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Thread: Why 3.5?
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2022-01-05, 02:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
You're reading way too far into the DMG's examples by no sane reading is a "primitive hang glider" or "standing on a wall" the equivalent of an "expensive magical item."
The commonality in both examples that you're missing for the trees is that in both cases, the atypical tactic is "attack the PCs from higher elevation using projectile weapons." Whether they do that with gliders, trees, a wall, a cliff etc, the DMG's point is that the encounter difficulty may not align with that orc warband's listed or base CR. And that's a much, much simpler example of this phenomenon than a teleport-spam-ambushing Balor.
Where is your support for this claim? Because a Balor is one of the examples they've provided of explicit round-by-round combat behavior and it doesn't include anything remotely close to this tactic at all. If they intended the listed behavior to come out to less than CR 20, that's what they would have done.
Three of the big ones are:
1) Nerfing spellcasting in general - spells are by and large weaker than they were in 3.P and do less things. Some got nerfed through the floor (compare 3.5e and 5e Gate for instance) and others are still good but much weaker (see 3.5e vs. 5e Haste.)
2) Greatly reduced buff stacking thanks to the concentration and attunement mechanics. Characters quite simply cannot be christmas trees decked out in items and buffs anymore. Admittedly, that works much better in a bounded accuracy system like 5e's, but I can definitely see ways to bring 3.P closer to that.
3) Less ammunition for casters in general. Bonus slots are nonexistent now, you get what you get. Consumables like wands, scrolls, and pearls of power still exist but are much weaker, rarer and more situational. No tapping everyone 8 times with one of our many Cure Light Wounds wands before bed for instance. To compensate for this, cantrips are at-will and scale much better.Last edited by Psyren; 2022-01-05 at 02:42 PM.
Plague Doctor by Crimmy
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2022-01-05, 02:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
Characters I've enjoyed playing for more than four sessions:
Falgar the Swiftblade
Revain Sumeth, Whip Fighter Extraordinaire
Malvin Firel, Cleric of Corellon, Destroyer of Undeath
Vongur Dorent, Primeval Champion of Poverty
In defense of the Vow of Poverty
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2022-01-05, 02:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
I think that's a bit harsh. Yes, PFSRD has some bloat due to the third-party content and it can be a little confusing to navigate since they have to use setting-neutral versions of everything. But they have great tools too like the Spells DB and Monsters DB, and it's nice to be able to browse everything within a category in one place regardless of book, like every single Style Feat or every single Animal Companion or Familiar option. I actively use both sites depending on the specific thing I'm looking for.
Plague Doctor by Crimmy
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2022-01-05, 03:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2013
Re: Why 3.5?
I am also a fan of Archives of Nethys as an alternative to PFSRD when it gets annoying as it has strengths, especially in customized searches and filters that the basic site lacks. The 3.5 go-to similar to Archives of Nethys is D&D tools, but that, while pretty comprehensive, has a lot of features that sometimes don't play well with my browser.
But basically "online resources for all the weird stuff" is pretty strong in d20, 3.5 and its successors, in a way you really don't see for other games, including other D&D editions.
Of course you may need all those resources because d20 is made of splatbooks and weird web enhancements and magazine articles and such, made worse by Wizards getting eaten by Hasbro and all their web resources removed.
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2022-01-05, 03:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2013
Re: Why 3.5?
Eh...I find not having anything but rapid shot going for it until the second half of the game missing some rather useful archer feats even in 3.5.
A core cleric needs quicken divine favor to keep up with the weapon focus/weapon spec/greater weapon focus/greater weapon spec fighter progression, and can't do it till level 9.
A core cleric needs divine power to keep up with accuracy and iterative attacks, which costs a standard action and round/level duration limits how often its opportunity cost is worth it. And can't do until level 7.
A core cleric needs to somehow muster a dex of 19 and wait till level15 to get improved precise shot. If you don't think that feat isn't a game changer, well, I've played archers with and without it, and it can be a massive swing in how often you hit at all.
The core fighter by L12 will also have quickdraw and improved crit, which granted aren't incredible feats, but in terms of rocket tag, going from sheathed bow to full attack means in real play he'll vastly outperform any archer that doesn't have the bow in hand before combat starts. Which isn't any social situation and is a surprising amount of other situations too if you add it up. The core cleric, unless human (and thus lower dex and/or str even aside from MAD for needing wisdom) has its feats tied up in point blank, precise, rapid and quicken spell until level 12. The fighter takes quickdraw about level 6, maybe also far shot the same level just out of boredom while waiting for improved weapon focus and improved crit to come online.
Quickdraw also lets you throw blunt and slashing throwing weapons, for that rare case where it's better than just shooting through DR (eg, plant DR/slashing10 can come pretty early on). At some tables it also lets you toss a bunch of holy water vials or alchemist fire etc, if stored in some weaponlike way.
Basically a core cleric has exactly 2 feats before level 20 not tied up in either stuff a fighter gets by level 2, making up for not having improved weapon spec with quickened divine favor and assuming he can get improved precise shot by L15 when his bab catches up and he can afford a big dex item to get to 19 dex. That leaves only his L12 and 18 feat. quickdraw and improved crit sure. By 18 he's pretty close to what a fighter archer can do at level 12 if he casts quickened divine favor every fight and can't match what the fighter is actually doing without fitting in divine power somewhere (std action, round/level, although granted at L18, 18 rounds increases the odds off prebuffing it).
He's still more MAD, he still needs to spend some WBL advancing his cleric role, etc. In no way shape or form will a core cleric ever truly catch up to a core fighter in archery without assuming prebuffing of some kind that the fighter doesn't also get, and he's only in shouting range in combats where he can prebuff with divine power, or maybe some situation where his better will save means he isn't taken out of action early.
That core cleric WILL be providing many other benefits to the party. Nobody is arguing that. If evil, that benefit will include weak but disposable controlled undead. But as early as level 1 and as late as level 18, in core, he's got nothing the fighter doesn't have, and the fighter gets it a lot sooner, in spite of the absolutely true fact that the fighter has no more archery useful feats to buy after L12. Likely he'll use those feats on something else, probably to cover one of archery's various issues (loss of visibility, underwater, difficulty with move+full attack, wind attacks etc). Being a fullbab class with all armor and weapon proficiencies, getting some chops with mounted combat and perhaps buying a griffin egg might be attractive, or a cloak of manta ray and investing in weapon spec for armor spikes might be interesting, or just power attack and blind fight for pulling out a greatsword in that fog cloud, or just be a bit more effecting when switching to hammer and beating up a nearby lich.Last edited by Seward; 2022-01-05 at 03:32 PM.
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2022-01-05, 03:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
Any archer is probably going to be carrying multiple quivers of Ehlonna, which does not specify that getting an item from the quiver is any particular type of action. Drawing an arrow from a quiver must be a free action, or otherwise archers would never get more than two shots per round. Since the quiver of Ehlonna also specifies it can store "objects in the same general size and shape as a bow" (DMG pg 265), it's not an unreasonable conclusion to say that the cleric archer could retrieve the bow from the quiver as a free action as well. And since there are precisely ZERO rules for bows needing to be strung before use, we can conclude that the bow is essentially always strung (which BTW is very, very bad for a real bow).
Of course, this is RAI. RAW is quiet on all these matters.Last edited by Feldar; 2022-01-05 at 03:52 PM.
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2022-01-05, 03:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
I find having multiple unique magic systems interesting. That's really the main draw. Later systems having 1 system for everyone or only Vancian casting makes me sad, and makes me want to fix them.
3.5 power sources are a pretty good jam.
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2022-01-05, 04:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2013
Re: Why 3.5?
I've never played at a table that didn't consider the Javelins and Bow slots in the quiver to be basically identical to a sheathed weapon. It was never free without quickdraw. Thus also no magic wands or staves or rods being pulled free by the casters either. The ammo slots are free, cause ammo is free.
I don't rule out that some tables might play differently. Just never saw it, or even anybody who advanced the idea that it might be possible (and we had plenty of rules lawyers).
The lack of a need to string a bow is bizzare, I agree, although past level 3 the archer will have a magic bow, and magic, at least, might mean you can keep it strung. IRL, bows are a lot more awkward. I've seen some youtube videos trying to replicate the "golfbag of weapons" and you really can do a fairly typical layout (blunt, slashing, piercing, light and heavy weapons, even a shield) but you can maybe sling 1 polearm or bow over your back and draw it, but either works far better as something you hold, then drop if you switch to another weapon. That axefighter who switches to a bow mid-fight kinda doesn't work without a magic items similar to the Quiver involved.
Interestingly real world melee fighters sometimes did have several weapons. What works on mail (chain) isn't the same as what works on a buff coat or on something like a breastplate or worse full plate, and what works on a more or less unarmored or lightly armored target is also different. The Incan swords (made of wood with obsidian fragments on cutting blade or similar) were absolutely devastating against their typical targets - other folks either fighting unarmored or in woven cloth type armor. They were absolutely useless against a typical conquistatdor armor setup, and had a hard time even getting through to hurt horses. European and Asian warriors would look at their opponent and draw the appropriate weapon, which also served as a backup in case their go-to weapon got damaged or maybe stuck in an enemy or otherwise lost.Last edited by Seward; 2022-01-05 at 04:07 PM.
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2022-01-05, 04:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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2022-01-05, 04:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
The commonality is that the Orcs are gaining an advantage that their abilities do not provide. A creature using its abilities, by definition, is not doing so. Unless you can show me where "owns hang glider" or "lives on top of a cliff" appears in the Orc stat block, you're no closer to proving your claim than you were when we started.
Where is your support for this claim?
Because a Balor is one of the examples they've provided of explicit round-by-round combat behavior and it doesn't include anything remotely close to this tactic at all.
Or greater magic weapon. That frees up half your WBL at 9th and lasts all day, and you can do things like handing out individual arrows or crossbow bolts to undead archers.
A core cleric needs divine power to keep up with accuracy and iterative attacks, which costs a standard action and round/level duration limits how often its opportunity cost is worth it. And can't do until level 7.
But as early as level 1 and as late as level 18, in core, he's got nothing the fighter doesn't have
I'm a big fan of that as well. 3e has a very greater degree of legitimate variety in characters than any other edition of D&D, and I'm shocked that it was not embraced moving forward.
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2022-01-05, 04:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
The cleric as fighter is almost certainly being compared with a tank fighter, not an archer fighter, as core archer fighter, as well as being the most feat intensive style, is also generally behind the tanks in damage and gets completely hosed by a third level spell, wind wall, which being core it can do absolutely nothing about. Everything you said put together does less to make you a functioning archer than (I dispel your wind wall). Because it doesn't matter how many 0 damage shots you take. And every caster can out damage a core archer at range with spells, including a cleric, so unlike tank/controller, ranged striker isn't really a niche casters need filled. The core cleric can do ranged damage to targets behind cover, incorporeal targets etc, by level 3, which the core archer can do pretty much never. He can literally cast one level 2 spell (spiritual weapon) and then pull out his bow, bypass DR way better than the fighter throwing holy water, and do more ranged damage per round.
He isn't more MAD. The core fighter has a poor will save and no way to auto succeed will saves. The core fighter can and should take Iron Will, but without a pretty high wisdom all you have made is a weapon for enemy casters to murder your party with. A melee cleric doesn't actually need more than a couple points higher wisdom than the fighter. All he really needs is enough wisdom to cast his highest level spells. All else is gravy.
The core cleric has a higher AC all day with magic vestments. The core cleric won't replace with quickened divine favor, he will replace with Greater Magic Weapon, which by level 12 is as good as weapon focus, greater weapon focus and weapon specialization put together and last all day. This ignores the effects of crafting, because he can also just make himself a higher strength or dex item than the fighter or craft his bow to an extra enchantment.
The core cleric doesn't need to compensate for weapon focus. He can take war domain and get it for free.
Oh, and I don't find the mounted combat feats and griffin egg particularly persuasive. But if I did, the cleric can create or summon a mount pretty much anytime he wants. Putting him about a billion miles ahead of the fighter who has all those feats. Good luck getting your Griffin into the underdark or keeping him from being blasted out from under you if you get there.
And on top of that are all the just "I win this melee combat" buttons that clerics start getting at level 3 (spell level 2). Situational effects like delay/neutralize poison, death ward, freedom of movement, resist energy, which allow clerics to effortlessly tank enemies that meaningfully threaten the fighter. Those aren't utility effects, they are tanking combat tools, which muggles don't get until path of war if them.Last edited by Gnaeus; 2022-01-05 at 05:47 PM.
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2022-01-05, 05:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
I like some of the things from 5e -- attunements aren't one of them. You found a new magical helmet, but you can't use it, because...as we all know, it's a basic rule of physics that you can only benefit from 3 magical objects at once. What? Why?
The phrase "Christmas tree effect" gets thrown around with a negative air, but I haven't seen anyone articulate why it's actually a problem. 3e-style body slots is the norm in most CRPGs and seems to do fine there.
Maybe attunement could be used as a mechanic for especially powerful items like (no-personal-cost) legacy weapons, with only one attunement per char.
Consumables like wands, scrolls, and pearls of power still exist but are much weaker, rarer and more situational.
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2022-01-05, 05:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
"Climb on thing, throw rocks" and "make primitive thing, drop rocks" are both well within an orc warband's abilities. Especially since you need to do the former before you can do the latter, so it's not a guaranteed tactic in all cases/terrains.
1) Why don't you expect the rules to explicitly state that climbing on a thing makes for a different encounter than not climbing on a thing? (Which for the record, as Fizban and I have showed you, they do.)
2) The summoning rule you're citing specifically relates to CR, not EL. Depending on the specific summons and how they are used, they can indeed increase EL, such as summoning flying creatures while the party is climbing up a sheer cliff face, or while standing across an impassable gap, or summoning aquatic creatures that can hide under a party's boat and destroy it with impunity. Those are all "circumstances that modify difficulty."
The whole point of providing such tactics is to prevent DMs like yourself from going off the rails with vastly more difficult if not impossible encounters that you then justify by waving "24-Int Balor!" in the players faces.
Again, you can use those advanced tactics if you want and if you think your party can handle it (or heck, if you don't and just want to wipe them out.) But you're not supposed to be assuming that every Balor does that by default. The designers do have specific behaviors in mind for monsters when they assign CR, just like they wouldn't assume in the other extreme that a Balor is never using any of its SLAs at all.
I think both kinds of game (high wealth with many items and slots, and low wealth where magic items are more rare and precious) are certainly valid. The issue though is accessibility - 5e's goal was to reach a wider audience, including a large number of players who have never even played a TTRPG before, and they inarguably succeeded at that.
What that means however, is that some mechanics which could have presented pitfalls for newer players, like being unaware of things like the Big Six or WBL, needed to go in the name of simplifying. I'm not the biggest fan of bounded accuracy (or rather, I think it's just a little bit too bounded in 5e's case) but I can't deny that it goes hand in hand with attunements and concentration quite easily.
I'd argue that needing UMD to keep up is itself a problem. I'd rather give martials other ways to deal with flying creatures or bypass DR/regen on their own without needing to buy scrolls or wands.Last edited by Psyren; 2022-01-05 at 05:36 PM.
Plague Doctor by Crimmy
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2022-01-05, 05:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
Every party without dysfunctional party dynamics has GMW on every martial's most commonly used weapon(whether via martial classes or a cleric wanting to be a fighter). Doing otherwise is just stupid. Nobody wastes WBL on something a 3rd level hour/level spell can provide unless nobody in the party can cast the spell. So no, you need quickened divine favor. If you want to be picky, subtract 9k from the WBL of the fighter archer for a pearl of power 3 to get it from his cleric buddy, so only one slot is used.
I chose archer for a reason. It doesn't have any tanking role, and is usually outside of the dangerous close range that most will-save stoppers provide so it is a much more pure example than a melee argument. It also has enough feats in core to illustrate why getting an extra attack at L2 vs L6 might be desirable in most campaigns, just to start with rapid shot, and how it always stays ahead. Its ranged capability also more than matches cleric ranged offense with spells most of the time at least on single targets. So it makes the comparison more straightforward.
Which is why you are moving the goalpost from attack mod and damage dealt/round to other stuff.
The solution to wind wall is dispel magic or dimension door, cast by somebody who can't dish out triple digit damage in a round like your archer. Followed by a full attack from the archer to kill whomever cast it. If a party has a good archer, it's stupid not to support it, just as it is stupid not to set up your TWF rogue for blender sneak attacks when any opportunity presents.
Finally most melee can't outdamage an archer in any situation except starting the round right next to an enemy, and even then, the archer's ability to more easily switch ammo (and only need GMW on one weapon for peak efficiency) to penetrate DR often is decisive in actual play. They also don't waste as much damage in overkill, as any extra shots can be aimed anywhere on the battlefield. What a melee adds to the party an archer does not is "omg somebody is in my face tearing it off", it draws enemy actions. Melees therefore tend to need more ac, hitpoints and better saves than archers.
Clerics are WAY MAD compared to a fighter. Again, with archer as an example, it needs strength and dex, period. Nothing else. Cleric con needs to be 2 higher than fighter to keep up on hitpoints, they DO need decent wisdom, they need decent CHA if they care about turning (or DMM) and their con item conflicts with wisdom item. Any cleric keeping up with a fighter in strength/dex/con falls behind a more traditional cleric build in spell slots and save DC because they will have a wisdom only barely high enough to cast their top tier spells. They are a very strong healer/buffer, granted, but not as good at clerical offense as Jozan.
Druids can match (rarely exceed, and not till the second half of the 1-20 period) fighter strength but only in size large or huge forms, which don't fit everywhere nor are they usually socially acceptable. So there will at minimum be a less ideal form and might be a standard action lost to shifting in many situations. Clerics have the same heavy armor perk as a fighter and both have much better will saves but usually worse fort saves (again, that item conflict in core with constitution and wisdom, but a wildshaped druid can sometimes make that up in bigger forms - they don't get the hitpoints but do get con for fort save).
Druids can sometimes keep up in AC for a frontliner if their spells are active and they're in a high natural armor and/or dex form. Getting both strong offense and strong AC can be tricky, as can the way wildshape currently works with itemization. Clerics have it easier here, with heavy armor, shield and magic vestment cast twice. Unlike GMW, magic vestment isn't normally cast on anybody who deals physical offense without something like chain spell, since the slot cost is pretty high, although after level 15ish, anybody with armor or a shield will find 9k for a pearl of power 3 cheaper than enchanting their armor/shield, and do so if a prep caster in the party can cast magic vestment. Same with Druids and Barkskin - that's a party buff once 4k for a pearl 2 seems cheap for other party members.
If a party doesn't cast circle of prot evil on your frontliner (cleric or fighter or druid) in core, past level 7, when expecting trouble they have a dysfunctional party. That spell is a hard stop to all the mind control will save threats. Other problems exist and yeah, you can take out that melee tank (if he isn't a paladin or a monk, who will have better will save than clerics) with more spells than you can a cleric. I've also seen tricks like dominating your own barbarian to force checks on anybody else trying to do the same.
IMO a cleric can be a pretty good replacement for a heavy armor fighter, and a druid can replace a light infantry similar to Barbarian or monk (done differently depending who you are replacing) if they think it out. A druid is less likely to sacrifice spellcasting ability to do an adequate job (only needs power attack, natural spell and constitution, basically) but will have to accept a power downgrade when large shapeshifts aren't practical.
There is a cost though, and the "Tier 1 is god always" advocates never seem to see it.Last edited by Seward; 2022-01-05 at 05:53 PM.
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2022-01-05, 06:06 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
Why not? The idea that people need to attune magic items to themselves somehow, or simply the reality that people don't use all that many magic items, is quite common in the source material. And it offers great mechanical benefits, allowing you to stop worrying about giving people magic items or tracking WBL because the fifth or tenth or hundredth magic item is now an extremely marginal boost in flexibility rather than a potential power increase.
The phrase "Christmas tree effect" gets thrown around with a negative air, but I haven't seen anyone articulate why it's actually a problem. 3e-style body slots is the norm in most CRPGs and seems to do fine there.
Oh, so the tactic is dependent on the terrain? So maybe the adjustment is because of the terrain and not the tactic. You know, exactly like I've been saying. And like the rules say.
1) Why don't you expect the rules to explicitly state that climbing on a thing makes for a different encounter than not climbing on a thing? (Which for the record, as Fizban and I have showed you, they do.)
Those are all "circumstances that modify difficulty."
The whole point of providing such tactics is to prevent DMs like yourself from going off the rails with vastly more difficult if not impossible encounters that you then justify by waving "24-Int Balor!" in the players faces.
What if we were talking about a Druid instead of a Cleric? They don't get greater magic weapon, they get greater magic fang which does the same thing for them but nothing for the Fighter. Is a party of Druid/Beguiler/Fighter/Rogue inherently dysfunctional? Of course not. Different characters provide different things. One of the things you get for having a Cleric is access to greater magic weapon. Since Fighters don't get greater magic weapon, having a Fighter instead of a Cleric as part of your party might mean you don't get that.
If you want to be picky, subtract 9k from the WBL of the fighter archer for a pearl of power 3 to get it from his cleric buddy, so only one slot is used.
It doesn't have any tanking role
Which is why you are moving the goalpost from attack mod and damage dealt/round to other stuff.
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2022-01-05, 06:39 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
A character has to be considered as a whole, yes, but in context of the party.
I think that's a lot of what is lacking in these discussions and makes it often unproductive. What does the party need?
With no martial characters and all full casters, somebody needs to take on martial roles, probably 2 people. Spells will often substitute for skills where gaps arise too.
With lots of martial characters, party success will tend to pidgeonhole the one full caster into a support/buffing/battlefield control role.
With the iconic party, Jozan and Mialee usually focus on being better spellcasters and use their spells to make sure Lydda and Tordek are able to do their job, rather than trying to be a second-best version or warping their feat choices and attribute distribution to be a credible equivalent.
If the party has adequate ranged and melee offense and somebody who can draw attention and take a hit, then you have a lot more freedom to do whatever you want. Larger parties also tend to allow more freedom. You're likely to have enough spellpower or enough martial or adequate skill coverage (by spell or by talent) in a 6 person party than a four person party, and the action economy equation is also significantly altered, especially where the consequence of somebody being taken out of a fight lies. Losing the only credible physical threat can be a big problem in a 4 person party, in a 6 person party there will almost always be another. Ditto ranged offense, or basic things like "OMG, the cleric got turned to stone".
I think the real problem with casters in 3.5 are the plot breaking spells and how they impact higher level play. The entire system also gets to complexity overload for many players, but something like a summoning druid with a cat-type animal companion will encounter this by about level 6, where a power attacking barbarian might not encounter it till level 15 or so when he's trying to figure out if he'll hose his lower iteratives by power attacking too much.
Prep casters get it worse than spont casters. Choosing spells at level up is a lot less stressful and complex than doing it every night, or thinking about filling open slots whenever you have 15 minutes of downtime.
Summoners get it worse than pet classes, but both are far slower to finish a turn than most other classes.
Martial classes with a lot of attacks sometimes cause problems if their player isn't good at addition and/or can't manage to roll all the attacks at once with different colored dice, especially if they are rolling 3d6 per hit damage rolls one die at a time.
Lower level combat has a lot less options and a lot less actions per phase. It is assumed that system mastery will speed things up as you level, which offsets the complexity of more options or just rolling more attacks. Unfortunately not all players ever progress pass a relatively low plateau of system mastery.
To me...the idea that a full caster might make an adequate martial if they devote feats and a fair number of spell slots, and attribute distribution and WBL to the task isn't really a bug. It's just something on what I think of as a continuous range. Even the most dedicated martial-only class with no partial spellcasting of any kind, no dips, nothing will have items that still give them options that cover weaknesses or let them do their thing more often.
At the other end is divine casters who work hard to be melee or, more rarely archer. Pure arcane casters who do the same are rare, but can exist, although they often sacrifice a spell level or two somewhere to really keep up in a way CoD doesn't have to. Or they do it with rays instead of weapons, with SR=no or just really high spell penetration to simulate the physical weapon advantages.
Between is the Gish. You can have an arcane archer with 12 levels of wizard and 2 of the class whose sole reason for taking it is to shoot an antimagic field arrow on somebody. Or you can have what is basically an arcane ranger, with 1 level of wizard or sorcerer, int or cha instead of wisdom and in case of wizard, a lot of pearl power 1s for whatever spells they like to cast in addition to filling folks with holes. Some of these guys are nearly as good as a primary caster when they bother, but they usually don't. Others are almost indistinguishable from the martial+gear guy, just able to bust out blood wind on their flurry of blows or dimension hop into melee range for a full attack like a duskblade - maybe a bit more at risk from a dispel but otherwise the same.
It's a feature unless you let ego get tied up into it. You can show your build is superior at the table if it matters. Whether it actually is will depend on who else is in your party, and how they like to spend their actions.
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2022-01-05, 06:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
Two unrelated (or at least, mostly unrelated) things I'd like to say:
Martial vs. Caster
A well-built Martial can outdo a Caster in damage. Part of the problem, though, is that the Caster is often good enough. If a Martial build does 10,000 points of damage, and the Caster only does 500, the Martial is in theory twenty times better! In practice, not anything has more than 500 HP, so the extra damage is just overkill. It was mentioned above, I think-it's not so much relative within the party, it's relative to what challenges you face. And a Caster can, if they put a few resources towards it, easily match damage benchmarks.
Christmas Tree
I have two issues with it. One I think most people can agree, and one that's more personal.
1) The best items are frequently BORING. Cloaks of Resistance, Items of Stat, anything that just bumps a number up are, by and large, dull. But they're also needed to keep up. So Automatic Bonus Progression or similar is a good thing to have, so you can HAVE more interesting items.
2) I like my character to be functional without magic items, or with minimal magic items. I don't mind if my great weapon Fighter needs a big honking sword and thick armor to do good, I do mind if they need a 100,000 GP magical sword of hoozat and whatnow to keep up. A 20th level Fighter, in 3.5, without any WBL beyond mundane armor and weapons, is a liability. And that SHOULDN'T be the case.I have a LOT of Homebrew!
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2022-01-05, 07:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
This is simply false. What if your party has 3 people, and the other 2 are a rogue and a druid? Or a sorcerer who chose other third level spells. or a dread necro. Best case, you sacrifice 1/4 your WBL at level 8. Worst case it is simply unavailable. I mean, yes, you COULD have an evil backstabby party. Or you could just have other players who didn't play a cleric for the same reason the fighter didn't. Your wizard (if you have one) has every right to say, "Im going to prepare either Haste or GMW, not both". Or, "Pick 2, fly, haste, GMW". That doesn't make him dysfunctional.
And is therefore not at all what parties need when they say I need a fighter. Literally every cleric with a mace and shield performs the fighter basic role (tank and provide crowd control, by standing in the way if you cant do better) than does your archer fighter. Just by standing in front of the sorcerer.
Still false. Cleric beats it by casting Spiritual Weapon round 1 and then attacking with a weapon. Or summoning a monster and then attacking with a weapon. Or maybe you are in a 6 man party and you are the archer, and the cleric casts Prayer and then attacks with a weapon.
The solution to wind wall is stuff you cant do. Requiring other party members, who themselves likely have more useful things to do to win combats because you are discussing casters, to bail you out. Assuming that they even have dispel magic readied, they may have used it. Or they may need it later and enabling your character to function on a basic level may mean you dont have it for the boss. And that they are free, not otherwise engaged etc.
Well, unless the DR is something difficult to bypass, in which case the melee higher damage per hit wins. Or there are miss chances, because blind fighting is melee only. or any kind of BFC, like obscuring mist, which the archer cant see through, starting at level 1. Or unless AOOs are a thing.
Also known as, "the reason we wanted a fighter, since we can all deal damage"
Except that again, the cleric has better AC, and also better defenses, in the form of spells. Lets fight some fire elementals, and you take a fighter, and I'll take a cleric who has Resist Elements. Repeat with undead/Death ward. Or the cleric could cast Aid on himself. 1d10+level will exceed 1+level 90% of the time. At low level Bears Endurance is a thing. At high level the cleric can craft an amulet of health. Weren't you assuming that the cleric was casting Divine Power? That also comes with extra HP.
And again, this assumes the cleric is a cleric ALONE. He isn't neutral or evil, with a posse of undead. He didn't summon a combat buddy before the fight. No Planar ally. None of the things he can do with different core domains, like dominate animal pets.
"A cleric who is functioning as a fighter isn't as good a caster as a cleric who isn't functioning as a fighter" isn't an argument as to why "A cleric who is functioning as a fighter isn't better than the fighter while also having some cleric stuff". I mean yes, the first statement is totally true, but also says nothing as to whether a party looking for a tank shouldn't pick a cleric, even a second cleric, over a fighter.
I don't necessarily disagree with that, but the druid is vastly superior to the core fighter at the basic job, which is melee control. He has a lot of forms with trip/grapple, coupled with size increases that allow them to trip/Grapple, and a pet, who can usually trip or grapple. And battlefield control spells on top of that. And just being big helps control the battlefield, making enemies go around you. Plus easy core access to pounce. Also a lot of those same basic protection tricks like delay poison and resist energy.
Again, you are relying on a spell not everyone has. If you have a sorcerer 7, he probably doesn't have either GMW or Circle of Protection. Honestly, the only way I take Circle of Protection as a sorcerer is if im planning planar binding, in which case the cleric and the fighter can both take the bench. Your Druid doesn't. Your bard doesn't. Your paladin will in the way distant future. Having a cleric as tank could allow your wizard to take abjuration as a prohibited school, because there is a lot of overlap, which might be what lets him take illusion or enchantment and throw a heroism or a greater invisibility. Or it might allow your cleric to help your sorcerer craft a scroll of it if he didn't choose to take it himself. The solution to the fighter's problems can't be "Obviously the caster will help me out or he is mean!!!" Maybe the tank is someone else, we are discussing a party ranged combat slot, and the other players are a rogue and literally any other core class that isn't cleric or wizard. Or heck. Maybe there is another caster and he IS dysfunctional. I once saw a sorcerer who only took fire spells.Last edited by Gnaeus; 2022-01-05 at 07:25 PM.
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2022-01-05, 07:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
Basically agree, this is the root of the discussion. Enough varies on difficulty and type of encounter. One advantage of the martial with lots of spells left over is they are harder to completely neutralize without incapacitation than a less spell oriented character. Past L10 gear tends to help, especially noncore (eg, rogues have various ways to get sneak attack in 2006 that they didn't have in 2003 vs a variety of targets)
The "item tax" is stat enhancers, resistance items and basic enhancement bonuses to armor and weapons. I agree, I really think this stuff should just be baked into leveling. Make all archers like arcane archers, or maybe just boost bab and saves and raw weapon damage as if you had such items when you're expected too. If you want spellcasters to stunt double as martials maybe have the weapon stuff not be free for them but need one or more spells, kinda the way divine power or tenser transformation already do with bab.
I agree these are mostly a waste of space, WBL, and are a primary reason why GM's who dislike giving out WBL per guidelines in an attempt to go "low magic" end up boosting spellcasters well beyond their expected dominance because the gear dependent martials fall behind much faster, but spell slots and higher tier spells come for free for all but wizards, and their overall cost to keep up is less than martials overall.
Hm. 1 and 2 are basically the same. It's an item tax, and while everybody needs an enhancement resistance and primary attack stat item which varies by class, and pretty much everybody needs a constitution item, weapons in particular are a massive WBL sink that casters don't face as obviously.
Weapons have AC and DR to contend with
Spells have SR and usually energy resistance to contend with.
A caster picks diverse spells so they aren't hosed by a bad enemy, a fighter has his golfbag of weapons. But spells are in the head of a caster, only noticed if the caster lacks any tool for the job, and most times if that happens they can do some sort of support activity that is worth an action.
A fighter's gear dependence is visible and normally only one or two types of DR are bypassed by their best weapon. So any DR of the wrong type will either mean a cheap-ass weapon that penetrates DR or his best weapon taking a damage penalty on each swing. It wasn't thought through very well. Worse if a martial can't do damage their best support actions are things that add mere +2 to hit (flanking, aid another), which doesn't fly past the baby levels as any better than "I stand around" in most cases.
In actual play with mature 3.x you have things like weapon capsule retainers (quicksilver, ghostblight, energy attacks for swarms) in Pathfinder the DR system can be largely overcome with more enhancement bonus much like 3.0 and where it can't item support is better (eg, there is a swarmbane amulet that lets you hit any swarm for full damage with your weapon). But it's still right in your face, and a typcal naked L20 warrior is going to struggle to do damage in a way that naked caster who hasn't had their spell slots drained away won't.
Anybody (martial or otherwise) that wants to take hits will also need to invest a lot of WBL and often feats to keep up with monsters. That's probably a design flaw too. Way too much of AC assumes something has to block the shot, that a fighter's footwork and ability to block/evade doesn't get any better as he levels. Free AC bumps (as monks get, and bigger ones) could help with this, as would just free enh bonuses to whatever armor they can find.Last edited by Seward; 2022-01-05 at 07:16 PM.
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2022-01-05, 07:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
Nobody is getting GMW ever IF YOU ARE A FIGHTER. Thats the point. If you are a CLERIC you are getting GMW. Because you can cast GMW.
Magic Circle, same. FOM, Same. Death Ward, same. The wizard can ban whatevs, the sorcerer can decide to be a bard instead, or take paladin levels and dragon disciple or any other thing. If you are a cleric, you can get cleric buffs. If you are a fighter, you can hope. And if you are a cleric lucky enough to be in a group with a wizard, and you can cover your own buffs, that might be a slot that becomes haste, or fly, or heroism, or some other buff that you can't cast yourself and the fighter wouldn't have because he is demanding GMW or Circle.Last edited by Gnaeus; 2022-01-05 at 07:42 PM.
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2022-01-05, 08:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
Parties buff with what they have, and they put it on who benefits most.
Most clerics don't put GMW on themselves because they don't spend most actions using a weapon. Those that do expect to not cast spells much in combat. But....
I played in a lot of parties that were actually random in a lot of level ranges. Once GMW hit +3, casters tended to think about it, because it was so useful to the folks in the party who were beatsticks. If the party could only spare a slot for one, it went to the best beatstick (or beatbow) and if that was the cleric, fine. But it wasn't uncommon for martials to show up with pearls of levels 1-3 depending on the buffs they liked to get, and that affecting choice of selection. Or wands or scrolls in the case of things that were reasonably cheap and effective with low CL like mage armor or barkskin.
You don't really see it before the casters have L6 slots and it is more common to get the arcane version before clerics get L7 slots. But before L12 the difference between the +1 weapon you bought to penetrate DR back at level 3 and GMW is only 1 point, so it isn't missed.
Circling back to the fighter joining the party vs the cleric in beatstick role. The fighter with the weapon focus/weapon spec/greater weapon focus/greater weapon spec tree is getting the damage benefit of the spell at twice the speed and the hit benefit right on schedule AND ALSO benefits from the spell if somebody at the table has it. If there is one GMW in the party, you cast it on the full bab weapon spec guy who will use every action in combat attacking with a weapon, not on the guy who is 3/4 bab unless he blows an action to cast a L4 spell that lasts for less than a minute and who is as likely to cast a spell as use a weapon when the fighting starts.Last edited by Seward; 2022-01-05 at 08:50 PM.
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2022-01-05, 09:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
There are 3 separate questions that are getting conflated here -- "WBL vs optional magical items", "stat sticks vs. unique magic items", and "body slots vs attunements". I'm only talking about the last.
Across all the things that could be considered "source material" for the game at this point, there's a broad range in how much of a part magical items play. But in stories where characters don't have a lot of magical items, it's typically because these items are rare, not because people are finding perfectly good items and declining to use them.
The knight can't figure out how to get into the castle. The fairy queen appears and gives him a cloak of invisibility. He puts it on but it has no effect because he already has a magic sword, shield and bow and that's his three-item limit. That's not a common storytelling conceit.
The 3 item limit is gamey, arbitrary and immersion-breaking. So it has to be justified on the basis of gameplay, as RandomPeasant points out:
And it offers great mechanical benefits, allowing you to stop worrying about giving people magic items or tracking WBL because the fifth or tenth or hundredth magic item is now an extremely marginal boost in flexibility rather than a potential power increase.
It might be hard to get it down to 3 items while still being anatomically intuitive. But if you think 3e's 12 items is too many, it can definitely be reduced. Say one head item, one torso item, one lower body item, one back item, one piece of jewelry. That's 5 and is pretty simple.
(Also, in this light, having both slots and attunements is redundant.)
The issue though is accessibility - 5e's goal was to reach a wider audience, including a large number of players who have never even played a TTRPG before, and they inarguably succeeded at that.
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2022-01-05, 09:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
Well, let's make it concrete. Consider the all-caster party of Beguiler/Cleric/Dread Necromancer/Druid. Which one of those is better off being a Fighter?
With no martial characters and all full casters, somebody needs to take on martial roles, probably 2 people. Spells will often substitute for skills where gaps arise too.
I think the real problem with casters in 3.5 are the plot breaking spells and how they impact higher level play.
That is an important point. Maybe the Fighter is, under some set of constraints, by some metric, better than a Cleric or a Druid as a frontliner. But is he better enough to matter? Is he better enough to make up for all the spell slots he doesn't have?
So Automatic Bonus Progression or similar is a good thing to have, so you can HAVE more interesting items.
You don't even have to do that. Just being a 5th level Cleric (who has not given up on animate dead by choice of god or alignment) already entitles you to substantially better area control than any Fighter provides. And as I've been saying repeatedly, the fact that you don't particularly need to keep undead tanks alive is a huge advantage.
This is the core of the issue. The pro-Fighter side seems unable or unwilling to acknowledge that there is a tradeoff. When you have a Fighter in your party, that means you don't have something else. Maybe it means you don't have a Cleric. Maybe it means you don't have a Wizard. Maybe it means you don't have a Warblade, or a Rogue, or a Dread Necromancer. But there's something you would otherwise have that you don't. If the comparison is "Fighter DPS/Frontliner" vs "Caster DPS/Frontliner", part of that something is going to be less buffs.
But isn't that a double standard? You can either say "people play optimally" (in which case you have to justify why the Fighter represents a positive trade for a caster) or "people play with what they have" (in which case you don't really have a leg to stand on when the Wizard decides she wants that slot to be stinking cloud instead of greater magic weapon). A large part of the argument for the Fighter seems to come from picking and choosing between those arguments depending on which aspect of the issue is being discussed.
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2022-01-05, 09:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
But we aren't discussing whether the party cleric will cast GMW on the fighter or on himself. We are discussing how a cleric built to be a melee (or ranged) combatant will use GMW on himself. And the answer is of course he will. He can 100 percent rely on the buffs he casts on himself. And if there happens to be a second muggle in the party like a rogue that will also benefit from GMW, that adds that much extra DPR to the cleric's column since he is the one who cast the buff.
And yeah, by level 12, if your party has members which can cast those spells, they totally have the slots to do so. But at level 12 the cleric doesn't need to, because the fighter is no longer compared with a cleric 12, he is compared with a cleric 12 standing back to back with an astral deva, who has the same BAB as the fighter, DR 10, stuns with every hit, a ton of immunities, and is better in general than the core fighter by himself.
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2022-01-05, 09:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
Do you have any sort of evidence to back up this assertion, or is it just your opinion? Because if it's the latter, I have to say it doesn't seem particularly likely to me. There are only 5 monsters in the Monster Manual with specified tactics - the balor, pit fiend, mind flayer, nightwalker, and titan - but there are plenty of high-int monsters that don't have tactics entries. If the point of tactics entries was to prevent DMs from having high-Int monsters use hyper-optimized tactics I would expect all the high-Int monsters to have tactics entries.
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2022-01-05, 09:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
But so are body slots! Why can't I wear a head-slot headband and a head-slot helm? Hell, why can't I wear a head-slot helm and another, slightly bigger, head-slot helm? Why can I only wear two rings? It's just as arbitrary as saying you only get three or eight or sixty-seven magic items, but it involves a bunch of tedious accounting of what gets worn where and how, equivalences for non-standard body types, incentives to craft custom items with weird slots, and other things that don't add anything to the game.
He has provided citations. He believes that "monsters get items that provide them with a tactical advantage that should be accounted for" and "monsters are fought in non-standard terrain get a tactical advantage that should be accounted for" imply that "monsters using their abilities in ways that deviate from the tactics section must be re-evaluated". He has yet to provide any connecting tissue between his citations and his conclusion, and the inconsistency of his position WRT everything that doesn't have a tactics section has been mentioned, but thus far ignored.Last edited by RandomPeasant; 2022-01-05 at 09:45 PM.
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2022-01-05, 09:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
cleric 12 standing back to back with an astral deva, who has the same BAB as the fighter, DR 10, stuns with every hit, a ton of immunities, and is better in general than the core fighter by himself.
Out of combat...yeah, all those spells are great. Maybe really helpful if he's willing to cast them on other party members who might benefit more than himself.
And then we have this
Literally every cleric with a mace and shield performs the fighter basic role (tank and provide crowd control, by standing in the way if you cant do better) than does your archer fighter. Just by standing in front of the sorcerer.
That is why any martial without a high strength score is poorly built, unless they somehow can swap to-hit and damage to some other stat or have some reliable method of doing damage not tied to the usual strength+weapon combination. Your typical 14 base strength cleric stunt-hitting as a fighter closes the gap with divine favor and later divine power. And doesn't close it especially well unless they've invested heavily enough in being a melee that they're often weaker than their divine caster peers at spellcasting.
A cleric does not do meaningful damage in melee or ranged without spell support if he is not also built to high strength, with similar investment in weapons etc. So no, a cleric with a mace and a shield and a normal build (stat focus is wisdom, secondary con and charisma, just enough strength to carry his armor) is NOT anything like a substitute for a fighter past level 5.
Nor is the druid's animal companion, if you stick with a riding dog, or worse, a wolf. Or get into a fight anywhere that animal companion won't fit or isn't allowed.
If you charge a martial melee character, and fail to kill it, the expectation is that you will be eviscerated. Cleric fighter or whatever if you can't do that, you aren't very good at the melee role, and you will be swiftly ignored by the enemy (and if they don't attack you, your investments in hp, ac, saves, whatever are wasted)
But so are body slots!
Plus they didn't stick to whatever scheme they started with on what items did what where. Boots usually have something to do with mobility, face usually has something to do with sensory changes, but most other things got all mixed up and rings rods and such were always problematic. Plus all the unslotted items, from bags of holding to ioun stones. D&D grabbed magic items from all kinds of literature, often without attribution in cases of more recent content (*cough ioun stone* *cough vancian casting*), and that lead to weird stuff.
D&D is going to be kind of a mess from all the history in terms of both spells and items. Kinda like the Windows Operating System. 4th edition tried to reset that but it didn't really stick. It is a lot easier to work out a reasonable item system in a completely new system. Ars Magica had magical item crafting but the vast bulk of items were either perilous gifts from deities or demons or faeries or whatnot that always had a price, or since they were crafted by mages who booked out projects and study decades in advance, were mostly things that made it easier for said mages to do research, study, and brag about their accomplishments to fellow mages. Spending years to craft an item just for a warrior in your covenant that'll just get too old to use it or randomly die in a few years seems pointless to most mages. Just do something to raise a little coin that can be fit in without impacting research schedules and equip them that way.Last edited by Seward; 2022-01-05 at 09:59 PM.
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2022-01-05, 09:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
Uh... can we take the caster thing to another thread, actually? I think we're going waaaaaaaay off topic... That being said, if the party isn't trying to one-up each other it's less problematic, because it's way less bookkeeping for the casters to mostly slap buffs on the martials. Though it's better when the martials are at least Barbarians or initiators and not just straight up Fighters.
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2022-01-05, 10:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
Both are abstracted, but one comes with an intuitive explanation and the other doesn't.
"You can only wear one item on each body part."
"Ok."
"You can only benefit from three magic items at a time."
"Why?"
Imposing an arbitrary limit isn't a good way to simulate fiction where magic items are rare. You do that by making magic items rare. Otherwise you're reversing cause and effect.
If magic items were completely abstracted, there would be the advantageous simplification of eliminating within-slot item competition -- every item would only have to be weighed against the whole. But it's not like 5e removes the item slot system. It still has one, it just hides it in the guise of "common sense", like a lot of other rules it pretends not to have -- but makes explicit that you can't wear two helmets, for example. But it has to add an item limit on top of the old item slot system because it wants people to have fewer items than its own common sense system would dictate. Call it redundancy or call it an epicycle.
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2022-01-05, 11:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
Never played 5e, but if I had to justify 3 item limit I'd say "magic items interfere with each other. After 3 they just all stop working. Why? 6th law of Magic, everybody knows it who knows anything about magic."
It's like gravity, it's baked into the worldlaws.
As for the caster vs martial discussion, sorry, those never are productive. I'm very bored from being snowed in and let myself get sucked in. I will stop cluttering this thread with responses to those digressions.