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lightrook posted:A trick I heard was to have your Frenzied Berserker find a safe and secluded place to exhaust all their Frenzies for the day so it's no longer an issue for anyone. "hold on I gotta go rub one out before we get started"
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Jul 12, 2018 10:24
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| # ? Apr 16, 2024 08:48 |
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If I pitch my group a 3.5 game with no PHB classes and no daily resource management (so no casting or psionics), is there any major option I would miss by just presenting the other books directly? I want to avoid too much book-diving, and unlike PF this game didn't have a central repository for everything.
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Jul 30, 2018 18:46
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So just tome of battle + scouts are the only classes?
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Jul 30, 2018 18:54
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It also includes things like binder/warlock/DFA/incarnum.
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Jul 30, 2018 19:10
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Include spellcasters by giving them one spell slot per spell per encounter and bonus spell levels equal to their casting stat mod. So e.g. you have a 20 int (+5), you can do one 5th lv spell, or a 3rd and a 2nd, etc. It's been working out pretty all right for my necromancer I think.
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Jul 30, 2018 19:20
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Yawgmoth posted:Include spellcasters by giving them one spell slot per spell per encounter and bonus spell levels equal to their casting stat mod. So e.g. you have a 20 int (+5), you can do one 5th lv spell, or a 3rd and a 2nd, etc. It's been working out pretty all right for my necromancer I think.
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Jul 30, 2018 19:33
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NGDBSS posted:Sounds interesting. Though what do you mean by "one spell slot per spell per encounter"? Is that a spell slot per spell level or something else? Otherwise my thoughts on reworking X/day powers are to make 1/day into 1/encounter and also spend another encounter power, or 2+/day into half that per encounter. So for example: Billy the Mage is 5th level, with a 20 Int and 16 Cha, so he has 3rd level spells known. He can cast each one 1/encounter as a base. He has a +5 Int mod and a +3 Cha mod, so each encounter he can cast an extra 3rd level spell and an extra 2nd level spell (or two 2nd and a 1st, or any other combination that adds up to 5). He can also throw a total of 8 spell levels of metamagic onto his spells, so if for example he takes quicken spell that's two spells quickened and he's spent. As for base number of spells known, I'd probably go for somewhere between 2-4 spells per character level. Maybe 2 per level as a base, with +1/CL for specializing in a school (as per wizard school spec) and let them drop another school for another +1.
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Jul 30, 2018 20:34
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That's basically a much stronger sorcerer.
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Jul 30, 2018 21:33
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Also on reflection I probably just want to avoid Vancian casting entirely for my pitch because that makes for far less book-diving. Though it could be repurposed for something like shadowcasting where all the powers are already in the relevant text rather than scattered in the PHB/SC/whatever else.
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Jul 30, 2018 22:39
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Limit them to Spell Compendium, or if you really want to carve it down, limit them to the wujen list in Complete Arcane.
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Jul 31, 2018 02:54
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NGDBSS posted:If I pitch my group a 3.5 game with no PHB classes and no daily resource management (so no casting or psionics), is there any major option I would miss by just presenting the other books directly? I want to avoid too much book-diving, and unlike PF this game didn't have a central repository for everything. You will still have to place some kind of limit on healing, because Wand of Cure Light Wounds spam might still be a thing. I recommend either: * A character can only be healed a number of times per day equal to their [Level + CON modifier] * A character can only be healed a number of times per day equal to [half of the maximum value of their hit dice, rounded down + CON modifier] If that's still "daily resource management" to you, and you want to disregard it, then be prepared for the players always starting a fight with both maximum health and no special ability restrictions, which can theoretically work, but the difficulty of your encounters will be very flat.
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Jul 31, 2018 03:29
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Or just let them have things like Dragon Shaman, who can get an aura that heals themselves and allies, but only up to half? But yeah a game that used things like Dragon Shaman, Warlock, Dragonfire Adept, Totemist and possibly other Incarnum classes, Binder and the classes from Tome of Battle 9 Swords would probably be decent. Can't remember if there were any other classes. If you could somehow divest the Shapeshift Druid of spells that might work too.
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Jul 31, 2018 06:16
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gradenko_2000 posted:If that's still "daily resource management" to you, and you want to disregard it, then be prepared for the players always starting a fight with both maximum health and no special ability restrictions, which can theoretically work, but the difficulty of your encounters will be very flat. Ryuujin posted:Or just let them have things like Dragon Shaman, who can get an aura that heals themselves and allies, but only up to half? Case in point: someone presented a 6K HP dragon as a challenge for level 18 Pathfinder PCs, with screwy action economy and immunity to everything but damage. (This was part of a Mythic campaign, which didn't help.)  It was the dullest combat encounter I have ever played in, especially after someone pulled out a plot device to finally end it and yet the GM wanted to math out all the damage we would deal.  At this point I refuse to participate in any more tabletop with him or to take him seriously at all.In-combat healing should still be fine, since most of it is not that efficient/siloed off onto casters/was designed to not interfere with also doing interesting stuff rather than sandbagging. As for Shapeshift Druid stuff or whatever I would have to look back at that stuff because I'm real rusty on the changes made by the more intrusive ACFs. If I put it in (if), it would probably be with that PHB2 variant or whatever that uses explicit buffs rather than the polymorph problem of using the Monster Manual like a shopping catalog. All this is probably a ways off; my group will run a campaign of several months and pitch new ones when that ends. We've got a lot of ideas floating around and so I want to polish up mine. I'd started brainstorming on a lark on the basis of "why does this entire social circle have a perverse fascination with running the same 3.x poo poo in the same clueless way" and progressed to "if they are interested in 3.x then bahgawd  I am going to actually do it well by them".
NGDBSS fucked around with this message at 10:42 on Jul 31, 2018 |
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Jul 31, 2018 10:36
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Oh didn't realize you were going for a full heal between encounters, kind of like Gamma World. The Shapeshift variant of the Druid is just that, it is from the PHB II and does not get Wild Shape, instead giving up a bunch of features to get an at will Shapeshift that has preset forms that add Str and AC, a form of attack and possibly a movement mode. Each shape is vague enough that you can flavor it a number of ways. The problem is I don't think any ACF would actually remove spellcasting. If you were willing to go to homebrew then you might find better stuff. As both Piell and I have tried our hands at non spellcasting Shapeshifters.
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Jul 31, 2018 19:07
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IIRC the Shapeshift Druid is great if your player still wants to play a supercool druid but doesn't feel like doing too much spreadsheet work, and you don't want them gaming wildshape too hard as a DM. In terms of ease of use and intelligent mechanics it's a modest upgrade.
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Jul 31, 2018 19:57
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Admittedly it has some major issues, like the bonuses to stats/AC it grants are the same as the most common magic items, Enhancement. Which uh means that unlike a Wild Shape Druid it doesn't work to well with magic items.
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Jul 31, 2018 21:05
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Ryuujin posted:Admittedly it has some major issues, like the bonuses to stats/AC it grants are the same as the most common magic items, Enhancement. Which uh means that unlike a Wild Shape Druid it doesn't work to well with magic items.
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Jul 31, 2018 23:52
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NGDBSS posted:The intent is to assume everyone is at full at the start of each encounter. Okay, if that's specifically what you want to happen in the first place, go for it. I've (perhaps unintentionally) ended up in a similar type of game before, and it's definitely a wild ride to just throw arbitrarily powerful encounters at the party.
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Aug 1, 2018 07:06
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I played a Master of Many Forms in a campaign once, using the Mulhorand Divine whatever template to get Wild Shape at-will. No magic, the ability to turn into anything vaguely humanoid-ish was pretty cool.
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Aug 2, 2018 18:06
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DM gave us a side story to create 11th level air or smoke nymphs, this is a custom race with its own rules for this sidequest. The smoke nymphs can freely see through smoke/mist/fog and dimension door through smoke. They also heal from fire and electricity. I'm giddily trying to convince the party into committing strategic mass arson in order to save a city from an occupying force.
Lamebot fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Aug 29, 2018 |
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Aug 29, 2018 00:24
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Do you get to add class levels or is it all part of the custom race?
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Aug 29, 2018 18:16
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Lamebot posted:DM gave us a side story to create 11th level air or smoke nymphs, this is a custom race with its own rules for this sidequest. The smoke nymphs can freely see through smoke/mist/fog and dimension door through smoke. They also heal from fire and electricity. I'm giddily trying to convince the party into committing strategic mass arson in order to save a city from an occupying force. that sounds like a workable premise for an entire board game, but not very much fun to execute in PF/3.X because they systems don't seem to handle arbitrarily specific puzzle encounters well.
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Sep 4, 2018 22:28
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Ranger talk, because Rangers are my favourite class despite everything Much like my idea of "what if the Fighter's power was to just get every combat feat", how unbalancing would it actually be to give the full druid Animal Companion and both fighting styles?
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Sep 6, 2018 21:32
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JohnnyCanuck posted:Ranger talk, because Rangers are my favourite class despite everything Fighting styles is fine because you can't use them effectively both at once anyhow. Animal companion is a problem because there's a decent chance it's better than the ranger in combat. My preferred ranger fix is to gestalt with scout.
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Sep 6, 2018 21:40
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My quick-and-dirty Ranger fix is to give them spell progression as Bard and any vaguely-appropriate druid spells to fill out their list, now that their casting goes up to 6th level spells. You could probably even throw in Animal Companion progression as Druid, and it still wouldn't be too unreasonable. A druid's animal companion being a better fighter than a ranger (or fighter) says as much about full-BAB martials as it does about animal companion, I think.
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Sep 7, 2018 00:13
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Either your martial is some abominable multiclass of like 10 things or you go home.
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Sep 9, 2018 02:25
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Chat thread got me thinking about this: partial success mechanics for martials? I'm thinking (after putting about 30 seconds of thought in it) of giving base Str mod on a miss, or maybe just base weapon damage die. Wondering how that would affect combat, especially with a party of TWF swordsage/warblade/psywar/TWF bard.
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Sep 27, 2018 17:19
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Yawgmoth posted:Chat thread got me thinking about this: partial success mechanics for martials? I'm thinking (after putting about 30 seconds of thought in it) of giving base Str mod on a miss, or maybe just base weapon damage die. Wondering how that would affect combat, especially with a party of TWF swordsage/warblade/psywar/TWF bard. I think 4e had strength modifier only on misses on a few at-wills, and that was pretty reasonable. Honestly, TWF-users have it hard enough already in 3.5, and martials are a long, long way from being busted anyways. I think getting their ability modifier bonus on misses is probably fair, like the usual 1.5 STR mod for two-handers and 0.5 STR mod for off-handed weapons, and I guess DEX if anybody bothered with Shadow Blade or some other junk to use their DEX modifier for damage. In 5e there's also a feat that does something similar in way too many words, probably to get around the grognard knee-jerk reaction against "damage on misses" by technicality, but I think it's pretty overcomplicated for what it does. Since ability modifiers are relatively flat, it makes the most impact at low levels, when AC is at its strongest and hit points are low. If you're worried about giving your players too much power, then you could make it a generic feature that everyone gets with +6 BAB or 5 HD or something, but adding inevitability to low-level combat doesn't sound awful either. On a tangential note I really miss playing the 3.5 cheese fiesta.
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Sep 27, 2018 20:18
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lightrook posted:Since ability modifiers are relatively flat, it makes the most impact at low levels, when AC is at its strongest and hit points are low. If you're worried about giving your players too much power, then you could make it a generic feature that everyone gets with +6 BAB or 5 HD or something, but adding inevitability to low-level combat doesn't sound awful either.
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Sep 27, 2018 20:38
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Yawgmoth posted:I let everyone who wants it make a feat that is "you use [stat] for attack & damage roll instead of Str" and the bard took it to tie Cha to melee attack/damage rolls. He also has DFI so the party gets +4d6 sonic damage per hit... assuming they hit and he gets a chance to use it. After the party rolled a total of eight 2s (which an average roll of 8) last week it made me wonder if such a thng might be rather required. I like that feat idea, I might have to offer something like it if I ever run another game of 3.5. At a certain point though, the bard needs to stop being greedy holding out for big DFI rolls and just take the flat +4 attack and damage from a normal, non-DFI Inspire Courage. If your table likes the idea then you should just go for it and adjust encounter difficulty as needed, since games should be fun.
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Sep 27, 2018 21:22
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lightrook posted:I like that feat idea, I might have to offer something like it if I ever run another game of 3.5. I think I'll roll out the "stat mod damage on miss" thing next session and see how it goes, as they are invading a city ruin that is overrun with undead. Should be a good sample size.
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Sep 27, 2018 21:40
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Yawgmoth posted:Chat thread got me thinking about this: partial success mechanics for martials? I'm thinking (after putting about 30 seconds of thought in it) of giving base Str mod on a miss, or maybe just base weapon damage die. Wondering how that would affect combat, especially with a party of TWF swordsage/warblade/psywar/TWF bard. Honestly shouldn't matter too much, attack rolls are balanced around being much higher than AC so you can Power Attack.
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Sep 28, 2018 04:52
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Pathfinder 2e did it as "assume you rolled a 1 on your weapon's damage dice", but since damage dice in 3e don't steadily go up, that's functionally equivalent to "you deal damage equal to your damage modifiers, plus 1 (or maybe 2 sometimes, or 3 if there's some size shenanigans)" As well, the specific implementation is not really going to change anyone's gearing or character development strategy, since most effects/abilities add a flat modifier to damage - you can't "choose" to improve the damage dice side of the equation. So really the only difference between something like: * modifiers only * STR/DEX mod only * roll damage dice but without modifiers is how powerful you want the damage-on-miss effect to be, period TheGreatEvilKing is also correct that, at least for full BAB classes, they're supposed to get to a point where they'll only miss on a nat 1, as long as the player is mindful enough to tune their Power Attack number appropriately
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Sep 28, 2018 05:14
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| # ? Apr 16, 2024 08:48 |
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I have a new character in this campaign that through a combo of their racial and cultural bonuses gets 0/0 two weapon fighting with heavy shields while only having TWF feat. They get improved shield bash as a free feat too. I have them as a level 11 divine metamagic cleric/warpriest with divine power and holy weapon persisted. Since I have some good buffs for shield work is there any interesting fighting styles i could persue along these lines?JohnnyCanuck posted:Ranger talk, because Rangers are my favourite class despite everything I also have a level 11 zen archery ranger/cleric focused on their deity's animal husbandry (handle animal, know(nature), ride). Nature's bond feat and a dip in beastmaster provides 7 levels for animal companion. The warbeast celestial brown bear is ecl 10 and feated out for durable fighting and balor numbus hugging everything now. I guess my solution is cleric levels, the right feats, and dipping beastmaster but I'm still only ranged fighting style. I eventually plan to divine metamagic persist the ranger's swift haste spell and the lightfoot spell. Lamebot fucked around with this message at 08:13 on Nov 9, 2018 |
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Nov 9, 2018 07:33
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