with the overall balance/brokeness/quality of the system. I would agree with you that 3.5 has significant mechanical flaws, but they have nothing to do with whether or not you can manage Wish-loops and other junk that no sane group will touch. The game's greatest flaw is that, for much of its run, it had absolutely no idea what power level it was trying to work and and how to get there. The huge swathes of trap options, the classes and spells that make you dig through giant lists of stuff to sort of what is and isn't worthwhile, the ways you can accidentally have one character come out significantly stronger than another.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-28, 11:22 AM

I had a thread on this a while back (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?519030-The-worst-balanced-splatbook-in-3-5).

Interesting, I'll take a look at it.

Theoretical optimization like Pun Pun has nothing to do with the overall balance/brokeness/quality of the system.

Stuff like Pun Pun shouldn't be possible in a well designed system.

I would agree with you that 3.5 has significant mechanical flaws, but they have nothing to do with whether or not you can manage Wish-loops and other junk that no sane group will touch. The game's greatest flaw is that, for much of its run, it had absolutely no idea what power level it was trying to work and and how to get there. The huge swathes of trap options, the classes and spells that make you dig through giant lists of stuff to sort of what is and isn't worthwhile, the ways you can accidentally have one character come out significantly stronger than another.

I mostly agree with your assessment. I still maintain that Wish loops and the like detract from the game's overall quality.

johnbragg

2017-06-28, 11:28 AM

I think that designing a game with unbalanced content and then expecting people to avoid it instead of fixing it is terrible game design.

The DM's job is already hard enough, attempting to toss out broken content on top of that only adds to that workload.

That's assuming that the DM even knows what's broken and what isn't. Judging from the thread title, I'd say that isn't always the case.

3E is designed before a revolution in expectations that 3E brought about. The designers and playtesters came from an era when "Rocks fall, everybody dies" was not just ragequitting. DM power was absolute and arbitrary. It had to be in early editions, to paper over flawed rules, gaps in the rule systems, inconsistent and often terrible mechanics. The DM was sovereign, infallible by definition. (Plus, we didn't have as much money so not everybody had their own PHB, never mind supplements)

d20's systematizing of a lot of the game created the expectation that rules could actually cover most everything. That created the expectation that the rules could actually cover--everything. RAW emerged, carving out great swaths of game where the players could argue that the DM was, in fact, wrong. (Plus we had more money, so more players had their own PHB etc to refer to.)

The problem arises because 3E looks playable out of the box. Previous editions did not, at least not in the same way. How did polymorphing work in AD&D? However that DM decided it would work.

PhoenixPhyre

2017-06-28, 11:36 AM

The game's greatest flaw is that, for much of its run, it had absolutely no idea what power level it was trying to work and and how to get there. The huge swathes of trap options, the classes and spells that make you dig through giant lists of stuff to sort of what is and isn't worthwhile, the ways you can accidentally have one character come out significantly stronger than another.

I agree with this. Anything is broken with enough "creative" reading. That's why there's a DM. On the other hand it should be hard (and require intentional work) to make a character way outside the norms in either direction. When it takes a rules savant to make a passable character using one class but another class can take whatever random options they like and be perfectly ok, that's not ok in my book. Power should vary based on intentional applications of player skill and system knowledge rather than choosing "OP class 1" or "UP class 2" at character creation.

I'd like to see more of this (the area between the arrows is the range of power, + indicates the normal average without significant optimization):

|<--weak---------------------------------------------------------strong-->|
|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<-----------------+--------------->xxxxxxxxxxxxxx|(for all classes)

rather than
| <----+------------------------------------->xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx| (fighters)
|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<------------------------+---------->| (druids)

johnbragg

2017-06-28, 11:38 AM

Interesting, I'll take a look at it.

Stuff like Pun Pun shouldn't be possible in a well designed system.

I mostly agree with your assessment. I still maintain that Wish loops and the like detract from the game's overall quality.

Stuff like Pun Pun isn't really the problem. The DM says "No", the Lady of PAin sends an arbitrary number of Inevitables, Epic Wish removes you from ever having existed, your arbitrary level of power collapses the local reality continuum, imprisoning you in the equivalent of a black hole pocket universe of which you are the locally omnipotent God, able to do anything except interact with any outside reality or consciousness (you can subjectively escape all you want, but it's just matrix-turtles all the way down).

The problem is CoDzilla outfighting the Fighter using basic Core spells as intended, the problem is the wizard outshining the Rogue at rogue-type things by swapping out spells.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-28, 11:39 AM

Stuff like Pun Pun isn't really the problem. The DM says "No", the Lady of PAin sends an arbitrary number of Inevitables, Epic Wish removes you from ever having existed, your arbitrary level of power collapses the local reality continuum, imprisoning you in the equivalent of a black hole pocket universe of which you are the locally omnipotent God, able to do anything except interact with any outside reality or consciousness (you can subjectively escape all you want, but it's just matrix-turtles all the way down).

Don't you think that Pun Pun is an example of poor game design? I realize that no one allows it in their games, but it's still there.

The problem is CoDzilla outfighting the Fighter using basic Core spells as intended, the problem is the wizard outshining the Rogue at rogue-type things by swapping out spells.

Agreed. Also stuff like spells granting minions that can replace the Fighter.

Lord Raziere

2017-06-28, 11:40 AM

That doesn't really matter. Whether or not people avoid the broken bits, doesn't mean the system isn't broken. There are plenty of PO tactics that are quite OP.

Even by your definition of broken, some of the high end TO snaps the game in half.

No. That doesn't mean that it isn't possible to create Pun Pun.

I think that designing a game with unbalanced content and then expecting people to avoid it instead of fixing it is terrible game design.

The DM's job is already hard enough, attempting to toss out broken content on top of that only adds to that workload.

That's assuming that the DM even knows what's broken and what isn't. Judging from the thread title, I'd say that isn't always the case.

Exactly! There is no excuse, its just plain terrible game design. Its not about the players, its about the game and the principles of designing a game. an rpg about knights doing knightly things shouldn't warp into a weird bomb-sword world because someone accidentally wrote it so that swords explode like bombs and a player decided to take that as physics when nothing in the fluff says anything about it or mentions it and focuses entirely on the knights doing knightly things. you fix it so that the swords do not explode like bombs and move on playing the actual game.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-28, 11:42 AM

Exactly! There is no excuse, its just plain terrible game design. Its not about the players, its about the game and the principles of designing a game. an rpg about knights doing knightly things shouldn't warp into a weird bomb-sword world because someone accidentally wrote it so that swords explode like bombs and a player decided to take that as physics when nothing in the fluff says anything about it or mentions it and focuses entirely on the knights doing knightly things. you fix it so that the swords do not explode like bombs and move on playing the actual game.

I'm glad someone agrees with me on this point.

Edit: Unless you were joking?

Cosi

2017-06-28, 11:54 AM

That just means you need to limit spells outside of core in a case by case basis.

I wish you luck combing through all 5,000+ printed spells for anything outside your power target instead of just fixing whichever half of classes you think should be moved.

Actually they are not always smart, a lot of monsters are rather dumb. And a solid frontliner can often buy a round or 2 of time to get the defensive buffs up.

Most dumb monsters are non-flying melee brutes who can be beaten by just knowing fly.

It's really not, and these kind of histrionics help nobody. People play and have fun in 3.5 games, even core ones, all the time. If you simply can't, that's fine, there are lots of other systems out there.

The game can be broken without being unplayable.

Theoretical optimization like Pun Pun has nothing to do with the overall balance/brokeness/quality of the system.

I wouldn't say nothing. The fact that you can abuse SLA wish matters, because it means you have to close that hole somehow if people want to actually use SLA wish. Given that SLA wish is how Genies work, that seems like something that will come up at least occasionally. Incidentally, this is part of what makes D&D's abuses so problematic. polymorph and planar binding are things that people want to do because they are iconic magical feats. If, say, globe of invulnerability was broken somehow, it would be much easier to ignore the problem.

Yes, the fact that casting cloudkill is just better than anything a Fighter can do at anywhere close to that level is a much bigger problem (and the fact that Fighters are strictly worse than Clerics is bigger still), but the existence of infinite loops and other cheese also matters.

Also, complexity is another big issue. To evaluate polymorph (and similar spells) requires analysis of something like a dozen different sources, and even after you've done that still involves debates that aren't cleanly settled by the rules.

johnbragg

2017-06-28, 11:54 AM

Don't you think that Pun Pun is an example of poor game design? I realize that no one allows it in their games, but it's still there.

Pun Pun is a bad thing, but it seems an inescapable outcome of creating an open-ended system. IF there is a constantly expanding array of options which will can then be reassembled and interact in unexpected ways, some of them will interact in unexpected ways that break the game. ("Break the game" here means "create divide-by-zero type errors", not just ridiculously powerful.)

Much like the religious argument that sin is a necessary result of free will. If you're going to have a game that allows wish as a spell, you're going to see wish abuse.

Agreed. Also stuff like spells granting minions that can replace the Fighter.

Yes, I was citing those two examples to represent the general case, much like using Pun Pun to represent a wide variety of theoretical optimization exercises.

Psyren

2017-06-28, 11:57 AM

That doesn't really matter. Whether or not people avoid the broken bits, doesn't mean the system isn't broken. There are plenty of PO tactics that are quite OP.

Even by your definition of broken, some of the high end TO snaps the game in half.

My definition hinges on how the game is played in practice. Therefore, something being theoretical puts it outside of my definition, by definition. Optimization theories and forum discussions aren't the game; the game is the game.

I think that designing a game with unbalanced content and then expecting people to avoid it instead of fixing it is terrible game design.

I disagree; balance is an admirable goal, but it is one I'm happily willing to sacrifice in favor of better priorities - like simulating a vibrant world capable of representing all manner of challenges, from clearing rats out of a peasant's basement to facing the armies of an evil god. You claim that balancing those is hard on a GM, and it certainly can be if they have jerk players or lack creativity, but I think such situations are the exception rather than the rule.

The problem is CoDzilla outfighting the Fighter using basic Core spells as intended, the problem is the wizard outshining the Rogue at rogue-type things by swapping out spells.

I agree, but engineering scenarios where those spells are suboptimal is not difficult. A single targeted dispel strips that cleric down to nothing, while the same against the fighter only suppresses one of his items and leaves him still able to apply liberal beatdowns. Things like that.

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-28, 12:04 PM

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-28, 12:08 PM

Pun Pun is a bad thing, but it seems an inescapable outcome of creating an open-ended system. IF there is a constantly expanding array of options which will can then be reassembled and interact in unexpected ways, some of them will interact in unexpected ways that break the game. ("Break the game" here means "create divide-by-zero type errors", not just ridiculously powerful.)

Manipulate form has no right to be in the game. Someone on the design team should have caught that one.

Much like the religious argument that sin is a necessary result of free will. If you're going to have a game that allows wish as a spell, you're going to see wish abuse.

Why make it worse and allow free wishes?

Yes, I was citing those two examples to represent the general case, much like using Pun Pun to represent a wide variety of theoretical optimization exercises.

OK.

My definition hinges on how the game is played in practice. Therefore, something being theoretical puts it outside of my definition, by definition. Optimization theories and forum discussions aren't the game; the game is the game.

It's more than possible for one character to make the rest of the party feel useless. That's just scratching the surface of the type of issues 3.5 has.

I disagree; balance is an admirable goal, but it is one I'm happily willing to sacrifice in favor of better priorities - like simulating a vibrant world capable of representing all manner of challenges, from clearing rats out of a peasant's basement to facing the armies of an evil god.

I think you can do that without ending up with a dysfunction system. I don't think that 3.5 or any game needs to be balanced, but I expect a certain level of competence from the designers.

You claim that balancing those is hard on a GM, and it certainly can be if they have jerk players or lack creativity, but I think such situations are the exception rather than the rule.

How much time and effort does it take to truly understand 3.5 as a system? Any attempt at balancing is going to be a thousand times harder without system mastery.

I agree, but engineering scenarios where those spells are suboptimal is not difficult. A single targeted dispel strips that cleric down to nothing, while the same against the fighter only suppresses one of his items and leaves him still able to apply liberal beatdowns. Things like that.

That's a really poor example. Spellcasters have several ways of avoiding dispels (selective AMF for example), while the Fighter is now completely screwed. He can't fly, his weapons aren't magical, and a good size chunk of his defense is gone. He's one spell away from death, or worse, becoming someone's slave.

Florian

2017-06-28, 12:10 PM

Really now? This is a system where Pun Pun is a thing. You don't think that means the game is completely broken?

Stuff like PunPun is uninteresting to the nth degree. Even talking about like it´s an actual thing instead of pointing out some flaws in the system is a waste of time.

D&D-style games can only ever work with an "open system", else they can´t provide the necessary freedom and support the creativity. This means there will always be flaws. Contrast that to two "closed systems", first in "modern" RPGs like Lady Blacklight, Witch Montain or Motobushi, then look at RPG-likes like Arkham Horror or Descent.

The only thing worthwhile to talk about are real flaws, like 3E-style Polymorph or Divine Power. Notice that when people say PF fixed stuff, that´s what´s meant, not absurd things any run-off-the-mill can handle. And yes, I mention gms, as they are a fundamental part of 3E/PF and you can´t play without them, being part of the "open system".

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-28, 12:16 PM

Stuff like PunPun is uninteresting to the nth degree. Even talking about like it´s an actual thing instead of pointing out some flaws in the system is a waste of time.

The point is that only a incompetent designer would let Pun-Pun be a thing. And D&D is an incompetently designed system. It doesn't matter that people will avoid it.

Putting a Lava Pool in the middle of a park would be incompetent design. It doesn't matter that almost nobody falls in there, it was still a terrible idea.

The_Jette

2017-06-28, 12:18 PM

The point is that only a incompetent designer would let Pun-Pun be a thing. And D&D is an incompetently designed system. It doesn't matter that people will avoid it.

Putting a Lava Pool in the middle of a park would be incompetent design. It doesn't matter that almost nobody falls in there, it was still a terrible idea.

Pun Pun is more like arguing that because a player purchased a high powered laser operated drill, drilled down to the core of the earth, and destroyed the planet, the park has a design flaw. It takes a lot of very loosely based interpretations of spells used in conjunction to create something that was never designed to actually cover.

Cosi

2017-06-28, 12:21 PM

Pun-Pun is a bad example, because it is a complicated build that involves voltronning a whole bunch of stuff together and is on somewhat shaky ground rules-wise once you get to the end.

The abuses possible with SLA wish (namely, infinitely powerful magic items) are a far more compelling case, as the rules are much less complicated. wish lets you get any item you ask for, with the only limit being the costs you are willing to pay. Making it a SLA ignores those costs. Simple, unambiguous, and possible in core.

The_Jette

2017-06-28, 12:24 PM

The abuses possible with SLA wish (namely, infinitely powerful magic items) are a far more compelling case, as the rules are much less complicated. wish lets you get any item you ask for, with the only limit being the costs you are willing to pay. Making it a SLA ignores those costs. Simple, unambiguous, and possible in core.

Wish actually doesn't let you get anything that you want. It lists things that it was designed to do, including magic items up to a certain amount. It says that you can wish for things that are more powerful, but that you should be cautious as it usually results in bad things happening. So, that says DM permission to me. Every Wish abuse that I've seen is completely free of the possible negatives associated with what is being tried, because it's free from a DM. So, even these are mitigated by having a DM with a brain.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-28, 12:24 PM

Pun-Pun is a bad example, because it is a complicated build that involves voltronning a whole bunch of stuff together and is on somewhat shaky ground rules-wise once you get to the end.

What part of Pun Pun is shaky rule-wise?

Edit:

Wish actually doesn't let you get anything that you want. It lists things that it was designed to do, including magic items up to a certain amount. It says that you can wish for things that are more powerful, but that you should be cautious as it usually results in bad things happening. So, that says DM permission to me. Every Wish abuse that I've seen is completely free of the possible negatives associated with what is being tried, because it's free from a DM. So, even these are mitigated by having a DM with a brain.

Wish's safe effects are more than enough to abuse.

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-28, 12:25 PM

Wish actually doesn't let you get anything that you want. It lists things that it was designed to do, including magic items up to a certain amount. It says that you can wish for things that are more powerful, but that you should be cautious as it usually results in bad things happening. So, that says DM permission to me. Every Wish abuse that I've seen is completely free of the possible negatives associated with what is being tried, because it's free from a DM. So, even these are mitigated by having a DM with a brain.

Every Wish abuse I've ever seen is done by using the Safe effects of Wish.

johnbragg

2017-06-28, 12:34 PM

:smallconfused: Huh?

The only reason Pun Pun exists is because of a single creature, if that creature didn't exist then neither would Pun Pun.

He is by no means an inevitable outcome of open-ended systems, so long as you don't include a way to make a character literally omnipotent he won't exist.

Googling these past few hours for the details of the Pun Pun ascension, there are actually several paths. Level 1 Pun Pun is an interaction of Pazuzu, the efreet and the sarrukh. I'm pretty sure there are other ways to get infinite wish loops, and we're using Pun Pun as shorthand.

Cosi

2017-06-28, 12:35 PM

Wish actually doesn't let you get anything that you want. It lists things that it was designed to do, including magic items up to a certain amount.

Read it again. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/wish.htm)

There's a GP limit on wish's ability to produce non-magical items (it can't make anything that costs over 25,000 GP). There is no GP limit on its ability to make magic items -- it just says "create a magic item".

You may be thinking of 3.0 wish, which did have a 15,000 GP limit on magic items. But that was removed in the transition to 3.0 because the designers aren't good at their jobs.

What part of Pun Pun is shaky rule-wise?

The argument is that, contextually, "an ability" is not the same as "any ability", and the alterations made by Manipulate Form are limited to ones similar to those listed as examples. I'm not totally convinced by the argument, but it is something that people have advanced. For a more detailed (and much angrier) explanation, see this thread (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=54081).

Ultimately it doesn't really matter, because fusion + astral seed, shapechange stacking, and wish will get you all the abilities in the game even if Manipulate Form doesn't.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-28, 12:35 PM

Googling these past few hours for the details of the Pun Pun ascension, there are actually several paths. Level 1 Pun Pun is an interaction of Pazuzu, the efreet and the sarrukh. I'm pretty sure there are other ways to get infinite wish loops, and we're using Pun Pun as shorthand.

Shapechange is the most foolproof method, if I recall.

Edit:

fusion[/I] + astral seed, shapechange stacking, and wish will get you all the abilities in the game even if Manipulate Form doesn't.

I thought as much. Pun Pun doesn't need to make up powers to become nigh-unstoppable, though. Manipulate Form is also a bit easier than abusing Astral Seed and Fusion.

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-28, 12:38 PM

Read it again. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/wish.htm)

There's a GP limit on wish's ability to produce non-magical items (it can't make anything that costs over 25,000 GP). There is no GP limit on its ability to make magic items -- it just says "create a magic item".

You may be thinking of 3.0 wish, which did have a 15,000 GP limit on magic items. But that was removed in the transition to 3.0 because the designers aren't good at their jobs.

If it existed in 3.0 but was removed for 3.5, then maybe it was intentional???:smallconfused:

Nifft

2017-06-28, 12:42 PM

If it existed in 3.0 but was removed for 3.5, then maybe it was intentional???:smallconfused:

The change in how wish-based magic item creation may have been intentional -- in 3.5e, you pay double the XP cost of the item, in addition to the 5k XP charge for the wish itself.

The interaction with SLA-rules, though, where the new XP charge simply disappears? That does not seem intentional.

Cosi

2017-06-28, 12:43 PM

If it existed in 3.0 but was removed for 3.5, then maybe it was intentional???:smallconfused:

Of course it was intentional. The fact that they made an intentional change, but missed its interactions with the rest of the game, and that made the game break, makes them bad at their job. Don't change the system if you don't know what your changes will do.

Psyren

2017-06-28, 12:45 PM

Pun Pun is more like arguing that because a player purchased a high powered laser operated drill, drilled down to the core of the earth, and destroyed the planet, the park has a design flaw. It takes a lot of very loosely based interpretations of spells used in conjunction to create something that was never designed to actually cover.

This.

It's more than possible for one character to make the rest of the party feel useless. That's just scratching the surface of the type of issues 3.5 has.

It's possible for that not to happen too. The real question is which one actually happens in practical play, rather than messageboard point-scoring.

I think you can do that without ending up with a dysfunction system. I don't think that 3.5 or any game needs to be balanced, but I expect a certain level of competence from the designers.

How much time and effort does it take to truly understand 3.5 as a system? Any attempt at balancing is going to be a thousand times harder without system mastery.

I'm sorry you feel that way about them, but clearly plenty of others are happy with the product as it currently is over a decade in, or using most of it and only making minor tweaks. Still, I can't argue with preferences.

Any player with the system mastery needed to break the game knows what is needed to avoid doing that. Choosing not to anyway is what makes a jerk.

That's a really poor example. Spellcasters have several ways of avoiding dispels (selective AMF for example), while the Fighter is now completely screwed. He can't fly, his weapons aren't magical, and a good size chunk of his defense is gone. He's one spell away from death, or worse, becoming someone's slave.

Shining South is a 3.0 book; the GM is obliged to make modifications to its content before allowing it, by RAW.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-28, 12:52 PM

This.

It's really more like TaintedScholar's example. Or leaving a Death Star hidden in the park and hoping no one finds it.

It's possible for that not to happen too. The real question is which one actually happens in practical play, rather than messageboard point-scoring.

Player 1: "I want to be a Fighter."

Player 2: " I want to be a Druid."

You can probably guess where this is going.

I'm sorry you feel that way about them, but clearly plenty of others are happy with the product as it currently is over a decade in, or using most of it and only making minor tweaks. Still, I can't argue with preferences.

Is still enjoy 3.5, despite my misgivings with the system.

Any player with the system mastery needed to break the game knows what is needed to avoid doing that. Choosing not to anyway is what makes a jerk.

A Wizard takes Polymorph because it sounds cool and uses it. The game can be broken by accident.

Shining South is a 3.0 book; the GM is obliged to make modifications to its content before allowing it, by RAW.

That's irrelevant, 3.0 books that weren't updated are fair game for 3.5. What alterations DMs make to RAW don't change that RAW is insane.

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-28, 12:58 PM

It's really more like TaintedScholar's example. Or leaving a Death Star hidden in the park and hoping no one finds it.

I like this analogy, the smart player's know where it is and how to use it, but don't because it's a terrible idea. But a ignorant player might come across it and start pushing buttons at random. Or an A@&hole player might use it on purpose.

Either way it's partially the Designer's fault for including it in the first place.

Hackulator

2017-06-28, 01:05 PM

The point is that only a incompetent designer would let Pun-Pun be a thing. And D&D is an incompetently designed system. It doesn't matter that people will avoid it.

Putting a Lava Pool in the middle of a park would be incompetent design. It doesn't matter that almost nobody falls in there, it was still a terrible idea.

I have to ask if you've ever actually worked in game design.

No ridiculously overpowered thing in D&D is necessarily a sign of bad design, as D&D is designed with a referee who makes decisions about what is allowed. Including options that might not be useful for the vast majority of games is fine because the DM can always say "no." You seem to make arguments about the design of this game without understanding that control by the DM is the linchpin of the design.

D&D control is PART OF RAW.

Florian

2017-06-28, 01:07 PM

You seem to make arguments about the design of this game without understanding that control by the DM is the linchpin of the design.

But... but... but... all people in the know always talk about the gm being irrelevant and it being a fallacy to mention rule zero... *headsplodes*

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-28, 01:08 PM

No ridiculously overpowered thing in D&D is necessarily a sign of bad design

It is when said overpowered thing is unintentional.

as D&D is designed with a referee who makes decisions about what is allowed. Including options that might not be useful for the vast majority of games is fine because the DM can always say "no." You seem to make arguments about the design of this game without understanding that control by the DM is the linchpin of the design.

And this is just the Oberoni Fallacy. It's not good game design if the DM is the one who has to fix the system.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-28, 01:08 PM

No ridiculously overpowered thing in D&D is necessarily a sign of bad design, as D&D is designed with a referee who makes decisions about what is allowed. Including options that might not be useful for the vast majority of games is fine because the DM can always say "no." You seem to make arguments about the design of this game without understanding that control by the DM is the linchpin of the design.

D&D control is PART OF RAW.

Oberoni Fallacy. The DM shouldn't have to compensate for the designers' incompetence.

Edit:

But... but... but... all people in the know always talk about the gm being irrelevant and it being a fallacy to mention rule zero... *headsplodes*

That's only in RAW or TO debates.

Florian

2017-06-28, 01:10 PM

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-28, 01:13 PM

There is no Oberoni Fallacy. It´s just a killer phrase brought up by the entitlement freaks that do not want to accept that RAW means nothing, nothing at all. How´d Mike Mearls put it? Something like: "Fine, let the rulebook run a campaign"

Just because the DM can fix it, doesn't mean it isn't broken; that's the core of the fallacy.

Hackulator

2017-06-28, 01:14 PM

Oberoni Fallacy. The DM shouldn't have to compensate for the designers incompetence.

Edit:

That's only in RAW or TO debates.

Ok first off, you don't really understand what a fallacy is. You disagreeing with someone does not make what they say a fallacy. I get that you're copy pasting from somewhere else on the internet, the fact that a bunch of dudes on reddit or wherever said something doesn't make it a fact.

Secondly, you still don't understand the game itself. It is a rule, in the books, that the DM has final say on what is and isn't allowed. This is something the designers did so that they could create all sorts of crazy stuff that you can play with if it makes sense for the game you are in, but can be kept out of other games. Using something that is part of the design is not a sign of bad design.

Zanos

2017-06-28, 01:15 PM

There is no Oberoni Fallacy. It´s just a killer phrase brought up by the entitlement freaks that do not want to accept that RAW means nothing, nothing at all. How´d Mike Mearls put it? Something like: "Fine, let the rulebook run a campaign"
The Oberoni Fallacy has literally nothing to do with player entitlement. It just says that arguing that you can rule 0 a broken rule doesn't mean that the rule isn't broken; by admitting rule 0 is necessary to fix it, you admit it requires fixing, and you don't need to fix things that aren't broken.

If I publish a rulebook that contains nothing but rules that are broken and don't work, you can't defend it because at the beginning I said "you are free to change any of these."

Florian

2017-06-28, 01:17 PM

This is something the designers did so that they could create all sorts of crazy stuff that you can play with if it makes sense for the game you are in, but can be kept out of other games. Using something that is part of the design is not a sign of bad design.

It´s noteworthy as it _is_ one of the defining elements that make a RPG a RPG and not a board game or a video game. Trying to act as it could work without is pretty insane or ...

@Zanos:

Oh, it has to do with it. The logical chain is that you use raw, run it by the gm and get the final result, modified to fit the scene/situation/game you´re in. Both things can happen, it can be broken before and fixed during that process, or the gm itself can take something perfectly functioning and break it.
People tend to forget how that progress works and feel entitled to directly translate their version of what they see as RAW into the game.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-28, 01:17 PM

Ok first off, you don't really understand what a fallacy is. You disagreeing with someone does not make what they say a fallacy.

Using a fallacious argument is what makes it a fallacy.

I get that you're copy pasting from somewhere else on the internet, the fact that a bunch of dudes on reddit or wherever said something doesn't make it a fact.

Fallacies exist as rebuttals to illegitimate arguments. The authority of the internet is moot.

Secondly, you still don't understand the game itself. It is a rule, in the books, that the DM has final say on what is and isn't allowed.

I know this.

This is something the designers did so that they could create all sorts of crazy stuff that you can play with if it makes sense for the game you are in, but can be kept out of other games. Using something that is part of the design is not a sign of bad design.

You might have a point, except for stuff like the Hulking Hurler allowing you toss the known universe at people.

Morty

2017-06-28, 01:17 PM

Ok first off, you don't really understand what a fallacy is. You disagreeing with someone does not make what they say a fallacy. I get that you're copy pasting from somewhere else on the internet, the fact that a bunch of dudes on reddit or wherever said something doesn't make it a fact.

Secondly, you still don't understand the game itself. It is a rule, in the books, that the DM has final say on what is and isn't allowed. This is something the designers did so that they could create all sorts of crazy stuff that you can play with if it makes sense for the game you are in, but can be kept out of other games. Using something that is part of the design is not a sign of bad design.

"Crazy stuff" meaning playing a druid, cleric or wizard above level 7? Because that's basically what it takes. No one needs to go out of their way for problems to appear.

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-28, 01:19 PM

Ok first off, you don't really understand what a fallacy is. You disagreeing with someone does not make what they say a fallacy. I get that you're copy pasting from somewhere else on the internet, the fact that a bunch of dudes on reddit or wherever said something doesn't make it a fact.

Secondly, you still don't understand the game itself. It is a rule, in the books, that the DM has final say on what is and isn't allowed. This is something the designers did so that they could create all sorts of crazy stuff that you can play with if it makes sense for the game you are in, but can be kept out of other games. Using something that is part of the design is not a sign of bad design.

Except the Game is poorly designed, just look back at the Death Star in the Park analogy. It'll never get used, or when it is used the results are disastrous. You claim that it's not a big deal because the DM can disallow it. But in reality it shouldn't be there in the first place.

The designers shouldn't make the DM fix the problems with the game, they should fix the problems themselves.

By your logic it shouldn't matter if the Rules are completely dysfunctional, because hey the DM can fix it.

Hackulator

2017-06-28, 01:23 PM

Using a fallacious argument is what makes it a fallacy.

Fallacies exist as rebuttals to bad arguments. The authority of the internet is moot.

I know this.

You might have a point, except for stuff like the Hulking Hurler allowing you toss the known universe at people.

So what? The DM says "no clearly that is not what is intended" and the situation has ended. D&D is too complex for the designers to have thought of every inane idea you and thousands of other people could come up with in over a decade of playing the game. They understand that, they also understand that it doesn't matter because of the very foundation of the game, which is the DM.

You also still clearly do not understand the meaning of fallacy. We disagree on this issue, that does not make my opinion a fallacy. A fallacy is if I said "you're a ******* so you're wrong". That would be an ad hominem fallacy, where I have claimed your point is wrong because of something about you which has NOTHING to do with your point. This is logically unsound as I have made a jump from one thing to another, unrelated thing. Me believing that the inclusion of the DM makes the game work and you thinking that does not make the game work is a disagreement.

Florian

2017-06-28, 01:23 PM

Except the Game is poorly designed, just look back at the Death Star in the Park analogy. It'll never get used, or when it is used the results are disastrous. You claim that it's not a big deal because the DM can disallow it. But in reality it shouldn't be there in the first place.

Why? If I want to use the Death Star, I do so, knowing full well he results. If everyone else at the tables is fine with it, too, no biggie. Option are just that: options. You feel compelled to use anything just because it´s there?

Morty

2017-06-28, 01:25 PM

So what? The DM says "no clearly that is not what is intended" and the situation has ended. D&D is too complex for the designers to have thought of every inane idea you and thousands of other people could come up with in over a decade of playing the game.

The "inane idea" being, once again, playing a druid and choosing Natural Spell in a party that also includes a monk, or a fighter who uses a shield. Or a wizard who figures out that damage spells don't really do that much, so maybe they should focus on Conjuration and Transmutation instead.

The_Jette

2017-06-28, 01:25 PM

The Oberoni Fallacy has literally nothing to do with player entitlement. It just says that arguing that you can rule 0 a broken rule doesn't mean that the rule isn't broken; by admitting rule 0 is necessary to fix it, you admit it requires fixing, and you don't need to fix things that aren't broken.

If I publish a rulebook that contains nothing but rules that are broken and don't work, you can't defend it because at the beginning I said "you are free to change any of these."

They're not saying that Rule 0 fixes anything broken. They're saying that there are games where DM's allow certain interactions between spells, and interpretations as spells, that make a more powerful game; and, games where the DM says "that's obviously not what that spell was designed to do, and I won't let the designers' vague wording turn a rather powerful but not broken spell into a broken one."

So, the Oberoni Fallacy (never heard of that before, btw. thanks for the info) doesn't actually apply here.

Tainted_Scholar

2017-06-28, 01:26 PM

Why? If I want to use the Death Star, I do so, knowing full well he results. If everyone else at the tables is fine with it, too, no biggie. Option are just that: options. You feel compelled to use anything just because it´s there?

Except the results of using the death star in the analogy are just "the campaign planet explodes". All that results from using it is ruining everyone else's fun.

That's what happens when Pun-Pun exists in D&D. Nobody uses it, because it's just a fun kill switch. It shouldn't exist.

Hackulator

2017-06-28, 01:27 PM

Except the results of using the death star in the analogy are just "the campaign planet explodes". All that results from using it is ruing everyone else's fun.

That's what happens when Pun-Pun exists in D&D. Nobody uses it, because it's just a fun kill switch.

Exactly, which means its existence DOESN'T MATTER.

ColorBlindNinja

2017-06-28, 01:27 PM

So what? The DM says "no clearly that is not what is intended" and the situation has ended.

What if the DM doesn't realize the problem?

D&D is too complex for the designers to have thought of every inane idea you and thousands of other people could come up with in over a decade of playing the game. They understand that, they also understand that it doesn't matter because of the very foundation of the game, which is the DM.

They could have done a better job.

You also still clearly do not understand the meaning of fallacy. We disagree on this issue, that does not make my opinion a fallacy.

Your logic is flawed; that makes your argument fallacious.

A fallacy is if I said "you're a ******* so you're wrong". That would be an ad hominem fallacy, where I have claimed your point is wrong because of something about you which has NOTHING to do with your point. This is logically unsound as I have made a jump from one thing to another, unrelated thing.

That's just one type of logic fallacy.

Me believing that the inclusion of the DM makes the game work and you thinking that does not make the game work is a disagreement.

That doesn't change the fact that the game is flawed.