The Gaming Den

That's a good point. You can't conquer or secure anything by flying. As soon as you have to do that, at some point you will need ground troops.

OgreBattle wrote:

K wrote: Fixing that is fundamentally about fixing the way DnD handles targeting and movement.

Any other games already do that well?

I'm curious as well.

If you'd start a game with people who are completely new to the hobby, would you rather play 3.5 (with some tome-fixes) or pathfinder?

I'd probably hand out a Dread Necromancer. They're hard to build if you're a newbie, but pretty straight forward to play if you hand out a few strategetic and tactical hints with the character sheet. https://allgeektomeblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/original-jason-and-the-argonauts-the-heroes-of-o...

Why is there such a discrepancy on the evaluation of anticipate teleportation ? Do you mean why is it such a low level on the Summoner list? Or do you mean why do some people regard it as a niche spell and others flip the fuck out about how necessary it is? In both cases, the answer is the same: it...

Why is there such a discrepancy on the evaluation of anticipate teleportation?

Man... Godwin's Law...

virgil wrote:Why is etherealness a 9th level spell? Crossing dimensions is available by 9th level for clerics.

Why is polar ray an eighth level spell? Srzly, that shit doesn't even have the effect of a cantrip at first level, at the level it comes into play.

SlyJohnny wrote:I wonder if there's a way to do it mechanically that doesn't make anyone want to kill themselves.

No there can't be. Otherwise your character doesn't suck first and is awesome later. Suck first, awesome later and awesome first, suck later can never be balanced.

It depends. If you are giving out other comparable escape and travel powers, then bird flight can just be one type of character's special thing. If escape and travel powers are nearly meaningless and mostly a flavor power in the system, then it's OK for it to be someone's special thing. What is cle...

Omegonthesane wrote: You're really not saying anything new here though, this explanation's in the Tomes.

The point of this thread is not to state the fact, but to ask why this kind of design happens.

Edit: and Frank came up with a reasonable explanation.

Sucking now for power later isn't a good balancing tool. It is, however, a strong rhetorical tool for deflecting criticism that the game isn't balanced. That sounds reasonable. It's not only easier to write this kind of material, it's easier to defend it, too. Presumably that's an advantage when yo...

You can give out bird flight at 1st level since it's a simple travel and escape power, but monster combat flight should be pushed back pretty dramatically. Right. But if you do hand it out at first level at all, shouldn't every character have access to it in one way or another? Otherwise it's anoth...

You can give out bird flight at 1st level since it's a simple travel and escape power, but monster combat flight should be pushed back pretty dramatically. Right. But if you do hand it out at first level at all, shouldn't every character have access to it in one way or another? Otherwise it's anoth...

Sandbagging is happening, but giving the monk an amulet of tiger-form still doesn't change the fact that the character fails at adventuring. You always have the option of not dominating, but you don't always have the option to matter. That's why I think that underpowered characters are worse.

erik wrote: +1 (at least +1 to that it is positive, doubt if it does anything to solve the problems of defense-focused characters)

I meant only the "tank"-part of the problem.

Short range teleportation also shuts down a crapload of combat tactics. Cages, shackles, bars, grappling, suddenly the lv1 wizard with Abrupt Jaunt gets to laugh at all of that. I'm not even sure that that can't be positive for the game insofar, as it actually encourages monsters to attack the non-...

Creating options for player character advancement which mitigate or even compensate disadvantages not inherent to the core mechanics is bad design. As soon as you add these kinds of options into the game you have the classic problem of Gygaxian "suck now, be awesome later"-game design. The...

10ft teleports aren't a problem for the game even if they come online at level 1. That is debatable. Abrupt jaunt or benign transposition in combination with a flying familiar trivialize a lot of "how do you get there"-puzzles. Or rather they don't because only one or two guys in the part...

Where is the point at which flight and teleportation should become available, respectively? DnD basically hands the ability to teleport out at first and flying as early as level 3. Adventures which can end in slaughter become trivially easy, so the biggest impact these abilities have, is unfortunate...

Buffing fighters and rogues by actually making them inferior casters. Brilliant.

But at least then everybody and their dog will recognize the power discrepancy.

A move-action and a move-equivalent action are the same fuckin thing for all technical purposes. If they wanted to make the case that you can't do anything else than move from point a to point b then the spell would have to explicitly state that. A move action allows you to move your speed or perfor...

I got a vintage 80ies denim vest with a huge mötley crüe patch (among others) on the back. ))

I don't have anything productive to say, so I'll say this: the best thing about dsa are the computer games from '92, '94 and '96.

What if there was a rule that if all PCs agree they can veto the MC?