Results 901 to 930 of 1468
-
2019-09-11, 01:36 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2007
- Location
- Oregon, USA
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
FeytouchedBanana eldritch disciple avatar by...me!
The Index of the Giant's Comments VI―Making Dogma from Zapped Bananas
-
2019-09-11, 04:12 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2006
- Location
- Meridianville AL
- Gender
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
They wanted skill based magic, it's a pretty common thing to want, magic FEELS like it ought to be a skill or an inherent thing, and for D&D characters who progress and learn, learned makes a lot more sense.
But +10 to a skill costs 10,000 GP, that's about what a +2 weapon costs. You simply can't give +10 caster level equivalent for that little, not if the powers are worthwhile in any meaningful way.
You can either rewrite the entire skills section of the rules and everything that interacts with the skill's section so that you don't go handing out +2's and +5's like candy, or you can make sure that your skill based magic is actually based on class level, with the skills as nearly pure fluff or a trivial tax, or you can make sure that your skill based magic can't do anything much.
Those are really the only choices. Tome of Magic went with "we'll make it useless", and it looks like they then also went with "and we won't edit it, because it's useless".
I get the feeling that someone involved wanted to just make the skill checks a tax, but whoever they were, they lost the argument.Last edited by Doug Lampert; 2019-09-11 at 04:13 PM.
-
2019-09-11, 04:21 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2007
- Location
- Oregon, USA
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
FeytouchedBanana eldritch disciple avatar by...me!
The Index of the Giant's Comments VI―Making Dogma from Zapped Bananas
-
2019-09-11, 04:44 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2006
- Location
- Meridianville AL
- Gender
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
Yeah, when I first typed my reply, I mentioned that the skill system is, less than good. With 3 examples of sections where it was obvious in 3.0 that no one had ever read the skill section, and it stayed the same or actively got worse in 3.5.
Then I decided "what's the point" and just went with the obvious global bad scaling. It would be workable if skills scaled smoothly with level in a vaguely predictable way, but they really don't, so it doesn't work.
-
2019-09-11, 05:21 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2007
- Location
- Beverly, MA, USA
- Gender
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
Out of curiosity, what are your criticisms of the 3.x skill system? I find myself missing it most of the time I play 5e, and while it seems easy to “break” if you’re trying to powergame, with the exception of Diplomacy it always seemed both natural and practical in my own games.
Last edited by Emanick; 2019-09-11 at 05:22 PM.
-
2019-09-11, 05:30 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2019
- Location
- Magrathea
- Gender
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
An explanation of why MitD being any larger than Huge is implausible.
See my extended signature here! May contain wit, candor, and somewhere from 52 to 8127 walruses.
Purple is humorous descriptions made up on the fly
Green is serious talk about hypothetical
Blue is irony and sarcasm
"I think, therefore I am,
I walk, therefore I stand,
I sleep, therefore I dream;
I joke, therefore I meme."
-Squire Doodad
-
2019-09-11, 05:56 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2006
- Location
- Meridianville AL
- Gender
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
Good thing you have that except, because RAW Diplomacy is blatantly horrible, and at quite low level without cheese, just used as obviously intended by a character built to be a party face it breaks the game. That alone demonstrates that they weren't paying any attention to skills, because that got WORSE between 3.0 and 3.5 (more synergy bonuses, all available for a bard, and I think half-elf got a +2 to diplomacy in the change over too).
Spot penalties for distance are linear, but the bonuses for target size are logarithmic. You can't see a mountain at half a mile, you can't hope to see the sun. A dragon flying overhead WILL see you while you can't see it if you use the rules. Your party rogue can hear one kobold whispering to another at 100' through two locked doors more easily than the kobold he's whispering to can hear him. So much for Tucker's kobolds if they are required to communicate to set their ambushes. The range penalties for spot and listen are just broken, and those are two of the most used and most important adventuring skills.
Craft is usable untrained, 3 Int, 0 ranks, take 10, 3 GP per week. The EXACT SAME section of the rules tells you that it's 1 SP per day for unskilled labor, so unskilled labor gets less than 1/4th of the pay of the LEAST SKILLED character it is possible to build in core. You're seriously going to claim that's well thought out?
I once had a prolonged discussion of what you could do with 3.x craft where I was the one claiming it's useless and that 4th did well to eliminate the skill and everyone else thought it was useful in an adventure with a bit of creativity. But their potential uses were 100% not legal and made it obvious they'd never used the rules. They didn't know you needed components to craft anything by RAW, they didn't know there were rules on how long it takes to use craft to repair things and again it needs components (which means their "you have to use craft to fix the wagon" would take longer than going to town to buy a new wagon and coming back), ext... You can make that adventure work, but to do so you have to house-rule away the actual craft rules and apply something usable. Similarly for their "if the PCs retreat then the kobolds can craft traps", "over how long and with how many GP in components?"Last edited by Doug Lampert; 2019-09-11 at 06:01 PM.
-
2019-09-11, 06:48 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2007
- Location
- Oregon, USA
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
Somewhat related.
Anyway, the implementation itself is where most of my criticisms lie....Every other class-based statistic you can doubled-check pretty easily: Saves, you sum the saves of each class and add the ability score at the end. Attack bonus, the same. Hit points, you generally have to live with separating summing 1s and die sizes, and then adding the Constitution modifier times the number of dice, and see if you're in the range. Skill points...you'd have to track level by level, because the first level is quadrupled, the actual number of skill points is based on the class and the Intelligence modifier (but only for the base score and inherent bonus) at the time the level was gained, and the actual number of total skill ranks can be half that because of different costs for cross-class skills, and the cap is dependent on whether a skill has ever been a class skill even if it didn't have any ranks....Oh, and then there were skill tricks that cost skill points, so it could actually still be less than half as many total ranks as skill points. It's very easy to mess up and not realize you did it...and conversely, to try to build an unconventional character (or an INT-dependent conventional character, or anyone who'd ever want a tome of clear thought during their lifetime) above 1st level and have to grasp at straws to figure out how to get the skill points into skill ranks to best fit the concept.
Past the build complexity, the steadily increasing skill rank caps as you level also lead to sharp divergences by mid-level....Either DCs are fixed like Diplomacy (or just an opposed check against a skill your target doesn't have ranks in) and they're overwhelmed, they're indirectly scaled by your own level (humanoid-ish NPCs with the same HD as thus a matching skill cap) and you shouldn't bother trying if you don't have the skill maxed, or they're horrifically outpacing your own level (monstrous NPCs with many more HD and thus a much higher skill cap) and you're wondering what the heck you're supposed to do now.FeytouchedBanana eldritch disciple avatar by...me!
The Index of the Giant's Comments VI―Making Dogma from Zapped Bananas
-
2019-09-11, 07:29 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2006
- Location
- Meridianville AL
- Gender
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
Note that WotC blatantly punted on that one, the rules for assigning skill points to a dragon ignored the fact that it's intelligence scales with increasing age category. If you follow the MM procedure for given a dragon skill points, they get to have full skill points retroactively, so they don't even follow their own rule.
And mentioning the MM, monster's have as "class skills" only the skills the monster has ranks in, but if you customize a monster that means it is very common to be forced to take cross-class skills.
-
2019-09-11, 10:06 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2007
- Location
- Oregon, USA
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
Oh, no, even that was punted:
Admittedly, I can appreciate not wanting to bother with reverse engineering the skill modifiers in the block to find out where the ranks are....But this does mean that, for example, a nightcrawler has Diplomacy and Survival as class skills without ranks (they're listed to show they receive synergy bonuses, I assume; but since they're mentioned, they're class skills). And since we're already here....why is the modifier for Sense Motive only +23? Was that a typo for +33, or did the average nightcrawler really increase its Intelligence to 20 with its 8th hit die and that's when it started getting ranks in Sense Motive?Originally Posted by SRD, Monsters as Races
But my most recent skill-related question: How exactly do Petals use their four ranks in Craft (flower arranging)? o_OLast edited by Jasdoif; 2019-09-11 at 11:53 PM.
FeytouchedBanana eldritch disciple avatar by...me!
The Index of the Giant's Comments VI―Making Dogma from Zapped Bananas
-
2019-09-11, 10:15 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2018
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
Truenamer sounds like a good class if you want to have a cohort that is more useful than the pc or something.
Last edited by CriticalFailure; 2019-09-11 at 10:15 PM.
-
2019-09-11, 10:38 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2013
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
Sounds like, yes. As implemented you're better off with an adept or expert.
-
2019-09-12, 03:12 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2015
- Location
- Brazil
- Gender
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
While I certainly can relate and agree with the sentiment, I still don't want to let the oportunity to reference 9th level spells slip (the same way I think iteration XXI should have an Epic Level reference)
Besides, if we had to reference a feature other than spells/powers, we could say something about Monk's Timeless Body or Tongue of the Sun and Moon, both which come at 17th level.
Another way of referencing 9th level spells without spelling "9th level spells" might be pay homage to the most famous of them: Wish.
Something like
Class and Level Geekery XVII - We Wish To Know Their StatsEach one of us, alone, is but a drop in the sea
Our powers pale compared with the great heroes
Our battles don’t hit theheadlines or shake the earth
But they are few, can’t be everywhere, and we, many
So, when the world or universe needs saving, they come
But when people needs saving, we are the ones to appear
We're underdogs, but we rise up to the challenge to be heroes.
(Wishing Joe, a low-powered superhero)
"I really like the Geek Math'ology we do here"
-
2019-09-12, 03:15 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2007
- Location
- Oregon, USA
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
FeytouchedBanana eldritch disciple avatar by...me!
The Index of the Giant's Comments VI―Making Dogma from Zapped Bananas
-
2019-09-12, 03:41 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2018
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
Or go the divine route with something like “The Miracle of [Character Creation, or something].”
-
2019-09-12, 04:17 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2019
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
So did some research for
Spoiler
Right-Eye (including buying SoD, which I’d already done when I wrote this but it hadn’t arrived)
Right-Eye (deceased)
True Neutral, Goblin Male, Rogue 2+
Str ~2 (no evidence; racial and age)
Dex ~6 (no evidence; racial and age)
Con ~ 4(no evidence; age)
Int 15+ (can speak common before advancing to Middle Age and eventually venerable)
Wis ~ 13 (no evidence; age)
Cha ~11 (no evidence; racial and age)
Age: 40+ (venerable, clearly moved up age categories from child to adult to middle age to old age to venerable)
Feats: Martial Weapon Proficiency: Greataxe (favors use of it)
Skills: Listen high, Diplomacy: 0 (per Redcloak pg 31)
Abilities: Rogue class abilities
I have him at rogue 2+ based on disintegrate not dissolving him, to get his saving throw he’d have to succeed in at least a 23, and the only way to get that would put his constitution at 16-17 at venerable, making his original one at 23, which I don’t think we can say he had without putting his level higher than 2, putting the damage at 14d6, so he has at least 15 health, which can only be gotten with two levels and a con of 14+ when he rolled the hit die (which I don’t think requires me to mess with the Con score since it’s not an upper limit and level 3 would mean 10 when rolled works), and the fall damage seems reasonable (if lowballing) at 20 feet or 2d6, rolling maximum with hit die would get 20, 14 for disintigrate at 6, the max fall damage for -6, getting him time to live a little bit before dying.
I’m uncertain if anything can be said for the killing of the treant however, the min health is 42, since he used his axe two-handed I think it’s a greataxe (what he gets if it’s a battle axe hitting using two hands for the bonus is below), with d12 damage, at critical hits that is 36 damage, level 2 adds another BAB so 39, another level or two more strength gets him to 42
But if it’s a battle axe the first thing changing is the weapon focus. As for the treant killing the base hit damage is a d8 and getting a crit makes the total 24, with eighteen points left, then 3 off from BAB so 15, either making him level 8 or one more level with max strength for it kills, meaning if it’s a battle axe he’s level 3+.
It’s not much and knowing me half of it is probably wrong, but it’s something and since I asked for it, I might as well try to find it.
EDIT: Before you think I know anything, when I posted this I had the srd open as like 10 tabs, and it took me a day to figure out all this.Last edited by Schroeswald; 2019-09-12 at 07:55 PM. Reason: Formatting
Arrrgh, here be me extended sig!
-
2019-09-12, 07:06 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2016
- Location
- Seoul
- Gender
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
That assumes +10 to a skill gives as much power as +10 to caster level. Does +10 to Spellcraft or Concentration equal +10 to caster level for wizards?
You can either rewrite the entire skills section of the rules and everything that interacts with the skill's section so that you don't go handing out +2's and +5's like candy, or you can make sure that your skill based magic is actually based on class level, with the skills as nearly pure fluff or a trivial tax, or you can make sure that your skill based magic can't do anything much.
Those are really the only choices. Tome of Magic went with "we'll make it useless", and it looks like they then also went with "and we won't edit it, because it's useless".
I get the feeling that someone involved wanted to just make the skill checks a tax, but whoever they were, they lost the argument.Cool elan Illithid Slayer by linkele.
Editor/co-writer of Magicae Est Potestas, a crossover between Artemis Fowl and Undertale. Ao3 FanFiction.net DeviantArt
We also have a TvTropes page!
Currently playing: Red Hand of Doom(campaign journal)Campaign still going on, but journal discontinued until further notice.
Extended sig here.
-
2019-09-12, 07:10 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2007
- Location
- Indianapolis
- Gender
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
-
2019-09-12, 07:50 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2007
- Location
- Oregon, USA
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
FeytouchedBanana eldritch disciple avatar by...me!
The Index of the Giant's Comments VI―Making Dogma from Zapped Bananas
-
2019-09-12, 08:05 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2019
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
Last edited by Schroeswald; 2019-09-12 at 08:07 PM. Reason: Not Resurrection, Regeneration
Arrrgh, here be me extended sig!
-
2019-09-12, 08:14 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2018
-
2019-09-12, 08:19 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2019
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
Arrrgh, here be me extended sig!
-
2019-09-12, 08:55 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2018
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
Carpentry is mentioned as a craft skill in PF but idk maybe d&d has done obscure rule dictating that it is only ever a profession or a performance or something. Though I think that it could be passed off as either a craft or profession probably (I doubt you could get it classed as a performance).
SpoilerI guess it’s not 100% straight forward which gear in sod qualifies given he’s dead and zombiified.
-
2019-09-12, 09:41 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2019
- Location
- Magrathea
- Gender
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
By the way, do you guys think that the...particular cut off point of the next to last panel was poking fun at this thread? As in, the fact that Sabine specifically was cut off before she could give a reasonable estimate and/or explanation for Laurin's level.
An explanation of why MitD being any larger than Huge is implausible.
See my extended signature here! May contain wit, candor, and somewhere from 52 to 8127 walruses.
Purple is humorous descriptions made up on the fly
Green is serious talk about hypothetical
Blue is irony and sarcasm
"I think, therefore I am,
I walk, therefore I stand,
I sleep, therefore I dream;
I joke, therefore I meme."
-Squire Doodad
-
2019-09-13, 01:56 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2014
- Gender
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
Last edited by RatElemental; 2019-09-13 at 01:57 AM.
-
2019-09-13, 05:36 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2019
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
Arrrgh, here be me extended sig!
-
2019-09-13, 06:49 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2017
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
-
2019-09-13, 07:36 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2019
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
And just for fun I’ll do the second person I asked for:
Jirix
Lawful Evil (racial) Hobgoblin Male, Cleric
Con ~ 12 (no evidence, racial)
Dex ~ 12 (no evidence racial)
Abilities: Hobgoblin racial abilities, Rebuke Undead,
Items: Unholy Symbol, Dark Blue cape, Clipboard, Headband
Spells: Cleric spell list
I thought I’d be able to level him a little bit by his survival of chain lightning, however as he was a secondary target that’s 10d6, and he can get 11 health with one levels and a bit higher con, but then O-Chul kills him, meaning he had 2+ levels but is still at 1+, so a bit less than Right-Eye here (but it’s about as much as Yikyik so I still support inclusion as named member of team Evil, Right-Eye also is a named member of Team Evil and I was able to get a bit for him so I still support him).
EDIT: And I messed around with Right-Eye’s stats a bit in this too.Last edited by Schroeswald; 2019-09-13 at 08:03 AM. Reason: Okay, last time, probably
Arrrgh, here be me extended sig!
-
2019-09-13, 08:42 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2017
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
I actually ran the math on this year's ago when someone claimed by RAW you couldn't see the moon. While the distance penalty to Spot/Perception is linear, and so you get a massive penalty to spot something so far away, the opposed check (The moons hide/stealth) doubles per size category (I also ruled that the moon had dex 0 and couldn't take 10 on its check, being mindless). Seeing as the moon is several thousand times bigger than Colossal, its multiplicative penalty to its Hide far exceeds the additive penalty to our Spot. In short, we can see big things far away because their bigness overrides the farness, similar to how perception works in reality.
The far better assertion to make about Spot not making sense is that we'd be able to see new moons as well as full. In Pathfinder, you can see it through the walls of your bedroom.
-
2019-09-13, 09:53 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2006
- Location
- Meridianville AL
- Gender
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVI - These Characters May Now Drive the Plot
You did the math wrong. Thousands of times colossal is not thousands of times the bonus. IF you allow larger than colossal (not in core but allowed in splat), then double size is +4 to spot, but you need to double the new and larger size for the next +4.
The moon is 11,398,464' in diameter. That would be 17 categories above colossal, for a whopping +84 to spot.
The distance penalty is minus over 250 million. You can not see the moon.