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SuperKlaus posted:Ahhh I forgot "that leaves us a bushel of fortune cookies, an 18th-level incarnum user, and a magic 8 ball" met with "ok bring up the cookies and keep the 8 ball on standby" I wasn't around when Incarnum was released, just how bad was it?
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Jul 12, 2022 19:39
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NihilCredo posted:I wasn't around when Incarnum was released, just how bad was it? It was pretty weak because your class features were mostly 'here's a power you can bind to one of your magic item slots which locks out that slot that are not remotely competitive with most good magical items'. They also just introduced a ton of new and confusing mechanics which led to the kind of reputation you get in that strip. For the classes themselves, the Totemist was fine and you could make the Incarnate work but both weren't exactly amazing. Then you had the Soulborn which is still one of the weakest classes ever printed for 3.5 Zore fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Jul 12, 2022 |
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Jul 12, 2022 19:50
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You know how some clerics or druids will spend all their magic on buffing themselves into the stratosphere so they can do cool fight things? Imagine that, but it's mandatory, the spells are poo poo, and you can't wear magic items. I would literally rather play a Truenamer (a class that is fundamentally broken on a mechanical level) than a Soulborn, because Truenamers get a few levels of being pretty fun before they drop off a cliff into hell. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Jul 12, 2022 |
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Jul 12, 2022 20:07
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Yeah, Soulborn are 'Paladins with no healing, magic or special abilities' and they don't even get access to the Incarnum stuff until level 4. And unlike the other 2 base classes they exclusively got binds that conflicted with magical items where Incarnates and Totemists had special a special slot that didn't where you could bind their powerful stuff which made them worthwhile.
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Jul 12, 2022 20:18
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NihilCredo posted:I wasn't around when Incarnum was released, just how bad was it? It introduced "Essentia," a pool you could assign for permanent bonuses. You could change what you spent your essentia on each day, to better adapt to the adventure you were facing. But in return for the flexibility of being able to prepare for an adventure, it was weaker than other options. For example, the feat "Lightning Reflexes" gives a player an untyped +2 bonus on all saving throws. The feat, "Cerulean Reflexes" gives the player 1 point of essentia, and lets them spend a point for a +1 insight bonus to reflexes. So if you were concerned with saving throws, you could spend three feats to get a +2 to each of your saving throws, or you could spend three feats to get an essentia pool of 3, which you can spend to get +1 typed bonus on each of your saving throws or +3 typed bonus to a single one of them. Also if you only assign one point to your reflex saving throw you can't later go back and add more, because god forbid this system be cooperative. A character who can rebuild themselves to the threats they face is an interesting idea, but for "balance" reasons every number in the book was awful.
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Jul 13, 2022 04:13
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Isn't that basically the concept of wizards, just made to be more complicated and suck?
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Jul 13, 2022 06:30
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Lt. Lizard posted:Isn't that basically the concept of wizards, just made to be more complicated and suck? Nah, wizards have the "weak point" of low saves, HP, and defenses in exchange for their powerful spells. (They don't really, but that's not the point) An essentia character can spend their essentia on being good at literally any role, so to make up for it they're bad at doing that. It's a little disheartening to look at a book of new ideas and say, "These are bad because they are mechanically suboptimal," but they were extremely mechanically suboptimal.
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Jul 13, 2022 06:49
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I'll forgive a lot of mechanical jank if the class is cool conceptually (see: Truenamers), that's what house rules are for, but incarnum users were a weird, underpowered mechanic with mushy and unclear flavor that also just weren't very fun to play. Edit: I can remember two distinct conversations where someone had a misconception about Incarnum or one of its classes that was actually cooler than the real one. (Admittedly, one of those was "no, that's the Binder", which is another cool-but-bad class from the same book as Truenamers.) girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 07:20 on Jul 13, 2022 |
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Jul 13, 2022 07:07
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I absolutely, absolutely loved the fluff and lore behind the Binder and the spirits they could petition. My first posts on the ancient WotC forums was even in the thread for designeing homebrew spirits. I wrote a Cú Chulainn expy I think. But I never got a chance to play one. The member of our friend group who usually DM'ed was of the erroneous opinion that all splatbook classes were overpowered despite the Binder being weaker than a core rulebook bard.
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Jul 13, 2022 09:13
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I've been poking around trying to figure out how these classes work and it's maddening. So if I get this right, for each meld you have to shape it to a chakra, and then can assign essentia to it or bind it to that chakra? And each of these actions (shape, essentia, bind) gives completely different effects on the same meld, and each one also has different restrictions on how often you can do them, with binds having the bonus of blocking out magic items in that slot... Oh, and as a bonus, totemists also seem to get an even more convoluted Totem chakra, where you can't shape anything to that slot but you can bind something shaped in a different chakra, and there's also something about a Totem avatar? I think I'm going crazy this is too convoluted.  Yeah, not sure why I would ever do this when I could just play a wizard. Edit: I do wanna say that some of the concept of these classes intrigue me. I feel like they could be a very cool flexible pseudo-crafter; it's just that the implementation completely sucks. Arzaac fucked around with this message at 09:25 on Jul 13, 2022 |
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Jul 13, 2022 09:17
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a lotta yall still don't get it totem holders can use multiple slurp chakras on the same totem so if you have 1 astro totem and 3 slurp chakras you can create 3 new totems
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Jul 13, 2022 11:19
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Yadoppsi posted:I absolutely, absolutely loved the fluff and lore behind the Binder and the spirits they could petition. My first posts on the ancient WotC forums was even in the thread for designeing homebrew spirits. I wrote a Cú Chulainn expy I think. But I never got a chance to play one. The member of our friend group who usually DM'ed was of the erroneous opinion that all splatbook classes were overpowered despite the Binder being weaker than a core rulebook bard. I got a soft spot for the Binder as well from reading an excellent campaign on journal on the OotS forums once that delved heavily into Binder fluff and made an awesome story out of it. It's a very unique take, and expresses the concept of "making deals with otherworldly powers" a lot better than any incarnation of the warlock, in my opinion.
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Jul 13, 2022 12:05
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Oh, was that silverclawshift? Those campaigns were amazing
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Jul 13, 2022 13:19
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sebmojo posted:Oh, was that silverclawshift? Those campaigns were amazing
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Jul 13, 2022 15:09
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Mystic Mongol posted:It introduced "Essentia," a pool you could assign for permanent bonuses. You could change what you spent your essentia on each day, to better adapt to the adventure you were facing. But in return for the flexibility of being able to prepare for an adventure, it was weaker than other options. As someone who is not at all familiar with Incarnum et al., what strikes me is that D&D already has a resource you can spend to respec some of a character's bonuses to adapt to different challenges. That resource is money and those bonuses are magic items.
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Jul 13, 2022 16:25
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girl dick energy posted:Edit: I can remember two distinct conversations where someone had a misconception about Incarnum or one of its classes that was actually cooler than the real one. (Admittedly, one of those was "no, that's the Binder", which is another cool-but-bad class from the same book as Truenamers.) Binder wasn't bad, though some of its bindings certainly were. With the right bindings it was upper mid-tier. It was certainly the strongest of the classes in its sourcebook.
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Jul 13, 2022 17:16
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fool of sound posted:Binder wasn't bad, though some of its bindings certainly were. With the right bindings it was upper mid-tier. It was certainly the strongest of the classes in its sourcebook. This is also true of the Totemist and Incarnate. They definitely had enough tricks to be fun to play once you managed to filter out their trap options. Like none of them were topping the power charts but uh the classes at the top of the power charts made the game completely unplayable if people were remotely competent at them. 3.5 was ultimately the kind of game where they shoved the most powerful classes and some of the least together in the PHB and the only one I can think of where if you banned all the PHB classes and allowed all the splatbook classes the game became a lot more fun and balanced. (You can let the Barbarian, Rogue and Bard out to play if you really have to. And ban the Archivist and Artificer for being the only 2 classes they made after the PHB that approached the power of Wizard/Druid/Cleric).
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Jul 13, 2022 17:26
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Zore posted:This is also true of the Totemist and Incarnate. They definitely had enough tricks to be fun to play once you managed to filter out their trap options. Isn't the Psion also pretty powerful?
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Jul 13, 2022 18:27
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wdarkk posted:Isn't the Psion also pretty powerful? Psion is powerful but not flexible. Its more like a Sorcerer than a Wizard/Druid/Cleric and can't break the game as hard as they do. Plus it just has less support so you can't chain together some of the absolutely stupid poo poo Arcane/Divine casters got by the end of 3.5 Like a huge, huge part of why Wizards/Druids/Clerics/Archivists/Artificers are top is because of how inordinately flexible they are. Not only are they full-casters but every day they can swap out their toolbox completely to tailor it to their current goals. Most other full casters can't do that so even though they can technically perform as well in any given situation they can't perform as well in every situation. Zore fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Jul 13, 2022 |
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Jul 13, 2022 18:35
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Also, they nerfed the psionic equivalent to all the various "Summon Mooks to Break the Action Economy" spells that arcane/divine casters have in order to curtail the power of psionic characters towards the end of 3.5's run. Naturally, they left the arcane/divine spells untouched because it's completely fine for wizards, clerics, druids, and archivists to clog the field with expendable bodies.
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Jul 13, 2022 23:44
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They should've kept the old system of letting fighters call in their entire personal army then.
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Jul 14, 2022 02:28
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Clarste posted:They should've kept the old system of letting fighters call in their entire personal army then. Nope. Fighters got to lose everything, their retinues and followers, their saves, the economy of action, and their dignity.
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Jul 14, 2022 03:03
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wdarkk posted:Isn't the Psion also pretty powerful? Hey it's Psteve!
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Jul 14, 2022 03:09
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sebmojo posted:Hey it's Psteve! 🎵In lieu of flowers send donations to charity!🎶
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Jul 14, 2022 04:35
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You know, the one that still puzzles me to this day is the 3.0 Hospitaler. Like, it's straight-up a Cleric with full attack + martial weapons, 80% of a fighter's bonus feats, and a couple of paladin abilities to top it up. I get why some more unique classes or new types of casters might be non-obviously broken, but in this case, you don't need to do any playtest at all! It straight up has bigger numbers than the base class it's replacing. I can't imagine how this made it to print without anyone saying "wait, is this BAB progression right?".
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Jul 14, 2022 07:44
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I get the sense that at no point during 3.0, and for a good part of 3.5, was inter-class balance a concern at all.
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Jul 14, 2022 08:04
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NihilCredo posted:You know, the one that still puzzles me to this day is the 3.0 Hospitaler. Like, it's straight-up a Cleric with full attack + martial weapons, 80% of a fighter's bonus feats, and a couple of paladin abilities to top it up. I mean that's a prestige class right? Weren't the early design of those basically just super classes?
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Jul 14, 2022 08:27
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NihilCredo posted:You know, the one that still puzzles me to this day is the 3.0 Hospitaler. Like, it's straight-up a Cleric with full attack + martial weapons, 80% of a fighter's bonus feats, and a couple of paladin abilities to top it up. quote:In addition, the hospitaler chooses two of the following domains: Healing, Protection, War, the prestige domain Glory (if she channels positive energy) or the prestige domain Domination (if she channels negative energy). Access to other domains is lost. quote:Code of Conduct: Hospitalers take an oath of poverty, obedience, and defense of those in their care. This does not mean that hospitalers live mean, penny-pinching lives. They share their wealth among themselves and give any excess to their order. Obedience is not related to character or social rank, but rather to position assigned within the order, and often changes with the situation. Regardless of their relative ranks, all hospitalers defer to the head of a facility while on the grounds. Hospitalers must be willing to lay down their lives to protect the pilgrims or hospitaler facilities under their care, but should not do so recklessly..
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Jul 14, 2022 08:44
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I think they were intended to be "Paladin but good." (3.0 Paladin was.... not great.)
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Jul 14, 2022 09:09
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NihilCredo posted:You know, the one that still puzzles me to this day is the 3.0 Hospitaler. Like, it's straight-up a Cleric with full attack + martial weapons, 80% of a fighter's bonus feats, and a couple of paladin abilities to top it up. Actually the hospitaler is poo poo. Look at the spellcasting they LOSE. edit: Obviously they're better than either the Paladin or the Fighter, but it's worse than just staying as Cleric. I take that back, it's worse than paladin, too, if your means of getting to Hospitaler was through the Paladin class. A.o.D. fucked around with this message at 11:27 on Jul 14, 2022 |
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Jul 14, 2022 11:17
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A.o.D. posted:Actually the hospitaler is poo poo. Look at the spellcasting they LOSE. Is either one of us misreading that page? Hospitalers gets full spellcasting progression. The only spellcasting they "lose" compared to a Cleric is that they have to choose new domains from a list of 4.
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Jul 14, 2022 13:34
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My reading of "other domains" is they only get the ones selected from the list. If it was written as "the other domains", then I'd take it to mean they only lose access to the ones in the list they did not pick, which seems a lot weirder than losing everything but the picked ones.
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Jul 14, 2022 15:12
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3.0 was a land of "your class' immersion trumps fun" so yeah, I always read that as you lose access to all other domains because you made a pinky promise to be an ambulance.
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Jul 14, 2022 15:30
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An oath of poverty is also a huge lead weight around your ankles at high levels when tons of your power comes from magic items, unless you subvert it with some clearly bullshit workaround like "no my friend owns all this equipment I'm wearing he's just lending it to me".
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Jul 14, 2022 15:38
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It seems pretty clear to me? "A hospitaler casts spells as a cleric and has full access to the general cleric spell list." "In addition, the hospitaler chooses two of the following domains: [...]. Access to other domains is lost." They can use all the standard cleric spells but are limited to a handful of domains for domain spells. E: Taciturn Tactician posted:An oath of poverty is also a huge lead weight around your ankles at high levels when tons of your power comes from magic items, unless you subvert it with some clearly bullshit workaround like "no my friend owns all this equipment I'm wearing he's just lending it to me". This one doesn't seem that restrictive, either. "They share their wealth among themselves and give any excess to their order." i.e. "The boss says I can use the Ring of Glory so long as we're on the adventure, bing bang gimme gimme." Zulily Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Jul 14, 2022 |
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Jul 14, 2022 15:40
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Taciturn Tactician posted:An oath of poverty is also a huge lead weight around your ankles at high levels when tons of your power comes from magic items, unless you subvert it with some clearly bullshit workaround like "no my friend owns all this equipment I'm wearing he's just lending it to me". Or you take the Sacred Vow and Vow of Poverty feats from the Book of Exalted Deeds, which are their own  .
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Jul 14, 2022 15:41
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Taciturn Tactician posted:An oath of poverty is also a huge lead weight around your ankles at high levels when tons of your power comes from magic items, unless you subvert it with some clearly bullshit workaround like "no my friend owns all this equipment I'm wearing he's just lending it to me". You're not getting the real medieval clergy experience unless you're trying to dodge the responsibilities of your restrictive oaths
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Jul 14, 2022 17:14
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:
Depends heavily on your GM to play along. Also, it'd be more actuate to say "share the poverty" until a few generations have passed and Ikanreed's observation is in full flower. And even then there's orders that have taken their vows more seriously than others. Also, even if the Order outfits you at the start, are you allowed to take a full share of the loot? Or use it towards your personal equipment? I'd give that serious side eye as a GM myself.
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Jul 14, 2022 18:04
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Oh no no these magical items are gifts given freely by pious merchants
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Jul 14, 2022 18:07
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habeasdorkus posted:Depends heavily on your GM to play along. Also, it'd be more actuate to say "share the poverty" until a few generations have passed and Ikanreed's observation is in full flower. And even then there's orders that have taken their vows more seriously than others. What does "poverty" look like for an actively adventuring warrior, though? I'd imagine it'd be pretty easy to make the case that you should be able to spend your loot on magic items and good armor because you can't keep your other oaths about defending people if you're too undergeared to fight equal CR opponents.
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Jul 14, 2022 18:54
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