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Altair_the_Vexed
2007-12-17, 05:12 PM
Lots of people post about the brokenness of this or that. I may have done so myself now and then.

I am puzzled though: working just with the PHB, DMG and MM - what's wrong?

More precisely perhaps: what's wrong that couldn't be solved by a new errata?

EDIT: I really am looking for what's wrong. I don't think the Core Three are perfect, but I want to hear what other, more experienced D&D players feel is wrong. Frankly, my games in 3.5 have never gone beyond 10th level or so, and I homebrewed out lots of the classes that were culturally incompatible with my setting, so I really am very ignorant of druids and monks. I've started playing in an open club setting where homebrew is less viable an option, so I wanted to tap the experience of the boards to help from letting my games get broken.

If you can give worked examples, you'll get more marks from the examiners. Marks will be deducted for deviation from the question.
:smallbiggrin:

Reel On, Love
2007-12-17, 05:19 PM
Why don't we start with the fundamental disparity between classes like the Druid and classes like the Fighter and Monk. That's certainly beyond the scope of errata to fix, since errata doesn't replace whole classes.

Then there's the rigid 4-day-encounter-for-the-sake-of-balance model, which keeps you both from having long grinds and from only have an occasional encounter (powerful 1/day abilities are win if you only *have* one encounter a day).

Then there's the way traps work.


If you accept "errata" to mean "rules rewrite", then sure, enough errata could fix everything...
...but it'd be so much errata they might as well put out a new edition and do it right.

Ashes
2007-12-17, 05:19 PM
Clerics, Druids, Sorcerers and Wizards.


Really, do we need another discussion about this?

Snadgeros
2007-12-17, 05:21 PM
THE BIG THREE:

Druids: They can transform into a super-bear, have a super-bear animal companion, and STILL be able to use their full divine casting progression to summon buffs and monsters that'll tear anything to shreds. Freaking natural spell.....

Clerics: Proficient in heavy armor and weapons while still getting great BAB and more buffs than you can shake a stick at. Fully buffed, he's an unstoppable fighting machine who can heal himself.

Wizard: The ability to cherrypick spells allows him to pull of supercomboes that should not be (celerity + timestop). If he needs to regenerate them, he has spells for that too, so you can't touch him (rope trick and magnificent mansion). Not to mention polymorph. That spell is just innate cheese.

AKA_Bait
2007-12-17, 05:22 PM
I'm not really sure what you mean by can't be 'fixed by a new errata' since in theory a new eratta could fix almost any of the problems in CORE. That in mind, I'll include the two that seem unfixable short of outright deletion. I'm sure others will occur to me.

Time Stop. Free rounds are incredibly powerful, more so than any non-epic spell really ought to be.

Metamagic Rod of Quicken: Basically the same as above.

Lochar
2007-12-17, 05:23 PM
Minus Celerity not being core, Snad...

Rad
2007-12-17, 05:25 PM
Despite the several errata published, Polymorph is still broken and the druid wildsahpe is still unsatisfactory (they removed you the chance to turn into a dog and gain scent, but you can still get many combat-oriented forms).

The fighter is worse than ever since the good feats in the PHB are not enough to justify staying in the class. Core Fighter versus Core wizard=no race.

Druids. Druids do not need any PrC to be broken and Natural Spell is in the PHB.

Several other class imbalances

Diplomacy. And its smaller brother Intimidate.

Drowning (but can be fixed)

That's just off the top of my head...


EDIT: wow... ninjaed FIVE times! That's a kind of a record!

Snadgeros
2007-12-17, 05:31 PM
Minus Celerity not being core, Snad...

Oh, right. But there are plenty of OTHER supercomboes that are broken, even in core. Hell, some of them aren't even cheese (fly + protection from arrows = really freaking hard to hit).

Altair_the_Vexed
2007-12-17, 05:32 PM
Now, I'm not picking on your post, just applying first come first served guidelines.

Why don't we start with the fundamental disparity between classes like the Druid and classes like the Fighter and Monk. That's certainly beyond the scope of errata to fix, since errata doesn't replace whole classes.

Then there's the rigid 4-day-encounter-for-the-sake-of-balance model, which keeps you both from having long grinds and from only have an occasional encounter (powerful 1/day abilities are win if you only *have* one encounter a day).

Then there's the way traps work.


If you accept "errata" to mean "rules rewrite", then sure, enough errata could fix everything...
...but it'd be so much errata they might as well put out a new edition and do it right.

I don't accept that errata means rules rewrite. Errata could mean the entire removal of a core class, if necessary (there's no need to replace classes that are extraneous, is there?), but that's a bit extreme.

Where's the disparity between Druids and Fighters?
What's wrong with the way traps work?

Aquillion
2007-12-17, 05:41 PM
I'm not really sure what you mean by can't be 'fixed by a new errata' since in theory a new eratta could fix almost any of the problems in CORE. That in mind, I'll include the two that seem unfixable short of outright deletion. I'm sure others will occur to me.

Time Stop. Free rounds are incredibly powerful, more so than any non-epic spell really ought to be.

Metamagic Rod of Quicken: Basically the same as above.Time Stop honestly isn't that bad. It's a 9th level spell, after all. It's nowhere near as overpowering as Gate or Shapeshift, say.

Reel On, Love
2007-12-17, 05:41 PM
Now, I'm not picking on your post, just applying first come first served guidelines.


I don't accept that errata means rules rewrite. Errata could mean the entire removal of a core class, if necessary (there's no need to replace classes that are extraneous, is there?), but that's a bit extreme.

Where's the disparity between Druids and Fighters?
What's wrong with the way traps work?

The disparity is that druids rock, and Fighters--beyond the first few levels--suck. What's more, Druids rock in the way Fighters are *supposed* to as well as others.

Everything is wrong with the ways traps work. For one thing, traps require a narrow ability only one class has (Trapfinding). For another, trap CR caps at 10 (34-DC search/disable resetting Wail of the Banshee trap? CR 10) for no good reason.
More fundamentally, though, traps aren't fun. They're targeted at a single player (with the others, more or less, just standing around), and they come down to a single die roll. CR-appropriate traps have DCs you can't make every time. That means that if a long hallway has 5 traps, the Rogue is, by design, going to fail one or two checks and then take damage/make a saving throw. The trap mechanic is basically "one member of the party rolls some dice and if they're not all high rolls he takes some damage/a negative effect. Oh, and only one class can do this, so you have to have that specific class, not any other way of filling that class' role."

That's godawful game design. It's not quite 2E's "you get 10% more XP for rolling a high primary stat", but it's close.


Edit: does this post really have a point? You know tons of things are wrong with core. You know that even if errata could do things like remove classes or change them completely (WotC's errata has never done this, and that would be a bad approach to errata), it would take volume upon volume, basically a rewrite of the books. You should definitely know why there's a disparity between core fighters and druids. Are you arguing just to argue?

Lochar
2007-12-17, 05:43 PM
Where's the disparity between Druids and Fighters?

Druid: I'll pump Wisdom to gain lots of spells and up my save DCs. I'll be a fighting powerhouse!

Fighter: What? How's that? I've got this great sword, does 3d6 damage plus my strength mod, which is 8 points higher than yours. And I can CLEAVE!

Druid: I took Natural spell. *druid wildshapes into hydra or other stupidly overpowerful creature* And now I have 18 points more strength than you do. With multiple attacks.

Sucrose
2007-12-17, 05:48 PM
Where's the disparity between Druids and Fighters?

:smallsigh:
Nine Hells of Baator, not this again...

*prepares flame shield*

At low levels, the Druid has decent HD, fair weaponry, spells for damage at range, or improved melee damage, and fair healing and an animal companion of doom that starts out better than an average Warrior, and gets better from there.

At mid levels, it's the same thing, except now he's a bear, and all of the buffs that he could apply to the animal companion apply to him too. Or he's an eagle, calling down electric death from above.

At high levels, as above, but with even more forms, elemental form cheese, and other methods by which high-level casters win.

Fighters...swing swords, with less Strength than the Druid bites, or claws, or whatever, dealing less damage, and hitting less often, except at low levels, where the animal companion is superior to most Fighters. Might Intimidate a bit, and is decent with animals (though that's not exactly a category you can count against the druid), and that's about it.


wildshapes into hydra

Actually, you can't wildshape into magical creatures from base druid. The more popular core forms for druids are generally bears, lions, and so on. Standard predators.

Edited for greater decorum.

Lochar
2007-12-17, 05:52 PM
Sorry, but the point still stands. Pick an animal out of the core which normally has higher str, dex, and con on average.

Wordmiser
2007-12-17, 05:54 PM
The thing is that Fighters suck in Core. There just aren't any feats to support any melee build. They make tolerable archers, but that only needs three feats to do competently. Casters have access to most of their important spells and feats in the PHB.

Splatbooks do much more for non-casters (the Fighter in particular) than they do for spellcasters (who already have Area save-or-dies, Fly, Natural Spell, Quicken Spell, Contingency, Polymorph, Time Stop, Divine Power, Righteous Might and all the others). If anything, breaking out of core actually increases caster/noncaster balance and there's still disparity.

Sucrose
2007-12-17, 05:55 PM
Sorry, but the point still stands. Pick an animal out of the core which normally has higher str, dex, and con on average.

Oh, I know that, but there's no reason to give the Fighter even MORE to worry about in this comparison than he already has.:smallwink:

Edit: I'm not sure I agree, Wordmeiser; it's generally much easier for a caster to get all the new material that's given for his class than it is for the Fighter to get all the new possible feats in a new splatbook, and noncore's what gave us the joys of celerity. I'd say that both halves are equally broken (for the core classes at least; some of the other classes do close the gap a bit.)

Altair_the_Vexed
2007-12-17, 05:56 PM
Okay, so I'll stick with my current house rule of "no druids", then (which may explain my ignorance of their [Scrubbed] [EDIT: I just got rid of them cause I thought they were silly: I've been druid-free since 1987, and proud of it] - do please excuse an ignorant old fool).

Anything else wrong with the game that can't be fixed with a simple errata?

Jayabalard
2007-12-17, 05:59 PM
Why don't we start with the fundamental disparity between classes like the Druid and classes like the Fighter and Monk. That's certainly beyond the scope of errata to fix, since errata doesn't replace whole classes.What's the problem with that?


Then there's the rigid 4-day-encounter-for-the-sake-of-balance model, which keeps you both from having long grinds and from only have an occasional encounter (powerful 1/day abilities are win if you only *have* one encounter a day).4 encounters per day looks like a guideline to me...

AKA_Bait
2007-12-17, 05:59 PM
Time Stop honestly isn't that bad. It's a 9th level spell, after all. It's nowhere near as overpowering as Gate or Shapeshift, say.

True, but shapeshift and gate could possibly be fixed without removing them entirely. Timestop is not fixable short of removal and, yes, it really is that bad. It means you need to one shot a Wizard or you pretty much cannot kill them at high levels.

Chronicled
2007-12-17, 06:04 PM
Splatbooks do much more for non-casters (the Fighter in particular) than they do for spellcasters (who already have Area save-or-dies, Fly, Natural Spell, Quicken Spell, Contingency, Polymorph, Time Stop, Divine Power, Righteous Might and all the others). If anything, breaking out of core actually increases caster/noncaster balance and there's still disparity.

Actually... splatbooks help most casters more. New animals/monsters are fodder for wildshape/polymorph/animal companion cheese (Fleshraker Dinosaur, for instance), while a Cleric, Druid, or Wizard can easily pick up new spells without sacrificing anything in return.

Meanwhile, a Fighter (or other melee class) has a set number of bonus feats. Whereas the Cleric can pick a spell from a splatbook (say, the Spell Compendium) one day, and swap it out the next, the Fighter can only take advantage of a certain number of bonus feats--and unlike many of the better feats, spells don't have prerequisites other than level (material components don't count).

Prophaniti
2007-12-17, 06:05 PM
The only real balance issues are from things that were not playtested the way people use them now, or at least the way people discuss using them on various forums. These are things like the Diplomacy skill, high level spellcasting, batman wizards, and apparently the whole monk class was never playtested. I've played a monk three times in mostly core campaigns and can't hold my own compared to anyone, even the new guys.

If you play the game the way it was tested, ie every class fills specific rolls/wizards are primarily blasters/clerics heal and buff the party not themselves/ect, there is nothing really broken about it. It's a very simple, easy to learn, easy to use system that makes for a great game, provided no one's TRYING to break it, which unfortunately seldom happens.

@REEL: Sorry, but what exactly is wrong with the way traps work? I don't think I've ever heard that one in a 'it's broken' thread...
EDIT: saw your reply to the question up there, sorry. Though your point of 'only one class can do this and there's no other way to fill the role' is entirely moot. That's what D&D has ALWAYS been. Fighters hit things and protect the party. Wizards blast things and decipher ancient runes. Thieves DISARM TRAPS and pick locks. It's when people wish to deviate from this time-honored formula of gaming and run a blaster who can take a lot of damage and disarm traps that the system breaks down.

Counterspin
2007-12-17, 06:05 PM
Primary casters are vastly more powerful than other groups because they are capable of downing or disabling one or more critters of their own or higher per round without requiring those critters to be standing within 10ft of each other. Combine that unchallengable combat punch with extremely high utility and movement capabilities and it makes them far more powerful than the other classes. Adding additional levels only exacerbates the problem.

Reel On, Love
2007-12-17, 06:05 PM
What's the problem with that?

4 encounters per day looks like a guideline to me...
[Scrubbed]

4 encounters per day is a guideline, but big problems arise if you deviate from it. 8 encounters and no one has spells or HP left for the last three; 2 encounters and the people with expendable-per-day resources absolutely dominate.


Okay, so I'll stick with my current house rule of "no druids", then (which may explain my ignorance of their pwnage bull$h!t [EDIT: I just got rid of them cause I thought they were silly: I've been druid-free since 1987, and proud of it] - do please excuse an ignorant old fool).

Anything else wrong with the game that can't be fixed with a simple errata?

Sigh. Define "simple" errata.
Because reworking an entire class, much less half of them, creating dozens of new feats, removing or changing (e.g. in spell level) a good fifth to a quarter of the existing spells, eliminating entire, eliminating some magic items while reevaluating the price of many more, etc, definitely doesn't seem like "simple errata" to me, and those are the kinds of changes you'd need to make just to address the mechanical issues--forget about things like overcomplicated rules, unnecessary skills (Why aren't Spot and Listen just Notice, again?), etc.


Tell you what: if you think a simple errata can fix the problems with 3.5 Core, then why don't you write up an errata for 3.5 core. You know, since it's so simple.

After that, we'll tell you twenty things you missed and you can go back to the drawing board.

Blasterfire
2007-12-17, 06:06 PM
Clerics and wizards are still leaps and bounds better than everything, so much so that fighters may as well not exist (along with barbs), the cleric can do his job for him, considering he can get all the good core feats from levels and he can fix his bab/hp with his spells. Plus, diplomacy is broken, and since I'm taking eratta to mean houserule here (you posted a housrule fix earlier), I'd suggest you use the system proposed in the gaming section of this site, since its worked out very well for me.

EDIT: whoops, forgot about the monk, drop him along with barb and fighter and just use clerics. Actually, you don't even really need rogs with summon monster spells to take care of traps. Anything a party of wiz cleric fighter rog bard can do a party of 3xwiz and 3x cleric can do better.

Moff Chumley
2007-12-17, 06:07 PM
From a technical rules perspective? Any number of things, for instance a monk being able to do on average 30 damage (Thats a guess. No math involved) while the wizard dishes out feeblemind/feeblemind/finger of death, or any other combo of cheesy spell combos.

From actual play experience, however, the balance disparities are only noticeable if one makes a point about them.

Edit:
EDIT: wow... ninjaed FIVE times! That's a kind of a record!

Pfft. I just got ninja'd 10 times.


Tell you what: if you think a simple errata can fix the problems with 3.5 Core, then why don't you write up an errata for 3.5 core. You know, since it's so simple.

After that, we'll tell you twenty things you missed and you can go back to the drawing board.

Woah, calm down. Nobodies out to get you here. Lets try to keep this discussion somewhere between civil and mildly aggressive, m'kay? :smallwink:

Edit again: This edit got ninja'd three times.

Mewtarthio
2007-12-17, 06:09 PM
What's the problem with that?

There's no point in playing a class that's weak compared to everyone else. There's no point in designing a class that nobody will play unless you want to screw around with the newbies.


4 encounters per day looks like a guideline to me...

Yes, but everything's designed around that guideline. Basically, WotC intially assumed that it would be balanced to let Class A use "Win" twice per day while Class B could use "Half-Win" four times per day.

Reel On, Love
2007-12-17, 06:11 PM
If you play the game the way it was tested, ie every class fills specific rolls/wizards are primarily blasters/clerics heal and buff the party not themselves/ect, there is nothing really broken about it. It's a very simple, easy to learn, easy to use system that makes for a great game, provided no one's TRYING to break it, which unfortunately seldom happens.
No, clerics WERE playtested to buff themselves not the party. Divine Power was given to clerics VERY intentionally. Pretending that no one testing 3.5 ever cast Glitterdust, Confusion, or Fear is ridiculous. Pretending that some of the classes were played during testing, but monks somehow escaped is likewise ridiculous.
Man, one person posts something someone told him once, and suddenly everyone takes it as gospel truth...


@REEL: Sorry, but what exactly is wrong with the way traps work? I don't think I've ever heard that one in a 'it's broken' thread...
I already covered that here: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3671050&postcount=11

Sucrose
2007-12-17, 06:14 PM
What's the problem with that?


The problem, Jayabalard, is that not everyone has the same expectations of the game that you do. You want casters to pwn and fighters to suck, because you think that it helps versimilitude. Others feel that it's best for everyone to be able to contribute. The fact that you and other people don't see eye to eye with each other on this is okay, but please take it to PMs.

This is a discussion about balance, which starts with the assumption that balance is a desireable thing to have. Thus, it isn't a discussion for you to participate in, beyond perhaps expressing your disagreement with the premise, as you've done.

Prophaniti
2007-12-17, 06:16 PM
Gah! everyone's posting too fast! I'm doing this at work and I can't keep up!:smallfrown:

@REEL: I fixed my first post because I saw what you'd written on it while I was posting it. Don't disagree with most but I did have one point I made that I think you shoud read. Sorry if I miss something again, I just have to do this bit by bit at work so I miss a lot of replies while I'm typing mine...

Solo
2007-12-17, 06:18 PM
Sorry, but the point still stands. Pick an animal out of the core which normally has higher str, dex, and con on average.

Higher as compared to what?


What's the problem with that?

"Look at me! I'm a tank and a full caster, and you aren't! Neener neener!"
- Druid Glenn Mardovia, Keeper of the Ancient Ways, Guardian of the Unbroken Circle, to a Fighter.

Moff Chumley
2007-12-17, 06:19 PM
Compared to average. Which is 10. Which isn't exactly average for adventurers... My guess would be from 14 to 20 preceeding level ten.

Reel On, Love
2007-12-17, 06:20 PM
EDIT: saw your reply to the question up there, sorry. Though your point of 'only one class can do this and there's no other way to fill the role' is entirely moot. That's what D&D has ALWAYS been. Fighters hit things and protect the party. Wizards blast things and decipher ancient runes. Thieves DISARM TRAPS and pick locks. It's when people wish to deviate from this time-honored formula of gaming and run a blaster who can take a lot of damage and disarm traps that the system breaks down.

Sorry, but that's made of falsehood and fail.

Fighters hit things. So do barbarians, paladins, rangers, clerics, druids, rogues, Fighter/Barbarbian/Ranger/Horizon Walkers, etc.
Wizards "decipher ancient runes"? No, no one ever takes Decipher Script, and anyone can cross-class a rank in the skill then sit around taking 20. There's no "only wizards can ever identify ancient runes" rule. Wizards blast things, but clerics get Flamestrike anyway.

And yet, only Rogues can find magical traps with a DC over 20. Not "only skillmonkeys can be good at disarming traps". Only Rogues. Specifically. Nothing else in D&D works that way, and neither should traps.

Reel On, Love
2007-12-17, 06:22 PM
Woah, calm down. Nobodies out to get you here. Lets try to keep this discussion somewhere between civil and mildly aggressive, m'kay? :smallwink:

Edit again: This edit got ninja'd three times.

That was between civil and mildly aggressive. I just think the OP's question is totally disingenuous.

Moff Chumley
2007-12-17, 06:25 PM
And yet, only Rogues can find magical traps with a DC over 20. Not "only skillmonkeys can be good at disarming traps". Only Rogues. Specifically. Nothing else in D&D works that way, and neither should traps.

Considering there are all of two skill monkey classes in core, that isn't much of a problem, isn't it? :smalltongue:

And besides, this is the sort of thing that can be solved with (relatively) simple errata.

Lochar
2007-12-17, 06:27 PM
Higher as compared to what?

A fighter who has to take care of 2, possibly three stats with limited amounts of points to be able to add to each.

Taking a high powered point buy(32), and dumping the mental stats, a fighter could reasonably have 16 in each physical stat.

A druid dumps the three physical stats, gets an 18 Wis, 16 int, 14 Cha. And then wildshapes into a powerful animal that has at least, if not better, physical stats than the fighter does. The druid now has no dump stats. Say a brown bear, with a 27 Str, a 19 Con. Dex is only a 13, but that's still better than the druid put into it to begin with.

Altair_the_Vexed
2007-12-17, 06:28 PM
...snip...
Sigh. Define "simple" errata.
Because reworking an entire class, much less half of them, creating dozens of new feats, removing or changing (e.g. in spell level) a good fifth to a quarter of the existing spells, eliminating entire, eliminating some magic items while reevaluating the price of many more, etc, definitely doesn't seem like "simple errata" to me, and those are the kinds of changes you'd need to make just to address the mechanical issues--forget about things like overcomplicated rules, unnecessary skills (Why aren't Spot and Listen just Notice, again?), etc.

Tell you what: if you think a simple errata can fix the problems with 3.5 Core, then why don't you write up an errata for 3.5 core. You know, since it's so simple.

After that, we'll tell you twenty things you missed and you can go back to the drawing board.

*saves vs poison* Phew, that was close. :smalleek:

Regarding "Notice" - Why should being good at seeing make me good at listening, exactly? Are short sighted people also deaf?

Okay, I'll try, since it seems to be contentious:


Definition: A simple errata does not involve writing new rules. It only fixes existing rules by the deletion, addition or substitution of sentences or phrases.

By such a definition, one could delete everything but Rule 0, and just play let's pretend, sure, but that's not my intent. What I'm looking for is specific, explained examples of what wrong with the Core Three.

Reel On, Love
2007-12-17, 06:29 PM
Considering there are all of two skill monkey classes in core, that isn't much of a problem, isn't it? :smalltongue:

And besides, this is the sort of thing that can be solved with (relatively) simple errata.

Rogues, Rangers, and Bards makes three. And, heck, let monks do it too, while we're at it.

And that's just one facet of what's wrong with D&D traps. I outlined the deeper issues, which can't be solved with simple errata, because you would have to fundamentally alter how traps work.

How many "oh, that can be solved with simple errata" issues ("anyone can find traps and X and Y classes gain Disable Device on their skill list") does it take before the composite result is no longer "simple errata"?

deadseashoals
2007-12-17, 06:29 PM
If you play the game the way it was tested, ie every class fills specific rolls/wizards are primarily blasters/clerics heal and buff the party not themselves/ect, there is nothing really broken about it. It's a very simple, easy to learn, easy to use system that makes for a great game, provided no one's TRYING to break it, which unfortunately seldom happens.

That requires willfully ignoring large parts of the game, including, but not limited to:


The druid class
The monk class
Sorcerer/wizard spells outside of the school of Evocation
Cleric spells with a range of personal
Anything anywhere that refers to levels above 12 or so
Diplomacy


To the OP: If you're serious about this, and aren't just trying to stir the pot, this topic comes up all the time. It is generally accepted that there are many things that are broken about 3.5. More to the point, tearing out half the pages in the PHB does not constitute simple and acceptable errata.

Altair_the_Vexed
2007-12-17, 06:34 PM
...snip...

To the OP: If you're serious about this, and aren't just trying to stir the pot, this topic comes up all the time. It is generally accepted that there are many things that are broken about 3.5. More to the point, tearing out half the pages in the PHB does not constitute simple and acceptable errata.

I'm dead serious - I want to know what people perceive as wrong / broken / etc. Stirring the pot is trolling, and we don't do that here.

If one accepts the definition of errata to exclude removal of whole classes (fair enough), then we can say that the druid and monk are not conducive to balanced game play (for the opposite reasons to each other).

What else?

Moff Chumley
2007-12-17, 06:36 PM
That was between civil and mildly aggressive. I just think the OP's question is totally disingenuous.

A) I was just making a joke... :smallfrown:

B) Bear in mind that some people (The OP, by the looks of it, and myself) do not have the same definitions of civil as you. There is really no need to be aggressive about any of this.

Edit (And to make this post actually contribute to the discussion): I believe the OP is not actually making a claim that Core are balanced, but asking for specific examples of how they aren't.

Solo
2007-12-17, 06:37 PM
I want to know what people perceive as wrong / broken / etc.


"Look at me! I'm a tank and a full caster, and you aren't! Neener neener!"
- Spoken by Druid Glenn Mardovia, Keeper of the Ancient Ways, Guardian of the Unbroken Circle and Kozan Modrin, Chosen of Heironious, Defender of the Faith, to Abraxas Montgomery, Fighter.

Prophaniti
2007-12-17, 06:37 PM
No, clerics WERE playtested to buff themselves not the party. Divine Power was given to clerics VERY intentionally. Pretending that no one testing 3.5 ever cast Glitterdust, Confusion, or Fear is ridiculous. Pretending that some of the classes were played during testing, but monks somehow escaped is likewise ridiculous.
Man, one person posts something someone told him once, and suddenly everyone takes it as gospel truth...
Ok, obviously my point about monks was intended sarcastically, there's really no excuse for them. It takes only a few changes from RAW to make them viable characters and I can't understand why they weren't made in the playtesting phase. It's true I don't have any more evidence than hearsay as for playtesting being the reason for all these problems. I repeat it mostly because it makes sense. D&D has always been somewhat formulaic in party structure and class design so it stands to reason that a new company would try to create rules that stay close to this formula, in order to keep existing fans interested.

I was merely saying that when played within the bounds of that formula, 3.X D&D is not anywhere near as broken as one would guess from reading these forums. The actual rules mechanics for things like fighting and skills work most of the time and are easy to remember. I didn't really want to cover any specific issues as that can get really involved as we've all seen before. Just making some generic statements about the system and agreeing with the OP. Core only 3.x isn't so bad if you play a classic D&D party with some minor variance.

EDIT:
Sorry, but that's made of falsehood and fail.

Fighters hit things. So do barbarians, paladins, rangers, clerics, druids, rogues, Fighter/Barbarbian/Ranger/Horizon Walkers, etc.
Wizards "decipher ancient runes"? No, no one ever takes Decipher Script, and anyone can cross-class a rank in the skill then sit around taking 20. There's no "only wizards can ever identify ancient runes" rule. Wizards blast things, but clerics get Flamestrike anyway.

And yet, only Rogues can find magical traps with a DC over 20. Not "only skillmonkeys can be good at disarming traps". Only Rogues. Specifically. Nothing else in D&D works that way, and neither should traps.
I was refering to the original D&D classes and their roles. They have, for the most part, been directly translated to the current edition, then hybrid classes added for fun and a change of pace.

I knew I should've said "identify items" instead but the literary voice in my head like the other phrase better. I was not refering to any specific skill/spell/game mechanic, but rather the feel of a wizard as an expert in all things old and arcane, a gatherer of knowledge and an understander of mysteries.

Clerics, I feel, should be played more in tune with what deity they worship, rather than what spells are the most immediately effective. That's just a preference thing though.

mostlyharmful
2007-12-17, 06:38 PM
I'm dead serious - I want to know what people perceive as wrong / broken / etc. Stirring the pot is trolling, and we don't do that here.

If one accepts the definition of errata to exclude removal of whole classes (fair enough), then we can say that the druid and monk are not conducive to balanced game play (for the opposite reasons to each other).

What else?

Most of the spells referanced on this forum, half-elves, a wide range of rule slip ups (see drowning, weights, etc,..), certain skills (diplomacy, some uses of Bluff, Spellcraft, Craft, Move Silently, Hide, etc..), the whole WBL/CR system (no rich low level PCs, No poor High level PCs, no more than around 4 CRs per day, No less, no team made up of anything other than the core four roles filled otherwise CR just doesn't come close to accurate)

Altair_the_Vexed
2007-12-17, 06:42 PM
...snip...

Edit (And to make this post actually contribute to the discussion): I believe the OP is not actually making a claim that Core are balanced, but asking for specific examples of how they aren't.

Yes - that's it. That's precisely what I'm after. I'm really sorry to anyone who's been thinking otherwise.

Jack_Simth
2007-12-17, 06:47 PM
Sorry, but the point still stands. Pick an animal out of the core which normally has higher str, dex, and con on average.
He doesn't need to - he just need to show that, using the same stat array, the Druid can out-fight the Fighter. Which, after level about 5 or 10, isn't that hard if you count the Animal Companion.

Suppose we use the stat array 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8 (a fairly nice point buy).

The fighting Fighter has priorities: Str, Con, Dex - don't care for the rest. The Druid has priorities: Wis, Con... don't care for the rest, but low-level survival matters, so we'll go Dex, then Str. Actually, as we're building a Fighting Druid, we can reverse con and Wis - Con (18), Wis (16), Dex (14), Str (12); Druid level boosts go to Wis, Fighter level boosts go to Str.

The fighter is focused on dishing out damage, and so takes a Greatsword, and grabs the line of feats for focusing on his Greatsword (Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, and so on, as permitted by level). All boosts go to Strength.

The Druid takes Natural Spell when it becomes available (6th), but otherwise takes stuff that'll help with Wildshape (Multiattack) or out of combat stuff (craft feats).

At 1st, the Fighter attacks at +6 for 2d6+6, or Power Attack at +5 for 2d6+8; attacks once per round.
At 1st, the Druid's Riding Dog attacks at +3 for 1d6+3, while the Druid attacks with a Club for +1 at 1d6+1. But wait - the Druid casts Shillelagh, so the Club now attacks at +2 for 2d6+2. Ignoring crits, against an AC 15 target, the Fighter hits on a 9 for an average of 13 damage per hit, average 7.8 damage per round; power attacking gives him an average of 8.25 damage per round. The Druid and Companion flank the target, and hit on an 11 and 10 for an average of 9 and 6.5 damage per hit, dealing an average of 8.075 per round - the Fighter, power attacking, is just barely ahead, while the Druid expends a single spell.

At 5th, with DMG NPC equipment for the two classes (so I can't be accused of optimizing too much), the Fighter has Full Plate, a Heavy Shield, a Masterwork Melee Weapon, a Masterwork Ranged Weapon, and a bunch of gold. He's using a two-handed weapon, and all we're looking at is damage against a target, so it's just the mastwork melee weapon that matters here. The Druid is Wildshaping, and absorbs all his equipment, so it stops working matter.
The Fighter now has +5 BAB, 19 str, Weapon Focus(Greatsword) and Weapon Specialization(Greatsword); with his Masterwork Greatsword, he hits at +10 for 2d6+8. The Druid Wildshapes into a Deinonychus (check the errata - it's Medium), after having pre-buffed himself and his Ape companion with Barkskin and Greater Magic Fang (+1 All version at this point). With the 50 minute duration on Barkskin, and the 5 hour duration on Greater Magic Fang, this shouldn't be too much of a stretch. The Druid attacks with: Talons +8 for 1d8+5, 2 Claws +3 for 1d3+3, and Bite +3 for 2d4+3; the Ape attacks with 2 claws +8 for 1d6+6 and Bite +3 for 1d6+3. Ignoring crits vs. AC 20, the Fighter hits on a 10, with an average of 15 damage per hit, for an average damage per round of 8.25. The Druid and Animal Companion Flank again, and hit on 10/15/15/15/10/10/15 for an average damage per hit of 9.5/4.5/4.5/8/9.5/9.5/6.5, for an average damage per round of 22.725 damage.

After that, it pretty much just gets worse for the Fighter.

Reel On, Love
2007-12-17, 06:47 PM
*saves vs poison* Phew, that was close. :smalleek:

Regarding "Notice" - Why should being good at seeing make me good at listening, exactly? Are short sighted people also deaf?
Because this is a game and an abstraction. Seeing good doesn't make you good at listening, but training yourself to notice stuff is unlikely to result.

If your character's short-sighted, say so and give yourself -5 on Notice-when-using-sight.
A character's who's a watchman or a scout is going to Notice things.

(I might as well ask you why, given the existence of the Scent ability, and even its availibility to PCs, why Smell and Cover Scent aren't skills.)

The point is, a lot of skills are completely or largely redundant. This is a problem, because characters have a limited amount of skill points. The Rogue's 8+INT are actually 6+INT because he has to take Open Lock and Disable Device to do his job... even though locks are devices. Meanwhile, a powerful skill like UMD only takes one skill point per level. Characters wind up having to spend extra skill points without rhyme or reason.


Okay, I'll try, since it seems to be contentious:

Definition: A simple errata does not involve writing new rules. It only fixes existing rules by the deletion, addition or substitution of sentences or phrases.

"Fixing existing rules by the deletion, addition, or substitution of phrases" can mean adding enough sentences to one part of the PHB to write a whole new *rulebook*.


By such a definition, one could delete everything but Rule 0, and just play let's pretend, sure, but that's not my intent. What I'm looking for is specific, explained examples of what wrong with the Core Three.
You're damn right, one could delete everything but Rule 0... or cross out most of the rules and add most of the 4th Edition rules in their place. How on earth is that "simple"? Going through the book and changing multiple things in every single section is not a simple job. It's up there with just writing a new book, if you want your changes to be good.

You already got a bunch of examples. I don't really feel like spending too long listing minor changes that need to be made (Spell-Like Abilities of spells that cost XP should still cost XP, for example). But the list would be long.

Do you really think nothing is wrong with Core D&D? Again--if you think fixing it with errata is so simple.

Here's a short list: SLAs shouldn't kill the XP cost of a spell. The Candle of Invocation. Polymorph and Shapechange. A whole bunch of spells are way too good, either for their level or period. Fighters suck. Monks suck. (Not "minor issues", definitely not fixable with "simple" errata, anyway.) Rangers are lame, their animal companion is useless, and they lose fighting ability without being real skill monkeys to compensate. Sneak Attack should work on everything. Everyone should be able to find traps. A bunch of skills should be rolled up together. Monster identification is ridiculous (with a DC 20 knowledge check you can identify a wyrmling red dragon but have no idea what its two-size-categories up older counterpart is). Drowning sets your HP to 0 even from Negative Whatever, and there's no way to stop drowning. Hiding and moving silently is useless eventually because enemies get blindsense or something similar. The -1 Spot for every 10 feet penalty means that you can't see anything beyond a remarkably short distance. Having to wait a year to summon a new familiar is stupid and pointless. Player characters are ridiculously weak against grappling monsters until the spellcasters get Freedom of Movement at which point they're fine. Speaking of which, Freedom of Movement completely shuts down grappling. Two-Weapon Fighting should be ONE feat, not three. Weapon Finesse having a BAB prerequisite of +1 is idiotic (since it's designed in huge part for Rogues, who wind up tossing daggers or shooting a shortbow and not getting sneak attack at levels 1 and 2, even though they'll be finesseing for the rest of the game, since Rogues don't have +1 BAB at level 1). The existence of Animated shields. Oh, yeah, the races--just compare dwarves (ridiculously good) and half-orcs (terrible), and *why* do half-elves not get any bonuses worth mentioning again?

And those are relatively minor issues, not even major things like *the entire way traps work* and *the crappiness of the 4-encounters-a-day balance mechanic*. The huge class imbalances would go here, as would the lack of good feats, the lack of SCALING feats (combat feats could, for example, give benefits based on your BAB), the enormous reliance of characters on magic items and the importance of following Wealth-By-Level guidelines for balance. The fact that about a quarter of all existing spells need to be fixed--even more, if you really want to do a good job--isn't minor, either. The complete inequality of fighting styles--two-handed weapons are vastly superior to sword-and-board or TWF, unless you have a very large amount of bonus damage per hit. The iterative full attack that takes a full-round action, intimiately tied with melee PCs' mobility problems. Alignments.

That's all just off the top of my head. Some of those are *huge* issues, which would take a whole lot of work to fix... to the point where you'd want a complete redesign. Kind of like, say, 4E.

Moff Chumley
2007-12-17, 06:47 PM
Yes - that's it. That's precisely what I'm after. I'm really sorry to anyone who's been thinking otherwise.

Glad to be of service. [Tips hat] :smallsmile:

In my opinion, the imbalances of core are played up considerably. Okay, thats probably because my players aren't munchkins, so I will admit to not having vast banks of knowledge on how to break D&D. And as I've said before, if you know how to do something, you are 100% more likely to do it. In this case, min/max.

Prophaniti
2007-12-17, 06:50 PM
Oh, mr. OP! I just thought of a very specific example of a poor rule that could be fixed with simple errata!

Half-orcs! No other base race has negatively unbalanced stat mods without anything to show for it. There's seriously no reason to play one unless it's pivotal to your character's personality. Personally, my fix is to let the player choose either int or cha to take the penalty in, rather than both. This is always something about the core races that's bothered me.

EDIT: also the ranger/druid animal companion problem. There's no reason for a ranger to ever worry about using his companion, it will never contribute. A druid is already a primary spellcaster with shapechanging abilities now he gets a free cohort. My fix: Ranger's animal companion advances at his character level. Druid's is -3(you could say more or less, -3 just felt right to me).

Mr. Friendly
2007-12-17, 06:58 PM
And yet, only Rogues can find magical traps with a DC over 20. Not "only skillmonkeys can be good at disarming traps". Only Rogues. Specifically. Nothing else in D&D works that way, and neither should traps.

Eh, not quite. Clerics can use Find Traps (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/35/sovelior_sage/spellsFtoG.html#find-traps). So after 3rd level, the Cleric can take over the Rogue's trapfinding. After he gets 6th level spells (or after the Druid gets 6th level spells) it becomes even more pointless thanks to Find the Path.

Reel On, Love
2007-12-17, 07:00 PM
Eh, not quite. Clerics can use Find Traps (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/35/sovelior_sage/spellsFtoG.html#find-traps). So after 3rd level, the Cleric can take over the Rogue's trapfinding. After he gets 6th level spells (or after the Druid gets 6th level spells) it becomes even more pointless thanks to Find the Path.

It's one minute per level, and a bonus to a cross-class skill that's based on what is pretty much a dump stat. You need to find traps constantly, not after you cast a second level spell.

And then, of course, you can't actually DISABLE the traps.

Jack_Simth
2007-12-17, 07:03 PM
EDIT: whoops, forgot about the monk, drop him along with barb and fighter and just use clerics. Actually, you don't even really need rogs with summon monster spells to take care of traps. Anything a party of wiz cleric fighter rog bard can do a party of 3xwiz and 3x cleric can do better.Don't use Summoned Monsters; they only last 1 round per level, and so you lose them whether or not they find a trap.

Use Detect Magic/Arcane Sight, Unseen Servant, and a 100 pound bag of rocks. The Unseen Servant dragging the bag of rocks triggers all mechanical traps (except things that merely go off periodically and don't properly trigger); the Detect Magic/Arcane Sight locates all Magical traps (except those specifically inured by way of Magic Aura). As an Unseen Servant lasts 1 hour per level, you only lose it if it finds a trap.

Xuincherguixe
2007-12-17, 07:11 PM
Broken Enough that I'm considering doing a d20 to Shadowrun conversion to address the balance concerns. Sure Shadowrun isn't balanced either, but it's a lot easier to have everyone contribute.

deadseashoals
2007-12-17, 07:14 PM
Yes - that's it. That's precisely what I'm after. I'm really sorry to anyone who's been thinking otherwise.

Ok, since you asked nicely - the d20 3.5 SRD breaks down into the following sections. There's horrible, horrible things in almost all of them (this is a tiny, tiny sample):

Basics, Races, & Description
* Half-elves and half-orcs are awful.
* Some races don't match their fluff, like Elves being excellent fighters and wizards (they're pretty much awful at both).

Classes
* The Druid and Monk classes are FUBAR. The Cleric, Wizard, and Sorcerer classes are also botched, but it's not immediately obvious until you go through their spell lists.
* Most classes have lots of dead levels, which is poor design. Especially the poor rogue, whose 20th level ability is... +1 base Reflex save!

Skills
* Diplomacy = wtf
* Search/Disable Device is poor game design

Feats
* Feats aren't balanced against each other
* The payoff for long feat chains in core is terrible (Whirlwind Attack)
* Natural Spell = wtf
* Leadership = wtf
* Casters are already awesome sauce, then they get Quicken Spell

Magic Items
* Most magic items are terribly overcosted, save the ones that everyone gets (ring of protection, stat boosters, cloak of resistance, weapons and armor)
* Candle of invocation = wtf
* Metamagic rods = wtf
* Dust of sneezing and choking = wtf

Equipment & Special Materials
* Chop a ladder in half to make two ten foot poles that you can sell for more than the cost of a ladder
* The only armors anyone ever wears are: leather, chain shirt, breastplate, full plate
* Mithral trivializes Heavy Armor Proficiency
* Special material damage reduction makes melee classes even more useless
* Most weapons suck, except:
* Spiked chains, daggers, and greatswords are somehow the awesomest sauce

Combat
* Peasant railgun
* Mobility is so important to the combat rules due to the way full attacks work that melee classes almost always get screwed
* Grapple

Special Abilities
* Improved grab = wtf

Spell Lists & Domains
* Horrible, horrible things
* Cleric: divine favor, divine power, righteous might, gate
* Wizard: alter self, polymorph, polymorph any object, glitterdust, web, tentacles, rope trick, gate, shapechange, time stop, forcecage, blah blah blah blah

Monsters
* Most monsters at mid to high levels outfight the fighter

Types & Subtypes
* Nonsensical type granted abilities are plentiful (all outsiders are proficient with martial weapons, intelligent undead are immune to mind affecting abilities, mindless undead are evil)

Improving Monsters
* CR advancement rules really suck sometimes

Monster Feats
* Snatch = wtf

Monsters as Races
* These rules (LA/racial HD) are completely FUBAR

Surroundings, Weather & Environment
* Bucket drowning healing

Traps
* Many traps are overly deadly for their CR because the designers assumed that a maxed out dungeoneering rogue would be in every party - e.g. a wail of the banshee trap is CR 10, and has a Search DC of 34, sounds like a recipe for TPK

Treasure
* Wealth by level is way too important

Planes
* Genesis + too many planar traits = wtf

Prophaniti
2007-12-17, 07:35 PM
Peasant Railgun? Bucket drowning healing? not familiar with those colloquialisms.

On traps: There was a thread earlier discussing the skill system that lamented the fact that a surprisingly low-level character can make ridiculous DC's. I believe they put DC30 around level 8 for a character who's trying. Why then is a DC34 trap so difficult? A rogue who actually puts ranks into the skill will be able to handle it with ease.

Agreed on many of the other points, espesially the monsters as races rules and the crappy payoff for long feat chains... but tell me, how are web or glitterdust issues? They're low-level spells, admittedly with good effects but the DC will never be high enough to matter in most situations. It's really only the high level ones that are ridiculous.

tyckspoon
2007-12-17, 07:52 PM
Peasant Railgun? Bucket drowning healing? not familiar with those colloquialisms.

On traps: There was a thread earlier discussing the skill system that lamented the fact that a surprisingly low-level character can make ridiculous DC's. I believe they put DC30 around level 8 for a character who's trying. Why then is a DC34 trap so difficult? A rogue who actually puts ranks into the skill will be able to handle it with ease.

Agreed on many of the other points, espesially the monsters as races rules and the crappy payoff for long feat chains... but tell me, how are web or glitterdust issues? They're low-level spells, admittedly with good effects but the DC will never be high enough to matter in most situations. It's really only the high level ones that are ridiculous.

Beginning to drown sets the character's HP to zero. Not reduces; the language is pretty unambiguous, so if you're in the negatives you can be healed by having your head dunked in a bucket of water. Of course, the rules also provide for no way to *stop* drowning, so it doesn't matter much; after you're dunked in that bucket, you're dead in another two rounds.

The peasant railgun is an illustration of how silly free actions can be. Stand a bunch of commoners next to each other and have them all ready an action to hand a quarterstaff to the person to their right. Give the first one in line said quarterstaff. Receiving an item is a free action, and the standard action is handing it off which happens immediately upon receiving it, so the quarterstaff instantly travels from one end of the line to the other, achieveing a totally ludicrous speed. That one isn't actually of any use, however, since D&D largely doesn't have rules for momentum and the only way for the commoner on the end to actually attack with the lightspeed quarterstaff is to swing it at somebody or throw it while taking the penalties for pitching a non-throwing weapon. Similar illustrations happen with the free-action mount/dismount use of the Ride skill, which allows a person to travel arbitrarily far along an arbitrarily line of horses standing side by side.

deadseashoals
2007-12-17, 08:14 PM
Beginning to drown sets the character's HP to zero. Not reduces; the language is pretty unambiguous, so if you're in the negatives you can be healed by having your head dunked in a bucket of water. Of course, the rules also provide for no way to *stop* drowning, so it doesn't matter much; after you're dunked in that bucket, you're dead in another two rounds.

The peasant railgun is an illustration of how silly free actions can be. Stand a bunch of commoners next to each other and have them all ready an action to hand a quarterstaff to the person to their right. Give the first one in line said quarterstaff. Receiving an item is a free action, and the standard action is handing it off which happens immediately upon receiving it, so the quarterstaff instantly travels from one end of the line to the other, achieveing a totally ludicrous speed. That one isn't actually of any use, however, since D&D largely doesn't have rules for momentum and the only way for the commoner on the end to actually attack with the lightspeed quarterstaff is to swing it at somebody or throw it while taking the penalties for pitching a non-throwing weapon. Similar illustrations happen with the free-action mount/dismount use of the Ride skill, which allows a person to travel arbitrarily far along an arbitrarily line of horses standing side by side.

Also, I forgot about grapple dragging to infinity, which is useful. Also, the peasant railgun can be useful for transporting an item an arbitrarily long distance within a 6 second timespan.


On traps: There was a thread earlier discussing the skill system that lamented the fact that a surprisingly low-level character can make ridiculous DC's. I believe they put DC30 around level 8 for a character who's trying. Why then is a DC34 trap so difficult? A rogue who actually puts ranks into the skill will be able to handle it with ease.

Agreed on many of the other points, espesially the monsters as races rules and the crappy payoff for long feat chains... but tell me, how are web or glitterdust issues? They're low-level spells, admittedly with good effects but the DC will never be high enough to matter in most situations. It's really only the high level ones that are ridiculous.

A DC 34 is difficult. Let's say the rogue is level 10, since it's a CR 10 trap. Let's be generous and give him 16 intelligence and goggles of minute seeing, and full ranks in search, for a bonus of +21. That's still not in take ten range, and the trap could be anywhere. Now, let's say that the rogue wants to be 95% certain to find the trap. He needs to roll a 13, which means he needs to roll 6 times to have a >95% chance of hitting that 13. That's 36 seconds per 5 foot square, which is an absurdly slow way to crawl through a dungeon.

Now, let's suppose he finds the trap. He has to disable it. With masterwork thieves' tools, he's got a +18 to disable it, meaning that he needs an 16 to succeed, and if he rolls a 11 or less, he'll set it off. So there's a 55% chance that a wail of the banshee will go off on the level 10 party, even if they find it. Wow I sure am having fun playing D&D this way.

That's assuming you've got a rogue with high intelligence and maxed out dungeoneering skills. It gets much worse if you're deviating at all from the assumptions.

Glitterdust is problematic because it's a level 2 spell. It works on anything without blindsight, it hits multiple targets, and it targets a Will save. It's pretty much the best level 2 spell in the game, throughout the game, to the point where it's worth Heightening it for quite a long time. Too good for a level 2 spell.

Web is problematic because it's a level 2 spell. It nominally allows a saving throw, but even if you make the save, you can't move without taking a full round action to do nothing but move, AND make a DC 15 ability check, at which point you're moving 5 feet (probably not out of the web). Ability checks are just so difficult that web basically doesn't allow a save (though if they do fail the save, they're completely hosed).

Worira
2007-12-17, 08:15 PM
Peasant Railgun? Bucket drowning healing? not familiar with those colloquialisms.

On traps: There was a thread earlier discussing the skill system that lamented the fact that a surprisingly low-level character can make ridiculous DC's. I believe they put DC30 around level 8 for a character who's trying. Why then is a DC34 trap so difficult? A rogue who actually puts ranks into the skill will be able to handle it with ease.

Agreed on many of the other points, espesially the monsters as races rules and the crappy payoff for long feat chains... but tell me, how are web or glitterdust issues? They're low-level spells, admittedly with good effects but the DC will never be high enough to matter in most situations. It's really only the high level ones that are ridiculous.

Ok, so a rogue can put two more ranks in search, and makes DC 32 search checks.

As for the spells, Web screws you over even if you make the save, and most monsters have pretty poor saves, especially will. For example, a CR 7 medusa has a +6 will save. Glitterdust can catch 4 of them pretty easily, especially a Sculpted one. That's an EL 11 encounter nuked by a second level spell.

Edit: Damn ninjas.

Jack_Simth
2007-12-17, 08:16 PM
Peasant Railgun? Bucket drowning healing? not familiar with those colloquialisms.

Peasant Railgun:
By the RAW, it doesn't actually do anything significant, other than move things a great distance in a short amount of time. The gist of it is that you get a long line of commoners with readied actions to hand the item to the next person in line. Item gets an arbitrary distance in one round - potentially exceeding the speed of light. However, D&D Mechanics don't make anything special with damage happen due to the distance the object has traveled in a given timeframe - so that rock that the commoner on the end throws, per RAW, only deals normal thrown rock damage (despite the fact that it may have exceeded the speed of light).

Bucket Drowning Healing:
The way the Drowning rules work, your HP are set to -1 (exactly) at a particular stage. If you're below that, (like the Frenzied Berserker who's taken 10,000 damage) it heals you by an arbitrarily high amount. Yes, it's one of those things where many DM's will simply laugh at you when you claim it works - and instantly house-rule it if you argue about it. Similar to the non-consequences of the "Dead" status.


On traps: There was a thread earlier discussing the skill system that lamented the fact that a surprisingly low-level character can make ridiculous DC's. I believe they put DC30 around level 8 for a character who's trying. Why then is a DC34 trap so difficult? A rogue who actually puts ranks into the skill will be able to handle it with ease.
The Rogue-10 with an Int of 10, max ranks in Search and Disable Device, and a masterwork tool can take 10 to make DC 25 (13 ranks, +2 Masterwork Tool); 20 to make DC 35. If the rogue is taking 20 for every step along the hallway, it'll take a metric age (as it's a standard action to Search one five-foot square normally, and taking 20 takes 20 times as long - twenty rounds (two minutes) for every five-foot step, that 100 foot hallway (20 five-foot squares) will take 400 minutes - which is over six hours) - and as Disable Device has consequences for failure, the Rogue can't take 20 on it. So to get that DC 34 trap reliably, the Rogue needs bonuses from other sources - spending that very limited quantity of feats works somewhat, but Skill Focus is only +3, and you can only take it once per skill - two feats can get you +5, but that's the limit. So basically you need magic items - Lens of Detection (+5 unnamed Bonus, but uses the virtual "Hand" slot) and Goggles of Minute Seeing (+5 Competence, eye slot) will do the job, as will a Robe of Eyes (+10 Competence to Search) to get the bonus up to +25 to make the search DC 34 by taking 10; and Elixer of Vision will do it for an hour at a cost of 250 gp. There aren't many Core ways to boost Disable Device beyond feats (+3 for Skill Focus, +2 for Nimble Fingers), stats (Intelligence), skill ranks, and an appropriate Masterwork tool (+2).

Yes, if you focus on little else, you can beat the highest listed Trap's Seach and Disable Device DC fairly early on... but then you're basically just a trap-monkey - and traps taken down by Search/Disable Device get boring fast (especially when taking 10 or 20 and not actually rolling).


Agreed on many of the other points, espesially the monsters as races rules
Eh, they're designed to make playing the base races favorable. It's had to make an overpowered race/class combo with the core monsters.

and the crappy payoff for long feat chains... but tell me, how are web or glitterdust issues? They're low-level spells, admittedly with good effects but the DC will never be high enough to matter in most situations. It's really only the high level ones that are ridiculous.
Glitterdust:
Will save or lose (there's very little that doesn't lose the fight if it's blind) (no SR) for 1 round per level in an area as a 2nd level spell. As a bonus, it nullifies invisibility and concealment (no save or SR) for the duration.

Web:
On a Successful Reflex save, everyone caught in the area is Entangled (1/2 move, can't Charge, can't Run, -2 penalty to attack, -4 penalty to Dex, DC 15+spell level concentration check to cast a spell) for the duration; moving through the Web costs a full round, and you only get 5 feet for every five full points by which you beat DC 10 Strength or Escape Artist check (so you've wasted a round on anything less than a 15 for either; DC 15 gets you five feet, DC 20 gets you 10 feet, DC 25 gets you 15 feet, and so on - as it's a 20-foot radius Spread, if it's centered on you, you need a DC 30 check to make it to the edge - and that cost you your entire round). Anyone who fails their save is stuck, and must take a 1 round action to attempt an Escape Artist (DC 25) or Strength check (DC 20) to get into the "made save" category - otherwise, they can't move at all. Additionally, it provides Cover with five-feet of distance, and Total Cover with 20 feet of distance.
In other words, this one second level spell: Debuffs everyone in a wide area, makes a wide area virtually impassable, and shuts down ranged characters until they can get out. And that's if they MAKE their save.
Sure, it doesn't actually kill your opponent... but it makes them easy meat for whatever you throw next (Summon Swarm(Spiders), also second level is a common favorite - especially as both are Conjuration spells, which is good for the Conjuration Specialist)

Hmm... how many Ninja's....
Edit: 3 - not too bad for my depth of coverage.

puppyavenger
2007-12-17, 10:14 PM
The instant quarterstaff creation.

Aquillion
2007-12-17, 10:44 PM
True, but shapeshift and gate could possibly be fixed without removing them entirely. Timestop is not fixable short of removal and, yes, it really is that bad. It means you need to one shot a Wizard or you pretty much cannot kill them at high levels.Yes, but so what? Teleport accomplishes the same thing. At low levels, when opponents have no way of dealing with them, Fly and Invisibility can do it, too. Any sort of wall will stop the enemy completely in enclosed areas until they get some transportation or terrain-alteration abilities of their own, by which point the wizard will usually just be able to teleport away and come back when they're ready.

Time Stop is very powerful, and certainly has overwhelming utility; but as an 'escape button' it's not that much more than what wizards have already, and generally in order for it to be a 'win button' against CR 17+ opponents it has to be combined with a broken spell like Gate or Shapechange anyway.

Theli
2007-12-17, 11:09 PM
The instant quarterstaff creation.

That's often bandied about. But I wonder how accurate it is.

Craft assumes raw materials. Says so right in the skill description. So the raw materials for a quarterstaff are worth 0 gold. Fine, but that doesn't mean that you suddenly don't need raw materials at all.

So where are you getting all these raw materials for quarterstaffs? Huh? HUH?!?!?

Looks like somebody needs to hire somebody with some skills at Profession (Logger)...

Chronicled
2007-12-17, 11:14 PM
That's often bandied about. But I wonder how accurate it is.

Craft assumes raw materials. Says so right in the skill description. So the raw materials for a quarterstaff are worth 0 gold. Fine, but that doesn't mean that you suddenly don't need raw materials at all.

So where are you getting all these raw materials for quarterstaffs? Huh? HUH?!?!?

Looks like somebody needs to hire somebody with some skills at Profession (Logger)...

At least you don't have to pay them, if what they're gathering is worth nothing!

(Yes, I know economics don't work like that.)

Aquillion
2007-12-17, 11:46 PM
That's often bandied about. But I wonder how accurate it is.

Craft assumes raw materials. Says so right in the skill description. So the raw materials for a quarterstaff are worth 0 gold. Fine, but that doesn't mean that you suddenly don't need raw materials at all.

So where are you getting all these raw materials for quarterstaffs? Huh? HUH?!?!?

Looks like somebody needs to hire somebody with some skills at Profession (Logger)...That isn't exactly how it's worded. It says this:


To determine how much time and money it takes to make an item, follow these steps.

Find the item’s price. Put the price in silver pieces (1 gp = 10 sp).
Find the DC from the table below.
Pay one-third of the item’s price for the cost of raw materials.
Make an appropriate Craft check representing one week’s work. If the check succeeds, multiply your check result by the DC. If the result × the DC equals the price of the item in sp, then you have completed the item. (If the result × the DC equals double or triple the price of the item in silver pieces, then you’ve completed the task in one-half or one-third of the time. Other multiples of the DC reduce the time in the same manner.)
According to a strict interpretation of the craft rules, you cannot get the raw materials yourself; you must pay for them. The only way you can use the craft skill is to "pay one-third of the item's price for the cost of raw materials." For a quarterstaff, this is zero, so most people considering the exploit leap past this step and rush on to the fourth one, where they use the badly-designed multiplier mechanics to reduce the craft time to zero.

However, it isn't so simple. You could still thwart this trick in RAW by arguing about the 'pay one-third of the item's price' bit. It stretches disbelief somewhat to argue that players can pay that price automagically on the spot without taking any time to do so; it's hard to argue that the money is just flowing out of their pockets. Normally, of course, any time involved in buying the materials would be so low that it just wouldn't matter next to the craft time, so no rules are provided; but that doesn't mean that, per RAW, it takes no time at all. It just means no RAW rules are provided, and therefore the DM has to ad-lib when that becomes important (like, say, here). Therefore this is downgraded from a rules exploit to a situation that requires adjudication; it's no more an exploit than doing anything else not covered by the rules.

And there is nothing in the rules to indicate that you can just skip that "pay one-third the item's price" bit just because the price is zero, oh no. Per RAW, you are plainly required to find an approprate merchant, talk to them, and pay them the required zero gold for your worthless materials in order to begin crafting a quarterstaff. You cannot provide or find the materials yourself; you must buy them to use the crafting rules in the RAW. You must also buy them seperately every time (go read the rules, I didn't write them. Buying the materials every time you want to craft anything is one of the required steps), so you can't, say, buy an infinite amount of 'quarterstaff materials' in one step.

While, again, no rules are provided for the transaction, it is unlikely to take zero time. Therefore, the rate of quarterstaff-production is limited to the speed at which you can complete these individual zero-gold purchases from a merchant.

An alternate interpretation: It is impossible to 'pay' zero gold. Therefore, you cannot craft quarterstaves at all, since you can't satisfy the second step of the crafting rules!

Chronicled
2007-12-18, 12:26 AM
An alternate interpretation: It is impossible to 'pay' zero gold. Therefore, you cannot craft quarterstaves at all, since you can't satisfy the second step of the crafting rules!

I like this interpretation. :smallamused:

Mr. Moogle
2007-12-18, 12:38 AM
That isn't exactly how it's worded. It says this:


According to a strict interpretation of the craft rules, you cannot get the raw materials yourself; you must pay for them. The only way you can use the craft skill is to "pay one-third of the item's price for the cost of raw materials." For a quarterstaff, this is zero, so most people considering the exploit leap past this step and rush on to the fourth one, where they use the badly-designed multiplier mechanics to reduce the craft time to zero.

However, it isn't so simple. You could still thwart this trick in RAW by arguing about the 'pay one-third of the item's price' bit. It stretches disbelief somewhat to argue that players can pay that price automagically on the spot without taking any time to do so; it's hard to argue that the money is just flowing out of their pockets. Normally, of course, any time involved in buying the materials would be so low that it just wouldn't matter next to the craft time, so no rules are provided; but that doesn't mean that, per RAW, it takes no time at all. It just means no RAW rules are provided, and therefore the DM has to ad-lib when that becomes important (like, say, here). Therefore this is downgraded from a rules exploit to a situation that requires adjudication; it's no more an exploit than doing anything else not covered by the rules.

And there is nothing in the rules to indicate that you can just skip that "pay one-third the item's price" bit just because the price is zero, oh no. Per RAW, you are plainly required to find an approprate merchant, talk to them, and pay them the required zero gold for your worthless materials in order to begin crafting a quarterstaff. You cannot provide or find the materials yourself; you must buy them to use the crafting rules in the RAW. You must also buy them seperately every time (go read the rules, I didn't write them. Buying the materials every time you want to craft anything is one of the required steps), so you can't, say, buy an infinite amount of 'quarterstaff materials' in one step.

While, again, no rules are provided for the transaction, it is unlikely to take zero time. Therefore, the rate of quarterstaff-production is limited to the speed at which you can complete these individual zero-gold purchases from a merchant.

An alternate interpretation: It is impossible to 'pay' zero gold. Therefore, you cannot craft quarterstaves at all, since you can't satisfy the second step of the crafting rules!

what abou one rank in Profession (wood merchant)?:smallwink:

Swordguy
2007-12-18, 02:24 AM
Man, one person posts something someone told him once, and suddenly everyone takes it as gospel truth...


Late to the party, otherwise I would have hit on this quicker. I imagine this is a shot at me and this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49378) thread.

Me uncle's resume (http://www.pen-paper.net/rpgdb.php?op=showcreator&creatorid=6)

You can either take what he's telling me as truth or not. I don't really care. Frankly, though, I think he knows what he's talking about. And that is that the designers and playtesters really did intend for people to play D&D in the "Blaster, Healbot, Fighter, Trapmonkey" paradigm. Let WOTC be idiots if you want, fine. Don't imply that I'm a liar.

Altair_the_Vexed
2007-12-18, 03:04 AM
The ever-handy example of infinite speed of passing and crafting!

We can ignore rules silliness like this, surely? Or does anyone play to those rules?

Khanderas
2007-12-18, 07:44 AM
I doubt very much anyone have transportation handled by railgun-peasant.
Or being medics with a bucket of water.


But the question YOU asked, was "what is broken, really ?" and I feel you got enough examples to do you "simple errata" :smallamused:

Sure the insane example I mentioned up there you don't have to.. but there are plenty others who are just as insane, inane and broken. just slightly less illogical I admit.

Prophaniti
2007-12-18, 09:22 AM
Thank you for the information on Drowning heals and peasant railgun. It seems clear to me that these two examples are perfect for what the OP had in mind. Silly rules loopholes that no one thought about and no sane DM would allow, and ones that can be corrected with simple rewording. Everyone is familiar with Rule 0 of course, I have my own rule.

Rule 0.5- The printed rules are intended to simplify the process of playing a game, they are not holy text. Gaps/typos/mistakes/loopholes are not to be used as an excuse to do what should clearly be impossible.

Most such insane loopholes in them are likely unintentional. They should be treated as nothing more than an amusing easter egg. Yes it would be possible by RAW to heal someone by drowning them, this is obviously something that was missed by quality control. Any DM who allows such things simply because it isn't explicitly stated otherwise in the rules deserves the disgusting mess the people who want to do it will make of the gaming sessions.

Theli
2007-12-18, 10:04 AM
That isn't exactly how it's worded. It says this:

That's only one part of the skill text. Elsewhere it says that you craft FROM raw materials. If you have no raw materials, or no way to readily obtain them, then obviously you cannot craft. It doesn't really have to be spelled out.

Just because they put up a step-by-step list of the crafting process for people's convenience doesn't mean that they wanted it abstracted in all cases.

Bleh, teach me to not read the rest of the post. You make pretty much the same point I was making.

People just like to make fun at WotC expense though, don't they?

Kurald Galain
2007-12-18, 10:18 AM
It seems to me that while the peasant railgun, and heal-by-drowing, are fun examples to cite, they aren't really relevant with regards to the brokenness of the core rulebooks. This is because they (almost) never come up in a campaign, and if they would, any sane DM would veto them instantly.

The problems with brokenness in practice are those that occur in regular play and aren't immediately obvious to the DM - the most obvious one being class imbalance, in particular the fact that fighters and monks cannot meaningfully contribute to the party at moderate to high levels.

A plethora of fixes to these exist on this and other roleplaying message boards, both nerfs to casters and boosts to warriors.

And I predict that within a day or two, this thread will have degenerated into one of those repetitive monk-vs-wizard debates :smallbiggrin:

Jayabalard
2007-12-18, 10:36 AM
fighters and monks cannot meaningfully contribute to the party at moderate to high levels.This is great rhetoric, but it's not a universally true statement; what constitutes a "meaningful contribution" depends on play style; even the term "moderate to high level" is up for interpretation. Every time this sort of statement comes up, there are people who point out that they do not have a problem meaningfully contributing.

A correct statement would be: "fighters and monks cannot contribute as much to the party as other classes after level x." Where x is the level where fighters and monks start getting totally outclassed.

Gungnir
2007-12-18, 10:47 AM
What about the grapple bomb? Have all those railgun peasants grapple some random dude in a 5'-5'-5' box, close the lid, and tell them to drop the grapple.

AKA_Bait
2007-12-18, 10:52 AM
Time Stop is very powerful, and certainly has overwhelming utility; but as an 'escape button' it's not that much more than what wizards have already, and generally in order for it to be a 'win button' against CR 17+ opponents it has to be combined with a broken spell like Gate or Shapechange anyway.

Or Forcecage and E's Tentacles. Or 2 or 3 wall spells. Or Solid Fog. The problem is the extra granted actions since there are so many ways to abuse it. Yes, it gets really cheezy when paired with other spells in need of revision, but even just using spells not generally thought to be too bad it is a 'win' button.

Altair_the_Vexed
2007-12-18, 01:14 PM
I doubt very much anyone have transportation handled by railgun-peasant.
Or being medics with a bucket of water.


But the question YOU asked, was "what is broken, really ?" and I feel you got enough examples to do you "simple errata" :smallamused:

Sure the insane example I mentioned up there you don't have to.. but there are plenty others who are just as insane, inane and broken. just slightly less illogical I admit.

I'm not really planning to write an errata. Sheesh, I wish I never mentioned it!

I just wanted to filter out the simple-fix brokenness and home in on the serious issues. Thing is, I'm DMing for an open club now, rather than homebrewing for my friends in a long-established, heavily house-ruled group - so I thought I'd get a little heads up on the evils of Core.

Yeah, I probably have plenty enough material to go on now.

NoDot
2007-12-18, 01:38 PM
If you're interested, this (http://bb.bbboy.net/thegamingden-viewthread?forum=1&thread=723) is an example of what you need to do to bring melee up to par with intelligent casters and monsters.

Marius
2007-12-18, 02:51 PM
If you're interested, this (http://bb.bbboy.net/thegamingden-viewthread?forum=1&thread=723) is an example of what you need to do to bring melee up to par with intelligent casters and monsters.

If you mean up to the same level of bronkenness then yes. Foil Action is one of the most broken stuff I've ever seen and it only get's worst. Plus if you use those classes anyway you'll have to rewrite the rogue, the ranger and many other classes AND every monster on the monster manual.

It's really one of the worst "fixes" out there.

Kompera
2007-12-18, 03:10 PM
I'm not really planning to write an errata. Sheesh, I wish I never mentioned it!

I just wanted to filter out the simple-fix brokenness and home in on the serious issues. Thing is, I'm DMing for an open club now, rather than homebrewing for my friends in a long-established, heavily house-ruled group - so I thought I'd get a little heads up on the evils of Core.

Yeah, I probably have plenty enough material to go on now.Rather than focus on the melee types, you'll need to focus on the casters. Savagely limit their potency and you''ll have a non-broken game.

Scrutinize all means of transportation, especially those which offer transportation beyond the three standard dimensions. If it gives Flight, remove or limit it. Look at all save or die spells, and limit them accordingly. Look at all save or suck spells, and limit them accordingly.

Carefully examine all full caster PRCs, and forbid those which offer advancement of full casting along with zero disadvantages. Consider eliminating all other full caster PRCs as well.

Forbid most arcane and divine metamagic.

Forbid most splat books. Core is broken as well as Core + Splatbooks, but Core is easier for the GM to reign in.

Remove most forms of Polymoroph.

Remove Natural Casting.

Carefully control the magic items you as the GM award the players. Do not allow a magic swap meet to exist where items you've decided to award are able to be transformed into items you never intended to award.

Have fun. :smallbiggrin:

Ominous
2007-12-18, 03:32 PM
Also, I forgot about grapple dragging to infinity, which is useful.

I haven't heard of this one. What does it entail?

NoDot
2007-12-18, 03:59 PM
Foil Action is one of the most broken stuff I've ever seen and it only get's worst.I'm not gonna touch foil, but...


Plus if you use those classes anyway you'll have to rewrite the rogue, the ranger and many other classesBefore real life sidetracked them, they were working on it.


AND every monster on the monster manual.Um... It was balanced against the monsters in the Monster Manual. According to the CR system, you are supposed to be able to solo a monster with CR equal to your level and win 50% of the time. They just created classes which abide by that.

Marius
2007-12-18, 04:13 PM
Before real life sidetracked them, they were working on it.

I know, but it's still an incomplete system.



Um... It was balanced against the monsters in the Monster Manual. According to the CR system, you are supposed to be able to solo a monster with CR equal to your level and win 50% of the time. They just created classes which abide by that.

I didn't do the test myself but I've seen several posted by people claiming that you can solo a mosnter a lot more than 50% of the time. And imagine what 4 fighters can do! Especially against 1 or 2 opponennts you can foil every action with one or two fighters, use one as backup and kill the monsters with the one left. Remember that in d&d you usually don't solo monsters, you kill them with a party.

NoDot
2007-12-18, 04:19 PM
I know, but it's still an incomplete system.I still says what you need to do to get close to mages in this edition, and that's why I posted the link.


And imagine what 4 fighters can do!I said I'm not touching foil. Go argue that at the Gaming Den.

Marius
2007-12-18, 04:25 PM
I still says what you need to do to get close to mages in this edition, and that's why I posted the link.

I said I'm not touching foil. Go argue that at the Gaming Den.

No, it doesn't. You just break the game more. And every class that's not a fighter or a full caster suffers more.

NoDot
2007-12-18, 04:41 PM
No, it doesn't. You just break the game more. And every class that's not a fighter or a full caster suffers more.That depends on where you draw the line between broken and high-powered. (stupidly, nonsensically high-power, but still just high-powered)

2xSlick
2007-12-18, 07:12 PM
Can 3.5 core become less-broken? We can try. Introducing 2xSlick's By-No-Means-Complete Errata for 3.!

Classes

Wizards

1. Gate- Only one creature may be called at any time. Using a creature to gate in another creature sends the original creature back whence it came.

2. Time Stop- Reduced to 1-4 rounds. *SPECIAL NOTE* Casting time stop in the presense of a monk allows the monk to move and engage the caster normally.

3. Polymorph- Trash it. Not worth fixing.

Druids

Remove natural spell. If this seems to drastic, then instead have the natural spell feat allow casting as long as a spell is both silenced and stilled.

Clerics

No persistent meta or divine meta magic to gimp in core.

Bards

New feat available-"Silent but damn useful." When activating one of his inspirations, the bard can choose to commit to head-banging to the music in his head. The bonuses applied from the inspirations are increased by 1 per 6 bard levels.When using this feat inspiration only applies to the bard. Reqs 10 ranks of any perform skill, +6 BAB.

Barbarians

1. He can read.

2. His rage stacks with all other sources of increased damage/ constitution except another rage or the rage spell.

Rogue

At level 20, the rogue gains 2D6 sneak attack.

Ranger

Not bad, by core.

Sorceror

At level one, player chooses to either gain either fire, ice, or acid breath attack at 1D6 per 3 levels (DC 10 + 1/2 sorc level + Con mod), or automatically cast all damage-dealing spells as if empowered without burning a feat or increasing spell level.

Paladin

Bonus starting feat- "Armored Strength." When wielding a shield and a medium weapon, the paladin's strength bonus is the same as if he wielded the weapon in two hands (1.5 Str mod). This feat becomes inactive if the number of paladin levels are less than 3/4 total class levels rounded down. E.G. a Paladin 14/6 Cleric would lose the feat until the player reached paladin 18/ cleric 6.

Fighter

1.Bonus starting feat- "Armored Strength." Same as paladin's feat with the bonus that power attack applies as if the weapon was two handed.

2.Weapon focus/specialization are available at level 5. Every five fighter levels afterward the bonuses increases by one. At level 20, fighter now has +4 to hit/ +5 damage with his weapon of choice.

3. Automatically gain feat "Indefatigable" at level 6. Upon failing a saving throw, the fighter can once per day + int mod choose to have his current hit points reduced by half to negate the effects from the original spell. Other players can pick this up with +6 bab, Int 13.

Monk

Needs a bit more work than errata but I'll try a quick & dirty fix.

1. Flurry of blows becomes standard action.

2. See Wrapped bandages in the equipment section

3. At level 9, gain the supernatural ability "Flying monk." Can be used once per day + Str mod. Allows monk to fly at base flying speed + monk's speed bonus for 1 minute/level. Not effected by dispel magic/ AMF.

4. See Time Stop.

5. At level 20, perfect form gives -5/- instead of -10/magic

Equipment

Wrapped bandages. for 1 gp, the hands and feet are bound. Allows unarmed fighter/monk to enchant their fists with the same properties as those found on normal weapons.

Miscellaneous

1. Two Weapon fighting chain. Feats all work the same as normal however player can swing both weapons at maximum attack bonus -2 as a standard action. Also, when whirlwinding, player attempts to strike all those within reach with both weapons. Characters with sneak attack damage can only apply their SA damage to one of the weapons as a standard action.

2. Hide/Move silently now combined into stealth.

3. Spot/Search combined into perception.

4. Listen stays the same as it's useful for overhearing conversations and whatnot.

5. Rule of Six. Only six free actions may be taken in one round by a character. Players caught abusing free action rules beyond this lose 1D6 stat of the dm's choosing permanently.

6. No wishing for more wishes. This includes wishing for items that grant wishes or wishing to summon monsters/wizards to grant wishes.



So, what ya think? I left traps alone as I don't know how to go about fixing them besides constantly throwing corpses down a hallway to spring them. Monks got a hefty boost. Possibly too much. I thought about adding a line saying flurry doesn't work with two hand fighting (since it is a variant of two hand fighting) but then ALL monks would punch with their new band aids on.

Aquillion
2007-12-19, 01:49 AM
Or Forcecage and E's Tentacles. Or 2 or 3 wall spells. Or Solid Fog. The problem is the extra granted actions since there are so many ways to abuse it. Yes, it gets really cheezy when paired with other spells in need of revision, but even just using spells not generally thought to be too bad it is a 'win' button.Not really... at least, those aren't as bad as you're implying that they are.

Forcecage has a 1500 gp material component, and, really... how often is the combination of forcecage + time stop going to be that much more powerful than just forcecage? The whole point of forcecage is that you cast it and the enemy's trapped; the only time you'd need more actions (to pile on dimensional lock, etc) is when the enemy has a way of escaping. That is relatively situational, and could just as easily be managed with a second caster of some sort or someone using UMD with an appropriate item.

E's tentacles are not going to be effective against anything you should be fighting by the time you have Time Stop. At all. All they do is make grapple checks, and at that point anything worth killing is going to be too beefy for them to grapple effectively.

Solid fog and the walls are like forcecage -- the only reason you'd use them with time stop is to pile on more restriction spells in case the enemy has a way of getting out fast (if they don't, you can just wait until your next turn anyway, since you have them trapped). You can do that in many different ways without burning a level 9 spell.

I'm not saying Time Stop isn't powerful, of course, but I'm not convinced it's broken. Most of the combos people describe for it seem to be focused more on "one wizard winning a message-board duel" than on actual adventuring utility. As an actual adventuring utility spell, it's an extremely useful get-out-of-jail-free card, but so is just about any high-level spell.

horseboy
2007-12-19, 02:19 AM
The ever-handy example of infinite speed of passing and crafting!

We can ignore rules silliness like this, surely? Or does anyone play to those rules?

I once heard from a buddy how he used it in a 3.0 tournament. He was the reason they removed the patch spell. Filled a cart with quarterstaff's, set it on fire, patch, fly. Drop on BBEG, 500d6 damage for 16 gold. Yeah, 500 free quarterstaff's have come up in play before.



6. No wishing for more wishes. This includes wishing for items that grant wishes or wishing to summon monsters/wizards to grant wishes.


"Back in the day" that would have just resulted in the Player being put into infinite loop where he constantly and for all eternity wished for more wishes. You know, sometimes being a jerk of a DM fixed a lot of thing

Titanium Dragon
2007-12-19, 05:03 AM
Basically look at the spell lists for spellcasters who aren't bards, druids, and rangers. Welcome to what is broken about the three core D&D books. Oh, and then look through the druid entry and find his wildshape ability; that's broken too. If you cut out all that, there would be more "balance" but it'd massively weaken the party.

Spellcasters are broken in D&D on a very fundamental level. Flying cheese is just the harbinger of things to come. It just doesn't work well because magic is so much better than anything else you can do in the system.

Talic
2007-12-19, 05:53 AM
That isn't exactly how it's worded. It says this:


According to a strict interpretation of the craft rules, you cannot get the raw materials yourself; you must pay for them. The only way you can use the craft skill is to "pay one-third of the item's price for the cost of raw materials." For a quarterstaff, this is zero, so most people considering the exploit leap past this step and rush on to the fourth one, where they use the badly-designed multiplier mechanics to reduce the craft time to zero.

However, it isn't so simple. You could still thwart this trick in RAW by arguing about the 'pay one-third of the item's price' bit. It stretches disbelief somewhat to argue that players can pay that price automagically on the spot without taking any time to do so; it's hard to argue that the money is just flowing out of their pockets. Normally, of course, any time involved in buying the materials would be so low that it just wouldn't matter next to the craft time, so no rules are provided; but that doesn't mean that, per RAW, it takes no time at all. It just means no RAW rules are provided, and therefore the DM has to ad-lib when that becomes important (like, say, here). Therefore this is downgraded from a rules exploit to a situation that requires adjudication; it's no more an exploit than doing anything else not covered by the rules.

And there is nothing in the rules to indicate that you can just skip that "pay one-third the item's price" bit just because the price is zero, oh no. Per RAW, you are plainly required to find an approprate merchant, talk to them, and pay them the required zero gold for your worthless materials in order to begin crafting a quarterstaff. You cannot provide or find the materials yourself; you must buy them to use the crafting rules in the RAW. You must also buy them seperately every time (go read the rules, I didn't write them. Buying the materials every time you want to craft anything is one of the required steps), so you can't, say, buy an infinite amount of 'quarterstaff materials' in one step.

While, again, no rules are provided for the transaction, it is unlikely to take zero time. Therefore, the rate of quarterstaff-production is limited to the speed at which you can complete these individual zero-gold purchases from a merchant.

An alternate interpretation: It is impossible to 'pay' zero gold. Therefore, you cannot craft quarterstaves at all, since you can't satisfy the second step of the crafting rules!

Nowhere does it mention a merchant. By RAW, you may be somewhat correct, or as correct as one can be for an area vaguely worded. It states that you must pay. You could pay in barter (the appropriate amount of chickens, for example). You could pay in time, if an appropriate amount of time could be determined. A good example of this is a quest. As it's the DM's job to set the value of non-priced services, you could provide a worthless service for said lumber.

Now, if you chose to pay the god of nature forest, and provided the service of chopping overgrown lumber, it's hard to argue that this service is less than worthless. It's certainly not instant, though.

Aquillion
2007-12-19, 08:01 AM
Nowhere does it mention a merchant. By RAW, you may be somewhat correct, or as correct as one can be for an area vaguely worded. It states that you must pay. You could pay in barter (the appropriate amount of chickens, for example). You could pay in time, if an appropriate amount of time could be determined. A good example of this is a quest. As it's the DM's job to set the value of non-priced services, you could provide a worthless service for said lumber.

Now, if you chose to pay the god of nature forest, and provided the service of chopping overgrown lumber, it's hard to argue that this service is less than worthless. It's certainly not instant, though.Actually, technically, it's even more restrictive than I described at first, when you read it carefully. The steps are:



Find the item’s price. Put the price in silver pieces (1 gp = 10 sp).
Find the DC from the table below.
Pay one-third of the item’s price for the cost of raw materials.
You have to put the price in silver pieces before paying it; it really doesn't make much sense to argue that on one hand they want you to put the price in silver pieces, and on the other hand you can pay anything with a value equal to those silver pieces (why tell you to put it in silver pieces at all, then?)

By the RAW, in other words... you must pay for items in silver pieces, specifically. Never mind using raw materials... even gold and platinum won't do. To make a quarterstaff, the requisite zero gold can only be paid in silver.

(There's also the fact that using an item's market price to determine the material cost makes no sense at all; it's nonsensical that a powerful magic item requiring rare and extremely valuable skills would have the same materials-to-labor ratio in its final market price as, say, a ten-foot pole. But there you have it.)

Kurald Galain
2007-12-19, 08:28 AM
I once heard from a buddy how he used it in a 3.0 tournament. He was the reason they removed the patch spell. Filled a cart with quarterstaff's, set it on fire, patch, fly. Drop on BBEG, 500d6 damage for 16 gold. Yeah, 500 free quarterstaff's have come up in play before.

What is this "Patch" spell you speak of? And do you have other cool tales of things removed after somebody figured out a trick like this?

TimeWizard
2007-12-19, 11:31 AM
What's this about grapple to infinity?

Mr. Friendly
2007-12-19, 11:51 AM
I haven't heard of this one. What does it entail?


What's this about grapple to infinity?

I believe what is being referenced is this simple rules conundrum.

Let's say you have a 6 person party, each of you having Leadership and a Cohort, just to make the math simple, you all also each have 8 followers. Now, all 60 of you enter into a grapple with each other. Each person in the grapple, in turn, attempts to use their action moving the grapple participants at half speed. Assuming everyone has a 30' move, each actor moves the whole grapple 15 feet on his action. So, that would be roughly 900 feet round.

Now this requires that say, Person 1 is grappling person 2, person 2 is grappling person 3 and so on, so that no one person is "being grappled by" more than 4 people. It also requires the supposition that you can voluntarily fail a grapple check, which thus far, no one can seem to find by RAW.

That in itself brings up a rather silly in-game scenario of a person being unable to volunterily give up at anything.

horseboy
2007-12-19, 12:20 PM
What is this "Patch" spell you speak of? And do you have other cool tales of things removed after somebody figured out a trick like this?

I skipped 3.0, but from the description, it was suppose to be one of those carrying spells. It created patches, like the Robe of Useful Items.

I'm not sure how, but there was something about Summon Celestial Bison, Embue with Spell like power, Shield other and I think Etherealness or something like that to where you were missed 50%. He then soloed a tower. They shortened the duration of summonings after that.

Then there was the time he magic jarred a rust monster.


I'm surprised no one has brought up one of the most broken things in core: Rebuke Undead. Nothing shuts down a module faster than Rebuke Undead.

deadseashoals
2007-12-19, 01:37 PM
I believe what is being referenced is this simple rules conundrum.

Let's say you have a 6 person party, each of you having Leadership and a Cohort, just to make the math simple, you all also each have 8 followers. Now, all 60 of you enter into a grapple with each other. Each person in the grapple, in turn, attempts to use their action moving the grapple participants at half speed. Assuming everyone has a 30' move, each actor moves the whole grapple 15 feet on his action. So, that would be roughly 900 feet round.

Now this requires that say, Person 1 is grappling person 2, person 2 is grappling person 3 and so on, so that no one person is "being grappled by" more than 4 people. It also requires the supposition that you can voluntarily fail a grapple check, which thus far, no one can seem to find by RAW.

That in itself brings up a rather silly in-game scenario of a person being unable to volunterily give up at anything.

That's right, although even if you can't voluntarily fail a grapple check, if you have a sufficiently large number of people in the hugfest, enough of them will fail their grapple checks that the whole mass will move ridiculously fast anyway.

KIDS
2007-12-19, 01:42 PM
I'd agree that deadseashoals summed it up quite well in his post #53 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3671546&postcount=53). Of course, some of the issues look relatively tame when they are listed in such an orderly fashion - the difference between cleric and fighter or wizard and sorcerer or good class design and sorcerer or... anything, would be much better off displayed like a giant pseudonatural gibbering mouther laughing at the core PHB book while eating it.

Mr. Friendly
2007-12-19, 02:15 PM
Also to factor into the "broken" equation of the Core books is the MM.

It's broken from a "New DM" perspective because there are plenty of monsters that are under CR'd (Thoqqua) and plenty that are over CR'd (Tarrasque).

Then there are the rules for advancing monsters by HD and adding levels.

Right but a good DM can deal with that and balance it out. -
Is an invalid response for this one.

There are and always will be new DMs. Now granted every DM is supposed to make mistakes, etc. However, when the new DM in question is simply trying to follow the CORE rules of the game and they are broken, then something is obviously wrong. Plus said new DM is never really going to know he is doing anything wrong. His PCs will just keep dying....

AKA_Bait
2007-12-19, 02:41 PM
Plus said new DM is never really going to know he is doing anything wrong. His PCs will just keep dying....

Oh sure he will. His PC's will keep on dying. That's usually a pretty good clue. ;-)

Mr. Friendly
2007-12-19, 02:42 PM
Oh sure he will. His PC's will keep on dying. That's usually a pretty good clue. ;-)

It all depends on the situation. I am simply saying that the system is, in and of itself, broken. (CRs and upgrading monsters that is)

Jayabalard
2007-12-20, 09:47 AM
It all depends on the situation. I am simply saying that the system is, in and of itself, broken. (CRs and upgrading monsters that is)and I believe that AKA_Bait is saying that it's not... specifically that "requires a learned skill to use properly" is a very different thing than "broken"