Complete Arcane and Tippyland

[Yahzi]

I've been reading the chapter "The DM and the Arcane Campaign," and I couldn't help but think of Tippy. Apparently the best advice CA can offer is that your super-villain should have a fortress so secret even his henchmen don't know where it is.

Did anybody else find the advice in this chapter hilariously useless?

[Vinotaur]

I've been reading the chapter "The DM and the Arcane Campaign," and I couldn't help but think of Tippy. Apparently the best advice CA can offer is that your super-villain should have a fortress so secret even his henchmen don't know where it is.

Did anybody else find the advice in this chapter hilariously useless?

Please Please read the advice in Complete Mage for different specialist Mages, or better yet, the advice for facing Drow in Drow of the Underdark.

It is hilarious. They tell you that because of SR, fireball isn't so good. So you should maybe consider preparing no SR spells like Evard's Black Tentacles or Glitterdust instead.

Hilarious.

[elliott20]

Gamebook advice running contrary to what common sense says? Say it ain't so!

[JBento]

Actually, the advice Vinotaur mentions is actually good... just not because drow have SR. Except in VERY specific situations, glitterdust and Evard's are better choices than FB - WAY better

[Project_Mayhem]

Actually, the advice Vinotaur mentions is actually good... just not because drow have SR. Except in VERY specific situations, glitterdust and Evard's are better choices than FB - WAY better

I think thats the point. They are giving this as specific advice for the Drow, Implying that normally fireball is the way to go.

[Hallavast]

I think thats the point. They are giving this as specific advice for the Drow, Implying that normally fireball is the way to go.

Well... considering the image of what they wanted mages to be (they failed miserably), this is true*. A mage who is primarily a blaster with a few Odds & Ends spells for utility is the closest thing to a balanced caster a wizard can be. So... in a way, fireball is the way to go!



*true as in: "makes sense in the reality in which they want you to believe".

[elliott20]

Now, just for a second, imagine a source book written by say, Tippy. Just go ahead and imagine it. It would be a tome of over 600 pages, talking about all the ways that magic has basically accelerated society into the 500th century.

[Vinotaur]

Now, just for a second, imagine a source book written by say, Tippy. Just go ahead and imagine it. It would be a tome of over 600 pages, talking about all the ways that magic has basically accelerated society into the 500th century.

I hate to tell you this, but there already is one, it's called the Tomes. It's written with the same or better understanding of the rules (except Epic, which doesn't count) and with changes to some of the stupider more contradictory places.

I could read about Mindflayers and Sanguine for hours.

[elliott20]

really now? *strokes his fu-man-chu mustache* tell me more about this... "The Tomes". but seriously, I have never heard of this book. Sounds interesting though.

[Oslecamo]

really now? *strokes his fu-man-chu mustache* tell me more about this... "The Tomes". but seriously, I have never heard of this book. Sounds interesting though.

Tome of Battle and Tome of magic, wich were both very carefully balanced, altough only the first one seemed to gain some popularity.

Also, fireball is the way to go when you're facing hundreds of gnolls with bows at level 8. Yes, it hapened to me. Evard's black tentacles doesn't kill them fast enough. Fireball does.

[kamikasei]

Tome of Battle and Tome of magic, wich were both very carefully balanced, altough only the first one seemed to gain some popularity.

I would expect Vinotaur was referring to the Frank & K Tomes: the Tome of Necromancy, the Dungeonomicon, Races of War, etc. Some googling should turn them up.

[bosssmiley]

Now, just for a second, imagine a source book written by say, Tippy. Just go ahead and imagine it. It would be a tome of over 600 pages, talking about all the ways that magic has basically accelerated society into the 500th century.

It would be the evil, mutated lovechild of a coupling between Dark Sun and Eberron conceived while both were off their heads on ground-up ELH.
It would be gloriously OTT.
It would be hilarious.
It would be OVER 9000!!!!

Tippy would write the last page, lay down his quill, sigh, say "There is no more to be done". Then he would will himself to die.

(sakura blow past camera, fade to black)

re: the K & Frank Tome series. *ahem* line 3 --v

[Emperor Tippy]

Not quite bosssmiley. If 4e hadn't come around I was going to submit one to WotC but it won't work in 4e and I don't feel like self publishing so that's on the back burner for a while.

Although I do have most of it finished. Most of it just isn't typed (and I can't find voice recognition software good enough to go from a recording to text).

[Burley]

Please Please read the advice in Complete Mage for different specialist Mages, or better yet, the advice for facing Drow in Drow of the Underdark.

It is hilarious. They tell you that because of SR, fireball isn't so good. So you should maybe consider preparing no SR spells like Evard's Black Tentacles or Glitterdust instead.

Hilarious.

I just want to point out one of the most ridiculous things ever from the 4e PHB: It suggest a high Dexterity score for wizards... For all Wizards... even though dexterity helps with Wand Wizard re-rolls and the Battle Mage's OAs only.

Sometimes, it's best to ignore the "How to Play" sections, and just roll some dice.

[Oslecamo]

I would expect Vinotaur was referring to the Frank & K Tomes: the Tome of Necromancy, the Dungeonomicon, Races of War, etc. Some googling should turn them up.

Ah, those tomes. I know them. They're a good read. To burst out laughing. Not actually playing, of course. They probably have more broken stuff inside them that in the rest of all 3rd party D&D material out there.

1-You gotta be an undead demon/devil, or you're royally screwed.
2-Everybody has infinite candles of invocations and scrolls of time stop. Who cares what class you are?
3-If you do care, congratulations, you can either pick a demonic class with the time sphere and stop time for all eternity once you reach lv17, or batman wizard still kills you with an hand tied to his back.
4-Fights take one round, since everybody can instant kill everybody. Except the fighter, that is.
5-Their sugestions for playing monsters boils down to "adapt it yourself because we're too lazy". Their frost giant example in particular is laughable for something lv10. It's not even huge size! Just be a demon acording to their rules, burn two feats(wich yiou'll get back with actual class levels) and you're huge size by then.


It has more holes than the core books, it hasn't got any kind of internal consistency, both fluff and power wise, and 90% of the time warns that the players will probably have to fix things themselves.

But it's still funny reading it, specially for the designer coments, thinking he's the ultimate authority in D&D fluff and mechanics.

[imperialspectre]

To be fair, most of the stuff they do in terms of fluff is quite well thought out in terms of internal consistency (which puts them well ahead of a great deal of WotC fluff material). Their mechanical fixes aren't reliable without careful scrutiny and re-balancing, but many of them do go in the right direction. The combat feats that they put together, for example, are very much what fighters need to be competitive, and I use a number of them in my games.

[Yahzi]

To be fair, most of the stuff they do in terms of fluff is quite well thought out in terms of internal consistency

I love Frank & K's fluff. I also love their writing style.

I'm working on my own tome (who isn't? ) but it won't be 600 pages.

[Vinotaur]

1-You gotta be an undead demon/devil, or you're royally screwed.
2-Everybody has infinite candles of invocations and scrolls of time stop. Who cares what class you are?
3-If you do care, congratulations, you can either pick a demonic class with the time sphere and stop time for all eternity once you reach lv17, or batman wizard still kills you with an hand tied to his back.
4-Fights take one round, since everybody can instant kill everybody. Except the fighter, that is.
5-Their sugestions for playing monsters boils down to "adapt it yourself because we're too lazy". Their frost giant example in particular is laughable for something lv10. It's not even huge size! Just be a demon acording to their rules, burn two feats(wich yiou'll get back with actual class levels) and you're huge size by then.

Wait, so:
1) Only Demons and Devils are any good?
2) Just like in Regular D&D? But yes, you can do that, just like you can in regular D&D, except that it costs an item slot.
3) Great, except it actually speeds you up, so no one cares that you can never interact with them. Or, The Batman Wizard kills you? So again, just like regular D&D, except you were absolutely wrong one the first one because Demons aren't better then Wizards.
4) I'm pretty sure the fighter can kill anyone in one round if you are playing under the mistaken assumption that no one has any defenses. But if they do, then it's actually harder to kill people.
5) So, they are lazy for not redoing every single monster in existence? What losers! And so what's the problem, that Frost Giants can't be Huge at level 1, or the they can be later? Stop contradicting yourself and pick one problem.

[elliott20]

ahh, THOSE tomes. I thought you were referring to a series that is just referred to as "Tomes" or something. ToB and ToM... ahhh yes, good ol' Tomes. It's a shame I never got to really extensively play those as my group quickly fell apart sometime after the books came out. (people got married, moved to new jobs, etc, etc)

at one point in time, I tried writing my own netbook as well, but I came realize that said book would be, for all intensive purposes, worthless. I mean, it was a netbook that archived OTHER netbooks and commented on them.

[zeruslord]

The balance point for the Frank & K tomes is set at a specialist transmuter wizard played optimally, or at individual characters going 50/50 with equal CR challenges. Most games aren't at this level of optimization, and so the fighter-types are going to be overpowered in a game where wizards cast fireball rather than chain-binding efreet. Basically, if you play the way the WotC playtesters did rather than the way that will make your characters most efficient, the game works as-is. If your players look for the combination of spells and abilities that is most effective without worrying about the iconic characters, then batman wizards, artificers, and CoDzilla dominate spiked chain fighters and you should be using tome rules or something similar.