I would say that's more a problem with power gamers and people moding the rules than the rules themselves.
It's still a very badly worded spell that needs to be fixed. We talk about how to fix it in this thread.
I've found that in some gaming groups, Reincarnate tends to be a lot less "random" then it is supposed to be. And some power gamers are more then happy to kill their characters off repeatedly until they get just the right race/class combo. Best to fix the spell and avoid the situation altogether. Lost levels can be regained or restored, but stacking extra Racial Traits last forever!I would say that's more a problem with power gamers and people moding the rules than the rules themselves.
Exactly. It's a problem with people not using the rules as written, not with using the rules as written. Using house rules as an example of why the actual rules need to be changed is ... well, silly.
Exactly. It's a problem with people not using the rules as written, not with using the rules as written. Using house rules as an example of why the actual rules need to be changed is ... well, silly.I've found that in some gaming groups, Reincarnate tends to be a lot less "random" then it is supposed to be. And some power gamers are more then happy to kill their characters off repeatedly until they get just the right race/class combo. Best to fix the spell and avoid the situation altogether. Lost levels can be regained or restored, but stacking extra Racial Traits last forever!I would say that's more a problem with power gamers and people moding the rules than the rules themselves.
Well in some cases, people HAVE been using the rules as written, but we can argue that they have not been using the rules as intended.
I'm with Sueki on this one: if a rule's iteration is not matching the intention or design behind the rule, it should be fixed somehow, if only to make the intention behind the rule clearer. After all, this is what this whole make-over is all about...
'findel
Do we really need to bribe players with extra HP or Skill Points to try and encourage them to play traditional race/class combinations?
Yes
My 2 decimal units of American currency:
Classes and bonuses don't exist in a vacuum. People claim that taking a non-favored class denies you a bonus without giving you anything in return. To put it simply, ridiculous. You trade one minor bonus, for a different minor bonus. Yes, a dwarven fighter can get extra HP that an elven fighter cannot duplicate. But a dwarven fighter, with his dexterity penalty and slow movement, cannot hope to match an elven fighter in terms of archery, skirmishing, and finesse. And, in a fact, an elven fighter is likely to have more skills than the dwarven fighter; the dwarf can take an extra skill point per level, but the elf has an innate bonus to intelligence, making it easier for him to achieve the high intelligence essential to a multitude of skill points.
Taking a more extreme example, the Half-Orc Wizard vs. The Elven Wizard. Obviously, the Half-Orc is at a serious disadvantage, competing in an intelligence. In most likely scenarios, their intelligences are equal at best, more likely the elf has a modifier one greater than the half-orc's. But if the elf takes his favored class bonus to HP, his CON penalty means he's still unlikely to match the half-orc's HP, for the green one suffers no such penalty. The half-orc also gets a bonus to Wisdom that most other wizardly types wouldn't get, which can give him a truly stellar Will save. Still not wholly equitable, but hardly the double penalty some speak of. Besides, since the half-orc clearly doesn't care about missing out on FC bonuses, he might well multiclass into Eldritch Knight, bringing his great strength into play.
One extra HP per level is nice to have, but it's almost meaningless, especially at high levels, and considering that Toughness, widely agreed to be a near-worthless feat, gives you three times that amount. An extra skill point is much nicer, but is it game breaking, or enough to gimp a non-favored class/multiclassing? I don't think so. The dwarven fighter taking extra skill points gets a nice bonus, slightly shoring up a weakness. If he wants skills, however, rogue levels would still give him more.
Exactly. It's a problem with people not using the rules as written, not with using the rules as written. Using house rules as an example of why the actual rules need to be changed is ... well, silly.I've found that in some gaming groups, Reincarnate tends to be a lot less "random" then it is supposed to be. And some power gamers are more then happy to kill their characters off repeatedly until they get just the right race/class combo. Best to fix the spell and avoid the situation altogether. Lost levels can be regained or restored, but stacking extra Racial Traits last forever!I would say that's more a problem with power gamers and people moding the rules than the rules themselves.
Not really. People cheating while using Reincarnate shows the worst abuses of the spell, but it doesn't do anything to change the fact that if you roll really well on the Reincarnate table, your character has the potential to walk away with double the racial traits of every other character in the party. Reincarnate still sucks and needs to be fixed.
One extra HP per level is nice to have, but it's almost meaningless, especially at high levels, and considering that Toughness, widely agreed to be a near-worthless feat, gives you three times that amount. An extra skill point is much nicer, but is it game breaking, or enough to gimp a non-favored class/multiclassing? I don't think so. The dwarven fighter taking extra skill points gets a nice bonus, slightly shoring up a weakness. If he wants skills, however, rogue levels would still give him more.
It's still not fair. But this whole thread has become a moot point if Jason implements the Favored Class mechanic that he's testing in his games right now - it's a compromise that I'm happy with.
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Not really. People cheating while using Reincarnate shows the worst abuses of the spell, but it doesn't do anything to change the fact that if you roll really well on the Reincarnate table, your character has the potential to walk away with double the racial traits of every other character in the party. Reincarnate still sucks and needs to be fixed.Exactly. It's a problem with people not using the rules as written, not with using the rules as written. Using house rules as an example of why the actual rules need to be changed is ... well, silly.I've found that in some gaming groups, Reincarnate tends to be a lot less "random" then it is supposed to be. And some power gamers are more then happy to kill their characters off repeatedly until they get just the right race/class combo. Best to fix the spell and avoid the situation altogether. Lost levels can be regained or restored, but stacking extra Racial Traits last forever!I would say that's more a problem with power gamers and people moding the rules than the rules themselves.
Yeah but by the same argument someone doing random dice rolling for stats could roll average whilst someone else in the party could roll nothing but 18's and 17's does this mean we need to remove random dice rolling for stats as well?
One extra HP per level is nice to have, but it's almost meaningless, especially at high levels, and considering that Toughness, widely agreed to be a near-worthless feat, gives you three times that amount. An extra skill point is much nicer, but is it game breaking, or enough to gimp a non-favored class/multiclassing? I don't think so. The dwarven fighter taking extra skill points gets a nice bonus, slightly shoring up a weakness. If he wants skills, however, rogue levels would still give him more.It's still not fair. But this whole thread has become a moot point if Jason implements the Favored Class mechanic that he's testing in his games right now - it's a compromise that I'm happy with.
I wouldn't be. If everyone gets to choose their favored class, than you are, in effect, inflating the number of skill points per level by one across the board. At that point, it would be better to drop favored classes entirely.
As far as it not being fair...that's not exactly an argument. In fact, it's not an argument at all. The dwarf fighter gets minor goodies the elven fighter doesn't, but the elven fighter gets to excel at areas the dwarven fighter never would. That's pretty much the definition of fairness and diversity to my mind. You're the one who has to prove that the extra skill point or HP will raise a favored classes capabilities to the insurmountable advantage you claim it is.
As far as it not being fair...that's not exactly an argument. In fact, it's not an argument at all. The dwarf fighter gets minor goodies the elven fighter doesn't, but the elven fighter gets to excel at areas the dwarven fighter never would. That's pretty much the definition of fairness and diversity to my mind. You're the one who has to prove that the extra skill point or HP will raise a favored classes capabilities to the insurmountable advantage you claim it is.
I (and many other people) have about 9 pages of arguments regarding why this isn't equitable. I think we've proven our point.
And I think I'm pretty much done in this thread. There's a lot more to test and post about, and this issue seems to have been resolved.
Woah; I'm glad to have inspired you all to action.
Does this mean I get an errata named after me?
You can get the problem named after you :-)