Wizards admits Empty Levels are a problem...

[fbmf]

...and offers the following suggestions:

Prepare to Cry...

Thanks to Zherog for pointing this out over on Nifty.

Game On,
fbmf

[erik]

I noticed that article when it came out and retched. It's like somebody told whoever wrote the article about the uselessness of dead levels and they tried to understand but couldn't, and that put a real hamper on their "fixes".

That they don't realize utter crap like trap sense, slow fall, remove disease, etc. aren't dead levels, is beyond me. Unless I get crunchy goodness like improved uncanny dodge, or evasion or somesuch, I'm not impressed.

Their fixes make baby Koresh cry.

Inspiring Presence (Ex): A paladin can become the rallying standard for decency and fairness. If a paladin takes the Leadership feat (see page 106 of the Dungeon Master's Guide), the character gains +1 to her leadership score, but only for the purpose of attracting 1st-level followers.

What crap is this?

Refine Performance (Ex): At 4th level, a bard learns how to make his performances more appealing to the public of a prosperous city and is considered to have rolled at least a 2 on each d10 or d6 when determining how much money was earned each day from a Perform check. See Perform on page 79 of the Player's Handbook. At 5th, 7th, 10th, 11th, 13th, 16th, and 17th level, a bard is considered to have rolled 1 number higher on each d10 (for example, a least 3 at 5th level, at least 4 at 7th level, etc.). By extension, a bard is considered to have rolled at least 3 on each d6 at 7th level, at least 4 at 11th level, and at least 5 at 16th level. At 19th level, a bard earns the maximum amount of money for his performance.

Holy crap are they just mocking us? Is it April Fool's already?

To acknowledge a real problem and then offer this crap? It's like me offering to my manager after a rash of fatal accidents occur at the hospital, that I should go around and urinate on patients to check and make sure they're still amongst the living. What the hell.

[Imban]

I like the Bard and Ranger features. They're not worth beans, but they're something high-level Bards and Rangers should just have, period, because it's cool.

I mean, seriously, neat RP abilities are great fun as long as people don't pretend they're real abilities.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

if you are expecting WotC to change the status quo of the game as written, you're shit out of luck, because they ain't.

If this guy didn't write an article that maintainted the status quo, they would have farted on it and gotten someone else to write one they approved of.

Now, is it okay to want wotC to change the game? Yes, there's nothing wrong with wanting things to be better. It just ain't happening.

[erik]

I know the article even said...

This article seeks to fill those "dead levels" with special abilities that have an imperceptible impact on game balance while remaining thematically consistent to the flavor of each character class.

But it's really just rubbing in our face that they know there are useless levels, and here are traps to try and make your players feel like they aren't useless (without actually affecting their uselessness).

I don't expect WotC to improve their stuff, that'd be crazy. I just prefer the notion that they have no idea what is wrong with their class balance issues rather than that they know something is wrong and don't care.

[User3]

The best part...

MONK


The monk is the only other core class, aside from the barbarian, that has no dead levels. Players always have something to look forward to with the monk, which boasts the most colorful and unique special abilities of all the character classes.

Monk: and next level, I can die even faster to... well anything! yay!

[Crissa]

Monk: I get feather fall this level! But only under twenty feet.
Wizard: I get it next level as just one of my spells. And it works for hundreds of feet.
Cleric: Well I get it as soon as the DM reads the new expansion book...
Monk: ;-;
Rogue: ...And I get it from this magic item.

-Crissa

[Username17]

The Monk and the Barbarian?

That hurts. In the soul.

The barbarian has no dead levels and serves as one of the finest examples of character class design. Not only do barbarians receive a special ability at every level, but their abilities follow a logical progression that easily can be extrapolated upward through epic levels as needed. Moreover, the abilities that are granted steadily become more powerful with each passing level, until mighty rage is gained at 20th level: the perfect crowning ability.

Last time I checked, people didn't know or care what Mighty Rage even did. And while it may be the perfect crowning ability, all I can say is that if you gave it out as a 2nd level Cleric spell, noone would even notice. I'm serious, it's a +2 bonus to Strength, and a +1 bonus to Will saves for the whole combat. Holy crap, that's really going to come in handy against a Pit Fiend or a Megapede. I mean, maybe you couldn't take them before, but now that you have two fvcking strength points everything is snapping into focus.

-Username17

[Imban]

Yeah, snapping into focus.

Seriously, though, the Barbarian is a pretty good example of how to design a character class. It's got a lot of the right ideas - abilities at every level that fit the theme and build on each other.

It's just not good enough at what it does to be effective in many games.

[RandomCasualty]

1161068315[/unixtime]]

Yeah, snapping into focus.

Seriously, though, the Barbarian is a pretty good example of how to design a character class. It's got a lot of the right ideas - abilities at every level that fit the theme and build on each other.

It's just not good enough at what it does to be effective in many games.

No, it's not at all.

The barbarian is the prime example of a class that you dump after 1,2 or 5 levels.

It's ridiculously frontloaded and the high level abilities are a total joke. I mean, they're not even close to being useful. Most of them are token abilities.

Just because there's some text written next to every level does not mean it's a good class. For an ability to count it has to be something that people actually want and not some meaningless token ability like damage reduction 1 or trap sense. When a class ability is worse than a fighter feat, we know there's a problem.

I totally disagree that eliminating dead levels is going to make the game any better. People are totally willing to suffer a few dead levels to get awesome abilities. The idea is to balance ability quality, not ability quantity. You can get 8 crap levels of trap sense, damage reduction 1 and extra rage per day, and it's not going to equal 1 level of pounce even if you had to pay 3 dead levels to get it.

Lets read the quote Frank cited one more time. First we can laugh at it, then we can all think about it and cry.

The barbarian has no dead levels and serves as one of the finest examples of character class design. Not only do barbarians receive a special ability at every level, but their abilities follow a logical progression that easily can be extrapolated upward through epic levels as needed. Moreover, the abilities that are granted steadily become more powerful with each passing level, until mighty rage is gained at 20th level: the perfect crowning ability.

"The perfect crowning ability"

This game really is being designed by morons. The designers just have no idea at all about game balance.

Whenever you read another poorly designed supplement and wonder "why does WotC suck so much?", just go back and reread that quote again. it should clear up all the misunderstanding.

These guys seriously think the barbarian is the perfect class. Nobody would take 20 levels of barbarian even if you didn't have any PrCs and played core only.

Seriously, I have to ask, do these guys even play their own game or do they just write for it?

[User3]

To be fair to the guy who wrote the article, he stated that he didn't have the authority to try to re-balance the classes, and that abilities weren't designed to add any real power to the classes (which would have been re-balancing). Significantly changing the power of base classes with class abilities is not something WotC is going to do on Wizards.com any time soon.

I do disagree with him on one thing, which is that the druid's SR is no more powerful than any other ability. Bullshit. Being abl to just shut down one of the primary abilities of a creature type is always significant, even if it only comes up rarely.

[Imban]

Random, I did not say that the Barbarian was good at what it did, which is what you're calling bullshit on. I'm saying that compared to a lot of crap ass PrCs that WotC has been putting out lately, it's a paragon of design because its stuff actually makes a goddamn bit of sense and isn't just a heap of unrelated abilities.

[User3]

Looks like this thread here:

http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.p ... 665[br][br]... predates the Gaming Den's "gripe thread" by 3 days. But both are similar in the complaints and the ripping of new a-holes. Similar humor in both too. :tonguesmile:

Although you gotta hand it to Kolja for having the balls (chutzpah?) to show up at that thread and argue his points out with the other posters.

Otherwise, I agree, the article is incredibly suffering from poor execution. Although at least the concept is publicly acknowledge as a problem by the wotc staff.

[Crissa]

I still can't figure out why I'm not allowed to post on Wizards' boards...

-Crissa

[MrWaeseL]

Crissa your avatars get creepier every day.

[Username17]

I agree.

BTW, did the charop board just completely miss the point? I mean, huge amounts of discussion were dedicated to capstone abilities to entice people to stay single classed (which doesn't do anything for 99.999% of the people playing the game who don't ever play a game after their character reaches 20th level), or by reverse enticing spellcasters to stay single classed by penalizing them caster levels when taking PrCs (which would work, but only by simply making PrCs a non-viable life choice for spellcasters across the board).

I mean seriously, what the fvck is going on there?

The empty level problem, and the solution, are amazingly obvious:

1. Taking level X+1 in your class should be as viable a life choice as taking level 1 in a new class.
   
2. Therefore, every class needs to give you something you give a damn about at every level, not just at 1st and 20th.
   
3. Furthermore, every class should also give you something worthwhile at first level.
   
4. Finally, spellcasting progressions can't work like that, they have to do something else where taking a level of "not spellcasting" doesn't cause you to miss the boat on world domination. Probably a system in which you collect access to schools of magic with levels of wizard and your total power within your available schools is based on your total character level.

We aren't talking rocket science here. Now actually designing such a system and applying it to the creation of a number of classes and/or prestige classes, that requires calculus. But seriously, why are the people over at WotC having so much trouble even identifying the problem?

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1161100915[/unixtime]]Random, I did not say that the Barbarian was good at what it did, which is what you're calling bullshit on. I'm saying that compared to a lot of crap ass PrCs that WotC has been putting out lately, it's a paragon of design because its stuff actually makes a goddamn bit of sense and isn't just a heap of unrelated abilities.

Honestly, I wouldn't considre the barbarian a paragon of anything. Even if you look at it on concept, it's fundamentally a 20 level class with four abilities:

Rage (Basic str/con buff)
Uncanny dodge
Trap sense
Damage reduction

Problematically, the barbarian gets absolutely no options whatsoever. All of his abilities are essentially just bonus collection or passive defenses. This makes for a horribly boring class that can't do a heck of a lot except be a big pile of numbers. The barbarian is pretty awful in general because he's so one dimensional. A 20th level character needs way more options than that.

[User3]

1161189827[/unixtime]]
[*] Finally, spellcasting progressions can't work like that, they have to do something else where taking a level of "not spellcasting" doesn't cause you to miss the boat on world domination. Probably a system in which you collect access to schools of magic with levels of wizard and your total power within your available schools is based on your total character level.

If I recall correctly, you and K already did that with the "Spheres" system.

It would probably have to be extended to the 'preparation' paradigm ot fit the D&D desires...

1161173070[/unixtime]]Crissa your avatars get creepier every day.

Ah, so I wasn't the only one who noticed that.

[Crissa]

Even if you do play at level 20...

...How much of your game is at that level? If you play twenty games, one at each level...

95% of your time is still spent without that 'capstone' ability.

I miss second edition now, when level ten was when you got your 'capstone' ability...

-Crissa

1161173070[/unixtime]]Crissa your avatars get creepier every day.

1161203881[/unixtime]]Ah, so I wasn't the only one who noticed that.

It's just a pokemon... I don't know what you guys were all on about! How's this one? I used to change my avatar pretty frequently 'cause it's fun to make them, but the animated ones I usually borrowed. (the line-drawn running centaur icon is from my spouse, though)

Was my centauress creepy? o-o This one I made from the Second Life avatar I painted. If you can't see it well, right click on it and choose 'view image' to see the full image.

[Draco_Argentum]

Rampant off topicness: I think your av is cute, does that make me creepy?

[MrWaeseL]

Seeing as how it's an antropomorphic horse in hotpants,yes.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I don't see what's so creepy about said avatar.

But then again, on a WoW board I used to frequent, I used this as my avatar:



For almost the entire life of the forum.

[fbmf]

[The Great Fence Builder Speaks]
Enough about avatars. Back to topic, folks.
[/TGFBS]

[Crissa]

What else should anthropomorphic horses wear, anyhow?

Hey, Count, that one looks familiar... Brothers Grin?

-Crissa

[User3]

BAWWWWW!