TRPG General Chat - 2013-01-15 (page 2 of 3)

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2:00 PM

Sounds good

(The party was suitably impressed by the evil empire's strategy of sending armies of slaves out to soften up the advancing troops, and then animating the corpses as zombies behind them.)

@BESW I think you've got the right idea with all of that :)

Of course, this assumes I can cajole my PCs into this course of action...

Well, either they start in the dungeons of a city in chaos, or they start outside the city in chaos ;)

Which is why I made sure the campaign's main conceit is that each PC must be a member of the "Silver Dragons," an elite special ops team that does the things the Lawful Good empire they work for can't be seen doing.

2:05 PM

@BESW Being the grey paladins always works

@Zachiel Oh, I knew my players weren't going to play nice with a Lawful Good nation. So I gave them a justification for it.

And it also gives me a leash when I need one.

(I've said this before and I'll say it again; this is the most railroaded game I've ever run.)

If there's partecipationism in it it's ok

However, as Jeor suggested...

...here I am setting up an encounter that might or might not happen, in the very tradition of D&D 3.0 published adventures

@Zachiel Oh, certainly. We all started out knowing the kind of campaign it would be: it's set 2000 years in the past compared to the standard 4e "Points of Light" setting, so some events are historically inevitable.

The fun is in seeing how the party was involved in them, and how things that seem truly horrific are actually a better outcome than what could've happened.

(This enemy city is said to have "mysteriously exploded.")

(I see. Good point.)

Within the confines of what history "knows," we have fairly wide range.

And some of history is wrong. That's fun too.

2:10 PM

History is written by the winners

I'm trying to understand (after 8 years of DMing games, yes) how to play premade enemies in an effective way. So I'm gonna share with you some data and play "what would ____ do" with you

There are no winners in this war. [grin] Both sides fell apart simultaneously.

Someone's gonna profit from that

Do you think a separate chat would be better suited to my experiment?

@BESW (that reminds me of Tippyverse somehow. I wonder, what would Elder Evils From Beyound be able to do in it?)

@Zachiel I really don't know. Depends on how massive your copypasta is.

IDK yet

2:13 PM

For the record, my vision of Allabar attacking the city is largely based on this:

user image

@BESW Not as cool as I've figured it in my mind. There's too much purple in there

(Canonically Allabar is a living planet that got thrown into the Far Realm toward the beginning of creation. I find that a little silly and hard to fight.)

@Zachiel and the party is going to influence who will that be, exactly.

@Zachiel Definitely, but it's where I started.

@besw too much gold too. :D

2:15 PM

Mmm. I'm thinking Disney Villain colors.

@Zachiel that is dangerously close to 'too much cool'. What's wrong with gold?

I do want to make sure there's a strong ice/crystal/wind theme coming off him.

@Jeormattan not my idea of elder evil coming from a stormy sky. I figure a lot of black and blue and maybe some dark green or dark violet for the tentacles. Dark means anguish and despair to me.

So cooler colors: blue, green, cool purples. Electric blue and white.

Disney's Hades comes to mind.

2:19 PM

The Far Realm is unimaginably alien and as has been pointed out earlier, not exactly malevolent.

@Zachiel He is a source of the color pallet, yeah.

@Zachiel that could be timed with the dusk, hence the warmer gold/red/purple shades. Some warmer tones also do incite a certain bit of hope (which may be desired or not).

My personal view of the Far Realm (which is not entirely supported by canon) is that it is an area in which our physical laws and order as we know it do not exist: perhaps there are other laws, perhaps order means something else, but they are different if they exist at all.

And into this space appeared a blop of something different. Something with order and physical laws that are wrong and strange and worrisome: the D&D multiverse.

Whether the multiverse drifted into the Far Realm from somewhere else, or spontaneously generated, or whatever, is unknown. But to the Far Realm and the things within it, the multiverse is like a sliver stuck under a nail.

Or a foreign body in the bloodstream.

That's remarkably similar to my own take on it

And the Far Realm's response is like an immune system's: it sends out forces and beings to destroy, to convert, or to encapsulate the invader.

Many aberrants we see are in the process of being converted from multiversal to Far Realm substances.

Other aberrants are actually from the Far Realm, seeking to destroy or encapsulate us, in whole or in part.

And they do not work together because their goals are different.

But the stimulus is the same, the source and the end result: an invader is found and neutralized.

Meanwhile the multiverse has its own immune response: psionics.

As for my encounter I'm gonna keep it simple unless asked to detail.
There's 4 characters in the party, everybody is level 15. No polymorph (the players chose so). 3.0 edition (so haste and harm are broken spells). Every caster except for the druid has CL+4 feats. They are a cleric/divine disciple of grumbar with a bard/shadowdancer cohort; an invoker wizard/arcane disciple/archmage (energy substitution and shaped spells); a barbarian with boots of flying; a gnome druid with a dire bear.

@besw that thing about psionics is cool

I've got to find some sinonyms for cool, man...

2:26 PM

@Zachiel Psionics are canonically a response to aberrant activity.

I must have skipped that info

@Zachiel It's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it blip. I ran across it studying for this campaign, because when asked what they wanted in the game all my players said was "dragonborn, and the Far Realm."

I guess this leads to Sorcerers...

Sorcerers, paladins and warlocks.

Also I'm talking about 4e, so that may be part of your confusion.

might be. I don't have PHB3 (a friend of mine has)

2:30 PM

PHB3's introduction to the psionic power source is just a page and a half, but it starts "The Far Realm is a disease, and we are its cure."

Basically when aberrant activity starts rising in an area, the locals are increasingly likely to start manifesting psionic powers.

There's a theory that it actually comes from the Far Realm, and in my version would be a subtle part of the "convert" process.

I'm going to be using that in this campaign, largely because the monk has been wearing a jangly hat he pulled off a Far Realm cultist ten levels ago and is completely unconcerned by this.

hahaha, excellent

My players seem to have this weird notion that if I appear to be making something up on the spot, it can't possibly be related to the plot.

Of course, this isn't the group I had when I used the koan koi.

Weird indeed. It may be unrelated at the moment you're making it up, but afterwards it can be easily connected to whatever you want.

however, my pcs are coming down a levitation shaft and find themselves in a square room with different doors. One leads to a passageway wit some weak monsters in it, one has a low level cleric that's gonna turn invisible and pepper the party with area spells and the other one has... this

user image

Koan koi: magical carp that, if fed, will provide a cryptic but always accurate prophecy, in the form of a haiku.

@Zachiel [eyes glaze over] I forgot what a chore 3.5 NPCs were.

2:42 PM

now, my question is. How can this enemy be a threat to the previously described party? Which spells first? Can she survive the first round? what if she gets dispelled?

@BESW I know but they don't like 4e combat

First off I'd re-do her entire spell list to better suit her flavor and her feats, or change out her feats.

@Zachiel City of the Spider Queen?

@Zachiel how willing you are to change the details?

@Zachiel Egads, that's painful to look at, for so many different reasons. First thought: 81 hp at level 15 = splat. She'd have to be prepared and with a lot of spells already active, and even then it's a couple of hits worth of hp.

@simon yessir

2:44 PM

If you're going to focus on necromancy, woman, focus on necromancy.

Well, they didn't die at the Maurezhi. Twice. Like my party did.

@jeormattan I can change her spells

@simongill was the maurezhi even a threat?

since she has spiderform I guess she has the spider domain that also means spidercurse cast on everybody in the area

@Zachiel One person wandered off alone while wounded. The GM got the player to play the demon after it took their shape. I was the last to die in the first round of deaths ... and I happened to be playing a Rokugani from the other side of Kara-Tur. Iaijutsu Focus in a creature with at-will invisibility is a little crazy.

@Zachiel would also help to change feats.

@jeormattan I know but I've promised myself not to redo NPCs from scratch

2:47 PM

as for spells, how much prep time she is going to have?

@simon@ we're playing core and FRCS only

@Zachiel changing spells is a lot more like redoing from scratch. just sayin'.

@jeor let's say as much as she wants.

@jeor that, she could change them every day. Plus, everybody here knows the PCs' tactics

@Zachiel Doesn't mean that with good GMing you couldn't lose one party to the damn thing in the same way. That creature was evil (and lucky/good with its feeding choices).

@simon they're used not to wander alone

with my previous group that would have been different

2:50 PM

What is a greater fire elemental gem and why does it sound abysmally useless?

summons a greater fire elemental

@Zachiel That's sensible of them. No old-school "I'm going to scout ahead (and palm some treasure)" rogues then?

@Zachiel first, she needs some buddies. have her Animate Dead something nasty (she can control 60HD of undead and is going to need all of them).

@simon the ususal rogue was playing a wizard at that time. An optimized magicjar wizard

From the new FATE COre kickstarter update - "Considering upgrading your pledge for additional books, but the math makes your head hurt? Fred's put together this handy spreadsheet for working out how much any kind of upgrade might cost. Thanks to everyone who helped "playtest" it!" That math is nuts.

2:52 PM

@jeormattan 3.0 udeads?

@Zachiel Soooo, she has a one-use item that summons a creature nearly half her level?

That deals damage which is the most resisted in the game?

And she'd better use that before the players get an hold on it and sell it for money

@Zachiel is there significant difference? I don't have the 3.0 books on hand.

Skellies and zombies are not a template. They're weak creatures no matter the size.

@SimonGill I am so glad I have a decent excuse not to try any of that.

2:54 PM

@Zachiel considering that every caster except the druid has a ton of feats, would you mind adding several feats to the drow, so the chances would be a little bit more even?

okay, Create Greater Undead, then.

@jeormattan which feats would you suggest?

zombler.org/files/srd30a

I think there's a little bit more spells on FRCS but nothing except for spidercurse is really worth it

mh everybody wait, wait, wait

it looks like the princess is in another castl... ehrrr, the priestess is in another room

so here we have a weak cleric casting spells while invisible that could bother the party and let them use some resource but nothing more...

and some quth marens

they were weak at level 10 I guess they're gonna be weak at level 15

feats: Improved Init, Extend spell, empower (?), leadership

oh noes, that is not relevant anymore.

She's gonna be part ofa an encounter later

extend spell?

She can control plenty of HD of undead with rebuke undead without being limited to the spells she can cast to create them: means you're not limited to "weak" undead.

it is generally useful, so why not? that, and the feat slots aren't gonna fill themselves. 19 feats are too much for 3.0 srd

3:04 PM

@besw she'd need to find undead first, which is pretty hard since the castle she's in is under siege and the PCs burn every corpse they find

@Zachiel ....she couldn't have had them already?

@BESW At any one time, the cleric may command any number of undead whose total Hit Dice do not exceed his level

that is kinda meh

but should be used, of course

(BTW I'm not gonna add leadership cohorts to the encounter. Just the NPCs the manual provides. my aim is not to make things difficult, it's to make things as tifficult as they can be while staying true to the adventure) - in other words I want to learn how to use monsters, not how to create them

dndtools.eu/feats/complete-divine--56/undead-mastery--3015

so no Create Greater Undead/Command Undead either?

3:06 PM

@Jeormattan in 3.5 (playing RttToEE) I killed the frenzied berserker with a horde of living fossyl orcs controlled by a lower level cleric

@BESW that's not 3.0 core, sorry.

@besw also, cha 21?

Mmm, core.

@Zachiel there usually are multiple ways to kill the entire party using a handful of monsters with CR 2 lower than their level, but that's beside the question.

There are other ways around it, including an item that gives a similar but stacking effect, but... core.

(Also Undead Leadership is fun.)

3:08 PM

@jeormattan they were 30 1/3 CR monsters with DR 10/adamantium

("Go forth, my army of ghouls and ghasts, while I ride above you on my SKELETAL NIGHTMARE!")

Let's take it just as an exercise for me to understand how to make choices. Should I play her as written, which spells would be better to cast first (after buffing herselves out of combat)?

Is it better to try a save or die or to cast the best AoE I have?

My aim is to delay the party

Fortitude SoD on party wizard, of course.

Dispel, dispel, dispel?

Dispel on her, yeah, that always happens

3:10 PM

No, her on them.

best AoE/tough debuff/dispel, if you only want to delay.

@BESW I don't think that would tourn the tables that much

Oh I don't want to delay them in rounds. I want to let them back and come tomorrow

(better specify that)

maybe a dispel on the barbarian's sword, coupled with damage resistance could be good.

then you're better off with killing the wizard outright (you might also be able to one-shot the barbarian with Will SoD, but wizard is way more valuable, IMO).

dispel on sword is going to make him what, do 3-4 damage less per attack? not worth it.

The wizard has 24 con and a +5 vest of resistance

luckily, he doesn't like to be anything but human

@JeorMattan Minus 3 or 4 to hit, however...

3:13 PM

uhm. nice wizzy. does Barbarian have con 12, by any chance?

otherwise it could have been worse

no, 16

for he has a different amulet

@BESW non-issue with AC 23.

but he has 200 hp already so who cares

as for the sword, keep in mind how resistance to damage keyed the +s in 3.0

DR 30/+5

okay, Harm someone, it has no save.

@JeorMattan ....how do you get 23 AC? I'm seeing at least 31: cloak of chaos and shield of faith.

3:15 PM

And the cleric has problems casting heal while in the castle

the cleric' s gonna cast improved dispel on his first round

@Zachiel And you say she's familiar with the party's tactics? Switch out level 8 fire storm for spell immunity: improved dispel.

I ance had a revenant wizard turned into an abyssal ghoul, with shield (+7 ca), bigby's interposing hand (+10 vs the barbarian) and several other spells on it. He needed to come, gather them under him, then cast (hasted) death cloud and a spherical force field around the party.

Got dispelled

And killed

Undeads have so few hps

@besw dispels can't be stopped by spell immunity for they don't mess with SR

Eh. 3.x is out of my bailiwick now, obviously.

@BESW derp, yeah. maybe even unholy aura for more.

@besw but let's say this is a full cleric (opposed to the eeeeewsome ftr4/nec7 I had to use in the past)

so she might keep some of her spells on her

3:21 PM

@Zachiel See, this is why she really needs to rebuild either her spell list or her feats. If she wants to stand up against dispels, she has to be stacking her spells and her +CL bonuses in the same places.

Instead she's spread her +CLs between necromancy and chaos, and her spell choices are even more scattered. She's been built for flavor rather than effectiveness.

right, if her spells have a better CL she's less likely to lose them

It's a pity the players will never appreciate that flavor. Not for more than 12 seconds if at all.

Quite frankly she'd be better off with a scroll of some massive illusion spell and faking something that presented a bigger threat to the party to make them back off.

The necromancer unbarring the door and shouting "I told you -not- to disturb me, guys!" is way more scenic

the party happily attacked and killed a dracolich last week

and some gargantuan spider golem

I kept a party intimidated by three level 12 hags until they were level 26 through the use of well-placed illusions.

I don't think anything is gonna make them go back unless it kills 1 or 2 of them

3:25 PM

[coughwallofstonecough]

They can be at 12 hp each and still say "let's kill it, fast!"

@BESW to divide the party?

okay, first things first for prep: create undead for a bunch of shadows. have them hide in the walls and surprise the party (someone with low str and low touch ac). don't go for spectres if you manage to boost her CL, str drain is much better under this circumstances. is that acceptable?

@jeormattan that's a good idea

Then, Forbiddance. As much as funds allow.

Unhallow and desecrate just for good measure.

to keep the barbarian out

3:27 PM

See, that's being smart rather than strong.

You don't outfight a wizard. You outpsych him.

the wizard might have an antimagic field ready

@Zachiel So? Shadows are created, not conjured.

they are incorporeal and wink out in AMF, no?

for entering the forbiddance

plus, Jeor is right

Okay, then bait the wizard away.

3:28 PM

our previous wizard already exploited that

(also don't forget to create undead under unhallow+desecrate effect, so it does get nice bonuses)

I need to conjure some strong creature with reach to keep him far from the forbiddance zone

Bah, I must go to sleep. Good luck. Plan smart, not strong.

@BESW this. AMF is just 10-ft radius.

I'll try. Ta

3:30 PM

@Zachiel you may forego that. AMF suppresses spell effects, not dispels them. And the wizard in question won't be able to cast himself.

@BESW GN

One last thing! It sounds like you know your party's strategies pretty well. Exploit that. If the wizard is going to cast some strong spells in the first round or two that will tip the balance in the party's favor... have the cleric hide while her shadows and impressive-but-wussy summons begin the fight, with dispel ready as a counter action.

@JeorMattan The wizard might cast haste or a delayed fireball. Problem is the room is small (yes, even the room where the priestess actually is)

crap, desecrate cannot be tied to Unhallow. Okay, maybe silence, then? and use silent spell yourself or stay out of the Unhallow area.

And do bait-and-switch: Set them up for one kind of fight by using minons and summons and illusions to mimic a scenario they can anticipate, then reveal the real fight after they've committed resources to the false one.

@besw not useful. they use the same tactics everywhere. AoE spells and physical attacks

maybe someone can cast harm or save or dies

3:36 PM

@Zachiel And there's no way you as GM can't houserule or bring in other source material?

Because I've seen that strategy, and I've seen what beats it: zombie bombs.

@besw I don't want to.

I just want to learn how to play villains smart

with limited resources

@Zachiel as in, "cast DBF, give it to another character, cast AMF?" Good luck with handling a grenade.

DBF? AMF?

Delayed Blast Fireball, Anti-Magic Field

Choose your ground and use it to your advantage, anticipate the party's choices and turn it to your advantage or deny them their favorite tactics, use minions and summons without being obvious about it so you can stay in the background while the party wastes resources on mooks....

3:39 PM

No, he's an archmage, he can throw fireballs with safe zones for allies

He can't while in AMF. And his allies can not.

he's not gonna be on amf. He's gonna use it only if the party needs a portal to enter the forbiddance

Can you attach quench to unhallow?

he's a wizard. He's weak in AMF

against sonic delayed fireballs?

...silence.

3:41 PM

I'm not even sure protection from energy can protect against sonic damage

Silence.

Silence.

And hope he doesn't step back

Attached to unhallow.

woooooh

Even if he steps out of the silence, the sonicball is nullified within the zone of silence.

3:42 PM

...not sure

"This spell provides a defense against sonic or language-based attacks, such as command, a harpy's captivating song, a horn of blasting, and the like."

hahahaha ok good

Now take the Silent Spell metamagic feat.

you're a genius. But he's gonna switch to lightning or acid. However, that's a spell less and half a turn less

How do you have someone who casts sonicballs as a regular thing and not use a level 2 spell available to bards to stop him?

3:44 PM

hey guys, I suggested that first.

@Zachiel um, he switches energy types on the fly?

@JeorMattan true. But I was thinking about blocking casters

Heck, you don't even have to be able to cast it! A wand of silence is just as effective. Caster level doesn't matter.

@jeormattan 3.0 archmage says so

@besw that npc doesn't have a wand of silence. But I'm gonna use the tactic on the first enemy with silent spell I find.

@Zachiel so he is able to, like, sonic fireball-drill his way around the priestess if he wants?

@Zachiel this npc is able to cast silence herself.

@Zachiel Where is the 3.0 archmage?

3:47 PM

@besw FRCS

@jeormattan yes but I think she's unable to cast in her own silence

@Zachiel we were talking about adding feats, right? add Silent Spell.

Or stand away from your own Unhallow.

Silence Area: 20-ft.-radius emanation centered on a creature, object, or point in space

Cast it on a rock. Throw it.

Also: look up the rules for emanations.

If she stands away from her own unhallow the archmage can damage her again

@Zachiel Not if the unhallow is between them.

@besw can't the sonicball be centered on her? It's a physical sphere being launched to her position and then exploding

3:50 PM

What we're saying here is, there are a ton of options even within the ridiculous artificial limitations you've set by restricting yourself to an obviously poor NPC design.

@Zachiel not if he is silenced. not if he is harmed. not if he is in his anti-magic field. not if he is drained by shadows.

@Zachiel And it's a sonic descriptor spell passing through a zone that explicitly shields against sonic attacks.

I've seen better plans fail in my hands XD

But this looks evil enough

It is not a full plan.

That may be one of your difficulties: don't lose sight of the bigger picture.

Remember to set up terrain advantage, remember the shadow mooks and make sure they're used to great effect by targeting low-touch-AC low-Str PCs.

I guess I need to concede him a spellcraft check to recognize what's happening and a knowledge (arcana) check to understand that a sonic spell is not gonna work if he enters the silence area

3:53 PM

Remember that the wizard is trashing himself when he puts up AMZ.

that's gonna be his problem

@Zachiel Does he have detect magic or a higher-level equivalent on at all times?

no

If not, no dice.

Once he interacts with it, then allow him a check. Go look up the rules on that.

yes yes, if he enters the zone I said

(weren't you going to bed btw?)

3:55 PM

@Zachiel he can't, someone is wrong in the Internet

XKCD XD

Actually I've got a friend who needs to vent on IM.

High five!

Oooh look at that feed!

May I reply "because it is so"?

Already posted a tvtropes link there.

You may reply with information about system balance (such as it is), or Vancian magic and Gygax's other inspirations.

@JeorMattan Yes, @SimonGill is talking about D&D. That's his point.

A wizard spends minutes casting a spell at the start of the day so he can take seconds finishing the cast during combat.

4:01 PM

I was just joking. "Because it is so" is, by the way, the favourite sentence of the archmage's player. Why do you play humans? Humans are better. Why? Because it is so.

@Zachiel "Because of The Reason."

I'd say because of the free feat but...

@BESW Yep, see rpg.stackexchange.com/a/12311/4463 for more detail.

And now I am going to try to go to sleep.

@BESW yeah, got it. That is still poorly implemented in the D&D 3.x, since the spell prep time is constant while spell volume grows.

4:03 PM

@JeorMattan If that's even on your list of poor 3.x implementation, you've got it good.

@JeorMattan That's not too much of a problem. If you start out spending 5-10 minutes casting a spell, you can learn to reduce that for the simple stuff to 30-60 seconds. It's still realistically out of range of combat casting though.

@jeormattan don't forget being able to cast no more than 6 level 0 spells ever, or 5 level one and one level 2 (but never 0 level 1 and 2 level 2) and so on

@Zachiel I don't think I follow you here. Care to elaborate?

@jeormattan spell slots. Not only I need to prepare in advance, I need to keep separate buffers for different spell levels.

And I know this is bad for I play a chameleon

@Zachiel yeah, that's when it starts to break down

4:07 PM

@SimonGill aaand that reminds me of recharge magic variant from UA, which had you wait for several rounds before you could cast a spell of the same level again.

(as my first caster casting more than 1st level spells ever)

@Zachiel was confused by "no more than X ever". with arbitrarily high Int you can cast arbitrarily large quantities of spells for any given level of those you're able to cast.

except for cantrips

you never get lvl 0 bonus spell slots

you can prepare cantrip in a 1st level slot, you know.

highly unuseful

but true

4:09 PM

yes, that would be impractical.

that's the word

@Zachiel play factotum, get rid of that spell level nonsense.

@JeorMattan Use Psionics, do the same :P

I've played a factotum

my DM banned it for everybody had 1/3 levels of it.

and with everybody I mean 50% of the people in a whole mmorpg

@SimonGill use Spell-to-power Erudite and convert Vancian system to Mana!

4:14 PM

@JeorMattan Now you are over my head.

@Zachiel whoa, whoa. No full casters in the group? The biggest problem had just solved itself, why bother banning anything?

Because if 50% of a population takes a class, that's a good sign there's something wrong.

@SimonGill an ACF for the psionic class Erudite, allowing to convert arcane spells to psionic powers and use them as such.

@SimonGill if 50% of the population wants to play skill monkeys they will likely all get some levels in factotum (which is a cool front-loaded skillmonkey class), but if that's a problem at all, it is a meta-game problem.

and for other character roles factotum is not so good everybody wants it.

@JeorMattan Well, that says that there aren't enough skill monkey classes that can compete with Factotum. Which isn't good in a class system with lots of classes.

@Jeormattan ArchivistX/factotum1 with devotion for knowledge and

for assasins it was great. they always won initiative

We were playing planescape

there's a non-epic feat that adds int to damage instead of str

add factotum

add wth it's called

the one on complete warrior

three times int to damage

add power attack and jump attack

add a valorous butterfly dagger

12xint damage plus 4xBAB damage on a charge

can you call it a skill monkey?

4:25 PM

We're going to need more dice.

@SimonGill I don't want to raise the old debate, but in the system where a wizard or cleric does better job as a skill monkey than a dedicated skill monkey your point is pretty much irrelevant.

@Zachiel no, I can call it "full caster". also, power attack with a light weapon? no way.

@JeorMattan I'm running my thoughts off the same principles as the CCG metagame. If one card is in over half of decks, no matter what they are, that card gets banned or errated.

and where did you get one more doubling of int? I can see 3xint doubled on charge from valorous.

There are a variety of different caster classes at the top. If almost everybody is playing one caster class, then it's time to look at it.

@jeor right, no power attack on that build.
As for int 1 from the feat 1 from the class I can't remember the name and 1 from factotum spending points. 3x. 2x from valorous. 2x because it's 2 attacks with the... oh it was not butterfly it was... oh, can't remember the name. It's on a dragon magazine.

4:32 PM

so it's basically 4xint to damage on charge. 2 times per day its 6xint (factotum 1 = 2 inspiration points). OH NO, FACTOTUMS ARE TERRIBLY BROKEN.

sorry, but the factotum seems a poor addition to this.

@SimonGill wanna ban/fix lands? or, to put it differently, why fix minor balance issues when there are MAJOR ones (read: casters)?

@JeorMattan No need to go to absurdity. You know that basic lands are different from other cards. The reason is that the minor issues are fixable or have appeared because of local house rules. Fixing casters means fundamentally rewriting the game or playing a different one(which is an option, but it's not really a fix anymore).

@SimonGill while minor features are fixable, what good is the fix going to do for the overall game? Certainly it is not game balance, since casters still unbalance the game.

CCG metagame is vastly different because CCG tend to be fairly balanced at some point, and if the issues appear, you can fix them all in a neat fashion.

That is not the case with D&D, where fixing minor balance points just because they are fixable resembles brushing your teeth before going out... during the earthquake or something.

@JeorMattan CCGs hope for balance. They rarely are. And it's certainly not neat.

@JeorMattan Minor balance points that have become noticable - I wouldn't do anything if only 10% had the Factotum class and were pulling off silly things with it. But when one class is felt necessary to boost half of the players in a large group. There's something wrong there.

Whether it's house rules with unintended consequences or the class itself, there's something that can be done to deal with a noticeable skew.

Going back to casters, there are plenty of caster archetypes out there providing variety. Yes, they are usually more powerful than mundanes.

4:48 PM

That DM banned Clone and several other high level spells, sends quaruts against whoever uses too much wishes (including tomes and manuals), recently banned that knife

but any SAD build is a good build

But, they aren't all using the same tricks (which get boring in a large scale environment).

think of a game where winning initiative means being able to kill an opponent in a single turn

@SimonGill while I agree with the general idea of fixing overly popular whatever, I don't think one group is representative enough to make a conclusion. And if everyone in a group is using the same tricks, it's more of a meta-game problem, like, in the players' heads.

yes, meta game problem

@JeorMattan And bans are a move in the meta-game. It deals with the problem.

@JeorMattan Don't forget this is a big group with multiple DMs. When you've got 10s of people on a forum/chat, it's a different game than you and 4 or 5 mates round a table.

4:53 PM

@SimonGill Players: we all want to do X! Ideal DM: guys, that would be boring. Wanna try Y or Z instead? Bad DM: X is overpowered! I hereby ban X!

@SimonGill a valid point. Haven't thought of that.

local meta issues for certain.

@JeorMattan Round a small table - it's a different set of issues. And you can get the communication going to do more interesting things.

You can play 4 clerics of pelor at the same table and be happy with it. In an environment where every new character you get in touch with is a cleric of Pelor you start asking yourself why.
I guess full casters aren't that great in that game because you need years to get to the point where they get uber. An ubercharger deals 200 damage at level 8 there (pathfinder fear ratio)

and lower levels are easier to get

so... metagame

but whenever you ban a problem, you change the metagame

and new problems arise

Yeah, we've discussed how.... odd... your environment is in the past.

not the same game

a similar one

4:59 PM

@Zachiel "Everything in life is only for now."

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