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The thing about the MIC is it becomes about the items and not the levels. I thought I left that behind in WOW. Next campaign definitely will be just core. The items in the SRD are almost universally better than those in the MIC. And there is nothing as broken in the MIC either, nothing like the Candle of Invocation.
Surely you mean War Master's Charge, the 9th level White Raven maneuver that allows the entire party to charge as one and gives other bonuses and such? How is this more broken than Celerity + Time Stop? Or Arcane Reach and Otto's Irresistible Dance? Or Ray of Stupidity (instant death to animals)? Or Split-Ray Avasculate? Or Craft Contigency? Or Wish/Miracle? No, War Master's Charge is not broken. The level 9 maneuvers are in-line with the power expected of a level 9 spell. In the end-game, an initiator is about 75-80% as powerful as a primary spellcaster. This is as vast improvement over the traditional melee classes (not counting a fully optimized Barbarian), which were next to useless. Anyone looking for a powerboost from the items in the MIC should look elsewhere. In most cases, the MIC correct the broken items of earlier books. The Belt of Battle is useful, but you should have at least 3 or 4 so you don't use up the charges and have a normal belt the rest of the day. As for the Ring of Spell-Battle - hey, if your player can dispel something with a regular dispel magic at level 20, the ring is just a means to an end.
Nope ToB doesn't exist in my reality...Aye. Having seen the ToB in the early part of the Savage Tide - and based upon 'live testing' it at the table - I can wholly concur. I like a lot of the stuff in there. The problem is that they clearly did not playtest it thoroughly, as two of the styles are pretty @#!! broken pretty much from the get-go. I think he talking about Devoted Spirit and White Raven. There is a considerable difference between powerful and broken, however. While a powerful maneuver is exceptionally effective, a broken maneuver completely changes the way the game is played. There are only a few maneuvers in the book that meet this criteria. And mostly, the fixes are minimal. For example, White Raven Tactics (level 3, swift action, ally moves to your initiative -1 and thus may get an extra turn) should be a standard action.
The only problem I have with doling out defensive spells like Spell Immunity or Ray Deflection, etc is who cast the spell on the Baddie? there are no Clerics to speak of on Divided's Ire, though it's easy enough to place some as prisoners. Also many of the effects are too powerful to be cast from Items and the Villains of the Ire aren't potent spellcasters except Orgosh and perhaps Saureya. There's always Use Magic Device for scrolls. It's not too difficult to give Vanthus full UMD ranks and a plethora of buffing scrolls. How do you plan to get around the debuffing spells?
If I was running that CR 33 one simple solution to slaughter the party, Blasphemy. Even if they had silence a quickened greater dispel then followed by blasphemy at caster level 25 your party wouldn't stand a chance of resisting (unless they were all evil). We were immune to it via Spell Immunity/Silence/plugging our ears/having evil party members.
Artificers have access to every spell list when crafting, and they treat their level as two higher when determining what items they can make, though their CL is not changed, and they can't cheaper items than normal. They use Use Magic Device to craft things. They also have an infusion list that is unrelated. Artificers make amazing cohorts. If they do it to you, just sunder the rods. Or disarm them. Or dispel them out.
True enough. I shy away from using such a powerful, imprecise spells since it has the tendency to make the players/DMs really quite angry. We were not really vulnerable to traps since our perception-based checks and abilities were so well developed. Nonetheless, had we been hit with one, we could have rebuffed ourselves in about 5 or 6 rounds. Demogorgon couldn't really use a staff of Disjunction on us without hitting himself with it as well. He had more buffs on him than we did, as well as an Epic Level Ward that made him immune to anything "Dispel" magic.
If you have access to it, you may consider turning Vanthus into a Warblade from the Tome of Battle. Nothing surprises your party more than a Manticore Parry (deflecting the attack back against the attacker). I know I was.
There's really no need to worry. Our DM started to talk to me after City of Broken Idols. The signs will start to show around there. If your players are still having trouble then, then the campaign should go pretty smoothly. If you're still worried, I can give you a list of higher-level abuses that can happen if you play strictly rules-as-written. Though if you make changes to the balance, you should inform your players as soon as possible.
As for the Eberron-related material, I can go into more detail. The Artificer is truly a powerful, interesting class. I loved it. Artificers have infusions, which are just like spells, except they have to be targeted on an item or construct. Most of their infusions are buffs, and they have access to their entire spell list which they cast from spontaneously (like a War Mage). The Greater Weapon Augmentation was a 6th level infusion. Warforged are different from every other race in the game. I don't really want to devolve this thread into talking about the balance of Warforged, but they have a number of immunities against things that DMs love (like Energy Drain, poison and disease), so I would say that they have a number of advantages.
Actually, I find your criticisms to be quite valid. I am usually on the other side of the screen. As a player, I have the tendency to optimize not only myself, but also the other players. I am quite a DM nightmare. Nothing went against the Rules-As-Written. Our DM let it slip that he let us get away with most things because he wanted us to make him a list of things he will ban for his later 3.5 games. But in general, the problem is more with the post-level 13 game. After this, the scalability of the game drops perceptibly. The 'Epic' 3.5 game is complete hogwash. Nothing scales. By the end of the campaign, my character (the Crusader) didn't really roll saves. He passed every Will or Fort save on a 2, and failed every Reflex save except on a 20. 4.0 largely corrects this problem of scalability. If the Pathfinder RPG is to be relevant, it will also have to correct the problem. As for guarding against debuffing (through Dispel Magic), I devised a nasty little trick. Both the Wizard and the Crusader had received a Girallon's Blessing, giving them an extra set of arms. They can't be used for attack, but they can hold shields or other items. In the extra set, they held a +4 Defending dagger to get the AC bonuses. In the other hand they held a Rod of Absorption. Now, this might be a source of contention, but technically it does work against all single target spells/spell-like abilities. Area-effect Dispels work just fine, but they only get rid of one buff each, and we had so many. Hence, in order to debuff us he had to get rid of our Rods, which he promptly tried. He sundered the Wizard's rod almost immediately, but lost in opposed attack roll against the Crusader (who was now Gargantuan size and possessed modifiers higher than the Prince of Demons). So, against the Crusader he just to knock out the Rod. Unfortunately for him, luck was not on his side, and failed to dispel the rod. Had he been successful, the battle would have been slightly different. However, it is worth mentioning that Sparky, who had the main contingencies, was kept in a extra dimensional space in the Crusader's chest (from a Dragon Magazine), until Demogorgon showed himself. He was never a target of a dispel that could have possibly debuffed his contigenices. As for the Crusader being lucky that he received those maneuver – not really. The Crusader at level 20 prepares 7 maneuvers, 4 of which gets randomly on the first round. He gets 5 if he takes the feat Extra Granted Maneuver, which he did. His maneuvers are reshuffled and re-granted on the 3rd round. So he always has more maneuvers that he can really use, and has to wait at most 2 rounds to get the maneuver that he needs. Nothing by itself was overpowered, but rather combination that resulted in power more than the sum of its parts. The Tome of Battle book actually just succeeds in making the melee characters somewhat relevant in the later game, whereas otherwise they are utterly overshadowed. They are overpowered in the early game, and just about right the rest of the time. It was a band-aid for a problem, before 4.0 actually solved the problem, but it is miles and miles better than nothing.
The team was: Strife: Warforged Crusader, Church of the Silver Flame(21)
We gated in a Concordant Killer and an Advanced Couatl (essentially a level 20 Sorcerer). We killed the CR 33 Demogorgon (with additional spells and such, our DM thought he was too weak) in 3 rounds. What really put him in his grave? Split-Ray Avasculate followed by a Mountain Tombstone Stike. (-75% health, and then 81 damage + 7 constitution damage). Actually, the only reason he survived after the first round was that our DM ruled that he could continue to survive with one head (he just Shapechanged into an Aspect of himself - I thought the rule was tenuous at best). How did we accomplish this? Sparky used Craft Contigency for the following: 1) The first time he throws an Annulat - True Strike
He buffed the Annulat with Greater Weapon Augmentation to put a Vorpal enhancement on it. Surge of Fortune you can expend instantly to treat any roll as a natural 20. With his Flesh Ring of Scorn, he auto-confirmed criticals. Boom - Demogorgon had no head. |
