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Lalliman
2017-11-22, 01:45 PM
Suppose you wanted to make a class that is terrible to the point of nigh-unusability, but that seems perfectly viable to the unwary eye. Basically a new cousin for 3.5’s Truenamer. What kind of features would you give to such a class?

I’ll start.

- Features that can be arbitrarily negated by the DM, like the 5e chaos sorcerer or the 3.5 paladin.

- Features that trade offence for defence, to the point of removing yourself from relevance.

- Features based off a skill that isn’t on the class list or that isn’t supported by the class’ primary ability scores.

- Features reliant on an ability check with a DC that scales faster than your bonus. (Courtesy of the Truenamer.)

What else can we think of? Ideas from a 3.5, 5e or system-neutral perspective are all welcome.

JeenLeen
2017-11-22, 01:55 PM
Abilities that sound good, but for some reason actually aren't, could be a feature. As a not-quite-right example, some folk think D&D rogues get overpowered due to the number of sneak attack dice. Something similar, but instead of just not being OP being weak/useless.

Some possible examples (though Truenaming subsystem of 3.5 is a good example):
--a power that does something really awesome, but is really easy to resist (easy saving throws, for D&D. Some mental influence abilities in Exalted 2nd ed Socialize Charms seem like this, due to rolled successes compared to a potentially high value and having penalties)
--a power that looks awesome, but actually isn't. Maybe you crazy damage against outsiders, but outsiders are very rare in the setting. Or you deal Void damage, but almost everyone is immune to Void.

Velaryon
2017-11-22, 02:52 PM
Assuming D&D here, and many of these are 3.5-specific as well.

First, let's take a few lessons from the 3.5 Monk:

-Make the class require decent or better stats in at least 3 different ability scores.
-Make it a class whose primary role in combat is to attack, but only has medium attack progression (if 3.5).
-Class features that don't synergize well. At first they look like they have a broad variety of abilities, until you realize that many of them are mutually exclusive (movement speed increase, extra attack on a full attack action, etc.).
-Abilities that function like [a watered-down version of] an ability or spell that another class gets at muchearlier levels.


Let's take a few more from the 3.X Ranger while we're at it:

-Abilities that are highly situational and may come up seldom or never in many games (terrain-specific bonuses, bonuses against specific enemy types, etc.)
-Abilities that are arguably not really abilities at all (like how Tracking is used in many games, where you either were or weren't going to find that person/monster/whatever anyway, depending on either the GM's whim or the needs of the story).


And what the heck, one from the Rogue too:

-Highly integral class features (for example, Sneak Attack) that are easy to obtain immunity against, or many enemies have blanket immunity against.


Throw in a few more that aren't specific to one class:

-Abilities that seem powerful, but don't scale well with level, becoming useless in higher-level play. Perhaps they have a static saving throw DC, or one that scales much slower than enemy saving throw bonuses.
-Bonus feats chosen from a highly specific list, of which most options are mediocre.
-All-or-nothing abilities that have no effect on a successful save.


And here are a few more, if we're designing a prestige class:

-Require spellcasting as a prerequisite, but don't advance spellcasting, or lose a lot of casting levels.
-Alternatively, require spellcasting as a prerequisite, but instead of advancing the existing class's casting, have a new and more limited spell list.
-Make the class particularly appealing to a specific type of character, but have a prerequisite that those characters cannot easily fill. For example, a class that appeals to Fighters but requires more skill ranks than they can easily obtain.
-Make the class progress the signature abilities of two or more base classes, but in such a way that a character would be more powerful just sticking to one of those classes (for example, nearly all dual-casting classes).
-Give a bonus feat

No brains
2017-11-22, 02:57 PM
I think one good way to do this is to give the class setting or environment-dependent effects. Unlocking doors in Sigil is useless in Pathfinder. Giving powers related to volcano eruptions or lightning storms gives you bonuses in situations that you don't want to find yourself in.

Add in defenses against things that don't really matter anyway, or make the class functional in ways that make the rest of the party dead weight. Immunity to aging sounds good, but rarely comes up in most games. Water breathing (especially without effects that remove other water-related penalties) only helps you and not the party. The ability to march without resting only helps if the party can keep up and if the adventure involves a lot of walking. Quintupled carrying capacity sounds nice, but that can be accomplished with a cart.

Make abilities dependent upon some pet creature that's easy to kill and difficult to replace. A familiar or special mount can become an enemy bullseye if not handled properly. One AoE can dash most of the features of the class.

You can also hide some of the weakness of your class by giving it a cool name, particularly if it relates to some popular media. Walker Hunter, Hunger Gamer, Avenger, all those could be used to disguise a terrible class under the prestige of the name or ideal.

Mastikator
2017-11-23, 01:59 PM
Classes that are really good at skills that don't matter or aren't used. Could easily be caused by the campaign setting or DM so it's not obvious just by looking at the class that it's actually useless.

Anonymouswizard
2017-11-23, 02:11 PM
Make all their abilities based on your 1st level ability.

Then make the ability only work against left handed people (based on GM fiat, easy to gain immunity to, many creatures don't have hands...)

wumpus
2017-11-23, 02:22 PM
One trick that I hated was "does not play well with the party". This seems to be limited only to paladins, but you wouldn't believe the original barbarian.

Add bonuses to pass/fail rolls that typically pass. Trading offense for defense was mentioned, but simply adding to "to hit" is huge at first level or so and then typically becomes pointless. In optimization circles I've heard this called "winning already won battles" and something to avoid.

Consider Belkar's ability to crush mooks. Plenty of games/campaigns (including apparently the stick-verse) don't substantially reward "taking out the trash" (Belkar didn't get any xp for his original "sexy shoeless god of war" battle). Giving bonuses that make it easier to "take out the trash" would often work well here.

Critical hits (and conversely dealing *more* damage in a steady rate also works) are good. Ideally they should deliver massive damage on the mooks (with impressive numbers that don't matter since it is far more hp than the mook ever had) but bosses (and any sub boss) can ignore.

On the flip side, dealing out damage in a steady state allows anyone with healing ability to use heals ideally.

icefractal
2017-11-23, 04:30 PM
-Class features that don't synergize well. At first they look like they have a broad variety of abilities, until you realize that many of them are mutually exclusive (movement speed increase, extra attack on a full attack action, etc.).Although this one is only a problem if those features aren't good enough when used alone. Offensive spells are (mostly) a feature that doesn't synergize - if you cast Magic Jar, you're not casting Web at the same time, and if you're planning to SoD someone then sticking BFC or damage on them beforehand is probably a waste of slots. But the difference is that spells (the good ones anyway) can stand alone on their own merits.

I actually feel like powerful and mostly non-stacking abilities are a better design for a class - when synergy is required, it creates one-trick ponies. ToB goes this way to some extent, but there's still a fair amount of interaction with normal melee attacks, which are a Voltron-fest of little stacking bonuses.


To get back on topic - abilities that make function calls to other books - like Polymorph, but too weak instead of too strong. It's harder to evaluate how good something is when it requires cross referencing several sources.

Idea: FF-style summons, where a powerful monster appears, uses a single ability, and disappears. Have the list of monsters seem powerful, but selected so that the ability filter (supernatural standard-action? SLA?) happens to return crappy effects.

You'd need a fixed-list though. Anything where you just have to meet a criteria (like Polymorph), there's going to be some edge case that makes the class OP, or at least adequately effective.

Anonymouswizard
2017-11-23, 05:13 PM
As a full round action you can use a Summon Monster I spell as a druid of your level as a spell like ability that takes a full round action. The monster well appear, use one standard action, and then disappear. You can use this ability up to 14,400 times a day. At 4th level and every three levels thereafter the spell level of this ability increases by one.

Bonuses:
Large number of uses/day is just an impressive way of saying at-will to creatures with Quicken SLA.
-Increases in spell level, but is still just Summon Monster I. For some spells this wouldn't be so bad....
-Druid chosen because I believe they don't get SM spells.

Jormengand
2017-11-23, 05:55 PM
Suppose you wanted to make a class that is terrible to the point of nigh-unusability, but that seems perfectly viable to the unwary eye. Basically a new cousin for 3.5’s Truenamer.

Given the forum's opinion that truenamers are obviously terrible and their actual performance compared to a lot of other classes, it seems like truenamers are the exact opposite of what you want. Specifically, the 15+double level looks overtly nonpassable, but isn't. Seek the Sky's duration looks untenable, but in reality the combat will be over before you land. You want something that's the opposite of that.

Now, since you mentioned 3.5, and it's what I'm used to working with, I'll give you an example for 3.5. I know, I know, this isn't the 3.5 forum. Oh well.

What you should do to start is give the class something bold, flashy, and ultimately meaningless. How about upstaging the rogue with 10+int skills? The class skills for your new class can be appraise, balance, concentration (give them no spellcasting, of course), decipher script, escape artist, forgery, knowledge (Psionics), perform, and use rope. You might have to shove a couple more on there to be believable, but nothing too good.

Next, plaster it with class features which aren't particularly useful but sound flashy. If you're really hung up on truespeak, try the disciple of the word's Word of Harm Avoided on for size: it requires a truespeak check, you need to spend a stunning fist attempt, it can only be used once per day, but as an immediate action you can negate one melee attack against you. Oh, and it doesn't work against spells or anything two or more sizes larger than you. Make sure that the class feature includes enough flavour text to hide how bad it actually is.

Make it have problems using its class features because it doesn't have the chassis for it - this one's all you, monk and soulknife - and while we're on the subject of monk and soulkife, give it class features which look good but actually just partly make up for the restrictions (like the monk's AC bonus which is literally just a way to make up for the fact it can't wear full plate, and not even that). Make its class feature grant it something which is worse than what other classes can do anyway (the soulknife's Mind Blade ability can produce short swords; the warrior can just pick up and wield them, or a better sword).

Make its abilities sound good but depend too much on action economy, attack rolls, and saves to be useful. Points here go to Death Attack for its relatively easy save, nontouch attack roll requirement, and excessively difficult-to-engineer situation requirement. Fortunately for the assassin, near-full spellcasting (indeed, full spellcasting which just stops early) and a few other neat abilities save it, but death attack is hardly a good selling point.

Too-little-too-late abilities, like the barbarian's Damage Reduction, are good too. I won't go so far as to say you're not going to notice DR 5 at all, but by the time you probably have a few hundred hit points, no-one is using attacks which are subject to DR anyway, and the ones that do tend to deal obscene amounts of damage anyway. Piddly bonuses like Trap Sense (as well as the monk's Still Mind) are also good, and my favourite, abilities which do nothing but remove the drawbacks of other abilities, like Tireless Rage, are a good way of filling up a class table without actually giving the class anything.

Abilties which are exceptionally situational, like Countersong, are great, especially if you go into great detail to make them seem like they do more than they do. Bonus points if the situational ability requires a roll, like Turn or Rebuke Undead does, though ToRU is probably too strong when it does work. Obviously, you should use something like the paladin's reduced-level version which will be too low-level to work. I'm also a fan of Resist Nature's Lure, an ability I routinely forget I have when I play a druid.

Another fun one is giving the class too few hit points to do its job, but making up for it by giving it a healing ability instead. The prize here goes to Wholeness of Body, with Lay on Hands as a runner-up.



However, I think what we need is some good old ninth-level casting off an awful list, with a different ability score required for save DCs and bonus spells.

Obviously, disrupt undead, flare, open/close, resistance, and virtue are good cantrips.

At first we can have calm animals, jump, magic weapon, produce flame, true strike, ventriloquism, and anything else you can think of that's not very good... bane?

For second I think we should take chill metal, daze monster, heat metal, phantom trap, shatter, shield other (make sure that the class doesn't have enough hit points to tank effectively)... that should be enough.

Third we can have continual flame, gentle repose, illusory script, quench, maybe searing light, or maybe call lightning? I feel like we need some blasting to make this a class a new player would want to play. I think searing light is the worse spell, though the action economy implicit in using call lightning unironically makes it a close one.

At fourth level, antiplant shell, blight, command plants, fire trap, ice storm, imbue with spell ability (remember you have no good spells to transfer), and possibly phantasmal killer given how low your DC is going to be (especially if you're trying to fight things as well as cast spells with your two ability scores needed to do that).

At fifth, animal growth (you have no means of controlling the animals), hallow (you have no useful relevant abilities), mark of justice, unhallow, and just so that again we have a damage spell wall of fire.

At sixth, acid fog is a terrible spell but does damage, animate objects should be okay (huge animated objects are CR 5, old news by the time you get 6th-level spells), as should create undead (in which case, forget the idea of giving the class TorU, or at least make it low enough level that it won't command the created undead), ironwood, repel wood, spellstaff, sympathetic vibration (hands up who's ever used this?), and I think Tenser's transformation is mandatory.

For seventh-level spells, instant summons, sequester, statue, sunbeam, and perhaps repulsion are probably bad enough to be safe.

At eighth level, control plants, moment of prescience, sunburst (weirdly, I'm trying to avoid polar ray because it might actually be too effective), repel metal or stone and word of recall seem like they wouldn't be too strong.

At ninth, antipathy, refuge, storm of vengeance, sympathy and perhaps even time stop (it's not like you actually have anything useful to do while time is stopped, after all) are all decent, but I think that time stop is too risky. I think that save-or-lose has gone badly enough out of style by level 18 (assuming I don't delay it even more than sorcerer) that I can add imprisonment.

Obviously I need to restrict its spells known and make it prepare them, because of course I do.

Now, there's only one thing left to do...

The Doombringer Champion

LevelBABFortRefWillSpecial 0lvl1st2nd3rd4th5th6th7th8th9th
1st+1+2+2+2Thundering Bolt 1d441————————
2nd+2+3+3+3Magic-Eating Sustenance 1/day41————————
3rd+3+3+3+3Escape Unburned 152————————
4th+4+4+4+4Arcing Shot521———————
5th+5+4+4+4Thundering Bolt 1d6531———————
6th+6/+1+5+5+5Magic-Eating Sustenance 2/day532———————
7th+7/+2+5+5+5Escape Unburned 25321——————
8th+8/+3+6+6+6Bolt from the Blue5432——————
9th+9/+4+6+6+6Thundering Bolt 1d854321—————
10th+10/+5+7+7+7Magic-Eating Sustenance 3/day54332—————
11th+11/+6/+1+7+7+7Escape Unburned 3544321————
12th+12/+7/+2+8+8+8Combat Casting554332————
13th+13/+8/+3+8+8+8Thundering Bolt 1d105544321———
14th+14/+9/+4+9+9+9Magic-Eating Sustenance 4/day5544332———
15th+15/+10/+5+9+9+9Escape Unburned 455544321——
16th+16/+11/+6/+1+10+10+10Volley55544332——
17th+17/+12/+7/+2+10+10+10Thundering Bolt 1d12555544321—
18th+18/+13/+8/+3+11+11+11Magic-Eating Sustenance 5/day555544332—
19th+19/+14/+9/+4+11+11+11Escape Unburned 55555544321
20th+20/+15/+10/+5+12+12+12Doombolt5555544332

Alignment: Any evil
Hit Die: 1d8

Class Skills:
The doombringer champion's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are appraise (int), balance (dex), decipher script (int), escape artist (dex), forgery (int), knowledge (architecture and engineering) (int), knowledge (psionics) (int), martial lore (int), perform (cha), psicraft (int) and use rope (dex).
Skill Points at 1st Level: (10 + Int modifier) Χ 4
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 10 + Int modifier

Weapon and Armour Proficiency
Doombringer champions are proficienct in the dagger, club, quarterstaff, handaxe, kama, nunchaku, sai, siangham, and shuriken. They are not proficienct in any kind of armour or shields.

Spellcasting

A doombringer champion casts arcane spells which are drawn from the doombringer champion spell list. A doombringer champion must choose and prepare her spells ahead of time (see below).

To learn, prepare, or cast a spell, the wizard must have a Wisdom score equal to at least 10 + the spell level. The Difficulty Class for a saving throw against a doombringer champion’s spell is 10 + the spell level + the doombringer champion’s Charisma modifier.

Like other spellcasters, a doombringer champion can cast only a certain number of spells of each spell level per day. Her base daily spell allotment is given on Table: The Doombringer Champion. In addition, she receives bonus spells per day if she has a high Wisdom score.

A doombringer champion begins play knowing three 0-level spells and a 1st-level spell of your choice. At each new doombringer champion level, she gains one or more new spells, as indicated on Table: Doombringer Champion Spells Known. (Unlike spells per day, the number of spells a doombringer champion knows is not affected by her Wisdom score; the numbers on Table: Doombringer Champion Spells Known are fixed.) These new spells are chosen from the doombringer champion spell list.

Preparing the doombringer champion's spells requires one hour of interrupted meditation, which must take place immediately after a good night's sleep.

Table: Doombringer Champion Spells Known

Level0lvl1st2nd3rd4th5th6th7th8th9th
1st31————————
2nd31————————
3rd32————————
4th321———————
5th331———————
6th331———————
7th3311——————
8th3321——————
9th33211—————
10th33221—————
11th333211————
12th333221————
13th3333211———
14th3333221———
15th33333211——
16th33333221——
17th333333211—
18th333333221—
19th3333333211
20th3333333221


Thundering Bolt (Su)
A doombringer champion always has the ability to call upon magical energy in the form of a thundering bolt. The doombringer champion can produce a thundering bolt once per round as a move action. Any time before the end of the next round, the doombringer champion can throw the thundering bolt at an enemy (the thundering bolt has a range increment of 10 feet when thrown). If she does, the damage dealt by the bolt is 1d4 plus the doombringer champion's strength modifier. The die size of the thundering bolt increases every 4 levels, up to a d12 at 17th level (this information is shown on Table: The Doombringer Champion). Further, a doombringer champion of a size other than medium launches thundering bolts which deal an appropriate amount of damage. For example, a large doombringer champion would deal 3d6 points of damage (plus her strength modifier) at 17th level and above.

You can use a thundering bolt's wicked, serrated edge as a melee weapon, but it's not designed for such use and you take a -4 penalty on attack rolls to use it in this way. The doombolt disappears when it strikes an enemy or at the end of the round after its creation.

Magic-Eating Sustenance (Su)
Once per day at second level, plus once more per day every four levels after second, the doombringer champion may, instead of casting a spell she has prepared, devour its raw magical energy to heal herself. If she does, she loses one of her prepared spells (other than a cantrip), but heals herself for a number of hit points equal to the spell's level.

Escape Unburned (Su)
A doombringer champion starts to gain a measure of resistance against fire at third level, as she learns the arcane secrets to ward herself from flame. She gains fire resistance 1 innately, meaning that even while otherwise unprotected she reduces any damage from fire or fire-based attacks by 1, potentially allowing her to walk through fire without injury. This resistance increases by 1 for every four levels after third.

Arcing Shot (Ex)
At fourth level, a doombringer champion becomes more accurate with her thundering bolts, allowing her to launch them with a range increment of 20 feet instead of 10 feet.

Bolt from the Blue
At eighth level, a doombringer champion is often able to surprise enemies with the sudden creation of a thundering bolt. While only one can be created per round, a doombringer champion of at least eighth level can create a thundering bolt as a free action.

Combat Casting
At twelfth level, the doombringer champion learns the secrets of casting even in a raging melee, and as such gains combat casting as a bonus feat.

Volley
At sixteenth level, the doombringer champion can make any number of thundering bolts per round, so she can make a full attack with them.

Doombolt (Su)
At twentieth level, the doombringer champion gains the power of the doombolt. Once per week, the doombringer champion can spend three rounds creating a special thundering bolt called a doombolt. When the doombolt is thrown at an enemy, if it hits, the enemy struck must take a fortitude save (DC 15 + the doombringer champion's intelligence modifier) or the doombolt prevents them from breathing. Some creatures don't need to breathe, such as undead and constructs, but most will suffocate when they can no longer hold their breath. The target regains its ability to breathe if it is resurrected, or a remove curse or other ability which removes curses can save the target.

Doombringer Champion Spell List

0lvl
Disrupt undead, flare, open/close, resistance, virtue

1st
Bane, calm animals, jump, magic weapon, produce flame, true strike, ventriloquism

2nd
Chill metal, daze monster, heat metal, phantom trap, shatter, shield other

3rd
Continual flame, gentle repose, illusory script, quench, searing light

4th
Antiplant shell, blight, command plants, fire trap, ice storm, imbue with spell ability

5th
Animal growth, hallow, mark of justice, unhallow, wall of fire.

6th
Acid fog, animate objects, create undead, ironwood, repel wood, spellstaff, sympathetic vibration, transformation

7th
Instant summons, repulsion, sequester, statue, sunbeam

8th
Control plants, create greater undead, moment of prescience, repel metal or stone, sunburst, word of recall

9th
Antipathy, imprisonment, refuge, storm of vengeance, sympathy

Code of Conduct
A doombringer champion is expected to be confident in her abilities and must not accept direct aid from her allies. Further, she must not miss an opportunity to spread pain and misery if she thinks she can get away with it. A doombringer champion who does not live up to this expectation loses her spellcasting and her ability to produce thundering bolts until she atones.

ATHATH
2017-11-23, 08:18 PM
A Doombringer that uses Corrupt spells, takes the Mother Cyst feat, takes the Cerebrosis feat, dips into Arachnomancer, and/or dips into Sandshaper might be able to actually make use of his delayed full-casting. You should probably add a clause that prevents the Doombringer from adding non-Doombringer spells to his spell list or list of spells known.

Maybe some reserve feat could be used to put those spell slots to use?

Nice touch with the "Evil Only" requirement- I was going to use Sanctified spells and use Silver Pyromancer to add Paladin spells to my spell list, and Rainbow Servant might have been an option for those willing to wait until teen levels to get some decent spells.

The Education and Knowledge Devotion feats could be used to put all of those skill points to use.

Could Heretic of the Faith be used to get around the strict code of conduct, or would it not work because the Doombringer's code of conduct isn't a "deity's" code of conduct? What if you gained a Divine Rank of 0?

That Full-BAB+All Good Saves+Delayed Full-Spellcasting combo has to be able to be used for something... Maybe they could be combo'd with some gish feat that lets you spend spell slots to boost attack damage or something?

ATHATH
2017-11-23, 08:20 PM
Honestly, I think the "has delayed full-spellcasting" quality of the Doombringer might actually be able to pull the Doombringer up to at least Tier 4 or so by itself. I never really understood why the Healer was placed in Tier 5 (IIRC).

GreatWyrmGold
2017-11-23, 09:26 PM
Consider Belkar's ability to crush mooks. Plenty of games/campaigns (including apparently the stick-verse) don't substantially reward "taking out the trash" (Belkar didn't get any xp for his original "sexy shoeless god of war" battle). Giving bonuses that make it easier to "take out the trash" would often work well here.
Quite. I remember one video game I was playing where one character was good in melee, but melee was only good on robots, not spaceships. The thing is, in the time it took that character to get into melee and defeat the robots, most other characters could have shot them to death, because nearly all robots are bottom-grade mooks. There are three exceptions; one shows up once, one shows up twice, and the third is basically impossible to defeat without cheating in ridiculous levels of resources (and pretty tough even with). To me, it was obvious that she was useless, but to everyone I discussed the problem with on the game's forums, there was no problem in specializing badly against an enemy type that didn't really need to be specialized against.
(Well, it was a free game, so I guess I can't complain too much.)



I never really understood why the Healer was placed in Tier 5 (IIRC).
Here you go. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=14605216&postcount=6) TL;DR: Until the game is basically over, they are only good at in-combat healing.

No brains
2017-11-23, 09:46 PM
I think one problem with the DbC is that I can tell it is awful a little too easily. It wears its prestige class ribbon abilities right on its sleeve. It needs to hide how awful it is, and I think its spell list does accomplish that to a degree. I think it could use more bonus feats, since feats are a good way to hide the lack of features on a class.

I also wonder if its spellcasting and good saves don't make it a decent springboard into PrCs. Are we sure that DbC can't qualify for something good early? I think a real crap class should not only be crap on its own, but it should actively keep a player from advancing beyond its crapiness. I think the poor class-skill selection hurts it right in that regard, but the ability to cast even bad spells opens a lot of doors.

Also the doombolts don't seem to have a listed damage type. While that keeps it from being enhanced, it does allow the character to do something against enemies that resist conventional damage.

I'm helping it be more terrible by playing devil's advocate for it. Player opinions are always what misinform others the most.

ATHATH
2017-11-23, 10:20 PM
Here you go. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=14605216&postcount=6) TL;DR: Until the game is basically over, they are only good at in-combat healing.
Yeah, but they're full casters. Even though their spell list is terrible, they still have access to Sanctified spells, spell list-expanding techniques, and the things on this list (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?541032-Spell-slots-as-(not-literal)-quot-currency-quot).

For completeness's sake, I suppose that I should mention that a dip into Nosomatic Chirurgeon would let a Doombringer Champion turn his spell slots into Inflict spells (that can damage undead), which is kind of a neat trick (especially when combined with the Mastery of Day and Night feat). Then again, Inflict spells tend to be pretty terrible, so it's not much of an improvement.

ATHATH
2017-11-23, 10:28 PM
AHA!

I've found what is quite possibly the perfect build for a Doombringer Champion.

Start with a single level in Factotum and the Able Learner feat (this step is optional if you want to remain a "pure" Doombringer Champion; just use other methods for getting more class skills instead). Then, take 7 levels of Doombringer Champion. Then, take a single level in the Magical Trickster PrC, which will give you the Spontaneous Trickster ability. Resume taking Doombringer Champion levels after the dip(s).

Spontaneous Trickster (Su): You can channel magical potential into using skill tricks more often, effectively "recharging" them. As a swift action, you can "lose" any spell slot or prepared spell of 1st level or higher to perform a trick that you have already used in the encounter.

Boom. Now the amazing (except for the d8 hit die) Doombringer chassis, the surprisingly large number of skill points that a Doombringer gets per level, and the somewhat decent spell progression of the Doombringer can all come together to give you a pseudo-gish build that might actually be quite fun to play. Use your swift action every round (in combat) to use whatever skill trick is most appropriate to the situation that you're in, because you've got spell slots to burn, baby.

I feel proud that I've managed to make a class that was intentionally designed to be terrible the focal point for a fun build that is probably at least Tier 4, maybe even Tier 3.

JNAProductions
2017-11-23, 10:41 PM
What skill tricks are T3?

ATHATH
2017-11-23, 10:48 PM
What skill tricks are T3?
...

Eh, Tier 3 was a stretch, anyway. I think I was going for versatility?

Meh.

Jormengand
2017-11-24, 12:15 AM
I'm aware of the fact that you can get a doombringer champion to be competent, but you can also build a reasonably capable truenamer/monk/disciple of the word (inability to be targeted is surprisingly difficult to get around, and very easy for that build to get its hands on). If you're willing to go far enough, you can get a commoner to be ridiculously good. And I'm not convinced by the argument that you can make it good by adding enough prestige classes - ur priest called.

I'm sure that you can use knowledge devotion to decent effect, but it might be hard to keep your int high enough to do that, your wis and cha high enough for your spells, and your str and con high enough to fight. If you have no int bonus, only the skill ranks, then even with the education bonus, you'll have a half chance to get a +1 and a half chance to get a +2.

As for grafting other spells onto the list: it's possible, it'll always be possible. I suppose I could have snuck a line saying "Unlike a sorcerer, a doombringer champion cannot learn spells that are not on their spell list," but ehh. I feel that keeping it a newbie trap rather than putting stuff in to stop it working in a veteran rules lawyer's hands is more in the spirit of things, you know?

Spore
2017-11-24, 12:30 AM
I hated 3.5's tendency to offer you 200+ prestige classes of which about 5-10 are actually viable and the others are traps or downgrades. Which is worse than a terrible base class because you ruin a perfectly good - and probably fun - character with it.

1) Have ridiculous feat tax: Say, Skill Focus (Handle Animal), Endurance and Toughness

2) Does not advance spellcasting on every level for a class that needs it.

3) Double or triple up on boni the character may already have: i.e. Darkvision or breath weapons

4) Confuse you with miniscule skill or combat improvements instead of fully fledged class features: Sure I'll take a bonus on hunting down undead instead of another d6 on my sneak attack.

5) Abilities that require a combat setup that you prev. didn't need or add in boni that aren't required off your character : I.e. offering a Paladinesque character Sneak attack or the wizards suddenly getting turn undead.

6) Important abilities that do not work on anything above your HD: Most monsters that are not cannon fodder/minions are a bit above your HD.

Potato_Priest
2017-11-24, 01:44 AM
I'd like to second including a lot of heavily DM-dependent features.

Here's my own addition to the discussion:

Abilities that give you worse or limited versions of what you could do anyway:

Look to 5th edition's Grappler feat for inspiration. It allows you to restrain a grappled creature at the cost of a full action and restraining yourself in the process. Restrained is a pretty powerful condition, so a way to dish it out an unlimited number of times per day looks pretty appealing.

However, when discussing this with experienced players one quickly realize that the ability it gives you is only useful if your party has lots of ranged attackers, since you could normally knock a grappled enemy prone for almost all the same effects, at a fraction of the action economy, with less feat investment, and without restraining yourself in the process.

So, take more powerful mundane (as in, any combatant can attempt these without special features) ability combos and action options, and brew up similar but slightly worse versions to give your class.

Lucas Yew
2017-11-24, 02:28 AM
This thread is incredible for a designer, in the sense that it easily lists what you should NEVER do in designing a d20-based character class...

Vitruviansquid
2017-11-24, 02:59 AM
My list, moving away from D&D 3.5:

1. Allow powerful effects contingent on a bunch of dice rolls that are layered deceptively. Every time your warrior hits someone, they can roll a d6 and do double damage if it lands on a 6 as a critical hit (WOWEE! Double damage! This is actually only about a 17% increase in total damage over time)... and if you get your critical hit, you can upgrade that to a heroic hit if you roll another d6 and it lands on a 6 (WOWEE! Quadruple Damage! This is actually only about an 8% further increase).

2. Give a class counter-synergies, and then ask that class to focus separately on each element of the counter-synergy. Your archer can shoot poison arrows, fire arrows, and freezing arrows... only he can only shoot one every round! Only you need to put points into poison arrow shooting or fire arrow shooting or freezing arrow shooting to improve each separately! Wowee! Look at that flexibility!

3. Allow a class to have very powerful personal defenses, but no way to threaten the enemy. You can have a character that barely tickles an opponent when he hits, but he can also become an unkillable rock on the battlefield... that way all the enemies will ignore him and kill all his friends!

4. Make a class extremely good at one thing to the detriment of everything else, and that one thing is at best only a marginal part of the game. So your character is the strongest, toughest, fastest fighter out of any other character... our game is about impartial discussion and coming up with nonviolent solutions.

5. Have a class just plain fail to scale as well as everyone else. Oh man. People are terrible at understanding how scaling works, and this is so easy to hide.

Firest Kathon
2017-11-24, 05:21 AM
Preparing the doombringer champion's spells requires one hour of interrupted meditation, which must take place immediately after a good night's sleep.

I really hope you did this on purpose :smallamused:. Totally up to GM abuse interpretation on what properly interrupts your meditation, and whether you can interrupt yourself or need an outside disturbance. I'm imagining a Doombringer Champion during his morning meditation, just sitting there and thinking "Why is nobody coming by and ask me stupid questions. I'll never get my spells if no one disturbs me."

Frozen_Feet
2017-11-24, 06:08 AM
Features that can be arbitrarily negated by the DM

That includes all abilities in a game like D&D.

Reason 1): it is the GM's task to design a scenario. The GM can design the scenario to play into the weaknesses of any class.
Reason 2): all builds are admissible as NPCs. This includes all rules-as-stupidly-interpreted infinite loops, functionally omniscient and omnipotent buids, as well as gods. Within the game, a GM is literally God the Almighty. And Pun-Pun. And the Wish and the Word. And d2 Crusader. And whatever that build was that can travel backwards in time and retroactively prevent Pun-Pun from happening.

ExLibrisMortis
2017-11-24, 08:59 AM
Thundering Bolt (Su)
A doombringer champion always has the ability to call upon magical energy in the form of a thundering bolt. The doombringer champion can produce a thundering bolt once per round as a move action. Any time before the end of the next round, the doombringer champion can throw the thundering bolt at an enemy (the thundering bolt has a range increment of 10 feet when thrown). If she does, the damage dealt by the bolt is 1d4 plus the doombringer champion's strength modifier. The die size of the thundering bolt increases every 4 levels, up to a d12 at 17th level (this information is shown on Table: The Doombringer Champion). Further, a doombringer champion of a size other than medium launches thundering bolts which deal an appropriate amount of damage. For example, a large doombringer champion would deal 3d6 points of damage (plus her strength modifier) at 17th level and above.

You can use a thundering bolt's wicked, serrated edge as a melee weapon, but it's not designed for such use and you take a -4 penalty on attack rolls to use it in this way. The doombolt disappears when it strikes an enemy or at the end of the round after its creation.

[...]

Bolt from the Blue
At eighth level, a doombringer champion is often able to surprise enemies with the sudden creation of a thundering bolt. While only one can be created per round, a doombringer champion of at least eighth level can create a thundering bolt as a free action.
On reading this, I was thinking: How about giving the class Skirmish (with TB only, of course), and then removing Bolt from the Blue. Good trade, right? It's bonus damage!

Frozen_Feet
2017-11-24, 09:07 AM
Let me add one that is quite abstract, but applicable across systems. (Also, encapsulates some of the already-named examples, for example, the Truenamer).

Make a class that's obviously powerfull on paper, but difficult to actually play succesfully.

Watch unskilled players periodically fail as they struggle to make used of their supposed might.

Bonus pointer for devious GMs: you can achieve this with a real class, by being better at playing the game while pitting that class against another example of itself. (See also: Chess.)

wumpus
2017-11-24, 11:03 AM
That includes all abilities in a game like D&D.

Reason 1): it is the GM's task to design a scenario. The GM can design the scenario to play into the weaknesses of any class.
Reason 2): all builds are admissible as NPCs. This includes all rules-as-stupidly-interpreted infinite loops, functionally omniscient and omnipotent buids, as well as gods. Within the game, a GM is literally God the Almighty. And Pun-Pun. And the Wish and the Word. And d2 Crusader. And whatever that build was that can travel backwards in time and retroactively prevent Pun-Pun from happening.

Dungeons & Dragons Online has a nifty way of balancing casters by giving bosses various immunities that make most "I win" spells only useful for trash (and thus wildly changes what spells casters bring). Various bosses have there name displayed in different color text, and the immunities vary from "guy who just barely warrants a name" to "raid boss". In general the wholesale changes to D&D rules are so extreme to make bringing it to the tabletop impossible (don't ask how many hitpoints mobs have, nor how many spells casters can keep firing), but I'd recommend at least looking up the immunities list.

GreatWyrmGold
2017-11-24, 11:13 AM
Yeah, but they're full casters. Even though their spell list is terrible, they still have access to Sanctified spells, spell list-expanding techniques, and the things on this list (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?541032-Spell-slots-as-(not-literal)-quot-currency-quot).
I'll admit I'm not familiar with all the possibilities of those methods, but the ones in that link don't look much better than what (say) warlocks or bards can do, and it wouldn't surprise me if the same was true for many of the others.
Full casters aren't powerful because they have 9th-level spell slots; they're powerful because of the spells they can put in them.

Jormengand
2017-11-24, 01:10 PM
Give a class counter-synergies, and then ask that class to focus separately on each element of the counter-synergy. Your archer can shoot poison arrows, fire arrows, and freezing arrows... only he can only shoot one every round! Only you need to put points into poison arrow shooting or fire arrow shooting or freezing arrow shooting to improve each separately! Wowee! Look at that flexibility!

There is a very, very great temptation for me to go on a rant about Diablo II's Amazon here.


I really hope you did this on purpose :smallamused:. Totally up to GM abuse interpretation on what properly interrupts your meditation, and whether you can interrupt yourself or need an outside disturbance. I'm imagining a Doombringer Champion during his morning meditation, just sitting there and thinking "Why is nobody coming by and ask me stupid questions. I'll never get my spells if no one disturbs me."

I didn't (I made this during the middle an insomnia-related all-nighter), but I'm leaving it in there for the mental image.


On reading this, I was thinking: How about giving the class Skirmish (with TB only, of course), and then removing Bolt from the Blue. Good trade, right? It's bonus damage!

Maybe too obvious. You need to make the illusion sustainable, and while people will swear by the amazing power of getting free ammunition, they won't be so easily fooled by something quite so obvious as actually forcing them to use multiple turns, in a confusing way, to do that.

Guizonde
2017-11-25, 07:43 AM
one thing i always resented from the dm that got me into dnd. i played a healbot cleric. i wanted to, by the way. the dude tanked like no one else in the group, he was gruff, grumpy, pretty solid in close quarters, had a large variety of boosts, and healed. a true support medic. we faced a lot of undead and he pretty much forced me into going radiant servant of pelor. a friggin' great prc, by the way except for one problem. i became the floor-killer of the band when facing undead. i punched so high above my role that he swapped out the undead we were facing with demons and devils, effectively neutering my main offensive abilities. he kept the difficulty level the same, so at least whenever i routinely healed over 100hp in a single standard action i was useful (if overqualified for the hp totals of my allies).

my build was cleric 5/ rsop 2, pretty unoptimized in the traditional sense (read: ability scores, feats, etc), but i was great for my given role. a swap of enemy types and i basically became an auto-doc just after going into a prc designed to add offense to the group. dm fiat made my build accidentally unoptimized, just because i became a specialist.

tl;dr: crippling overspecialization hurts otherwise awesome classes.

Cluedrew
2017-11-25, 09:02 AM
This thread is incredible for a designer, in the sense that it easily lists what you should NEVER do in designing a d20-based character class...I think a lot of the notes are generic as well. For instance "gets worse versions of generic abilities" is pretty widely applicable. Gets worse versions of other special abilities can still be good (something as opposed to nothing) but you have to remember there is a better version out their.

Also comedic value.

GreatWyrmGold
2017-11-25, 02:30 PM
tl;dr: crippling overspecialization hurts otherwise awesome classes.
Underspecialization can, too. Only a moron (or someone who didn't playtest enough) would create a class which could do anything two or three other classes could, as well as they could. Hence, a generalist is going to be less effective than a specialist. This can still make for a useful character, but spread them thin enough and you might get something like the monk.

Actually, taking most of this advice to an opposite extreme could end up with a similarly-terrible class.

ATHATH
2017-11-25, 10:17 PM
I'll admit I'm not familiar with all the possibilities of those methods, but the ones in that link don't look much better than what (say) warlocks or bards can do, and it wouldn't surprise me if the same was true for many of the others.
Full casters aren't powerful because they have 9th-level spell slots; they're powerful because of the spells they can put in them.
I'm not saying that the Healer should be a Tier 1 or even Tier 2 class, but as you said, it's on about the same power/versatility level as the Warlock (a Tier 3 class, IIRC), and should be ranked (tiered?) as such.

Jormengand
2017-11-26, 05:28 AM
I'm not saying that the Healer should be a Tier 1 or even Tier 2 class, but as you said, it's on about the same power/versatility level as the Warlock (a Tier 3 class, IIRC), and should be ranked (tiered?) as such.

This was the basis on which the healer was set to tier 3 in the community tiering (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?516038-Community-Tiering-II-No-Revotes-No-Flaming-Variants-at-the-End), incidentally.

Anonymouswizard
2017-11-26, 06:07 AM
This can still make for a useful character, but spread them thin enough and you might get something like the monk.

To be fair, the monk is also at least partially specialised in somethng that was literally impossible in base 3.5 (making a full attack after a move action), and IIRC didn't have a reliable way to pull it off when the edition was abandoned for 4e.

Knaight
2017-11-26, 06:18 AM
There's also the Palladium technique, exemplified in Ninjas and Superspies - write the general rules so incredibly poorly (https://megadumbcast.podbean.com/) that it's hard to compare what the classes specifically do to them, then give the classes abilities that don't actually do anything given those rules.

GrayDeath
2017-11-26, 10:00 AM
I really hope you did this on purpose :smallamused:. Totally up to GM abuse interpretation on what properly interrupts your meditation, and whether you can interrupt yourself or need an outside disturbance. I'm imagining a Doombringer Champion during his morning meditation, just sitting there and thinking "Why is nobody coming by and ask me stupid questions. I'll never get my spells if no one disturbs me."


My thoughts exactly, loved it.

Good that it stays.
Overall like the fluff and semiuselessness (well it still has 9th Level casting whcih combined with its CHassis makes it at the very least better than monks, SOulblades and consorts, maybe also Fighters and equivalents, though granted, thats not hard^^) a lot.


So, we have the MAD dest Class there is, on its own its horrible to adequate (after all, while most of its spells are very situational, these situations CAN occur), but has a good to great chassis.

It seems overall a perfect PrC Jumpstarter, mayhap put im some marginally powerful feat row that improves its spellcasting power (say, may sacrifice 2 spell slots to cast one spell of the same school they do not know 1/day per five Class levels or somesuch) to make players avoid prestiging out?

GreatWyrmGold
2017-11-26, 10:40 AM
To be fair, the monk is also at least partially specialised in somethng that was literally impossible in base 3.5 (making a full attack after a move action), and IIRC didn't have a reliable way to pull it off when the edition was abandoned for 4e.
I was thinking of the 3.5 monk when I said that. It's specialized in supernatural abilities mimicking outdated spells and intraclass conflict.

Anonymouswizard
2017-11-26, 11:07 AM
I was thinking of the 3.5 monk when I said that. It's specialized in supernatural abilities mimicking outdated spells and intraclass conflict.

True, but it also specialised in redundant abilities. Some of their supernatural abilities are actually worthwhile in low op groups for no reason other than I've seen casters refuse to memorise anything that doesn't deal damage or heal people, but no level of optimisation can make Flurry of Blows and increased Move synergise.

Off the top of my head, I remember 3.5's monk abilities being the sort of thing that would be awesome five or six levels earlier, but now the wizard could just dedicate a spell slot to them. I think it's major problem is the lateness of a lot of features.

4e and 5e both made the monk good, to the point where I'm designing a 5e Wuxia system which gives each class a different Martial Arts progression instead of giving weapons damage dice, and having Ki/Chi points be a character trait rather than a class trait. It's good enough that, if a GM would allow longswords (potentially sans versatile) to be martial arts weapons I'd play one. But that's another thread.

ATHATH
2017-11-26, 04:03 PM
but no level of optimisation can make Flurry of Blows and increased Move synergise.
Ahem: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?103358-3-X-Ways-to-get-Pounce-or-Free-Movement

JBPuffin
2017-11-26, 11:55 PM
4e and 5e both made the monk good, to the point where I'm designing a 5e Wuxia system which gives each class a different Martial Arts progression instead of giving weapons damage dice, and having Ki/Chi points be a character trait rather than a class trait. It's good enough that, if a GM would allow longswords (potentially sans versatile) to be martial arts weapons I'd play one. But that's another thread.

4e and 5e made every class playable and most builds halfway optimized for something. Sure, there’s still high-op and varying levels of supplement support (4e PHB3 classes, 5e Sorcerer getting so few non-PHB spells), but if you want something that does a job, pick a class and have a decent score in your prime stat. Job done. I have some downright weird builds for 5e that still do something (you can take 1 level in each class and still not be a complete failure at life, for example; normal human can do it with standard point-buy - 14/14/14/13/13/13 placed as you desire), which is more than I can say for my 3.5 ventures. That’s my evangelistic shpeel over; I’m curious as to how you’d screw up a 5e class using only flaws in the current classes, though...

Anonymouswizard
2017-11-27, 06:52 AM
4e and 5e made every class playable and most builds halfway optimized for something. Sure, there’s still high-op and varying levels of supplement support (4e PHB3 classes, 5e Sorcerer getting so few non-PHB spells), but if you want something that does a job, pick a class and have a decent score in your prime stat. Job done. I have some downright weird builds for 5e that still do something (you can take 1 level in each class and still not be a complete failure at life, for example; normal human can do it with standard point-buy - 14/14/14/13/13/13 placed as you desire), which is more than I can say for my 3.5 ventures. That’s my evangelistic shpeel over; I’m curious as to how you’d screw up a 5e class using only flaws in the current classes, though...

4e did so better than 5e, in 4e it was harder to build somebody that punched significantly ahead than the rest of the party than it is in 5e, but they're both pretty solid. I'm not a big fan of how much magic there is in the system, but that's why I'm making my own 5e hack (much further in development) without any spell-using classes.

For screwing up a 5e class, let's look at the standard Ranger. A relatively small number of spells known, from a list that's not brilliant, with some spell taxes if you want to keep your damage game decent. Then remove a decent amount of power from the main class to put it into the subclasses, but forget to give the subclasses broadly useful abilities that work. But even then it's hard to call the Ranger strictly bad, more disappointing.

Lalliman
2017-11-27, 02:26 PM
For screwing up a 5e class, let's look at the standard Ranger. A relatively small number of spells known, from a list that's not brilliant, with some spell taxes if you want to keep your damage game decent. Then remove a decent amount of power from the main class to put it into the subclasses, but forget to give the subclasses broadly useful abilities that work. But even then it's hard to call the Ranger strictly bad, more disappointing.
Not to mention features that are extremely circumstantial and do almost nothing unless the DM goes out of his way to make them useful (Favoured Enemy, Natural Explorer, Primeval Awareness). With an extra-special mention for Primeval Awareness, which actually becomes less useful when in your favoured terrain. There's a lot to learn from the core ranger indeed.


Snip
A bit of a late response, but I still want to give mad props for whipping this up, it's exactly what I was going for.

Class table looks powerful at first sight: Check.
Unsynergistic design with no real strengths: Check.
Dependent on literally every single ability score: Check.
A hilariously bad trap feature: Check.
Can lose its class features extremely easily: Check.

A nooby trap at its finest. An optimiser might be able to create a halfway decent build with it, but then again they'll never be fooled by the deceiving exterior to begin with.

Anonymouswizard
2017-11-27, 03:15 PM
A bit of a late response, but I still want to give mad props for whipping this up, it's exactly what I was going for.

Class table looks powerful at first sight: Check.
Unsynergistic design with no real strengths: Check.
Dependent on literally every single ability score: Check.
A hilariously bad trap feature: Check.
Can lose its class features extremely easily: Check.

A nooby trap at its finest. An optimiser might be able to create a halfway decent build with it, but then again they'll never be fooled by the deceiving exterior to begin with.

I don't see how it's actually reliant on Int, just getting skill points it can't really use, I can see it for anything else. Maybe if we changed it so being able to cast spells is based off of Wisdom, save DCs are based off of Charisma, and bonus spells are based off of Intelligence?

I actually love the capstone, take three rounds once a week to make a Save or Die you must use by the next round. I can see potential for a very simple attempt at a thrown weapon build by going Halfing, taking a few levels of DoomBringer Champion, and use a slightly altered version of the Giant's Halfling Rock Skipping Champion to allow it to use any thrown weapon. At 1st level you can throw a 1d4 bolt 10 feet, by sixth level you are throwing a bolt 20 feet for 1d6 damage, at 7th level you can skip it to another enemy within 10 feet, at 8th level we can pick a skip trick (I'd go for either Ba-bump or Ping Pong, with the second trick as either the other or Lucky Bounce), 9th level we get another skip, and a third at 11th level, allowing us to deal up to 4*(1d6+Strength) damage per round, plus potential Ping Pong bonuses. If we can get to 20th level we might be able to go Doombringer Champion 17/Rock Skipping Champion 3 to get up to 12*(1d12+Strength) damage in a round, plus any feat or spell bonuses you can get. It's still really bad, but it's a viable build that doesn't rely on getting additional spells added to your list, and I'm not a good 3.X optimiser.

Segev
2017-11-27, 04:56 PM
Don't forget to give it 1/day abilities that look good enough to use as an encounter-ender...but really aren't.

Nemirthel
2017-11-27, 08:21 PM
I don't see how it's actually reliant on Int, just getting skill points it can't really use, I can see it for anything else. Maybe if we changed it so being able to cast spells is based off of Wisdom, save DCs are based off of Charisma, and bonus spells are based off of Intelligence?

I actually love the capstone, take three rounds once a week to make a Save or Die you must use by the next round. I can see potential for a very simple attempt at a thrown weapon build by going Halfing, taking a few levels of DoomBringer Champion, and use a slightly altered version of the Giant's Halfling Rock Skipping Champion to allow it to use any thrown weapon. At 1st level you can throw a 1d4 bolt 10 feet, by sixth level you are throwing a bolt 20 feet for 1d6 damage, at 7th level you can skip it to another enemy within 10 feet, at 8th level we can pick a skip trick (I'd go for either Ba-bump or Ping Pong, with the second trick as either the other or Lucky Bounce), 9th level we get another skip, and a third at 11th level, allowing us to deal up to 4*(1d6+Strength) damage per round, plus potential Ping Pong bonuses. If we can get to 20th level we might be able to go Doombringer Champion 17/Rock Skipping Champion 3 to get up to 12*(1d12+Strength) damage in a round, plus any feat or spell bonuses you can get. It's still really bad, but it's a viable build that doesn't rely on getting additional spells added to your list, and I'm not a good 3.X optimiser.

The problem I see with the doombolt is that it's a save or die with a DC 15+INT fortitude save. Anything you'll fight at level 20 either has a very high chance of making that save or isn't worth using a once per week ability on. And a 20th level wizard can cast wail of the banshee (http://http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/wailOfTheBanshee.htm), which has a DC 19+INT fortitude save, 4+INT times a day. Admittedly that wouldn't be the best use of 9th level spell slots- but that's because you have spells like wish and gate. If it came earlier, or had a harder save, or wasn't the only use a doombringer champion has for intelligence (besides skill points that they can't use effectively anyway), it would be good. But as it is, it's way overshadowed by pretty much any other class.

The problem I see with the halfling doombringer champion/rock skipping champion is that you'd have no armor, a weapon that takes a move action to prepare, and a code of conduct that keeps your party from directly helping you.

The only features that are terrible by themselves are the code of conduct and the need for interrupted meditation to prepare spells. Everything else you can find a way to use, but it takes optimization just to be relevant. You're just always better off with a different class.

Duff
2017-11-27, 10:38 PM
I really hope you did this on purpose :smallamused:. Totally up to GM abuse interpretation on what properly interrupts your meditation, and whether you can interrupt yourself or need an outside disturbance. I'm imagining a Doombringer Champion during his morning meditation, just sitting there and thinking "Why is nobody coming by and ask me stupid questions. I'll never get my spells if no one disturbs me."

That's another essential for a bad class - Plenty for the players and GM to argue about for how it works

Lalliman
2017-11-28, 11:27 AM
I don't see how it's actually reliant on Int, just getting skill points it can't really use, I can see it for anything else. Maybe if we changed it so being able to cast spells is based off of Wisdom, save DCs are based off of Charisma, and bonus spells are based off of Intelligence?
Doombolt keys off Intelligence. Admittedly that's way too late to really call it a dependency, but it does mean that if you do somehow get to level 20, your ultimate ability will be laughably easy to resist unless you've been raising Intelligence (as opposed to just "pretty easy").


I actually love the capstone, take three rounds once a week to make a Save or Die you must use by the next round.
A save-or-die-after-about-three-minutes, mind you.

JoshuaZ
2017-11-28, 11:45 AM
Now, there's only one thing left to do...

The Doombringer Champion
*snip*


This is brilliant and hilarious. You could probably even get away with adding a few extra direct damage spells to their list that are one or two levels below where they normally appear on that list. Say fireball as a 4th level spell.

Guizonde
2017-11-28, 11:56 AM
This is brilliant and hilarious.

it is, but there's a distinct lack of "selling point" to the class. for example, i get how jormengand created this monstrosity, but i'm wondering what they thought about to sell it as a newbie trap. a lot of the class simply has no narrative synergy: it's an evil class that throws lightning, becomes immune to fire, can heal by eating magic, but spell-wise, it's all over the place. searing light is one of the best low-level blasts against undead (plus is a light spell so there's another thematic element that is wonky), jump, and i don't even remember beyond level 3 to be honest it seemed so disjointed. which i know was the point, but hey. if jormengand went to all that trouble to make a newbie-trap, might as well go the whole nine yards, right?

can we get a brainstorming session going? let's take bonehead billy, and we want to troll him because he's "that guy" at the gaming table. how can we create some edgy fluff for the doombringer champion that will make billy think it's the most overpowered class ever "because it says so right here"?!

i'll start:

the doombringer champion is a law unto herself. she fears no one and not even the flames of the deepest pit of hell can harm her. she smites those brazen enough to stand against her with the power of the heavens cleft asunder.

that's it, i'm out. stupid writer's block...

Segev
2017-11-28, 12:41 PM
Doombringers are known and feared for the destruction they bring wherever they go. Masters of thunder and magic, their approach is as inexorable as the certain death they herald. A Doombringer's strength lies not in sudden bursts of devastation from nowhere, but in the constant hammer-beat of inevitable brutality, round after round. Durable and enduring, they dish out constant pain. The most powerful of them are known to lay out an inevitable doom upon their foes, who will be given a brief time to know their certain death before it crashes down upon them. Woe be all to whom a Doombringer turns his gaze, for though they are not yet dead, it is now only a matter of time.

CharonsHelper
2017-11-28, 01:25 PM
A slightly broader non-D&D focused list.

1. Powerful in-combat abilities which take so long to use that fights are nearly always already over.

2. The ability to craft in a modern/future setting where it's easy/cheap to purchase equivalent gear.

3. A defensive class with weak offense and no good way to keep enemies from ignoring you.

4. Abilities which are useless in the game's implied game format. (Ex: Abilities around unarmed and/or smuggling small weapons when the standard game format is as a military unit.)

5. Having ways to more easily deal with challenges which no one else has significant issues with.

6. Being good at abilities which are easily overcome with low level gear. (ex: being good at computer hacking when a cheap auto-hacker is available)

7. Being the best at what is still a sub-par tactic. (Ex: Melee in many modern/sci-fi games - with the exception of Jedi.)

8. Having an OP ability which is easily resisted. (I've seen this in systems where the designer was obviously married to the idea of the ability but through play-testing realize it's OP and put in all sorts of patches instead of removing/nerfing the ability itself.)

9. Having an ability with high risk when an equal powered ability from another class lacks the risk. (hello wild mage!)

10. Classes sold as being jack-of-all-trades in systems which reward having an alpha tactic.

Jormengand
2017-11-28, 06:07 PM
searing light is one of the best low-level blasts against undead

You're... you're kidding, right?

Apart from an oddly-specific sub-list of undead (namely "Vampires" and "Undead orcs", AFAICT), the spell does exactly as much damage to undead as fireball, hits fewer targets, has a shorter range, and requires a roll to hit at all rather than allowing a roll for half damage. Against vampires and undead orcs, it does an extra one point of damage per level, still has a shorter range and still hits fewer targets and still needs a roll to hit at all. And at least fireball works properly on living creatures and constructs.

Now of course, a doombringer champion is more likely to have a decent attack bonus than a reflex save DC worth a damn, but searing light is awful. It's one of the worst blasting spells you can get (in fact, most of the light spells seem to be pretty awful).

Velaryon
2017-11-28, 06:59 PM
10. Classes sold as being jack-of-all-trades in systems which reward having an alpha tactic.

I fall for this one almost every time. :smalleek:

CharonsHelper
2017-11-28, 09:38 PM
I fall for this one almost every time. :smalleek:

There are systems where jack-of-all trades can work. Most obviously systems where enemies have multiple defenses which vary significantly. So - while others are forced to attack the same one, the jack can always target their weakest.

And Pathfinder actually made the bard a decent jack - but in combat they get their awesome buffing in addition to playing second fiddle at whatever else they do to make up for it. (casting or combat)

But - there are a LOT of systems which just have a class be mediocre at everything without any major parts of the mechanics which makes that viable OR extra things for the class to make up for not having a solid alpha tactic.

Knaight
2017-11-28, 10:08 PM
There are systems where jack-of-all trades can work. Most obviously systems where enemies have multiple defenses which vary significantly. So - while others are forced to attack the same one, the jack can always target their weakest.

Not being hugely combat focused also tends to help the jack of all trades - at least they have some relevant skill for most everything, even if they're not on par with an expert.

awa
2017-11-28, 10:33 PM
powers that might be powerful but are just bad for pcs

for example disease, it takes a long time to have an effect so its rarely going to be useful because it will take days to do anything

and abilities that are not team friendly
going the disease rout maybe his disease is an aura that takes effect if they are close to him for more then 10 minutes so most likely to hit the party.
Ahh and as a servant of the god of plague he must attack any one who would try and cure a disease, and he needs to spread disease when ever he can. Lets also give it a class feature that we pretend is a benefit like a swarm of flies that distracts nearby creatures but also makes it impossible to hide what he is basically preventing him from going into towns or stuff.

finally class features removing a restriction that dms don't enforce like the ability to speak as an immediate action rather than a free action (so you can do it off turn).
Or the ability to ignore food while in forests or jungles at the cost of rotting all trail rations left near you for more then a day. Thus reminding people of the problem and then making it worse.

CharonsHelper
2017-11-28, 11:03 PM
Not being hugely combat focused also tends to help the jack of all trades - at least they have some relevant skill for most everything, even if they're not on par with an expert.

True. But such systems generally don't have an alpha tactic.

The Glyphstone
2017-11-29, 12:27 AM
We need a flavorful-but-useless 'class feature' as well to drive in the grimdark.

Aura of Doom: A doombringer champion radiates an aura of evil as a cleric of her class level (see the Detect Evil spell for details). This malign aura also creates spontaneous magical expressions of malice and entropy within a radius of 10ft./level, causing effects such as spoiled or stagnant drinks, small plants withering and dying, uncomfortable chills down the necks of nearby people, etc. The doombringer champion has no control over when or how this aura manifests.

Guizonde
2017-11-29, 02:42 AM
You're... you're kidding, right?

Apart from an oddly-specific sub-list of undead (namely "Vampires" and "Undead orcs", AFAICT), the spell does exactly as much damage to undead as fireball, hits fewer targets, has a shorter range, and requires a roll to hit at all rather than allowing a roll for half damage. Against vampires and undead orcs, it does an extra one point of damage per level, still has a shorter range and still hits fewer targets and still needs a roll to hit at all. And at least fireball works properly on living creatures and constructs.

Now of course, a doombringer champion is more likely to have a decent attack bonus than a reflex save DC worth a damn, but searing light is awful. It's one of the worst blasting spells you can get (in fact, most of the light spells seem to be pretty awful).

no, i wasn't. i do mean what i wrote. for starters, it's a domain spell for sun clerics, which does help tremendously. maybe not "fireball" levels of ubiquity, but it benefits from the sun domain's augmented capabilities and affects all undead (for double damage) and on top of that affects all creatures that have a weakness against flames, making it a surprisingly effective but situational blast against vampires, liches, plant life, and things without a pulse. otherwise, it's just 3d8 damage of laser beam. nothing to sniff at, but there's better.

i should have specified that it was great for clerics, not wizards. that spell got me out of more tight spots than "enlarge person" ever did, no pun intended.

GreatWyrmGold
2017-11-29, 01:13 PM
Not being hugely combat focused also tends to help the jack of all trades - at least they have some relevant skill for most everything, even if they're not on par with an expert.
That reminds me of a recent experience, which inspires another possibility:
Make a game where the focal mechanics, sample adventures, adventure hooks, etc, all revolve around combat. Then make a class which focuses on noncombat tasks (e.g, investigation) without giving them unique combat abilities.



i should have specified that it was great for clerics, not wizards. that spell got me out of more tight spots than "enlarge person" ever did, no pun intended.
I'm no optimization expert, but if your best tactics revolve around blasting as a T1 caster, you may want to stick to low-op games.

Guizonde
2017-11-29, 01:50 PM
I'm no optimization expert, but if your best tactics revolve around blasting as a T1 caster, you may want to stick to low-op games.

i'm not a great optimizer of t1, namely because i care very little for theory or "magic solves everything". i much prefer situational spells, wits, and quick thinking to solve problems. but when you're in a group that is scared out of their minds by a dm that grew up playing tomb of horrors and cthulu, your wizard is fresh out of spells except for "invisibility" and "haste" and you've got several over-cr undead monsters facing you in a tomb, i was glad to have that little blast as my domain spell for the day. i only prepared that spell more than once on two occasions, and both times i knew we were heading into a crypt.

most of the time, that game i played halfway between a healbot, a tank, and making sure that whatever my team hit they hit with three to five times their usual force. having a laser beam up my sleeve was "insurance". i do not regret that spell or consider it bad by any means. situational? oh yes, no questions. bad? no way.

hell, i'm steamrolling a game right now that consists of an oracle, a cleric, and a bard. the paladin is more competent a combattant than the monk (who gets one-hit killed every two sessions), and i'm playing a friggin' inquisitor that is as unoptimized as they come (seriously, a skill-monkey inquisitor... only for the sake of a joke). but why is my inquisitor an invaluable part of the team? because i've got enough experience to know what i can do, what i'm good at, and what i can do to make my team gain as much glory as painlessly as possible. it's not about theoretical power, it's about practical knowledge of what to do when the plot hits your team. which, to be honest is a recurring theme on these boards. a lot of people forget that there is a whole game beyond "playing the sheet".

[/tangent]

Anonymouswizard
2017-11-29, 03:04 PM
Ah the irony, generally the better you can optimise the less you need to.

I'll admit in actual games I'll pick options based on two things, what seems fun and how my character's been acting. That's why in a GURPS game I played the party warrior but sunk every CP I earnt into more ranks of Charisma, we never got into fights because we talked our way out of them, and it felt like my Warrior Priest did prefer talking to fighting (that game also revealed that if I don't do a shifty character I'll go full blown lawful idiotic, not helped when my primary disadvantages were Honesty, Truthfullness, and Overconfidence).

I suspect most of us are the same, and suspect most of us actually stay away from the most powerful builds. Generally those that try their hardest to power game are only about average at it, as a friend once showed me (power gamed like crazy, refused to play any wizards bar Evokers*), and those of us that are good at it will still occasionally outshine others when playing medium-op characters.

I once arranged for a character to be removed from the game because if it continued I'd have been able to take on the rest of the party (this was M&M and I was the only one who knew how to use Arrays). I was the one having the least fun, as either I'd be equal to the others or I'd be dominating the battle with area effects and high damage precision attacks, I didn't feel good when there was nothing that I was bad at. (Would be a fun build to try again though, although I've got a lot of cooler M&M ideas to try first).

* Also got annoyed at me when I picked the Fighter class and went for a Dexterity build. I actually ended up relatively sticky at the low levels we were playing, although I was a bit annoyed at my stats as I'd wanted to play an illusionist.

Jormengand
2017-11-30, 01:48 AM
no, i wasn't. i do mean what i wrote. for starters, it's a domain spell for sun clerics, which does help tremendously. maybe not "fireball" levels of ubiquity, but it benefits from the sun domain's augmented capabilities and affects all undead (for double damage) and on top of that affects all creatures that have a weakness against flames, making it a surprisingly effective but situational blast against vampires, liches, plant life, and things without a pulse. otherwise, it's just 3d8 damage of laser beam. nothing to sniff at, but there's better.

i should have specified that it was great for clerics, not wizards. that spell got me out of more tight spots than "enlarge person" ever did, no pun intended.

For a start, it doesn't "Benefit from the sun domain's augmented capabilities." The augmented capability of the sun domain applies to turn undead, not light spells. Second, it doesn't "Affect all creatures that have a weakness against flames." I mean it does, but it only does half damage to most of them: it only does the d8 per level against undead with a particular weakness to bright light. Plants? d8/2 levels. Liches? d6/level. Things without a pulse? Potentially as little as d6/2 levels. It's like you never even read what the spell did. 3d8 damage of laser beam is terrible when you could have taken a real domain (I shudder to call "Fire" a "Real domain", but Burning Hands deals 1 fewer point of damage out of a first level slot, to multiple creatures. Produce flame deals 5 fewer damage... up to six times. Out of a second level slot. And is generally consdiered terrible). I mean, or if you want to kill undead, rather than dealing 6d6 (21) damage, you could always deal 3d8+6 (19.5) damage with a cure spell, and then at the price of doing ever so slightly less damage (you actually do more damage at 5th level!) you didn't have to prepare a spell that doesn't work properly on anything else. Hells, you didn't have to prepare a spell at all.

Or! Or! You have turn undead! Why in the nine exalted blazes are you preparing spells which only work on undead when you have a class feature that only works on undead? And is better, because it instantly defeats them if it works!

The doombringer champion, of course, doesn't have ToRU, but they do have the ability to whack the undead creature twice with a stick - and even if that stick is just a quarterstaff, 2d6+12 damage for two whacks is still almost as much as 6d6 and doesn't cost spell slots. More likely, a doombringer champion will actually have a real weapon proficiency, and therefore deal 4d6+12 damage, which is even more!

Searing light is both mathematically and practically not a good spell, and certainly not "One of the best". It's simply awful.

Guizonde
2017-11-30, 02:22 AM
For a start, it doesn't "Benefit from the sun domain's augmented capabilities." The augmented capability of the sun domain applies to turn undead, not light spells. Second, it doesn't "Affect all creatures that have a weakness against flames." I mean it does, but it only does half damage to most of them: it only does the d8 per level against undead with a particular weakness to bright light. Plants? d8/2 levels. Liches? d6/level. Things without a pulse? Potentially as little as d6/2 levels. It's like you never even read what the spell did. 3d8 damage of laser beam is terrible when you could have taken a real domain (I shudder to call "Fire" a "Real domain", but Burning Hands deals 1 fewer point of damage out of a first level slot, to multiple creatures. Produce flame deals 5 fewer damage... up to six times. Out of a second level slot. And is generally consdiered terrible). I mean, or if you want to kill undead, rather than dealing 6d6 (21) damage, you could always deal 3d8+6 (19.5) damage with a cure spell, and then at the price of doing ever so slightly less damage (you actually do more damage at 5th level!) you didn't have to prepare a spell that doesn't work properly on anything else. Hells, you didn't have to prepare a spell at all.

Or! Or! You have turn undead! Why in the nine exalted blazes are you preparing spells which only work on undead when you have a class feature that only works on undead? And is better, because it instantly defeats them if it works!

The doombringer champion, of course, doesn't have ToRU, but they do have the ability to whack the undead creature twice with a stick - and even if that stick is just a quarterstaff, 2d6+12 damage for two whacks is still almost as much as 6d6 and doesn't cost spell slots. More likely, a doombringer champion will actually have a real weapon proficiency, and therefore deal 4d6+12 damage, which is even more!

Searing light is both mathematically and practically not a good spell, and certainly not "One of the best". It's simply awful.


ok, ok, you know what? yes, my memory is a bit hazy regarding that spell. i needed the sun domain for the prc, although i didn't mind it. why didn't i turn or heal? because i was out of one and my team's total hp was under 10. having a ranged attack as a mandatory spell was a bit better than casting moderate heal (which i could've just swapped out any other spell for). that level 5 cleric was optimized for healing at that moment, not for attacking 13th level lich-like specter-things. hindsight is 20/20, i'll give you that. i'm still glad i had that spell.


Ah the irony, generally the better you can optimise the less you need to.

I'll admit in actual games I'll pick options based on two things, what seems fun and how my character's been acting. That's why in a GURPS game I played the party warrior but sunk every CP I earnt into more ranks of Charisma, we never got into fights because we talked our way out of them, and it felt like my Warrior Priest did prefer talking to fighting (that game also revealed that if I don't do a shifty character I'll go full blown lawful idiotic, not helped when my primary disadvantages were Honesty, Truthfullness, and Overconfidence).

I suspect most of us are the same, and suspect most of us actually stay away from the most powerful builds. Generally those that try their hardest to power game are only about average at it, as a friend once showed me (power gamed like crazy, refused to play any wizards bar Evokers*), and those of us that are good at it will still occasionally outshine others when playing medium-op characters.

I once arranged for a character to be removed from the game because if it continued I'd have been able to take on the rest of the party (this was M&M and I was the only one who knew how to use Arrays). I was the one having the least fun, as either I'd be equal to the others or I'd be dominating the battle with area effects and high damage precision attacks, I didn't feel good when there was nothing that I was bad at. (Would be a fun build to try again though, although I've got a lot of cooler M&M ideas to try first).

* Also got annoyed at me when I picked the Fighter class and went for a Dexterity build. I actually ended up relatively sticky at the low levels we were playing, although I was a bit annoyed at my stats as I'd wanted to play an illusionist.

you know how they say "no plot survives first contact with the players"? well, "no build survives first contact with the plot" is just as true. it's also why i'm loathing dnd/pf/d20 more and more. for example, let's take my two current characters, inquisitor josι (pathfinder), and arch-militant raymond (rogue trader). for josι, i've got his build roughly outlined until level 10, and written up until level 8, he's level 4. i know that whatever i write will change based on the demands of the plot since i'm working with unknown variables all the time. i might get an item that radically changes my entire layout. i might fall, forcing me into swapping inquisitions to heretic (currently heresy because of reasons). i hate that whole tzeentchian planning, oh, the planning might be all for nought if the campaign ended due to irl troubles.
now, raymond up there? he's muscle. he's got skills from his backstory. his progression is unknown to me at the moment because the plot and his actions dictate how he'll grow (if. it is rogue trader and death and dismemberment is an ever-present possibility). he's got a hellgun and doesn't afraid of anything, which is kind of a fringe benefit since we're currently neck-deep salvaging a wreck. none of the players have any idea how it will turn out. i prefer narrative structures to build characters, it creates a better story and it creates more believable characters, which incidentally is my gripe with a lot of dnd prc's. you can't get into a lot of them without lots of forward planning. i try to never have "dead levels", instead being relevant no matter the level or the build.

regarding the "trap choices", one of the teammates of my rsop cleric up there was a sorceror going into draconic disciple. that guy flaunted his "optimizing" to high heavens and yet pulled us back a lot. you don't play "support and cqc" as a sorceror specced in divination if you value not dying or being useful.

wumpus
2017-11-30, 12:04 PM
well, "no build survives first contact with the plot" is just as true. it's also why i'm loathing dnd/pf/d20 more and more. for example, let's take my two current characters, inquisitor josι (pathfinder), and arch-militant raymond (rogue trader). for josι, i've got his build roughly outlined until level 10, and written up until level 8, he's level 4. i know that whatever i write will change based on the demands of the plot since i'm working with unknown variables all the time. i might get an item that radically changes my entire layout. i might fall, forcing me into swapping inquisitions to heretic (currently heresy because of reasons). i hate that whole tzeentchian planning, oh, the planning might be all for nought if the campaign ended due to irl troubles.

The idea of "the stormwind fallacy" falls apart when you have to roleplay the character acquiring all those specific skills.

At this point I'd say "why don't you just stick to a base class", but that only really works for casters. Maybe if you let characters take one full castor or gestalt into two "base only" melee (or maybe one [non-full] caster and one melee?

But this type of answer doesn't rake in the money for WOTC/Pazio, so the game was designed to make it less and less viable.

Anonymouswizard
2017-11-30, 01:29 PM
you know how they say "no plot survives first contact with the players"? well, "no build survives first contact with the plot" is just as true. it's also why i'm loathing dnd/pf/d20 more and more. for example, let's take my two current characters, inquisitor josι (pathfinder), and arch-militant raymond (rogue trader). for josι, i've got his build roughly outlined until level 10, and written up until level 8, he's level 4. i know that whatever i write will change based on the demands of the plot since i'm working with unknown variables all the time. i might get an item that radically changes my entire layout. i might fall, forcing me into swapping inquisitions to heretic (currently heresy because of reasons). i hate that whole tzeentchian planning, oh, the planning might be all for nought if the campaign ended due to irl troubles.
now, raymond up there? he's muscle. he's got skills from his backstory. his progression is unknown to me at the moment because the plot and his actions dictate how he'll grow (if. it is rogue trader and death and dismemberment is an ever-present possibility). he's got a hellgun and doesn't afraid of anything, which is kind of a fringe benefit since we're currently neck-deep salvaging a wreck. none of the players have any idea how it will turn out. i prefer narrative structures to build characters, it creates a better story and it creates more believable characters, which incidentally is my gripe with a lot of dnd prc's. you can't get into a lot of them without lots of forward planning. i try to never have "dead levels", instead being relevant no matter the level or the build.

Oh certainly. I've given up on planning builds, instead I'll op a character at the starting level and then pick my level up choices when we level up. It's just not worth the hassle, especially after the time I made an illusionist who banned Evocation and the GM immediately filled the dungeon with mindless undead and contructs.


regarding the "trap choices", one of the teammates of my rsop cleric up there was a sorceror going into draconic disciple. that guy flaunted his "optimizing" to high heavens and yet pulled us back a lot. you don't play "support and cqc" as a sorceror specced in divination if you value not dying or being useful.

What really annoyed me about it was that he knew Evoker was a weak choice, and that I was playing a melee character, and then started complaining that my human with about 16 Dexterity and possibly Improved Initiative (it's been a few years) consistently won initiative and charged into the thick of things. I could probably have also taken him in a fight despite a rather dreadful build, I had a decent chance of surviving his daily allotment of spells.


The idea of "the stormwind fallacy" falls apart when you have to roleplay the character acquiring all those specific skills.

At this point I'd say "why don't you just stick to a base class", but that only really works for casters. Maybe if you let characters take one full castor or gestalt into two "base only" melee (or maybe one [non-full] caster and one melee?

But this type of answer doesn't rake in the money for WOTC/Pazio, so the game was designed to make it less and less viable.

Honestly? I think we should start going back to less defined characters, let people just assign ranks to DIY skills and ignore trying to codify magic in a system. All my favourite games these days are like that.

Segev
2017-11-30, 02:04 PM
Honestly? I think we should start going back to less defined characters, let people just assign ranks to DIY skills and ignore trying to codify magic in a system. All my favourite games these days are like that.

That really is a personal taste thing.

GreatWyrmGold
2017-11-30, 07:11 PM
you know how they say "no plot survives first contact with the players"? well, "no build survives first contact with the plot" is just as true. it's also why i'm loathing dnd/pf/d20 more and more. -snip-
I've played D&D (and Pathfinder) for years, and never felt the need to plan out my character's build. I don't fault anyone who does that, but I do question anyone who thinks it's a core part of the experience.


regarding the "trap choices", one of the teammates of my rsop cleric up there was a sorceror going into draconic disciple.
Yeah..."trap choices" are indefensible. And there are a fair number of them in D&D. The game isn't literally unplayable if you stumble into them, but I'd call it a fair reason to hate the system.



The idea of "the stormwind fallacy" falls apart when you have to roleplay the character acquiring all those specific skills.
...What?
So, you claim that a character multiclassing and acquiring a bunch of specific skills is both impossible and required for the Stormwind Fallacy to be a valid critique, correct? I don't see how either of those is true. Could you explain this sentence which is kinda important to the rest of your post making sense?



That really is a personal taste thing.
What? Don't be ridiculous. I have the most fun doing X, so therefore X must be the most fun thing. This also fits in well with some rhetoric I've heard about games that resonated with me, so it must be true.

Guizonde
2017-12-01, 02:33 AM
I've played D&D (and Pathfinder) for years, and never felt the need to plan out my character's build. I don't fault anyone who does that, but I do question anyone who thinks it's a core part of the experience.


Yeah..."trap choices" are indefensible. And there are a fair number of them in D&D. The game isn't literally unplayable if you stumble into them, but I'd call it a fair reason to hate the system.




i've done it only a couple of times myself until i went with "improvise along the way". on the other hand it seems that a lot of my friends (those that actually like the nitty-gritty of the system) look forward to doing a 1-20 build, even if it never gets used. i guess it's akin to having a swiss army knife.

i know i kept hearing later on that dragon disciple is "a good choice", but there are also a lot of other classes that keep getting bandied around like it's the be-all-end-all-you-can't-say-you've-experienced-dnd-unless-you've-played-that-class awesome things (that nobody really ever plays). i wanted to play a halfling outrider, but mechanically, a cavalry build meant to kite is very situational. it's early morning here and can't think of other examples for now, though.

re: the stormwind fallacy thing. i think i can sort of see where you're coming from, but what i meant was that in a 1-20 pre-build, i don't know how the plot will influence my character development thus why i change partway through. sometimes i just can't contrive my character's personality to stick to the build (if ever). it's just not my style of roleplay, but my monk teammate is currently in that optic... even if he's a dead-weight dps-wise until level 7 or so, he's still a bag of hp and a better target for the dm than the oracle or cleric. my build by necessity had to include a lot more of cqc-orientation as a result to compensate (although i still kick myself for taking twf... idiot trap choice...)

Anonymouswizard
2017-12-01, 05:53 AM
That really is a personal taste thing.

Sorry, I thought saying 'I think' would make it clear that it was a personal opinion. It just seems to be like the games I've enjoyed recently have been rules medium or less, which is reflected in the games I write.

I'm honestly against giving characters special rules-defined abilities these days, I think that they just over-complicate gameplay too much. But again, that's very much a personal preference. It shows in the games I run/play (where the most complex it might get is 'you have access to a couple of combat techniques' and most of the character is just their stats and skills).

However the fact that people have different tastes is a great thing, that's why I tried to write it as an opinion rather than a fact.

GreatWyrmGold
2017-12-01, 09:27 AM
i've done it only a couple of times myself until i went with "improvise along the way". on the other hand it seems that a lot of my friends (those that actually like the nitty-gritty of the system) look forward to doing a 1-20 build, even if it never gets used. i guess it's akin to having a swiss army knife.
Some people just like building builds. To each their own.


i know i kept hearing later on that dragon disciple is "a good choice", but there are also a lot of other classes that keep getting bandied around like it's the be-all-end-all-you-can't-say-you've-experienced-dnd-unless-you've-played-that-class awesome things (that nobody really ever plays). i wanted to play a halfling outrider, but mechanically, a cavalry build meant to kite is very situational. it's early morning here and can't think of other examples for now, though.
Yeah, D&D is not a good game for completionists...


re: the stormwind fallacy thing. i think i can sort of see where you're coming from, but what i meant was that in a 1-20 pre-build, i don't know how the plot will influence my character development thus why i change partway through. sometimes i just can't contrive my character's personality to stick to the build (if ever). it's just not my style of roleplay, but my monk teammate is currently in that optic... even if he's a dead-weight dps-wise until level 7 or so, he's still a bag of hp and a better target for the dm than the oracle or cleric. my build by necessity had to include a lot more of cqc-orientation as a result to compensate (although i still kick myself for taking twf... idiot trap choice...)
I've never thought of my character build as being tied to my character's personality. I mean, it would be good if I could find a way to do that, but nobody else in my gaming group cares particularly about game design or the interplay (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QwcI4iQt2Y) of mechanics (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QwcI4iQt2Y) and narrative (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQJA5YjvHDU), so I try not to worry too much about the details nobody else will care about. I try to keep my character's build matching his character in broad strokes, but don't worry too much about the details.
Though it probably helps that I don't usually do complex builds. Some people like building builds, and I am not one.



Sorry, I thought saying 'I think' would make it clear that it was a personal opinion.
Just because you start it with "I think" doesn't mean it's an opinion to be judged as any other. When you follow "I think" with "we should," you're proposing a course of action for everyone to follow. Not all opinions are the same; an opinion that everyone should do it your way is far different than an opinion that your way is fun.


I'm honestly against giving characters special rules-defined abilities these days, I think that they just over-complicate gameplay too much.
I'm curious as to what you mean. And how you adjudicate special abilities.

Anonymouswizard
2017-12-01, 09:57 AM
Just because you start it with "I think" doesn't mean it's an opinion to be judged as any other. When you follow "I think" with "we should," you're proposing a course of action for everyone to follow. Not all opinions are the same; an opinion that everyone should do it your way is far different than an opinion that your way is fun.

Yeah yeah, I know, I wasn't clear and implied something I didn't quite mean.

To explain, I personally think that games should move towards lighter, more freeform mechanics, but this doesn't mean I think somebody who's view is 'games should move towards more complicated, specific mechanics' is wrong. I'm very much of the view that somebody can have a different opinion to me and be right.


I'm curious as to what you mean. And how you adjudicate special abilities.

In all honesty? By making special abilities special. PCs should not get special abilities just for being PCs, they generally already get extra stat and skill points compared to NPCs.

But to explain, let's say that I'm running a game where PCs may have studied at martial arts academies and wield various sytles. Instead of making them learn techniques and stuff each style is just written on their sheet with a couple of adjectives. In this case I wouldn't give somebody with a style an advantage or disadvantage against somebody without a style, but if somebody with a quick, brutal style goes up against somebody with a showy, defensive style I might give bonuses.

Or lets say a character can do magic. Each spell is probably a skill, so your character might have Talk to Animals 3, Bolts of Force 1, and Evil Eye 4. That's all I need, because other characters might have skills like Knight of the Chalice or Inventing.

So in short? On the fly, because there's less chaff to get in the way.

GreatWyrmGold
2017-12-01, 10:07 AM
Two quick questions about your rulesless special abilities.

1. How do you determine that a quick, brutal style is superior to a showy, defensive style? Some kind of rules, perhaps?
2. What do the numbers associated with special skills indicate? Are they connected to some kind of rules?

It's sounding less like you don't use rules and more like you use different rules. Which is fine, of course, but I'd like to make sure we're all on the same page here.

Anonymouswizard
2017-12-01, 10:31 AM
Two quick questions about your rulesless special abilities.

1. How do you determine that a quick, brutal style is superior to a showy, defensive style? Some kind of rules, perhaps?
2. What do the numbers associated with special skills indicate? Are they connected to some kind of rules?

It's sounding less like you don't use rules and more like you use different rules. Which is fine, of course, but I'd like to make sure we're all on the same page here.

1) No clue, randomly came up with the example. But yeah, I'd likely come up with a bunch of different descriptors and a set of rock paper scissor mechanics for what gets bonuses against what.
2) Skill ranks. You want to talk to animals? Roll your Talk to Animals skill.

But the idea is that the rules should generally be more freeform and much less 'a 63rd level digger gets the reloate pebbles ability'.

GreatWyrmGold
2017-12-01, 10:49 AM
Okay, are you familiar with a strawman argument? Because while that 63rd-level digger isn't strawmanning anything I've said, it's still a strawman of the kind of thing you apparently don't like. It sounds patently ridiculous, so it's clearly bad.
But it's not even good as a strawman, because beyond being ridiculous, it's not entirely clear what your issue is with. Do you not approve of how granular more mechanically-defined abilities are? Do you not like the presence of specific abilities with specific limits? Do you not like leveling-up granting preset, arbitrary abilities? It's not helpful.

Anonymouswizard
2017-12-01, 11:00 AM
Okay, are you familiar with a strawman argument? Because while that 63rd-level digger isn't strawmanning anything I've said, it's still a strawman of the kind of thing you apparently don't like. It sounds patently ridiculous, so it's clearly bad.
But it's not even good as a strawman, because beyond being ridiculous, it's not entirely clear what your issue is with. Do you not approve of how granular more mechanically-defined abilities are? Do you not like the presence of specific abilities with specific limits? Do you not like leveling-up granting preset, arbitrary abilities? It's not helpful.

Arbitrary abilities, gained at arbitrary times, that don't actually make the game more fun. Like the classes in D&D5e, so many abilities, at most I'll use like three in the campaign. I don't like having defined abilities separate from skills at all if I can get away with it, if I can't I like the mechanics as simple as possible.

JBPuffin
2017-12-01, 12:08 PM
Arbitrary abilities, gained at arbitrary times, that don't actually make the game more fun. Like the classes in D&D5e, so many abilities, at most I'll use like three in the campaign. I don't like having defined abilities separate from skills at all if I can get away with it, if I can't I like the mechanics as simple as possible.

How much 5e have you played? The only place I can see that critique truly applies to is spells; my AT has used his actual class abilities almost constantly, and most of his spells have been used at least once (although fire bolt and shield get a lot more play time than most).

I don’t get a lot of chances to play, so a system that I can spend free time coming up with different build synergies and wacky combos in is important to my gaming experience. Different games scratch that itch differently; for example, Nobilis’ special abilities are more loose and narrativistic, but gluing together different Keys and other elements allows for a non-mechanics-driven example of build synergy. 5e DnD’s abilities are more mechanically solidified and segregated, but the race-class-background setup actually intrigued me more than the abilities themselves, and having a list of abilities which interact in one way or another is more of a bonus than anything. I could probably keep going, but I think that’s enough for me to finish up from - if every RPG company decides to follow through with toning down its mechanical complexity and depth, I’d probably be one of the folks who’s less than thrilled. I like my character building too much to be satisfied with something approaching your ideal game, Anon.

Segev
2017-12-01, 12:09 PM
Sorry, I thought saying 'I think' would make it clear that it was a personal opinion. It just seems to be like the games I've enjoyed recently have been rules medium or less, which is reflected in the games I write.

I'm honestly against giving characters special rules-defined abilities these days, I think that they just over-complicate gameplay too much. But again, that's very much a personal preference. It shows in the games I run/play (where the most complex it might get is 'you have access to a couple of combat techniques' and most of the character is just their stats and skills).

However the fact that people have different tastes is a great thing, that's why I tried to write it as an opinion rather than a fact.

Ah. In that case, more power to you.

Personally, I like rules-crunchier systems, because I like being able to predict what my character can actually do without having to negotiate with the GM each time I come up with something new. I like the unforeseen interactions that a crunchier system can lead to, even though this also leads sometimes to stupid unforeseen interactions that need to be adjudicated out.

Anonymouswizard
2017-12-01, 12:18 PM
How much 5e have you played? The only place I can see that critique truly applies to is spells; my AT has used his actual class abilities almost constantly, and most of his spells have been used at least once (although fire bolt and shield get a lot more play time than most).

I don’t get a lot of chances to play, so a system that I can spend free time coming up with different build synergies and wacky combos in is important to my gaming experience. Different games scratch that itch differently; for example, Nobilis’ special abilities are more loose and narrativistic, but gluing together different Keys and other elements allows for a non-mechanics-driven example of build synergy. 5e DnD’s abilities are more mechanically solidified and segregated, but the race-class-background setup actually intrigued me more than the abilities themselves, and having a list of abilities which interact in one way or another is more of a bonus than anything. I could probably keep going, but I think that’s enough for me to finish up from - if every RPG company decides to follow through with toning down its mechanical complexity and depth, I’d probably be one of the folks who’s less than thrilled. I like my character building too much to be satisfied with something approaching your ideal game, Anon.

Sorry, again, trying to give personal experience. Whenever I've had a character with more than about three abilities they quickly get forgotten, no matter the system (except for spells, weirdly, but even then if I have more than a handful I'll just use the same subset over and over). Reactive abilities are even worse for me.

So yeah, I have a distinct interest in limiting the number of abilities a character has. If it gets to ten or more I'll forget them in the heat of the moment, two to five seems to be a sweet spot for me where they'll be remembered and used. Which is strangely why my favourite 5e class is the Fighter, followed by the Barbarian, as it has the fewest distinct abilities (which yes, does include spells, although they seem to count for half an ability in my brain).

CharonsHelper
2017-12-01, 12:34 PM
Personally, I like rules-crunchier systems, because I like being able to predict what my character can actually do without having to negotiate with the GM each time I come up with something new.

That's the big thing for me. I don't like playing "GM May I" as player or GM.

JBPuffin
2017-12-01, 02:20 PM
Sorry, again, trying to give personal experience. Whenever I've had a character with more than about three abilities they quickly get forgotten, no matter the system (except for spells, weirdly, but even then if I have more than a handful I'll just use the same subset over and over). Reactive abilities are even worse for me.

So yeah, I have a distinct interest in limiting the number of abilities a character has. If it gets to ten or more I'll forget them in the heat of the moment, two to five seems to be a sweet spot for me where they'll be remembered and used. Which is strangely why my favourite 5e class is the Fighter, followed by the Barbarian, as it has the fewest distinct abilities (which yes, does include spells, although they seem to count for half an ability in my brain).

I’m like that with trading card games and competitive online stuff; the pressure of competition shoots them right out of my brain. It confuses the heck out of my friend who plays League of Legends - he thinks I ought to be better than I am in practice (partially from a lack of practice, but that’s only half of it).

Knaight
2017-12-01, 05:24 PM
How much 5e have you played? The only place I can see that critique truly applies to is spells; my AT has used his actual class abilities almost constantly, and most of his spells have been used at least once (although fire bolt and shield get a lot more play time than most).

The extent to which 5e assigns abilities that are just useless isn't the point here - it's more about a preference for which character building elements are standard. To make some really sweeping generalizations that only apply to pretty traditional RPGs there's about a half dozen major categories of character abilities that crop up a lot. You've got stats, skills, talents, powers, tags, and pools. None of those are extremely well defined and some of them are pretty oblique, but as a quick set of definitions:

Stats: Attributes, derived attributes, and other mechanical constants that aren't skills. D&D examples would be the attributes, AC, saves, BAB, and move rate.
Skills: Numerical ratings for accomplishing specific tasks. Skills fit here, BAB kind of fits here (it's a good example of a fuzzy boundary), and profession ranks fit here in games like Barbarians of Lemuria (where instead of having Stealth X, Sailing Y, Climb Z you have Thief X, Navigator Y, Cultist Z).
Talents: Individual bonuses that aren't directly rolled but affect stats and skills or provide soft bonuses. Feats are a textbook example, but usually you'll see talents, gifts, or advantages used as the term.
Powers: These are abilities you have which are directly used. Spells and class abilities that aren't passive generally fit here in D&D, but if you really want to see these on display take a look at HERO system.
Tags: Tags are descriptions that don't do anything on their own but which can get tied into other traits (mostly though permissions or targeting on those traits). Alignment is a tag, as are monster types. Outside D&D the obvious example is Fate's Aspects. This is a particularly fuzzy category.
Pools: Pools are resources that dwindle with use and generally get replenished. HP and spell slots are the obvious D&D examples, but these crop up all over the place.


Anonymouswizard has been expressing a preference towards systems that are primarily or even entirely stat-skill systems, and a dispreference towards powers specifically. This preference set exists independant of the quality of a given powers system. D&D meanwhile is a stat-power system with the rest being comparatively minor.

GreatWyrmGold
2017-12-02, 05:55 PM
So yeah, I have a distinct interest in limiting the number of abilities a character has. If it gets to ten or more I'll forget them in the heat of the moment, two to five seems to be a sweet spot for me where they'll be remembered and used. Which is strangely why my favourite 5e class is the Fighter, followed by the Barbarian, as it has the fewest distinct abilities (which yes, does include spells, although they seem to count for half an ability in my brain).
Personal preference here, but I'd hate to play a character who can only do 2-5 things. In a recent campaign, I always wound up either summoning celestial hyenas or shooting my bow at things, and that was boring. (Though the fact that neither me nor Shenzi felt effective didn't help.) Now, I can see having a few abilities which worked together to let me do more meaningfully-different things, but that seems like it would run into the same issues as having that larger number of things to do with an equal number of abilities.
I suppose one objective counterargument is that I'm not sure there's a direct correlation between number of abilities and variety of available actions, especially once you strip out blatantly foolish choices (e.g, raging in a useless encounter, or not raging at the start of a major one).

I dunno if this'll help you any with making you like other character/game concepts more, but I'd recommend not making yourself decide what to do in the heat of the moment. Try planning ahead of time, in the 15-20 minutes it takes from when you roll your last dice to when your turn comes up again. Look over your spell list while the others are rolling, see if any look like they'd be useful/effective/interesting to use in your current scenario, and figure out what you'll try to do. Sure, another player's action might invalidate what you tried to do, but in most cases your strategy will be adaptable with some changes. And if not, well, you're no worse off than you would be without planning.

Anonymouswizard
2017-12-02, 06:35 PM
The extent to which 5e assigns abilities that are just useless isn't the point here - it's more about a preference for which character building elements are standard. To make some really sweeping generalizations that only apply to pretty traditional RPGs there's about a half dozen major categories of character abilities that crop up a lot. You've got stats, skills, talents, powers, tags, and pools. None of those are extremely well defined and some of them are pretty oblique, but as a quick set of definitions:

Stats: Attributes, derived attributes, and other mechanical constants that aren't skills. D&D examples would be the attributes, AC, saves, BAB, and move rate.
Skills: Numerical ratings for accomplishing specific tasks. Skills fit here, BAB kind of fits here (it's a good example of a fuzzy boundary), and profession ranks fit here in games like Barbarians of Lemuria (where instead of having Stealth X, Sailing Y, Climb Z you have Thief X, Navigator Y, Cultist Z).
Talents: Individual bonuses that aren't directly rolled but affect stats and skills or provide soft bonuses. Feats are a textbook example, but usually you'll see talents, gifts, or advantages used as the term.
Powers: These are abilities you have which are directly used. Spells and class abilities that aren't passive generally fit here in D&D, but if you really want to see these on display take a look at HERO system.
Tags: Tags are descriptions that don't do anything on their own but which can get tied into other traits (mostly though permissions or targeting on those traits). Alignment is a tag, as are monster types. Outside D&D the obvious example is Fate's Aspects. This is a particularly fuzzy category.
Pools: Pools are resources that dwindle with use and generally get replenished. HP and spell slots are the obvious D&D examples, but these crop up all over the place.


Anonymouswizard has been expressing a preference towards systems that are primarily or even entirely stat-skill systems, and a dispreference towards powers specifically. This preference set exists independant of the quality of a given powers system. D&D meanwhile is a stat-power system with the rest being comparatively minor.

Yeah, essentially this. I'm just bad at expressing myself* so I tend to say something that makes perfect sense to me and people take it in a completely different direction. Although I'm not completely against Stat-Powers systems if they leave skills and talents out of it, I like Lamentations of the Flame Princess and I don't actually know why (once we get past the nostalgia factor).

* I kid you not, I've got no clue as to how I attracted the woman I'm in a sort-of relationship with.


Personal preference here, but I'd hate to play a character who can only do 2-5 things. In a recent campaign, I always wound up either summoning celestial hyenas or shooting my bow at things, and that was boring. (Though the fact that neither me nor Shenzi felt effective didn't help.) Now, I can see having a few abilities which worked together to let me do more meaningfully-different things, but that seems like it would run into the same issues as having that larger number of things to do with an equal number of abilities.
I suppose one objective counterargument is that I'm not sure there's a direct correlation between number of abilities and variety of available actions, especially once you strip out blatantly foolish choices (e.g, raging in a useless encounter, or not raging at the start of a major one).

Okay, it's obvious we play different games. The ones I play are light on enabling abilities, to the point where they might even leave out magic systems, so the idea is that the number of actions you can take is not dictated by what's on your sheet. Flip a table to provide the party with some cover, deactivate the reactor to put out the lights, attack the hull to let out the atmosphere, these are all viable actions that don't require abilities.

Honestly, while I used to always play mages, I'm liking Barbarians a lot more. Sure, I'll still take an engineer character if the game offers because they give me a lot of thinking time when I'm using my creation abilities, but if it's something I have to use now for an advantage, I've got no problem with saying 'I attack again'.

Seriously, I hated playing a 5e Battlemaster because I had to work out if spending SD was worth it, and so never did. The Champion is a much better fit for me (and ironically the Sorcerer is the best 5e caster for me).

While your playstyle is great for you, it sucks for me. I used to play like that, and never had time to consider 'is this what my character would do' because I was too busy comparing all my options.


I dunno if this'll help you any with making you like other character/game concepts more, but I'd recommend not making yourself decide what to do in the heat of the moment. Try planning ahead of time, in the 15-20 minutes it takes from when you roll your last dice to when your turn comes up again. Look over your spell list while the others are rolling, see if any look like they'd be useful/effective/interesting to use in your current scenario, and figure out what you'll try to do. Sure, another player's action might invalidate what you tried to do, but in most cases your strategy will be adaptable with some changes. And if not, well, you're no worse off than you would be without planning.

Honestly? You're not telling me to do anything I don't do, but in the games I tend to play the situation could change significantly between one round and the next (which might take as little as five minutes). Plus I suffer from decision paralysis outside of gaming as well, it's a real problem.

Heck, when playing a game of Mutants and Masterminds I had a lot more fun when playing a speedster than a telekinetic, because I didn't have to look at my eight item array every round and pick the best action, I had to ask myself if I was going to use my speed or my strength (both were high, but I could only be in one 'mode' at a time for combat) in the situation at hand, and could actually judge how they applied. I jotted some notes down, when running fast I could move over water and up walls, and it made my decision making a lot easier. Which, believe it or not, made me start using longer term plans (including attempting to invalidate a villain's trump card before the fight with them began).

For the record, this is how I see the 5e Barbarian:
Rage: cool, an option that gives me a boost for the combat.
Unarmoured Defence: it's just a change to a number on my character sheet, I'll note my AC and I don't have to consider it.
Reckless Attack: another cool option, and one to consider every round.
Extra Attack: must remember I have that. Normally will, it's just a case of 'make two attacks a round instead of one'.
Feral Instinct: I'll honestly generally forget this, but it won't affect my enjoyment.
Brutal Critical: Awesome, I hope I remember.
Relentless Rage: Again, I'll honestly forget about it. But when I remember during the climactic battle it'll be nice.
Persistent Rage: Won't come up much, but it'll be cool.
Indomitable Might: won't really make a difference, but it's still a cool passive.
Primal Champion: Just changes numbers on the sheet, easy to remember.

That's what, two active use abilities to remember, three if I go Berserker, and five passives of which three won't overly affect me if I forget. Compare to the Fighter, who has two active abilities and one reactionary one, with most features being extra uses, and is also good, to the Monk who has seven active abilities, a couple of reactionaries and a load of passive ones without getting into the subclass. Or the Paladin, who gets four, plus spellcasting, plus a bunch of passives, and has to juggle smites with spellcasting?

GreatWyrmGold
2017-12-03, 08:29 AM
Okay, it's obvious we play different games. The ones I play are light on enabling abilities, to the point where they might even leave out magic systems, so the idea is that the number of actions you can take is not dictated by what's on your sheet.
Now I'm even more confused. You don't like having too many abilities because they make it hard to decide what to do...but what you can do isn't even related to what abilities you have?

Anonymouswizard
2017-12-03, 08:49 AM
Now I'm even more confused. You don't like having too many abilities because they make it hard to decide what to do...but what you can do isn't even related to what abilities you have?

There's already a large number of potential actions in any action situation, and I suffer from decision paralysis. Therefore having more options (or worse, not having some basic options because I don't have some ability, but that's rare) adds even more for me to consider, which makes my decision paralysis works.

Or rather, abilities adds more options, and there's already a lot of them.

Necroticplague
2017-12-03, 11:05 AM
What else can we think of? Ideas from a 3.5, 5e or system-neutral perspective are all welcome.

In almost every system I've seen, making a 'jack of all' usually falls within this category. A new player will go 'wow, they can do x&y&z&q? how is this not broken in its versatility?'. A more experienced one will go 'why would I want that when I'd rather have someone who does X, someone who does Y, someone who does Z, and someone who does Q'. Party play encourages specialization, so jacks either lag behind in use (if they're the only one in that roll), or are made redundant by someone better (where roles overlap). This is especially true if it's not possible to perform more than one role at a time (i.e, action economy, finite resources), so you're never really a hybrid, just a crappy substitute.

Similarly, backloaded damage (i.e, 'you do little damage early on, but a lot of damage late in the fight') or a focus on AoE damage tends to be this, for the same reason: you want enemies to spend as little time able to damage you as possible. So you want the damage to be ASAP to deny action, and 1 dead person and two unharmed people is preferable to 3 half dead.

Guizonde
2017-12-03, 12:40 PM
In almost every system I've seen, making a 'jack of all' usually falls within this category. A new player will go 'wow, they can do x&y&z&q? how is this not broken in its versatility?'. A more experienced one will go 'why would I want that when I'd rather have someone who does X, someone who does Y, someone who does Z, and someone who does Q'. Party play encourages specialization, so jacks either lag behind in use (if they're the only one in that roll), or are made redundant by someone better (where roles overlap). This is especially true if it's not possible to perform more than one role at a time (i.e, action economy, finite resources), so you're never really a hybrid, just a crappy substitute.

Similarly, backloaded damage (i.e, 'you do little damage early on, but a lot of damage late in the fight') or a focus on AoE damage tends to be this, for the same reason: you want enemies to spend as little time able to damage you as possible. So you want the damage to be ASAP to deny action, and 1 dead person and two unharmed people is preferable to 3 half dead.

honestly, when it comes to skills or actions, i found that overlap can be useful. i call it "necessary redundancy". for instance, your healer was the only one taken out in the fight. he's bleeding out. if no one has a modicum of skill in first aid, you've got a dead guy that could've been avoided. or, a classic group blunder: splitting the party. who can tank when the meatshield is absent? who can break locks or doors when the rogue is gone? what needs to be done is of course to coordinate how much redundancy is to be had and how it's split, but it's not a bad thing in practice, so long as you have a primary and a backup. everyone being able to do everything will make players bored to tears since it's never their moment to shine. in theory, it's awful, i agree. in practice, always have a plan b.

hell, we've got two skill monkeys in my group, and we tuned our fiddles so that we only overlap on 4 skills, and we each have 4 unique ones (silly thing, though, neither of us have a "fly" or "linguistics" skill).

GreatWyrmGold
2017-12-03, 01:05 PM
As with everything else in an RPG, versatility's utility depends heavily on how the game is designed (both by the original authors and by the GMs). But in general, if you're not deliberately trying to make versatility useful, it tends to be better to have a party of specialists.
Which isn't too surprising. I mean, the civilizations which were essentially huge parties of specialists outcompeted the ones who were huge parties of generalists.

Tinkerer
2017-12-03, 05:48 PM
In almost every system I've seen, making a 'jack of all' usually falls within this category. A new player will go 'wow, they can do x&y&z&q? how is this not broken in its versatility?'. A more experienced one will go 'why would I want that when I'd rather have someone who does X, someone who does Y, someone who does Z, and someone who does Q'. Party play encourages specialization, so jacks either lag behind in use (if they're the only one in that roll), or are made redundant by someone better (where roles overlap). This is especially true if it's not possible to perform more than one role at a time (i.e, action economy, finite resources), so you're never really a hybrid, just a crappy substitute.

There are a few systems out there which do tend to encourage versatility via diminishing returns, low ceilings, and sometimes having everything be indispensable. Savage Worlds is one which springs immediately to mind (although some of the particular settings not so much). Most characters within that system tend to have MAD like crazy, each point that you spend within a skill gets less and less powerful, and due to the low ceilings you usually wind up spreading out to a few different areas.

EDIT: Although that's just skills, the edges are what makes the character and you usually want to focus on those.

Knaight
2017-12-03, 06:12 PM
There are a few systems out there which do tend to encourage versatility via diminishing returns, low ceilings, and sometimes having everything be indispensable. Savage Worlds is one which springs immediately to mind (although some of the particular settings not so much). Most characters within that system tend to have MAD like crazy, each point that you spend within a skill gets less and less powerful, and due to the low ceilings you usually wind up spreading out to a few different areas.

There's more than a few - it's not uncommon in stat-skill systems for skills to get dramatically more expensive as they go up. Common formulas include skills costing N points to increase from N-1 to N, and skills costing 2^(N-1) points to increase from N-1 to N. You can have Piloting 6, or you can have Piloting 5, Firearms 4, Athletics 3, Survival 2, Diplomacy 1, and Science 1 for the same price. The latter is probably a more useful array most of the time.

Guizonde
2017-12-04, 02:08 AM
There's more than a few - it's not uncommon in stat-skill systems for skills to get dramatically more expensive as they go up. Common formulas include skills costing N points to increase from N-1 to N, and skills costing 2^(N-1) points to increase from N-1 to N. You can have Piloting 6, or you can have Piloting 5, Firearms 4, Athletics 3, Survival 2, Diplomacy 1, and Science 1 for the same price. The latter is probably a more useful array most of the time.

i'll have to check with my dm, but that sounds strangely similar to rogue trader's advancement. all in all, i'll keep preaching versatility until between the party we cover all skills in that particular game... the dice gods have been clement towards violence, less so towards subtlety...

Cynthaer
2017-12-05, 06:14 PM
There's already a large number of potential actions in any action situation, and I suffer from decision paralysis. Therefore having more options (or worse, not having some basic options because I don't have some ability, but that's rare) adds even more for me to consider, which makes my decision paralysis works.

Or rather, abilities adds more options, and there's already a lot of them.

I think I get what you're saying. It's similar to what Mark Rosewater calls "board complexity" in Magic: the Gathering—the more cards with relevant effects there are on the battlefield, the more mental load there is on the players and the more different places you have to remember to look for things to track.

That makes perfect sense with your class preferences, too. The Champion is specifically designed to minimize both character-build decisions and abilities to track in combat, while the Battlemaster is designed to give lots of turn-by-turn resource management decisions to people who like that. Berserker Barbarians are similarly straightforward, for the reasons you outlined.

Setting aside whether the class is underpowered, the Sorcerer has also historically been "Wizard, but with fewer choices". That's bad for its raw power level, but it's good for people who don't want to keep track of more spells, or decide what to prepare every day, or even worry about whether they should be constantly trying to find more spells for their spellbook. The addition of Sorcerer metamagic in 5e adds a wrinkle, but it sounds like it's not a problem for you.

This also makes sense with this:


I'm not completely against Stat-Powers systems if they leave skills and talents out of it [...]

A purely stat-skill system with talents but no powers lets you calculate your bonuses up-front. In-game, you only have to care about (A) what's actually going on, and (B) how good you are at the various things you might think of doing. You only have to care about the one list of numbers, in other words.

A pure stat-powers system with no skills/talents forces you to consider your mechanical options, but at least those are still the only things on your character sheet you have to worry about. You get a similar effect because the scope of things to think about at a given time is reduced, and they're all of basically the same type.

Contrast something like a 5e Paladin, who gets to choose between normal attacks, Lay on Hands (X/day), prepared spells (X/day), Divine Smite (using a spell slot), various Channel Divinity options (1/rest), and the normal non-attack combat actions. That's not a problem for a lot of people, but having all these options and resources spread around the character sheet can get very overwhelming if that's not your thing.

Tinkerer
2017-12-05, 06:28 PM
There's more than a few - it's not uncommon in stat-skill systems for skills to get dramatically more expensive as they go up. Common formulas include skills costing N points to increase from N-1 to N, and skills costing 2^(N-1) points to increase from N-1 to N. You can have Piloting 6, or you can have Piloting 5, Firearms 4, Athletics 3, Survival 2, Diplomacy 1, and Science 1 for the same price. The latter is probably a more useful array most of the time.

My apologies, I meant that there is a few which use all three methods. And it truly depends on the system, I can think of quite a few where (particularly for the piloting skill) specialization is still quite encouraged despite the increasing costs. To put it another way a system which has none of those 3 methods generally actively encourages over-specialization, a system which has 1 is generally fairly neutral, and a system which has 2 or more most likely actively discourages over-specialization. But that is a simplification.

Cynthaer
2017-12-06, 04:26 PM
My apologies, I meant that there is a few which use all three methods. And it truly depends on the system, I can think of quite a few where (particularly for the piloting skill) specialization is still quite encouraged despite the increasing costs. To put it another way a system which has none of those 3 methods generally actively encourages over-specialization, a system which has 1 is generally fairly neutral, and a system which has 2 or more most likely actively discourages over-specialization. But that is a simplification.

All this discussion of standard RPG components is giving me a lot more insight into why D&D put the specific classes and archetypes they chose into the starter set. Even though the system as a whole is heavily stat-power based, the prebuilt characters (at low levels) pretty well cover the extremes that you would expect to see within the system.

The two Champion Fighters let the player more or less pretend they're in a pure stat-skill system, with emphasis on the stats. Straightforward.

The Thief Rogue is also pretty much a stat-skill character, but with more emphasis on the skills and talents. Being a Halfling adds a few powers as well.

The Cleric and Wizard, like all casters, are heavily stat-power characters from level 1, with the Wizard built as a High Elf to cram in even more powers (spells).

(Obviously in 5e every character ends up accumulating a bunch of powers as they grow, and everybody engages with the skill system outside of combat. It's not the same as actually playing a pure stat-skill or stat-power system, but my point is the designers seem to have intentionally constructed the pre-built characters to be spread across the design space within the 5e system.)

JBPuffin
2017-12-06, 07:11 PM
All this discussion of standard RPG components is giving me a lot more insight into why D&D put the specific classes and archetypes they chose into the starter set. Even though the system as a whole is heavily stat-power based, the prebuilt characters (at low levels) pretty well cover the extremes that you would expect to see within the system.

The two Champion Fighters let the player more or less pretend they're in a pure stat-skill system, with emphasis on the stats. Straightforward.

The Thief Rogue is also pretty much a stat-skill character, but with more emphasis on the skills and talents. Being a Halfling adds a few powers as well.

The Cleric and Wizard, like all casters, are heavily stat-power characters from level 1, with the Wizard built as a High Elf to cram in even more powers (spells).

(Obviously in 5e every character ends up accumulating a bunch of powers as they grow, and everybody engages with the skill system outside of combat. It's not the same as actually playing a pure stat-skill or stat-power system, but my point is the designers seem to have intentionally constructed the pre-built characters to be spread across the design space within the 5e system.)

Oh yeah, that’s entirely intentional. Building pre-gens to cover the spectrum allows the maximum amount of people with their varying play styles to find an option that suits them.

johnbragg
2017-12-11, 08:18 PM
Yeah, but they're full casters. Even though their spell list is terrible, they still have access to Sanctified spells, spell list-expanding techniques, and the things on this list (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?541032-Spell-slots-as-(not-literal)-quot-currency-quot).

That requires a fair level of op fu. If you stacked the same amount of cheese on a bard, you'd be close to Tier 1. If you stacked it on a Tier 1 caster, you're just showing off.

Velaryon
2017-12-12, 02:00 PM
As with everything else in an RPG, versatility's utility depends heavily on how the game is designed (both by the original authors and by the GMs). But in general, if you're not deliberately trying to make versatility useful, it tends to be better to have a party of specialists.
Which isn't too surprising. I mean, the civilizations which were essentially huge parties of specialists outcompeted the ones who were huge parties of generalists.

I think group size affects the utility of generalists vs. specialists as well. Not just in an RPG group, but in general. The more people you have, the smaller the spectrum of abilities you need each person to have. Since characters are generated with a finite amount of resources they can devote to their abilities (whether that's ability score points, skill ranks, other class features to choose, dots to put in different attributes, or whatever mechanism the RPG uses), having more characters allows each one to focus those resources on improving their areas of specialty.

Conversely, in smaller groups the generalists will be advantaged because they allow the group to cover multiple different roles.

CharonsHelper
2017-12-12, 03:02 PM
As with everything else in an RPG, versatility's utility depends heavily on how the game is designed (both by the original authors and by the GMs). But in general, if you're not deliberately trying to make versatility useful, it tends to be better to have a party of specialists.


That's largely because most tasks are generally designed for one person to do at a time. Even in combat most games push having a character focused on one thing.

If you make #s matter more and/or actions be more situational, then going generalist is more viable as you can add to the competent # of people for non-combat and in combat pick the action which best fits the situation rather than just using your alpha tactic all the time.