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Okay, there is a hierarchy of expensive healing based on how critical the situation is. You should understand that using potions is almost always the incorrect method of healing. Goes like this: Bed rest. Costs: your night watch. Heals: HP equal to character level. If you're in a safe place, like an inn, and you only have a couple HP damage, you can top it off by sleeping through the whole night. Wand of Cure Light Wounds, caster level 1. Costs: 15 gp per charge, a couple minutes of time. Heals: 1d8+1 damage per charge. When you're not in combat, take advantage of your unlimited time to bring people back up to full health by just hitting them with this thing over and over. Your ranger can use these, too! And if the rogue has Use Magic Device, even he can activate them. If you can use the Spell Compendium, get a Wand of Lesser Vigor, which will heal 11 damage for the same cost. Healing Belt: this thing is from the Magic Item Compendium. If you can use that book, then order everybody to buy one. Just... Look at it. You'll see why. Spontaneous Healing. Costs: a spell slot and your entire turn. Heals: (spell level)d8+(caster level). This is a terrible option! But if someone is seriously going to die right now unless they get healing, then you can turn a spell you have prepared into a Cure spell of the same level. You simply cannot outpace enemy damage this way, though, so get that guy out of the fight- preferably before you need to waste resources on him. Potions of Cure Serious Wounds Costs: 750gp per sip and somebody's standard action. Heals: 3d8+5. When your buddy is pinned down, about to die, and you can't be there, it's got to be this thing. It's the worst option, so you only use it if it's the only option. If someone wants one, they can pay for it themselves. Eikre fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Apr 9, 2014 |
# ? Apr 9, 2014 15:56 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 07:08 |
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Eikre posted:Okay, there is a hierarchy of expensive healing based on how critical the situation is. You should understand that using potions is almost always the incorrect method of healing. Goes like this:
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# ? Apr 9, 2014 16:14 |
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Actually, Heal owns petty hard; the fact that it nullifies a remove-from-fight debuff and bombs you with way more health than a Cure spell would makes it actually outpace enemy offensives and makes it a very effective use of a turn. Mass Cures are the foundation of some hard-built healing strategies that basically keep refreshing the entire party to full health every turn. I don't think much of them for more moderate uses. At high levels, HP is more like the fake-out ablative defense that distracts enemies from using instant death stuff, and you're liable to get rocket tagged out of a fight anyway.
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# ? Apr 9, 2014 16:51 |
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Heatwizard posted:A lot of stuff. This is all very helpful. I should mention that the earth elemental I have is summoned from a gem we found, so he lasts as long as we need him to, or until the DM decides he'd want to leave, which coincidentally is usually the length of one fight that we'd all normally get murdered in. He asks for gems/money after summoning, though, and the price keeps going up, although I've been informed that the price goes up because he's getting stronger, which will help out. If nothing else, I'm fairly certain the GM will let me repick my feats and skills. He might let me re-allocate my stats if I beg or bring him beer, too.
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# ? Apr 11, 2014 13:09 |
Kruller posted:This is all very helpful. I should mention that the earth elemental I have is summoned from a gem we found, so he lasts as long as we need him to, or until the DM decides he'd want to leave, which coincidentally is usually the length of one fight that we'd all normally get murdered in. He asks for gems/money after summoning, though, and the price keeps going up, although I've been informed that the price goes up because he's getting stronger, which will help out. That's good, glad to hear the beatdown worked. If you end up holding onto your stats, it's a decent bet you might find a Periapt of Wisdom or some such in a loot pile somewhere to give your numbers a push in the right direction. If that doesn't happen in a timely manner, you can sniff around your Wizard's plans for the future and see if he plans on taking anything like Craft Wondrous Item to whip up magic items on demand. It sounds like the DM's not too much of a miser re: gadgets though, since he's dropped you an emergency teammate.
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# ? Apr 11, 2014 22:19 |
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Heatwizard posted:That's good, glad to hear the beatdown worked. If you end up holding onto your stats, it's a decent bet you might find a Periapt of Wisdom or some such in a loot pile somewhere to give your numbers a push in the right direction. If that doesn't happen in a timely manner, you can sniff around your Wizard's plans for the future and see if he plans on taking anything like Craft Wondrous Item to whip up magic items on demand. It sounds like the DM's not too much of a miser re: gadgets though, since he's dropped you an emergency teammate. The elemental is part of the loot in the module. I'm about 99% sure I'm about to get a Periapt of Wisdom as well. We had to finish our last session before we figured out what all the loot was, but it was a cleric and it had a Periapt, so it's probably for me. We play tonight so hopefully I'll be fixed and I'll post what I did and you guys could give me more pointers on the way to go in the future? We're playing this story all the way through to level 20 or so, so I'll be fighting mostly the same, awful stuff.
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# ? Apr 11, 2014 23:29 |
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Eikre posted: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. Well, Dreamscarred is doing numbers-filed-off Tome of Battle for Pathfinder now that they're done Ultimate Psionics, and they have "Incarnum but with fluff that isn't ultra boring" on the to-do list. If they'll do Binder and maybe a few Beguiler-like tier 3 casters and also all the good stuff out of MIC, then put them into a new combined core book, we may finally have that.
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# ? Apr 12, 2014 02:34 |
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The part where we "finally" get content originally written in 2007 isn't the sticking point. The sticking point is that everybody can see that 3.5 is a great game when you file off the top and bottom ends of the power scale. Achieving that by the separate undertaking of every individual play group is lousy, though. It takes lots of redundant work, gives up on dnd being the one game you knew everyone knew the rules of, and leaves it to the discretion of DMs who tend to be lovely and think Core Only is balanced, or that Nine Swords is overpowered, or whatever. Publishing another manual for Pathfinder isn't helpful, it's just the same problem in an edition where "Fly" is a skill. The actual task of writing DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS THREE POINT FIVE BLACK EDITION wouldn't be that difficult and I would do it myself if I thought anyone would ever use it ever. Just takes the guts to tell people that fighters actually aren't allowed, and a review of thousands of loving spells.
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# ? Apr 12, 2014 16:37 |
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Kruller posted:It's too late in the game to reroll without getting killed, plus my DM won't let me unless I die, and my group keeps managing to keep me alive. The kind of groggy DM who has such weird control issues that he won't just let you remake your character is not the kind of person you want to play imagination games with. Like, it'd be one thing if you were some kind of 3.5 veteran and this was some kind of non-optimised challenge run, but to punish a new player for mistakes that another person made because you thought he was helping you in good faith - your DM is either getting off on the power imbalance or he/she is so out of touch with the intent of the law that I can't imagine the adventure is very much fun.
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# ? Apr 12, 2014 18:11 |
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homeless poster posted:The kind of groggy DM who has such weird control issues that he won't just let you remake your character is not the kind of person you want to play imagination games with. Like, it'd be one thing if you were some kind of 3.5 veteran and this was some kind of non-optimised challenge run, but to punish a new player for mistakes that another person made because you thought he was helping you in good faith - your DM is either getting off on the power imbalance or he/she is so out of touch with the intent of the law that I can't imagine the adventure is very much fun. He's not like that at all. He still didn't let me fix it, but his justification was that it was a learning experience, and if I do end up getting killed, or when we start a new story, I'll know better and will make myself better. I got a buttload of magic items from the last encounter, and my character is already improved, just not optimal from the get go. Heatwizard was right, it's hard to screw up a cleric too much, it seems. Plus the rest of my party understands that if I die they're all coming with me, so they've been pooling our cash to keep my elemental fed and get me some gear assistance. We'll see how it turns out, but getting even a little gear has helped out a lot in how my character feels.
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# ? Apr 13, 2014 07:25 |
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Eikre posted:The part where we "finally" get content originally written in 2007 isn't the sticking point. The sticking point is that everybody can see that 3.5 is a great game when you file off the top and bottom ends of the power scale. Achieving that by the separate undertaking of every individual play group is lousy, though. It takes lots of redundant work, gives up on dnd being the one game you knew everyone knew the rules of, and leaves it to the discretion of DMs who tend to be lovely and think Core Only is balanced, or that Nine Swords is overpowered, or whatever. Publishing another manual for Pathfinder isn't helpful, it's just the same problem in an edition where "Fly" is a skill. I'm currently gauging interest for a 3.5 game with only Barbarian, Bard, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, and Rogue allowed. All classes get Fighter BAB and feat progression and add the fighter's class skills to their list, plus paladins and monks get some other bumps because they kinda blow. Probably doesn't make for super interesting martial characters, but might be easy to DM for/balance around.
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# ? Apr 13, 2014 07:36 |
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P.d0t posted:I'm currently gauging interest for a 3.5 game with only Barbarian, Bard, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, and Rogue allowed. All classes get Fighter BAB and feat progression and add the fighter's class skills to their list, plus paladins and monks get some other bumps because they kinda blow. Probably doesn't make for super interesting martial characters, but might be easy to DM for/balance around. TBH that sounds boring as poo poo. The problem with martials isn't (just) that they suck, it's also that "roll attack, roll damage, rinse and repeat" is just not an interesting playstyle. I mean, even if you're glued to D&D 3.5, Tome of Battle exists!
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# ? Apr 13, 2014 07:52 |
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3.5 is like jazz music, just ignore that boring poo poo and make the game about courtly intrigue. That's what I wanna see, classic buddy-cop slapstick were the barbarian and paladin have to work together to do whatever. Even writing a premise or justification for them being in the same party could be fun. Classes that have some fluff and aren't overpowered are coincidentally/shockingly not Wizards.
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# ? Apr 13, 2014 08:14 |
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P.d0t posted:3.5 is like jazz music, just ignore that boring poo poo and make the game about courtly intrigue. Except now you're playing a game that is fantastically, notoriously bad at social challenges. Like, if I had to imagine a worse game for social intrigue than "roll a d20 to make the king like you" I'd have to start looking into FATAL. Like, I get that you bought into the d20 hoax, but nowadays even d20 fans admit that it's not great outside of a relatively narrow focus.
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# ? Apr 13, 2014 10:46 |
P.d0t posted:3.5 is like jazz music, just ignore that boring poo poo J. Alfred Prufrock posted:Like, I get that you bought into the d20 hoax, Traditional Games > D&D 3.5/d20 Depreciation Station (also you shut your heathen mouth about jazz) He does have a point though; if your plan is to just ignore the fact that you're playing 3e at all, what's the point of the pretense? If you'd rather be playing Dungeon World or whatever, just play that instead.
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# ? Apr 13, 2014 17:36 |
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I play 4e. But the idiot grognards who got me into the hobby didn't drink the kool-aid, so I'm trying to meet them halfway.
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# ? Apr 14, 2014 02:04 |
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What's the deal with prestige classes? Every time I'm talking with anyone about joining or starting a campaign, it's one of the first things I get asked about. Like, I can easily believe that you should usually run campaigns at a level where PrCs become an option, but should you basically jump ship to a prestige class ASAP? Are they always an upgrade, or is it hit ad miss?
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# ? Apr 17, 2014 04:31 |
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P.d0t posted:What's the deal with prestige classes? Every time I'm talking with anyone about joining or starting a campaign, it's one of the first things I get asked about. Spellcasters usually jump ship asap because they tend to have inferior or nonexistent class abilities (other than spellcasting), and casting can be advanced by the PrC's. Martial classes often have actual class features, but there's so many PrC's you're likely going to find something better among them.
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# ? Apr 17, 2014 04:43 |
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P.d0t posted:What's the deal with prestige classes? Every time I'm talking with anyone about joining or starting a campaign, it's one of the first things I get asked about. Certain classes benefit from a change as early as possible, paladin being the best example I can think of. In fact, planning what you want to do from character gen is never a bad idea, and paladins have many options that allow them to continue leveling as a paladin when they take it. Cavalier will turn you into a mounted badass, and you get a mount for free anyway! There are other options like Hospitaler and Divine Crusader that are direct upgrades to what you already do or things like Knight of the Chalice, Hunter of the Dead, or Gray Guard that give you a different focus if you're playing certain kinds of campaigns. In short, a paladin should definitely try to be ready for a prestige class at 6th level or around there, because at that point you have all the unique class features and all you're getting is more things per day. I say all that to say this: figure out how much you want out of your base class, then go hog wild with a prestige class that interests you. Just don't pick Street Fighter. Also, I have a few posts in this thread talking about some combinations I've run if you're interested in poking through them.
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# ? Apr 17, 2014 05:15 |
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P.d0t posted:What's the deal with prestige classes? Every time I'm talking with anyone about joining or starting a campaign, it's one of the first things I get asked about. It's like anything else in 3.X edition - many of the choices are non-obvious traps that sound cool but are poorly executed, but for those people who are willing to read the char-op boards until their eyes bleed, the PrCs can also be gateways to game ruining power. My guess is most people ask about them up front either because they don't want some munchkin rear end in a top hat to ruin their story game, or because they are a munchkin rear end in a top hat who wants to ruin story games. Generally, they tend to exacerbate the existent problems baked into 3.X - martial PrCs tend to further pigeonhole martial characters into doing one trick pretty well (to the exclusion of being useless outside of their one trick) while caster PrCs continue to enhance the inherent benefits of being a caster while also giving them more free spiffs (caster progression between character levels stack, plus they get other powers for little investment).
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# ? Apr 17, 2014 05:20 |
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homeless poster posted:Generally, they tend to exacerbate the existent problems baked into 3.X - martial PrCs tend to further pigeonhole martial characters into doing one trick pretty well (to the exclusion of being useless outside of their one trick) while caster PrCs continue to enhance the inherent benefits of being a caster while also giving them more free spiffs (caster progression between character levels stack, plus they get other powers for little investment). PrCs are also one of the few ways in 3.5 to glue disparate classes together, which is usually a power drop rather than a boost... ...but can make the martial/caster disparity even more obvious by allowing a caster to copy all a martial character's best tricks with only a single level of spells lost (if even that). One good example is Paladin 2/Sorcerer 4/Spellsword 1/Abjurant Champion 5/Sacred Exorcist 8, which is a build that ends up with BAB +16, 9th level spells, Turn Undead, +Cha to saves, +10 armor to AC all day with greater luminous armor, bonuses to attacks/AC/damage/saves by burning spells, and an always-on personal consecrate aura. Even the absolute simplest version, Wizard 5/Fighter 1/Eldritch Knight 14 (presuming you just extend the class indefinitely) gets BAB +17 and d6 instead of d4 HP on top of 9th level spells, and can go around in a +1 twilight mithril chain shirt all day, all for the grand inconvenience of a single level that's not wizard. Roadie fucked around with this message at 09:31 on Apr 17, 2014 |
# ? Apr 17, 2014 09:27 |
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My friend is running a pre-final's week D&D 3.5 marathon game. Since I'm going to be stuck on campus for final's week despite having nothing to do (long story), I signed up. It's going to be a series of loosely related modules, we're starting at level 1, he said this might go from morning to night, and he mentioned the Tomb of Horrors. I suppose it is worth noting that my friend can be a bit groggy at times and is a long time, 3.5 homebrewer from GiTP. He says, since it's a one shot, he's not going to go easy on us (said I should expect character death). Essentially, what I'm asking is, what would be a good starting character for this game? Any back-up suggestions? Edit: I guess I should mention I've only ever played 3.5 once as a Dread Necromancer. Covok fucked around with this message at 04:40 on May 5, 2014 |
# ? May 5, 2014 04:38 |
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Covok posted:My friend is running a pre-final's week D&D 3.5 marathon game. Since I'm going to be stuck on campus for final's week despite having nothing to do (long story), I signed up. It's going to be a series of loosely related modules, we're starting at level 1, he said this might go from morning to night, and he mentioned the Tomb of Horrors. I suppose it is worth noting that my friend can be a bit groggy at times and is a long time, 3.5 homebrewer from GiTP. He says, since it's a one shot, he's not going to go easy on us (said I should expect character death). From the sounds of it, you'll probably be light on opportunities to swap out treasure and (for a spellbook user) known spells. A couple of thoughts: - Druid. It's a solid spell list, you can use an okay set of weapons and armor from level 1, animal companion gives the party another meatshield, low-level summons running down a hallway can set off traps for you (and the Tomb of Horrors has an absurd number of traps), and as soon as Wild Shape comes online at 5th you can fill in for whatever stuff the party is missing (flight to get across gaps, scent against invisible enemies, etc). Make sure to have stat blocks prepped ahead of time for summons/animal companion/wild shape/etc (or use something like Hero Lab that will track the numbers for you). - Totemist (from Magic of Incarnum). It's weaker than druid overall when you zoom out, but its do-anything powers are online from day 1, and it can get loads and loads of skill bonuses and magic stuff without needing treasure at all. Like druid, though, it has stats that change all over the place (each soulmeld gives different bonuses based on how much essentia you have put into it, and you can rearrange your points round-by-round). - A paladin/sorcerer build like the one I mention in my previous post right above yours. It'll depend on equipment more than the other two, but your saving throws should be sky-high (important if the Tomb of Horrors is coming into play) and you should be able to pick sorcerer spells with each level-up to cover gaps in the party. Roadie fucked around with this message at 16:04 on May 5, 2014 |
# ? May 5, 2014 06:39 |
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Roadie posted:Totemist (from Tome of Magic). It's weaker than druid overall when you zoom out, but its do-anything powers are online from day 1, and it can get loads and loads of skill bonuses and magic stuff without needing treasure at all. Like druid, though, it has stats that change all over the place (each soulmeld gives different bonuses based on how much essentia you have put into it, and you can rearrange your points round-by-round). From Magic of Incarnum, actually. If you go Totemist, a dip into either Warblade or Swordsage is a good idea. Sudden Leap alone is a great mobility boost, and Punishing Stance or Assassin's Stance are both tasty on a character who wants to be making 4+ natural attacks. Also once you get an adamant weapon the Basilisk Helm soulmeld is an at-will save-or-die.
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# ? May 5, 2014 07:15 |
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First off, I'd like to thank you both for your advice, but I'm a little confused. Your advice is centered on how the characters will grow, but I don't know how much that will happen. I never played 3.5 below sixth level (I've only played it once), but do characters level-up quickly at those levels? To reiterate, the game is starting at level 1 and taking place over a single day. Of course, I don't want to diminish your advice, I'm thankful you took time to give me some, but I'm just a bit confused about it. Also, this semester I wrote a 100+ page report (no exaggeration, I'm serious). I kind of want to keep my character simple and effective since I just don't feel like spending that much time building him after a monster report like that.
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# ? May 6, 2014 06:49 |
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Covok posted:Also, this semester I wrote a 100+ page report (no exaggeration, I'm serious). I kind of want to keep my character simple and effective since I just don't feel like spending that much time building him after a monster report like that. The mention of the Tomb of Horrors is what's making us think about higher levels, since the 3.5 module for The Tomb is written "for Four to Six 9th-Level Characters". For low level 3.5: Play a Wizard, cast Sleep/Color Spray, win. Play a Druid, cast Entangle, win.
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# ? May 6, 2014 10:28 |
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J. Alfred Prufrock posted:The mention of the Tomb of Horrors is what's making us think about higher levels, since the 3.5 module for The Tomb is written "for Four to Six 9th-Level Characters". So, in other words, he is planing from going from level 1 to level 9 over the course of one play session. How unrealistic is that, from the perspective of people who play the game often?
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# ? May 7, 2014 08:30 |
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Covok posted:So, in other words, he is planing from going from level 1 to level 9 over the course of one play session. How unrealistic is that, from the perspective of people who play the game often? It's real dumb. A typical leveling rate is to level every 2-3 sessions (if you only have encounters, you need ~13 equal level encounters, so say 3-4 encounters per session plus quest XP), with a typical session lasting a few hours. Of course, if he's skipping XP rules entirely he can just jump you to whatever, but levelling 3.5 characters is a bitch and a half and can take a longass time so even this is also dumb. Edit: Also Tomb of Horrors is also super dumb because it's an adventure designed for a completely different style of gameplay than 3.5 D&D and is an incredible meatgrinder for people who don't know how to play it the way you are supposed to, as well as making fighting characters almost completely pointless and basically impossible to win unless you luck out on having exactly the right spells. Hope you brought a dozen extra character sheets! Piell fucked around with this message at 10:23 on May 7, 2014 |
# ? May 7, 2014 10:20 |
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Play a party of druids x5 and use the same stats for each one of you. Ditto for your animal companions. And put the companions through the meatgrinder and just go pray for new ones every time they get instagibbed by traps.
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# ? May 7, 2014 19:17 |
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Hmmm, taking all the advice I've been go so far, I'd need 9 character sheets (each at a different level) per character just to make things run smoothly? And that I might also need a backup character? Mostly likely a druid as one and a Totemist as my backup? Maybe the Paladin/Sorcerer third backup? Oui, this is starting to become a lot more bookkeeping than I wanted.
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# ? May 7, 2014 23:16 |
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Talk to the friend running it again. if he told you to only bring one character - and he tells you again - it's a good bet he has something planned to counteract that. It might be like the Tomb of Horrors, or maybe you guys will have 2 hours at level 1, a couple hours to level up, run the Tomb at level 9, etc.
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# ? May 7, 2014 23:50 |
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As a barbarian, is it worthwhile to take a level of Fighter or Rogue to buy off illiteracy? Or is burning the 2 skill points a better option?
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# ? May 10, 2014 08:21 |
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P.d0t posted:Is it worthwhile to take a level of Fighter or Rogue? You know there's only one answer to that question.
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# ? May 10, 2014 12:11 |
P.d0t posted:As a barbarian, is it worthwhile to take a level of Fighter or Rogue to buy off illiteracy? Or is burning the 2 skill points a better option? Fighter is a pretty useful two-level prestige class, but if all you're looking for is to learn how to read, it's probably going to be significantly simpler to just find two spare skill points. Rogue isn't going to get you much. e: If you're looking for an excuse to branch out of Barb, though, you might consider dipping into Ranger, and using that to grab the prerequisites for Horizon Walker. The sixth level of the class gives you a choice from a series of supernatural perks, including the ability to Dimension Door once every 1d4 rounds, which is as useful as it sounds, especially if you don't have Pounce or some other means of both moving and making a full attack. Heatwizard fucked around with this message at 13:11 on May 10, 2014 |
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# ? May 10, 2014 13:05 |
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Jesus, don't play a horizon walker. Especially if you have to actually play through all the level ups before it gets good. That class is literally five solid levels of skill focus. Edit: wait you're the core only guy, lol, never mind, you're not allowd to have anything good anyway. Eikre fucked around with this message at 16:40 on May 10, 2014 |
# ? May 10, 2014 16:36 |
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Horizon Walker is "good" only for a core-only game. Of course, if you're playing a core-only game, just play a caster.
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# ? May 10, 2014 16:39 |
I posted this in the 4e CharOp thread and was told to post it here:Triskelli posted:Is there a 3.5e CharOp thread? I don't have archives to check (and search is down anyway) so I'll try here. After doing some research it seems that acid is the best breath weapon and Spider Climb seems like it'd be a good ability by taking the Copper Dragon totem, but I still would like some input from people that have actually played the game.
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# ? May 11, 2014 02:44 |
Triskelli posted:I posted this in the 4e CharOp thread and was told to post it here: I've never tried this class out myself, but I've read up on it a bit. Copper's a good choice. If you have Dragon Magic available to you, go dig for the alternate class feature Shamanic Invocation, and pick up Endure Exposure. You don't need seven auras, and you DO want your party to be immune to your breath weapon. Because your breath weapon is expressed in rounds, you can apply the metabreath feats from Draconomicon, and there's nothing stopping you from applying them all at once. It'll take forever for your weapon to recharge, but if you win the fight off your big nasty acid bomb, who cares? Heighten, Maximize, Lingering, and Clinging are the standouts. Quicken is nice, but since you'll only really be super-breathing once, it's not as exciting as it is on spells. Since your weapon is a line, you might also look at Shape Breath to hit all your foes at once. If you're going to be sword-slinging, you'll generally want to be rolling with a two-hander and taking Power Attack. A little later on, you can grab Leap Attack out of Complete Adventurer and do some nasty damage when charging. Your weapon proficiencies...suck, so there's a lot to be said for sneaking away from the class and grabbing a single level of something more martial. If you find yourself short on feats, Fighter can give you more to work with. If you don't need more feat slots, something with actual class features will be better, though; if Tome of Battle is available, Warblade's a good choice. It has a cute trick where any feat you take that makes you pick a single weapon can be retrained to another weapon on demand, so you can do something like take Exotic Weapon Proficiency once, and apply it to anything you get your hands on. (That's not necessarily the most practical thing you can be doing with your time, but if it ain't worth style points, I don't know what is.) The ToB classes are also very friendly to splashing a single level into an otherwise unrelated character. The downside is ToB has a whole subsystem unto itself you'd have to grapple with. It's not all that complicated, but when you're just starting out it's More Crap To Read. Beyond ToB, one level of a base class isn't hugely deforming to a given plan, so just shop around, look at the various classes that get you the proficiencies you want, and see which ones give you decent goodies at level 1. Re: races, Warforged get a constitution bonus, so that's certainly good news, but one of the drawbacks of the living construct template is that healing spells and supernatural abilities that cure hit point damage are halved in effectiveness on you. You round down in D&D, so you won't actually be able to use the Vigor aura on yourself until level 5. (Unless your DM is willing to do something like let you heal one point every other round, which isn't really a thing in the rules but would certainly be nice.) There's no hard and fast "this is how you worship dragons when you're a shaman" rule, so don't worry too hard about being an odd duck- hell, you're an adventurer, you're already doomed to be a special snowflake. Classes like this generally don't have specific ideas as to how you should be acting, so if you're still worried about it, you'll probably get further asking your DM about it then you will rooting through all the random fluff about dragons. Aside from robits, Human is good for everything, and Orc gives a hefty strength bonus. Shifters get Con, so they're alright, if you're playing Eberron.
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# ? May 11, 2014 04:32 |
Thanks! I think I'll work on the actual character creation tomorrow, I still have a lot of reading to do on stuff like dual classing and the like. But for now I think I'll aim for a tanky/intimidate-y build, and probably roll with Human for the bonus feat. I still don't know much about the setting or campaign yet, but I'll definitely post results if there's anything worth telling!
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# ? May 11, 2014 05:30 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 07:08 |
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Dragon Shaman is actually pretty terrible, since the main draw of the entire class (the Aura) can be replicated with two feats or a subtype and a feat. You're much better off playing a Dragonfire Adept and spending the feat on Draconic Aura for the one you like the most. Or even just playing a Dragonblooded Bard with Dragonfire Inspiration. Or even even a White Raven Warblade. Seriously, they're all better than Dragon Shaman.
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# ? May 11, 2014 09:33 |