I failed my sanity check after reading all the crap about Illumians.
I have a particular fondness for Illumians. I love to multi-class, and I was happy to find a race that's half as scatterbrained and multi-tasking as I am. They were never particularly game breaking, since to get the most out of their racial abilities you had to multi-class like a madman, thus limiting you from the potent top-tier class abilities. I've had a couple Illumians with as many as 8 different class levels. And yes, it was explained in their backstory. The one with 8 different levels was a traveling scholar, who would spend time in different cultures and study them, learning their ways and taking a few levels in whatever predominant class derived from that area.
Races of Stone - Still waiting for dwarves done right.
I'm biased, but Open Design's Dwarves of the Ironcrags is pretty cool. You can find it here.
-Ben.
Spell Compendium - Nothing like releasing a "Core" looking book that includes the Orb spellsPeople think...the orb spells...are overpowered?
This is deeply baffling to me.
Putting on my full dork hat here...
The orb spells are junk because they're quite obviously evocations, and not the conjurations they've been classified as in SC. That shift in magical school is what allows them to bypass SR, as they're not a magical effect, per se, but a magically created or summoned bit of X (where X is the element of choice). But then I also think making things like arc of lightning or chain lightning conjurations is inappropriate, as well.
-Ben.
I failed my sanity check after reading all the crap about Illumians.I have a particular fondness for Illumians. I love to multi-class, and I was happy to find a race that's half as scatterbrained and multi-tasking as I am. They were never particularly game breaking, since to get the most out of their racial abilities you had to multi-class like a madman, thus limiting you from the potent top-tier class abilities. I've had a couple Illumians with as many as 8 different class levels. And yes, it was explained in their backstory. The one with 8 different levels was a traveling scholar, who would spend time in different cultures and study them, learning their ways and taking a few levels in whatever predominant class derived from that area.
Ditto all around. Had several Illumians in my games - the most memorable including Lex, a Sorcerer whose campaign didn't last long enough for him to multiclass but did last long enough for him to be unforgettable, and Rhea, a Swordsage/Shadowcaster who ended up getting dumped on Krynn with the rest of us due to a portal trap - and I'm rather fond of the race popping up as NPCs. I think three classes is the max any of ours have taken though.
I guess that makes me and my group the opposite of everyone else. Illumians were the only thing we really ever used out of Races of Destiny other than some of the feats.
WotC books that disappointed me. Magic of IncarnumArgh! An Undead, or Draconic, or Elemental, or Animal, Totemist could kick twelve kinds of booty, but they picked a themeless mish-mash type to create the Ex Miscellanea Totemist...
Ars Magica reference FTW! :D
Ave sodale! ;)
-Ben. (returns to his covenant.)
And who laughed at Rivivify? That name shall never be spoken at my table! *BAM*
As a writer for Living Greyhawk, more annoying was Delay Death. Once that became available, you had to completely cheese out an encounter in order for there to be *any* sort of risk to a party. That spell pretty single-handedly made 3.5 about as fatal for PCs as a pillow fight in a bounce castle.
-Ben.
Spell Compendium - Nothing like releasing a "Core" looking book that includes the Orb spellsPeople think...the orb spells...are overpowered?
This is deeply baffling to me.
Putting on my full dork hat here...
The orb spells are junk because they're quite obviously evocations, and not the conjurations they've been classified as in SC. That shift in magical school is what allows them to bypass SR, as they're not a magical effect, per se, but a magically created or summoned bit of X (where X is the element of choice). But then I also think making things like arc of lightning or chain lightning conjurations is inappropriate, as well.
-Ben.
Or Acid Splash or Melf's Acid Arrow. I mean who would make those conjurations right?
And why is Light an evocation spell? Has anyone ever attacked with Light? Did you know that you can use Shadow Evocation to cast Light? How does that make sense?
Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords (maybe it's just my taste, but um...no...)Planar Handbook (a hodge-podge, desperate attempt to ring another hardback book out of the subject of the Planes)
...?
I must agree on Tome of Battle, it presented interesting "video game" options but it was simply way overpowered.
Planar handbook...meh. The least used book I have on the entire 3.5 collection. Quite the disappointment
Savage Species had A LOT of potential, but I have used it soooooooo little because no matter what, the races are still unbalanced and just too complicated to run on an easy going game. Even my power-hungry players get lazy just with looking at it.
Pathfinder RPG: oh, wait... :P
I must agree on Tome of Battle, it presented interesting "video game" options but it was simply way overpowered.
... In what way?
I must agree on Tome of Battle, it presented interesting "video game" options but it was simply way overpowered.... In what way?
The only player who used it ended up acting/declaring actions 3 times EVERY round... There are just one too many things that do not check well in that book. For example, the Warblade is just too powerful a class, you just need to glance at his advancement table.
Well, that's just a personal opinion ;)
Anything FFE. Gah...complete drek.
Creature Collection 1 (original, not revised), for the stat block quality. I loved the contextual flavor text, and really grew to like Scarred Lands, but the stat blocks in that first 3.0 book were a real mess.
I don't think I've seen anything by WotC that I would categorize as "crap." Not to my liking, or not the best, but not "crap."
I must agree on Tome of Battle, it presented interesting "video game" options but it was simply way overpowered.... In what way?The only player who used it ended up acting/declaring actions 3 times EVERY round... There are just one too many things that do not check well in that book. For example, the Warblade is just too powerful a class, you just need to glance at his advancement table.
Well, that's just a personal opinion ;)
*shrug* I've had several Swordsages and one of both of the others in my campaigns. The Warblade and Crusader were on-par with the warlock in their party as far as damage went. All of the Swordsages have been VoP using the Monk Variant, so I can't judge them yet with their as-written stats as much, though I have a few NPCs of such rolled up that will be used soon so I might be able to change that soon. Certainly don't see any of them out-damaging a Wizard, Sorcerer, or caster Druid.
Of course, if you drag on long enough to make the casters run out of spells they're going to be ahead of the game, but if you do that they'll also be getting beaten by anyone who has staying power - Warlock and Binder come to mind as regular-used classes in my gaming group.
But ignoring that problem, I really don't see an insane power gap myself. I typically play pretty high-magic, high-power games though, and not all of my players are great optimizers so they may not be playing the classes to their "full potential".
But ignoring that problem, I really don't see an insane power gap myself. I typically play pretty high-magic, high-power games though, and not all of my players are great optimizers so they may not be playing the classes to their "full potential".
I do agree its not "insane", since the player who used the ToB classes was not too far from damage/ability power from the other player, thou many of his abilities did broke/slow the game quite often. I do like the book thou I have to do a serious revision before allowing it into my games again. The whole new sistme for warriors was a great idea.
I think it might just be an issue with my gaming group - we've had since we started a long-standing rule of "The DM can and will use anything in the house and on his/her computer against you, feel free to equip yourself equivalently" or of course its vice-versa "The DM can and will use anything you have access to against you". So problems players cause by something possibly being overpowered are often negated by the DM just turning it against them.
Again, that's just my group, might not work so well for others.
As a writer for Living Greyhawk, more annoying was Delay Death. Once that became available, you had to completely cheese out an encounter in order for there to be *any* sort of risk to a party. That spell pretty single-handedly made 3.5 about as fatal for PCs as a pillow fight in a bounce castle.
What's Delay Death?
I think it might just be an issue with my gaming group - we've had since we started a long-standing rule of "The DM can and will use anything in the house and on his/her computer against you, feel free to equip yourself equivalently" or of course its vice-versa "The DM can and will use anything you have access to against you". So problems players cause by something possibly being overpowered are often negated by the DM just turning it against them.
Again, that's just my group, might not work so well for others.
I do this as well. My players hate it, but only because I'm better at it then them. :D
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Necromancy
Level: Cleric 4
Component: V, S, DF
Casting Time: One immediate action
Range: Close
Target: One creature
Duration: 1 round/level
Saving Throw: Will negates
Spell Resistance: Yes
The subject of this spell is unable to die from hit point damage. While under the effects of this spell, the normal limit of -9 hp before a character dies is extended without limit.
The spell does not prevent the subject from entering the dying state by dropping below 0 hit points.
I really don't see how that spell takes the danger out of combat. All it does it give the cleric more time to get around to healing the character. It time runs out he is still dead as a doornail.
I think the point is that it's an immediate action. So the cleric need not cast it unless someone gets hit below -9. If it was a standard action that you buffed with, it wouldn't be so powerful (and would probably be considered a poor choice).
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not to mention it has range, so immediate action, range, and lasting 1/round per level, which at 4th level spell means at least 7 rounds which is longer than most combats. Yeah I see that taking lethality down quite a bit. Not completely as it takes a 4th level spell slot, but prepare two and I can see very few situations short of a TPK where you'd have a character actually die.
If you're only having one combat where a character goes into negatives, yes.
I think you mean "If you're only having one combat where a character dies from HP damage, yes." I don't believe you'd necessarily use it on an attack that sent a character to -1, for instance.
If your characters are dying more than once a day from HP damage, then that's a much tougher campaign than I'm used to.
Necromancy
Level: Cleric 4
Component: V, S, DF
Casting Time: One immediate action
Range: Close
Target: One creature
Duration: 1 round/level
Saving Throw: Will negates
Spell Resistance: YesThe subject of this spell is unable to die from hit point damage. While under the effects of this spell, the normal limit of -9 hp before a character dies is extended without limit.
The spell does not prevent the subject from entering the dying state by dropping below 0 hit points.
Interesting. Where was that published? I didn't see it in the PHB, but perhaps I'm blind?
Interesting. Where was that published? I didn't see it in the PHB, but perhaps I'm blind?
Not the PHB.
Originally found in:
- Miniatures Handbook
- Races of Destiny
Later updated in:
- Spell Compendium
Interesting. Where was that published? I didn't see it in the PHB, but perhaps I'm blind?Not the PHB.
Originally found in:
- Miniatures Handbook
- Races of DestinyLater updated in:
- Spell Compendium
Righto, thanks!
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If you're only having one combat where a character goes into negatives, yes. But if that is the case, they're either using the 15-minute workday or the combats really aren't that dangerous anyway.
This was the Living Greyhawk campaign, a kissing cousin to the Pathfinder Society games? Adventures rarely had more than three combat encounters and you could expect the battles to be in the APL+1, APL+2, and APL+3 ranges. APL = Average Party Level. (Or as they were fondly known, the thugging, the resource drain, and the boss battle.) You might get away with +1/+1/+4, or APL+2/+2/+2, but that was the (very basic) way of things. Two round scenarios were usually beefier, and Battle Interactives and Specials (aka "Meat Grinders") tended to take the gloves off when done properly.
This led to some very interesting CR calculations and design considerations. (Some half-dragon stirges, each CR3 with a 6d8 breath weapon anyone? Two of them are appropriate for an APL4 party's APL+1 encounter and they'll eat them for lunch with an AC20, +14 hide and a grapple check of +6 after the touch attack. In a 3.0/3.5 cusp adventure there was a vampiric darktentacles. Roll that one around on your tongue for a moment, get a taste of it.) As I'm sure anyone will agree, all APL+2 encounters are not created equal. (I'm thinking of incorporeal earth whisperer sorcerers {a non-associated class, despite the high charisma} using a flyby-spell feat to zip from wall to wall lobbing the boom at characters.)
In that environment, where you're fairly certain to only be facing three battles over the course of the adventure? Delay Death becomes a lifesaver. The immediate action means that it happens outside the cleric's turn and allows anyone administer healing over the next 7+ rounds. I've seen characters put at -57 hit points and still survive the combat-- a swamp giant with a keen huge longspear crit on a power attack (charging, power attack for 5 (3d6+25)*3, the fort save was a joke). That guy should have been a red smear and gristle, but the cleric pops Delay Death before I even roll damage, a bard drops a rod-empowered Cure Serious Wounds for an average 25 hp on his turn, the Cleric hits him with a domain-Cure Critical that's empowered by the Radiant Servant class ability (Cleric6/RS2) for 40 hp on average on his turn, and suddenly that guy is up again by his next initiative count and lobbing a pair lightning-charged arrows for 1d8+3d6+3 and 1d8+1d6+3. That's good times and it was by no means uncommon once you got past APL6--and still happened occasionally at APL6 with a Cleric 7 playing down. So yeah, not so thrilled about the Delay Death.
-Ben.
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Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but that spell description above makes no mention of Death By Massive Damage, so the example PC in the last post would still have been forced to make a Fort save, or die on the spot, Delay Death or no Delay Death.
It prevents you dying from the death of a hundred cuts, but you're still in danger of immediate death to a high-damage blow, since those are independent of your hp total, in fact you can die from them if you're in the positives.
Having said that, the official 3.5 SRD rule is that it's always DC15, which is a joke. It really should scale, even if only by +1/5 damage over 50, or +1/10, or whatever.
I find it humorous that what is allegedly a complaint about "third party d20 glut" is mainly about 2/3 about Wizards products. IMO, it's a sign that the gamer community has bought into disinformation that it's those third party companies that hurt D&D, when in reality WotC's line had gotten pretty consistently bad. They just don't want to blame themselves, which is understandable. "The problem is all those 3pp's cranking out junk!" No, the problem is "all those 3pp's showing us up."
I agree with many of the posters on:
Savage Species - a pure rules book with bad rules; the super high LAs don't make sense, ensuring that most of it is for NPCs or one shots.
Weapons of Legacy - a core concept you can't help but love and an execution you can't help but hate
Races of Destiny - Illumian please.
And Planar Handbook, Cityscape, the later Complete splats.
Our group loves Book of Nine Swords, though.
So much of the third party stuff - even stuff developed on a staff and budget about 1/10 of any Wizards book - was super good. I'd say that these are better than any product Wizards put out maybe ever...
Ptolus (I am just rereading it this week, coincidentally)
Freeport and the Freeport trilogy of adventures
Any Paizo AP except Second Darkness
Nyambe: African Adventures
Skull & Bones
I really liked the flavor of the Scarred Lands stuff, not every single product was good but it's a big line
There's definitely good and bad third party stuff. When 3e first came out we got every one of the very first third party adventures published in that initial year and ran them all. And only a couple sucked ("The Horror Beneath," I'm looking at you); most, by Green Ronin (Freeport), Atlas Games (Thieves in the Forest, Three Days to Kill), Fiery Dragon (NeMoren's Vault), and Monkey God Enterprises, were quite good. The intial WotC offering (Sunless Citadel) was decent and probably in the top 50% but not the top 30% of the offerings.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but that spell description above makes no mention of Death By Massive Damage, so the example PC in the last post would still have been forced to make a Fort save, or die on the spot, Delay Death or no Delay Death.
Unless you do like I do and ignore the Massive Damage rules.
Edit: Would the people who hate Illumians care to enlighten me as to why? Is it the multiclassing thing? Like I said above, they were really the only thing out of RoD that any of my group uses save a few feats and I'm curious why they're so hated.
So...you're complaining about the players using what they have to keep their team alive? In a campaign intentionally geared to slaughter them?
No, I'm saying that Delay Death totally eliminated any real concerns of a fatality in a limited campaign setting and fostered a perpetual arms race between writers/GMs and players while creating an environment with a strong metagaming undercurrent ("Does this feel like the tough battle yet? Well, remember we've probably got two more..."). LG wasn't geared to slaughter anyone, but there were definitely regions that had a more difficult "regional flavor" than others.
For many, a game where there's no real risk just isn't much fun, and Delay Death eliminates a lot of risk. In a home campaign, you can adjust for that without too much heartache-- you're in total control of your generated material. In a communal campaign, like LG, you're restricted by the campaign directors (who chose what material will be permitted, like spells from Spell Compendium or particular items from the Magic Item Compendium ) and the editing that gets done on the adventures-- all of which was done by volunteers. Adventures had to be written for a generic table, and there was a lot of debate about that "generic" table. Was it optimized? Was it iconic? You couldn't presume any one class would be there. Trying to create exciting, razor's-edge adventures in that environment? Yeah, Delay Death sucked.
-Ben.
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Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but that spell description above makes no mention of Death By Massive Damage, so the example PC in the last post would still have been forced to make a Fort save, or die on the spot, Delay Death or no Delay Death.Unless you do like I do and ignore the Massive Damage rules.
Edit: Would the people who hate Illumians care to enlighten me as to why? Is it the multiclassing thing? Like I said above, they were really the only thing out of RoD that any of my group uses save a few feats and I'm curious why they're so hated.
I have to agree - I quite liked the illumians. I guess walking roung with a glowing halo of letters might be a bit of an uncool look but I thought the concept in general was quite well executed. That said, I never played one and so there may be mechanical issues lurking that I never noticed. The rest of Races of Destiny I found eminently forgetable (especially the section on explaining what humans are). So I'd be curious why they are hated, assuming it isn't simply aesthetics.
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Interesting. Where was that published? I didn't see it in the PHB, but perhaps I'm blind?Not the PHB.
Originally found in:
- Miniatures Handbook
- Races of DestinyLater updated in:
- Spell Compendium
Probably it might have been better to houserule it so it could only be cast on someone on negative hit points. Then all it does is mimic a successful roll to avoid dying for a few rounds. When I read it, I assumed that was how it worked but I haven't looked at it for a long time.
No, I'm saying that Delay Death totally eliminated any real concerns of a fatality in a limited campaign setting and fostered a perpetual arms race between writers/GMs and players while creating an environment with a strong metagaming undercurrent.
I should note that Delay Death didn't foster "a perpetual arms race between writers/GMs and players while creating an environment with a strong metagaming undercurrent" all by itself. There were a number of contributors, Delay Death just added to it. Eliminating the concerns of fatality, though? Yeah, totally responsible for that.
-Ben.
Edit: Would the people who hate Illumians care to enlighten me as to why? Is it the multiclassing thing? Like I said above, they were really the only thing out of RoD that any of my group uses save a few feats and I'm curious why they're so hated.
I think it was because the race encouraged multiclassing. I played with a lot of players who don't like to multiclass, and I do it like crazy, so I found a lot of appeal both aesthetically and mechanics-wise. I even rolled up a single-classed Illumian just to show people that they were a perfectly viable and unbroken race. I think by rewarding multiclassing with more racial abilities, people just lumped them in with gish-build power gaming and never bothered to actually sit down and read what they were about. For as much as my gaming group disliked the race, not a single player ever bothered to even open Races of Destiny up and read the entry. "You're character can do WHAT? BROKEN!"
I kind of guessed it was something like that. My group tends to multiclass just as often as not - heck, the first campaign we tried Gestalt one of my players played a Favored Soul/Warlock/Eldritch Theurge|Sorcerer/Rogue/Arcane Trickster, and amusingly the character was not an Illumian but rather a Spellscale - so the whole "anti-multiclassing" mindset is rather alien to us.
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I guess I'm in the minority here. I really liked a lot of the Sword and Sorcery stuff and was a huge fan of Scarred Lands. I liked its flavor and generally I thought it was well written. Even the Creature Compendiums they put out I thought were solid enough to place several of the creatures in my games (they were different than the core critters at least, which is what I liked).
I'm going to rock the boat here and say flat out my least favorite products to date was virtually anything by Mongoose Publishing. I got the first "Quintessential" book several years ago and was disappointed but thought it a fluke since people talked about how good the products were, so I got another. Same thing - I absolutely hated what they put together.
There was lots of good stuff from 3PP during the height of the 3E days, but frankly there was a ton of crap too.
EDIT: Because I'm a moron, it's too early, and I wrote 'complete' instead of 'quintessential'.
Mongoose did do d20 Conan, which is pretty awesome. Barring Exalted's _Manacle and Coin_, it is one of the few supplements to actually talk about the price of slaves.
The whole line of Conan stuff is pretty great. The 2E core book had some printing issues-- the binding fell apart on the first printing, but they did the right thing and took care of anyone who had that issue.
-Ben.
No, I'm saying that Delay Death totally eliminated any real concerns of a fatality in a limited campaign setting...
I never really encountered this spell, but reading it I can't see how your statement is true. A character who's down to single digit HP is going to get killed by being knocked past -10 if he takes a decent amount of damage. Also, most parties have a limited number of clerics. It's not like there's one standing right by every party member waiting for them to drop so they can cast this. It certainly would cut way down on fatalities, but eliminate them? I don't see it.
A character who's down to single digit HP is going to get killed by being knocked past -10 if he takes a decent amount of damage.
If Delay Death is active, the character can go down to -1000 and not die. It literally says "Can Not Die from hit point loss".
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It's not like there's one standing right by every party member waiting for them to drop so they can cast this.
Close range mean 25 feet +5 feet per/2 levels, a cleric needs to be 7th level to cast a 4th level spell, so that's 25+5x3 or 25+15 or 40ft, I can't think of that many games where the character wind up fighting more than 40ft apart. It's an immediate action which means you can cast it when you see the fighter going down or about to go down so you don't need to worry about wasting an action, and as a previous poster says if its on thats 7 rounds where you could get taken to -7000hp and still you wont die. You can't see that practically eliminating fatalities. Like I said prepare 2 per day, use them only as needed, how often are you having two characters go down in a day where you can't get to heal them quickly so need a ranged spell? I'm not saying it ends all lethality, but yeah, I can see very very very few players dying if that spell is in the arsenal.
It's not like there's one standing right by every party member waiting for them to drop so they can cast this.Close range mean 25 feet +5 feet per/2 levels, a cleric needs to be 7th level to cast a 4th level spell, so that's 25+5x3 or 25+15 or 40ft, I can't think of that many games where the character wind up fighting more than 40ft apart. It's an immediate action which means you can cast it when you see the fighter going down or about to go down so you don't need to worry about wasting an action, and as a previous poster says if its on thats 7 rounds where you could get taken to -7000hp and still you wont die. You can't see that practically eliminating fatalities. Like I said prepare 2 per day, use them only as needed, how often are you having two characters go down in a day where you can't get to heal them quickly so need a ranged spell? I'm not saying it ends all lethality, but yeah, I can see very very very few players dying if that spell is in the arsenal.
Worse than that, Favored Souls could just learn the spell and cast it as needed.
Being that I am a bastardly DM and have gone through the books much more than some of my players, I expect the Healer in my party in STAP to start memorizing it after I have an enemy or two use it to keep some very nasty monster with Frenzy or Die Hard or something else like that from dropping.
Bwahahahah.
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I guess I'm in the minority here. I really liked a lot of the Sword and Sorcery stuff and was a huge fan of Scarred Lands. I liked its flavor and generally I thought it was well written. Even the Creature Compendiums they put out I thought were solid enough to place several of the creatures in my games (they were different than the core critters at least, which is what I liked).
Yeah, I'm a huge fan, too, but this ain't the thread for it. This is the 'Abuse' thread where we heap contempt on D&D products that have roused our ire.
And now I have to go watch Monty Python's 'abuse' skit. (paraphrased, since I'm not looking it up, and it's been at least 20 years...)
"Shut your festering gob, you tit! Your type make me sick, you toffee-nosed vacuous malodorous pervert!"
"I'm just here for an argument!"
"Oh, terribly sorry, this is abuse. You want room 23, down the hall."