Iron Chef Optimisation Challenge in the Playground LXXXIV

[Amechra]

So... where are the stats for a Sea Lion?

[WhamBamSam]

So... where are the stats for a Sea Lion?

I'm not sure if there were any at the time the class was written, but there's a Sea Lion printed in Stormwrack.

[Darrin]

I'm not sure if there were any at the time the class was written, but there's a Sea Lion printed in Stormwrack.

There was. The 3.0 Monster Manual has the Sea Lion as a 6 HD large beast. In the 3.5 MM, it was renamed "Sea Cat", became a magical beast (with no magical/supernatural abilities), but has nearly identical stats to the 3.0 Sea Lion. (The 3.0 version was a hold-over from previous editions, and was one of Gygax's "monsters based on a pun or joke" creations.)

The Stormwrack version is a 3 HD large animal based on the real-world pinnipeds.

Helio, could we get a chair ruling on whether the 3.5 Sea Cat is a valid selection for a waverider mount?

I am disappointed with the companion selection for smaller Waveriders. They get much weaker companions by HD with no discernible trade-off. Then again, there's no explicit rule that says your companion selection is restricted by size, and there's no penalty that I'm aware of for having an oversized mount.

[Thurbane]

Since Sea Cat is called out as an alternate paladin mount in the DMG, I think it would make sense here, on top of the reasons already given above.

[Venger]

There was. The 3.0 Monster Manual has the Sea Lion as a 6 HD large beast. In the 3.5 MM, it was renamed "Sea Cat", became a magical beast (with no magical/supernatural abilities), but has nearly identical stats to the 3.0 Sea Lion. (The 3.0 version was a hold-over from previous editions, and was one of Gygax's "monsters based on a pun or joke" creations.)

The Stormwrack version is a 3 HD large animal based on the real-world pinnipeds.

Helio, could we get a chair ruling on whether the 3.5 Sea Cat is a valid selection for a waverider mount?

I am disappointed with the companion selection for smaller Waveriders. They get much weaker companions by HD with no discernible trade-off. Then again, there's no explicit rule that says your companion selection is restricted by size, and there's no penalty that I'm aware of for having an oversized mount.

The only penalty is not being able to fast mount/dismount if that was part of your strategy at all. otherwise, no.

[Vaz]

Is it Fey, Humanoid, etc with the Aquatic subtype, or just Outsider with Aquatic Subtype?

[Technetium43]

The former. Check the second post.

[Vaz]

Grazie amigo. Missed that!

[Zaq]

So I took a little bit more time and read the class abilities again, and I still have no idea how the hell most of them work. (And I think I'm pretty decent at parsing WotC's rules text overall, but perhaps that's immaterial.)

n.b.: I'm pretty sure that I don't have a copy of the 3.0 PHB, so if any of these abilities hinge on rules that were different back in 3.0, I'm going to be at a disadvantage here.

First, let's look at Breach. "The mount makes a Jump check [. . .] to make a 'running' high jump as part of a charge, with a maximum height distance of twice its length." This seems to just use the default PHB rules for a high jump (DC with a running start = 4 per foot of desired height), only it puts a maximum on it based on "its length." I'm not sure what "its length" actually means. I think by RAW it means that the mount can't jump higher than twice its own creature length (so for a Large critter, typically 10' length doubled to a 20' maximum?), but that seems weird and arbitrary. It's a PrC from Savage Species, of course, so weird and arbitrary shouldn't come as a surprise, but there you have it. That said, this ability doesn't seem to actually let you do much that you couldn't do already, unless I'm wildly confused about what it actually does. It does seem to be intended to let you leap out of the water and attack a foe there (and then, presumably, dive back into the water, though it doesn't say how far you go or how you plot your trajectory, since a charge is normally in a straight line), but it doesn't actually explicitly say that you have to be underwater to use this ability to start. Not sure what we want to make of that, since it seems like you can be riding a normal, non-aquatic horse on dry land, use Breach to attack an opponent who is "out of the water," and then end your turn "once again submerged." (The use of "once again submerged heavily implies how this is supposed to work, but again, the rules don't actually say.) Also, does the rule on pg. 85 of Stormwrack (which didn't exist when Savage Species was printed) stating that there's a –10 penalty on a Jump check to make a high jump to breach the surface of the water have any bearing on how this works?

My initial impression upon reading Breach was that you basically make a long jump and still go vertically with it (which would make the height maximum make a little more sense, since it's way easier to get long jump check up that high than a high jump check), but that doesn't seem to match the actual rules text.

Next, Sound. It's clear that the target must be underwater and that we're going to end up underwater, but it is absolutely unclear where we have to be to start using Sound. What does this Jump check represent or allow? The sentence "the mount makes a Jump check . . ." doesn't actually seem to be connected to anything. Is it intended that we start on dry land (with our presumably aquatic mount?) and the Jump check allows a dive into the water? Are we starting at the surface of the water and diving down (if so, what's up with the Jump check)? Are we starting submerged and just diving deeper (and if so, what the hell's up with the Jump check)? I think it seems to be the case that the Jump check is being used as a weird sort of substitute for a Swim check, and again, we've got an arbitrary distance maximum (which will actually likely be much, much shorter than we'd normally get on a charge, but perhaps that's by intent), but as I keep saying, that's not entirely clear. Also, it doesn't seem to me that there's any hard rules text saying that you can't go up during a Sound attack, so long as both you and your target are submerged the whole time. (That's not what "sound" means as a verb, and the ability does refer to diving, but again, there's definitely some gaps here.)

Full Mounted Attack has been brought up already, and I'm in favor of ruling it that we can make a full attack when the mount moves, as that's completely in keeping with similar abilities.

Moving on to Skim. Once again, I don't know what this actually does, and I especially don't understand what it does that Breach doesn't do. Is it possible that Breach is intended to only let you charge straight up at something directly above you, while Skim does something similar but allows for both vertical and horizontal movement as part of the same charge? Nothing in Breach seems to put that limitation on us (at least not by my reading), but that's why we're having this discussion, no? Skim has the same "once again submerged" phrase, gently indicating that we're likely supposed to be submerged (and not at the surface of the water) to start, so how is the portion of the movement that is between the submerged starting point at the edge of the water affected by this ability, particularly considering that a charge is supposed to be in a straight line? (And I still don't understand how we're supposed to plot our movement back into the water after jumping up and attacking an opponent out of the water, since nothing in the ability tells us how to reconcile our jumping arc with the fact that charges are in a straight line.) These abilities are really confusing, to be honest.

And I'm in the same boat (or riding the same fish) as everyone else when it comes to Wavedancing. If I had to guess the intent from the context, I think the idea is that you go up to the surface of the water (but not on dry land and not airborne), you move around really fast up there (faster than you would while fully submerged), and you can even charge or use Ride-By Attack at the surface of the water (though I don't see why you couldn't do that already). However, that doesn't necessarily seem to be what the rules actually say, so I don't know how we want to officially rule it. The sentence about using Breach/Sound/Skim in consecutive rounds is clear, at least.

There are even some other abilities that I find questionable, but I think I might PM those to Heliomance rather than possibly trigger the speculation clause. Overall, though, this class is a grade-A rules mess, and I really want some more explanations before I commit to anything. If we can get some clarity, this class does seem to have a few interesting tricks, but both cooking and judging will be a nightmare if we aren't on the same page.

(Also, does "Waverider" sound like a kenning to anyone else, or is it just me?)

[WhamBamSam]

So I took a little bit more time and read the class abilities again, and I still have no idea how the hell most of them work. (And I think I'm pretty decent at parsing WotC's rules text overall, but perhaps that's immaterial.)

n.b.: I'm pretty sure that I don't have a copy of the 3.0 PHB, so if any of these abilities hinge on rules that were different back in 3.0, I'm going to be at a disadvantage here.

First, let's look at Breach. "The mount makes a Jump check [. . .] to make a 'running' high jump as part of a charge, with a maximum height distance of twice its length." This seems to just use the default PHB rules for a high jump (DC with a running start = 4 per foot of desired height), only it puts a maximum on it based on "its length." I'm not sure what "its length" actually means. I think by RAW it means that the mount can't jump higher than twice its own creature length (so for a Large critter, typically 10' length doubled to a 20' maximum?), but that seems weird and arbitrary. It's a PrC from Savage Species, of course, so weird and arbitrary shouldn't come as a surprise, but there you have it. That said, this ability doesn't seem to actually let you do much that you couldn't do already, unless I'm wildly confused about what it actually does. It does seem to be intended to let you leap out of the water and attack a foe there (and then, presumably, dive back into the water, though it doesn't say how far you go or how you plot your trajectory, since a charge is normally in a straight line), but it doesn't actually explicitly say that you have to be underwater to use this ability to start. Not sure what we want to make of that, since it seems like you can be riding a normal, non-aquatic horse on dry land, use Breach to attack an opponent who is "out of the water," and then end your turn "once again submerged." (The use of "once again submerged heavily implies how this is supposed to work, but again, the rules don't actually say.) Also, does the rule on pg. 85 of Stormwrack (which didn't exist when Savage Species was printed) stating that there's a –10 penalty on a Jump check to make a high jump to breach the surface of the water have any bearing on how this works?

My initial impression upon reading Breach was that you basically make a long jump and still go vertically with it (which would make the height maximum make a little more sense, since it's way easier to get long jump check up that high than a high jump check), but that doesn't seem to match the actual rules text.

I think Breach is supposed to allow the mount to charge while leaping out of the water, which might otherwise violate the rule about charging in a straight line. So basically, it let's your mount charge like this, which it might or might not have been able to do under the standard rules. It also lets the mount use the rider's jump ranks, which is helpful, as none of the mounts get jump as a class skill, and removes the normal AC penalty from enemies outside of the water.

As for how high out of the water you can go (assuming you can achieve the necessary jump check result), I'm not sure.

Next, Sound. It's clear that the target must be underwater and that we're going to end up underwater, but it is absolutely unclear where we have to be to start using Sound. What does this Jump check represent or allow? The sentence "the mount makes a Jump check . . ." doesn't actually seem to be connected to anything. Is it intended that we start on dry land (with our presumably aquatic mount?) and the Jump check allows a dive into the water? Are we starting at the surface of the water and diving down (if so, what's up with the Jump check)? Are we starting submerged and just diving deeper (and if so, what the hell's up with the Jump check)? I think it seems to be the case that the Jump check is being used as a weird sort of substitute for a Swim check, and again, we've got an arbitrary distance maximum (which will actually likely be much, much shorter than we'd normally get on a charge, but perhaps that's by intent), but as I keep saying, that's not entirely clear. Also, it doesn't seem to me that there's any hard rules text saying that you can't go up during a Sound attack, so long as both you and your target are submerged the whole time. (That's not what "sound" means as a verb, and the ability does refer to diving, but again, there's definitely some gaps here.)

I think that sound is just a normal swimming charge against an enemy at a distance of at most whatever '6 times its length' means in context. One might interpret it as requiring that the enemy be below you in the water based on the word 'dive,' but it might just always work so long as you're both submerged. The jump check tells you how far you can move as opposed to the usual rules of moving up to twice your speed. Assuming you get enough jump distance to reach your target, the rider's charge attack gets the bonus on their attack roll increased to +4 and increases their damage multiplier, but the penalty to their armor class increases to -4.

Full Mounted Attack has been brought up already, and I'm in favor of ruling it that we can make a full attack when the mount moves, as that's completely in keeping with similar abilities.

That seems to be the way Heliomance is ruling it to work.

Moving on to Skim. Once again, I don't know what this actually does, and I especially don't understand what it does that Breach doesn't do. Is it possible that Breach is intended to only let you charge straight up at something directly above you, while Skim does something similar but allows for both vertical and horizontal movement as part of the same charge? Nothing in Breach seems to put that limitation on us (at least not by my reading), but that's why we're having this discussion, no? Skim has the same "once again submerged" phrase, gently indicating that we're likely supposed to be submerged (and not at the surface of the water) to start, so how is the portion of the movement that is between the submerged starting point at the edge of the water affected by this ability, particularly considering that a charge is supposed to be in a straight line? (And I still don't understand how we're supposed to plot our movement back into the water after jumping up and attacking an opponent out of the water, since nothing in the ability tells us how to reconcile our jumping arc with the fact that charges are in a straight line.) These abilities are really confusing, to be honest.

Skim appears to do very little that Breach does not. I think it lets you charge further in the horizontal direction but not the vertical one along the surface of the water.

And I'm in the same boat (or riding the same fish) as everyone else when it comes to Wavedancing. If I had to guess the intent from the context, I think the idea is that you go up to the surface of the water (but not on dry land and not airborne), you move around really fast up there (faster than you would while fully submerged), and you can even charge or use Ride-By Attack at the surface of the water (though I don't see why you couldn't do that already). However, that doesn't necessarily seem to be what the rules actually say, so I don't know how we want to officially rule it. The sentence about using Breach/Sound/Skim in consecutive rounds is clear, at least.

I think it does just allow you to move faster along the surface of the water and use the other charges in consecutive rounds. Other than that, you're right, it appears to only give you things that the rules allow you to do anyway.




I think my build is largely set, despite the rules confusion. I just have to sort out one or two details.

[The Viscount]

Can we talk about how strange it is that this PrC gives jump as a class skill, despite jumping not working in water.
Or... does jumping work in water? If it does that's its own hilarity.

[Inevitability]

Can we talk about how strange it is that this PrC gives jump as a class skill, despite jumping not working in water.
Or... does jumping work in water? If it does that's its own hilarity.

If it didn't, quite a few of its abilities would become worthless.

[The Viscount]

I know that the class features make use of jump I just mean that for a regular character swimming around in the water jumping seems nonsensical.

[Troacctid]

Jumping in Water: Creatures that have natural swim speeds use that speed to determine how they jump when in water. They take a –10 penalty on high jumps from water, the final result measuring how high the jumper’s feet or tail is out of the water after the jump. Creatures that lack a natural swim speed can’t jump while in water.

Rules Compendium page 94.

[Darrin]

I know that the class features make use of jump I just mean that for a regular character swimming around in the water jumping seems nonsensical.

As Troacctid pointed out, every instance of Waverider mentioning jump appears to be the mount jumping out of or on top of the water. As with jump while flying, the rules are utterly silent on whether you can jump while completely submerged.

I can't quite make up my mind on this issue. On the one hand, the RAW answer is yes, because there's no indication in the rules that Jump checks are restricted to a particular terrain, environment, or movement mode. On the other hand, this seems like a pretty clear "Common Sense" issue where the designers thought it would be obvious how this should work. On the gripping hand, I'm *really* annoyed that none of the suggested mounts has Jump as a class skill.

[Thurbane]

I've got the bare bones of a build laid out in a table. I'm not sure it's revolutionary, but I'm happy with the basic concept. Now just to gte all the feats and skills locked away, write up a backstory, and get it all in order...

[WhamBamSam]

On the gripping hand, I'm *really* annoyed that none of the suggested mounts has Jump as a class skill.

That's probably why the class features let you use the rider's jump ranks instead of the mount's.

[Sian]

got a build I don't dislike, but I'm positive that someone else is going to do the same trick ...

[Darrin]

got a build I don't dislike, but I'm positive that someone else is going to do the same trick ...

Yeah, I have the same Vizzini problem. But every time I convince myself that someone else will use this idea, I'm wrong.

And if I'm not wrong... Well, if it's a good idea and I execute it well, then it should still be in the running.

[Sian]

thats the issue ... I'm not at all convinced that it actually is a good idea :S

[Darrin]

thats the issue ... I'm not at all convinced that it actually is a good idea :S

Yeah, that's pretty much where it all falls apart.

For the last ingredient, I thought I had a good idea, but the more time I spent on the build, the more I found myself pointing out flaws and trying to excuse some of the weaker parts of it.

[Korahir]

Yeah, that's pretty much where it all falls apart.

For the last ingredient, I thought I had a good idea, but the more time I spent on the build, the more I found myself pointing out flaws and trying to excuse some of the weaker parts of it.

I'd be happy to enter this stage with this ingredient. I am still stuck in: nothing remotely interesting comes to mind. Usually this is the stage where I start to read random source books for inspiration.

[daremetoidareyo]

Are there sinking rules anywhere for inanimate objects?

[Zaq]

I feel like this class would be surprisingly interesting to use in a live game, especially if you can go back and forth with your GM about what the abilities do, don't do, should do, and shouldn't do. That said, I haven't yet thought of anything unique to do with it from an Iron Chef perspective (everything I've come up with is paint-by-numbers at best).

I haven't given up yet, though. It's been too long since I had a good entry, and this class is weird enough that I keep feeling like there's some potential I'm missing.

I will say that I am highly dissatisfied with the mount it gives you. We can stop there, but it's got some flaws that are hard to get around.

[KrimsonNekros]

*Listens to the crickets.*

[Thurbane]

Have to say, with three days or so left to go, not sure I'm going to get a build in.

[Amphetryon]

Waiting on the chairperson.

[The Viscount]

I was similarly waiting for some clarification to the previous questions, but in light of the deadline and what I've cobbled together so far I think I'm going to press on.

[Zaq]

I have some half-formed ideas (with at least one build idea going full [REDACTED], though I don't have anything firm enough to call a build skeleton yet), but there's less time left than I had hoped, and I have some very important job-related things to prepare for between now and Tuesday. It's not terribly likely that I'll compete, though stranger things have happened.

[Venger]

I would also appreciate some official rulings on how most of the features work, having been holding off on the nitty gritty til then. This class is a real mess