The Gaming Den

Voss wrote:A wild animal that is pissed off will try to drive whatever pissed it off *away*. That isn't to say it can't kill, but the primary thing is it wants the threat gone, and it doesn't really care how that happens.

Most PCs are smart enough to be dumb enough to fight that animal to the death instead of leaving.

Yeah, my players questioned me when I had overmatched hobgoblins bolt rather than fight to the death. They were relieved when I assured them they would get EXP for bolting enemies. One encounter ended with the CO of the goblins offered himself so the PCs would spare the remainder of his men.

Why the hell did WotC make the Wizard and Sorcerer with a philosophy of "Best casting in the game requires you to have shitty BAB, one good save, poor skills, and few to no special abilities" and then their divine versions, the Cleric and Favoured Soul with Average BAB, more skills (if not points), and actual class abilities (domain granted powers, turn/rebuke for cleric, weapon focus, energy resistance, damage reduction and flight for the favoured soul)?

Because this is how wizard dm'd games go:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/gs/20010927a

Because they seriously expected you to burn through many spell slots on spontanious cure spells; recognozing, rightly so, that being the party band-aid a projected majority of the time, they allowed the cleric and druid to have interesting spells of win and awesome, for the "rare" time they weren't combat or downtime healing.

It just didn't come up in playtesting that divine casters could ignore spontanious battlefield healing, cast all those imteresting and awesome spells, and use actual band-aids wands of CLW because they didn't actually playtest the game, they just ran a level 1-10 adventure around the office and called it good to ship.

That's absurd. And not only because Vadania should have just cast Jump on Krusk, which would have allowed him to clear 85' in a jump with an average roll and smack the damned cleric like he wanted (assuming his Jump skill is maxed, and it should be, because there isn't much else for him to spend skills on).

Hicks wrote:Because they seriously expected you to burn through many spell slots on spontanious cure spells; recognozing, rightly so, that being the party band-aid a projected majority of the time, they allowed the cleric and druid to have interesting spells of win and awesome, for the "rare" time they weren't combat or downtime healing.

It just didn't come up in playtesting that divine casters could ignore spontanious battlefield healing, cast all those imteresting and awesome spells, and use actual band-aids wands of CLW because they didn't actually playtest the game, they just ran a level 1-10 adventure around the office and called it good to ship.

And meanwhile paladins have to wait till 14th level to grab random weapons and make them +5 Holy Greatswords, and can only do it a handful of times a day at 20th, when it's something that they really should just be able to do whenever they want (maybe not +5, but...)

What, exactly, is an appropriate level for a character in D&D to gain at will flight?

Prak_Anima wrote:What, exactly, is an appropriate level for a character in D&D to gain at will flight?

If we're talking 3.x, sometime between 8 or 9 would probably make sense. Ideally, you'd want to make it such that even characters with permaflight still have reason to slug it out on the ground every so often, so as not to invalidate a distressingly large portion of the MM. Either that or also give flight out to more critters.

Level 11 paladins have a super special secret easter cowbell class feature hidden in the back of the DMG that that says they can have a gold gold dragon as their pokemon special mount, at level 8 a druid may be wildshaped for 24 hours into a large flying animal, at level 6 anyome with the Leadership feat can have a hippogriff or pegasus as a cohort, and the druid again can have a dire bat as an animal companion at level 4, and a fully trained hippogriff or pegasus can be bought with a modicrum of effort from a breeder/trainer for 4,000gp.

That's generally about what I've assumed. Good to know. Most creatures and characters are going to be flying with wings, are they not? That can be fairly easy to work around for a DM.

Blicero wrote:

Prak_Anima wrote:What, exactly, is an appropriate level for a character in D&D to gain at will flight?

If we're talking 3.x, sometime between 8 or 9 would probably make sense. Ideally, you'd want to make it such that even characters with permaflight still have reason to slug it out on the ground every so often, so as not to invalidate a distressingly large portion of the MM. Either that or also give flight out to more critters.

I keep hearing the "7ish" range for DnD 3.5 characters to appropriately have flight. Not knocking that at all, I just wonder why that would be. Is it because the "game has changed" or "tiered up" so the player characters having flight is not a big deal or something like that?

Can you explain what reasoning lead you to say level 8 or 9 is appropriate?

Thanks,
Saxony.

Most casters will have been able to fly for two whole levels by 7th, that's why it's ok to give it to others.

Wizards get 3rd level spells and thus the ability to let people fly for a minute/level at level 5. At level 7, that wizard gets 4th level spells and can now devote some of their 3rd level spells to utility. Further, at level 7 your expected wealth is 19000gp, so spending 4000 of that to pick up a hippogriff is an acceptable choice. So, flight in combat time is acceptable at around level 7.

Overland Flight comes in at level 11, but at that point you have Teleport, and thus flight becomes largely obsolete outside of combat. So that means that if you want to give someone a magic carpet, special flying mount or other source of non-combat flight that your characters will care about, it has to be somewhere between level 7 and level 10.

Grek got it very well.

In terms of balance, you want to have Flight generally available a bit after the people who have to spend limited resources have had it. Elsewise, the fact that a wizard can learn flight at level 5 is useless. 2 or 3 levels is generally a decent waiting period.

Thematically, it often makes for better (or at least a wider variety of) stories if the entire party can fly.

Mechanically, 3.x starts to break down rapidly after like lvl 10 or 11, so you want the fighter-types to be able to fly for a long enough such that the flight isn't a meaningless capstone.

The answer is always "What did they give up to get it?"

But that's usually a question with a very complex answer, so the answer we give to when someone should have X usually just assumes the answer to the above question is "Nothing."

Prak_Anima wrote:Why the hell did WotC make the Wizard and Sorcerer with a philosophy of "Best casting in the game requires you to have shitty BAB, one good save, poor skills, and few to no special abilities" and then their divine versions, the Cleric and Favoured Soul with Average BAB, more skills (if not points), and actual class abilities (domain granted powers, turn/rebuke for cleric, weapon focus, energy resistance, damage reduction and flight for the favoured soul)?

No one wanted to play the Cleric in 2nd edition, but someone always had to. They couldn't figure out what to do about that, so they just made the Cleric into the best class. By far. Quite deliberately. Then if anyone forced you to be a Cleric you'd be all, like, .

Basically, the Cleric has the crappiest fluff, so it gets the best mechanics to make up for that. Similarly, all the AD&D rules that made Wizards harder to play (on account of them being awesome) got taken out to make them more fun in general and just as easy to play as Fighters, without taking the time to make them any less awesome.

So now we have people who hate that magic can be awesome, and they are buggering up the 5e playtest, because for them, 4e fixed Wizards. The idea that the extra power Wizards have should just be harder to deploy than what Fighters do, and the game should murder your character if you get it at all wrong, the designers simply refuse to touch it, despite people spending 20 years really enjoying a class like that, '78-y2k. Specific components were a bit pointless, and time to prepare was overly fussy for what it did, but the rest of it worked smoothly and made sure other classes stayed relatively useful.

Help me figure out a damned character.

My friend wants me to make a first level character, on practically no game world info. He's made the compromise that he won't give me shit about how I build my character, if I don't give him shit about his less than stellar knowledge of the rules. So, basically, I can use just about any published source. He'll grumble about internet sources, but those may be hand waved as well.

So the goal here is to stick to published things, and go with WotC stuff as much as possible, because for some reason he thinks that's balanced.

I have a handful of ideas, all of which are stymied because wotc stuff typically doesn't work the ways I need it to, but perhaps people can help me find stuff that will fit conceptually, at least with a few easy to negotiate house rules. He does seem to be fine with reflavouring, thankfully, as he didn't give me crap about using cleric to represent a warlock type of character.

character ideas:

• Verminfriend. No, not the shitty feat in an obscure book, that requires one to be a boring somewhat racist fetishist pastiche, but a character that primarily gets his combat abilities by using vermin. I liked the idea in Book of Gears that monstrous vermin are bioconstructs, and might be able to get that approved, but basically I want someone who can summon swarms, giant bugs, possibly turn into a swarm, all that stuff. Preferably without being evil, because I get enough "Prak wants to be dark lord of the sith but sucks at it" shit as it is.
• Psionic Tony Stark. Basically using Astral Construct and Skin of the Construct to play a powersuit user, bonus points to psionics because then my psicrystal can be Jarvis, and the chest light. Problem is, Skin of the Construct only gives you a single Menu A ability, and you can't use Ectopic Form with Skin of the Construct for some stupid reason. If someone can find me a work around, that'd be awesome.
• Dragon/Dragon Rider. I'm starting at level one. This means that if I use a monster class (thanks Paizo, for publishing monster classes for the MM true dragons, I guess?) I start out shitty (feat, no stat bonuses, or a +2 and some -4s, bite, claw, Full BAB yay![/sarcasm] and all good saves double yay![/sarcasm]), and wind up at something like 14d12 at level 20. If I go Dragon Rider, then I have to wait till fucking level 11 to get a fucking dragon mount. ...half dragon horse may be possible, on the other hand... hm...
• Bright and shiny paladin. The problem here is that the paladin class is pretty much shit, and there is very little that makes it work in the way I want. Ideally, I'd like to play a paladin type who eventually picks up a Trumpet Archon trumpet as a special ability, or can use Holy Sword at will, because god damnit, a paladin should be able to pick up any weapon and make it a magical, holy greatsword. They just should. Actual paladin levels are far from necessary. Basically, I want a good aligned, armour wearing magically augmented warrior, who at higher levels can grasp hold of any weapon and make it a magical holy sword, possibly has a large trumpet he can turn into a sword, because that'd be an awesome reputation thing in character, and grows wings at a certain point.
• Sanctified Bebilith. Yeah, I have no clue how my mind got this idea, but somewhere in trying to find stuff to make the above concept work, my mind popped out the idea of a bebilith who was cursed to lose all it's powers and forced to be good, who is working to recover it's power, and possibly break the compelled alignment, who maybe finds that he enjoys good along the way, yaddayaddayaddaIshouldreallyjustwritethedamnedcharacterinastoryshouldn'tI?

Is the Pathfinder Summoner on the table? Because it's an insanely fun class that can let you have a dragon from level 1

If anyone can figure out how to do Psionic Tony Stark properly, I would appreciate that as well.

[*]Verminfriend. Sorcerer, Giant Roach familiar (rat stats), and reskin your spells as being "bugs appear and do this spell effect". Bitten by enchanted sleeping flies, fear caused by rot creeper larva, blinds and KO's with a spray of colourful bettles. Summon Swarm all the time once you're 4th level. Fluff it up as your bugs hide under your cloak.

[*]Psionic Tony Stark. Ride your construct as a mount, just fluff it as you being "inside", only it uses standard mount rules. Give yourself thematically appropriate AC feats and things. Be small so you can ride easier. A Blue or something.

[*]Dragon/Dragon Rider. Be, like, a Draconic Kobold. Use the PClass that turns you into a dragon later on. Pick up a micro-dragon familiar at L6 or whatever, and get a really small dragon cohort as soon as you can wiggle it.

[*]Bright and shiny paladin. The Pathfinder Paladin does everything you want. WotC? Uh, um, maybe a strong celestial bloodline, whatever book that's in, use the various spells and magic grease for your weapon.

[*]Sanctified Bebilith. Spiked player race from some splat or another? Shifter-thingy was it? Fluff it up as a "Bebilith soul" and go Psywar to make personal weaponry and so on that mirrors Bebilith abilities. Tack on a bloodline if it fits.

This class seems good for the Psionic Suit. (this is the beta version so might be radically different from the one they actually released)
Sadly not a wotc version but still.

http://dreamscarredpress.com/dragonfly/ ... =1566.html


But more to the point, how strong do you want you char to be? And you're starting at level 1, till around what level will you play? How strong is the rest of your group?

Verminfriend sounds like a warlock with Summon Swarm as your first invocation pick. Use the dark speech thing, but don't chain it. Otherwise, just max out handle animal and buy and train pets.

Like everything else weird, the Tony Stark thing probably has to fall back on Necromancy. Something wacky like a Warforged Dread Necromancer should do it. If you can afford to wait for a while, play a warlock. Eventually, you'll get your hands on Haunt Shift (Libris Mortis), and all your problems will solve themselves.

If you really want to play a Dragon, I'd fall back to 2E and Council of Wyrms. Dragon Rider would be much easier. Go small to get into it early, and start out as a gnome lancer on a dog or something, then track down and charm or charm a dragon.

Play a cleric, call yourself a paladin. Problem solved forever.

The bebilith sounds a lot more like a novel than a game. That said, try a tiefling caster going for Acolyte of the Skin. It's not actually good, but at least it's thematic. The only real requirements for entry are 6 ranks and CL 5, which ought to be doable by 4th level. If you can take a little longer, go for Fiend-Blooded from Heroes of Horror instead (it doesn't suck).

Yes, I understand that if I want to play a paladin, I actually use cleric, I don't quite see how that gets me light blades and celestial transformation and such... Or Holy Sword, for that matter.

Also, I think I need you to be a bit more explicit on how Warforged Dread Necro fulfills the "Tony Stark in a power suit" concept.

Silver Pyromancer from Eberron gets Paladin spells on the arcane list, and there are ways to add healing spells to arcane lists or use arcane lists with healing... feel like being an arcane gish paladin guy, maybe a Snowflake Wardance/Arcane Strike Bard who heals and has a Holy Sword?

Ok, so looking at the silver pyro, I have two questions, what's the best way for an arcane caster to get turn undead, and what's the snowflake wardance thing?