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Thread: Most Useless Ink?
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2021-01-08, 01:35 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Most Useless Ink?
Probably multiple ways:
1) Seeing most of the abilities as essentially RP fluff.
2) Not being knowledgeable / motivated to be mechanically powerful.
3) Not even knowing that there are mathematically less good ways to play the game than others. I highly doubt the first thing you did when you popped open a rule book was to plug in combinations of stuff into a spreadsheet.
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2021-01-08, 01:49 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2018
Re: Most Useless Ink?
Really, we can sum up all three in a single point: Not knowing how to playtest a game.
Playtesting is not for having fun and enjoying a good gaming experience. Playtesting is for sniffing out all the places the game breaks down, doing what you can to identify them, and reporting that to the designers so they can address them. It requires an active interest in doing your damnedest to find the best (and worst) ways to play, regardless of fluff or flavor.
In short, playtesting looks an awful lot like optimization, except it also allows for intentionally trying to mess up to see just how bad you can get as well as seeing just how good you can get. Going into the playtesting process and expecting a normal TTRPG process, where you have a DM that will compensate for things and players that can be reasoned with or talked down, where the point is to have the most fun regardless of what specific stuff is played, is doomed to failure.
It's one of the reasons why I've soured so much on public playtest stuff. I find 90% of the time it's just a publicity stunt, yet designers repeatedly present it as far more.
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2021-01-08, 02:11 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Most Useless Ink?
Do realize that D&D 3e wasn't released to the public until the year 2000. Back then, "game design" wasn't a proper profession. Hell, the number one stressful issue of the day was the fact that digital memory space was so strict that the 2 extra digits for storing the date was skipped to save on it. (Now we've got literal terrabytes of space on USB drives.)
"Playtesting," was not what it is today.
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2021-01-08, 04:44 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2009
Re: Most Useless Ink?
As a DM, I see the appeal of these rules - they have the potential to add a bit of realism and immersiveness. If there were a way to use them without the game devolving into Supplies&Logistics too much, that would be great.
On topic:
I think for similar reasons, I didn't use many of the more fiddly rules - I usually handwave vision and light rules, as well as tactical aerial movement (figuring out forward speads, turn degrees, etc.), because they just take too long to adjudicate.
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2021-01-08, 05:17 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Most Useless Ink?
Last edited by AnonymousPepper; 2021-01-08 at 05:19 AM.
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2021-01-08, 09:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Most Useless Ink?
My IRL group's reasoning for spells not being a bigger offender is that a cleric can swap out their whole spell selection every day. And a wizard could literally learn nearly every spell WBL permitting.
Additionally spells can be meaningfully encountered on both sides of the GM screen in a multitude of ways.
Feats on the other hand have very very few ways to.even be present at the fights. Especially with feat taxes and feat chains.
The Feats In Magic Items sidebar in Arms and Equipment could have helped this but they're fairly overpriced and it moves the burden of allowing feats to be present for your character from feat slots to your WBL which has it's own troubles with expected equipment bonuses and immunities by level.
Magic items made our cut because of how formulaic they are. For my money magic items have far more useless members printed than spells even when considering loot tables.
Our group pointed out that magic items being formulaic also makes them super easy to use to fill space in a book.
Also, as mentioned earlier, there's a certain amount of a character's WBL that is expected to be spent on remaining relevant in combat so the amount of wealth left over for shenaniganery style items isnt always a lot.Last edited by unseenmage; 2021-01-08 at 10:00 AM.
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2021-01-08, 10:04 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2016
Re: Most Useless Ink?
Monsters. I have played at literally hundreds of tables, but only seen 5% of monsters. It's why I incorporated so many different kinds in my campaign world.
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2021-01-08, 10:39 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2017
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Re: Most Useless Ink?
This is a really good point. I have thrown weird 1 off monsters at a party before and it shut them down. People are so used to seeing the standard monsters that make up only 25% of the game, that the other 75% can really be head scratchers. Major swaths of the MM2+ books are practically unused.
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2021-01-08, 02:21 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Most Useless Ink?
This sidebar was one of the biggest mistakes in 3e, wym? Anyone with even a basic investment into item crafting could snap the game in half with this more so than perhaps any other rule set. Like. Even with my most wacky artificers, I avoided these things. They're cheese, pure and simple. Without any feat investment besides craft wondrous, you can get them down to <30% market price...
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2021-01-08, 02:36 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2014
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Re: Most Useless Ink?
The Pareto Principle, named after esteemed economist Vilfredo Pareto, specifies that 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes, asserting an unequal relationship between inputs and outputs.
Actually learned of it in my comp sci classes, where 80% of your errors come from 20% of your code. And 20% of your code runs 80% of the time. Although it applies to basically everything from linguistics to people to ... monsters.
It's an almost inevitable observation. But without a vast swathe of unused monsters, you'd get an excessively small number of used ones.
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2021-01-08, 02:42 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Most Useless Ink?
Last edited by MaxiDuRaritry; 2021-01-08 at 02:42 PM.
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2021-01-08, 03:06 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Most Useless Ink?
I am going with setting a weapon against a charge, it is a great rule in theory but I have never seen nor heard of anyone using it.
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2021-01-08, 03:21 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2007
Re: Most Useless Ink?
Feat or Spell bloat is a tricky one, because while it's true that probably 90% go unused, I don't think the good 10% would exist without the rest. Based on PF2 and 4E/5E, a lot of the stuff I enjoy in 3.x was put in there by mistake, and if WotC or Paizo had been able to precision-tune every feat and spell it would likely have been (for me) not as good a game.
So I'm probably going with multiclass XP penalties, for not only being seldom used but having mostly negative consequences when it does get used.
Incidentally, I think Living Greyhawk used those rules. I played a Monk 2 / Barbarian 1 / Fighter 2 / Ranger 1 - no XP penalty there! But at least I wasn't trying to play some cheesy nonsense like a Barbarian 4 / Ranger 2.Last edited by icefractal; 2021-01-08 at 03:24 PM.
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2021-01-08, 03:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Most Useless Ink?
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2021-01-08, 04:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2016
Re: Most Useless Ink?
I have a friend who literally TRIES to use it. Many times he has done it, set his weapon for a charge. EVERY SINGLE TIME the GM has made the enemy NOT charge. It has been multiple GMs who have done this, on a regular basis. Pisses him off to no end. To be fair, it DOES at least remove the +2 they get from charging.
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2021-01-08, 04:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2015
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Re: Most Useless Ink?
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2021-01-08, 04:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2018
Re: Most Useless Ink?
Readying actions is pretty useless in general.
Especially if your DMs make sure enemies never take the action the actions you're readied against. Then it's just a convoluted way of skipping your turn.
But even if the DM doesn't change enemy behavior based on your readied actions, you're still betting your entire turn on the idea that you know what your enemy is going to do.My Perpetually-Unfinished Homebrew: Tier-3 Class Suite, Homestuck Races for Pathfinder, Homestuck Races for 5e, Psionic Class Redux
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2021-01-08, 05:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Most Useless Ink?
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2021-01-08, 06:11 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2015
Re: Most Useless Ink?
You get magic immunity but only from opponents(and not from allies) for free basically?
If yes it means you spent a feat in a not too bad way (technically you could have picked more cheese for prcs and general opness instead but it is bad for many tables because most players does not wants 100% cheese characters)Last edited by noob; 2021-01-08 at 06:17 PM.
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2021-01-08, 08:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2009
Re: Most Useless Ink?
One thing we do at my table is to scratch down the readied action on a scrap of paper instead saying it out loud to the GM and only actually say "I ready an action." If one of the NPCs triggers the action, you pass the note to the GM with a big cheshire grin. Harder to do on roll 20 though.
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2021-01-08, 08:29 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Most Useless Ink?
I believe that the "ready vs charge" was an attempt to replicate in th 3e action economy the "set to receive charge" from AD&D. Which is a great tactic when you can cram 8 followers into a 10' hall with 15' & 20' pikes and get 8 free double damage attacks on every charger. Recalling as well that PCs & henchies getting over +6 to damage rolls was rare untill higher levels.
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2021-01-09, 06:51 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2013
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2021-01-09, 03:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2018
Re: Most Useless Ink?
spells for sure. A lot of arcane and divine spells should have been condensed ala Psionics where you spend more power somehow to cast higher ranked versions.
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2021-01-11, 12:11 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2016
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- No Longer The Frostfell
Re: Most Useless Ink?
I've rolled the ready action option in somewhat with the delay action option. If you delay your action, you are ticking down in the initiative count and you will always reside there. If you ready an action, you forego your movement in order to prepare yourself to react to your surroundings. Then, at any point before your next turn, you may take your standard action however you see fit, basically like an immediate standard action. If you act first in the initiative, it gives you lots of flexibility to react on the battlefield. This reflects that better than trying to predict what the enemy is going to do and makes things like brace against charges and counterspelling much more viable from the start.
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2021-01-20, 04:07 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2010
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Re: Most Useless Ink?
Unpopular opinion: I like that there's so many spells, even (or especially!) if some are redundant in some way. It makes things feel..more realistic? If I'm allowed to use that word in this context. It seems like a system designed by humans/sentients through trial and error would naturally have such foibles and quirks. People would come to the same conclusions from different angles, make things the same but just slightly different according to needs, etc. Even if some of the spells are truly, truly vestigial with no conceivable purpose whatsoever, I think that just makes one consider what actually makes the other choices so much more valuable. Now, despite that, I DO laud 5e's attempts to consolidate some of the more egregious redundancies through upcasting (Like Summon Monster), but I do think it went too far in some cases. But on the whole, I like seeing all of the odd variations that occur when things are just all over the place. You won't find things like Avascular Mass or Blood Star in 5e, I tell you hwat.
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2021-01-20, 04:17 AM (ISO 8601)
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2021-01-20, 11:00 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2018
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Re: Most Useless Ink?
Yeah the big issue is it is a tactic designed specifically for military use, literally the only time you would see it based on the way the game mechanics is when armies fight because the charging force doesn't have the option to not charge even though the apposing force has set their weapons for a charge.
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2021-01-20, 12:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2015
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Re: Most Useless Ink?
The MIC's steadfast boots automatically ready your weapon against charges, so you don't waste time or energy on doing so. If everyone knows that you're automagically readied against any charge they make, and you deal significant damage on your hits, it's highly unlikely that they'll charge you while wearing them. This means (essentially) immunity to charge attacks.
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2021-01-20, 01:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Most Useless Ink?
So slight disagreement. You get the feat at 3rd level. There is very little you can make as far as magic items. At 7th you pick up a nice variety, however the party or your character must be idle in one location with a lab, forge and materials must be bought maintained then a skill check completed.
You can not make rings without 12th level and another feat.
I took the craft magic item feat at 3rd as a cleric most useless feat. Craft potions is slightly better.