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2019-02-18, 08:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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2019-02-18, 08:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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2019-02-18, 09:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
Well, look at the editions of D&D where they implemented just a single "Fighter", vs the one where there's Fighter, Samurai, War Blade, etc. I think evidence suggests that you'll get more content when people are acclimated to writing lots of content.
Similarly, I think you'll get more balance when people are accustomed to thinking about balance. How many balance threads like this exist for 4e? How many 4e players would be good at giving little Timmy a balanced play experience?
Call me crazy, but I'll claim that 3e's imbalance helps game balance, simply by increasing awareness.
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2019-02-18, 09:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
Well, a lot like the rules say, you can balance the game setting before the characters.
But why does it matter if content is cut?
Why must a fighter be ''mundane"? Like, ok, how about you say the fighter can Mundane Move(aka teleport), Mundane Ball(fireball) and Mundane Stop(time stop)....well ok, we ''say" they are all mundane...but they are exactly like magic, but we ''say" they are not magic. So...really...does it matter?
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2019-02-18, 09:21 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
Been a bit since I last checked in. Forgive me for not pouring through 250+ posts!
So, not particularly mundane, then? Because action heroes--in non-superhero movies, involving putatively "real" people--do things that actual flesh-and-blood human beings cannot do. They do so on the regular, in fact. And this is even assuming that the daily activities of these action heroes are comparable to peak performance of medal-winning Olympic athletes.
Yes, that is what "having a level system" means.
Insisting that level be meaningless because you want the system to have properties that level based systems don't have is just fundamentally misunderstanding how the game works.
If your goal is to enable players to do every possible thing they can piece together from the chunky point buy, tell them that, and tell DMs that they should prepare for the players having the potential to re-write the campaign from under them, because quadratic (or, realistically, exponential) power increase + combinatoric flexibility increase (the two are not identical, but are mutually amplifying) means the system will almost assuredly go off the rails eventually.
Or, if your goal is to make a certain set of actions, events, procedures, or experiences well-supported and leave the rest for each table to figure out, then tell readers that.
But don't try to pretend that the first game includes the second as a proper subset. It doesn't, and trying to make a game that does both will fail.
Which is higher level: the ability to defeat an allip, or the ability to defeat an ogre? It turns out that mostly you can, in fact, reconcile these things.
So you want traveling to be easy when you are going "up a mountain", but hard when you are going "across an ocean". And you want otherworldly beings to be dangerous and scary, but also for PCs to put them in headlocks. It seems like you just don't have a coherent set of expectations for how the campaign is supposed to work.
If you pin a specific event in the campaign to a specific enemy without considering the rest of the campaign, you will have problems in any system with any notion of different power levels. What if you decided that you really wanted your end boss to be a Mind Flayer, but also that you really wanted his goons to be Stone Giants?Last edited by ezekielraiden; 2019-02-18 at 09:26 PM.
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2019-02-18, 11:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
2e AD&D has more content than any other D&D edition and actually has the fewest classes, so this is provably false.
More broadly, having lot's of mechanics makes it easier to add...more mechanics. This is what you see in Pathfinder, where the existence of the Archetypes, the Race Point system, and a greater number of base classes means that it's possible to spew out and endless amount of extremely niche mechanical modifications to suite every possible thing the designers can think up - even when they are being almost entirely redundant (ex. Pathfinder has at least two first party races to fullfil the role of 'ape-men').
At the same time, having an endless array of mechanics makes it more difficult to right coherent fluff, because there's so much variability and an endless array of factors have to be juggled. Paizo responded to this challenge by taking their principle campaign world - Golarion - and chopping it apart into severed bits that each function more or less autonomously and completely lacks a coherent whole and choosing to mostly produce nations that are shameless knock-offs of actual earth cultures even though these should not even come into existence in the context of Pathfinder.
Call me crazy, but I'll claim that 3e's imbalance helps game balance, simply by increasing awareness.
Again, broadly, pretty much no game will come out and openly admit that it's mechanically imbalanced and that certain options are under-powered. Even RIFTS - which is the poster-child for the unbalanced game - doesn't do that. Games almost universally claim that whatever metric of power they're using, whether levels or points, characters built to that same level will be roughly equal. In fact generally the only time a gaming source will talk about something providing an imbalance is when they note some option that does not necessarily provide the same amount of points (like the Life Path Chargen option in Eclipse Phase).
Gaming producers are generally wise to avoid noting imbalance, in their gaming product, because they want to sell books about the weaker options. That's why even when they do admit that something is weaker - like how Dragon-Blooded are weaker than Solars in Exalted - they'll offer some other special option - like teamwork abilities for the Dragon-Blooded that Solars can't have - in an attempt to pretend the disparity doesn't actually exist. And they do that because they want to sell more product. That they can get away with this has a lot to do with how games are marketed and played. The economics of gaming largely work against producing mechanically sound products.
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2019-02-19, 01:07 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
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2019-02-19, 08:28 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
That's a pretty good guideline.
Right. A perfect* physical speciman with maximum ability scores. Not the sum total lf human abilities. After all, he's not Batman.
There are plenty of normal humans in the marvel universe who have knowledge, skills, training, experiance, and practice that Captain America doesn't. These are the things that, imo, D&D levels represent, and in D&D level tends to matter a lot more than ability scores.
*Of course when looked at realistically perfect is a matter of trade offs rather than absolutes. For example, a guy with Cap's build could never have the same potential for flexibility as a preteen girl. Sometimes its better to be tall, other times short, somtimes fat sometimes thin, some situations call for a bunch of short muscle fibers and others long, and when you get to the immune system it gets really complex with some traits being life saving in certain situations and lethal in others. Of course thats probably a good deal more complex than either comic books or RPGs need to be.
That works to an extent, but you are almost certainly going to have some unhappy players as many character concepts and playstyles are inexorably linked to certain power levels. For example, none of the ToB classes appeal to me because I dont like fire and forget powers. A guy who likes a generalist academic mage would likewise be so in a game that bans tier 1s.
Furthermore, the classes tend to suck at even their own power levels. Fighters lack the versatility, mobility, anti-magical defenses, or skills to be a descent adventurer even in a low key sword and sorcery campaign. Likewise spells like shape change and gate break the game wide open even in a high end over the top game of cosmic battles between wierd wizards.Last edited by Talakeal; 2019-02-19 at 08:36 AM.
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2019-02-19, 06:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
My point is to ask why fighting an Allip is something we consider inherently commensurate to fighting an Ogre, but ignoring falling damage isn't. You don't fight them with the same tactics or tools. Different characters excel or falter against each of them. Ultimately, it just depends on your perspective. You can abstract all combat encounters as being fundamentally the same, and non-combat encounters as being fundamentally different. But you can also not do that. You could abstract everything in terms of "overcoming challenges" -- as an example, fly overcomes the "Giant Scorpion" encounter in pretty much the same way that it overcomes the "Giant Chasm" encounter, which suggests that those encounters are, in some sense, commensurate. Or you could consider the high level enemies that live in (or generate) hostile environmental conditions as creating a upper bound on the level of combat effectiveness it is appropriate (or, frankly, possible) to have without being able to deal with those conditions. You can't fight a Xixecal without being able to survive extreme cold, because it drags an area of extreme cold around with it.
I have less experience with DMing than most, so perhaps I should not speak on this, but...what's wrong with that?
Yeah, but do any of them have feats that are actually that much more impressive than Cap's? Again, look at the climax of the first Avengers movie. Thor, Hulk, and Iron Man all individually kill one or more of the whale/snake/dragon things. What mundane character is skilled enough to do that?
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2019-02-19, 08:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
But what is mundane?
Thor and Hulk are very clearly 'beyond human' and even ''magic", but Iron Man is a normal human with some cool toys. While a cop or army guy could not take out a monster space whale....Hawkeye sure could. Every missile we see Iron Man shoot is more then small enough to be an ''arrow head", and even more so Hawkeye has the 'critical hit' ability too(and again he could also wear tech goggles like Falcon does).
And Captain America, if he had to, could likely take out a space monster whale. But he would not just ''do a flip and punch it". Again, Cap might need a weapon or tool and might do something like maneuver the creature into a tight space and trap it.
Even Black Widow. Sure she is not going to shoot one with a hand gun or kick one.......but she could sneak her way past the army and find the ''tech hive control" thingy and disable or destroy it. Again, she might use a lot of tech...and she does in the movies.
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2019-02-20, 01:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
It's hard to compare marvel to this, because some of them use technology that would have to become analogus to magic. Cap for example, might be mundane in marvel, but the superhero serum he took wouldn't be mundane in dnd unless you're using some high tech rules. Likewise goes for iron man's suits (which basically make him something like an artificer), or hawkeye's trick arrows (which kinda make him like an arcane archer). Black widow is about the closest you get to a mundane (most analogous to a rogue with some tricky magic items), even if you remove some of the gadgets she uses, she has a strong fighting style that doesn't rely on any of that, and many skills in infiltration and espionage that can be used to get by without any tech.
Thor can shoot lightning, clearly magical, and hulk is basically a synthesist summoner, also very "magical" (again, high science basically equals magic in dnd unless you're using some kind of high tech variant)Last edited by Crake; 2019-02-20 at 01:24 AM.
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2019-02-20, 04:20 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
I feel like, after some years and a couple hundred discussions, we might finally have to accept that the discussion about how we define "mundane" is not going anywhere. It hasn't gone anywhere the last hundred times and I can't see it going differently now.
Besides which, the core non-casting classes are bad at being mundane anyway, unless we define it as being one of the poor chumps the supervillain knocks aside as they square off with the heroes.Last edited by Morty; 2019-02-20 at 04:40 AM.
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2019-02-20, 04:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
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2019-02-20, 07:15 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
Last edited by upho; 2019-02-20 at 07:16 AM.
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2019-02-20, 07:33 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
Ultimately, it doesn't really matter, because there's no reasonable definition of mundane that is appropriate as a high level character. However you define mundane, a mundane character (in a medieval setting) is not getting abilities like teleport, fabricate, cloudkill, or raise dead and is therefore going to have an increasingly difficult time justifying their existence as the party gets into the back half of the game. Which is what we observe with pretty much all mundane classes.
Hulk has a rage state that makes him very strong and tough. He's obviously a Barbarian. So obviously, in fact, that I would venture to say that if your supers-to-D&D system outputs anything other than "Barbarian" for Hulk, it's doing it wrong. It's just that "Barbarian" is not an inherently mundane concept. For fantasy examples of non-mundane Barbarians, consider Karsa Orlong (Malazan: Book of the Fallen) or Logen Ninefingers/The Bloody Nine (The First Law).
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2019-02-20, 08:31 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
I doubt it, although Cap has lost fights to mundanes on a few occasions.
My point is that some sort of ultimate high level mundane could have cap's body, reed richards mind, black widow's stealth and espionage skills, shang-chi's kung-fu, Conan's swordsmanship, Hawkeyes marksmanship, and Punisher's arsenal while still technically being mundane. Not to mention a suite of high tech / magical gear appropriate to the setting.
Of course, a character doesn't need all of this, but some combination thereof could still produce a mundane character who could do more than someo e with Captain America's powers alone.Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.
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2019-02-20, 10:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
I feel this point is very important, as it seems people frequently do the same mistake as Crake may have done here, confusing what is with what could or should be.
Yes, currently no 3.5/PF class is more capable of accurately reflecting Hulk's abilities in game mechanics than the synth. Yes, all three(!) current barb classes lack the raw physical power to do so even remotely as well as the synth. That does not in any way mean Hulk is anything other than the quintessential raging barbarian in every important regard, but with his power turned up to what is more appropriate for higher level D&D play. Nor does it mean the current synth is otherwise anywhere near as suitable to capture the "Hulk concept", as I believe most people (myself included) find a summoning- and buff-focused "sorcerer" able to wear a custom outsider creature like a power-armor to be pretty darn far from that concept.
Likewise, switching the barb for say, a primalist bloodrager of the abyssal bloodline, you've come a lot closer to the Hulk in some regards (free up-sizing and additional Str bonuses while raging), but also gained abilities much less suitable (like burning claws, abyssal heritage and some combat-focused sorcerer casting). And while a "bloodrager Hulk" would certainly be better equipped for handling high level play than a "barb Hulk", he'd still not be nearly as well equipped as he should be.
While I agree Logen is a good example of a barb, I'd say he's also very much a low level barb, especially the power of his rage not being comparable to that of Hulk's. I haven't read Malazan, but some quick research has given me the impression that the same is very much true also for Karsa Orlong.Last edited by upho; 2019-02-20 at 11:02 AM.
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2019-02-20, 01:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
Are you two forgetting that hulk is quite literally a second personality/entity? That matches perfectly with both fluff and crunch of synthesist summoner. Anger may be the catalyst that summons hulk, but hulk and bruce banner are very clearly two separate entities. Bruce banner himself is actually a wimpy nerd, which further matches the fluff and crunch of a synth summoner, with the summon's stats replacing his, rather than buffing them. In every sense, he becomes another person, and synth summoner far better represents that in both fluff and crunch than barbarian does.
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2019-02-20, 01:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
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2019-02-20, 01:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
Logen and Karsa are both good examples of imbalance in action. Logen is a high-level character - he consistently wins duels against other prestigious and well-known warriors in the First Law universe and takes an almost ridiculous amount of combat punishment (he clearly has an incredible immune system), but his level doesn't translate into all that much power when compared with the setting's wizards. The First Law, like 3.5, is operating on a system where wizards, once past a nebulous 'apprentice' stage, are clearly overwhelmingly more powerful than warriors. Karsa Orlong is similar. He's a very skilled combatant (with a bunch of completely imbalanced and frankly ridiculous racial bonuses, but it's Malazan, so everything is awful in all ways), and matches up with various other stupidly skilled and strong combatants, but none of it means anything compared to the power of the setting's wizards. Malazan actually has a number of explicit examples of wizards casting dominate and turning high-level martials into their puppets, sometimes for months on end.
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2019-02-20, 01:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
Oh absolutely.
Characters always need limits to make themselves unique, which is one of the reasons I have long argued that the existing T1 characters are bad for the game.
We discussed it at length in this thread.
Although, I will say that personality and aesthetics do go a lot further towards making a character interesting than a list of abilities.
My point was merely that if we are looking at the theoretical maximum capabilities of a mundane character we can do a lot better than Captain America.
Edit: Forgot to link the thread I referanced:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...ot-the-problemLast edited by Talakeal; 2019-02-21 at 10:41 AM.
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2019-02-20, 02:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
I just came here to say Captain America is a human Warblade 14/Bloodstorm Blade 6 with the Paragon Template from the Epic Handbook,
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2019-02-20, 03:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
So? A synth's eidolon is in all relevant aspects precisely as much its own entity as a suit of power armor is. That is, it's indeed a separate being, in a physical sense much more so than Hulk is a being separate from Bruce. And the absolute opposite is true in regards to control, personality, and feelings, all of which the synth's power armor lacks, along with so much as a means of communicating or even any mental stats at all to begin with. So in fact, the synth's mechanics are much better suited for Iron Man.
No. Hulk definitely buffs Bruce's physical stats (as they always share the same body) and replaces Bruce's mental stats. Whereas the synth's eidolon instead replaces the summoner's physical stats but not the summoner's mental stats. It seems you're forgetting/ignoring the following key parts of the eidolon and synthesist descriptions, none of which are true in the case of Bruce/Hulk (emphasis mine):
1. "A synthesist summons the essence of a powerful outsider to meld with his own being. The synthesist wears the eidolon like translucent, living armor."
2. "A summoner can summon his eidolon in a ritual that takes 1 minute to perform."
3. "The synthesist gains the eidolon’s hit points as temporary hit points. When these hit points reach 0, the eidolon is killed and sent back to its home plane."
4. "The eidolon does not heal naturally..."
5. "If the eidolon is sent back to its home plane due to death, it cannot be summoned again until the following day."
6. "The eidolon cannot be sent back to its home plane by means of dispel magic, but spells such as dismissal and banishment work normally."
7. "If the summoner is unconscious, asleep, or killed, his eidolon is immediately banished."
8. "The eidolon takes a form shaped by the summoner’s desires. ...each eidolon receives a pool of evolution points... ...that can be used to give the eidolon different abilities and powers. Whenever the summoner gains a level, he must decide how these points are spent... ...The eidolon’s physical appearance is up to the summoner..."
9. "The eidolon also bears a glowing rune that is identical to a rune that appears on the summoner’s forehead as long as the eidolon is summoned."
On top of this, it appears you're forgetting about the summoners other major class features, such as super-boosted spontaneous Cha-based 6/9 casting from the best short list in the game. How often do you see Hulk do the equivalent of casting haste, spiked pit or greater teleport in combat? How about the equivalent of summon monster 10+ times per day?
Again, Iron Man and his gadgets are actually a lot closer here, which in itself says quite a bit IMO (especially since the synth isn't that particularly great for Iron Man). Heck, even a Ragechemist alchemist would be a much better fit for Bruce/Hulk than the synth.
Barbarian on the other hand... Yes, definitely as close as D&D gets to the Hulk, albeit in a toned down manner.Last edited by upho; 2019-02-20 at 03:03 PM.
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2019-02-20, 07:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
Reed Richard's mind is a superpower. It's the "comic book super genius" power that him, Bruce Banner, Tony Stark, Hank Pym, Peter Parker, and all sorts of other characters share to various degrees. And it's not really appropriate for a lot of mundane character's idioms as a high level upgrade. I think it's far more natural for Conan to upgrade to high levels by getting some kind of spirit or ancestor or war magic than by becoming superhumanly intelligent.
I agree that Logen as depicted in the First Law series is low level, but it should be pointed out that he's low level in no small part because the story takes place in a time period where the spirits his magic relies upon are mostly asleep and don't really do much. He gets an infodump in The Blade Itself, does a fire breath thing in one book, and talks to the guardian spirit in Best Served Cold, but other than that he doesn't do much magic (IIRC). But as I understand it, his power isn't fundamentally different from the power Bedesh got from Euz. So if you rewound things to the time of Euz or the Old Empire when more spirits were awake, his powers would presumably become some amount more impressive.
You're probably underestimating Karsa's power. This is a decent summary, but highlights include "basically immune to magic", "defeated two dog-gods of darkness", and "fought through a ship full of elite basically-elven mages and warriors".
Are you forgetting that a synthesist summoner can still cast spells? Yes, Hulk's a separate entity, but so is the Bloody Nine. It's not weird for a Barbarian-type's rage to manifest as a separate entity. But it is totally outside the Hulk's power suite to get spellcasting. Particularly MCU Hulk.
That's part of the problem with "mundane". Even if you accept that there's a high level mundane character, there's like one high level mundane character. You can't have a Barbarian class that's mundane, and a Marshal class that's mundane, and a Rogue class that's mundane, you can have one Mundane Warrior class that's mundane, and it gets pretty much all the mundane abilities. But if you allow those characters to game idiom-appropriate magical abilities like "rage hard enough to shatter mountains" or "inspire people to fight literally beyond death" or "steal souls", you can have those classes all exist and be distinct at high level
Logen is a high level character relative to his setting, but he's in a low level setting. The world of the First Law is templated on LotR, and as such is pretty close to E6. Logen's big feats are beating Fenris the Feared (who is reasonably modeled as an Ogre with DR) and killing moderately large numbers of basically-goblins or soldiers. There's nothing he does that you couldn't do as like a 5th level character. Even Bayaz doesn't do much that's more impressive than 3rd or 4th level spells except the big ritual at the climax.
his level doesn't translate into all that much power when compared with the setting's wizards.
Karsa Orlong is similar. He's a very skilled combatant (with a bunch of completely imbalanced and frankly ridiculous racial bonuses, but it's Malazan, so everything is awful in all ways), and matches up with various other stupidly skilled and strong combatants, but none of it means anything compared to the power of the setting's wizards.
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2019-02-20, 07:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
Logen has a mystical ability - though it is presented as extremely minor, the fire-spitting trick is probably the most potent thing he does with it, and Abercrombie seemingly forgets about that trick shortly after the first few chapters are over since he never does it again - but it's different from the wizardry present in the setting, which is why Bayaz can't duplicate it. Logen is not a match for even fairly low-ranked Eaters, something that's true of pretty much every single warrior in the setting.
The First Law is a setting, much like the Hyborian Age or Nehwon, where warriors and wizards both have advancement tracks, but they are simply not comparable. You might not be able to chop up 20 levels from 'raw recruit' to Logen, but you could certainly manage ten, just as you could manage a large number of gradations between the worthless Malacu Quai and Bayaz. It's just Logen tops out at being able to go into a rage and fight eight to ten enemies at once and Bayaz can kill a dozen men with a gesture.
Your distaste for anything more powerful than LotR aside. Most notably, Karsa does explicitly have the ability to no-sell even very powerful magic. Even in the backstory portion House of Chains, he's explicitly able to basically ignore magic that should put him in crippling pain because of his use of Otataral-infused blood oil. And he does demonstrate some ability to leverage the magical abilities of the souls bound to him. The climax of his arc in Reaper's Gale involves him leveraging his spirits to help defeat Rhulad, for example.
And yes, Karsa Orlong has a bunch of bizarrely defined abilities that basically allow him to get away with varying degrees of BS so that he can tromp around engaging in some very squicky authorial wish-fulfillment - it is a rare feat to write such a blatantly horrible being with such committed sympathy - but those abilities are mostly unrelated to his fighting skill progression and are tied to either his racial bonuses or to buffs acquired from other external sources.
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2019-02-20, 08:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
But this just takes you back in the circle.
Ok, so the character has a non magical mundane +10 to hit. Or can Mundane Fly, or Mundane Teleport.
AND, here is the big question: You you'd say Mundanes can have no magic what so ever.....then would you say the Magic folks must have no mundane things too?
So a Wizard would have a Base BAB of zero. Base Attack is a 100% mundane ability....right? The same would be true with saving throws: All zero for a wizard. And no mundane items or skills or feats(except metamagic ones).
And if you'd say ''oh the rules say wizards get all that", well I'd note the rules also say mundanes can have magic and magic items.
By the D&D rules, ''Mundane'' is only ''does not cast spells" or even better "is not a full class 1-9 spellcaster".
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2019-02-21, 01:44 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
I think the Alchemist is a pretty appropriate class for a Mr Hyde style character
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2019-02-21, 04:52 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
I would agree with the Alchemist assertion of the Hulk, but honestly none of the suggested classes are bad ideas depending on which Hulk you're talking about. The traditional Hulk is straight up a Barbarian, but the problems arise when you consider the others.World War Hulk could be considered a Synthesist Summoner since he and Banner work together. I'm not sure what the Maestro would be. He doesn't turn into his Banner form often but there is only one mind there. World-Breaker Hulk could be considered a Barbarian at epic levels kinda. The Red Hulk is a straight Bloodrager. But I wonder about the Immortal Hulk, the Immortal Hulk in my opinion is more of a Dread than a Barbarian. A Fear-in-the-Flesh to be exact. Maybe a multiclass Dread/Bloodrager?
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2019-02-21, 08:26 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2009
- Location
- Denver.
- Gender
Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
Comic books (and media in general) are kind of wierd when it comes to intelligence, typically depicting geniuses as experts in every field. Likewise comic book science is different from real life science.
I dont think in the fiction Reed Richards mind is supposed to be a super power, unlike say The Leader, I think he is just the second smartest man in a world where science works very differently.Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.
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2019-02-21, 10:02 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2006
- Location
- Poland
- Gender
Re: 3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?
Fair enough point, and I certainly won't argue that D&D 3E's "tier one" characters are a very poor thing to balance towards. Really, I don't think the tier system is a particularly good or useful tool for that at all. It analyzes 3E's unbalanced environment but I don't think it can tell us much about creating an environment that is balanced.
Last edited by Morty; 2019-02-21 at 10:06 AM.
My FFRP characters. Avatar by Ashen Lilies. Sigatars by Ashen Lilies, Gullara and Purple Eagle.
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