"At high levels a monk should have enough magic items to make up for most of his deficiencies and you have more survivability than any other melee class going up against a caster, with the possible exception of ToB classes." <-OhgodwhatwhydidInotnoticethatbeforewhhhhhhyyyyyy
Try something more specific that can be answered yes or no, like "At higher levels, does magic item accumulation help balance martial and caster classes?"
Which I would translate as "Not only do spellcasters gain power exponentially while martial classes do so quadratically, the spellcasters are also gathering items at an equal rate."
@Lord_Gareth I'd ask @BrianBallsun-Stanton first, but I suspect each of those could be acceptable as an individual tightly-focused Q&A.
I was intending on addressing first how picking up items at high levels helps stopgap some, but not all, of non-magical class weaknesses and then address how it doesn't match up to spellcasters, since the two are related but different beasts. Most published monsters aren't full casters.
But fullcasters ARE common villains, so they belong in that discussion
Since it's dealing with how it's a problem for PCs
I'm imagining a question like "How useful are the wealth-by-level guidelines and what should I know about using them? with a sub-question like "what are alternatives to the wealth-by-level guidelines that I can use in my game?"
Mobile enemies, self-mobility, action economy, non-AC defenses, battlefield control, lack of out-of-combat utility, inferiority to monsters that dwell in a similar niche, and lack of answers to monstrous/magical panic buttons.
Sorry, PF is a bit of a berserker button on my end of the keyboard. I hate Paizo in ways most people reserve for, say, the man who killed their family at the start of the movie.
@BESW - My main issue with Paizo is not their sloppy and half-done work. It's their complete and utter lack of maturity and professionalism and the abusive tone that the designers take with their fans while they tromp around their forums like god-kings, banning anyone who dares to disagree with them.
(My secondary issue with Paizo is that they promised to fix 3.5. On that promise I purchased their core books for PF. The store refused to give me my money back)
@Lord_Gareth I have EiJ in the back of the PC binder on a single sheet of paper, for players to occupy themselves with while I rejigger the campaign they've just broken.
@Brian - Well, the thing is that this represents a solved problem for /me/, but looking through the threads and answers of the community it doesn't seem to be a solved problem for /them/
My problems with the sound effect library question:
Due Diligence and standing.
Due Diligence: you've given no evidence that you haven't done a trivial google search for sound effects.
Standing: Your question is: "Where can I find a sound library?" for a bunch of generic sounds. While these a...
Well, the problem relates to the player. [Classes] have that list of problems, which require solutions. The player seeks solutions to those problems (this is where the problem I'm addressing starts) and comes to magical items as the solution, and unfortunately they're NOT a solution
...Well, I could wax poetic about the paladin character I had who broke his shield, threw away his holy symbol and retired in disgust but that's more dramatic than helpful.
@Lord_Gareth SM2 I already have, fine spell; Web is a good idea too... Glitterdust is my favourite L2 atm, if every monster every hadn't saved against it every time I cast it
I'm sure you have a lot of guidance and solutions in you, but I think @BrianBallsun-Stanton is right that at least at first you should allow it to bubble up organically.
For Christmas this year, I got the Monster Manual Three. Only problem is, this one is for 4e and I play almost exclusive 3.5. However, I started flipping through the pages anyway out of curiosity.
I've barely heard of some of these monsters, and a others I've never heard of. The tulgar? I like t...
@JonathanHobbs If you don't want me to snipe your Hidden Club answer out from under you, you'll have to add a discussion of the rules changes. That guy's using the PHB, poor man.
@Lord_Gareth If I were feeling exceptionally generous and benevolent I might houserule that if some poor sap spent their money that way they'd get to roll twice.
@JonathanHobbs I've generally expected the DDI Compendium to be the most up-to-date, but the Rules Compendium has some obviously better wordings that don't change the meaning, just make it clearer. Sigh.
@BESW Yeah I realised leaving it as-is would leave him just going "Oh." and staring at his PHB and wondering how useless and irrelevant it is. And then I remembered that isn't the case. Errata!
> This is why, for example, the Monk AC bonus does not stack with the Swordsage AC bonus - despite coming from two different sources and having subtly different rules text, they're both named 'AC bonus' and as a result do not stack. -- @Lord_Gareth
Hmmmm; looking at the spells for a control based 3.5/PF Wizard, seems to me that ultimately your goal is to have AOE based control spells that target as many different saving throw types as possible (principally will as it's usually the hardest to increase) so you can lock down different enemy types....
@Lord_Gareth 4e has the concept of typed and untyped bonuses, wherein for any type of bonus, only the highest bonus of that type applies. If you have two bonuses, a +2 and a +4 Necrotic Bonus to Damage, only the +4 applies. But with untyped bonuses (e.g. "+1 Bonus to AC" with no type specified, unlike "Reflex Bonus to AC"), untyped bonuses always stack.
@Lord_Gareth Your fortification answer is really just an addendum to Rob's. It'd probably be better as a comment to his post, which someone can then edit into his answer if they like it.
> Untyped Bonus: Some bonuses have no type (“a +2 bonus,” for instance). Most of these bonuses are situational and combine with other bonuses, including other untyped bonuses. However, untyped bonuses from the same named game element (such as a power or a feat) are not cumulative; only the highest applies, unless otherwise noted.
I don't understand this, since you can have multiple untyped bonuses from feats, and multiple untyped bonuses from two sides of a hybrid class. Right?
There is no easy or good way to do this.
Which doesn't mean there's NO way to do this, mind you. It's just that it's going to be a rough and toothy thing on you. I'm afraid the proposed answer involving shaving the defenses and the like is more of a stop-gap solution than it is a long-term way t...
Say you have a feat called Master of Punching Faces that gives a +1 bonus to attack rolls, and then you pick up a class feature called Master of Punching Faces that gives a +1 bonus to attack rolls.
These do not stack because they have the same ability name
Now, if the feat was instead named Master of Kicking Shins
Then the game would just see two untyped bonuses, add them together and call it a day
Ah, so they have to be very careful with naming things I guess. Ok, that makes total sense: you can't get two bonuses from Fortification because they're the same game element, and it's not Shield Fortification and Armor Fortification, it's just Fortification.
@Lord_Gareth I have had some amazing discussions with people who have a hard time separating a fictional moral paradigm from their IRL ideas about morality. Which is understandable but makes any talking about the Axis of Lawful Stupid moot.
@Lord_Gareth Going way back though, you might be interested to know that FATE Core and the quickstart edition will be released under a pay what you want model after the kickstarter ends. You can also get access to the pre release materials by pledging a dollar and then taking back the pledge (it won't take any money out of your account).
Plus there's the problem where the designers couldn't be consistent about any kind of alignment-based issue either. There's some telling shit that the best alignment books published were Heroes of Horror, Champions of Ruin and the two Fiendish Codexes
BoED and BoVD just aren't worth consulting about it.
At all.
Man I hope my answer is actually helpful. Seeing "There's no good way to do this," in bold at the top has GOT to be a little discouraging.
@Lord_Gareth Isn't there some way to build off the 4E monster skeleton, look for the distinctive features of that monster and then use those against a 3.5 monster skeleton?
@Lord_Gareth I didn't say anything about players. There are generic monster skeletons that give you base stats for something in a certain role at a certain level.
At the risk of tooting my own horn, I consider myself to have been an above-average NPC-builder in both systems. Here's the difference as I see it: In 3.5 you begin with what a creature is and from that you discover what it can do; in 4e you build around a creature's capabilities.
@BESW Arrg, two different threads of conversation. The point was to compare the monster to the generic skeleton to get an idea of what makes it distinctive (kobolds got Shifty, some get less hit points and more damage, others the other way round) and using that to build on top of a generic 3.5 monster.
Can you reduce the "how to 3.5"ness, as that's not the question being asked, and maybe make suggestions about converting common 4e concepts to 3.5 terms?
Does it make sense that we're looking at the 4E strike, seeing that it's got, say, a ranged basic attack that's a fireball and that's the only thing that's different from a generic striker of its level?
My problems with the sound effect library question:
Due Diligence and standing.
Due Diligence: you've given no evidence that you haven't done a trivial google search for sound effects.
Standing: Your question is: "Where can I find a sound library?" for a bunch of generic sounds. While these a...
