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Evil Vin posted:Thanks for the comments of 4e vs 3e I'll bring this up to my friend. I apologize in advance for the next question, so if casters are way overpowered is viable just have the whole group of people play casters or will somebody have to play a lame fighter to be able to defend against some silly weakness they all have? For pure combat purposes, there's really no stage of the game where a cleric isn't at least good enough for everything. Your actual mileage with each character outside of combat will depend entirely on what kind of adventures are happening and how good the DM is. Like, there's often plenty of room for a rogue's talents, even though the system kneecaps them by making 2/3rds of the monsters immune to sneak attack.
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Sep 23, 2011 06:12
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Evil Vin posted:Thanks for the comments of 4e vs 3e I'll bring this up to my friend. I apologize in advance for the next question, so if casters are way overpowered is viable just have the whole group of people play casters or will somebody have to play a lame fighter to be able to defend against some silly weakness they all have? All Wizard and Cleric 3.5 would probably be awesome. Especially if you start at level 1 and pull no punches in encounter design.
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Sep 23, 2011 06:27
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Evil Vin posted:. . . or will somebody have to play a lame fighter to be able to defend against some silly weakness they all have? The only weakness a caster has is the person playing them. If you're willing to commit to learning all of the nuances that your spells will give you access to, you can pretty much make yourself a better fighter than a fighter, a better rogue than a rogue, and all around unstoppable. The best bet would be to get your friends together and hash out who is going to GM and what kind of story you all want to tell. If no one wants to be a caster, that's fine because you GM can tailor a story around that. If everyone wants to be full on let's run this poo poo into the ground with wizards and clerics, that's good for the GM to know too. The only way you're going to fail to have fun is if the GM just designs everything with no regard to what kind of experience everyone wants and basically tells you to suck it. As long as everyone is willing to communicate, you should wind up having fun whether you are the combat MVP of the party or just want to play a really cool concept you have for a wizened, blind rogue.
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Sep 23, 2011 06:55
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A lot of internet people are extremely passionate about which game system they prefer. Most of them are also tediously annoying. With the right people you can have plenty of fun with any edition. One thing that hasn't really been mentioned yet is that, if you're all new to tabletop, D&D 4e will probably be easier to learn (I think most people agree on this). This is largely because its combat mechanic always reduces to "actor rolls d20 against target number," whereas previous editions use different mechanics for different parts of combat (e.g. most, but not all, 3e spells require the target to roll to see if he can avoid them; many also require the caster to roll against a target number). Pathfinder, a slightly revamped version of 3e, exists as another alternative. It improved some of the worse rules in 3e (e.g. grapple) a bit and, similarly, is mostly available for free online. There are also other systems that can handle the "heroic fantasy" feel. If you do go with 3e (already owning the books is nice, as is having people who may be familiar with the rules), I'd reiterate what homeless poster just said: Communication is key (really this is true for all RPGs/social events). For instance, it doesn't matter if casters are ridiculously overpowered if no one wants to play one (or if everyone wants to play one, or play a partial caster), as long as the DM can adjust to the situation. If your group finds itself having issues (such as one member feeling useless) and you cannot figure out how to solve them yourselves, posting here is a great fallback. All caster parties, by the way, are absolutely the most powerful parties. Druids can fulfill the "fighting" role as well as clerics (i.e. better than fighters if done reasonably well). If you want to do something like this I'd suggest poking around on the internet a bit to find out which spells are good and which are a waste of your time (for everyone in the game).
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Sep 23, 2011 07:14
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OpenlyEvilJello posted:All caster parties, by the way, are absolutely the most powerful parties. Druids can fulfill the "fighting" role as well as clerics (i.e. better than fighters if done reasonably well). If you want to do something like this I'd suggest poking around on the internet a bit to find out which spells are good and which are a waste of your time (for everyone in the game).
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Sep 23, 2011 07:28
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Yawgmoth posted:I nominate this for Biggest Understatement of the Decade, especially on these forums. Nothing will make someone who prefers 4e rage harder and faster than pointing out any of of the similarities between 4e and a video game. Which is not to say that 4e's similarities to video game mechanics is a bad thing; different strokes and all. A DM that spends more than five minutes figuring out how he is going to figure out how to have a fun game this week in spite of the caster being able to 'magic anything' is a DM that is suffering under a bad system. edit: Here is a pretty good list of how classes actually work in Cookian D&D. Discuss to figure out what level y'all will be at for a fun game and have everyone stick to that relative level and things won't be actively terrible on a systematic level. Gerund fucked around with this message at 07:50 on Sep 23, 2011 |
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Sep 23, 2011 07:46
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But seriously, a decent DM can screw up a caster in a ton of ways if need be. I personally prefer casters who do things that are less combat focused, like illusionists and necromancers (although necromancers are ridiculous combatants if you skew yourself that way).
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Evil Vin posted:Thanks for the comments of 4e vs 3e I'll bring this up to my friend. I apologize in advance for the next question, so if casters are way overpowered is viable just have the whole group of people play casters or will somebody have to play a lame fighter to be able to defend against some silly weakness they all have? Unless you play a very high level campaign (12+) you probably don't need to worry about it. However, if you end up in a group of casters, and they all go all-out, the person playing the fighter can feel secondary, particularly if the casters are stingy with buffs (which would be foolish, but can definitely happen). No one should ever play a "lame" fighter who doesn't want to. However, if someone really wants to play a fighter, good feat choices and communication with the party casters are key. If all you want to do is stand around and full attack, a druid's pet can pretty much do that.
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Sep 23, 2011 07:49
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Gerund posted:A DM that spends more than five minutes figuring out how he is going to figure out how to have a fun game this week in spite of the caster being able to 'magic anything' is a DM that is suffering under a bad system.
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Sep 23, 2011 07:56
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People aren't really being a dick when one of them is playing item creation & Bat-Mannery and the other is trying to kick doors down and put evil-doers to the sword. A bad system creates conflict because there are different pages on which people get planted, while having a tighter design in a game that works gets everyone on the same page. I'd rather state, to Evil Vin mostly, that people in general would be happier playing a more focused game like John Wick's CAT with their friends rather than going through all the social grinding trying to figure out how to use the rules to make the "right" game for the party. If any guy comes into a thread and expects a good answer to "what should we play", the answer is never just "hey 3.5 is a good". You're always apologizing and fixing the problems and guessing as to what the game really is going to be. Gerund fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Sep 23, 2011 |
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Sep 23, 2011 08:29
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What are my chances of finding a set of 3.5e core books for a reasonable price? Especially Player's Handbooks. Playing D&D with some people and having fun (as a DM, WHAT) but money commitment is an issue so we've been struggling through with my remembrance of 3.5e rules and d20srd.org. I've noticed that used 3.5e books through normal channels are still pretty expensive, surely because they've been out of print for a while. Is my best bet advertising something on my own and hoping for someone who's been lazy enough to not clear out their collection yet? I guess I know the answers to these questions so my real question: is where the gently caress should I actually ask? (really, alternatives besides SA-Mart, where the desired audience is unpredictable) Upon further inspection, it's only Player's Handbooks that are ridiculous prices on the secondhand market. I think I can deal with that. Crazytroll fucked around with this message at 09:20 on Sep 23, 2011 |
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Sep 23, 2011 08:36
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I'm running a 3.5 game where everyone is a wizard or a cleric. Any tips for encounter building or any suggestions at all?
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Sep 23, 2011 11:28
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What level are they? Someone is gonna say oh yeah pump saves or maybe you want spell resistances or whatever, which is all boring because you know how to make things numerically tougher. It's the qualitative game-changers that Fighters and the player characters from Diablo II never get that you actually need to account for. First among many is that at some point you're not going to have Final Bosses anymore, because the PCs are going to find a way to teleport right to him and subsequently jump off the tops of towers fist-first so that the last thing your evil self-insert ever sees is five terminal velocity dickpunches out of nowhere, and they will do that for the entire campaign as long as your objectives are marked with finish lines.
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Sep 23, 2011 16:14
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They are going to be level 1. I'm going to balls out with my encounters but CR fair rules as written. Going to use a lot of bows and axes so that everytime I roll a 20 a PC dies outright.
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Sep 23, 2011 17:13
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Crazytroll posted:What are my chances of finding a set of 3.5e core books for a reasonable price? Especially Player's Handbooks. Playing D&D with some people and having fun (as a DM, WHAT) but money commitment is an issue so we've been struggling through with my remembrance of 3.5e rules and d20srd.org. If you've got a local used book store you might be able to find them pretty cheap (for example, in the Phoenix and Tuscon metro areas there's a place called Bookmans which I absolutely love). Most RPG stuff at second hand stores is still fairly expensive because they know nerds will gobble that poo poo up, but it's a pretty decent place to pick up holes in your collection. If that's not an option, I have also had great success with Amazon.com. It's usually a few dollars more than my local Bookman's but the flip side is they generally have whatever you're actually looking for and you don't have to make a weekly trip just to see if anything new has dropped in.
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Sep 23, 2011 17:19
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So to clarify here, if I use a Wight (CR3) that does a Negative Level on hit against a level one party if I hit them they instantly die, right?
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Sep 23, 2011 18:53
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Yup. Then they turn into wights under control of that wight 1d4 rounds later. It's a pyramid of murder!
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Sep 23, 2011 18:56
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Karandras posted:They are going to be level 1. Pfft, well so far that means once a day per wizard your entire encounter will get incapacitated by Sleep or Color Spray. The clerics will be only marginally worse than a fighter is at beating the ever living poo poo out of people. Your game isn't going to turn seriously freaky until level five at the earliest. If I was one of them I would start putting together a Corpsecrafter cleric and have a wizard take Lord of the Uttercold and together we'd slog around with a half dozen skeletons of the biggest animals we could get our hands on, dropping frozen fireballs with impunity. That's probably about as sexy as it gets at that level but the things you can do without that sort of coordination are only mildly less destructive.
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Sep 23, 2011 20:53
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Karandras posted:All Wizard and Cleric 3.5 would probably be awesome. Especially if you start at level 1 and pull no punches in encounter design. Best Party: Wizard Cleric Beguiler Druid Dread Necromancer Rogue Let's loving do this. 
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Sep 23, 2011 21:31
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MadRhetoric posted:Best Party: I would totally play in this. Dibs on dread necromancer!
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Sep 24, 2011 01:41
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Eikre posted:Pfft, well so far that means once a day per wizard your entire encounter will get incapacitated by Sleep or Color Spray. The clerics will be only marginally worse than a fighter is at beating the ever living poo poo out of people. Yeah D20SRD only so no utter cold but each Sleep spell is going to be pretty fun.
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Sep 24, 2011 02:00
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d20 update. This game is reminding me how great rolling for stats is. One persons cleric is going to now carry the whole party on their shoulders.
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Sep 26, 2011 00:01
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Karandras posted:d20 update. This game is reminding me how great rolling for stats is. One persons cleric is going to now carry the whole party on their shoulders. Did you hate your friends enough to make them select their class, roll down the line, and possibly have to play a fighter with 4 STR, or did you at least allow them to assign their rolls however they wanted? I think I would have a hard time enjoying a legit "roll your stats down the line" game if it was any longer than a one shot.
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Sep 26, 2011 03:20
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homeless poster posted:Did you hate your friends enough to make them select their class, roll down the line, and possibly have to play a fighter with 4 STR, or did you at least allow them to assign their rolls however they wanted? I think I would have a hard time enjoying a legit "roll your stats down the line" game if it was any longer than a one shot. It was roll down the line and then you can choose to flip them if you want. They need to make a cleric and a wizard out of that stat line. One guy now has 15 Dex and 17 Str because it was the only array combination that allowed an Int above 10 (It was 12). I think he's going to start with 1 HP because the only race in the d20srd that has an intelligence bonus is some bizarre Fire Elf so everyone is taking that race for their Wizard. I told my players d20srd only and they managed to get me to agree that anything on the d20srd was legal, then they revealed that all the Unearthed Arcana stuff is there including variant races, bloodlines, flaws etc. I'm so proud of my little munchkins  There is a cleric with more or less straight 15's as well. Best quote from a player so far: quote:basically i am envisioning this game Karandras fucked around with this message at 03:54 on Sep 26, 2011 |
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Sep 26, 2011 03:36
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I'm joining a new group this month, and I've been looking at Soulknife for my class. It seems pretty interesting and good for story, but I'm not sure where it is on the balance of good/bad classes. Help?
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Oct 9, 2011 19:18
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Eox posted:I'm joining a new group this month, and I've been looking at Soulknife for my class. It seems pretty interesting and good for story, but I'm not sure where it is on the balance of good/bad classes. Help? Its main problem is absolutely terrible BAB, considering that it's a warrior. If I recall its damage is not great, either.
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Oct 9, 2011 20:08
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Eox posted:I'm joining a new group this month, and I've been looking at Soulknife for my class. It seems pretty interesting and good for story, but I'm not sure where it is on the balance of good/bad classes. Help? The base soulknife is a guy whose class feature is having a crappier weapon than everyone else. See if you can use Blainetog's soulknife fix instead, it's actually worth playing rather than the base soulknife which, while an interesting idea, is pretty subpar.
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Oct 9, 2011 23:52
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Eox posted:I'm joining a new group this month, and I've been looking at Soulknife for my class. It seems pretty interesting and good for story, but I'm not sure where it is on the balance of good/bad classes. Help? Soulknife is literally one of the weakest classes ever made in 3.5. Beg your DM to use one of the third party "fixed" versions.
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Oct 10, 2011 00:03
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You could literally just combine the Soulknife with the Psychic Warrior (or Divine Mind or Lurk if you've got the book for them) and the other people at the table would seriously not notice anything wrong. There are individual feats which have more utility than the soulknife's entire list of class features.
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Oct 10, 2011 02:47
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MadRhetoric posted:Best Party: You almost got that right. The last one should actually only take a single level in rogue for trapfinding. Then they take four levels in wizard, as many levels as they like in unseen seer with a minimum of 2 to pick up grave strike, then fill it out with levels in arcane trickster.
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Oct 24, 2011 06:40
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Soulknife is one of the most mechanically inept classes in all of 3e, only technically better than some things like Complete Warrior Samurai and the Truenamer. The big problem is that it's a class which has been internally "balanced" against itself under the assumption that having a sword that you can't lose is that big of a deal, when any game in which fighting types are at frequent risk of losing their weapons is a bad game to begin with (Caster Supremacy Strikes Again). Thus it's a fighter with a mediocre BAB, a weapon that scales far slower than anything available on the market, and a few unique abilities that range from okayish (Bladewind, though you're only making a single attack against everyone within reach, so it's not as good as full-attacking a single target unless you can kill everyone around you with one shot) to difficult to use (Psychic Strike, requiring a move action in a game where full-round actions are the best source of weapon damage and doesn't affect nonliving, mindless or mentally immune opponents) to absolutely laughable (Multiple Throw, an almost offensively bad high-level ability. You took 17 levels of this class to gain... the ability to full attack at range). Yet it's a conceptually cool class (even if it is Psylocke: The Class, Sort Of), which is why everyone and their dogs have soulknife fixes (and no one gives a poo poo about salvaging the CW Samurai). The Pathfinder version is less terrible, but still suffers from the usual Pathfinder problems of stunning lack of originality on some parts and making players pay class currency to acquire features that should have been included in the start. I believe that deep, deep inside that class is a 4e striker waiting to get out. Danhenge posted:You almost got that right. The last one should actually only take a single level in rogue for trapfinding. Then they take four levels in wizard, as many levels as they like in unseen seer with a minimum of 2 to pick up grave strike, then fill it out with levels in arcane trickster. Beguiler comes with Trapfinding and a bunch of other rogue-ish features. I assume the rogue is just here to CDG targets or something.
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Oct 24, 2011 07:57
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Karandras posted:All Wizard and Cleric 3.5 would probably be awesome. Especially if you start at level 1 and pull no punches in encounter design. Playing in an all caster game, hobbit Sorcerer, human Cleric, elf Druid and elf Bard (me) Level 1 First encounter was against 5 level 3? cleaving Goliath Barbarians and an orc with more than five hit dice. No no, it's okay. We had like 20 level 1 fighters on our side. And three warblades! (One of them might even have more than one level in the class!) All human of course. Not a single character on our side survived a hit, and we only managed to take out two or three of the Goliaths before we'd been crushed into goo. It was awesome.
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Oct 24, 2011 15:00
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LightWarden posted:Beguiler comes with Trapfinding and a bunch of other rogue-ish features. I assume the rogue is just here to CDG targets or something. Rogue is there for secondary stupid UMD tricks (with the Beguiler) and for being a reusable SoD vs. touch AC when the group has to run clean up after Color Spray/Glitterdust/Web/Entangle. I didn't realize that Unseen Seer and Arcane Trickster were both full casting PRCs (and Unseen Seer only needs a one-drop), so that works too.
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Oct 24, 2011 15:55
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Eox posted:I'm joining a new group this month, and I've been looking at Soulknife for my class. It seems pretty interesting and good for story, but I'm not sure where it is on the balance of good/bad classes. Help? If you're playing Pathfinder, the Bladebound Magus might fit what you're looking for without being as terrible as the soulknife. You have the magic weapon that you can summon to your hand, along with spellcasting to supplement your hitting stuff abilities.
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Oct 24, 2011 16:53
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MadRhetoric posted:I didn't realize that Unseen Seer and Arcane Trickster were both full casting PRCs (and Unseen Seer only needs a one-drop), so that works too. If you take three or more levels of unseen seer, you do lose effective spellcasting levels in non-divination spells (although not caster progression - it's kind of weird) so practiced spellcaster is probably a good pickup feat.
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Oct 24, 2011 19:00
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Hey I just recently joined a D&D 3.5 game, the setting is a world created by my DM and our characters started at level 4. I decided to play a Knight and I am looking for some tips on how to play it well and not get outclassed by some of the other players. So far we have only played once and I had a lot of fun but I am concerned with all this I am hearing about casters being the only classes that are really effective. right now I am trying for a mounted build, I have a heavy warhorse for a mount, along with power attack, bastard sword proficiency and bastard sword focus. Is there a way I can get some of the weapon specific feats like weapon specialization without taking ranks in fighter? Here are my stats: Lvl 4 Human Knight str 16 dex 12 con 17 int 13 wis 10 cha 17
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Oct 27, 2011 00:59
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A.J.F.U. posted:Hey I just recently joined a D&D 3.5 game, the setting is a world created by my DM and our characters started at level 4. I decided to play a Knight and I am looking for some tips on how to play it well and not get outclassed by some of the other players. So far we have only played once and I had a lot of fun but I am concerned with all this I am hearing about casters being the only classes that are really effective. If you're not playing in a game where min/maxing is a big thing (i.e. the DM doesn't expect you to do it and most of the players aren't doing it) then it really doesn't matter what you play, but with a magic user you will still be more versatile in the extreme and eventually far better, regardless of what spell choices you make. Even if a magic user is deprived of all his magic, he still has more useful support feats and skills than most warriors. The reasons for this are complicated, but it boils down to every edition of D&D up to 3rd bowing before sacred cows of design logic. Until 4th, casters were always better. Among min/maxers, Weapon Specialization is considered not worth it unless you get it for free somehow and even then isn't considered a great feature, but generally a true min/max guy will just tell you to roll Druid every time. Pious Templar gets Weapon Specialization at level 3. Favored Soul gets it at 12. We had a discussion somewhere in here or another thread from Lightwarden about making charge attacks into things of beauty: quote:ounce is a special attack that allows you to make a full attack on a charge. It's usually reserved for monsters only, but there's the "Lion Totem Barbarian" substitution level from Complete Champion that grants Pounce instead of Fast Movement at 1st level. You still get rage, so taking a one-level dip is great. Combine that with a Valorous Weapon (Unapproachable East) which doubles your damage on a charge attack (and thus if you have any charger whatsoever, you will never go without a valorous weapon), then the usual fun with Leap Attack and Shock Trooper and have fun. With a paladin, there's the Rhino's Rush spell (Spell Compendium) which doubles the damage on your next charge, so that's 5x damage while mounted. Cavalier (Complete Warrior) has per day options that boost your charge even further, and things get even funnier if you score a critical hit (Riding Boots from Magic Item Compendium boost your lance critical multiplier to x4 while charging), where you can do 12x damage, which you then combine with power attack, smite evil, bard song, high strength bonus, a collision weapon (Expanded Psionics Handbook) and it basically turns into "either you die or I die." You can easily throw down 200 or more damage at level 7 (which is when a paladin can pick up a pegasus mount, ensuring that there's always an angle to charge from).
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Oct 27, 2011 01:32
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ProfessorCirno posted:Soulknife is literally one of the weakest classes ever made in 3.5. Beg your DM to use one of the third party "fixed" versions. Specifically, porting the Pathfinder-compatible version from Psionics Unleashed would be pretty simple.
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Oct 27, 2011 03:26
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It has been years since I played D&D, but I am starting a new campaign with people who never played before. We will use only the core books and hopefully learn together. Character creation is going well, but I seem to be misunderstanding the Cleric and hope someone can help me. You choose a God and two of his Domains. What does this do? I know you get those Granted Powers, but does it also limit you to spells from those Domains? There is a player who wants to use Healing, but also the free Martial Weapon Proficiency feat from War as a Granted Power. Then he wants to cast Healing and Strength spells. I don't think you can just take the Feat and then cast the other spells, but it doesn't say so anywhere or I am not understanding it right. Also, does this mean the War+Healing combo is impossible? It says you can skip choosing a God and go for two Domains, but what drawback does it have? I get that the Allignemnt restrictions mean you cannot have both Good and Evil on one Cleric, but I think War and Healing should be possible, right? BioTech fucked around with this message at 11:39 on Nov 2, 2011 |
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Nov 2, 2011 11:26
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BioTech posted:It has been years since I played D&D, but I am starting a new campaign with people who never played before. We will use only the core books and hopefully learn together. Character creation is going well, but I seem to be misunderstanding the Cleric and hope someone can help me. As a cleric, you pick two domains. You get the granted power from those two domains. In addition, you have a domain spell slot (one at each spell level) that you can fill with a spell from one of the granted spells from your domain list. For example, if I have the War and Healing, I get free weapon proficiency and weapon focus in a weapon (from the War domain granted power) and cast healing spell at +1 caster level (from Healing). If I am, say, 3rd level, I have a 1st and 2nd level domain slot. My first level slot could be used to memorize either Magic Weapon (from the War domain) or Cure Light Wounds (from Healing domain). My second level spell slot could be used for either Spiritual Weapon or Cure Moderate Wounds. This doesn't effect any of my regular cleric spell slots - they can be used to memorize whatever cleric spell I want. In some cases taking a domain will give you a spell that isn't normally on the cleric spell list (Travel domain gives Fly, for example). In this case, the spell can ONLY be memorized in that domain spell slot - you can't memorize it in your normal cleric slots. quote:Also, does this mean the War+Healing combo is impossible? It says you can skip choosing a God and go for two Domains, but what drawback does it have? I get that the Allignemnt restrictions mean you cannot have both Good and Evil on one Cleric, but I think War and Healing should be possible, right?
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Nov 2, 2011 11:53
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Piell posted:Helpful answer Great, thanks!
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Nov 2, 2011 12:01
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