Frank's revisisions and blasting

[User3]

I've just recently discovered Frank's rebuilding of D&D and I'm very, very happy with it. The abilities are very cool, eahc class has a different kind fo magic resistance with different vulnerabilities, and generally thgins are good. The new feats rock, the armor rocks. I LOVe the jester.

Just one thing bothers me: I think we already agree that blasting is a rather underpowered option for casters in basic D&D. As such, you don't seem to have counted blasting resistance as worth much in your class design. But many cool monsters and villains like blasting; many players and DMs find it rmoe fun than save or die. As a DM especially, I love monsters that blast because it lets me make the whole group feel threatened, and take damage, without the battle actually being too hard.

Thus, I'm a tad disappointed by the huge degree to which blasting suffers under the new ruleset. Alreayd it wasn't the best attack form, but now most PCs seem likely to be nigh unblastable.

Fighter: reflex good, re-roll saves, counter spells
Thief-Acrobat: good reflex, (supreme) evasion
Jester: good reflex, divine grace
Monk: will good, styles, SR
True Fiend: Multiple energy resistances and immunities, good reflex

These five classes are very difficult to blast.

Asassins get good ref. Summoners, for some reason, get good ref. Knights and barbarians are probably the most blastable, but eventually get SR and Antimagic field. Samurai are the only ones without protection.

But wait! Any character can take lightning reflexes and be immune to area damage. Any character can take mage slayer for a moderately useful SR boost.

All this antimagic-- saves, SR, adn teh like, amy be necessary against spell that jsut kill you; but they make damage spells even less useful than before. suppose I chuck a 5 die fireball at the players.

That's about 18 damage. But most characters will have, at fifth level, SR 10. deducting for that, average damage is 15. Most characters save more often than not; that's 7 damage. Some save for none; maybe one poor fellow fails save. Nobody has yet been given any energy resistance items or save bonuses. Average damage is something like 6 points ot each character.

Why would the PCs even care? Am I missing something? Will this be fixed in a later book? Because right now, it looks like a dragon's breath wepaon isn't all that scary either.

[Username17]

Just one thing bothers me: I think we already agree that blasting is a rather underpowered option for casters in basic D&D.

I think that the word we're looking for is "retarded" rather than "underpowered". Indeed, if you put everything into your character's ability to shoot searing scorching rays at people, you can do hundreds, even thousands of points of damage that bypasses energy immunity and that is vaguely appropriately powered.

Of course, it does require everything about your character. You have top spend all your feats, all your spell slots, all your equipment, all your class features into burning things, and what you get at the end of a vast pile of min/max crazy talk is the ability to do sufficiently large amounts of damage to kill appropriate enemies a asmall number of times each day and the ability to clear hallways full of low level bullshit another small number of times each day.

It's level appropriate, and it does get the point across, but it isn't particularly good. Not in the "good for the game" sense of the word nor the "good for your character" sense either.

---

We do ultimately plan to do something about this. We have a shelved project of the Tome of Tiamat which handles as its primary focus Evokers and Dragons. That's going to be very "energy damage" centric. Things to expect:

• Damage Juggling: if you're going to do amounts of damage to people with expendable spell slots that won't kill them, you should at least have the chance of delaying them for a while - like Acid Orb, but not ass.
  
• Energy Modes: Sometimes you want to spend a battle throwing fire around, that should be a single spell and a viable tactic.

However, as Keith's LSAT test draws ever nearer, my deadlines for Augmentation for Shadowrun draw nearer, and the University of California decided to delete every single piece of email I have received for the last three and a half fvcking years without warning, things have been delayed.

-Username17

[User3]

Fair enough, as far as it goes.

Still, my worry is not that PC blasters wil suffer--they've never been that good. Indeed, save or dies work fine as a PC trick. Except for boss types, you actually want quick and efficient ways for enemeis to *just go away*

However, while save or die is a fine mechanic for PCs to use against monsters and NPCs, it's less fun the other way around, since PCs are supposed to be logner lived. Dealing hit point damage to PCs is a good way to make them feel threatened without arbitrarily killing them, and fireball effects let you deal large amount fo damage to a group without actually killing any of them.

Thus, as a DM, my concern is not that the players can't optimize a blaster wizard who will be able to kill things. Rather, my concern is that the blasting abilities fo monsters and NPCs will completely fail to threaten the party.

[TarlSS]

Frankly I've always found six or eight fireballs more than a match for my PCs, but that's another story altoghether. Artillery has always been about demoralizing and softening up the enemy before sending the infantry, that's how it should be used.

[MrWaeseL]

The problem is that instead of artillery you can have additional bitching infantry which are better in most ways. (Glitterdust versus Snilloc´s Snowball Swarm)

[TarlSS]

Well, When you're the DM, it's never really about better use of resources. You have artillery just to have artillery. It certainly has a place. In a PC-party, which is essentially a mixed infantry company, yeah, artillery's just not that useful.

It's for engaging things at long distance and generating a threat to the enemy- something that tells your enemy, "I'm here, you bastard, come get me!"

Artillery is a strategic level tool. PCs, which are inherently on the Tactical Level, just aren't going to find real use for it.

That said, you can bet any fireball chucking mage is going to catch the PC's attention. They're not just going to sit around and ignore it. That's the deal with artillery pieces- they draw fire. It's not really a problem for the DM, who has unlimited NPCs.

[Username17]

Blasting has purpose for Chaff clearance at any level, but that isn't generally important against PCs. If the PCs are classified as "chaff" against the pposition, they are fvcked. Simply speaking, there are only 4-7 PCs, and they can't use numbers to overcome numerical inferiority. It's not even possible.

That being said, if the PCs have armies, cohorts, bands of brigands, and hangers-on, then anti-chaff tactics can royally piss them off.

Actually, such tactics are so effective against PC hangers-on, and DMs so rarely can accomplish anything against PCs with area weaponry that most bands of thugs rarely last long - contributing to a downward spiral.

-Username17