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A Catastrophe posted:You are sure somebody will make up belt of healing, even if the devs don't? Using houseruled 'Belt of Healing' after every encounter, OKAY! Everyone healing up after every encounter using weaboo 'Healing Surges', BOOOO!
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 09:55 |
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# ? May 15, 2024 01:40 |
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God a belt of healing would have been great tonight. Two Wizards, a Warlock and a Paladin all level one are not super survivable against mass kobolds and cultists. At least we got to do the grease+fire trick, even if the DM doesn't think prestidigitation could light it on fire because it's not a torch or a campfire...
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 13:20 |
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Cassa posted:...even if the DM doesn't think prestidigitation could light it on fire because it's not a torch or a campfire... That's an interesting one. It's a magic spell, it doesn't have to follow logical or realistic rules, and "magically cause one of these three intended-to-be-aflame things to catch fire" isn't equivalent to "magically produce a flame that lights things on fire" or even "magically light any flammable thing on fire". If your interpretation is that it lights anything on fire, then why is Produce Flame a whole separate cantrip?
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 13:33 |
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Because magic is dumb? Edit: OK that's overly dismissive, I see your point and feel that a system built around a wizard having access to a small set of incredibly specific cantrips would be very interesting. But by your reading, how large a torch would it work on, what kind of candles, how big is a campfire before it's a bonfire? Cassa fucked around with this message at 13:45 on Aug 28, 2014 |
# ? Aug 28, 2014 13:34 |
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Ferrinus posted:Okay, but there is something stopping my fighter from using such a sword to open a planar gateway, even though in anyone else's hands it'd just be a +2 sword/+4 vs. devils or some poo poo. There is something stopping my fighter from being such a great warrior that an elemental archon would respond to my fighter's call for a fencing match, while it wouldn't respond to any common brigand and has magically girded itself against normal summoning magic. That thing is the fact that fighters don't get any loving powers. What? Literally what? We have examples of magic weapons that need to be attuned to specific races, why not specific classes? Providing all the special wonderful Good lord you're obtuse, have you considered for a moment that wish is simply a good example of poor spell design? I agree, Knock is terrible too, however not because it exists but because it is so readily available to every caster in the entire game. There's little issue with having overlap between the spells and abilities of some classes, the problem with wizards is they overlap with every class in the game with no investment beyond "I'm a wizard" and with zero drawback. Also you keep using the term "Cargo Cult" and I'm starting to wonder if you even know what you're talking about beyond some internet catchphrase you heard on tumblr. I don't know what you do for a living but it's obviously not game design, though you're right, I don't know Exalted, I've never played it and have little wish to, everything I know is from the forums here, i.e. horrendous anime titty art and people talking about blowing up planets, so that's on ya'll i guess. Every single recommendation you and others have made for buffing martial classes has been to either 1) make them jump further whenever they want, or 2) make them wizards with swords. Neither is interesting for a whole host of reasons and is lazy design. If you want to create a unique, useful, and flavorful set of martial classes you inherently have to pull back the variety and utility of wizards who can do everything already anyway and are poorly thought out with no concept beyond MAGIC. This means either 1) removing large portions of spells from the game, or 2) Keeping the spells more or less as they exist but segregating them into different builds/archetypes. Then after creating some semblance of a scoped and defined caster class (beyond 'do all the magic'), adding in a handful of useful martial abilities that perhaps a particular build of Wizard can emulate, but not every wizard in the game. What kind of abilities? Well that depends on the kind of game. If D&D is truly just a dungeon crawler, then the majority will probably be combat oriented. If you're attempting to actually round out the franchise with RP abilities then perhaps this could be providing benefits through something like "commands" to your allies which produce a variety of results from advantage on skill/combat rolls or causing enemies to flee in terror (or cowing NPCs into submission). Now one might say "that's Charm Person or Some Other Spell, wizards do that already." and I would say "Yes, the Enchanter Wizard can Charm Person, and the Conjurer can grant Advantage, but no wizard can do both unlike the Leader Fighter Man who can also rally entire villages to a cause and command their loyalt" or whatever. The point is he's not just a wizard in armor who can do all the things that a wizard already can do and brings nothing different to the table. Personally I'm not a fan of removing large numbers of spells, I don't think that's an elegant solution. However creating a situation where a Wizard has to make a loving choice of what kind of wizard he or she wants to be at character creation (rather than at any given moment during the game) is actually a pretty neat idea and ultimately far more interesting design for everyone in the game. On top of that it opens the loving gates for other classes to then do things. You had a pretty good idea about Rangers being able to find natural rifts to other planes. That's a perfect example. If only Conjurors (or whatever) can open portals anywhere, then a Ranger becomes super useful, even though there's a bit of overlap in class design. Should this be their only neat ability? Of course not, maybe they can track anything anywhere, even across the planes. Kinda overlaps with Divination a bit. Good thing since you don't have a Diviner. If you don't have a Rogue then maybe the wizard seriously considers becoming a Transmuter instead of an Evoker to pickup Knock. Otherwise they're stuck buying expensive scrolls or searching for the Key to every locked door they find. Currently giving a neat ability or two (or three or four) to other classes is pointless. A single wizard makes it unnecessary. Turning the Fighter/Rogue/Ranger/Monk/Paladin into Wizards with all of their abilities is just an example of "Me too!" design where everyone has to be everything all the time in order to 'balance' the game. edit A Catastrophe posted:Fom lasts an hour, and that's assuming it even needs to be memorized. Yes, Freedom of Movement lasts an hour, it also requires a 4th level spell slot to cast and isn't a ritual, so it would have to be memorized unless provided by a domain or similar feature. As above, I don't think this particular instance is imbalanced, two classes have similar though somewhat different abilities. One is passive and permanent, the other more powerful but ultimately limited by time, resources (spell slots), and preparation requirements. However I do agree the fact that any wizard could potentially at any time replicate a class feature of another class (while doing a lot of other stuff as well/better) is a bit lame. This is actually a pretty good example of giving martial characters what would generally be considered a 'spell like ability' but differentiating it from the actual spell and creating utility/diversity. The weakest examples are simply giving characters literal "spell like abilities" that tell you to look up the spell to figure out what your Ranger can do. treeboy fucked around with this message at 14:28 on Aug 28, 2014 |
# ? Aug 28, 2014 14:09 |
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Cassa posted:Because magic is dumb?
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 14:14 |
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Serdain posted:"okay you guys have to get to New Land City, its 100km North over even terrain." Why wouldn't you just run 100km straight other then "I, the poster Serdain, am a hilariously dumb loving nerd." Literally name one reason you would do this.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 14:29 |
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QuantumNinja posted:Come with me, and you'll be in a world of PURE IMAGIATION! I've run four or five sessions without a grid and it's been fine. Once or twice I've shown relative positions with a few dice.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 14:31 |
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I would totally buy into the "wizard casts strange spells that rewrite reality, fighter hits things real hard" dichotomy in a game where only villains could be wizards.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 14:34 |
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Measured ranges are dumb and is the RPG equivalent of blood-letting with leeches to cure disease. It is a painful fruitless thing that we know better than to do yet a disturbing number of people in this modern age still do it.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 14:38 |
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ProfessorCirno posted:Why wouldn't you just run 100km straight other then "I, the poster Serdain, am a hilariously dumb loving nerd." Terrain features? Lakes or mountains or such.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 14:38 |
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treeboy posted:Every single recommendation you and others have made for buffing martial classes has been to either 1) make them jump further whenever they want, or 2) make them wizards with swords. Neither is interesting for a whole host of reasons and is lazy design.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 14:41 |
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ProfessorProf posted:I would totally buy into the "wizard casts strange spells that rewrite reality, fighter hits things real hard" dichotomy in a game where only villains could be wizards. The homebrew I play does this, where all the wizards are evil (and their spell components are things like piece of flesh from someone you personally caused 1000 hps of damage to) and if the players want to play a good wizard they can but guess what, the evil wizards are going to gently caress you up sooner or later. It works out really well actually.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 14:44 |
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Cassa posted:Because magic is dumb? I'm not really debating you on this, if I was your DM, I would be going "yeah, that poo poo lights up", because my own rule 0 is that a player who's character is setting poo poo on fire is a player who is probably having fun. What I'm getting at is the other end of the "fighters can't X because it's not realistic, unrealistic stuff is magic and fighters don't do magic" argument - the one that gets ignored by the people who make that argument. As written, your DM is correc. No, it doesn't make sense, and it doesn't have to - it's a magic spell and it does what it says on the box. A Catastrophe posted:The solution is to carry extra torches, and toss them into whatever you want set on fire, then use prestidigitation for precision ignition of your torch-detonator. See, this guy gets it. Next step is to realise you can carry a bucket of grease and some pre-lit torches and tell the weirdo in the dress to gently caress right off. Then he gets all bitter and decides that he's going to show you what a real wizard can do and then in a few levels you get to fight Dread Necromancer Whoever who you belittled for the last time. MadScientistWorking posted:You do realize that there isn't much differentiating a wizard's spell casting abilities from a lot of martial abilities. The only real difference is that its couched in magic. No way man the idea that you're such a good archer that you never miss is total bullshit and ruins immersion and I can't suspend my disbelief and Magic Missile is totally different because Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Aug 28, 2014 |
# ? Aug 28, 2014 14:57 |
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treeboy posted:Yes, Freedom of Movement lasts an hour, it also requires a 4th level spell slot to cast and isn't a ritual, so it would have to be memorized unless provided by a domain or similar feature. As above, I don't think this particular instance is imbalanced, two classes have similar though somewhat different abilities. One is passive and permanent, the other more powerful but ultimately limited by time, resources (spell slots), and preparation requirements. However I do agree the fact that any wizard could potentially at any time replicate a class feature of another class (while doing a lot of other stuff as well/better) is a bit lame. This is obviously and entirely unbalanced, based on the things you said above it. Your entire argument is about how casters are super-powerful because they're flexible, and then you immediately contradict yourself. The ranger doesn't get a "similar but somewhat different ability", he gets a similar but strictly worse ability. If you want martial characters to be competitive, they should either (a) be good at things wizards cannot be good at (which you've spent pages pointing out isn't currently possible), or (b) be better than wizards at the few things they get. Suggesting they get a lesser version of this means there is no hope they may outshine a properly-prepared caster at the thing they are built to do, which directly contradicts the exact design approach you are advocating for. Rangers, by their nature, should have movement unaffected by difficult terrain (even magical difficult terrain), and spells and other magical effects should neither reduce their speed nor cause the them to be restrained. Rangers should also be fantastic at slipping from nonmagical restraints (including grapples, which makes sense when you're fighting poo poo like bears), and they should be expert swimmers. As such, reprinting the text of Freedom of Movement as a passive, permanent ability for 8th-level rangers seems fair and reasonable. And this shouldn't be a spell-like ability, where it's got some magical portion, but just an ability the ranger gets. The ranger has given up the flexibility of full spell progression to gain that ability, so the party bard/cleric/druid shouldn't be able to outshine a ranger when he uses it, ever, even with the proper preparation. Edit: Actually, rangers should probably get an even better version of it as a permanent ability precisely so that a caster can't just say "Me, too!". QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 15:11 on Aug 28, 2014 |
# ? Aug 28, 2014 15:02 |
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Kortel posted:So.... not having healers are viable in a party? Or are they essential to party set up? Not having a dedicated healer works fine. The new hit dice mechanic allows for limited self healing throughout the adventuring day. Healers will of course be useful, as they should be, but are not strictly necessary. At the end of the day, it's a resource management tradeoff. Your party can pass on a healer in exchange for more damage output, or something like that, but they will lose some adventuring day longevity and be more at risk in combat.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 15:02 |
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Really Pants posted:5e's return to caster supremacy is solely a response to the big babies who threw tantrums about 4e not letting them hold all the shiny toys. No, fans of YOUR favorite edition are the babies!!! This is literally a conversation people are having.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 15:04 |
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Ruckby posted:No, fans of YOUR favorite edition are the babies!!! This is literally a conversation people are having. Welcome to D&D.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 15:15 |
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Honestly, I knew 5e wasn't going to be something I would like when I saw one of the surveys they sent out for the public playtesters. It read something to the effect of "Which spells feel the most like D&D to you?" and then listed a giant splat of wizard spells. This was but one of them. They basically devoted entire surveys to one class and what bullshit spells grogs liked the most.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 15:37 |
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Ruckby posted:No, fans of YOUR favorite edition are the babies!!! This is literally a conversation people are having. One of Karl Rove's best things was to accuse the other guy of exactly what you were doing, so his only recourse was to say "no you are!" and then you win because "just look how juvenile this discourse has become." 5e is penned in the tears shed over 4e. That's not even remotely controversial or disputed. moths fucked around with this message at 15:45 on Aug 28, 2014 |
# ? Aug 28, 2014 15:43 |
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I really like the idea of stripping spells down into a giant list of exalted charm-like effects. If it's true that monster design is already treating spells like keywords to describe a monster's capabilities, just go whole hog with keyspellwords and give them to everything. Of course, that'd require going through and changing things to account for 'spells' being 'a neat thing happens' rather than 'An arcane release of energy happens (Which won't work in an antimagic field, and you must gesture to do it, and can be dispelled, and...). You'd also need to cut into the wizard's 'I can do anything' shtick so he doesn't have access to EVERY spell or it'd just turn into 'Everyone is a different flavor of wizard now.' You'd need to start assembling 'spell lists' for stuff that seems like classes should be able to do. Rogues should be hard to pin down, so 'Freedom of Movement' could be an Maybe gate some 'exploits' behind having a certain number of points in a skill, so that you have to have a lot of Move Silently before you can just flat Silence yourself. I don't know if a system like this would be good or even interesting, or if I've just managed to reverse-engineer 4e's powers system in a clunky fashion. I dunno.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 15:44 |
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Seems fine to me you want to fight that guy who's NW or some noon cardinal direction from you, you bee line using your full movement, not randomly moving what seems to be less for some strange reason. If it really bothers you magically all spaces in DND free always 5ft across no matter what diagonally even in the 3D cube where you want to move from the bottom NW corner to the upper SE corner.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 15:45 |
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I keep seeing people say that Fighters shouldn't be able to do certain things because most fighters in fantasy cannot. Okay, so the line for Fighters is "most can do this? Then you can too!" Seems reasonable. So what can Wizards do? Where's the line there? "Can any wizard do this in any book? Then you can too!" Huh. That seems to be different. What's up with that? Why don't Fighters get all the cool things that any cool fighter can do in any fantasy book as options? And furthermore... why is everyone forgetting about levels? This is a level-based system. Characters of equal level should be of equal power or else what do levels even mean? So if your typical top-notch fantasy hero sword-guy is in his 30's and can't match the top Wizards for power, that says to me that he's probably level 7-ish. The top wizards tend to be old dudes with hunched backs and white beards, with world-changing powers, which says to me level 20. So if you kept fighters as they are now in 5e and let them get all their bonuses by level 7 (or 10), I think that would be comparable to Wizards of that level. The fighter wouldn't have the same level of narrative control as Wizards and wouldn't have the powers that Ferrinus is positing, but their sheer combat destructiveness might make up for that lack. Fighters really would be the kings of combat as advertised. Where would fighters go after level 7? When they already have everything that most fantasy sword-guys can have? I guess they have to start making choices like Wizards of powers that only some fantasy sword-guys have.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 16:10 |
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moths posted:One of Karl Rove's best things was to accuse the other guy of exactly what you were doing, so his only recourse was to say "no you are!" and then you win because "just look how juvenile this discourse has become." So 4e grognards are obnoxious democrats? Makes sense.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 16:10 |
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Serdain posted:So you believe that in a traditional fantasy setting of Sword Guy and Mage - any reasonable person should want to be the guy in the dress even if they love the concept of Sword Guy thematically? Is the game not meant to be, at some level, about playing a Role? Read some pre-D&D "Traditional" or pulp fantasy novels. Sword Guy's get all kinds of narrative abilities - Beowulf ends a fight by ripping off Grendels arm, Fafrnir constantly kills people in single sword blows or lifts impossibly heavy objects. They survive the most cunning traps of death, and when they do die its in their sleep because death couldn't have taken them awake. The Knights of the Round Table do amazing impossible things as well - Lancelot runs himself up a sword to decapitate his final foe, Gawain survives getting his head cut off, etc. You can't do cool stuff as "sword guy" in D&D because people like you insist that all sword guys can do in "traditional" fantasy is swing swords and kill things. You also can't balance the other way by toning down the wizard because, unlike in traditional fantasy, magic can do everything and the wizard has access to all the magic. If you read the Jack Vance novels that Vancian casting is based on, wizards know at most like 4 spells. Total. Period. Traditional fantasy mages were almost all illusionists and tricksters and very few had any kind of real power, and those that did were usually infernal. Pulp Fantasy (which is probably what you consider traditional, but whatever) like Conan brought in the Wizards of unknowable and inscrutable power, but they too often only had a handful of tricks individually. So no, only people who drink the D&D kool-aid believe in the traditional fantasy of Sword Guy and Robe Guy, because one of those roles is too incredibly narrow and the other one is too overly broad to have a place in actual Traditional Fantasy.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 16:12 |
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TheAnomaly posted:Pulp Fantasy (which is probably what you consider traditional, but whatever) like Conan brought in the Wizards of unknowable and inscrutable power, but they too often only had a handful of tricks individually. These guys are also total chumps. The Scarlet Citadel posted:Old Tsotha rose and faced his pursuer, his eyes those of a maddened serpent, his face an inhuman mask of awful fury. In each hand he held something that shimmered, and Conan knew he held death there. Black Colossus posted:`Aye, blench, dog!' The voice was like the hiss of a giant serpent. `I am Thugra Khotan! Long I lay in my tomb, awaiting the day of awakening and release. The arts which saved me from the barbarians long ago likewise imprisoned me, but I knew one would come in time - and he came, to fulfill his destiny, and to die as no man has died in three thousand years! Rogues in the House posted:`Back!' Nabonidus's voice cracked like a whip. `Another step and I will blast you!' Conan kills that last guy by throwing a wooden stool at his head. There's no real precedent in fiction for D&D Wizards able to fly around throwing fireballs, turn invisible, raise the dead, teleport, stop time etc. Jack the Lad fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Aug 28, 2014 |
# ? Aug 28, 2014 16:22 |
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UP AND ADAM posted:So 4e grognards are obnoxious democrats? Makes sense. I haven't actually seen any 4e grognards, but drat there's a lot of people who want them to exist.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 16:32 |
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TheAnomaly posted:Read some pre-D&D "Traditional" or pulp fantasy novels. Sword Guy's get all kinds of narrative abilities - Beowulf ends a fight by ripping off Grendels arm, Fafrnir constantly kills people in single sword blows or lifts impossibly heavy objects. They survive the most cunning traps of death, and when they do die its in their sleep because death couldn't have taken them awake. The Knights of the Round Table do amazing impossible things as well - Lancelot runs himself up a sword to decapitate his final foe, Gawain survives getting his head cut off, etc. You can't do cool stuff as "sword guy" in D&D because people like you insist that all sword guys can do in "traditional" fantasy is swing swords and kill things. Crap, read the Old Testament. Samson kills an entire army with a donkey's jawbone and tears down an entire evil temple (albeit at the cost of his life) with a quick prayer and awe-inspiring strength.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 16:34 |
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Jack the Lad posted:There's no real precedent in fiction for D&D Wizards able to fly around throwing fireballs, turn invisible, raise the dead, teleport, stop time etc.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 16:35 |
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treeboy posted:What? Literally what? We have examples of magic weapons that need to be attuned to specific races, why not specific classes? Providing all the special wonderful We have examples of special abilities that scale in power with character level, too. For some reason, fighters don't get those. This isn't because it's impossible given the framework of the game - it's just because the game is bad. I'm not talking about a magic weapon made for fighters - I'm talking about a special fighter power. Don't get me wrong, we're definitely not going to get either thing - since fighters are generic on purpose, the idea of anything at all that only they can use is completely absurd, but even a sword that could shoot lasers but only in a fighter's hands would be insufficient. quote:Good lord you're obtuse, have you considered for a moment that wish is simply a good example of poor spell design? I agree, Knock is terrible too, however not because it exists but because it is so readily available to every caster in the entire game. There's little issue with having overlap between the spells and abilities of some classes, the problem with wizards is they overlap with every class in the game with no investment beyond "I'm a wizard" and with zero drawback. Do you? It seems to me like you've seized on a couple surface level signifiers of caster imbalance. Wish, for instance. How could Wish exist in a game in which casters were balanced? Well, even though you actually never read stories about Wish ruining games, the sheer fact that the spell has a cool descriptions must mean it's bad - must mean, in fact, that as long as Wish was gone, the game would become balanced! Same thing for Knock. Knock can't just be a symptom of something - it must literally be the problem. As long as we get rid of these bad, game-ruining spells, it'll be perfectly okay to give one person at the table a specialist necromancer or enchanter, but to give another person at the table a fighter or monk. Forget about the fighter, don't bother with the rogue, just give spellcasters a little more aesthetic consistency and it'll be perfectly fine! As long as we fix how things look, we don't need to learn anything or do anything about the underlying mechanics. quote:Every single recommendation you and others have made for buffing martial classes has been to either 1) make them jump further whenever they want, or 2) make them wizards with swords. Neither is interesting for a whole host of reasons and is lazy design. 4e fighters are not wizards with swords. Dawn Caste exalted aren't wizards with swords. You've been trained to think that "person with special abilities" and "wizard" are synonyms, but that's your problem, not mine. quote:If you want to create a unique, useful, and flavorful set of martial classes you inherently have to pull back the variety and utility of wizards who can do everything already anyway and are poorly thought out with no concept beyond MAGIC. This means either 1) removing large portions of spells from the game, or 2) Keeping the spells more or less as they exist but segregating them into different builds/archetypes. Then after creating some semblance of a scoped and defined caster class (beyond 'do all the magic'), adding in a handful of useful martial abilities that perhaps a particular build of Wizard can emulate, but not every wizard in the game. You don't need to do any of that. You do what 4e did - lots of powers that you can choose freely, but that you can only have a level-capped number of at once. "Vancian" characters like wizards or swordmages who are able to respec themselves repeatedly have a bigger library of powers that they can shuffle around each day. So, say, a normal character has 5 combat powers and 3 noncombat powers. A wizard has 5 combat spells with 3 in reserve, and 3 noncombat spells with 5 in reserve. Just like a fighter's combat powers don't all have to be sword techniques (some could be grapples, or tactics, or berserk rages), a wizard's combat powers don't all have to be necromancies, or conjurations, or enchantments. They could just be the spells that wizard knows and likes to use. To keep up the feel of building up universal mastery, you could allow a character to "ritually" (i.e., given a few minutes to think and prepare) access any in-class power whose level is half their own, or that's 5 levels below theirs, or whatever. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Aug 28, 2014 |
# ? Aug 28, 2014 16:36 |
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Most wizards in fantasy and mythology only know one or two magic tricks, or their powers are derived from either ownership of a magic item or possessing a lot of obscure knowledge. Conan's big Priest of Set wizard nemesis was pretty much reduced to begging on the streets once he lost the magic ring that gave him his powers, for instance.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 16:37 |
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Jack the Lad posted:There's no real precedent in fiction for D&D Wizards able to fly around throwing fireballs, turn invisible, raise the dead, teleport, stop time etc. This may be true for precedent for earlier editions, but at this point, when it comes to what's reasonable for 5e, D&D-style wizards have penetrated popular culture to the point of being the default. Dumbledore, Willow, Dr. Strange, etc. are depicted as producing a wide variety of magical effects on a regular basis.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 16:56 |
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Sir Kodiak posted:This may be true for precedent for earlier editions, but at this point, when it comes to what's reasonable for 5e, D&D-style wizards have penetrated popular culture to the point of being the default. Dumbledore, Willow, Dr. Strange, etc. are depicted as producing a wide variety of magical effects on a regular basis. I can't speak for Dr. Strange or Willow, but it's worth noting that Dumbledore spends most of the series in the background, and if he was hanging around with Harry Potter and friends (Harry is good at like two things, Hermione mainly uses library research and small utility spells, Ron relies on being clever/brave as much as casting actual spells), then the books would be an insufferable parade of Dumbledore solving every problem while everyone else watches. Just like D&D!
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 17:01 |
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Sir Kodiak posted:This may be true for precedent for earlier editions, but at this point, when it comes to what's reasonable for 5e, D&D-style wizards have penetrated popular culture to the point of being the default. Dumbledore, Willow, Dr. Strange, etc. are depicted as producing a wide variety of magical effects on a regular basis. Hypothesis: at this point, D&D has influenced wizard fiction more than wizard fiction has influenced D&D.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 17:05 |
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LuiCypher posted:Crap, read the Old Testament. Samson kills an entire army with a donkey's jawbone and tears down an entire evil temple (albeit at the cost of his life) with a quick prayer and awe-inspiring strength. He even has a one-liner about making an rear end of his enemies after he gets them with the jawbone. Samson is the original action hero.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 17:07 |
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The only wizard I want to play in D&D is Stardust the Super Wizard.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 17:08 |
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Sir Kodiak posted:This may be true for precedent for earlier editions, but at this point, when it comes to what's reasonable for 5e, D&D-style wizards have penetrated popular culture to the point of being the default. Dumbledore, Willow, Dr. Strange, etc. are depicted as producing a wide variety of magical effects on a regular basis. Dr. Strange predates D&D by 11 years.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 17:08 |
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ProfessorProf posted:I can't speak for Dr. Strange or Willow, but it's worth noting that Dumbledore spends most of the series in the background, and if he was hanging around with Harry Potter and friends (Harry is good at like two things, Hermione mainly uses library research and small utility spells, Ron relies on being clever/brave as much as casting actual spells), then the books would be an insufferable parade of Dumbledore solving every problem while everyone else watches. Just like D&D! That's fair. Mainly, I think that a discussion of modern wizard-expectations that gives multiple examples from Conan novels and doesn't mention Harry Potter is not exactly capturing modern pop culture. homullus posted:Hypothesis: at this point, D&D has influenced wizard fiction more than wizard fiction has influenced D&D. I obviously agree, since I specifically described it that way in my post. theironjef posted:Dr. Strange predates D&D by 11 years. Well, naturally, what I meant is that he's only in a position to be mainstream-acceptable enough to be in a movie thanks to D&D wizards, which is in no way me covering up for forgetting that.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 17:14 |
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To anyone that still thinks the spell list on Wizards could be nerfed and it would solve how powerful they are, consider for a second: What if Wizards could still do everything with the disadvantage of wearing rags for armor and having a d6 hit die and not being proficient with any weapons and dedicating upgrades to making their spells more powerful, while other classes did specialized versions of the same thing but could also fight and have skills and generally be competent human beings. The problem is that right now, ALL the martial classes are, are competent human beings. Why can't rogues pick magical locks, or steal stuff from chests without even opening them, or hide in plain sight as if invisible? Then, well, who cares about the wizard getting Knock? Why can't rangers get permanent FoM that is granted to their allies whenever they are leading the group? Cause, then, well, who cares about the wizard getting FoM? You could do this with lots and lots of spells, or abandon the idea of "spells" alltogether and give magic-users magic that emulates the cool heroic powers other classes get, with a lil' bit o' sumtin special on da side.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 17:19 |
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# ? May 15, 2024 01:40 |
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treeboy posted:Also you keep using the term "Cargo Cult" and I'm starting to wonder if you even know what you're talking about beyond some internet catchphrase you heard on tumblr. I don't know what you do for a living but it's obviously not game design, though you're right, I don't know Exalted, I've never played it and have little wish to, everything I know is from the forums here, i.e. horrendous anime titty art and people talking about blowing up planets, so that's on ya'll i guess. Your flawed, second-hand impression of Exalted is exemplary cargo-cult thinking. You don't know how it works, but you think you do because of what you overheard.
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# ? Aug 28, 2014 17:27 |