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View Full Version : D&D 3.x Other Advice/Assistance Needed on a [Racial Feature] for Crystal Race(s) [P.E.A.C.H.]



DracoDei
2020-08-05, 12:55 PM
Important set-up: This race is probably getting at least a +2 to Constitution and will be LA +1. Modifiers to other stats might exist, but for the purposes of this thread only Constitution really matters.

The ability that I need help building that will be the major reason a player would take this race follows. More specifically I need help getting the numbers in the chart balanced since they are pretty wild guesses right now and I'm having great trouble thinking about how to refine them. This would include knowing how much that balance might tend to vary from campaign to campaign.

Brittle Protection (Su): Whenever you would take the indicated amount of damage or less of any given damage type, you instead take no damage of that type. This applies only to bludgeoning, slashing, piercing, and basic energy (acid, cold, electricity, fire, and sonic) damage; this protection does not apply against other more esoteric types of damage. You can determine the effects of this ability after applying other defenses you may have that reduce the damage you take, such as damage reduction and energy resistances.

((Currently, at levels 4+ this is simply (ECL*2)-3, but I'm keeping the chart because that might easily change in the future and it also might help some people, depending on how their minds process numbers.))


ECL Brittle Defense



1
3*[/th]



2
3[/th]



3
4[/th]



4
5[/th]



5
7[/th]



6
9[/th]



7
11[/th]



8
13[/th]



9
15[/th]



10
17[/th]



11
19[/th]



12
21[/th]



13
23[/th]



14
25[/th]



15
27[/th]



16
29[/th]



17
31[/th]



18
33[/th]



19
35[/th]



20
37[/th]


*In case someone ends up making an LA +0 race with this quality.


Final Design Notes and Requests: Given the binary nature of negating a non-trivial amount of damage, I really do feel that non-multiples of 5 and advancing every level are probably going to prove necessary.

Less important questions than getting the numbers right in the chart:

How high of a racial constitution bonus is needed to keep this from being too much of a gamble?
In general, what sort of classes would take this the most? Barbarians? Other full BAB classes? Arcane casters with d4 HD? More specifically, the main race I have in mind would be extremely limited in what spells they can learn, even if they take a full-caster class? Basically, unless it manipulates crystals somehow, they can't learn it. I assume that this wouldn't make much of a difference since it would suit a beefy front-liner much more than a "Please don't hurt me!" class, but I want to double check... maybe I'm missing something and Sorcerer's could skip several defensive spells if they took this.



Would a reminder that sneak attack, skirmish, sudden strike, etc. all add to the basic physical damage, rather than being a separate type of damage be helpful, or would it just add unnecessarily to the word-count?
Should I keep the bit about Stone Dragon Maneuvers and such?
Eventually someone (maybe even me) might want to make this in magic-item form. What should the formula for the price be?




So... help me out here? I want to offer this racial option to my players in a campaign I am probably starting in the next week or two and I've probably had this idea, and its related balance issue cooking in the back of my brain for years, so I REALLY need something to break it loose.

Garryl
2020-08-05, 02:46 PM
If it's not supposed to work like damage reduction or interact with things like damage reduction, just don't call it damage reduction. Problem solved, no need for specific exceptions for DR bypassers like Mountain Hammer.

Brittle Protection (Su): Whenever you would take the indicated amount of damage or less of any given damage type, you instead take no damage of that type. This applies only to bludgeoning, slashing, piercing, and energy (acid, cold, electricity, fire, and sonic) damage; this protection does not apply against other more esoteric types of damage. You can determine the effects of this ability after applying other defenses you may have that reduce the damage you take, such as damage reduction and resistances.

With that out of the way, I don't think this is necessarily a good mechanic. It's too swingy. Against some enemies, it does nothing. Against others, it makes you immune to damage. Against a scant few in the middle, it deflects some of their attacks, but not all, and the damage scales involved in 3.5 mean that there is no number that fits a comfortable amount of enemies in that middle ground. This sort of defense utterly dumps on unoptimized fighter-types, and even semi-optimized multiattack-type builds (dual wielding, archery, etc.). Optimized power attackers, which are already usually the strongest martial option, get to ignore it.

Blasting spellcasters get to largely ignore this, too, as spells tend more towards singular big explosions of damage, although the numbers you provided are in the right range to make it a pseudo-Evasion effect, as full damage will always overwhelm it, but half damage does leave unoptimized damage spells (1d6/level) sitting right in its range. It's also kind of interesting with high-level martial adepts around, because while most single-attack strikes will just ignore it, thanks to their healthy bonus damage, a number of higher-level Diamond Mind and Tiger Claw maneuvers focus instead on making larger numbers of weaker attacks. This could have the effect of providing protection from some, but not all of a martial adept's arsenal, which is the kind of result you want.

If you want to make this work, make sure you go through the Monster Manual, or at least the monsters you're planning on using for your campaign, and compare their damage ranges at various levels to the numbers you plan on using. Figure out how powerful you want this effect to be (say, mitigating about 10-15% of damage taken) and choose some numbers that fit. Try to make sure there aren't many enemies that will either always exceed that amount of damage, or will never be able to reach it. And if you can't find a number that fits in that narrow range, maybe consider some alternative options.

DracoDei
2020-08-05, 10:44 PM
If it's not supposed to work like damage reduction or interact with things like damage reduction, just don't call it damage reduction. Problem solved, no need for specific exceptions for DR bypassers like Mountain Hammer.

Brittle Protection (Su): Whenever you would take the indicated amount of damage or less of any given damage type, you instead take no damage of that type. This applies only to bludgeoning, slashing, piercing, and energy (acid, cold, electricity, fire, and sonic) damage; this protection does not apply against other more esoteric types of damage. You can determine the effects of this ability after applying other defenses you may have that reduce the damage you take, such as damage reduction and resistances.
Thanks. Inserted.


With that out of the way, I don't think this is necessarily a good mechanic. It's too swingy. Against some enemies, it does nothing. Against others, it makes you immune to damage. Against a scant few in the middle, it deflects some of their attacks, but not all, and the damage scales involved in 3.5 mean that there is no number that fits a comfortable amount of enemies in that middle ground. This sort of defense utterly dumps on unoptimized fighter-types, and even semi-optimized multiattack-type builds (dual wielding, archery, etc.). Optimized power attackers, which are already usually the strongest martial option, get to ignore it.

Blasting spellcasters get to largely ignore this, too, as spells tend more towards singular big explosions of damage, although the numbers you provided are in the right range to make it a pseudo-Evasion effect, as full damage will always overwhelm it, but half damage does leave unoptimized damage spells (1d6/level) sitting right in its range. It's also kind of interesting with high-level martial adepts around, because while most single-attack strikes will just ignore it, thanks to their healthy bonus damage, a number of higher-level Diamond Mind and Tiger Claw maneuvers focus instead on making larger numbers of weaker attacks. This could have the effect of providing protection from some, but not all of a martial adept's arsenal, which is the kind of result you want.

If you want to make this work, make sure you go through the Monster Manual, or at least the monsters you're planning on using for your campaign, and compare their damage ranges at various levels to the numbers you plan on using. Figure out how powerful you want this effect to be (say, mitigating about 10-15% of damage taken) and choose some numbers that fit. Try to make sure there aren't many enemies that will either always exceed that amount of damage, or will never be able to reach it. And if you can't find a number that fits in that narrow range, maybe consider some alternative options.

Ah, so I wasn't just stuck, it really IS that hard to balance. Perhaps even impossible, at least in an even vaguely campaign-agnostic way?

One problem you didn't even mention (at least explicitly) is that characters of a given ECL aren't balanced against individual monsters they are balanced against encounters. A single goblin is a reasonable encounter for a 1st level party. Twelve of them is reasonable for a higher level party. But their damage-per-hit doesn't increase between the two cases.

DracoDei
2020-08-11, 01:04 PM
I just realized that "immune to damage in some encounters" is actually not an issue since "flying character with a bow" can be done in the setting I'm using* from 1st class level. Since I am doing commoner levels instead of normal L.A. the only reason you couldn't do it as an E.C.L. 1 character is that you might not be able to afford a bow on a commoner's starting wealth.
*It's Ponies.

Does this change your assessment?