Why Frank's Tomes Have Not Caught On (In Some Circles)

[Leress]

1196979063[/unixtime]]Didn't realize there're six incarnations of Doctor Who.

There are actually ten.

[Fwib]

1196979573[/unixtime]]

1196979063[/unixtime]]Didn't realize there're six incarnations of Doctor Who.

There are actually ten.

Plus others, non canonically

[Koumei]

Wait, so now Daleks are out to stop Frank? Hell, Daleks could be the ones in control of WotC, going out of their way to piss him off, hoping an anger-induced stroke will give them victory.

[Captain_Bleach]

1196985418[/unixtime]]Wait, so now Daleks are out to stop Frank? Hell, Daleks could be the ones in control of WotC, going out of their way to piss him off, hoping an anger-induced stroke will give them victory.

I doubt that he is angry this much in real life; he puts on his face when he logs on to the Internet; like an actor/comedian; like a lot of people on this board.

[Crissa]

If you want to know more, the BBC has has a great guide to them.

My favorite was always the odd-numbered doctors, oddly. The first I knew was the third. That isn't actually dating me, as they were playing re-runs on the cable network which was sharing time with Nickelodeon long ago. The current doctor is pretty awesome, though.

-Crissa

[Koumei]

The Daleks don't know that, though.

I'm sure he doesn't actually care that much - it's irritating to find out that the people being paid to make the game are being idiots and that you need to fix it, but that's all.

[Captain_Bleach]

1196987637[/unixtime]]The Daleks don't know that, though.

I'm sure he doesn't actually care that much - it's irritating to find out that the people being paid to make the game are being idiots and that you need to fix it, but that's all.

If he didn't care that much, why did he make the Tomes?

[K]

When Frank and I sat down to write the Tomes, our first real ideas were to just fix some things.

Frank really got into trying out alternate systems, and I mostly wanted to write awesome things for people to play. That's why we started with the Tome of Necromancy. We both knew that both mechanically and content-wise the area was a wasteland, despite being one of the few real DnD stereotypes (its so bad the Dungeon used to do adventure submission calls with phrases like "no necromancers, dark elves, vampires....).

We figured this out after working on the Revised Necromancer Handbook. We had combed the cast collection of official DnD texts we had, and it came up mostly empty with such lacking areas as "a single decent Necromantic PrC".

Personally, I was disillusioned with arguing about rules with people. Writing things whole cloth seemed the way to go, and so we did. I knew that if we made the the flavor text and ideas in the books awesome enough, we'd convince people to use them. The fact that the rules are balanced at the high end (what spellcasters can do) just means that they are more balanced.

Why aren't they adopted?

A. No art. Trust me, if we had original art for these babies, people would print them out and they'd be on gaming tables.

B. Incomplete. We don't have a PHB, or a DMG, or an MM. The rules we've written are additional complications to a system, and sometimes are awkwardly integrated. If we had them in fully integrated systems, it'd be far easier to swallow.

C. We violate the "Don't Look Behind the Curtain Rule". We actually tell people why we've made certain choices, and that allows people to argue with our conclusions without addressing our facts.

People will argue until they are blue in the face that the RoW Fighter is broken, but very few will actually playtest a fight with a few MM monsters.

It also means that people will argue with essential facts without addressing the logical conclusion. They want nonmagical Fighters roaming the land on horses and living off the land and robbing corpses for coppers fighting wizards who actually can Teleport to the other side of continent and have genies that make towers of crystal and djinn phantom harems. The logical conclusion is either that people can play wizards and all fighters are NPCs, or that wizards are much higher level and are more like plot devices and unplayable as PCs. I have a few ideas about way to reconcile them, but I'm under no illusions that they'd work.

I've been tempted to do a Penny Arcade thing where I just write content for DnD or a system of my own design and accept donations and advertising and make T-shirts and cups that say clever DnD type stuff. The only problem is that I've got this whole law school thing and Frank has the whole medical school thing.

[JonSetanta]

Some Phil Foglio art for Tome series would fit nicely. heh

[Captain_Bleach]

1196995503[/unixtime]]They want nonmagical Fighters roaming the land on horses and living off the land and robbing corpses for coppers fighting wizards who actually can Teleport to the other side of continent and have genies that make towers of crystal and djinn phantom harems.

The players that played non Clerics/Druids/Wizards were incredibly bummed out about how much said previous classes could do, not to mention have ground-breaking ways of altering reality. The other seven classes were a real let-down. Sorcerer was a decent choice, but it obviously paled in comparison to the Wizard.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

1196995985[/unixtime]]Some Phil Foglio art for Tome series would fit nicely. heh

Foglio art is a poo on the universe.

[Catharz]

1196995503[/unixtime]]
I've been tempted to do a Penny Arcade thing where I just write content for DnD or a system of my own design and accept donations and advertising and make T-shirts and cups that say clever DnD type stuff. The only problem is that I've got this whole law school thing and Frank has the whole medical school thing.

Wait until you're disillusioned with law

[JonSetanta]

1197012054[/unixtime]]

1196995503[/unixtime]]
I've been tempted to do a Penny Arcade thing where I just write content for DnD or a system of my own design and accept donations and advertising and make T-shirts and cups that say clever DnD type stuff. The only problem is that I've got this whole law school thing and Frank has the whole medical school thing.

Wait until you're disillusioned with law

That happened to me very early in my college years.

Now, 5 years later, I temped for 2 weeks in a Disability Law Center in Baltimore.
Oh, irony.

[Maxus]

Last night I had a lengthy debate with a friend about the stuff on this board. It kicked off when I showed him the Fire Mage. He claimed the class to be broken because...

1) Medium BAB, 4 skill points, good skill list, d8 HD, useful weapon proficiencies, Good Saves (GAPS!)
2) Able to unload damage allllll day long without fear of running out of it, and the immunities and stuff besides.

Among things he compared the Fire Mage to, he chose wizard and warlock.

Oh, and he went on at some length about this being typical of the stuff on this board and claimed it's completely unbalanced and no sane DM would ever allow it.

Now I know I'm new here, and not able to analyze something with godly insight like a few people can...

But I'm pretty sure he's wrong. (He also likes the Core Fighter, too, despite my attempts to posit the daring theory they should either be doing something useful out of combat, or in combat they should be able to go all anime and run up to and kill multiple people each round.)

So this really got me thinking...Some people don't like Frank and K's stuff because they claim it's broken/too powerful/etc.

What's the right answer to that, in a way that will let me continue talking to this guy on friendly terms?

In Ye Ultimate Scales of True Balance, where should the weights be, and where are they currently at in DnD that throws the balance off?

[angelfromanotherpin]

People work with the context they have. A lot of people look at the core rules and have it in their head that those are a reasonable balance point, often because they haven't played any other games. Much in the same way that a lot of Americans look at their 's politics and have it in their head that a centrist American position is a reasonably centrist position, often because they haven't been to other countries.

When put in a broader context, D&D screws non-full-casters and American politics are skewed conservative; but that context can be difficult to expose people to, and even then people hate to change their minds once they've made them up.

There's a thread [counturl=121]here[/counturl] about power benchmarks. I think the Balor example is particularly telling.

[Judging__Eagle]

1197039400[/unixtime]]
In Ye Ultimate Scales of True Balance, where should the weights be, and where are they currently at in DnD that throws the balance off?

Be able to win 50% of expected encounters at any and most importantly all levels.

The basis starts as follows:

1 level X Character is CR X (with NPC wealth)

1 CR X Monster is CR X

That much we can assume, since that's what the DMG and MM tell us and most people accept (with a few exceptions this is usually true, there are a few oddball monsters that don't fit into that).

Now, 1 level X Character is CR X+1 (if they have PC wealth).

Therefore, a PC of any level, should be able to win 50% of all encounters that they would face that have a CR equal to their class levels.

So, a level 15 Wizard should beat 50% of all CR 15 encounters. A level 10 Monk should beat 50% of all CR 10 encounters, a level 11 Fighter should be able to face any type of CR 11 encounter and expect to win 50% of them.

So, if the level 20 fighter, with level 20 expected wealth cannot face and beat at least 5 out of every 10 CR 20 monsters, then he's not a PC that is CR 20.

If he's not a CR 20 creature, then he's not a level appropriate creature.

With the PHB and MM written the way they are, having level-appropriate abilities cannot happen.

Meaning that at the very core of the game there are massive imbalance issues.



Note: The argument that PCs will never face a monster that is their own 'level' is a non-argument. Very often in written adventures, PCs will have to face a number of creatures whose individual CR is equal to each PCs level.

If 4E is any indicator, that was the way that the game is ideally played (?); for every lvl X PC, there's a 'level' X monster.

[JonSetanta]

Friends and I have been playing D&D like that, PC = monster power level on a 1v1 basis, for years.
However, since the game wasn't designed as such from the start, it gradually becomes a sisyphusian struggle to change the fundamentals.

Other than "eyeballing it", you must write your own fixes or find house rule material, such as Tome series.

While I personally still put more weight in the concept of "classless d20", and believe it is possible, on the other end of that scale... the typical class system seems to work OK, so that's what I put up with.
Classless would take the problem of "inter-class balance" completely out, since everyone is the same class. The trick then is preventing someone from doing everything themselves.

[Catharz]

1197039400[/unixtime]]
So this really got me thinking...Some people don't like Frank and K's stuff because they claim it's broken/too powerful/etc.

What's the right answer to that, in a way that will let me continue talking to this guy on friendly terms?

There's often an assumption that the PHB must inherently be a paragon of balance, and anything not in line with the PHB bust be unbalanced. If the next PHB to come out had the Tome fighter and the fire mage bas base classes, your friend would probably bitch on message boards about how the game was going to shit (assuming he's the message boards type), and then calm down and assume the stance that the fire mage and fighter are balanced anything else is unbalanced.

Just don't talk with him about game balance if you think it will mess up your friendship.

[tzor]

1197058351[/unixtime]]There's often an assumption that the PHB must inherently be a paragon of balance, and anything not in line with the PHB bust be unbalanced.

The assumption has some merrit but in practice is actually inverted. If we assume the first assumption, that the "PHB must inherently be a paragon of balance" (but we know it's not) then we can make an argument that for anything to sell it's got to be better than the PHB (after all you already got the PBH the "paragon of balance"). Therfore all supplements are more powerful than the base book.

This doesn't work becuse most designers are so full of themselves that they think they can "fix" the inblances in the PBH by nerfing the very things they are writing in their supplements. Thus the supplements are generally weaker than the PHB but because people think that they must be better they simply assume that they are better, and thus we generate paradox.

A paradox, a pradox, a most ingenious paradox.
A ha ha, ha ha, ha ha, ha
A paradox.

(Would you believe I just had to sing the line from Pirates two times to get the proper number of ha's?)

[Username17]

The very simple argument goes like this:

• Balance does not equate to being similar to other material. An Ogres numbers don't look like a Wizard's numbers. Attack bonuses, saving throws, hit points, skill totals, attribute placement - all very different.
  
  
• Balance is not defined by the highest numbers. A collosal Scorpion is actually amazingly unimpressive. A 4th level horse archer will bring it down despite the fact that its numbers are huge.
  
  
• Balance is not defined by the lowest numbers. A Girallon is not considered to be non-threatening because of its weak intellect, a Troll is not considered laughable because of its pathetic social bonuses.

That's the starting point. You can't take a series of isolated numbers and pronounce it thumbs up or thumbs down. A commoner with +50 to every saving throw is still a commoner. A character who can cast 9th level spells will win D&D whether he has a Base Attack Bonus or not.

A character's position in the universe vis a vis balance is determined by their actual Strengths and Weaknesses. A character needs to have some kind of offensive potential, which needs to be able to take down level appropriate groups of monsters in a reasonable amount of time. Once they have that, any number of alternate secondary offenses they have is largely meaningless. Similarly with weaknesses. Once a character can be taken down by level appropriate encounters in a reasonable amount of time, they don't actually need to have additional weaknesses.

Saving Throws are a classic example. A multiclassed character will always have huge saves. Huge. Being a single classed character means that your saves are crappy from a relative standpoint even if you have all Good saves!

-Username17

[JonSetanta]

1197110070[/unixtime]]
Saving Throws are a classic example. A multiclassed character will always have huge saves. Huge. Being a single classed character means that your saves are crappy from a relative standpoint even if you have all Good saves!

Yeah I noticed, in making a Tome Monk/Fiend the base saves skyrocketed after 3 classes were added.
HOWEVER... the combat ability overall was sub-par.

Comparison to SunTzu's straight-out Tome Samurai was... left lacking.
In any melee confrontation I would put money that the Samurai wins, even with Concealment on the Monk, even with 4 poison claws, grappling, any tricks to throw at him...

Nothing can compare, as you stated with "9th level spells", to higher level abilities.

The save conundrum can be smoothed over with a house rule I picked up years ago:
When adding another class, check if each save is good (2+1/2 level) or bad (1/3 level).
If good, increase the save by one step as if the character advanced a level in a previous class with a good save. In other words sometimes it will jump up, sometimes not, depending on the character level.
If bad, add 1/3 as if it was like any other bad progression for your class(es) as normal. Whenever 3/3 is reached, that save increases by +1. duh.

Anyways, this prevents the effect that multiclassing has, normally adding +2 every time, which does indeed stack too fast.

On the other hand every time a sub-par PrC choice or new class (level 1, just beginning) is added, unless the new ability can synergize well with the previous ones, the character is weakened.
They are delayed from attaining their potentially better abilities by that many levels.

Pardons if I'm being redundant, hard to coordinate the concept. It's probably common sense or at least common knowledge but there are some players still not convinced.

[RandomCasualty]

1197039400[/unixtime]]
So this really got me thinking...Some people don't like Frank and K's stuff because they claim it's broken/too powerful/etc.

What's the right answer to that, in a way that will let me continue talking to this guy on friendly terms?

In Ye Ultimate Scales of True Balance, where should the weights be, and where are they currently at in DnD that throws the balance off?

The problem is that there really are no scales of True Balance. Not for D&D anyway.

See it all hinges on how smart your players are. If your casters have crap for spell selection, as many casters I've seen do, then your fighters (core fighters I'm talking) will likely outperform them. This is because fighters and barbarians are simple to play.

The tomes are basically rules for expert gamers, and if you're all experts you should be able to convince people that the tomes are balanced. Novice gamers will see them as munchkin, which they are in comparison to their playstyle. Basically,the tomes really aren't for everyone.

Put it in a game where the casters aren't that experienced and they'll get dominated. The tomes are designed for games where casters are constantly using stuff like wraithstrike or shivering touch.

[Catharz]

1197114208[/unixtime]]
See it all hinges on how smart your players are. If your casters have crap for spell selection, as many casters I've seen do, then your fighters (core fighters I'm talking) will likely outperform them. This is because fighters and barbarians are simple to play.

Barbarians, maybe. A weak fighter will be worse than a weak wizard.

But yes, it's a good point.

[Neeek]

1197154283[/unixtime]]

1197114208[/unixtime]]
See it all hinges on how smart your players are. If your casters have crap for spell selection, as many casters I've seen do, then your fighters (core fighters I'm talking) will likely outperform them. This is because fighters and barbarians are simple to play.

Barbarians, maybe. A weak fighter will be worse than a weak wizard.

I dunno. Once the fighter is made, they are usually pretty easy to run. And that done on downtime, so there is no reason you can't just get someone else to make your character for you.

[CalibronXXX]

I dunno. Once the Wizard understands the concept of SoDs and battlefield control, they are usually pretty easy to run. There is no reason you can't just get someone to make your daily spell selections for you.