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 Recent Posts
Gods no. Please no minion rules.....gods How I hate that.Like the poster above use 1 HP kobold,goblins or small children might as well. They seem to have less recording of the damage each creature has taken and the mob template tends to handle a larger number of creatures.
I've been thinking about trying to do something along those lines when doing a large scale (20-ish enemies) combat next time.
Adding the minion stuff seems to me to be a patch for something I personally don't find broken. A DM can very simply adjust what he needs to get the same effect. But wouldn't it be nice for some rules to be written to tell the DM what he needs to adjust rather than force them to guess what might need to be adjusted.
Having someone invest 15 ranks over 15 level to learn 15 languages makes sense (to me) when a vast majority of Golarion's population may have 1-2 levels in NPC classes at most.Well, really, it's less the learning 15 languages and more the learning 15 languages in less than a year that gets me. That has been the case for the while in many games I played. The characters advanced so quickly in the game that they went from being able to only cast burning hands to being able to cast prismatic spray in less than a year.
I would like to say to everyone. Don't ignore things WotC does for 4E just because they are doing it for 4E. This might not work well in 3.5 rules, but most of the comments against it have taken the form "Don't do it, anything from 4E sucks!" But can't there be some overlap between stuff in 3.5 and stuff from 4e? Edit: I'm not in favor of adding something to PRPG just because it is in 4E. It is just because some "problem" was addressed in 4e I don't want it to be ignored in PRPG.
Just a general please, please, NO. Minions is just another name for a 1-hp creature. It's more 4e marketing to make you think it is somehow innovative or solving a problem you didn't have. But ... I did have that problem. I ran several encounters that put the party against 20+ creatures and it just slowed the combat to a crawl. --- I would like to say to everyone. Don't ignore things WotC does for 4E just because they are doing it for 4E. This might not work well in 3.5 rules, but most of the comments against it have taken the form "Don't do it, anything from 4E sucks!" I'm not saying that adding in generic minion templates is appropriate, but I would prefer if ideas were not just shot down just because they are in 4E.
I believe part of the point is that you will only really send it against level 21 groups. It is not 3rd edition, where you might be able to use several CR 12 monsters against a level 16 party and then use a single one of those monsters against a level 8 party. In 4th edition I think that you would just build a different set of stats for each of those encounters.
The minion rule is just another thing that made me cringe about 4E when I read it. Well, one among many things that made me cringe. The whole rational behind the concept seems to be to provide the appearance of danger without the substance and to burn some of the players time. Don't really need a special "minion" template to do that. Any DM can manage that with a little thought... What? I'm not sure how you managed to get to that conclusion about the "rational." It just seems to be the same as having many kobolds attacking you at low levels, only at all levels.
But having 20-40 monsters currently in 3.5 slows down combat incredibly. I've run several battles with a large number (more than 20) of enemies and in both cases I wished that I had at least done them differently because they those extra creatures just took too much time to run for the benefit they had on the session. All those extra attack rolls and turns just take up time.
While I believe using weak minions in battles is a option for 3.5, I certainly believe that it can be better.
I like psionics. I am also somewhat concerned on how their balance works with other characters just like I'm concerned that pure-Vancian casting might have similar issues. This doesn't mean I want Vancian magic or Power point manifesting to go away. I just won't be someone who cries out it one or both are replaced with some other form of casting if that works. All I care about is that it feels similar or the same even if it uses different mechanics, if that makes any sense. What I think is a problem with psionics is that a psionic character going "nova" can just manifest their most powerful highest level power over and over again. I'm less concerned about augmented powers since, I feel, that even when augmented that they are weaker than non-augmented powers with the same cost. My idea on how to adjust this is simply add a penalty for manifesting their highest level power. The penalty would be that, until they regain their power points by resting, they number of power points they can spend manifesting a single power is reduced by one (for that class). A 5th level psion could manifest one 3rd level power then, until he rested, could only be able to spend 4 power points per power. He would no longer be able to manifest 3rd level powers that day (barring things that increase the power point limit like overchannel or maybe the Wilder's wild surge). This limits the number of max powers a psion can do as well as slow down their nova speed for the rest of the day (they are able to spend less points in a round so it would take more rounds to manifest powers). This is a drop in power however for the classes so I believe it would be appropriate to say that this all the psions have to give up to be able to get nifty PRPG abilities that can be used at will and so on.
19-20 hours of driving later I've put at least a thousand miles between me and Paizo. Notes: Overloading a car with old shocks is a problem. Got to hear every bump along the way. There was some cloud cover along the trip that gave protection from the sun ... for about 30 seconds. The rest of the trip was a combination of Desert Bus and that one level of Super Mario Bros. 3 where that hateful glowing day-ball torments you. Washington scenery is green.
And it's good to be home.
Everybody, thanks for the great ideas. For the dragonborn, at the moment, I'm leading toward a combination of what's been suggested here - they're from another world and came through Azlanti gates, some recently, some a bit longer ago, with the long-ago arrivals having migrated mainly to the steppes area. I'll look back through the Gazeteer with this in mind. I personally like the idea of the Dragonborn showing up more recently. With the timing right after the death of Aroden. I like this because I can push them as more of an alien race than a real natives to the world.
I think I would keep the Weapon Aptitude, but take out the parts where it says they can qualify as Fighters for Fighter only feats. Or better, make it a feat that works with Fighters and Warblades get it automatically. It's a nice ability for either. Maybe we could use the Fighter's weapon groups. Instead of being able to switch between any weapon they would choose a single one of the groups and then would be able to switch between weapons in that group.
I think I would keep the Weapon Aptitude, but take out the parts where it says they can qualify as Fighters for Fighter only feats. Or better, make it a feat that works with Fighters and Warblades get it automatically. It's a nice ability for either. I'm not so sure about removing the ability to take Fighter only feats. It already is pretty limited as a Warblade gets the normal set of feats (plus the few bonus feats that can't be used on the Fighter bonus feats). They really have to burn a good number of feats to get those bonuses. As for the bonus feats they do get. I'm not quite in favor of getting rid of them. Maybe move it down one level (to balance out dead levels) and adjust it so that it works more like a ranger or monk bonus feats (first choice you get a skill feat, second is something like Endurance or Run, then a tactical feat, and so on).
Actually, I'd keep Martial Lore, and add the concentration checks to that skill, because that's consistent with the logic of Spellcraft enveloping concentration for spellcasters. This would give the skill a bit more reason for being as well. I thought about doing that, but didn't feel it was appropriate for my game. The player really didn't have a chance to use the other aspects of Martial Lore (since there were no Bo9S NPCs around for one) so I felt it was a dead skill for my game and didn't want him to put ranks in it just for those few manuevers. I believe your idea is better in general though.
For the relevant Diamond Mind manuevers I replaced the concentration skill with Knowledge (local) because looking at the skills section of the book I felt that was the best fit for knowledge of the maneuevers than anything else. I also should note that I took everything from Martial Lore and gave it to Knowledge (local) as well because of the limited scope of that skill.
But a fifth level psion can get about seven third level powers off. A fifth level wizard can get off about two third level spells and three second level spells. Counting the first level spells does the wizard get more abilities per day if the psion is going full blast. For one it was kind of confusing that you said 5th level psion at the beginning and used 7th level psion and wizard instead. My point was the psion at this level can expend his highest level power for times per day more times than a wizard can use her highest level spell and second highest level spell. Also I should note I was including power points and spells for a basic ability score at this level. I think moving it up two levels and still using 3rd levels kind of just ignores my point. So I'll just move up to 4th level powers for the 7th level psion. This time I won't bother with the extra spells and power points. A 7th level psion gets 46 power points; that would be good for six 4th level powers. A wizard? Gets one 4th level spell, two 3rd level spells. Three? Add the three 2nd level spells then it equals the number of 4th level powers the psion could manifest. While those 2nd and 3rd level spells are "augmented" somewhat (no higher DCs or abilities most of the time) they are still not as powerful as a good 4th level spell or power. You still haven't addressed this point. All I got from you post is that the psion is balanced if he never uses his highest level powers. Either way, the "Myth" thread handles this well (#16 point I believe does admit that psionics are more powerful if they nova).
From my point of view #16 doesn't address the tank with a hose as much as it confirms it. The point basically says that it is more powerful than other spellcasters when there are few encounters per day. The problem is that there is nothing really forcing the party to have four encounters per day. The psions can have their two encounters most of the time then just hide away and rest for powers again.And when wizards have two encounters per day they can just as easily nova and then hide away and rest for spells again. But psions are much, much better at it. I think it still is a problem with other casters, but in my experience a psionic character is just better if the party has one or two fights per day because of the way their powers work.
But a fifth level psion can get about seven third level powers off. A fifth level wizard can get off about two third level spells and three second level spells. Counting the first level spells does the wizard get more abilities per day if the psion is going full blast.
To address your metaphor of the tank with a hose, please see talking point #16 in the above link. From my point of view #16 doesn't address the tank with a hose as much as it confirms it. The point basically says that it is more powerful than other spellcasters when there are few encounters per day. The problem is that there is nothing really forcing the party to have four encounters per day. The psions can have their two encounters most of the time then just hide away and rest for powers again.
That just really looks like the character has a slightly higher bonus in a bunch of lower skills. I don' think it is broken, because it doesn't really break anything. I just see a character with every skill bonus at 4+ability mod at 5th level when I expect their best skills were supposed to be 8+ability mod. So I say let them do it. It's not going break anything.
I think I need to put some sets together to get a handle on how this plays out. Assuming a rogue with Int 10 in both systems the rogue gets eight skill points per level after first. *** At first level, In 3.5, seven class skills get four ranks each and four more skills (knowledges) get one half point. In PRPG, six class skills get one rank each (for a +4 bonus) and two more skills (knowledges) get one rank (for a +1 bonus). At second level, In 3.5, seven skills get five ranks each and the four more skills (knowledges) have one half point, and one more class skill has one rank. In PRPG, six skills get two ranks each (for a +5 bonus) and four more skills (knowledges) get one rank (for a +1 bonus). At third level, In 3.5, seven skills get six ranks each and the four more skills (knowledges) have one half point, and one more skill has two ranks. In PRPG, six skills get three ranks each (for a +6 bonus) and four more skills (knowledges) get one rank (for a +1 bonus), and then two more class skills get one rank (for a +4 bonus). Doesn't work out as nicely as I originally thought, but it seems to at least getting better. Most of the bonus is for getting three virtual points for putting that first rank in a skill. I want to now see what it looks like if eight ranks are spent on cross-class trained only skills at first level. So my goal is to have at least the same number of basic skills early on and have at least half a rank in eight skills. Same rogue as before with 10 Int. *** At first level, In 3.5, six class skills get four ranks each and eight more cross class skills get one half point. In PRPG, five class skills get one rank each (for a +4 bonus) and three more cross class skills get one rank (for a +1 bonus). At second level, In 3.5, six skills get five ranks each and the eight more skills have one half point, and two more class skill have one rank each. In PRPG, four skills get two ranks each (for a +5 bonus), two class skills get one rank each (for a +4 bonus), and six more skills get one rank (for a +1 bonus). At third level, In 3.5, six skills get six ranks each and the eight more skills have one half point, and two more class skill have two ranks each. In PRPG, four skills get three ranks each (for a +6 bonus), and three skills have one rank (for a +4 bonus), and eight more skills get one rank (for a +1 bonus). PRPG is still behind with ranks in only seven class skills, but I want to see what it looks like a level later. At fourth level, In 3.5, six skills get seven ranks each and the eight more skills have one half point, and two more class skill have three ranks each. In PRPG, five skills get four ranks each (for a +7 bonus), and three skills have one rank (for a +4 bonus), and eight more skills get one rank (for a +1 bonus). Now for the class skills it is roughly even, the PRPG character has one worse class skill and three better skills. The big difference however is that the eight cross class skills all have a +1 bonus instead of none. While you don't get everything at first level, it seems you can get those skills as you go up a few levels. In a small number of levels you have what you had before and slightly more. It should be noted however that I'm biased against 1/2 rank to use skills. My experiences with 1/2 rank skills have been negative up until now.
But this system doesn't punish cross-class skills anymore. One rank means a +1 bonus to that skill rather than two ranks to a +1 bonus. This system seems to be worse for putting single ranks in cross-class skills at first level. However it gets better at later levels and I would even say that by 3rd level this system works just as well for one rank dips as it does in 3.5.
While there were a few points during 3.5 games that I was confused by the rogue's knowledge of where monsters hurt most ( I know where to hit the mimic because it is not immune to sneak attack! ), but I am much more comfortable with that that rolling dice every encounter or having to compare ranks to CR and such. For one, most of these methods seem to penalize the low Int rogue quite a bit and I don't really like that. If it is really nessary to add some sort of knowledge to be able to sneak attack something I would suggest just letting a rogue pick a number of monster type that they can sneak attack at first level and they get more creature types later levels. That way they have to admit to studying the creature's anatomy which out pushing into skill points. (Maybe add some damage to each sneak attack if being able to sneak attack nearly everything was balanced)
What about have a set of generic LA +0 races that can be modified to provide the generic idea of the target creature from the start and other abilities could be gained by taking race specific feats that might grant spell-like abilities and other abilites. --- Actually leaving them as Outsider might help to balance the race a bit more, if they can't be raised that is. I'm not so confident that having abilities that only affect you when you die should be used for balancing races. It really doesn't feel like a good idea to me, just like calling a race balanced because they have role-playing problems with other characters bothers me.
Do you think more getting more powers are necessary for an updated wilder? I felt the limited choices hit pretty hard. Especially when the first powers had to be some sort of damaging ability to be able to contribute to battles. Maybe the wilders could automatically get some methods to deal damage with power points. That way they might be able to look toward different powers early on. By the way, where is the Variant Wilder?
But for Appraise, Diplomacy, and Heal work nearly as well with no ranks. If the party could work well with only one rank in a skill I would say that they could do just as well with no ranks. It is only a small bonus and would affect play only in 1 in 20 rolls. Also, how does half a rank help in these skills? None of them are trained only and, if I recall correctly, half a rank gives no bonus.
I assume part of being backwards compatible is that you could use the old barbarian in the new system with nearly no problems. The new barbarian having more abilities doesn't leave you unable to use the old barbarian as written.
I was thinking about updating the wilder’s abilities for the sake of Pathfinder RPG, but since I’ve played a wilder once and haven’t seen anyone else play them I wanted to post here and figure out if my experiences were not the norm before putting together several pages of wilder modifications. To start I probably should describe the abilities of my character before moving forward. My feats were at the beginning were primary the feats from Complete Psionic that reduced the pain that came with the enervations. My power list started with energy ray for damage and demoralize for a general area of effect to hamper a lot of things at the same time. Later on I got recall agony (but later on I realized I was almost never used it because I had other powers that did the same thing so I replaced it with ego whip), took feat to learn energy missile, and finally got touchsight, and psionic dimension door. Early on I picked Split Ray as one of my feats, but I changed that when I realized that it only worked for a single power. Playing a wilder was an interesting experience. Playing it I had a couple thoughts, the first being they have very few powers. Choosing them was a little painful balance between various damage dealing powers and some more utility powers. While I say utility I don’t mean something like knock or identify, I felt I had to choose powers that would be useful in combat situations before powers that would only see use outside of combat. Also, I really didn’t want my wild surge to go to waste and my power selection reflected that; every power I choose was augmentable. I didn’t really see any point in choosing any powers that were not augmentable since I didn’t feel that my class abilities would work well with them. The second thing that I noticed was that I was using a full augmented power with wild surge for every power. I think this was partially because of my power choices and the campaign environment. On in-game days where there was combat there was usually only one fight. Sometimes there were two or more fights, but those were few and far in-between. I was able to go through these fights discharging my powers at full without getting really close to emptying my power point reserve, I believe in the longer fights it dropped to about half after the fight was over. Since my powers were all augmentable, most of them cheap, there was a constant temptation just to go full blast. What I want to do with the wilder is make it a better choice to grab the non-augmentable utility powers or even force them onto the class. For example detect psionics is a good power, especially if it can be used to identify psionic (or magic) items. However at third level a wilder knows two powers, choosing detect psionics would be a painful choice and would leave you with only one power in a fight. At higher levels you still have few powers and have the option to choose higher-level powers than 1st so it is unlikely that the wilder would ever willingly choose this. Finding some way to let a wilder use these without items would be helpful to the wilder and the party. My final note is on volatile mind. It is a nice flavorful ability, but my wilder never had to use it. In fact, I think I could have gone to twentieth level without ever using this ability. It requires another character to manifest a telepathy power on the wilder. This is relatively unlikely unless you are facing a lot of psionic characters in a campaign. Also it is very weak against the creatures it affects. The ability only removes a few power points from the enemy and unless that enemy was facing an army of wilders or casting telepathy powers on the wilder throughout the battle, I don’t think it would have any significant effect on the enemy. Maybe they would have to manifest a 5th level power instead of a 7th level power before running out of power points completely in the final round of a long fight.
- Publish a line of 4E adventures in a "Points-of-Light" setting (only defining the immediate point of light needed for a given adventure, no world maps etc.) Isn't that what they have been pretty much doing for the Pathfinder Modules so far or is it something different? - Create a few contradictions where needed; Eladrin are elves that hid in the Feywild (assuming Feywild is open-GSL) as opposed to normal elves who stayed in the forests, Dragonborn came through the gates when the majority of elves departed, tieflings come from some area of devastation, stuff like that. If these elements don't exist "later" in the PRPG version for the Pathfinder line, don't worry about it. I'm not sure if you meant it this way, but I am against having it in Golarion just because it is in the 4E PHB, MM, or DMG. In this case the Dragonborn seem to be there just because they are in the PHB and I feel it makes Golarion look more like any other 4E setting. I would also say the same thing about the Feywild as well. I feel the same way about other aspects like succubi, if on Golarion I would be very much against making them devils just because they are in the 4E MM. Overall I'm not sure how I feel about the 4E setting being ancient Golarion. It might work and I think like how it interconnects the two settings, but I'm not sure if it would be too much or too little or whatever. I think I'm going to think about this for a good long time before figuring out how I feel about this.
Also only 2 classes have access to linguistics as a class skill. I can understand not giving it to the Barbarian however I could think that Clerics, Wizards, and Sorcerers should also have it as a class skill as they tend to have to know many different languages. I think with the current rules that even someone who doesn't have linguistics as a class skill can still put ranks in it and have as many languages as the classes that have it as a class skill. The only difference is how good they are at the skill checks which doesn't normally apply to speaking languages.
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