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Gharbad the Weak posted:We have a goddamn rabbit in our group, I think Prausia can have a tail if she darn well wants a tail.
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Sep 16, 2014 04:35
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Gharbad the Weak posted:We have a goddamn rabbit in our group, I think Prausia can have a tail if she darn well wants a tail. I'd just like to be explicit that anything I talk about from a cruch perspective, is not making judgment on the fluff. Please, by all means, keep the fluff, the fluff is incredible, I love it. I'm just saying that 3.5 is a system where, while fluff and crunch should inform each other a little bit, they absolutely shouldn't bind each other. Like, just because someone wants to play a Yuan-Ti Wizard with a snake tail, doesn't mean they should have to take the rules for a YT Halfblood (Counts as a level 12!), then have to roll between 81 and 100 on a d100 in order to get that snake tail, and THEN have to bolt Wizard levels on top of those 12 levels they're already spending just to try and attempt to be what they want. That's just unnecessarily restrictive bullshit. Personally, with 3.5, I don't really care about fluff when it comes to crunch, and I care very little about crunch when it comes to fluff. If the crunch is balanced in relation to the other players, I'm not about to tell you what color you can paint it, so long as acting you're acting in good faith and the fluff is reasonable within the bounds of the story being told. Maekrix Waere fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Sep 16, 2014 |
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Sep 16, 2014 04:48
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(Oh, Poorweather, I forgot to say that the origin of your character's name is loving rad.)Nihilarian posted:3.5 is absolutely not a system you want to teach new players. I still play it, but only because I learned it back when it was the only game in town and I know it well enough to create good, fun characters. Nowadays, there are just so many systems that are simpler and/or better balanced. You guys already know about 4e, Dungeon World and 13th Age, but I also quite like Legend. Legend sounds pretty cool. It's free too!  Anyone want to get a game going using it?
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Sep 16, 2014 05:02
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Nihilarian posted:Are you sure? Yuan-Ti Purebloods are also the Yuan-Ti who have legs. Here are the stats I found. For some reason that wiki doesn't have Yuan-Ti Halfblood stats, which is what I assumed your character was (since they have snake tails). I think you missed the edit I made where I said that I had to use the halfblood stats because there were no other good Yuan-Ti options around at all. My bad for not clarifying at first! Also, for the record, I'm sort of deliberately trying to make Prausia awkward and knick-knacky in mechanical terms, which is the reason I went for this race as opposed to a reskin, and why I will probably continue to make kind of dubious character development decisions into the future. I have a lot of experience playing 3.5 - More so then any other system - And I've mostly played spellcasters, so I of course know all the ways to make a gamebreaking abomination wizard, if I were in the market. But, in the interests of the enjoyment of the rest of the party and the people watching, as well as Medibots hairline, I am not going to do that.
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Sep 16, 2014 05:05
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tlarn posted:Better than me. I just went for a name that sounded vaguely Norse for my Dwarf Fighter for this 3.5 campaign at a local hobby store. Went with Brondr for the first name and then Bronzebeard for the last name. Introduced my dude to NPCs like "My name is Brondr Bronzebeard," then he flexes, "but the ladies call me BronBron." My first tabletop character was literally "Flowers for Algernon" reversed in french.
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Sep 16, 2014 05:10
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Drakkel posted:My first tabletop character was literally "Flowers for Algernon" reversed in french. I went through an Alucard phase when I first started D&D, where I thought spelling my real name backwards was SO clever and made a good character name.
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Sep 16, 2014 05:20
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Nihilarian posted:3.5 is absolutely not a system you want to teach new players. I still play it, but only because I learned it back when it was the only game in town and I know it well enough to create good, fun characters. Nowadays, there are just so many systems that are simpler and/or better balanced. You guys already know about 4e, Dungeon World and 13th Age, but I also quite like Legend. Legend allows you to turn any character into a Kamen Rider and has explicit parkour rules. It is demonstrably The Illest.
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Sep 16, 2014 05:47
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djw175 posted:What almagamation of classes is Kit? Because I don't think it's working well for her. one of each.
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Sep 16, 2014 06:20
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D_W posted:(Oh, Poorweather, I forgot to say that the origin of your character's name is loving rad.) PoorWeather posted:I think you missed the edit I made where I said that I had to use the halfblood stats because there were no other good Yuan-Ti options around at all. My bad for not clarifying at first! Drakkel posted:My first tabletop character was literally "Flowers for Algernon" reversed in french.
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Sep 16, 2014 06:21
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Are there still going to be the "Wolfshirt explains" segments now that it's 3.5e or is that not really his forte?
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Sep 16, 2014 06:35
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ikks posted:one of each. "What's your character class?" "Assorted."
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Sep 16, 2014 06:37
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Aurora posted:Are there still going to be the "Wolfshirt explains" segments now that it's 3.5e or is that not really his forte? But we have Gharbad! I'm just waiting for someone to grapple something and the entire group to groan in unison.
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Sep 16, 2014 06:37
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Aurora posted:Are there still going to be the "Wolfshirt explains" segments now that it's 3.5e or is that not really his forte? It'll be "Poorweather Explains" and the segment will be 4 hours long as she tries to make the rules of this nonsense game make sense.
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Sep 16, 2014 06:45
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ikks posted:one of each. The classiest motherfakka at the table.
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Sep 16, 2014 07:48
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PoorWeather posted:I have a lot of experience playing 3.5 - More so then any other system - And I've mostly played spellcasters, so I of course know all the ways to make a gamebreaking abomination wizard, if I were in the market. Oh dear, I was hoping you'd be using this build, http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Magic_Missile_Stormer_%283.5e_Optimized_Character_Build%29 Don't like Magic Missile? What if it was doing 56d4+112 damage per round? All you need to do is follow this build, and hate fun.
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Sep 16, 2014 10:20
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PoorWeather posted:Additionally, at level 4, (level 7 for everyone else) she'll get five spell-like abilities for free. Animal Trance, Cause Fear, Entangle, Darkness, and Charm Person. Actually, she should have those already! The "at caster level 4" part doesn't mean that she needs to have 4 levels in a casting class to use them, it just means that if the spells have any bits that are affected by the level of the caster, you use 4 instead of Prausia's actual level. For instance, Animal Trance has a range of "Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)", so Prausia's racial version of the spell has a range of 35 feet.
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Sep 16, 2014 10:31
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Night10194 posted:I just know I had a cleric of Bane who was gonna go around and take out her frustrations about the rest of her party on some chumps' faces with the destruction smite+Power attack and her 3.5 facsimile of a Power Fist, until one of the other players pointed out it was a light weapon and the DM told me I was no longer allowed to punch out dragons for personal gain. Warforged battlefist. There's always a way.
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Sep 16, 2014 10:37
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I know Tome of Battle talk was a little bit back, but, really its the best book because it finally made viable melee fighters. Really, outside of that, if you look at any class that cannot use magic or supernatural powers to fight, they are really bad. To note also, one really underappreciated class I feel is worth mentioning that will likely never make its way into the game is the Factotum. Basically the skill monkey of the gods which is also the jack-of-all-trades class that Gharbad mentioned in his Tome of Battle post. They key completely off of intelligence can cast a limited number of arcane and divine spells, actually get intelligence bonus to defense and possibly also to hit. But, the main reason you want to play one is that every skill is a class skill for the factotum. So, in conclusion, Tome of Battle classes are awesome. And, go check out the factotum because they replaced rogues.
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Sep 16, 2014 13:39
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Bruceski posted:I went through an Alucard phase when I first started D&D, where I thought spelling my real name backwards was SO clever and made a good character name. My first D&D character was just literally me. Used my own name and made no claims that it was anything other than me but good at swords. I didn't really understand the idea of creating, y'know, a character back then apparently.
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Sep 16, 2014 14:38
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Brassherald posted:I know Tome of Battle talk was a little bit back, but, really its the best book because it finally made viable melee fighters. Really, outside of that, if you look at any class that cannot use magic or supernatural powers to fight, they are really bad. After getting the Tome of Battle and reading through it, I put my players up against some NPCs with classes from it, and then gave them the opportunity (through ~magical plot device~ naturally) to reclass into an appropriate class from the book. Unsurprisingly, most of the martial characters took that opportunity.
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Sep 16, 2014 14:44
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Doc V posted:Actually, she should have those already! The "at caster level 4" part doesn't mean that she needs to have 4 levels in a casting class to use them, it just means that if the spells have any bits that are affected by the level of the caster, you use 4 instead of Prausia's actual level. For instance, Animal Trance has a range of "Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)", so Prausia's racial version of the spell has a range of 35 feet. Technically speaking, this is only partially correct. She does have access to the spell-like abilities that are noted as being available starting at caster level 4. However, when using these spell-like abilities, any reference to "caster level" in the spell-like ability's description uses the average of her total level, including level adjustments, and her highest class level. There's an optional feature she can choose to take that will allow her to always use her total level instead, but this carries the potential penalty that she will take a -2 to all saving throws made to use racial spell-like abilities while inside an antimagic field or under similar magic-suppressing effects. At level 8, this penalty is reduced to -1, and at level 16, the penalty is eliminated. Note that if two or more characters in the same party take this optional feature, the saving throw penalty is doubled for each friendly character within 30 feet that has taken the feature.
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Sep 16, 2014 15:28
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So many chargen traps. So many poorly explained massively conflicting rules.
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Sep 16, 2014 15:30
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Brassherald posted:I know Tome of Battle talk was a little bit back, but but the Tome of Battle discussion is never over
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Sep 16, 2014 15:42
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Brassherald posted:I know Tome of Battle talk was a little bit back, but, really its the best book because it finally made viable melee fighters. Really, outside of that, if you look at any class that cannot use magic or supernatural powers to fight, they are really bad.
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Sep 16, 2014 16:05
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medibot posted:Technically speaking, this is only partially correct. She does have access to the spell-like abilities that are noted as being available starting at caster level 4. However, when using these spell-like abilities, any reference to "caster level" in the spell-like ability's description uses the average of her total level, including level adjustments, and her highest class level. There's an optional feature she can choose to take that will allow her to always use her total level instead, but this carries the potential penalty that she will take a -2 to all saving throws made to use racial spell-like abilities while inside an antimagic field or under similar magic-suppressing effects. At level 8, this penalty is reduced to -1, and at level 16, the penalty is eliminated. Note that if two or more characters in the same party take this optional feature, the saving throw penalty is doubled for each friendly character within 30 feet that has taken the feature. The best part is, even I can't tell/recall if this is real or satire intended to defend my misunderstanding of the rules.
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Sep 16, 2014 16:50
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I like how you can tell PoorWeather didn't prepare Mage Armor because she keeps whining about low health, even though she could have a +4 bonus to AC for the entire dungeon if she casted it. That's literally the one thing at low level that makes Wizards better is they can just go "Nuh uh you can't shoot me, I have a magic shield that stops bullets." like a kid on the playground. If you're daily prepared spells at level 1-2 are not just Mage Armor, Sleep, and Grease- you're doing it wrong. As for the jokes about people in video saying "haha casters aren't broken" you have to remember that most people on the internet do not play D&D below level 10 for some stupid as hell reason, and at that point Casters literally do just nuke playing fields.
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Sep 16, 2014 16:51
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Yeah, Wizards take a while to get going, but when they do, they trivialize so many encounters that aren't explicitly made to make a Wizard burn most or all their spells per day. And someone who knows what they're doing can flip their Wizard's nuke-switch pretty early.
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Sep 16, 2014 16:58
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I would entirely believe it. There are so many rules, and they contradict, complicate, counteract and conflict with each other in a confoundingly cruel cavalcade of cluttering criteria. And probably some more words that would alliterate nicely.
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Sep 16, 2014 16:59
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PoorWeather posted:The best part is, even I can't tell/recall if this is real or satire intended to defend my misunderstanding of the rules.
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Sep 16, 2014 17:06
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TCat posted:I like how you can tell PoorWeather didn't prepare Mage Armor because she keeps whining about low health, even though she could have a +4 bonus to AC for the entire dungeon if she casted it. That's literally the one thing at low level that makes Wizards better is they can just go "Nuh uh you can't shoot me, I have a magic shield that stops bullets." like a kid on the playground. If you're daily prepared spells at level 1-2 are not just Mage Armor, Sleep, and Grease- you're doing it wrong. She used Mage Armor on Joey though.
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Sep 16, 2014 17:07
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RBA Starblade posted:She used Mage Armor on Joey though. She did? ... She did. Okay nevermind she's just bad at spellcasting because the reach on Mage Armor is Touch as in you have to touch someone, which is why it is used primarily as a self buff for people that can die from being sneezed on like Wizards. As in the kind with 6 health. That can't stop talking about it. And that whole wiggling with the rules on it is really ridiculous, I'm sorry.
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Sep 16, 2014 17:20
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TCat posted:Okay nevermind she's just bad at spellcasting because the reach on Mage Armor is Touch as in you have to touch someone, which is why it is used primarily as a self buff for people that can die from being sneezed on like Wizards. As in the kind with 6 health. That can't stop talking about it. Shocking Grasp is also a touch spell and people don't use that on themselves. Plenty of cleric and wizard buffs/healing have a range of touch and are best cast on other members of the party. Range of touch just means it's best cast before combat if not an offensive spell and with sufficient duration. I suppose if you're playing your wizard as Monk they could use that as an excuse to not buff other people. People cast Mage Armor on themselves because the mage is usually squishy, it doesn't stack with other armor (it's an Armor Bonus, not an Enhancement Bonus), and when discussing buffs/builds theorycrafters tend to either assume the build exists in a vacuum alone or is a greedy bastard who would sooner see their companions wiped out than give up a +1 to some minor skill.
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Sep 16, 2014 18:15
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I'm pretty sure you can cast mage armor on other players. There's no ridiculous wiggling of any rules or am I crazy? I looked up the spell and I'm not. Edit: Also, I think she keeps mentioning her HP as part of her joke build. I think this is were your misunderstanding what makes a player "bad at spellcasting" is coming from TCat. NextSundayA.D. fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Sep 16, 2014 |
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Sep 16, 2014 18:18
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The idea that you are "doing it wrong" while having fun in a game with friends is hilarious. Keep doing it "wrong," gang. We're enjoying it.
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Sep 16, 2014 18:24
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I think efficient character building and minmaxing are only fun in a theoretical sense. I've never once had fun when they're put into play. They're the crunch version of Jimmy the Fighter. It's fun to imagine Jimmy the Fighter being the ultimate out of place wet noodle, but actually having Jimmy the Fighter in your party? Kills everything, just like it did beforehand, but you're actually dealing with it. Please keep having fun, Fun Havers.
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Sep 16, 2014 18:31
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Just because we switched to 3.5 doesn't mean we've stopped ignoring rules. If anything there's only more rules to ignore now.
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Sep 16, 2014 18:47
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And because 3.5 has been around forever with an edition that came after it that streamlined the hell out of the experience, it's easy to figure out which rules to leave as is, modify, or ignore in their entirety.  My rule of thumb on hyper efficient min/maxing in tabletop stuff or anything in general is to only do it when everyone involved is in agreement that they'll participate in doing it. If there's even one person who doesn't know how to do it or refuses to participate, you don't do it. If it's anything that kills the good vibes in the group, it's having That One Guy.
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Sep 16, 2014 18:55
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The only thing as absurd as wizards in 3.5 are clerics. High level clerics with the right domains are terrifying. And they also don't explode when you look at them like a wizard does at low levels.
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Sep 16, 2014 19:40
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Let me tell you about the Archivist, which is literally Cleric+ Also about my buddy the Druid
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Sep 16, 2014 19:50
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The Cleric, the Druid and the Wizard are all very strong guys from core. The Archivist (divine wizard), Artificer (magic item crafter) and Erudite (psionic wizard) join the big 3 when you go to noncore material. ... But this may be getting a bit far afield. WolfShirt posted:Just because we switched to 3.5 doesn't mean we've stopped ignoring rules. If anything there's only more rules to ignore now.
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Sep 16, 2014 20:05
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