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    Ogre in the Playground
     
    Just to Browse's Avatar

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    Nov 2011

    Default Re: The Pacifist (PEACH) - A Healer that doesn't suck

    White Fire: Hm. Attempting to stack your party's effective HP by churning through low-level spell slots before each encounter seems fairly abusive to me. Your call.

    Guilt: Lack of options is a balancing factor. I have agreed with this. I'm saying that it's not enough of a balancing factor, considering how crazy the penalty is and how incredibly high you want the DC. I feel like you are vastly underestimating the raw power of Guilt, as well as the effectiveness of buffs with curative riders.

    This would probably be less broken (still broken, just less) on a wizard because they've already got SoL spells to throw around so they run the risk of redundancy -- i.e. the swift action is wasted because you don't need to debuff anyone. It's much better on a guy like the Pacifist who is stocking up on defenses an anti-SoL effects, because redundancy isn't an issue and it gives him more levers for affecting the combat. Now if this reduced saves or SR, then it would be way better on the wizard. But this is explicitly a debuff to aggression, with loopholes for edge cases.

    Interpose: The "cost" of HP is part of the intended effect. Remember the "cost" was already going to be paid in full by the designated target, who will likely be doing something big next turn (like killing whoever attacked them). As an example: A spell that let you tank an attack for an ally would not cost HP, it would cost a spell slot. This is non-action, at-will, 1-4 times per turn, usable as an interrupt. And then on top of that it's a strong tank effect with higher priority than immediate actions, it has a huge amount of damage reduction, and it's followed by an SoL that's also at will / out-of-turn / interrupt the likes of which the God Wizard lusts over.

    And don't forget to think about the context of a fight instead of just the numbers. If you are in a fight against an ubercharger at their peak, blocking 1 attack and maybe dying (depending on if you're using Elusive Target / using stoneskin / maxing Con / cheesing with white fire / guilting him) is probably fine, considering you saved a priority party member who can use time stop or wail of the banshee or imprisonment or warp you all to his private demiplane.

    Against a Balor using real tactics, Interpose is already useless because insanity and power word stun and greater teleport will be the Balor's weapons of choice. Remember that Interpose only breaks a specific (but important) part of encounter design.

    Tank / Healer: I wasn't talking about whether the attempts succeeded. Every edition of D&D (even 3e/4e/5e) has failed to make the Cleric a useful tank and sometimes has also failed to make it a useful healer. But the concept of a tank / healer was what Ancalidormis was talking about. Despite poor execution, the cleric has always been intended as a healy / tanky character ever since it was written up to troll the guy who wanted to play a vampire PC pre-1e.

    I agree we've hit a wall. You should definitely playtest those abilities before trying this in a game -- from personal experience, 5 encounters is probably enough to see the power of Guilt, and I think Interpose should come across pretty much immediately. But then again, I figured those would be obvious right now so hell if I know how long it'll take. I've found the Same Game Test very helpful in the past if you're interested, but it's for judging solo balance so Pacifist performance will not be a particularly good metric.

    Good luck!
    Last edited by Just to Browse; 2016-01-28 at 05:42 PM.
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