New Planar Handbook stupidity

[User3]

The new Planar Handbook has some ripe some heaps of stupid.

One of these is the "planar level." These are single levels of regular classes that act as replacements for those levels. For example, the 9th level of Fighter is a replacement level. Instead of gaining the abilties you gain at 9th level, you instead gain the Planar 9th level abilties.

It looks like:
Level BAB
8th level +8 Fighter Bonus feat
9th level +9 Planar Fighter Planar crap
10th level +10 Fighter Bonus feat

For most classes, its just free or almost free abilities. The wizard, for example, looses one of his spells per day each time he takes these totally pimp planar abilties.

Also, the feats section has some elaborate feats that duplicate Quicker than the Eye, and an authentically good feat that reduces a struck enemy to a single standard action or move action. Unfortunately, you have to hit them with unarmed attacks to do it.

It has a bunch of dumb or just stupid monsters and PrCs, and increasing poor design, layout, content, pictures that have become the new WOTC standard.

[Username17]

For most classes, its just free or almost free abilities. The wizard, for example, looses one of his spells per day each time he takes these totally pimp planar abilties.

Note: if that's how it's written, this actually is free, because the next time you go up in level you take a normal wizard level instead of a "planar" level. The normal wizard level replaces all previous spell slots per day with a new and generally higher number of spell slots.

Remember, 2nd level wizard doesn't give you "plus one 1st level spell", it gives you two first level spells. It wouldn't even matter if you had no 1st level spells while caster level 1, on reaching caster level two you now have 2 spell slots (plus bonuses for specialization and such).

I really don't like it when people write stuff that gives people wizard spellcasting at some kind of crazy reduced level - because it instantaneously goes up to normal levels as soon as you take one more level of wizard. It's one of the problems that the Ilithid Savant had.

-Username17

[User3]

Unfortunately, they specifically said, "and you sacrifice one spell of so and so lot per day" in the description, so its close but no cigar.

Of course with abilities like "and now your elemental spells are half force" or "and now you can make a spell act like its cast on a plane where its totally pimp," you are never going to miss those lost spells.

[User3]

Is basically just a 'Why didn't we just do this instead of PrCs? Well, no reason to wait until 4e to introduce a new mechanic, and maybe this way everyone will have to buy the Planar HB' sort of move.

Or possibly a 'I never liked PrCs. Finally an opportunity to imp how *I* think they should work' sort of move.

I actually like the idea better then PrCs to some extent, but from what I have seen the imping is rather poor.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I see it as a bit odd, but I aperantly am too apethetic to see the new mechanic with such open contempt. <shrug>

[Username17]

The idea is basically a move towards point-based character developement. Or alternately, you could look at it as introducing a whole bunch of minor little UA-style alternate classes.

If we believed that the Fighter was balanced, then the ability to trade your 9th level abilties (which are, let me check... nothing) for anything at all, would be unbalancing. Of course, Fighters are woefully underpowered, so the ability to gain something at 9th level doesn't even make them playable to that point.

Basically, this is a way more complicated and frustrating way of saying "We should only have 3 character classes: Fighter, Rogue, and Spellcaster, and every level should give you a selectable ability." Which is a valid claim, actually. You can make a strong case for there being only 3 character classes, and every Rogue level gives you a selectable Rogue ability, every Fighter level gives you a selectable Fighter ability, and every level of Spellcaster gives you more Spellcasting.

That would have some intense advantages in terms of character versatility, and would have some large disadvantages in terms of character versatility. That is, it would be easier to make exactly the character you want, and harder for the other players and DM to remember what your character could do.

But doing it in half measures - having prestige classes galore and multiple swappable abilties scattered throughout the core classes - still leaves people sort of locked into the rails on what their character is and can do, while simultaneously making it difficult for the other people at the table to understand your character. As such, it kind of has all the drawbacks of rigidinflexible classes and full customization - which means that alot of people are understandably quite angry at "option creep".

It's like power creep except that instead of losing control of game balance you just lose track of what characters are and what they can do.

-Username17

[Crissa]

The 3e version of this just gave a special ability out at certain character levels - none were overpowering, or more than flavourful, but they were better than the pay-for-a-level get-less-than-a-level that they replaced it with.

I don't know what they're thinking anymore.

-Crissa

[canamrock]

Bleh, what they did in the PH is nothing to really worry about. The fundamental logic seems to be that characters in a setting where interplanar travel is more important/readily available/something the DM cares to handle, the swapped in abilities will be slightly more useful. For spellcasters giving up slots, BTW, they word it much like Archmage abilities; one slot disappears forever, so the class progression chart is effectively notched back by one for that spell level. Nothing there really seemed that major, one way or the other.

When I've seen 'vague' point-buy systems such as BESM or Mutants & Masterminds get used, it's not that hard to keep track of their powers and general capabilities.