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I'm going to be playing 3.5 for the first time this weekend, and in general only my 2nd experience with dnd. While everyone else is still thinking about characters, I'm wondering do we need a set healer? I'm not sure anyone has plans to play a cleric, I think one person is going to pick druid, and I'm not sure about the other two. Out of the 1st handbook, is there anything besides cleric or druid that can heal people, and will we be setting ourselves up to fail without a one of those two?
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Jan 3, 2014 00:37
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| # ? Jun 10, 2024 00:57 |
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Set healers are boring to play in 3.5, and it's my understanding that in-combat healing is generally considered a waste of an action. With that said, you can play a Cleric and not spec yourself to be a healer, but always have the opportunity to trade out prepared spells for a cure spell. A lot of the best healing options are from outside of core, unfortunately. It's harder to do it in core, but a Bard can be made for healing. But given the spontaneous casting of cure spells, I'd say Cleric is the best choice in core, and even then only as a backup healer.
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Jan 3, 2014 00:42
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Have everyone take Tomb-Tainted Soul and then have a Dread Necromancer in the party. You'll never have to worry about healing again!
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Jan 3, 2014 00:56
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Kingtheninja posted:I'm going to be playing 3.5 for the first time this weekend, and in general only my 2nd experience with dnd. While everyone else is still thinking about characters, I'm wondering do we need a set healer? I'm not sure anyone has plans to play a cleric, I think one person is going to pick druid, and I'm not sure about the other two. Out of the 1st handbook, is there anything besides cleric or druid that can heal people, and will we be setting ourselves up to fail without a one of those two? As mentioned, combat healing isn't that useful due to how easily damage outpaces it, and how short ranged it is. You're looking at 2-3 times the amount of damage healed dealt per round. However, what IS useful is condition removal and out of combat healing. Poison, disease and ability damage can be highly inconvenient without a cleric or a druid. But inconvenient is all. Clerics and druids are the two most powerful classes in the game, so thinking of them as a healer is pretty wasteful anyway. For out of combat healing, you want wands of Cure Light Wounds as the most efficient source of bulk healing until you have more than 16 spells per day, at which point you have already exceeded the maximum number of spells you can feasibly use in combat anyway, and should feel free to convert lower level spells into healing for a cleric. Any character who can use a wand of cure light wounds works just fine. Paladins, Bards and Rangers all have it on their list, which makes the wand trivial to use. Anyone else with the necessary Use Magic Device ranks can also do it as well. Throw in some potions for restoration of damaged abilities, and for removing the more long lasting conditions like disease and negative levels. Short version: If you have no cleric, pool some cash and you have a healer on a stick.
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Jan 3, 2014 00:59
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Thanks for the advice, going into this I was mostly worried about group makeup and didn't know how important having a healer was. We have a wizard, and a druid so far. I'm not sure what our third member is doing, but depending on his choice I might have to change from sorcerer to a tankier class.
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Jan 3, 2014 01:08
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A minor nitpick: the best out of combat healing is actually a wand of Lesser Vigor. Gives fast healing 1 for 11 rounds, thus healing more than CLW could possibly heal and not requiring a roll for healing.
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Jan 3, 2014 03:49
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I was going to mention the Vigor line, but Kingtheninja said to stick to the first handbook.
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Jan 3, 2014 04:13
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No, the best healing item is a Healing Belt.
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Jan 3, 2014 04:18
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Yeah but none of those are in the core books. If you had access to the MIC you can meet all healing needs with permanent items alone.
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Jan 3, 2014 10:20
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So we have everything sorted for our group starting today. I am going with a monk, and am a little confused about their unarmed strikes. Do monks get to attack twice with unarmed strikes (as if they had two weapons)? If so, is the two weapon fighting skill a good investment for a monk?
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Jan 4, 2014 17:28
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You can unarmed strike twice if you take TWF, but really you don't want to take TWF unless you have a source of bonus damage such as sneak attack or the like.
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Jan 4, 2014 17:39
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Kingtheninja posted:So we have everything sorted for our group starting today. I am going with a monk, and am a little confused about their unarmed strikes. Do monks get to attack twice with unarmed strikes (as if they had two weapons)? If so, is the two weapon fighting skill a good investment for a monk? What level and resources are you looking at incidentally? Depending on your resources you might be better off using a monk weapon to flurry with a two handed weapon instead of your fist. You'd be making pretty heavy use of stunning fist if you want to avoid getting mauled bad by your opponent's full attacks as well. Standard sequence is to rush the enemy, stun them, then next round, full attack with flurry.
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Jan 4, 2014 18:04
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Just a basic level one Monk, right out of PHB1. I'm just trying to figure out the best way (or a good way) for damage, like sticking with fists or quarterstaff, or the 1H monk weapons. I was trying to understand how TWF worked with monks and it started confusing the hell out of me.
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Jan 4, 2014 18:21
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Kingtheninja posted:Just a basic level one Monk, right out of PHB1. I'm just trying to figure out the best way (or a good way) for damage, like sticking with fists or quarterstaff, or the 1H monk weapons. I was trying to understand how TWF worked with monks and it started confusing the hell out of me. Ability scores rolled or point buy?
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Jan 4, 2014 19:01
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Rolled.
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Jan 4, 2014 19:06
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Strength needs to be highest if you're to hit at all, 3/4 BAB with a further -2 penalty from Flurry tends to miss a lot(this is the reason you should avoid Two weapon fighting, because you're looking at a -4 penalty to every attack on an already low attack bonus). With a 18 strength(if you can manage it), you also deal pretty decent damage by wielding a quarterstaff as a two handed weapon. The second priority depends on how many good stats you have. If it's just one good stat(14+) after str, put it into Con. Your AC will be pretty low and you're going to get hit a lot, so prepare for that. Wis goes after to make your stun DC not suck. If you have instead, three good stats in all, you get Wisdom and Dexterity, for a good AC and DCs, as well as mobility skills, and beg a casting of Mage Armor off the wizard. By the fourth good stat you're looking at Str>Wis>Dex>Con. If you have only one stat above 16, it's probably best to reconsider playing Monk. veekie fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Jan 4, 2014 |
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Jan 4, 2014 19:45
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veekie posted:
Your party has got two of the three strongest classes in the game. I recommend a cleric so that you can actually contribute.
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Jan 4, 2014 20:26
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veekie posted:you get Wisdom and Dexterity, for a good AC and DCs
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Jan 4, 2014 21:08
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Monk is pretty much the worst character class in all of 3.5, so you're sort of screwed in the contributing part (except for the part where you're the most likely member to save against spells) I recommend taking improved grapple as a feat (stunning fist as your monk bonus feat) and you can get your wizard buddy to make you bigger for a total of +9 on your checks (feat: +4, size +4, size strength bonus +1) to make people not be able to do jack poo poo, give you reach (so people that charge you get socked in the face). On the second level, Improved Trip is a pretty decent choice. You get to kick your opponents to the ground, get an extra kick in and if any of your pals are playing a rogue. If you have high dex and are playing a human, toss in combat reflexes as your second feat. It normally wouldn't be too valuable, but if you have the wizard growing you, that means anyone trying to get past you within 10 feet, will provoke an attack of opportunity. When there are several guys in a fight, that gets very important. The wizard is a fragile porcelain doll. You can use that for stunning fist, or on second level to trip fools. As a monk, you're never going to be an amazing damage dealer, but you can tell your opponents "no" some of the time which will be much more valuable. Spell casters are the biggest fight winners. Your job is to keep them alive, you are the Kevin Costner to their Whitney Houston. This should squeeze a bit more usability out of the monk than it otherwise would have.
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Jan 4, 2014 23:39
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Kingtheninja posted:Thanks for the advice, going into this I was mostly worried about group makeup and didn't know how important having a healer was. We have a wizard, and a druid so far. I'm not sure what our third member is doing, but depending on his choice I might have to change from sorcerer to a tankier class. Depending on how much experience the rest of your group has with 3.X, going with a "tankier" class will end up leaving you largely useless if the campaign progresses into even the high single digit levels and the other players have a passing familiarity with how 3.X works. If you have to absolutely imagine that you are a "tank" who wears plate armor and swings a giant weapon then roll a cleric and marvel as you can tank and heal and do loving near anything you want to because you chose a valid class. Do not choose any of non-casting classes because they are exceedingly poor choices (they can generally excel at one extremely specific role if you have all of the splat books ever published to draw from, but are complete garbage if you're limited to just the core PHB).
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Jan 5, 2014 07:43
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Well, the monk is bad, but the spellcasters do prefer having someone martial to buff. A Fighter or Barbarian could just focuses his feats on doing loads of damage with a big weapon, and getting the buffs. Less useful, but not useless.
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Jan 5, 2014 09:57
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A question: Could you use Minor Creation to make functional myconid animation spores? And if so, would they animate the body for the usual 1d6 weeks or would they fail to function after the duration ended?
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Jan 11, 2014 20:13
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Yawgmoth posted:A question: Could you use Minor Creation to make functional myconid animation spores? And if so, would they animate the body for the usual 1d6 weeks or would they fail to function after the duration ended? As a DM I'd rule a spore is living. That's without digging out a book and reading up on myconid reproduction, but I presume it's basically a mushroom spore. Edit: so no. A myconid spore might also count as magical, what's there subtype? And you could probably successfuly argue that myconid's being fungi don't count as "vegetable matter" because they aren't plants, but personally as a DM I'd let you make dead mushrooms. Vaginal Vagrant fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Jan 11, 2014 |
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Jan 11, 2014 23:17
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rock rock posted:As a DM I'd rule a spore is living. That's without digging out a book and reading up on myconid reproduction, but I presume it's basically a mushroom spore. My DM is allowing it since by the time I can get access to it we'll all have access to crazier poo poo anyways, and it's really on-flavor with my character.
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Jan 11, 2014 23:25
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welp, read the plant type and they are specifically defined as vegetable, so ignore that bit about fungi. As an extraordinary ability it's non magical so I'd say it's effects persist, although RaW as a creation spell it "vanishes without a trace". That's stupid though, if you can create a club and wounds inflicted by it remain once it disappears then seems like the spores effects would to.
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Jan 11, 2014 23:53
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I've recently picked up 3.5 as a player again, and the biggest thing I notice in char-gen is the M.A.D. aspect with ability scores. It seems like rolling for stats (with some safety nets) is preferable to point-buy, since a lot of classes need like 4 good scores. I was thinking to remedy this a little, maybe houserule saves to work like 4e, where you pick the higher of 2 mods. Thoughts?
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Jan 12, 2014 18:46
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Rolling for stats is terrible, never do it. It invariably ends up with someone being totally gimped and another person whose lowest stat is a 16. There's feats for changing the stat a given stat works off of, but I imagine just houseruling it would work fine if you're worried about it.
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Jan 12, 2014 18:59
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Probably if I were to use rolling, it would be something like "everyone do 4d6 drop the lowest, 6x" and then let everyone at the table use the best resulting array. Or like, 2d6+[8 or 10], 6x.
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Jan 12, 2014 19:05
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For my group, we roll 4d6 and drop the lowest 7 times. Then, we drop the lowest and replace the second lowest with an 18. That's how I ended up with an 18, two 14s and three 16s.
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Jan 12, 2014 21:18
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For the campaign I've just started, I foolishly had them roll and I'm regretting it. I'll let any future characters Point-Buy. That said, we're having a ball with my crazy GRRM/Skyrim/Steven Erikson Mashup world of 'Stormgaard', and the players had a whale of a time with their first adventure into a tomb of the 'Treth', a more civilized (on par with Dwarves) missing-for-a-thousand-years form of Goblinoid. In the background they're just Bugbears statistically, but I wanted something that'd pique their interest, I knew would remain balanced and I happen to hate the name 'Bugbear' so it's working really well.
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Jan 13, 2014 13:42
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If my players didn't think rolling for stats was so fun, I wouldn't even consider it. If I'm letting my players roll for stats, each player rolls an array of 4d6 six times, one garbage roll, and any player can pick any array. I also write up an array of 16, 16, 14, 14, 12, 12 because even with six sets to choose from some of my players just have terrible luck.
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Jan 13, 2014 17:43
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I'm thinking of running a mildly house-ruled one-shot of 3.5 (perhaps longer if the players are having fun). On the advisement of some goon's post I read a long time ago, I was going to limit classes to PHB, minus wizards, druids, clerics, and fighters. I'm hung up on whether to include rogues, monks, and sorcerers. A) Are rogues good/interesting enough based on their class features? B) What are the main problems with monks? If I put in safety nets for AC and HP, would they be ok, or does it go deeper than that? C) In the context of Barbarian, Bard, Paladin, and Ranger, would a sorcerer outshine/upstage the party often/greatly/easily?
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Jan 16, 2014 10:10
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I don't understand why you would remove fighters  But to answer your other questions: Rogues can be useful in combat as long as you don't throw a bunch of undead, constructs, plants, oozes, and other things immune to critical hits (and thus sneak attack) so really, rogues are good if you don't plan on using 70% of the monster manual. Monks are very multi ability dependent, they need to have good wisdom, strength, constitution, and nominally dexterity. If you don't have at least a +2 in all of those, you won't be very good.As for sorcerers, they are basically wizards with a slightly limited spell set, but they don't have to prepare spells, so there's really no difference between a sorcerer and a wizard when they're both capable of blowing up an entire encounter with a single fireball, or later doing save or die poo poo like Phantasmal Killer, Stop Heart, or the really bad no save things like Avasculate, so whatever "advice" you got that said you shouldn't allow wizards should apply to sorcerers as well. I would really be interested in seeing this post that made you think fighters shouldn't be included and yet somehow allows for bards as being just fine. Hell, a ranger in the proper hands can be devastating, especially once you get access to their spells.
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Jan 16, 2014 11:57
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P.d0t posted:I'm thinking of running a mildly house-ruled one-shot of 3.5 (perhaps longer if the players are having fun). On the advisement of some goon's post I read a long time ago, I was going to limit classes to PHB, minus wizards, druids, clerics, and fighters. Limiting classes to the PHB is dumb because most of the good classes (that is, well-designed, not most powerful) are post PHB. If you want to make characters roughly equal, allow only Tier 3-4 classes, which are: http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5293 posted:Tier 3: Capable of doing one thing quite well, while still being useful when that one thing is inappropriate, or capable of doing all things, but not as well as classes that specialize in that area. Occasionally has a mechanical ability that can solve an encounter, but this is relatively rare and easy to deal with. Can be game breaking only with specific intent to do so. Challenging such a character takes some thought from the DM, but isn't too difficult. Will outshine any Tier 5s in the party much of the time.
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Jan 16, 2014 11:59
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P.d0t posted:I'm thinking of running a mildly house-ruled one-shot of 3.5 (perhaps longer if the players are having fun). On the advisement of some goon's post I read a long time ago, I was going to limit classes to PHB, minus wizards, druids, clerics, and fighters. A) Not without some major allowances made for skill usage. They do ok in the early game, but in the late game aren't much good even against the rogue's specialities. B) Deeper, much deeper. They suffer from needing pretty much every stat but Cha and Int to be high(16 or better) to function, Flurry demands full attacks, but the move speed and stun suggests hit and run. Unarmed strike is a trap in that it looks like a good weapon, but it's only merit is that you always have it(the damage gain is approximately +1 per dice step). So basically it can't make up it's mind. C) Varies enormously by the sorceror player comptency. It's all in the spell selection. As for limiting books, the PHB has pretty much all the worst offenders of game balance on both ends of the scale. PHB full spellcasters(wizard, cleric, druid) are grossly overpowered, and PHB full martial(fighter, rogue, barbarian) basically stops growing after level 8. Classes in extended books are usually more balanced, spells are a mixed bag(PHB contains most of the big offenders of overpowered spells, but a few of the outrigger spells make it worse), but generally speaking the Magic Item Compendium and Spell Compendium has more balanced stuff on average than the PHB. veekie fucked around with this message at 12:35 on Jan 16, 2014 |
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Jan 16, 2014 12:31
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Echoing the hate for PHB classes. A lot of people have this extremely unsubstantiated idea that 3e had "power creep" in class design when really it was the opposite: base classes didn't get more powerful, they just got better designed. Warlock needs a little help, but I find that this fix works pretty nicely.
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Jan 16, 2014 17:08
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I am pretty sure this isn't the right place for this post, but hopefully someone can direct me to such a place. I am building a new campaign world for a casual group I play with, and would like to get someone to critique it for me. The campaign will have a long running story arc and the players are docile enough that I think they'll "play along". It isn't really close to ready yet, but once it's shaped up a bit I would like to get some input so that I can tighten up any loose ends. I am not at all new to this, but its been over ten years since I ran my last campaign, which is my main reason for wanting some constructive criticism. I am playing in a 3.5 campaign now, and this one is likely to be run with the same group when our current campaign winds down. Depending on the timing we may use it as an excuse to try out 5th edition, but I didn't know about it while the playtest was running (had my head under a rock...) and now I can't get access to the materials through the WotC site.
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Jan 16, 2014 19:31
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Yawgmoth posted:Echoing the hate for PHB classes. A lot of people have this extremely unsubstantiated idea that 3e had "power creep" in class design when really it was the opposite: base classes didn't get more powerful, they just got better designed. I think this nascent understanding is found in the minds of everyone who really cared a lot about 3.5 and belies the incredible preorder numbers on 4E. I think what a lot of people really wanted was literally just a reprint of all the best latter-day content in one manual so that the community would have a new cohesive baseline.
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Jan 16, 2014 20:35
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Nucular Carmul posted:I would really be interested in seeing this post that made you think fighters shouldn't be included and yet somehow allows for bards as being just fine. Hell, a ranger in the proper hands can be devastating, especially once you get access to their spells. Bards was more of "in a world without Wizards and Sorcerers, they're the best arcane caster!  " or something along those lines. Same thing with Paladin:Cleric, and Ranger:Druid.Fighter rationale was "they don't get any interesting class features, so gently caress 'em, just give everyone more feats and use a Barbarian." Basically within my group, most of the people only have the PHB anyway (if that), and our DM is a grognard who loves arbitrarily banning books. To wit, here's the allowed classes in our current campaign:
Barbarian Cleric Druid Fighter Paladin Ranger Rogue Sorcerer Wizard Favoured Soul Healer (miniatures handbook) Knight Marshall Monk Samurai Scout Warmage Warlock
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Jan 17, 2014 03:52
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P.dot, what level were you planning on the PCs being?
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Jan 17, 2014 04:31
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