Dear Jason and Erik,
I love what you’re doing with keeping the OGL alive and I love almost all of the changes to the classes. Thank you so much. The following is a concern of mine.
Okay, so sorcerer bloodlines. There are some balance issues. I’m not writing to post about more/better spells, role-playing needed for the different bloodlines or the whole prepared versus spontaneous thing. I’m writing to address what I feel are inadequacies between the bloodlines. While some bloodlines are wonderfully done in terms of both flavor and mechanics, others are either blasé or just plain too poor to use.
The following will be some of my thoughts on each line, with some ideas which I think might be used to fix em.
Aberrant: Weird extra spells, weird, useful bloodline stuff (ray and limbs are pretty neat, especially if you get a flank when you use a touch from afar.)
Overall? Weird. Lots of utility that will go far in a party.
Abyssal: Mean, some offense, some demonic in the dirt stuff. Claws, resistances and strength bonuses planning up as you gain strength is real nice and adds flavor to the more “dead” levels
Overall: Pretty cool and flavored right.
Arcane? Riiiiiiiight... I like the identify and the magic staple flavors, but the bloodline stuff? Snore... Metamagic adept, new arcane and the school power didn’t impress me at all.
Overall: I would never play this class. Almost no level scaling and poor bloodline powers compared to others. Bonded item extra spell is cool, but overall, a bit of a clunker.
Celestial: Decent spells (bless is really cool. Do more of this crosslist stuff.) Heavenly fire is great if your party is good and you fight a lot of evil, but is useless in many situations. Scaling resistances are okay, but you run into fire so much more often that they’re likely less useful than demonic resistances. Flight ought to scale up as a permanent thing at 15th, much like the other flying bloodlines. Conviction… Meh, I'm not impressed.
Overall: Some are okay... Like the bless thing, but the general offensive weakness of this bloodline is obvious compared to other lines, as is the gap in the bloodline skills. Good guys always get the shaft, here is no different. I might play this bloodline for a crusader-type adventure, but otherwise, forget it.
Destined: The way I see it, this one is a pale imitator of the old luck domain. Powers are bardish, but not nearly as good as a bard. Extra spells are okay, with some exceptions (alarm…). Fated bonuses should scale and apply at all times, not just during the surprise round. The later bloodline powers just do not compare with the upper level powers of the other bloodlines. I look at the old luck domain compared to this class and want to play a cleric instead...
Overall: I would not ever play this bloodline, due to its obvious lack of power compared to other bloodlines.
Draconic: Strong defense, strong offense, good spells, solid.
Overall: What I would expect from a dragon relative.
Elemental: Crazy offensive outpouring and typed resistances. The movement is a nice bit of flavor for the bloodline.
Overall: Fun, weird, solid.
Fey: Laughing touch is weak, but still has utility. It could easily be a 30’ ranged thing and be a bit stronger. Bloodline powers don't scale like others do though. Weak in bloodline powers, but toolboxy enough to help a party along in general.
Overall: Flavor is right, even if some of the powers in general could use a tweak or two. I’d play it.
Infernal? Manipulative, good offense, touch attack again, but at least it scales well and gives some sort of synergy with the class spells. Touch and then back up and throw in a suggestion or two. Sounds devilish to me. Upper level powers are pretty cool too.
Overall: Flavor is right, nice extra spells. Solid.
Undead: Weak touch that scales poorly. This could easily become a drain attack at higher levels and be pretty cool or be ranged and much more useful. Death’s gift is fine on cold, but when, other than in a forced march do you run into non-lethal damage? Skeletal arms with your CON modifier? I’m imagining this is a typo. Incorporeal form would be more useful if you could break it up into smaller increments but not being able to use your spells is a little absurd. One of Us is pretty cool. With Grave Touch what it is, chill touch is a useless extra spell.
Overall: Making all of the bonus spells necromantic doesn’t make them appropriate (like everything but chill touch, to be honest). Looking at the animal domain, what about an undead companion, something like the shadowdancer’s shade or a skeletal companion or how about an option to hate undead, rather than raise and control them? As is I would not play this bloodline.
What do you all think?
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A couple comments on the original post.
Arcane Bloodline will be taken by the people who want familiars or who use metamagic a lot. I'm not sure metamagic is a big thing for sorcerers. There are also some people who feel the arcane bond with an object is da-bomb because they can turn it into the uber magic item of doom.
Celestial is the earliest bloodline to get flight. If wings are important you got em. This is a pretty nice defensive feature at that level and the duration means you can use it pretty much all the time. Not for overland travel but enough for any utility use (never climb again) and to be flying in every single encounter. The first level power is IMO one of the nicer ones, 1d6+.5HP/level damage is lame quite early in the game. A ray that does heals that much from 30' away is useful for much longer as far as I'm concerned. No we're not replacing the cleric. We are however able to stabilize that dying fighter from across the room in an emergency.
Destined... I like the touch of destiny. A nice little freebe to boost some important skill checks. I can see this being quite useful for rogues or any sort of social situation... Beyond that the bloodline is uninspiring and will likely not be missed if it were dropped entirely.
Most of the rest I tend to agree with you on. I like the bloodlines and think most of them are in the ballpark power wise. I don't see a lot of people using Destined but almost all the rest will probably see a reasonable amount of use, often just for the flavor of the bloodline.
- Dennis
What if the undead line got a scaling companion? At first level, an always active unseen servant that scales up. Later it turns into a shadowdancer type shadow and then gains HD as the sorcerer grows more powerful.
Just thought I'd chime in and defend the Destined bloodline. Is it as 1-on-1 dangerous as the other bloodlines? No. Does it have cool flavor and an interesting mechanical abilities? Yes.
If all the bloodlines worked exactly the same (i.e. a defense power at level X, an attack power at level X etc.), then the only difference would be the flavor.
Please don't change the core of the bloodline (or, as suggested drop it entirely) - it was the one bloodline that universally appealed to our group! Long live the destined Sorcerers!
Peace,
tfad
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Please don't change the core of the bloodline (or, as suggested drop it entirely) - it was the one bloodline that universally appealed to our group! Long live the destined Sorcerers!
That's cool. I wasn't trying to suggest it be nuked only that it wouldn't be missed if it were. Clearly, not the case.
That's what I like about the bloodlines, they add a lot of character to the sorcerer.
That's cool. I wasn't trying to suggest it be nuked only that it wouldn't be missed if it were. Clearly, not the case.
That's what I like about the bloodlines, they add a lot of character to the sorcerer.
:D
Yeah, it'd be missed by at least one group.... Also, you can't have evil bloodlines without good ones. Speaking of which, I was hoping for a little more alignment related sorcerer-bloodline love.
Gotta love the bloodlines - we've been giving the bloodlines out as bonus feats to sorcerers since the Dragon Compendium. They just make sense....
Peace,
tfad
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Yeah, it'd be missed by at least one group.... Also, you can't have evil bloodlines without good ones. Speaking of which, I was hoping for a little more alignment related sorcerer-bloodline love.
Hmm, an anarchist bloodline?
It is interesting that there are 2 evil bloodlines and only one good one. Heck a lot of them have an evil bend to them, how many good aberations are there out there?
-- Dennis
how many good aberations are there out there?
Howard the duck? ;p
Seriously, I can't think of any as 'aberration' means 'the thing that should not be'. It's hard to be (the D&D definition of) good and be somehow associated with the crawling chaos from beyond time and space etc.
The Dragon Compendium had a more even split of the bloodlines across the alignments. It's not a game breaker though and if it's not in the core book, it's only a message board request away. There are plenty of people here who'd happily whip up something. The symmetry'd be nice though.
Peace,
tfad
I got one!
Silthilar, from Lords of Madness. Chaotic Good deep-forest-dwelling hive-mind swarm-shifting bone-starfish flesh-grafting bio-engineers.
But the fluff says they're the result of a "normal" race that went waaaaay waaaaay far into bio-engineering, and this is what they ended up as.
Does it count if they were normal once?
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Howard the duck? ;p
What was he 'good' for?
It's funny that you mention Howard, the other day we were playing and the group ran across a Lizardfolk dwelling that was unoccupied. We have 2 rangers in the group and they both made track checks. One of them rolls a 1 so I tell the group:
"There is a bit of a difference of opinion, Moonshadow thinks this is a lizardfolk dwelling, Lock thinks that the tracks belong to a lost race of intelligent ducks."
Needless to say the room had a good chuckle over that.
It would be nice if there were a few more group 'good' bloodlines to match the evil oriented ones. Fey aren't even good, they are generally neutral with some on both sides of the fence. The problem is the good bloodlines sound kind of lame.
A few thoughts:
Archon???
Blink Dog -- This one would be cool IMO :) But not exactly likely "Tell me again, you have what in your bloodline?"
Unicorn? -- maybe popular with the female players
Let's face it the evil folks just have all the good ideas stolen.
- Dennis
Let's face it the evil folks just have all the good ideas stolen.
I think it's more that there are not very many 'iconic' good aligned monsters. It's difficult for the few good critters in the monster books to gain an 'iconic' status as the PCs don't face them very often. Seriously, I think a large part of the 'cool' and 'respect' [monster x] has, comes from years of smacking adventurers around and dropping only after half of party. It's that cool-iconic-respect that translates into an awesome bloodline for the Sorcerer - a promise to have at some of that history.
I think it'd be a real challenge to come up with an equal number of bloodlines along the good/evil split in alignments. Plus remember that the good monster will have to be able to sire offspring with the core races, otherwise it's not a viable bloodline. Or, at least not viable as a core bloodline.
Lets not dwell on that too much though....
;P
Peace,
tfad
I got one!
Silthilar, from Lords of Madness. Chaotic Good deep-forest-dwelling hive-mind swarm-shifting bone-starfish flesh-grafting bio-engineers.
But the fluff says they're the result of a "normal" race that went waaaaay waaaaay far into bio-engineering, and this is what they ended up as.
Does it count if they were normal once?
I think that the fact that I both have read and own this book, yet have no memory of this race, speaks to the impact it had on me. ;p Now that you mention it, I remember reading it and thinking WTF! And feeling that they were invented only because someone thought "Hang on - can you think of any good aligned aberrations?"
They can count if you want them too! ;D
Peace,
tfad
Heck a lot of them have an evil bend to them, how many good aberations are there out there?
There's at least one OGL creature in the Tome of Horrors that fits that description...
Heck a lot of them have an evil bend to them, how many good aberations are there out there?There's at least one OGL creature in the Tome of Horrors that fits that description...
Yay!
Problem is, someone has to write a bloodline for this critter that doesn't suck. Good luck with that... ;P
There's at least one OGL creature in the Tome of Horrors that fits that description...Yay!
Problem is, someone has to write a bloodline for this critter that doesn't suck. Good luck with that... ;P
The real problem is that someone has to write a rationale for having that bloodline that doesn't make me queasy. Good luck with that...
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I'll dissent here and say that the arcane bloodline is actually quite good. Arcane bond alone is worth quite a bit, and tossing out a few freebie empowered fireballs at earlier levels is a nice boon.
I mentioned arcane bond, a lot of people like that and would take arcane bond just for that. Personally I prefer flavor over power gaming so I went with draconic :)
Metamagic Adept does not allow you to empower fireballs at an earlier level, all it does is allow you to cast those empowered fireballs without increasing casting time.
So, an idea for the grave touch that we're going to playtest is allowing it to stack with the chill touch spell granted at 3rd level for damage. With multiple uses at 2d6+2, I think that this one might just be useful enough to work.
~m
I mentioned arcane bond, a lot of people like that and would take arcane bond just for that. Personally I prefer flavor over power gaming so I went with draconic :)
Flavor choosing your Cake: Which class to play like a spellcasting sorcerer over a cleric, druid, fighter, monk, rogue or wizard.
Additional Flavor Not Powergaming: Choosing the Frosting for the cake picking a bloodline for your sorcerer.
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Arcane Bloodline
3rd Level to give the sorcerer the use of a metamagic feat they know to be able to cast without increasing the time,but still at level cost.
(Do not get me wrong a nice idea but useless for 1 to 2 levels) You can do this ounce at 3rd level + 1 use for every 4 levels, at 19 level you get a whole 5 times aday
3rd Level Sorcerer still casting 1st level spells only, no way to cast a metamagic feat at this time.
So you either burn your 3rd level feat for a metamagic and can not use for 1 more level or you wait till 5th level and take a metamagic feat then
Where as most of the other bloodlines at 3rd level get Resistance to something that is usable at that level,, resist fire 5, resist element 5 , damage reduction 5/- non lethal.
To stay with this getting a metamagic feat use at 3rd level, why not make the Arcane Bloodline, be a spell level a head on progression. So at 3rd level he can cast second level spells, HE is suppost to be connected to the Art of Magic quicker due to have accomplished Wizards relatives.
just an idea...
---Chas
AkA SagaWeaver
Arcane Bloodline
Hey, who's to say I don't want to extend prestidigitation? ;) I agree it's a bit clunky and the choice of having a power you can't use for 2 levels or a feat and a power you can't use for 1 level kind of sucks.
As for why not give him a second level spell at 3rd level? Because then there would only be one sorcerer bloodline ever played.
Well considering it's the 'Arcane' bloodline how about simply allowing him to use one of his daily spell slots to prepare a spell as a wizard does rather than for spontaneous casting? The ability would advance once every 5 levels to a maximum of 4 spells per day at 18th level. Limit the spell memorized to 1/3 of the casters level so a 9th level caster could memorize 2 spells of 3rd level or lower.
Maybe fewer prepared spells per day? I thought 4 at 18th level would be good.
Seeing as the wizard's arcane bond steps on the sorcerers toes a bit it seems that turn about should be fair play :)
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The bloodlines shouldnt have "fighter feats" as bonus feats. Power attack, improve grapple, impoved disarm, improved unarmed strike, etc.
Granted these feats could be made of good use for a multiclassed fighter / sorcerer but the truth is they shoulddn't be included in a arcane heavy class. I don't see spell like abilties in the fighter bonus feat section.....(and they shound't be)
I like what you guys are trying with the bloodlines but keep the feats inline with the class.
A level 9 sorcerer don't really have a use for those feats either for the most part.
My 2 pp.
Paul