What 3.5/PF content disappointed you mechancially?

[Ottriman]

We've all been there, there was something you thought was really cool and interesting. Something you got hyped for, only for it to disappoint. Maybe it was a promising monster with cool as hell lore which turned out to lack the abilities to be any threat. Perhaps a spell with incredibly cool effects, ruined by so many creatures being resistant or immune to it, or a too high spell level. Perhaps it was a class with lore and implied gameplay that got you intrigued, but which turned out to be far too weak or strong.

Lets talk about the times the mechanics let us down on some piece of content we were genuinely interested in or excited for. It can be 3,5 or Pathfinder or Pathfinder 2e. Classes, feats, items, spells, monsters, and rules subsystems are all fair game here. Just make sure people know what thing you are talking about in which edition.

I will start off with a Prestige Class from D&D 3.5.

The Spellsword prestige class from Complete Warrior has one of the coolest art pieces in D&D 3,5. The armored caster holding a sword in one hand while magically manipulating a tome with the other next to a statue head was just super cool. Plus the fantasy of casting powerful spells through a weapon while being decked out in armor is just so appealing.

However, the mechanical execution is bad. The ability to ignore increasing percentages of spell failure and the ability to gradually channel more spells through weapons are not bad, but are stretched out over 10 levels while 5 whole levels of spell-casting are removed. In the end the character ends up with a few cool tricks but losing too much core competency. I wouldn't have needed it to be stronger than a normal full caster or anything, but I think it'd have been great as a 5 level PRC with like 4/5 casting levels and all the same special features.

Now onto you, explain and discuss content that failed to meet expectations for yourself.:smallsmile:

[Quertus]

The move from 3.0 to 3.5 really let me down. Haste went from letting Fighters get full attacks (by partial charging, then full attacking) to just giving them an extra attack. "Mundanes can't have nice things" became the tagline, as useful things like Portable Holes and Winged Cloaks became less affordable, Keen stopped stacking with Improved Critical, and that didn't matter as much, because Vorpal went from triggering on a crit to triggering on a natural 20. :smallfrown:

Epic Mystic Theurge was a huge mechanical letdown. Better to just alternate between Wizard and Cleric.

"Monster" Level Adjustment was a joke. See also all the threads attempting to divine correct level adjustments for everything.

Being worse at their jobs, the True Necromancer who controlled fewer undead and... "Psion with more PP" who actually got worse at everything definitely didn't put a smile on my face.

But the worst was probably the Wild Mage. It was so much fun in 2e, and had cool interactions with various things, and in 3e it just... wasn't. It was the final nail in the coffin of 3e caring about fun, because the devs clearly thought balance was so important as to be worth sacrificing everything for. And they did so well at creating that balance, too. :smallsigh:

[vasilidor]

Monster level adjustment never needed to be a thing.
A CR 4 monster was, on average, the equivalent of a level 4 character. Same with CR8, 12 etc.
The not being able to cast polymorph spells that benefitted martials. This meant that one of the best buff spells in the game could now only be cast on the caster, allowing them to entirely overshadow the martials in martial combat.
The continued nerfs to martials from 3.5 to pathfinder.
Yes, I know the classes got better, but monsters got better defenses against martials, weapons were nerfed, combat maneuvers got nerfed, feat chains got worse.

[Ottriman]

Epic Mystic Theurge was a huge mechanical letdown. Better to just alternate between Wizard and Cleric.

"Monster" Level Adjustment was a joke. See also all the threads attempting to divine correct level adjustments for everything.

Being worse at their jobs, the True Necromancer who controlled fewer undead and... "Psion with more PP" who actually got worse at everything definitely didn't put a smile on my face.



Yep, the first two are some really popular letdowns and I agree wholeheartedly. However.... A class called True Necromancer that is worse at being a necromancer than a straight normal caster? Where is that from? So I can see such a sad class for myself.:smallconfused:

[H_H_F_F]

The CW Samurai. CW was my first splatbook, and I was supremely hyped when I saw the Samurai, and immediately declared I would play one. Power aside (we were preteens, extremely low-op) it just... wasn't fun. There's nothing there.

[Pinkie Pyro]

This comes up constantly!

Just yesterday, I was looking at nightsong infiltrator, and it has this wonderful gem;


Starting at 2nd level, a nightsong infiltrator can study a small area (typically up to 10 feet square, such as a doorway or guard post) in order to prepare for infiltrating that area. If the infiltrator spends 1 hour studying the area from a distance of no more than 60 feet, she gains a +2 competence bonus on Balance, Climb, Disable Device, Hide, Move Silently, Open Lock, Search, and Tumble checks attempted in that area for the next 24 hours. All allies within 30 feet of the infiltrator gain the same bonus in that area. (The allies need not be present while the infiltrator studies the area.)

At 8th level, this bonus increases to +4.

That is an awful long time to be 60 ft away from a place for the same bonus as aid another. The idea behind the ability is amazing, but the execution falls so flat.

Or almost any alchemical specialty item. Jump through 3 hoops and pay for a +1 bonus to something.


A big problem with the system is a lack of cohesiveness with niche VS general bonuses. It's ok to give a +4 or even +8 if it's something specific, like attempting to maintain balance while fighting on a boarding plank, and it's fine to still have +2s for general use things (to hit, AC) so that they still feel impactful.

+1s should be a thing for specific, powerful options like increasing spell slots or caster level.

[Ottriman]

This comes up constantly!

Just yesterday, I was looking at nightsong infiltrator, and it has this wonderful gem;



SNIPPED

Wow, that is an impressively bad ability. 1 hour for +2 to a few skills in one tiny passage.:smalleek:

[Psyren]

3.5e: Everything in Tome of Magic. Yes, including Binder. It was the best cooked of the bunch but the class still needed work, particularly its chassis, which the PF Pactmaker improved on considerably.

PF1: Shifter, hands down. This had so much potential to be the super-fun shapeshifting martial, and the end result was so lame. Also Kineticist. In both cases, the concept was utterly let down by the mechanics.

PF2: ...No comment.

[tyckspoon]

Yep, the first two are some really popular letdowns and I agree wholeheartedly. However.... A class called True Necromancer that is worse at being a necromancer than a straight normal caster? Where is that from? So I can see such a sad class for myself.:smallconfused:

Libris Mortis (The Book of Bad Latin.) It's kind of a weird necromancy focused Mystic Theurge variant - intended entry appears to be the usual 3/3 split, because it requires a 2nd level Divine spell and a 2nd level Arcane spell, then over the course of its 14 levels (..it's a really weird class, they want you to just commit to the thing all the way if you take it) it gives 13/14 progression in arcane+divine classes. So if you commit to it all the way through you wind up 4 levels behind normal casting progression, plus you had to take Spell Focus: Necromancy (which is utterly useless if you want to do undead minions!) and commit to Death domain (which is.. at least not bad, but there's other stuff you probably would prefer for a domain power + domain spells.)

So what do you get for that? Well, you get up to a +4 bonus to your effective rebuking level and caster level for necromancy spells. Ok. That makes you.. exactly as good at these things as a straight leveled Cleric or Wizard. What else you got? You get to cast a few Necromancy spells as spell like abilities. Create Undead, Create Greater Undead, Wail of the Banshee, ok, those are nice. How much can you do that? Oh. 1/day. Um. And you explicitly still need material components for the undead making spells. You know what else would let you cast these spells a few more times per day? How about those 4 levels of casting advancement you set on fire in order to be a True Necromancer?

You also get to be a walking Desecrate spell. That's legitimately Kinda Cool! But.. like, it's also a level 2 spell that has a pretty trivial cost, when you want to make some undead you just cast it. So this mostly means 'you have an aura of +1 for your undead buddies.' (+2 if you can convince your DM that as a powerful cleric you qualify as a 'shrine or altar' of your god.)

Edit: Miscounted the chart. It's 12/14 progression, so ending up behind 5 levels in both arcane and divine progressions. Which means your cleric 3/wizard 3/True Necromancer 14 with a specifically dedicated prestige class is -worse- at Rebuking Undead than a level 20 cleric and has a smaller Animate Dead/Command Undead pool than a straight 20 Cleric or Wizard would - the bonus feature that is supposed to help make up for this only gets +4, so you Rebuke/Animate Dead/etc as a level 19. The only real benefit you're getting here, necromantically speaking, is if your DM runs that your arcane and divine classes maintain separate Animate Dead control pools, in which case 2x19 is more than 1x20.

[loky1109]

The CW Samurai. CW was my first splatbook, and I was supremely hyped when I saw the Samurai, and immediately declared I would play one. Power aside (we were preteens, extremely low-op) it just... wasn't fun. There's nothing there.
Totally agree. Even 3.0 Master Samurai PrC was better.

[Zanos]

Monster level adjustment never needed to be a thing.
A CR 4 monster was, on average, the equivalent of a level 4 character. Same with CR8, 12 etc.
I actually don't agree with this. While the implementation of LA is bad, the idea that a monster is less powerful in the hands of the DM than the player is based on sound logic; a monster usually exists within the space of a single encounter, therefore it's abilities only need to be evaluated for their effectiveness within that space. That's not the case for PCs. For a monster, fast healing 5 means that he might have an extra 20hp in the fight. For a PC, it means they can completely ignore HP attrition. Likewise, DR 5/cold iron usually just means the PCs need to switch weapons, for a PC, it means they're reducing nearly all incoming damage from nearly every printed creature by 5, and even that amount of DR can make you immune to many monsters that are stacking natural attacks. For a monster, an at-will SLA and a 3 per day SLA are basically the same thing, for a PC, they're completely game changing. Consider a vampires at-will dominate in the space of an encounter and on a PC and see how it's worth far more on a persistent character. Being incorporeal just means the PCs need to use magic weapons and specific spells and might have a rougher time getting damage on the target, while an incorporeal PC is basically invincible since most creatures can't natively fight something incorporeal.

So I do agree with the premise of higher LA than CR. The implementation prevented the "everyone is a vampire" problem, but it doesn't really let you play as monsters in an effective way. Perhaps not a bad tradeoff, since D&D isn't really supposed to be about monster PCs, but it shouldn't really be touted as a feature when it was intentionally crippled.

[Quertus]

Yep, the first two are some really popular letdowns and I agree wholeheartedly. However.... A class called True Necromancer that is worse at being a necromancer than a straight normal caster? Where is that from? So I can see such a sad class for myself.:smallconfused:

Eh, I'm senile and going from memory - was it the Dread Necromancer? Anyway, IIRC, it lost caster levels, which meant it could control fewer undead, with no class features that would mitigate this problem let alone reverse this imbalance in its favor.

Huh. The internets have failed me. Dread Necromancer is a base class, not what I was looking for. True Necromancer is a decent-ish Mystic Theurge that actually advances Turning, but cannot Turn or Create as powerful of undead as a straight Cleric or Necromancer or even Mystic Theurge of the same level could. So maybe that's what I was thinking? Or maybe there's something even worse that I cannot find on a casual Google/Playground search.

EDIT: Looks like @tyckspoon gave a better answer while I was lost reading old Playground posts that pinged "True" and "Necromancer". :smallbiggrin: Kudos!

[AvatarVecna]

Player: "I would like to do [thing that's clearly a skill thing ripped straight out of a movie/book/video game]."

DM: "Roll a [ability/skill] check."


Player: "I would like to do [thing that's clearly a skill thing ripped straight out of a movie/book video game]."

DM: "I'm sorry, the ability to do [thing] is locked behind possessing the right [skill trick/feat/PrC/item]."

Hate this. Hate this with a fiery passion. There's so much wasted ink in 3.5 where they could've just made something a new skill use and instead gated it behind a feat. Whyyyyyyyyy

[Pex]

Truenamer - Cool concept, terrible execution. It fails to function by its own design.

Incarnum - Cool concept but not given enough Essentia to do much at low level you're barely using it. To spend a feat only to get 1 point is horrible.

Book of Nine Swords - Especially for Crusader but Warblade has it too, the level you get a stance is out of sync to when stances are available by their maneuver level. For Crusader you are one level short.

[Darg]

The move from 3.0 to 3.5 really let me down.

The more I understand the differences between 3.0 and the 3.5 update the more disappointed in 3.5 I am. Something specific about this is that they break up the Emotion spell into separate spells or how they somewhat nerfed the x animal x ability score spells (i.e. Cat's Grace).

[Saintheart]

Monks. I wanted a character who can punch through rock barehanded and I got something that can run away very fast.

/thread

[Crake]

Monster level adjustment never needed to be a thing.
A CR 4 monster was, on average, the equivalent of a level 4 character. Same with CR8, 12 etc.
The not being able to cast polymorph spells that benefitted martials. This meant that one of the best buff spells in the game could now only be cast on the caster, allowing them to entirely overshadow the martials in martial combat.
The continued nerfs to martials from 3.5 to pathfinder.
Yes, I know the classes got better, but monsters got better defenses against martials, weapons were nerfed, combat maneuvers got nerfed, feat chains got worse.

The idea is that, while a monster might be the equivalent of a character of their CR in the context of a single encounter, over the course of a campaign, those at will monster abilities become much stronger than simply CR= level.

Take a succubus for example, CR7, but they can teleport all over the world, charm and suggest at will, shift to the ethereal plane to scout and spy, have DR10 that most things wont be able to overcome, and have a bunch of strong resistances and immunities. Definitely far stronger than a level 7 character, and if you stick to the monster advancement rules, you could have a level “17” succubus with four different classes at level 5, as long as they were all “nonassociated”

[Ottriman]

SNIP explanation


SNIP explanation

Wow, that is an incredibly strange and underwhelming class. Thank you for the explanation.

Anyhow onto a general disappointment, I'd have to say Most Feats. Most feats grant some minor niche situational bonus to a d20 roll, or unlock a martial ability that becomes quickly obsolete without more feats pumped into a chain. This applies to all iterations of 3.x and PF to varying extents.

[Satinavian]

Wow, that is an incredibly strange and underwhelming class. Thank you for the explanation.As prestige classes go, it is not particularly bad. It is just also not really good. If you are going "I want to be mystic theurge with undead focus and don't like losing my rebuking advancement or that the actual undead creating spells come really late", it is pretty decent. But if you are fine with the spells and slots you get as e.g. a pure necromantic cleric, you are likely better off without.

But that brings me to my own disappointment. Ok, it is actually 3.0, not 3.5, but there always was a dearth of undead focussed prestige classes for clerics. And one of the only ones that were printed is the Horned Harbinger.
I was so happy to finally get one and then it turns out to be a prestige for basically Myrkul priests that does not advance any casting at all. Ok, you could enter without having casting but then your Rebuke would be pitiful, you wouldn't have much use for the granted domain and the main thing the PrC gives, Animated Dead and allowing more undead per caster level, would be hurt as well.

Extreme disappointment.

Compared to that, the True Necromancer is near ideal.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Monster level adjustments were in my opinion the single best thing to come out of 3.X, and definitely needed to be there on top of CR, as others have already mentioned. However, still whyyy didn't they put more thoughts into it to actually make monsters playable instead of making them a punishment for experienced players trying something new?

Agree with "most feats". Pathfinder fixed a lot of those, but Power Attack, Combat Expertise, Point Blank Shot, Two-Weapon Fighting... should have been already available in the base rules, maybe behind a BAB wall rather than a feat wall, and the rest should be combined so that they actually feel like you learned something new instead of having a +2 bonus on something sometimes. I would probably use a feat that did both Weapon Focus, Specialization and Cleave, and another one that did Greater WF, GWS and GCleave, while I'm never taking the current ones outside feat taxes.

Monks, of course. Just let them use the four elements, fly, immediately use their flurry without malus. Give them things to do that a TWF fighter cannot.

Book-based magic. By that I mean Polymorph (from Alter Self to Shapechange and Wild Shape in general), and Planar Binding (from lesser Planar Ally to Gate), and in a lesser measure Anyspell and Shadow Xation. Spells that actually become more powerful the more books you own in real life. They wanted 3.X to be the edition where you could find anything? Fine! But don't make it also the edition where you can bypass the versatility cap of your class. Really, Polymorph put such a burden on the devs themselves to always balance HD and power (which inevitably made the LA system obsolete, by the way, yes I blame Polymorph for that) that they nerfed it twice and eventually removed it from official games to replace it with the Polymorph school instead, which they should have done when going from 3.0 to 3.5. And don't get me started on Assume Supernatural Ability and Master of Many Forms.

Epic levels. No epic feat feels epic, they either feel broken or useless. Epic classes are boring without epic feats, and do not give enough new things to do. Later, they kinda fixed it with epic destinies, epic vestiges and warlock invocations, though.

The uselessness of BAB. I mean, that's good to have more attacks, but there should be a much better incentive to keep taking martial levels than just being able to make another attack at -15.

Skills. Epic usages of skills are cool, there probably should have been more, way more uses for skills.

The tarrasque. Just take Pathfinder's tarrasque, it's way better.

Paladins, fighters. Once again, Pathfinder's your friend. (excuse me, how many smites per day?)

[eBarbarossa]

Ley Lines

They could have been cool, with Mages siphoning off mystical power for incredibly powerful spells as long as you were at the nexus of several lines, or allowing casters to ignore range restrictions as long as their spell went along a ley line. Instead we got "You get +1 CL when you're in a forest/desert/whatever you chose."

[Gnaeus]

Kineticist. Because Warlock was too strong maybe? Alchemist was too easy to play? IDK

Spirit Shaman. Not unplayable, but essentially operating off 1/3 of the druid list because so many spells are only useful in combination with AC or WS or are only really helpful once per day. Its not bad, its a 9th level caster. But the number of times I found myself prepping Heal because I knew it was a spell that I would find uses for in virtually every fight and then realizing how much better I would have been as a Favored Soul annoyed me. (Our campaign kept going places where summons didn't work or had other issues, which contributed to the bad).

[Draconi Redfir]

I am exclusively talking about pathfinder 1e here. i haven't played any of the other systems lately.

Fighters:
They should have more mundane options to solutions. Let fighters be "Mundane masters" where they're great without magic items or spells. As it is, everyone's idea of making a good fighter is apparently cover them in magic ASAP. I don't want magic! i wanna be a badass normal!

Cantrips:
In PF1e, Cantrips don't scale with level. So you've got a level 1 wizard and a level 20 wizard. Both are dealing identical damage with an acid splash. Seriously? the Wizard never figured out how to make one of the most basic spells just a little bit better? Cantrips have GREAT potential as a spellcaster's "Fallback" spells since they have unlimited casts. A Wizard who ran out of spell slots for the day could keep participating in combat by casting half-decent cantrips. As it is though, they do so little damage that they won't even bypass the minimum amount of damage reduction.

Elemental spells:
Similar to the above. "Acid splash" is a spell right? a spell that deals acid damage at a range? Well then why is there not an otherwise identical version of that spell for the other elements like Fire, Electricity, and Cold? I'm not 100% right now but I'm pretty sure at least one of those is missing from the list. Honestly more options to just change a spell's element would be great. If you can throw a fireball, why not an acid ball? Wall of fire? Why not wall of electricity? All functionally identical, just changing the one elemental damage type you get. I can see an argument for not doing this with Sonic damage just because that's kinda OP, but i see no reason why the others shouldn't be allowed.

Spells in general:
It's always bugged me that despite the HUGE array of Spells that exist out there, you are INCREDIBLY limited in what you can do with magic. If there's no spell out there that can do it, you just can't do it. Want to make a teacup orbit your head? Guess what, impossible because there is no "orbit your head" spells. Ignore the existence of things like Ioun stones and spells that make things float. there's no specific "make item orbit head" spell, so it can't be done! Just recently in my campaign, the Oracle turned all my character's Rum into Water using "Purify food and drink". Why can't they just do that in reverse in order to turn it back into Rum? You're telling me there's a spell to turn Stone into Meat, but no spell to turn Stone into Wood? Why? We just can't do it because reasons? A more flexible spell system where you have more control over what you can do would be great IMHO. Something like "Turn [Material] into [material] with some kind of graph showing what spell level you'd need based on how different / valuable the materials are or something.

[RexDart]

This comes up constantly!

Just yesterday, I was looking at nightsong infiltrator, and it has this wonderful gem;



That is an awful long time to be 60 ft away from a place for the same bonus as aid another. The idea behind the ability is amazing, but the execution falls so flat.


But it stacks with Aid Another! Do you not see the amazing possibilities of the class now? Really, it should be nerfed if anything....

[Beni-Kujaku]

Spells in general:
It's always bugged me that despite the HUGE array of Spells that exist out there, you are INCREDIBLY limited in what you can do with magic. If there's no spell out there that can do it, you just can't do it. Want to make a teacup orbit your head? Guess what, impossible because there is no "orbit your head" spells. Ignore the existence of things like Ioun stones and spells that make things float. there's no specific "make item orbit head" spell, so it can't be done!

You know there are rules for researching spells, right? You can create your 1st level "make specifically a teacup orbit specifically your head" and call it Redfir's Rotating Tea. Or you can just use the regular Telekinesis spell, or attach your tea to a grey ioun stone, or to the stars of Arvandor, or use Mage Hand on your teacup...
I'm not sure what you're asking for here. Do you want there to be an infinite number of written spells for every application people can think of? Because I'd rather not have the 1st level spell Beni-Kujaku's Flying Prismatic Crayons take up space in the books for nothing.
There are a lot of thing you can complain about in 3.5 but "lack of option" will very very rarely be one of them.


Elemental spells:
Well then why is there not an otherwise identical version of that spell for the other elements like Fire, Electricity, and Cold?

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/metamagic-feats/elemental-spell-metamagic/

Also, the kind of element is both a balancing factor and a way to give personality to spells. Fireball is a ball, Lightning is a line, Cone of Cold is a cone, Acid Splash is single-target, Shout is an emanation.

Some things are easier to do than others, and having an Frostball dealing CLd6 in a sphere with long range would make all elements indistinguishable. It would both be boring and reduce the strategy of the game. Fire deals generally more damage, but more things are immune to it. If acid dealt as much damage, you'd have to balance the whole monster manual as well.

[Darg]

I am exclusively talking about pathfinder 1e here. i haven't played any of the other systems lately.

Fighters:
They should have more mundane options to solutions. Let fighters be "Mundane masters" where they're great without magic items or spells. As it is, everyone's idea of making a good fighter is apparently cover them in magic ASAP. I don't want magic! i wanna be a badass normal!

Cantrips:
In PF1e, Cantrips don't scale with level. So you've got a level 1 wizard and a level 20 wizard. Both are dealing identical damage with an acid splash. Seriously? the Wizard never figured out how to make one of the most basic spells just a little bit better? Cantrips have GREAT potential as a spellcaster's "Fallback" spells since they have unlimited casts. A Wizard who ran out of spell slots for the day could keep participating in combat by casting half-decent cantrips. As it is though, they do so little damage that they won't even bypass the minimum amount of damage reduction.

I mean, if you don't cover the fighter in all that magic, what's the point of nonpersonal spells that buff characters? That said, ToB gave "caster" mundanes. If you want it to be under the title of "fighter" just rename warblade to fighter. And if you just want to be a badass normal without "mundane casting" fighter can do that. You can literally kill 24+ normies in a single round with no magic at all while they just can't touch you. A level 20 fighter is practically invincible against like 99% of the average setting's population.

Sorry, but scaling cantrips aren't a good idea. That's literally what 1st level spells are for. Cantrips are basically magic tricks. It kind of goes against the reason for their existence in the first place if they scaled.

[Logalmier]

Do you want there to be an infinite number of written spells for every application people can think of? Because I'd rather not have the 1st level spell Beni-Kujaku's Flying Prismatic Crayons take up space in the books for nothing.
There are a lot of thing you can complain about in 3.5 but "lack of option" will very very rarely be one of them.

It's entirely possible to have a flexible, modular spell system of the sort Redfir was describing. Frankly, I find modular systems to be far more elegant than the comparatively clumsy "every spell is a distinct entity" approach D&D goes for. When it comes to Vancian magic, researching spells is just asking players to pick up the system's slack. D&D just doesn't doesn't do a good job of letting you play themed characters, and 3.5 is no exception.


A more flexible spell system where you have more control over what you can do would be great IMHO. Something like "Turn [Material] into [material] with some kind of graph showing what spell level you'd need based on how different / valuable the materials are or something.


I would encourage you to check out Spheres of Power if you're not already familiar with it. In particular, the Creation sphere has almost verbatim the exact thing you describe here. http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/creation

[Eldan]

My fix for two weapon fighting, after a while was just to rip off what I did in 5E: fighting with two weapons lets you choose which weapon you're attacking with (for different damage types and so on) and you get advantage on your attack roll, instead of a bonus attack with a penalty. No feats required. That about put it on par with other attack options, for me.

I will agree that Skill Tricks are the worst general idea for D&D. Every single one of them could be done as "okay, that's a +5 to the DC" and I don't want them to exist.

Apart from that, I think most of the usual stuff has been mentioned. As for another cool thing with really bad execution, let me suggest the Green Star Adept. What a cool idea for a class! Great worldbuilding, if you lean into it! Ruins your character!

[Eldan]

Ley Lines

They could have been cool, with Mages siphoning off mystical power for incredibly powerful spells as long as you were at the nexus of several lines, or allowing casters to ignore range restrictions as long as their spell went along a ley line. Instead we got "You get +1 CL when you're in a forest/desert/whatever you chose."

I think Leylines pretty much need to be part of the story, not a class or a feat. Just something like "the villain is tapping the leyline, he's casting incredibly powerful spells, but it also means he can't leave this location!" or "the level 20 druid can't come along on your quest and just solve this problem himself because, uh, there's a leyline here where he draws all his power from."

[Draconi Redfir]

You know there are rules for researching spells, right? You can create your 1st level "make specifically a teacup orbit specifically your head" and call it Redfir's Rotating Tea. Or you can just use the regular Telekinesis spell, or attach your tea to a grey ioun stone, or to the stars of Arvandor, or use Mage Hand on your teacup...
I'm not sure what you're asking for here. Do you want there to be an infinite number of written spells for every application people can think of? Because I'd rather not have the 1st level spell Beni-Kujaku's Flying Prismatic Crayons take up space in the books for nothing.
There are a lot of thing you can complain about in 3.5 but "lack of option" will very very rarely be one of them.

Inventing spells entirely depends on if the DM allows that kind of thing, some DM's like my own only allow spells that already exist in the allowed books. Telekinesis is concentration, ioun stone and mage hand kind of defeat the point.

I'm not really asking for infinite number of written spells, i think "more vague spells" is what I'm looking for. or maybe not even "Spells" just "Vague expressions of arcane power". Like "I make that item float over to me" and "i blast them with arcane power" and "I stop you from falling by freezing you mid-air and slowly lowering you down to the ground", just stuff that isn't covered by the limited existing spells but should theoretically still be do-able. As-is, if there is no spell for "Make box fly independently from my house to the house across town, avoiding obstacles and distractions along the way" (and for sake of argument we're going to pretend there aren't) then you just CAN'T do it. Despite being able to do so many other things like teleport and fly and make pocket dimensions, "Make box fly across town without intervention" is apparently just too complex for you.




https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/metamagic-feats/elemental-spell-metamagic/

Fair, still feel like this should be something you can just do rather then needing to burn a feat on it tho. This also dosn't cover other damage types like Sonic, Negative, and Positive. Which yes, are more powerful and less resisted against, but still need more options for those who want to specialize in them. Those elements could even have a "Reduce damage by X amount" clause to them, where the element is changed, but you get lower damage overall.


Also, the kind of element is both a balancing factor and a way to give personality to spells. Fireball is a ball, Lightning is a line, Cone of Cold is a cone, Acid Splash is single-target, Shout is an emanation.

Some things are easier to do than others, and having an Frostball dealing CLd6 in a sphere with long range would make all elements indistinguishable. It would both be boring and reduce the strategy of the game. Fire deals generally more damage, but more things are immune to it. If acid dealt as much damage, you'd have to balance the whole monster manual as well.

Fair argument. Still think more variety would be welcome though. It really sucks when you're trying to play "ice wizard" or "acid wizard" or the like and really specialize, and your options are just so limited. Little to no long-range or bomb-style spells for your chosen element and the like.


Sorry, but scaling cantrips aren't a good idea. That's literally what 1st level spells are for. Cantrips are basically magic tricks. It kind of goes against the reason for their existence in the first place if they scaled.

What's the difference between a 1d3 cantrip that goes up by 1d3 every 2 levels to a maximum of 5d3, and say, any kind of weapon wielded by a non-caster?

Way i see it cantrips should be viable as basic-attacks, Weapons for the mages who don't want to carry a crossbow, because they're MAGIC users, not CROSSBOW users.

Yeah sure your first level spells will work... until you run out... Meanwhile those martial fighters are still swinging.

[AsuraKyoko]

Hate this. Hate this with a fiery passion. There's so much wasted ink in 3.5 where they could've just made something a new skill use and instead gated it behind a feat. Whyyyyyyyyy

I wonder how difficult it would be to take all of those feats, make their benefits into a general skill use, and then have the feat make it easier to do in some significant way.

Take Brachiation, for example. It could...

Ok, I just reread the feat, and it's already pretty close to how I would suggest changing it. My suggestion was going to be: swinging from branch to branch is a climb (or maybe jump?) check to move at half your speed and avoid the ground, while the feat removes the check and makes it full speed. Honestly, though, that still feels bas as a feat, since it doesn't really give concrete benefits outside of terrain hazards, and is only useable in specific areas. I would probably add something in that says that the feat allows you to do it while holding things in your hands. Also include a quick way to get up to the height required.


Inventing spells entirely depends on if the DM allows that kind of thing, some DM's like my own only allow spells that already exist in the allowed books. Telekinesis is concentration, ioun stone and mage hand kind of defeat the point.

I'm not really asking for infinite number of written spells, i think "more vague spells" is what I'm looking for. or maybe not even "Spells" just "Vague expressions of arcane power". Like "I make that item float over to me" and "i blast them with arcane power" and "I stop you from falling by freezing you mid-air and slowly lowering you down to the ground", just stuff that isn't covered by the limited existing spells but should theoretically still be do-able. As-is, if there is no spell for "Make box fly independently from my house to the house across town, avoiding obstacles and distractions along the way" (and for sake of argument we're going to pretend there aren't) then you just CAN'T do it. Despite being able to do so many other things like teleport and fly and make pocket dimensions, "Make box fly across town without intervention" is apparently just too complex for you.

I'm going to second the suggestion above and say that you should absolutely check out Spheres of Power. It's entirely based on customizable effects. Heck, one of the spheres (Destruction) is literally "I blast them with arcane power".


What's the difference between a 1d3 cantrip that goes up by 1d3 every 2 levels to a maximum of 5d3, and say, any kind of weapon wielded by a non-caster?

Way i see it cantrips should be viable as basic-attacks, Weapons for the mages who don't want to carry a crossbow, because they're MAGIC users, not CROSSBOW users.

Yeah sure your first level spells will work... until you run out... Meanwhile those martial fighters are still swinging.

I agree here. Cantrips just aren't competitive with weapons at all, and it sucks. The closest thing we have for casters is Reserve Feats, which are useable at-will and scale with level. It's seriously nice to be able to do something moderately impactful without having to expend any resources.

[Eldan]

I'm not really asking for infinite number of written spells, i think "more vague spells" is what I'm looking for. or maybe not even "Spells" just "Vague expressions of arcane power". Like "I make that item float over to me" and "i blast them with arcane power" and "I stop you from falling by freezing you mid-air and slowly lowering you down to the ground", just stuff that isn't covered by the limited existing spells but should theoretically still be do-able.

As a DM, my answer to that, depending on how impressive it is, is usually either "cast prestidigitation" or "just fluff it". Making a small item float to your hand when you could easily reach it? Prestidigitation at best.

[Zanos]

You know there are rules for researching spells, right? You can create your 1st level "make specifically a teacup orbit specifically your head" and call it Redfir's Rotating Tea. Or you can just use the regular Telekinesis spell, or attach your tea to a grey ioun stone, or to the stars of Arvandor, or use Mage Hand on your teacup...
I'm not sure what you're asking for here. Do you want there to be an infinite number of written spells for every application people can think of? Because I'd rather not have the 1st level spell Beni-Kujaku's Flying Prismatic Crayons take up space in the books for nothing.
There are a lot of thing you can complain about in 3.5 but "lack of option" will very very rarely be one of them.
Eh, the rules for spell creation could be a little better than "spend 1000gp per level and the DM tells you if your spell works." There are rules in the DMG for damage caps for different types of spells per level, it would have been interesting to see that expanded to see an actual framework for characters to create new spells.

[H_H_F_F]

Re cantrips:

I think "I have a limited amount of magical power, and when I'm out I'm out" makes just as much thematic sense as "I'm a magic user, I use MAGIC".

5E went the direction that's being suggested here. It's fine. 3.5 didn't - but if a wizard casts prestidigitation, he can still "do stuff with magic" for a full hour.

As for the balance argument - come on.

[Draconi Redfir]

it's definitely something unique to PF1e and earlier. i don't have experience with PF2e or 5th edition, but IIRC both of them have scaling cantrips to some degree. So it is fixed, it's just annoying in PF1e, which is the edition that i play.

[Ottriman]

The Meteor Swarm spell for D&D 3.5

It is known as one of the weakest 9th level spells for a reason. The appeal of throwing a barrage of frigging meteors is obvious, the theoretical damage is 8d6 per hit four times on a creature followed by significant splash damage.

There's just so many problems though: most of the damage is fire damage that is super commonly resisted or immune, most of the damage is reflex half which further cuts it down especially if an enemy has evasion, finally it is SR yes which further puts a potential damper on things.

So a lot of the time it ends up much weaker than the concept and spell level would suggest. Only when things align really well does it end up as strong as it feels it should.

[pabelfly]

The uselessness of BAB. I mean, that's good to have more attacks, but there should be a much better incentive to keep taking martial levels than just being able to make another attack at -15.

BAB also dictates how accurate your attacks are, and thus how much average damage you output per round. I feel like you've undervalued the worth of this here.

Let's say you have a level 1 character who's a martial character with a greatsword (2d6 damage). They have 18 STR. They're attacking a enemy with an AC of 15 (average for a CR 1 enemy is 15.5). Let's see how much difference there is in damage output just by changing accuracy by 1:

Accuracy (0 BAB): 4
Accuracy (1 BAB): 5
Accuracy (1 BAB + Weapon Focus): 6

Damage: 2d6 + 4 x 1.5 STR
Damage: 13

Average damage per attack:
0 BAB: 0.5 hit chance x 13 = 6.5 damage
1 BAB: 0.55 hit chance x 13 = 7.15 damage (10% increase in average damage)
1 BAB + Weapon Focus: 0.6 hit chance x 13 = 7.8 damage (8.3% increase in average damage)


For our first example, we're dealing with somewhere between 8 and 10% increase in damage.

Just out of interest, let's take some damage calcs I did for a level 20 character in a Junkyard contest a few months ago. Accuracy bonus of 35 at full BAB and 58 damage per attack before DR.

Accuracy
20 BAB + 10 STR + 3 Belt of Giant Strength + 1 (Weapon Focus) +1 (Weapon)
35/30/25/20
Damage: 43 (after DR 15)

We'll assume the enemy has 35 AC.

Full attack: 43 * 0.95 + 43 * 0.75 + 43 * 0.5 + 43 * 0.25 = 105.35
Full attack (-1 BAB): 43 * 0.95 + 43 * 0.75 + 43 * 0.5 + 43 * 0.25 = 98.9 (6.1% decrease)
Full attack (-1 BAB, -WF): 43 * 0.9 + 43 * 0.7 + 43 * 0.45 + 43 * 0.2 = 90.3 (8.1% decrease)

So, our accuracy drops means a change of 6 and 8% damage difference.

This obviously isn't an exhaustive comparison, but it doesn't need to be either. The tl;dr: BAB matters

[calam]

-feats should be more based on what they're named after: doing actions. It shouldn't be fiddly bonuses like it is with dodge or improved initiative. Most of the feats that give you new abilities also usually fall under things that should be universal things that end up being too niche or things that should be basic skill uses

-Full attacking kind of sucks up all martial options. At higher levels you either get pounce or you don't really move to fight others because then they'd full attack you in response. I expected there to be more mundane martial actions

-With cantrips in pathfinder I expected that they'd be more like fallbacks that scale with level, more like how they work in 5e

-I am disappointed in martial characters in general, especially the rogue and fighter, They just have so few moving parts and end up feeling like warrior or expert+ rather than a full player class.

[tyckspoon]

The Meteor Swarm spell for D&D 3.5

It is known as one of the weakest 9th level spells for a reason. The appeal of throwing a barrage of frigging meteors is obvious, the theoretical damage is 8d6 per hit four times on a creature followed by significant splash damage.

There's just so many problems though: most of the damage is fire damage that is super commonly resisted or immune, most of the damage is reflex half which further cuts it down especially if an enemy has evasion, finally it is SR yes which further puts a potential damper on things.

So a lot of the time it ends up much weaker than the concept and spell level would suggest. Only when things align really well does it end up as strong as it feels it should.

In fairness to it up to 32d6 damage is -significantly- ahead of the usual 1d6/level, and for your primary target you can bypass the normal saving throw by hitting their Touch AC, which is often a much easier target. Fire resistance at high CRs is.. still a problem, and there's not much you can do about that. But the spell does approximately the damage as casting 2 Empowered Fireballs with one action and one spell slot. And you don't even have to be pushing your caster level to do it. If 3.5 were an environment where casting 2 Empowered Fireballs was good, that'd be pretty good! But it's not, so.. it's just not.

[vasilidor]

Fighters not having skill points as well as skills being limited in what you can do with them due to it all being gated behind feats.

[Ottriman]

In fairness to it up to 32d6 damage is -significantly- ahead of the usual 1d6/level, and for your primary target you can bypass the normal saving throw by hitting their Touch AC, which is often a much easier target. Fire resistance at high CRs is.. still a problem, and there's not much you can do about that. But the spell does approximately the damage as casting 2 Empowered Fireballs with one action and one spell slot. And you don't even have to be pushing your caster level to do it. If 3.5 were an environment where casting 2 Empowered Fireballs was good, that'd be pretty good! But it's not, so.. it's just not.

Yeah its theoretically quite good, but as I said there's several caveats that make it very unreliable and one of the worst 9th level slot options. It is competing against the most busted spells in the game that break basically anything wide open and is itself merely situational.

The simplest change would be to make these like blue glowing arcane meteorites and change the damage to force damage because that way no one resists the damage (barring spell resistance or evasion). Doing that would make the great damage potential actually shine much more reliably. Doing 32d6 damage to the primary target and 24d6 damage to several other enemies is still not busted, but is now actually useful.

A blaster caster would now have a cool capstone spell instead of a massive disappointment.

[pabelfly]

-feats should be more based on what they're named after: doing actions. It shouldn't be fiddly bonuses like it is with dodge or improved initiative.

Dodge is fiddly and with the small bonus given, easily forgotten, agreed. Improved initiative is pretty decent though: you put it on your character sheet, you don't have to remember it after that but you get a decent bonus. +4 to Initiative is the equivalent of a 20% chance of going before a character that would otherwise have the same initiative score as you.

[calam]

Dodge is fiddly and with the small bonus given, easily forgotten, agreed. Improved initiative is pretty decent though: you put it on your character sheet, you don't have to remember it after that but you get a decent bonus. +4 to Initiative is the equivalent of a 20% chance of going before a character that would otherwise have the same initiative score as you.

Yeah initiative is my go to filler feat, I'm more saying that there are too many passive feats that just add more numbers. Most are fiddly but improved initiative isn't.

[Draconi Redfir]

Fighters not having skill points as well as skills being limited in what you can do with them due to it all being gated behind feats.

honestly yea. my fighter gets 3 skill points per level. legit considering spending feats on skill-increasing feats rather then anything combat related just so they can half a half-decent diplomacy and other important skills.

[Fiery Diamond]

I am exclusively talking about pathfinder 1e here. i haven't played any of the other systems lately.
Elemental spells:
Similar to the above. "Acid splash" is a spell right? a spell that deals acid damage at a range? Well then why is there not an otherwise identical version of that spell for the other elements like Fire, Electricity, and Cold? I'm not 100% right now but I'm pretty sure at least one of those is missing from the list. Honestly more options to just change a spell's element would be great. If you can throw a fireball, why not an acid ball? Wall of fire? Why not wall of electricity? All functionally identical, just changing the one elemental damage type you get. I can see an argument for not doing this with Sonic damage just because that's kinda OP, but i see no reason why the others shouldn't be allowed..

I agree with this 100%, which is why I will never play with a DM who disallows such elemental customization of spells. As a player, I do this; as a DM myself, I allow this; and as a fiction writer who occasionally writes D&D-based fiction, I use this.



https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/metamagic-feats/elemental-spell-metamagic/

Also, the kind of element is both a balancing factor and a way to give personality to spells. Fireball is a ball, Lightning is a line, Cone of Cold is a cone, Acid Splash is single-target, Shout is an emanation.

Some things are easier to do than others, and having an Frostball dealing CLd6 in a sphere with long range would make all elements indistinguishable. It would both be boring and reduce the strategy of the game. Fire deals generally more damage, but more things are immune to it. If acid dealt as much damage, you'd have to balance the whole monster manual as well.


Respectfully, this argument is something I find absurd. Customization is king, and thematic consistency matters for individual characters, not for the ruleset or the world as a whole. You want to give personality? Fluff it. Make Frostball always explode in the visible shape of a giant flower. Make Flamebolt be composed of white and black flames. Make your stuff cool through description, don't gate what you can do based on the game developers' idea of what's thematic for an element.

Also, the balance argument isn't compelling either. That's only an issue if you have metagaming "I want to optimize my character's damage and don't care about theme or character reasons." Otherwise, if you have someone who wants to play an Acid Mage because they like the concept of a character whose magic corrodes everything, WHO CARES if that makes them more effective against certain monsters?

Finally, that feat has a +1 effective spell level restriction, unlike the 3.5 "Energy Substitution" feat, making it objectively worse. It's really not a very good feat.

[pabelfly]

honestly yea. my fighter gets 3 skill points per level. legit considering spending feats on skill-increasing feats rather then anything combat related just so they can half a half-decent diplomacy and other important skills.

Im of the opinion that it's the best way to build a Fighter. Once you have damage sorted out, hopefully with not using too many non-Fighter bonus feats, you then can do stuff like add new class skills, take Nymph's Kiss, etc and fix up the Fighter chassis.

[Darg]

Yeah sure your first level spells will work... until you run out... Meanwhile those martial fighters are still swinging.

5 minute adventuring days are apparently a thing. Though, what it really sounds like is that you're disappointed you're playing 3e at all. That's literally the martials' whole shtick. They can swing forever while those tricksy wizards can play god for 5 minutes a day.


I agree here. Cantrips just aren't competitive with weapons at all, and it sucks. The closest thing we have for casters is Reserve Feats, which are useable at-will and scale with level. It's seriously nice to be able to do something moderately impactful without having to expend any resources.

A medium dagger does 1d4 damage vs normal AC with range of 5ft. Acid Splash and Ray of Frost do 1d3 lethal damage at a range of 25ft + 5/2 levels targeting touch AC. Seems competitive to me. Or is it more that you want to play a warlock with wizard spellcasting? There's a PRC for that. Could probably homebrew one for kineticist for PF if needed.

[vasilidor]

I agree with this 100%, which is why I will never play with a DM who disallows such elemental customization of spells. As a player, I do this; as a DM myself, I allow this; and as a fiction writer who occasionally writes D&D-based fiction, I use this.




Respectfully, this argument is something I find absurd. Customization is king, and thematic consistency matters for individual characters, not for the ruleset or the world as a whole. You want to give personality? Fluff it. Make Frostball always explode in the visible shape of a giant flower. Make Flamebolt be composed of white and black flames. Make your stuff cool through description, don't gate what you can do based on the game developers' idea of what's thematic for an element.

Also, the balance argument isn't compelling either. That's only an issue if you have metagaming "I want to optimize my character's damage and don't care about theme or character reasons." Otherwise, if you have someone who wants to play an Acid Mage because they like the concept of a character whose magic corrodes everything, WHO CARES if that makes them more effective against certain monsters?

Finally, that feat has a +1 effective spell level restriction, unlike the 3.5 "Energy Substitution" feat, making it objectively worse. It's really not a very good feat.

This here highlights a lot of why I like spheres of might and spheres of power. Like a lot of the problems in the game engine was fixed with these books. Not all of them, but a lot of them.
Yes, I still think some abilities as described should just be a DC something or other in a set skill or two, but this was essentially a huge bug fix to me.

[Pinkie Pyro]

Here's a recent one, P1 barbarian rage powers.

Once per day while raging add +1 to a single damage roll?

or my personal favorite:


Breathtaker

While raging, whenever you make a successful melee attack against an opponent that is holding its breath, in addition to any other effects caused by that attack, the opponent loses a number of rounds of breath equal to your Strength modifier.

Amazing name, and just... probably one of the most niche things I've ever seen. I was hoping for something that lets you knock the wind out of someone, but no...

[Ottriman]

The Tarrasque (D&D 3.5)

The big T, the highest hp boi in the monster manual, the giant kaiju that can't be killed.

In combat it can't do anything other than slowly waddle into melee and hit you for damage. No epic atomic breath, no walking through buildings like they're paper, no sending huge people or objects flying long distances.

Just.... Melee damage, and maybe it eats someone.

[Bohandas]

All epic level stuff is disappointing (except for epic magic, which is merely confusing and abusable). The epic stat advancement rules were pointless and confusing, the magic item pricing needlessly contradicted the core rules, the epic skill uses were underwhelming - you have to beat DCs of like 80 or 90 just to do things that are the equivalent of a first level spell - and the epic feats and epic prestige classes are all somehow both overpowered and underwhelming at the same time

EDIT:
Oh, and also the way monster stats are handled in 3e and especially 3.5e in general. All the monsters are just piles of HD and ability scores, and with the excpetion of special abilities their stats are derived purely from these. Instead of just getting whatever skills and feats they logically should have, they have to buy them as if their hit dice were levels.

And there's no breakdown in the stat block so if you want to advance a monster you have to go through and find all of its bonuses and subtract them if you need to figure out how many skill points it actually has in a given skill

EDIT:
Oh and the various Flunky of Insert Planar Subtype Here feats all suck and also are redundant. There was no need to give the exact same feat six different names

EDIT:

-Full attacking kind of sucks up all martial options. At higher levels you either get pounce or you don't really move to fight others because then they'd full attack you in response. I expected there to be more mundane martial actions

It's kind if immersion breaking too; like the fighter can't walk and chew gum. (Edit: unless someone adjacent moves away from him; then for some reason he can inexplicably make an extra attack no matter what else he's done or is doing)

[Ottriman]

-Full attacking kind of sucks up all martial options. At higher levels you either get pounce or you don't really move to fight others because then they'd full attack you in response. I expected there to be more mundane martial actions

-I am disappointed in martial characters in general, especially the rogue and fighter, They just have so few moving parts and end up feeling like warrior or expert+ rather than a full player class.

Same, it's why I basically never run games without allowing Tome of Battle (D&D 3.5) or Path of War (Pathfinder 1e). They give martials useful special abilities they can use as a standard action. It just makes them so much more fun.

[Quertus]

In fairness to it up to 32d6 damage is -significantly- ahead of the usual 1d6/level, and for your primary target you can bypass the normal saving throw by hitting their Touch AC, which is often a much easier target. Fire resistance at high CRs is.. still a problem, and there's not much you can do about that. But the spell does approximately the damage as casting 2 Empowered Fireballs with one action and one spell slot. And you don't even have to be pushing your caster level to do it. If 3.5 were an environment where casting 2 Empowered Fireballs was good, that'd be pretty good! But it's not, so.. it's just not.

On the flipside of fairness, Disintegrate is dealing 40d6, resistance or immunity are virtually unknown, requires a touch attack (aka "Double damage if you cheese out a 20"), has a rider effect of turning your foe to dust, and does so as a 6th level spell. Taking Disintegrate as your 9th level spell would be roughly equally impressive to Meteor Swarm.

[Darg]

On the flipside of fairness, Disintegrate is dealing 40d6, resistance or immunity are virtually unknown, requires a touch attack (aka "Double damage if you cheese out a 20"), has a rider effect of turning your foe to dust, and does so as a 6th level spell. Taking Disintegrate as your 9th level spell would be roughly equally impressive to Meteor Swarm.

Except you're comparing spells with completely different functions. Disintegrate can only target one target. Meteor swarm on the other hand can potentially hit upwards of 1024 squares or as low as 256. Meteor swarm isn't meant to be the big bad single target encounter ender. It's more for devastating large forces of enemies. You wouldn't just lob fireballs for single target killing, there are better spells for that even within the same spell level. I think the real reason people are disappointed in Meteor swarm is that it's the only core 9th level damage dealing spell. Bigby's isn't really for doing much damage after all. Outside of core, evocation has some really fun 9ths, but they aren't really much for the instant damage and their biggest advantage are the secondary effects.

[Ottriman]

On the flipside of fairness, Disintegrate is dealing 40d6, resistance or immunity are virtually unknown, requires a touch attack (aka "Double damage if you cheese out a 20"), has a rider effect of turning your foe to dust, and does so as a 6th level spell. Taking Disintegrate as your 9th level spell would be roughly equally impressive to Meteor Swarm.

Well, a creature with high fort saves (there are a lot of those) can reduce the damage of that one to a piddly 5d6, so I would say the damage is mostly resisted often enough that it isn't mostly guaranteed. Meteor swarm does also have the native ability to hit multiple creatures. I would sitll say that you are right that disintegrate is probably a sidegrade to Meteor Swarm while occupying a spell slot 3 levels lower, which is just sad for Meteor Swarm.

If Meteor Swarm was kept as is but was a 6th or 7th level spell it'd probably be pretty good. It would potentially do a massive amount of damage, and there would be enough breathing room to add metamagic to it for those who want it even stronger.

[Darg]

Well, a creature with high fort saves (there are a lot of those) can reduce the damage of that one to a piddly 5d6, so I would say the damage is mostly resisted often enough that it isn't mostly guaranteed. Meteor swarm does also have the native ability to hit multiple creatures. I would sitll say that you are right that disintegrate is probably a sidegrade to Meteor Swarm while occupying a spell slot 3 levels lower, which is just sad for Meteor Swarm.

If Meteor Swarm was kept as is but was a 6th or 7th level spell it'd probably be pretty good. It would potentially do a massive amount of damage, and there would be enough breathing room to add metamagic to it for those who want it even stronger.

Metamagic rods and Sudden metamagics are available to work with 9ths

[Telonius]

I mentioned this one recently in another thread: Master of Masks, from Complete Scoundrel. I love playing trickster characters, and the idea of taking up multiple mechanical identities would be something that I would absolutely love to play, especially on top of something like a Changeling. But it falls terribly flat mechanically.

The PrC has two obvious entries, Rogue or Bard. (Beguiler is also thematic, but you'd need to get Perform on the class skill list). But, the class has: 4/10 spellcasting, BAB progression as Wizard, 4+Int skill points, no bardic music progression (and no masks that grant it), and no automatic sneak attack advancement. If you were a Bard (or Beguiler) before, you've traded all of your Bard abilities (and most of your casting) for the Mask abilities, most of which aren't that terrific. For example, this gem:


Jester: Gaudy ribbons, tinkling bells, and a bobbing cockscomb adorn this leather mask. Brightly hued eyeshadow, lipstick, and alternating red, black, and white diamonds flamboyantly paint the form's angular features.

You gain a +2 competence bonus on Balance, Perform, Sleight of Hand, and Tumble checks. As you advance in the master of masks class, you become more proficient with these skills: This bonus improves to +4 at 4th level, +6 at 7th level, and +8 at 10th level. Your alignment appears to be chaotic neutral while you wear a jester mask.

If you were a Rogue before, you've traded your sneak attack progression and Rogue abilities for the mask abilities (which again, aren't that terrific). 4/10 casting isn't much, but it's useless to you anyway.

For either one, you're less of a skillmonkey and have a lower BAB.

If you're a Rogue and still want to sneak attack, you can get the Assassin mask and end up with 1 less sneak die than you would have if you'd stayed Rogue. But then you're wearing the Assassin mask and not the other masks. (You can switch between them by either a move or a swift action, but that poses its own issues).

Mechanically, the only reason to take the class is if you need the Gladiator mask, which is admittedly pretty nice. Gaining proficiency with "all martial and exotic weapons" is - as far as I've been able to tell - a unique ability. But after that first level, there's not much reason to stay. 2nd level tops if you had a caster entry (since level 2 is +1 spellcasting).

[Biggus]

I will agree that Skill Tricks are the worst general idea for D&D. Every single one of them could be done as "okay, that's a +5 to the DC" and I don't want them to exist.


I don't see what you mean here. How does this apply to eg Back On Your Feet/Nimble Stand or Listen To This?

[loky1109]

I don't see what you mean here. How does this apply to eg Back On Your Feet/Nimble Stand or Listen To This?

+1 here, I don't see how Collector of Stories could be converted into "+5 DC".

[Eldan]

I don't see what you mean here. How does this apply to eg Back On Your Feet/Nimble Stand or Listen To This?

Okay, there's a handful where that doesn't quite work literally, but I wouldn't have a problem with someone trying a difficult tumble check (DC 20? 25?) to stand up as a swift action. And a DC 25 already allows you to move without attacks of opportunity, I'd have no problem applying that to standing up, too. Which is a kind of movement as far as I'm concerned.

[Harrow]

1) Dragonfire Adept. At first, the mechanics don't even look that bad. And they aren't terrible, just disappointing. You start out, at level 1, with an at-will AoE. One with decent area coverage, too. Depending on circumstances, you don't have to worry about friendly fire most of the time, either. You don't rely on to-hit, so, as long as you don't mind going last in initiative, you can put on heavy armor and a tower shield that you aren't proficient with. Combine that with a bonus to natural armor at an early level, and you're not likely to be hit much for a while.

And then you start to level up. Your breath weapon's damage scales at d6/2 levels, noticeably slower than enemy hit points. You just aren't contributing like you used to. Also, the higher you go, the more enemy accuracy out-scales your armor. At some point, it just becomes better to ditch the armor and rely on other defenses so that you can actually use invocations in combat. There are some nice invocations, but that's actually where you get to my real problem with DFAs: There's, like, one decent way I would build one. I played a DFA once. It was fun. But, if I ever played one again, I would either feel bad picking options I didn't like, or feel bad picking the exact same options I did before.

2) Tome of Battle. I hear all the time about all the wonderful options that martials got out of ToB, but when I look at it, all I see are standard action attacks that are basically on-par with a full attack. Iron Heart Surge has some neat uses, though I wish it worked on things that prevent you from taking actions. White Raven Tactics can be abused, depending on the build you use and what party members you have. Swordsages have some moderately interesting tricks, like invisibility and teleportation, but their maneuvers are so limited (invisibility lasts 1 round, need LoS and LoE to teleport, poor maneuver recovery) and the swordsage chassis, well...

3) Classes with 3/4 BAB progression and d8 HP per HD. Pick a side and stick with it. In my mind, all classes should either be 1/2 BAB and d6 HP/HD or full BAB and d10 HP/HD. You're either a frontliner or you're not. The designers seemed to have this idea of a sort of "skirmisher" or "striker" kind of thing, that could weave in an out of combat. Opportunity attacks, monsters tending to be large with good reach, and charging all kind of threw that in the bin.

4) Caster killers. It's an archetype I get really excited about, but the designers never made anything that could realistically be a hard-counter to wizards (Ok, arguably another, better built wizard, but that's not what I'm after). If they did, it would have to be balanced by not being as good against things that aren't casters, which runs afoul my next problem.

5) Monsters. Let's start with just the 3.5 Monster Manual. Off the top of my head, you have gnoll warriors, goblin warriors, hobgoblin warriors, orc warriors, kobold warriors, I'm sure I'm missing some. These are all the same thing. Their races may give them slightly different ability score bonuses, but they all fundamentally work the same way. I really don't see why so much book space was given to what are functionally weak bears. Most animals, for that matter, are functionally bears. And magical beasts, any sort of skeleton or zombie, many constructs. Dragons have lots of neat stuff on top of being a bear. All of this means that if you try to balance a character that can reliably take down an equal-level caster by making them vulnerable to beatsticks, your DM will open up the MM and hit you with beatsticks because everything is either a beatstick or beatstick+. And those are the easiest things to stat out. I really wish more book space had been given to squishy spellcasting monsters.

6) Hide in Plain Sight. In video games, I love stealthy characters. In 3.5, it just feels bad. I tried to make a back-up character for the campaign I'm in using Umbral Disciple, and I just couldn't figure out how to make it actually do something. Like, yeah, I can make enemies ignore me. But how do I punish them for doing so?

[Darg]

1) Dragonfire Adept. At first, the mechanics don't even look that bad. And they aren't terrible, just disappointing. You start out, at level 1, with an at-will AoE. One with decent area coverage, too. Depending on circumstances, you don't have to worry about friendly fire most of the time, either. You don't rely on to-hit, so, as long as you don't mind going last in initiative, you can put on heavy armor and a tower shield that you aren't proficient with. Combine that with a bonus to natural armor at an early level, and you're not likely to be hit much for a while.

And then you start to level up. Your breath weapon's damage scales at d6/2 levels, noticeably slower than enemy hit points. You just aren't contributing like you used to. Also, the higher you go, the more enemy accuracy out-scales your armor. At some point, it just becomes better to ditch the armor and rely on other defenses so that you can actually use invocations in combat. There are some nice invocations, but that's actually where you get to my real problem with DFAs: There's, like, one decent way I would build one. I played a DFA once. It was fun. But, if I ever played one again, I would either feel bad picking options I didn't like, or feel bad picking the exact same options I did before.

Gotta agree with you, DfA is more underwhelming than even warlock. Though I can't say it's the class itself, but rather the range progression (or lack there of) of the breath weapon and the lackluster options for breath effects. DfA suffers from a lack of options for sure which was compounded for coming out so late into 3e's run. Another weakness is that your breath is further hampered if you take a PRC multiclass: no range upgrade or breath effects which are really intrinsic to the class in the first place.

Skin of Ectoplasmic Armor would be a really decent investment if you don't want to suffer nonproficiency/weight penalties but still get +8 armor bonus for cheap. As you'd have already made the character psionic, you could also acquire another 2 skins to wear.


4) Caster killers. It's an archetype I get really excited about, but the designers never made anything that could realistically be a hard-counter to wizards (Ok, arguably another, better built wizard, but that's not what I'm after). If they did, it would have to be balanced by not being as good against things that aren't casters, which runs afoul my next problem.

Mage Slayer feat chain + the Witch Slayer PRC from ToM does a pretty decent job. You can even pick up Extend Supernatural Ability to increase the duration of Momentary Disjunction to 2 rounds once a day. Of course, you are specializing a bit so you won't be as capable against pure mundane enemies, but then you have party members to cover your weakness.


6) Hide in Plain Sight. In video games, I love stealthy characters. In 3.5, it just feels bad. I tried to make a back-up character for the campaign I'm in using Umbral Disciple, and I just couldn't figure out how to make it actually do something. Like, yeah, I can make enemies ignore me. But how do I punish them for doing so?

You can use HiPS with a 5ft step and you don't always have to use it defensively (especially since you get concealment already). This is also a really good use case for Spring Attack as you can hide before and after an attack. Hide as you move in, attack, and hide again as you move into position for your next attack. Otherwise, you punish them like any good sneak attacker punishes a target: by delivering massive amounts of damage.

[Draconi Redfir]

5 minute adventuring days are apparently a thing. Though, what it really sounds like is that you're disappointed you're playing 3e at all. That's literally the martials' whole shtick. They can swing forever while those tricksy wizards can play god for 5 minutes a day.

correct, and that's a BAD thing.

hours are being wasted because the wizard is calling for a long rest after the 5th fight while everyone else is still able to keep going. What if you're on a time limit? or just want to spend more then five minutes doing things in a day?

Let the casters push forwards! We've got a day to save, not waste it taking a nap!



A medium dagger does 1d4 damage vs normal AC with range of 5ft. Acid Splash and Ray of Frost do 1d3 lethal damage at a range of 25ft + 5/2 levels targeting touch AC. Seems competitive to me. Or is it more that you want to play a warlock with wizard spellcasting? There's a PRC for that. Could probably homebrew one for kineticist for PF if needed.

The thing is, Acid Splash needs to deal with Spell resistance and ALSO element resistance / immunity and ALSO you can't increase it's damage in any way

So all that ranged touch attack damage equals out to about nothing a few levels into the campaign, as eventually you get to the point of baddies getting resistances or immunities while your damage isn't going up at all, leaving you with either zero damage, or plinking away with 1-3 damage while that 1d4 damage is using power attack, sneak attack, Weapon specialization, magic enchantments, and all sorts of other things to REALLY be doing 1d4+15 damage.

[H_H_F_F]

I'd argue the exact opposite: that there's a spot in low to mid-low levels, where a skilled DM can force a caster to be more aware of their resources than the martial has to be, and martials actually have something they're slightly better at than casters. That's a good thing. Should've been more-so the case, not less so.

[Draconi Redfir]

I'd argue the exact opposite: that there's a spot in low to mid-low levels, where a skilled DM can force a caster to be more aware of their resources than the martial has to be, and martials actually have something they're slightly better at than casters. That's a good thing. Should've been more-so the case, not less so.

Well I'm not asking for the wizards to be bending reality forever here, just give them some minor fallback spells, like cantrips that are still able to keep up at whatever level you're at.

Just let the cantrips be a wizard's basic attack, so he's not completely useless and dragging the rest of the party down when he decides to blow all his magic missiles in the first combat.


If a Fighter looses his weapon, he can pick up another weapon and keep going. If a Wizard loosees all his spell slots, he calls for a nap and time is wasted that could have been spent adventuring.

[H_H_F_F]

And if you don't let them nap, because they're being chased/they're in the clock/what have you, then the fighter might outshine the wizard a little bit.

Again, this is only true for non-high-op groups, and for lower levels. But "I wasted all my spells, and now I'm helpless and the fighter is our only hope" is a feature, not a bug - and it's one they clearly imagined as happening way more than it actually does.

In theory, the caster should be careful and considerate when expanding resources, and the fighter should have situations when they're better than the caster. These things actually happening once in a blue moon is good, IMO.

[Draconi Redfir]

again i'm not saying "give them more spells" i'm not saying they should clear an entire room with a fireball 24/7 every single day.

I'm saying give them a Basic. Attack. Something that does little, but still contributes. My fighter has a big sword, that is their main attack. That is analogous to the wizards spells.

If my fighter's sword breaks or gets lost or gets stolen, then my fighter ALSO has a Dagger that they can use. This can be analogous to the wizard's cantrips.

The thing is, the fighter's dagger is going to keep up with the fighter no matter what level you're at. Attack and damage rolls will continue to go up as the fighter levels up.

There is NONE of this for the Wizard's cantrips. it's always 1d3 all the time. Regardless of level, regardless of skill. Just let it do some kind of damage so the Wizard isn't plonking away with 1 damage AT BEST during an emergency. Add a "+ caster stat" to the end of that 1d3, let that d3 go up to 2d3, or 3d3 as the wizard gets more powerful, maybe let them be used with things like weapon focus and power attack (or a spell-equivalent) idk.

If the wizard has ZERO spells and is currently in a fight, would you rather:

Wizard can still basic attack with a cantrip that can still contribute to the fight

or

Wizard stands perfectly still, not contributing to the fight at all, because acid splash can only deal a max of 3 damage and the enemy has Resistance (Acid) 5, so the wizard can do literally nothing.



Just, a basic attack, all i'm asking for. just some fallback that can still be useful at higher levels. in most cases, they still won't be used any more then they currently are, it just gives the mage more options to conserve resources, maybe do something OTHER then waste a spell or do nothing when they've got a low-HP opponent in the room and the fight is almost over. just let them make an attack roll with a cantrip that's worth it, and bam the fight is done, lets keep going.


In all situations the fighter is STILL outshining the wizard here. The wizard being able to deal more then three damage with a cantrip isn't going to make the fighter suddenly useless. it just means the WIZARD isn't going to be completely useless.

[Darg]

correct, and that's a BAD thing.

hours are being wasted because the wizard is calling for a long rest after the 5th fight while everyone else is still able to keep going. What if you're on a time limit? or just want to spend more then five minutes doing things in a day?

Let the casters push forwards! We've got a day to save, not waste it taking a nap!

That's the whole point. You're meant to manage your resources, not blow it all and continue on like you didn't.


The thing is, Acid Splash needs to deal with Spell resistance and ALSO element resistance / immunity and ALSO you can't increase it's damage in any way

So all that ranged touch attack damage equals out to about nothing a few levels into the campaign, as eventually you get to the point of baddies getting resistances or immunities while your damage isn't going up at all, leaving you with either zero damage, or plinking away with 1-3 damage while that 1d4 damage is using power attack, sneak attack, Weapon specialization, magic enchantments, and all sorts of other things to REALLY be doing 1d4+15 damage.

I don't know much about PF other than you can use cantrips infinitely. In 3.5 there are ways to increase the damage: improved critical, weapon focus, precise shot, point blank shot, ranged spell specialization, warmage's edge, arcane focus soulmeld, metamagic, and the biggest single source of damage: sneak attacks.

[Draconi Redfir]

oh yeah sneak attack, the thing all wizards and sorcerers and other arcane casters get.

Barbarians and other classes have resources they need to conserve too, they still have basic attacks to fall back on.

I'm not sure why there's all this pushback about mages having the equivalent of a crossbow, but magical, so they don't need to lug around a crossbow that might not fit their theme?

[Morphic tide]

I'm not sure why there's all this pushback about mages having the equivalent of a crossbow, but magical, so they don't need to lug around a crossbow that might not fit their theme?
What you're asking for exists: Reserve feats.


As long as you have an acid spell of 2nd level or higher available to cast, you can throw an orb of acid as a ranged touch attack. The attack has a range of 5 feet per level of the highest-level acid spell you have available to cast and deals 1d6 points of damage per level of that acid spell. As a secondary benefit, you gain a +1 competence bonus to your caster level when casting acid spells.

It specifically ties the scaling to holding onto high-level spells, making for a rather detailed tradeoff.

[Pinkie Pyro]

I'm not sure why there's all this pushback about mages having the equivalent of a crossbow, but magical, so they don't need to lug around a crossbow that might not fit their theme?

Because if you're actually relying on cantrips for damage of all things, you're scraping the bottom of the barrel.

This is a really meaningless argument. If you want scaling infinite cantrips and damage to actually matter more than status effects, play 5e, because it has exactly that.

Also, the cantrip you seem to be looking for is 'launch bolt'.


On topic,



Daggerspell Stance
(Spell Compendium, p. 57)

Abjuration
Level: Druid 2, Sorcerer 2, Wizard 2,
Components: V, AF,
Casting Time: 1 swift action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: 1 round/level

While this spell is in effect, if you make a full attack while holding a dagger in each hand, you gain a +2 insight bonus on attack rolls and damage rolls made with daggers in that round.

The magical energy that permeates your daggers while this spell is active allows you to deflect the magical energy of spells. When wielding two daggers and fighting defensively, you gain spell resistance equal to 5 + your caster level.

The spell focuses your concentration so that when you devote all of your attention to defense, you can turn the force of most blows away from your body with your daggers. When wielding two daggers and using the total defense action, you gain both the spell resistances benefit described above and damage reduction 5/magic.

Really dang interesting effect that would be really cool as a feat, but for some bizarre reason is a spell. This would be really interesting to use as a rogue or ranger, but it's not even on the ranger list!

[Darg]

oh yeah sneak attack, the thing all wizards and sorcerers and other arcane casters get.

Barbarians and other classes have resources they need to conserve too, they still have basic attacks to fall back on.

I'm not sure why there's all this pushback about mages having the equivalent of a crossbow, but magical, so they don't need to lug around a crossbow that might not fit their theme?

They can get it if they want it, that's what matters. Just because it requires a trade off doesn't mean it doesn't accomplish what you want. We can also put this in reverse: what does the fighter give up to get 9th level spells?

Yes, but these other classes don't have many encounter ending options.

I don't have a problem with it especially. Just in the context of 3e granting casters this ability without any tradeoff is extremely unfair to the more mundane classes who rely on their endurance to contribute as much as a decently played wizard. There are classes available for the infinite magic blaster archetype. Refluff them if you want.


Really dang interesting effect that would be really cool as a feat, but for some bizarre reason is a spell. This would be really interesting to use as a rogue or ranger, but it's not even on the ranger list!

It was designed, along with other similar spells, to be a companion to the daggerspell shaper/mage classes. Making it a feat would make these classes even more feat intensive.

[Kurald Galain]

Duskblade, for having a very short spell list and still having a lot of duds on there (and most of the hype for duskblades assumes a higher level than where most campaigns end).

Kineticist, for obvious reasons.

Medium as well as Chameleon, because switching your party role every day is just not something that helps in most parties.

[vasilidor]

I would have done skill tricks as unlocks.
Like you have 5 ranks in jump? here is a cool new thing you can do with it.

[Harrow]

Medium as well as Chameleon, because switching your party role every day is just not something that helps in most parties.

Ugh! I have a problem with a lot of Jack-of-All-Trades archetypes, whether that's from the ability to shift load-outs on a day-to-day basis like Incarnate or Chameleon or just being kind of OK at everything like a Bard is supposed to be. In practice, almost all rolls in D&D have binary results. Either you hit, or you miss. Either the sentry spots you or they don't. You either can or cannot pick a lock, etc, etc. And if you can't do something reliably in combat or at all out of combat, it tends to feel really bad. I've run combats before where both sides had difficulty getting past the other's AC. It's not fun for anybody. Some chance of failure is necessary, it wouldn't really feel like a game without it, but there's a reason I've never seen an arcane caster use armor that grants so much as a 5% arcane spell failure.

What this all means is that you either have a Master-of-All-Trades like certain caster builds, in which case the rest of the party gets to be no more than a pile of BMX Bandits, or Master-of-None, in which case you end up doing things like not having the bonuses to make skill checks on a 10 or even a 20 out of combat, and in combat you waste actions by failing rolls. You want to be someone that can grapple AND trip AND bullrush AND do them all from stealth? Not likely, unless you're fairly high level (and even then, you'll probably want heavy caster support).

D&D just requires specialists. And it's a team game, so there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is when the designers tried to shoehorn in character archetypes that don't gel with the system.

It doesn't help the Chameleon in specific that it's not very good at party roles that aren't great in the first place. Weapon combat specialist? Outdoor survivalist? Already not as useful as casters, and the Chameleon fails to do these underwhelming tasks to fall even further.

[Draconi Redfir]

Pathfinder 1e

i understand the point of Weapon Focus, but i feel like it's kind of limiting. If you decide to spend a feat to be better at longswords, then there is definitely an incentive to ONLY use longswords, passing up other weapons that could also be good. Feel like a better alternative could be to have them instead be focus in specific weapon groups, Axes, Heavy blades, light blades, bows, etc. Much more vague, but also much less limiting.

Fighters get this with their weapon training ability, but that also gives them a +1 to the damage, so i feel like a feat to get just a +1 to attack should be fine.


And this isn't even counting all the feats that have Weapon Focus as a prerequisite, meaning those feats will ONLY work for that one specific weapon.


At the very least a feat that says "If you have weapon focus in a weapon, it and any other feats that have weapon focus as a prerequisite also apply to one new weapon of your choice" or something for the sort.

[Snowbluff]

3.5e: Everything in Tome of Magic. Yes, including Binder. It was the best cooked of the bunch but the class still needed work, particularly its chassis, which the PF Pactmaker improved on considerably.



Truenamer - Cool concept, terrible execution. It fails to function by its own design.


While I like Binder, I do think on one level or another I think Tome of Magic has to make it into the list for me. I think my standards are higher for the later classes that branch out beyond "I cast spells" and "I use swords." Trunenamer is a major disappointment, and I think shadowcaster is definitely on the weak side, and both are confusing in how they function as well.

[Ottriman]

The Fighter class (Both D&D 3.5 and PF 1e to a slightly lesser extent).

A general martial class to build your own badass? That sounds really cool, too bad every option this class gets is just a feat. PF 1e improved a bit by giving some weapon and armor options but most of them are nothing exciting.

So its a class that can only really get super generic passive martial abilities for the most part. Basically nothing Fighter gets is distinct. This is them compounded by them being so feat-based, when most feats are really bad, making it easy to create a very sucky character.

[RexDart]

Duskblade, for having a very short spell list and still having a lot of duds on there (and most of the hype for duskblades assumes a higher level than where most campaigns end).


My DM improved Duskblade by adding a bunch of reasonable spells to their list (and from all schools of magic, due in part to the specifics of the game world) and changing them from INT-based to CHA-based.

[SimonMoon6]

Here's my choice for prestige class:

Acolyte of the Skin. Ooh, cool, a wizard replaces his skin with the skin of a demon. And doing so requires a special ritual that has been eradicated from most libraries, so it's this super-rare, super-cool thing that only the most awesome guys are gonna be able to do.

But, you lose five caster levels if you take all ten levels of this class. That's not an automatic failure for a prestige class, but it is a huge red flag. It is *possible* that the class could still give you something that's worth giving up five caster levels. So, what does it give you?

Darkvision. A +1 to natural armor which eventually becomes +2. A +2 to DEX (inherent, so won't stack with wishes) and eventually a +2 to CON... which is nice but not worth giving up spells for.

Some (Sp) and (Su) abilities that aren't better than the spells you've lost, including poison, stunning, fire damage, and summon monster abilities.

At 10th level, you get DR 10/good and become an outsider.

Bleah. As a full-caster class, it wouldn't be too bad but also wouldn't be overly powerful. But as a half-caster? No thanks.

Of course, a lot of early prestige classes were like this. The designers felt that if they gave the players *anything* beyond what a normal class would do, they needed to cripple the character completely.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For feats (and sometimes class abilities), anything that lets you cast a cantrip a few times a day. That's not worth a feat (or class ability). Sure, that might be nice at 1st level, but when you're 10th level, that is absolutely worthless. Feats and class abilities that you have to choose (rather than getting for free) need to be worthwhile through your entire career, but I feel a lot of designers only think about how cool things would be at 1st level.

[Tyndmyr]

As a DM, my answer to that, depending on how impressive it is, is usually either "cast prestidigitation" or "just fluff it". Making a small item float to your hand when you could easily reach it? Prestidigitation at best.

Mage Hand seems reasonably appropriate for making an object hover however one wished. If someone wanted to make a dull grey ioun stone, permanencying a cantrip seems...honestly kind of appropriate.

[Eldan]

That is an application of mage hand, yes. Butwhat I mean is that if my player just wants to have their mug fly into their hand to look cool, when instead they could just also walk two steps, I wouldn't demand they actually use a spell slot for that. That's just a bit of fluff.

[Psyren]

While I like Binder, I do think on one level or another I think Tome of Magic has to make it into the list for me. I think my standards are higher for the later classes that branch out beyond "I cast spells" and "I use swords." Trunenamer is a major disappointment, and I think shadowcaster is definitely on the weak side, and both are confusing in how they function as well.

My biggest problems with Binder are twofold:

1) Pathetically low skill points - a Binder gets all the face skills (as they should for a wheeling-and-dealing-focused class) but they simply can't take advantage of them with the meager allotment they're given. Both mechanically and thematically they should be really good at influencing and deceiving those around them, particularly given how Binders are treated in most settings if they act openly, but that's just not how things work in practice. They should get 4+Int at a minimum, if not 6+Int; they have neither demanding martial training nor demanding spellcasting education to explain why they have no free time to pick up other skills, especially skills that would directly aid them with Pact Magic.

2) Weak and samey early game - The skill points issue comes into play here too, because skills are at their most useful early on - but even putting that aside, a lot of low-level Binders feel identical to one another. Almost all of them grab Improved Binding as soon as possible, and then either Savnok for surviving melee or Naberius for control. Naberius is also handy out of combat so most early Binders go with him. The worst part though is being stuck with a single vestige until level 8 for a day at a time; if you want to change your pact during a day, not only does that lock you into yet another fixed feat, but the penalty for actually doing so is massive.

[Ottriman]

The travel shift at 9th level.

To explain what I mean, I will note three spells: Teleport, Plane Shift, and Overland Flight. All of these come online at spell level 5 (character level 9 for a full caster). What this means is that the party goes from mostly walking or riding mundane mounts everywhere and taking time to travel, deal with the terrain, and whatnot, to suddenly being able to skip basically all overland travel in an instant. It also takes things from the characters all being on the material plane to them being able to go to basically any plane whenever all at once.

I'm someone who likes well executed and gradually expanded upon world traversal. The instantaneous shift from walking on the same plane to cover long distances to being able to skip basically all travel is super jarring to me. I don't always want travel games or anything, but if long range movement options and speeds and such opened up more gradually and evenly throughout the level range I'd have loved that.

[icefractal]

I'd say there is a bit of a ramp-up, between "We can teleport, but it's going to use up all my highest level slots and be risky if we port to someplace hostile" to "Oh hey, just realized we're out of the good jerky, I'll port to town and pick some up, back in like an hour". But it is a fairly sharp change.

[Silva Stormrage]

I'd say there is a bit of a ramp-up, between "We can teleport, but it's going to use up all my highest level slots and be risky if we port to someplace hostile" to "Oh hey, just realized we're out of the good jerky, I'll port to town and pick some up, back in like an hour". But it is a fairly sharp change.

Except for Lesser Planar Binding for a Bargula or Justice Archon which gives at will teleport for other creatures. Which does break things.


On that note, my addition for the thread is for Planar Binding. It's such an iconic spell and concept but is so utterly broken its hard to use without just wondering why you aren't breaking the game. A limit on the number you can have or a requirement that monsters with HD near your CL always have to be paid or SOMETHING to make it useable but not broken. Very disappointed Paizo didn't change anything regarding those spells in PF.

In a similar vein I would like necromancy to be more player friendly. It is incredibly hard to get and control non mindless undead without jumping through a bunch of obscure optimization loops at which point you can control far TOO many intelligent and powerful undead for free. I would like more options for animate dead and an easier but more limited option for control for create/create greater undead. (And allowing for most undead monsters to be created by one of those three spells).


I will also back up Psyren's opinion on ToM. Binders while cool just struggle so hard at levels 5-7 and having a single vestige at those levels is painful. Radiance House's PF pactmaker is an excellent update. Shadowcasters are cool but utterly mechanically lacking against Beguiler's in almost every way.

[Eldan]

The travel shift at 9th level.

To explain what I mean, I will note three spells: Teleport, Plane Shift, and Overland Flight. All of these come online at spell level 5 (character level 9 for a full caster). What this means is that the party goes from mostly walking or riding mundane mounts everywhere and taking time to travel, deal with the terrain, and whatnot, to suddenly being able to skip basically all overland travel in an instant. It also takes things from the characters all being on the material plane to them being able to go to basically any plane whenever all at once.

I'm someone who likes well executed and gradually expanded upon world traversal. The instantaneous shift from walking on the same plane to cover long distances to being able to skip basically all travel is super jarring to me. I don't always want travel games or anything, but if long range movement options and speeds and such opened up more gradually and evenly throughout the level range I'd have loved that.

That's why I like Shadow Walk. It's probably my favorite travel spell. It's faster than normal travel in most cases, but considerably weirder and potentially dangerous, if you interpret the spell description liberally.

[Zanos]

I think the sudden shift in travel mechanics is overblown; the party should go from walking to horses at level 2 or 3, phantom steed is avaliable at 5 or 6 spell slots permitting, and then teleport at 9 is only reliable in returning to locations you've already been. You can port back to town just fine with a small margin of error, but how how are you going to teleport to the hill giants cave somewhere in the mountains to the north? You can't even teleport to a location you've never seen. You could scry on someone already there, but then you'd need to qualify for the conditions of scrying, and teleporting right next to them might not be the best idea.

Teleports potency as escape is more game warping than travel, imo. Not to say it isn't useful, but most travel encounters shouldn't realistically threaten a 9th level party.

Oh, and overland flight is self only. Phantom Steed or some kind of massive animated undead with a high fly speed are probably the most reliable forms of moving the entire party.

[icefractal]

On that note, my addition for the thread is for Planar Binding. It's such an iconic spell and concept but is so utterly broken its hard to use without just wondering why you aren't breaking the game. A limit on the number you can have or a requirement that monsters with HD near your CL always have to be paid or SOMETHING to make it useable but not broken. Very disappointed Paizo didn't change anything regarding those spells in PF.
Agreed on that, I feel like it's both OP and yet underwhelming, in that you can't really do the "foolish mage conjuring powers far too great to control" thing with it either, because of the HD limit.

I think it should be a least two separate spells:
* Call something much more powerful than yourself, and then bargain with them because the spell gives you no control, just sets up the meeting.
* Call something on par or weaker than you, and you control them. Probably with a limit on how many you can control at once.

[Darg]

I will also back up Psyren's opinion on ToM. Binders while cool just struggle so hard at levels 5-7 and having a single vestige at those levels is painful. Radiance House's PF pactmaker is an excellent update. Shadowcasters are cool but utterly mechanically lacking against Beguiler's in almost every way.

Same. I find that a lot of classes suffer from a lack of skill points while also having a limited class skill list. It makes investing in intelligence simply not valuable a lot of the time beyond feat prerequisites. As for the binder specifically, the irregular progression for most of their features is really weird too. I think allowing the player to get an augmentation every third level would fill in gaps (2nd, 5th, 8th, 11th, 14th, 17th, 20th) and you could cap it to 5 per bonus and then uncap it if you go epic. I'd also change when you get more vestiges to every 6th level (1st, 7th, 13th, 19th). Move the bonus feats to (4th, 10th, 16th) and soul guardian to (6th, 9th, 12th, 18th) while also adding an effect at 15th like increasing the extra chance to two times on a second round or maybe a "scent" type ability specifically for illusion magic within 30 ft. This leaves only 3rd level as a "dead" level and provides a better feeling of progression. Personally, I think I'd move suppress sign to 3rd level, but at the same time it being at 2nd makes sense


Agreed on that, I feel like it's both OP and yet underwhelming, in that you can't really do the "foolish mage conjuring powers far too great to control" thing with it either, because of the HD limit.

I think it should be a least two separate spells:
* Call something much more powerful than yourself, and then bargain with them because the spell gives you no control, just sets up the meeting.
* Call something on par or weaker than you, and you control them. Probably with a limit on how many you can control at once.

Just make it not a compulsion spell (kinda weird that a spell designed to bring something to you to barter for services would allow you to basically dominate them without it being a mind affecting spell which is why I don't play it that way).

[Pinkie Pyro]

The astral dancer PRC.

just read it for the first time, and just...


Lightning Speed (Ex): At 10th level, an astral dancer's ability to move through the Astral Plane with but a thought becomes so finely tuned that those observing her cannot react as she passes by. The character's movement while on the Astral Plane (or a similar no-gravity environment) never provokes attacks of opportunity.

That's their best ability. a 10 level prestige class that gives less than a fighter.

[Arutema]

I'll cast another well-deserved stone at the Kineticist, a class that can't decide if it's an all-day blaster, or a caster that uses their own HP as their power point pool, and in then end can't do either well. Also held back very badly by lack of magic item support.

The Gunslinger, a base class that gives so little after 5th level you might as well multiclass or PRC on out. And it's tied to another disappointing mechanic: The PF1e firearm rules. You spend a lot of feats getting down to free-action reloads, on a weapon that basically cannot miss because you have full BAB and you're targeting touch AC.

Timeworn technology and the accompanying glitch table. Players either conveniently "forget" to roll for glitches, or just don't bother using said tech because of the randomness of the glitch table.

[inuyasha]

I'm surprised nobody here has mentioned the Shifter class for PF; or is that fruit too low hanging for even this kind of thread?

It's just... lame. Shapeshifting is such a cool idea and I feel like the Shifter just isn't flexible enough.

[icefractal]

Timeworn technology and the accompanying glitch table. Players either conveniently "forget" to roll for glitches, or just don't bother using said tech because of the randomness of the glitch table.
Heck, I'd expand this to "the PF technology rules in general".
Like, it's a cool idea with a lot of support, but ... it's mostly like a worse version of magic items. For example, starting from scratch, you can either:

1) Find a cybernetics lab. You can't craft these, you have to find one in the world.
2) Take Craft Cybernetics, with requires 9th level and Technologist.
3) Spend 36k (72k price) to make Cyberfiber Muscles Mk III
4) Install them, which requires surgery (Heal DC 36) and takes up 8 points of your cybernetic capacity (lower of Con or Int, so probably 8-14 for most PCs), and also takes up your cybernetic Body slot, so no Dermal Plating or Wirejack Tendons for you. Oh, and it deals 8 Con damage when you install it, although by the time you can afford it that's not a big deal.
5) Now you have +6 enhancement bonus to Strength.

or ...
1) Take Craft Wondrous Item
2) Spend 18k (36k price) to make a Belt of Mighty Strength +6
3) Put it on. Now you have +6 enhancement bonus to Strength.

Yes, the cybernetics are less stealable, but you still lose them if you die and get resurrected in a different body or someone surgically removes them. And while they don't take up an item slot, they do take up their own slots, and they cost as much as a slotless item would.

And if you're just an end-consumer instead of the crafter, it's maybe even worse? Have surgery vs put on a belt ... hard choice. :smalltongue: This means you need to trust the installer significantly, more than you would someone you're just buying a belt from.

Even if we assume unlimited funds and access to non-timeworn tech, there's not much of it that has a "wow" factor compared to existing items. Like, the lasers are nice for Gunslingers I guess, although losing that x4 crit hurts. Some of the veemods and other gear are cool. But not anywhere cool enough to justify the amount of roadblocks they put between it and PCs.

[MesiDoomstalker]

Heck, I'd expand this to "the PF technology rules in general".
Like, it's a cool idea with a lot of support, but ... it's mostly like a worse version of magic items. For example, starting from scratch, you can either:

1) Find a cybernetics lab. You can't craft these, you have to find one in the world.
2) Take Craft Cybernetics, with requires 9th level and Technologist.
3) Spend 36k (72k price) to make Cyberfiber Muscles Mk III
4) Install them, which requires surgery (Heal DC 36) and takes up 8 points of your cybernetic capacity (lower of Con or Int, so probably 8-14 for most PCs), and also takes up your cybernetic Body slot, so no Dermal Plating or Wirejack Tendons for you. Oh, and it deals 8 Con damage when you install it, although by the time you can afford it that's not a big deal.
5) Now you have +6 enhancement bonus to Strength.

or ...
1) Take Craft Wondrous Item
2) Spend 18k (36k price) to make a Belt of Mighty Strength +6
3) Put it on. Now you have +6 enhancement bonus to Strength.

Yes, the cybernetics are less stealable, but you still lose them if you die and get resurrected in a different body or someone surgically removes them. And while they don't take up an item slot, they do take up their own slots, and they cost as much as a slotless item would.

And if you're just an end-consumer instead of the crafter, it's maybe even worse? Have surgery vs put on a belt ... hard choice. :smalltongue: This means you need to trust the installer significantly, more than you would someone you're just buying a belt from.

Even if we assume unlimited funds and access to non-timeworn tech, there's not much of it that has a "wow" factor compared to existing items. Like, the lasers are nice for Gunslingers I guess, although losing that x4 crit hurts. Some of the veemods and other gear are cool. But not anywhere cool enough to justify the amount of roadblocks they put between it and PCs.

On the whole, I agree with this. There are a few gems. a Prismatic Hypo Gun has True Rez on a stick, which is nothing to scoff at. The majority of items are priced as if magic items but have extra hoops and bull on top of it. Just like the non-tech gun rules, its all about making sure the cool stuff isnt better than normal high fantasy stuff.

[Arutema]

Even if we assume unlimited funds and access to non-timeworn tech, there's not much of it that has a "wow" factor compared to existing items. Like, the lasers are nice for Gunslingers I guess, although losing that x4 crit hurts. Some of the veemods and other gear are cool. But not anywhere cool enough to justify the amount of roadblocks they put between it and PCs.

About the only tech I see as worth it is the chainsaw for melee bruisers. 3d6 base damage that can be further enhanced by the usual size-boosting shenanigans is nothing to scoff at, even if you have to take exotic weapon prof.

[Quertus]

The travel shift at 9th level.


I think the sudden shift in travel mechanics is overblown; the party should go from walking to horses at level 2 or 3, phantom steed is avaliable at 5 or 6 spell slots permitting, and then teleport at 9 is only reliable in returning to locations you've already been.

I think a more optimized party might transition from walking to ground mounts to ground mount with Horseshoes of Speed to flying mounts to flying Dragons to Teleporting over the span of, say, 12 levels or so (when they can afford Teleport for transportation rather than just as an emergency exit). For planar access, they go from paid services to Knowledge checks and walking/riding to existing portals to Plane Shift over the span of 9 levels. It seems like a rather good progression to my eyes.

[Morphic tide]

Yes, the cybernetics are less stealable, but you still lose them if you die and get resurrected in a different body or someone surgically removes them. And while they don't take up an item slot, they do take up their own slots, and they cost as much as a slotless item would.
The big hangup to me is just the Cybernetics Lab, the rest is understandable given they also shrug at spell requirements and Dispel. Just a bit too much of a premium for those benefits, like Vow of Poverty.

Which is a surprising absence from this thread, given how well-known its issues are. While I stand by my opinion that it's the wrong bonuses rather than bad ones, it remains a terrible pick outside Druid builds that net a considerable cost-effectiveness advantage over spamming clasps. This is mostly because [Exalted] feats suffer immensely from paint-by-numbers design, padding the book out with feature-by-feature "support" that is mostly just mild number bonuses, very frequently constrained to anti-Evil activity, rather than general utility.

[Psyren]

I'm surprised nobody here has mentioned the Shifter class for PF; or is that fruit too low hanging for even this kind of thread?

It's just... lame. Shapeshifting is such a cool idea and I feel like the Shifter just isn't flexible enough.

I'm... I'm on the first page! (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?657355-What-3-5-PF-content-disappointed-you-mechancially&p=25807421&viewfull=1#post25807421)

[Snowbluff]

My biggest problems with Binder are twofold:

1) Pathetically low skill points - a Binder gets all the face skills (as they should for a wheeling-and-dealing-focused class) but they simply can't take advantage of them with the meager allotment they're given. Both mechanically and thematically they should be really good at influencing and deceiving those around them, particularly given how Binders are treated in most settings if they act openly, but that's just not how things work in practice. They should get 4+Int at a minimum, if not 6+Int; they have neither demanding martial training nor demanding spellcasting education to explain why they have no free time to pick up other skills, especially skills that would directly aid them with Pact Magic.

2) Weak and samey early game - The skill points issue comes into play here too, because skills are at their most useful early on - but even putting that aside, a lot of low-level Binders feel identical to one another. Almost all of them grab Improved Binding as soon as possible, and then either Savnok for surviving melee or Naberius for control. Naberius is also handy out of combat so most early Binders go with him. The worst part though is being stuck with a single vestige until level 8 for a day at a time; if you want to change your pact during a day, not only does that lock you into yet another fixed feat, but the penalty for actually doing so is massive.
I totally agree with these points being sore ones. The former isn't a deal breaker for me, but I'm far more likely to consider a binder when I can either use one of their theurges or have a second vestige value.

I'm... I'm on the first page! (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?657355-What-3-5-PF-content-disappointed-you-mechancially&p=25807421&viewfull=1#post25807421)

Psyren ninja'd so hard no one could see 'im.

[Draconi Redfir]

Heck, I'd expand this to "the PF technology rules in general".
Like, it's a cool idea with a lot of support, but ... it's mostly like a worse version of magic items. For example, starting from scratch, you can either:

1) Find a cybernetics lab. You can't craft these, you have to find one in the world.
2) Take Craft Cybernetics, with requires 9th level and Technologist.
3) Spend 36k (72k price) to make Cyberfiber Muscles Mk III
4) Install them, which requires surgery (Heal DC 36) and takes up 8 points of your cybernetic capacity (lower of Con or Int, so probably 8-14 for most PCs), and also takes up your cybernetic Body slot, so no Dermal Plating or Wirejack Tendons for you. Oh, and it deals 8 Con damage when you install it, although by the time you can afford it that's not a big deal.
5) Now you have +6 enhancement bonus to Strength.

or ...
1) Take Craft Wondrous Item
2) Spend 18k (36k price) to make a Belt of Mighty Strength +6
3) Put it on. Now you have +6 enhancement bonus to Strength.

Yes, the cybernetics are less stealable, but you still lose them if you die and get resurrected in a different body or someone surgically removes them. And while they don't take up an item slot, they do take up their own slots, and they cost as much as a slotless item would.

And if you're just an end-consumer instead of the crafter, it's maybe even worse? Have surgery vs put on a belt ... hard choice. :smalltongue: This means you need to trust the installer significantly, more than you would someone you're just buying a belt from.

Even if we assume unlimited funds and access to non-timeworn tech, there's not much of it that has a "wow" factor compared to existing items. Like, the lasers are nice for Gunslingers I guess, although losing that x4 crit hurts. Some of the veemods and other gear are cool. But not anywhere cool enough to justify the amount of roadblocks they put between it and PCs.


i don't have any experience with them, but it does sound like the Tech stuff is an alternative to Magic, which is nice if you're running a character or theme that doesn't want to use magic for one reason or another.

More mundane options to keep up with magical ones are always welcome in my book.

[questionmark693]

Spellfire channeler. I love the idea of being a battery if magical energy, of absorbing it when it's meant to harm me, and then repurposing it against my enemies. If only it wasn't tied to con, and required me to ready actions, denying me the ability to do literally anything.

[Arutema]

i don't have any experience with them, but it does sound like the Tech stuff is an alternative to Magic, which is nice if you're running a character or theme that doesn't want to use magic for one reason or another.

More mundane options to keep up with magical ones are always welcome in my book.

If you want a mundane to keep up without magic items, Pathfinder is probably not the system for you.

[Darg]

Spellfire channeler. I love the idea of being a battery if magical energy, of absorbing it when it's meant to harm me, and then repurposing it against my enemies. If only it wasn't tied to con, and required me to ready actions, denying me the ability to do literally anything.

To be fair, they weren't very clear on how it's supposed to work. A rod of absorption is a non-action and you can't ready a non-action. When would it be triggered? Does it absorb only one spell per action? Are you permanently readied and can absorb infinitely until you decide to end it? Or is it triggered and now you act like a rod indefinitely? It's impossible to know exactly WHAT the mechanic actually is to be disappointed in it.

[DammitVictor]

I want to draw a line between facets of the 3.X and PF systems that have disappointed me and specific content that I was looking forward to, and then regretted looking forward to.

I think the thing that gets me most with Tome of Battle and, to a lesser extent Path of War, is that they claimed to fix the martial classes but... didn't. They replaced them with new martial classes that used a different definition of "martial". One which I was 100% here for, make no mistake, but one that wasn't really compatible with existing characters and campaigns... right before another radical gameplay shift in the edition cycle. Path of War at least offers some feat support, and archetypes for existing character classes... but I want a system where these mechanics are built into the framework of how the game works.

Same with Akashic Mysteries, except I wasn't that hype for it in the first place.

I can't say anything about the Shifter that hasn't already been said better.

I was really upset that the last couple of Complete ... books only had 4-5 Prestige Classes each because they had pages of basic worldbuilding that 1) wasn't my worldbuilding and 2) was completely implied by and inferrable from the description of the class. And this is Complete Mage and Complete Psionic which were... the majority of new game content for the warlock and psionic classes.

Same with that introduced two whole new races with wonky, awkward mechanics (right before the edition shift, again) instead of... doing anything with classics that an old crustbeard like me would have appreciated, like tortles or saurials. Spellscales were never seen again, while the dragonborn have become a core race at the expense of the lore they were initially presented with. If you're new to my channel, this is my [i]least favorite thing WotC does to D&D, and they do it constantly and ruthessly. (Click the lycan subscribe for new content like this every full moon.)

The soulknife base class in 3.5. The soulknife PrC in 3.0 was really cool... applied to an already-established martial and psionic character. As a base class, they're neither fish nor fowl. DSP fixed this with style for Pathfinder, and their third-party support was top-notch.

Occult Adventures in Pathfinder. I know it's my fault for wanting it to be psionics when it was never going to be psionics, but I also just don't like what it was, either. The Kineticist class could have been great, but the Burn system is just so murderously awful.

I loved most of Dragon Magic and especially the Dragonfire Adept. My disappointment comes from the fact it was a late-edition book and the DFA got almost no support afterwards, and hasn't resurfaced since, even as parts of the Sorcerer or Warlock classes or the Dragonborn race.

I've been pretty disappointed with most of the third-party content I've seen for Starfinder, especially compared to how good the third-party content-- from the same companies-- has been in Pathfinder.

[vasilidor]

Spellfire could have been tied to spell resistance. Any magical effect that failed to overcome it just gets absorbed and has no affect.

[Darg]

I think I might be the only person that doesn't think the kineticist burn mechanic is that bad. Really, I think what is terrible is how the class integrates it. Elemental overflow and gather power are really the two big offenders. The first makes it so you want to spend resources immediately instead of tactically and dynamically. The latter makes itself excessively difficult to use because of the visual and audible penalty or the burn cost if you fail your concentration.

[Draconi Redfir]

If you want a mundane to keep up without magic items, Pathfinder is probably not the system for you.

Just saying, more alternatives are always welcome.

[Ottriman]

The monster design system. Both D&D 3.5 and PF 1e.

Making monsters by adding together a ton of HD defined by type and then adding abilities on top is just a pain in the ass. Instead of getting stats that fit based on level and intended use case you have to kinda make a PC like creature with the complexities involved. It is such an overinvolved process for making a creature that's gonna show up for a few fights and that's it.

Then there's the problems with monster HD. Monster types determining what those HD entail screws up many concepts. Want to make a martial Fey? d6 HD and low BAB means you have to over-HD so much they become overcompetent at many other things. Want to make an angel of peace that's all about social graces and divination? Good BAB and proficiency in a bunch of weapons because Outsider. These are just two examples.

[Raven777]

3.5/PF: The linear or even exponential nature of 1-20 progression. Say what you will about other parts of 5e, but Bounded Accuracy is really nice.
PF: Traits. The giant list of random arbitrary +x traits is godawful. Their only redeeming value are the ones that let you dip extra class skills for character customization/flavor, and that's it.
3.5/PF: You know what, if I'm griping about Traits I might as well gripe about Feats. So much cruft. At least Elephant in the Room cleans it up a bit, but Feats are still mostly grate A+ clunk.

[icefractal]

There's a few other good Traits in there, but (like feats) it's a few grains of wheat in a big pile of chaff.

Although based off PF2, I guess I'm not looking at it the way Paizo is - from their perspective, it's a few grains of overpowered in a big pile of wheat, because "situational 5% bonus" is an awesome thing completely worth spending time and attention on. :smalltongue:

[MaxiDuRaritry]

There's a few other good Traits in there, but (like feats) it's a few grains of wheat in a big pile of chaff.

Although based off PF2, I guess I'm not looking at it the way Paizo is - from their perspective, it's a few grains of overpowered in a big pile of wheat, because "situational 5% bonus" is an awesome thing completely worth spending time and attention on. :smalltongue:I avoided PF1 like the plague for the longest time, because the first time I tried to make a PF character for a game, I kept hitting all of the "situational 5% bonus" feats and gave up.

[vasilidor]

I avoided PF1 like the plague for the longest time, because the first time I tried to make a PF character for a game, I kept hitting all of the "situational 5% bonus" feats and gave up.

Isn't that like 90% of all 3.x feats?
Instead of allowing for new or novel skill uses, just a bonus to a skill?

[Kurald Galain]

Isn't that like 90% of all 3.x feats?
Instead of allowing for new or novel skill uses, just a bonus to a skill?
I mean yeah, the signal-to-noise ratio in PF feats isn't great, but 3.X has exactly the same issue ("Use turn undead against hippos", anyone?); and it's actually worse in both 4E and PF2.

5E at least manages to keep its feat list clear and concise (although I'd argue most 5E feats still aren't impressive).

[Draconi Redfir]

3.5/PF: The linear or even exponential nature of 1-20 progression. Say what you will about other parts of 5e, but Bounded Accuracy is really nice.

ehh, I've always kind of felt the opposite really.

In pathfinder, my character at level 3 is better at hitting things and diplomacy then they were at level 1.

In 5th edition, that same characters has not gotten any better at hitting things OR talking to people at level 3 then they were at level 1, the stats are all the same, there's practically no progression. If it wasn't for a few extra hitpoints and like, one new ability, then you'd be hard pressed to tell if they've even levelled at all.

[Khosan]

The Dual Wielding sphere from Spheres of Might. I can appreciate some of the quality of life talents in there (Tandem Offensive is great, Asynchronous Swing is alright), but it feels like the sphere is missing the fun of TWF. Namely just making a lot of attack rolls and rolling an irresponsible number of dice. Barrage is closer to that than Dual Wielding is. Dual Wielding mostly just comes across as the sphere for having two hands that you can do different things with, which...isn't wrong, it's just not exciting.

[Pinkie Pyro]

Really it's just that a lot of content; feats, traits, class features alike needed to be more than "+X to Y in situation" and instead be actual abilities.

Power attack is an example of a good feat. trade accuracy for power, bonus if you're using a big heavy weapon. There's a choice to be made when you have that feat.

Two weapon fighting is an example of a problem feat. not only is it "+X to Y in situation", you can't do something reliably without it, so it just becomes a tax.

Same thing with say, favored enemy. "+2 bonus on Bluff, Listen, Sense Motive, Spot, and Survival checks when using these skills against creatures of this type. Likewise, he gets a +2 bonus on weapon damage rolls against such creatures." not only is it oddly specific, it's also a small bonus.

And let's not forget magic items! a +1 sword is about as boring as they come, and that applies all the time!


Part of me feels like it would be best to have an entire re-write of core to better accommodate "actions and choices" instead of "numbers". And everyone's tried to fix this one way or another, but it's hard to do that with the nature of 3.5 and its massive amount of content.

[JNAProductions]

ehh, I've always kind of felt the opposite really.

In pathfinder, my character at level 3 is better at hitting things and diplomacy then they were at level 1.

In 5th edition, that same characters has not gotten any better at hitting things OR talking to people at level 3 then they were at level 1, the stats are all the same, there's practically no progression. If it wasn't for a few extra hitpoints and like, one new ability, then you'd be hard pressed to tell if they've even levelled at all.

Action Surge makes you better at hitting people, or doing basically anything with a time crunch.
Fighting Styles (acquired by anyone who gets it besides the Fighter at level 2) can make you better at hitting things, defending yourself, or even talking to others (via Commanding Presence).
Eloquence Bards treat any roll on Persuasion or Deception of 9- as a 10 by level 3, making them insanely reliable at those types of checks. They also get Expertise at level 3.
Speaking of Bards, they get to add half their proficiency to all non-proficient checks at level 2.
Druids can Wildshape at level two, but not at level one. And for a Moon Druid especially, that skyrockets combat effectiveness.

Not to mention, for me at least, I'd much MUCH rather progression come via abilities rather than numbers. Numbers can and should go up-but I find it much cooler to have new things to do or new ways of doing old things, than just see a number tick up by 1.

[pabelfly]

Really it's just that a lot of content; feats, traits, class features alike needed to be more than "+X to Y in situation" and instead be actual abilities.

I actually don't mind the +X to Y in situation feats, they just need to be stronger to match how often they can be used. Examples of what I mean:

Spell Focus (Good), gives +1 DC. This is a pretty general feat and, IMO, not a bad balance level.

Cold Focus gives +1 DC to cold spells, but should give a +2 or +3. Cold spells are more specific and have more enemies they work poorly against, or even not at all.

Aberration Banemagic, which only works on aberrations, should not be a +2, it should be like a +6 or higher. Even in an aberration-focused campaign, there's going to be a bunch of enemies you'll fight that aren't aberrations, and if you want to spend your resources to have a character focused on killing aberrations with magic, I'd really prefer the stat bonuses to reflect that so it shows through to the dice rolls.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Not to mention, for me at least, I'd much MUCH rather progression come via abilities rather than numbers. Numbers can and should go up-but I find it much cooler to have new things to do or new ways of doing old things, than just see a number tick up by 1.

Very strong agreement here. I mean, I'm not opposed to +numbers. But I strongly want those to just be silently baked into the classes at appropriate levels. And be fairly limited in size.

For feats in particular...spending a feat to get a small, mostly-forgettable (once you write it down on your sheet), or worse situational numerical bonus, to me, sucks. Although it's worse when your entire effectiveness depends on picking the right small numerical bonuses from feats. For example, 4e had the Weapon/Implement Focus feats. Turns out, the game math basically required you to pick them up ASAP (level 1 preferably) or you'd fall way short of expectations. Which makes them the worst of all possible worlds--small forgettable bonuses...that turn out to be required but you can miss. So you can accidentally create a broken character because you didn't realize this tiny straw in the mountain of chaff that are 4e feats is load-bearing. Don't read a guide? Congratulations, you've got a sucky character.

So missable expected bonuses are the absolute worst. I strongly prefer if a character who picks only "horizontal" bonuses with feats and other parallel-progression things (such as items) still meets the system's baseline expectations, and if such parallel-progression stuff is mostly horizontal progression--giving you new things outside your class's boundaries rather than doubling down on your class's big things. Leave the class feature progression to the class itself. Much more controllable while actually providing more real choices. A choice you have to make to stay on track isn't really a choice at all. It's a trap.

[Kurald Galain]

In 5th edition, that same characters has not gotten any better at hitting things OR talking to people at level 3 then they were at level 1, the stats are all the same, there's practically no progression. If it wasn't for a few extra hitpoints and like, one new ability, then you'd be hard pressed to tell if they've even levelled at all.
I agree with this. 5E, and for that matter PF2, don't give me the "zero to hero" vibe that 3E/PF does.


Not to mention, for me at least, I'd much MUCH rather progression come via abilities rather than numbers. Numbers can and should go up-but I find it much cooler to have new things to do or new ways of doing old things, than just see a number tick up by 1.
I also agree with that; and imho 5E and PF2 give barely any new abilities that aren't numbers (except spellcasting, of course), whereas PF1 and 4E do an excellent job at this (and 3E as well, but depending on the class).

Like, of the examples you mention, Fighting Styles are almost all strictly numerical (although I like the one with superiority dice); and all the bard abilities you list are strictly numerical as well. Wild Shape is great, of course.

[Zanos]

Numbers are abilities when they mean something. Getting to +10 on a skill means you can pass a dc 20 on a take 10, making any listed dc 20 usage of that skill just something you can do now. At least in pf1e and 3.5, skill boosts aren't just more numbers, since they actually have a substantial impact on how you interact with the environment in a way that more to hit or more saving throws kind of don't.

[icefractal]

Numeric bonuses are fine if they're enough to be significant, IMO. Quantitative differences becoming qualitative ones and all that. But as mentioned, the less often the bonus comes up, the larger it needs to be to have a decent chance of mattering in a non-marathon campaign.

Honestly if you keep getting more and more abilities you need to remember to actively use? The character is getting unwieldy pretty quick, and many of them will end up forgotten.

[Raven777]

Honestly if you keep getting more and more abilities you need to remember to actively use? The character is getting unwieldy pretty quick, and many of them will end up forgotten.

Magic represents an exemple to the contrary, however. Are you saying Wizards, Druids, Clerics are unwieldy? One can argue that many spells are cruft, like feats, but the amount of 'old reliables' one automatically gains access to at every spell level is significant, yet they're not usually forgotten. But then again, remembering their repertoire is a big part of a spellcaster player's job.

[Gnaeus]

Magic represents an exemple to the contrary, however. Are you saying Wizards, Druids, Clerics are unwieldy? One can argue that many spells are cruft, like feats, but the amount of 'old reliables' one automatically gains access to at every spell level is significant, yet they're not usually forgotten. But then again, remembering their repertoire is a big part of a spellcaster player's job.

For me the big question is how fiddly the bonus is. A +1 on reflex saves I will remember. Or better yet, program into our tabletop simulator. A +1 on saves versus condition or +2 on a particular skill use (not the skill, the skill used in a certain way or on a certain target) not so much.

[pabelfly]

Are you saying Wizards, Druids, Clerics are unwieldy?

They are unwieldy. They take longer to play in combat as a player and longer to adjudicate as a DM.

[Draconi Redfir]

Not to mention, for me at least, I'd much MUCH rather progression come via abilities rather than numbers. Numbers can and should go up-but I find it much cooler to have new things to do or new ways of doing old things, than just see a number tick up by 1.

you can still do both. there's really no reason why you can't get an action surge and ALSO get a skill point or two to increase your non-combat orientated skills or something. Make it something that only pops up every two levels if you want idk, just do something so my character isn't looking exactly the same from level 1 and level 3 outside the HP and abilities sections.

it's the sense of progression I'm looking for i think. i want to KNOW that my character now is better then they were before. Numbers going up helps with that. And people just like seeing numbers going up in general.



Honestly if you keep getting more and more abilities you need to remember to actively use? The character is getting unwieldy pretty quick, and many of them will end up forgotten.

Also this^ i love me some "Set it and forget it" passive abilities/bonuses. That's why when i get things like Power Attack in PF1e, i just make it so that every attack is a power attack no matter what. I'd much rather suffer a -2 to hit on EVERY hit, then individually need to decide "i think today i'll try to hit a little HARDER" and potentially forget i have the feat at all. i have enough trouble remembering to add the bonus HP from Toughness.

[Harrow]

Magic represents an exemple to the contrary, however. Are you saying Wizards, Druids, Clerics are unwieldy? One can argue that many spells are cruft, like feats, but the amount of 'old reliables' one automatically gains access to at every spell level is significant, yet they're not usually forgotten. But then again, remembering their repertoire is a big part of a spellcaster player's job.

Are you saying prepared 9th level casters AREN'T unwieldy? If you had to give someone a 14th level character to play with at your table, and that person had never played a tabletop RPG, would you rather give them a Druid or a Barbarian? I know that for people that have been playing 3e for a while (and it's been out and abandoned long enough that most of us are covered under that) it can be easy to just choose the "good enough" spells if you don't want to think about it, but that actually takes a good bit of system mastery. Sure, we might all know that Sleep and Color Spray are great at low levels if you aren't expecting undead, or that Grease helps your Rogue out it you have one, and that a bit higher Glitterdust and Web can end encounters on their own, but all of that is a bit more involved than "I rage and charge" followed by "Is it dead? y-> charge again, n-> full attack".

Back specifically on the topic of situational abilities, has anyone here ever used a dwarf's racial +4 dodge bonus against giants? Has anyone had the opportunity to, but forgotten in the moment that a troll is a giant, or that you have the ability at all? I don't think I've ever seen it get used, in which case, why was it printed at all?

[Darg]

Back specifically on the topic of situational abilities, has anyone here ever used a dwarf's racial +4 dodge bonus against giants? Has anyone had the opportunity to, but forgotten in the moment that a troll is a giant, or that you have the ability at all? I don't think I've ever seen it get used, in which case, why was it printed at all?

I've seen it used and used it myself. As for why, probably because of the fantasy mythos surrounding dwarves fighting giants and trolls.

[Kurald Galain]

Back specifically on the topic of situational abilities, has anyone here ever used a dwarf's racial +4 dodge bonus against giants? Has anyone had the opportunity to, but forgotten in the moment that a troll is a giant, or that you have the ability at all? I don't think I've ever seen it get used, in which case, why was it printed at all?

This is part of the really old "rock-paper-scissors" systems of pre-D&D wargaming. There were like a dozen different types of troops, and they had to ensure that A beats B, B beats C, and C beats A in certain complex permutations (that are more-or-less based on Tolkien). This is also e.g. why elves are immune to ghoul paralysis, and why gnomes get +1 to hit against goblins.

So basically, "because it's traditional, that's why". At least the +4 dodge bonus has the decency of being easy to spot in the rare case where it applies. I have seen it used once or twice in the past decade.

[Draconi Redfir]

i don't really see a problem with situational abilities like that, they're cool things to have even if they never really get used.


Even if you never fight a giant as a dwarf, it's still cool knowing that you'd be slightly better at it then any non-dwarf in the party if you ever did. Exclusivity on minor things like that is always fun, and makes it feels like the race you choose to play matters.


The tricky part is coming up with things that are either very situational for every race, or very common for every race. Because admittedly it does suck if say, a Dwarf gets a +4 dodge AC against giants, but never fights giants, VS a Hobgoblin who always gains a +5 to attack whenever they're within 30ft of 5 or more allies*.



* Yes i know that's a 5th edition hobgoblin thing, and 5th edition dwarves don't get the +4 ac vs giants, but i needed an example and couldn't think of anything better, so just pretend they're in the same system for this argument

[Eldan]

This is part of the really old "rock-paper-scissors" systems of pre-D&D wargaming. There were like a dozen different types of troops, and they had to ensure that A beats B, B beats C, and C beats A in certain complex permutations (that are more-or-less based on Tolkien). This is also e.g. why elves are immune to ghoul paralysis, and why gnomes get +1 to hit against goblins.

So basically, "because it's traditional, that's why". At least the +4 dodge bonus has the decency of being easy to spot in the rare case where it applies. I have seen it used once or twice in the past decade.

The ghoul paralysis apparently specifically comes from Chainmail, where elven armies had no way to counter undead armies using ghouls, so they got paralysis resistance to make up for that weakness.

[RexDart]

For me the big question is how fiddly the bonus is. A +1 on reflex saves I will remember. Or better yet, program into our tabletop simulator. A +1 on saves versus condition or +2 on a particular skill use (not the skill, the skill used in a certain way or on a certain target) not so much.

The Favored Enemy stuff is the worst, because it requires two people (player and GM) to remember the bonus.

If Edmund Oozebane is approaching an ambush by a nefarious gang of oozes out to end his threat once and for all, Edmund gets a +2 on Spot/Listen checks to get some advance warning. But Edmund's player doesn't know he's walking into an Ooze ambush when the GM calls for a Spot roll, and the GM might forget the somewhat obscure part of Favored Enemy....

[Snowbluff]

I also agree with that; and imho 5E and PF2 give barely any new abilities that aren't numbers (except spellcasting, of course), whereas PF1 and 4E do an excellent job at this (and 3E as well, but depending on the class).


I don't see how 4e does and 5e doesn't. 4e classes could be fit on a post it note. There is practically no class progression throughout heroic other than powers, and a lot of those powers can be described as something you can just do in other editions. Most of the good Paths are largely numerical bonuses as well.

[inuyasha]

I'm... I'm on the first page! (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?657355-What-3-5-PF-content-disappointed-you-mechancially&p=25807421&viewfull=1#post25807421)

Oh jeez, somehow that slipped right by me. I feel a little silly now :smallredface:

That said, now I'm glad it's not just me here.