D&D 3e/3.5e/d20The forum for conversations specifically related to the rules and procedures of Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition, 3.5 Edition, or any fantasy game using the d20 system or a variant thereof (commercially published or not).
Re: Top Ten Worst-Written Spells, Class Features, Racial Abilities, Feats, Items, etc
Quote:
Originally Posted by Curmudgeon
Quite possibly. However, the preponderance of citations indicates that items which replenish daily uses do so at sunrise, so that makes a consistent pattern to apply.
Consistent pattern? Isn't that RAI rather than RAW?
IMO, Quivering Palm is meant to be used once per calendar week, judging from a familiar pattern: Smite X/day, Rage Χ/day, Abundant Step 1/day, domain powers 1/day, SLAs 1/day and so on. I've never heard anyone arguing that this day is "interval", though a lot of people have wondered if the day begins at sunrise or midnight or what. If that's a hole in the rules, the poor Monk is not at fault here, it's the general terminology that's confusing. (Not that it tragically affects the game, just saying.)
EDIT: So no, I don't think that's a horrendously written rule, neither for the monk, nor for all the rest. It could use some clarifying, especially regarding when the day starts for this purpose, but it doesn't otherwise confuse people.
__________________ "We need the excuse of fiction to stage what we truly are." ~ Slavoj iek
Re: Top Ten Worst-Written Spells, Class Features, Racial Abilities, Feats, Items, etc
Quote:
Originally Posted by Curmudgeon
While I'm in favor of narrowing down the entries to key elements, the lack of unarmed strike proficiency is just one of the problems with the way the Monk class is written.[list][*]Many Monk abilities (AC Bonus, Flurry of Blows, Fast Movement) only work if the Monk is unarmored. But Evasion works if the Monk is unarmored or wearing light armor. Huh?
That's just copypasta; Evasion was presumably written for the Rogue, which is a much broader class than the Monk and probably appeared in the draft far earlier, and then copied to the Monk when it was added. Since it's easy to stop paying attention to a standardized ability, it's not surprising this was never fixed.
Re: Top Ten Worst-Written Spells, Class Features, Racial Abilities, Feats, Items, etc
Quote:
Originally Posted by tuggyne
introduction of the absurd synchronicity
Finally got around to reading this, and I don't think it seems useless at all. Granted it's not very strong until you augment it, and I'm not sure it's worth the 3 power points this costs, but the ability to wait for the right moment to do whatever you want seems like it could be strong. Off the top of my head, you could wait to manifest an Energy Burst (or any other power which affects an area) whenever someone walks within range of you, or let your buddy disarm someone and then put an Energy Wall between them and the fallen weapon so they can't retrieve it. If it's somehow impossible to manifest a power with the gained action because you already manifested that round (I don't know if there's such a rule), you could use a dorje or powerstone. I'm sure there are other applications; it's basically just the ultimate "keep the freedom to react as you choose" power. Potentially annoying to a GM, but not useless.
I thought I remembered someone referring to Synchronicity as utterly broken in one of my threads; it was some power with a one-word name starting in S, and this seemed like a good candidate.
Re: Top Ten Worst-Written Spells, Class Features, Racial Abilities, Feats, Items, etc
Quote:
Originally Posted by willpell
Finally got around to reading this, and I don't think it seems useless at all.
That's the opposite of the problem. Look at the Quicken/Twin/Linked metapsionic feats, or the share powers psicrystal trait. The power is extra actions for 1 pp; it's a neat power when used unmodified, but with even an inkling of optimization, gameplay breaks down.
Re: Top Ten Worst-Written Spells, Class Features, Racial Abilities, Feats, Items, etc
Quote:
Originally Posted by eggs
That's the opposite of the problem. Look at the Quicken/Twin/Linked metapsionic feats, or the share powers psicrystal trait. The power is extra actions for 1 pp; it's a neat power when used unmodified, but with even an inkling of optimization, gameplay breaks down.
Quicken power costs +6 pp and your psionic focus; 7 pp and an earlier full-round action (move action with Psionic meditation) seems like a fair price for an extra standard action. Ditto for Twin, but I'm not sure Twin works at all; the twinned power takes effect twice simultaneously, which might mean that you twice simultaneously gain the ability to take a standard action later, but I could also see an argument that it means you take your standard action twice simultaneously, which is far less useful. Share Powers would let your psicrystal do stuff, which doesn't strike me as game-breaking. I can't find a Linked Power metapsi in the EPH or CPsi, though I've heard of it before.
Re: Top Ten Worst-Written Spells, Class Features, Racial Abilities, Feats, Items, etc
Quote:
Originally Posted by willpell
Quicken power costs +6 pp and your psionic focus; 7 pp and an earlier full-round action (move action with Psionic meditation) seems like a fair price for an extra standard action. Ditto for Twin, but I'm not sure Twin works at all; the twinned power takes effect twice simultaneously, which might mean that you twice simultaneously gain the ability to take a standard action later, but I could also see an argument that it means you take your standard action twice simultaneously, which is far less useful. Share Powers would let your psicrystal do stuff, which doesn't strike me as game-breaking. I can't find a Linked Power metapsi in the EPH or CPsi, though I've heard of it before.
Linked Power is Complete Psionic and it's the big one. On its own, it's ridiculous enough that almost every psion has it; it's also where the 1 PP comes from (or a Circlet of Rapid Casting). On Quicken not looking broken to you, Quickened Synchronicity is available at level 5 with a Torc of Power Preservation and Overchannel (both very common on psions) - 6 levels before Temporal Acceleration for a similar initial result. Extra actions for the psicrystal gets to be silly when you mix in Metmorphosis at high levels or Ectopic Ally at very low levels.
Re: Top Ten Worst-Written Spells, Class Features, Racial Abilities, Feats, Items, etc
Yeah okay, Linked Synchronicity is definite cheese. I think I'll just have to say that they don't work together without giving much of a reasoning why. Overchanneling the Quickened Version at 5 however is probably fair, at least unless you take Talented, and I probably won't allow that Torc in my games since it sounds like something that could break pretty easily. I dunno about Metamorphosis but the fact that Ectopic Ally is a DivineMind thing makes me think that nothing can possibly break it.
Re: Top Ten Worst-Written Spells, Class Features, Racial Abilities, Feats, Items, etc
After much procrastination, I've come back to update the votes here again. I've finally figured out a split for the Rules category, if anyone cares: Combat vs. (essentially) Misc (which is still called Rules).
Statistics:
Spoiler
Nearly half the suggestions (50) have only one vote. There are 14 negative votes so far; 31 voters have used all their votes, 22 have only used one, and 18 of the remaining 22 have used between 2 and 5 votes each.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kuulvheysoon
Dammit!
And here I was thinking that all the hubbub about DWK had been resolved...
Actually, on that note, a vote for Dragonwrought Kobolds?
Yeah, DWK is still rather ... tricksy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Draz74
1 vote for Monk. (I would be willing to shift this to a specific vote for Monk Proficiencies if a few other people do likewise, making it a significant entity on the list.)
I left your vote as Monk only until further notice; hope that's fine with you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lunar2
2. fast movement: a Druid's spellcasting is completely useless in relation to their wildshape as is.
I have to thoroughly disagree with this on two counts: first, Druids get a simple feat to remove any and all problems; second, even without the feat their spells are a far cry from being useless in wild shape (keep various buffs up in human form, then wild shape as needed, retaining all the buffs; start battle with SNA, then wild shape; etc).
With monks, the case is different. There is no strategy you can use that will reliably increase synergy using the unmodified Monk chassis, and the only ways to actually solve the problem involve multiclassing with various feats, custom magic items, or petitioning your friendly local spellcaster to make you effective.
Quote:
Originally Posted by willpell
Finally got around to reading this, and I don't think it seems useless at all. Granted it's not very strong until you augment it, and I'm not sure it's worth the 3 power points this costs, but the ability to wait for the right moment to do whatever you want seems like it could be strong. Off the top of my head, you could wait to manifest an Energy Burst (or any other power which affects an area) whenever someone walks within range of you, or let your buddy disarm someone and then put an Energy Wall between them and the fallen weapon so they can't retrieve it. If it's somehow impossible to manifest a power with the gained action because you already manifested that round (I don't know if there's such a rule), you could use a dorje or powerstone. I'm sure there are other applications; it's basically just the ultimate "keep the freedom to react as you choose" power. Potentially annoying to a GM, but not useless.
Unless I'm mistaken, synchronicity gives you a triggered standard action in return for a standard action and pp. However, readying an action gives you nearly the same result for no pp cost and no power known for any character at all.
So the naive usage of the power is almost unutterably lame. However, its usefulness in action-economy shenanananigans is probably unsurpassed: you can use it to get lots and lots of standard actions at the cost of pp. That is, the power can be used in one of two basic ways, near-useless or cheesily good. Neither of those is good game design, and therefore it is poorly written.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Psyren
The spell component pouch containing everything without a listed price, including Vecna's eyelashes, is a problem too.
Duly noted, and actually considering changing one of my votes to that... perhaps I will relinquish Chicken-Infested.
Finally, anyone in favor of dropping the lame-duck Wizard entry, currently holding steady at -1 votes?
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by Water_Bear
That's RAW for you; 100% Rules-Legal, 110% silly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hamishspence
"Common sense" and "RAW" are not exactly on speaking terms
Anyone knows blue is for sarcas'ing in · Use of gray may indicate nitpicking · Green is sincerity · "Take 10 SAN damage from Dark Orchid"
I often hop into threads for just one thing
Re: Top Ten Worst-Written Spells, Class Features, Racial Abilities, Feats, Items, etc
Quote:
Originally Posted by tuggyne
Unless I'm mistaken, synchronicity gives you a triggered standard action in return for a standard action and pp. However, readying an action gives you nearly the same result for no pp cost and no power known for any character at all.
You are mistaken. Ready allows you to pick a consequence and an action, such as "a nonhuman moves within X feet of me" and "I manifest Energy Burst". But with Synchronicity, you don't need to pick the consequence, just the action, and with the augment you don't need to pick that either; you just spend a standard action now, and then take a standard action at any point in the turn thereafter. Without the augment, you could take make the standard action "make a ranged attack", then wait to see who moves where and not automatically shoot the first person who comes within range, but rather pick the most relevant target after you've seen what shenanigans the opponent is up to. The augment gives even more flexibility; you can decide whether to make an attack, manifest a power, run away, or whatever, without being nailed to a single spot in the initiative order.
It might not be a strong option, but it's an option. The problem I see with it, aside from the potential shenanigans, is not that it "does nothing", but that it slows combat down by forcing the GM to keep checking whether you're using the "floating" action before everything he does. Still, it gives you the capacity to respond to what's happening around you with more flexibility than any other option I know of. In theory at least, that could be good. If you veto all the shenanigans, you're not left with a completely useless power, but rather with one more way that a psion can break all the rules and do his own thing (like Psteve). It's entirely possible that the author of CPsi, who I've heard was not a fan of psionics in the first place, wrote this power for them as a sarcastic comment on this very "I'm too special to follow the rules" attitude.
Re: Top Ten Worst-Written Spells, Class Features, Racial Abilities, Feats, Items, etc
Quote:
Originally Posted by willpell
Are you sure you want Vecna's eyelashes in your pouch? It seems like it might be hazardous.
I wouldn't worry about it: generally one would need to pluck out all of their own eye lashes first before they can use them. Not the kind of prep that you do on accident.
Re: Top Ten Worst-Written Spells, Class Features, Racial Abilities, Feats, Items, etc
Quote:
Originally Posted by tuggyne
Unless I'm mistaken, synchronicity gives you a triggered standard action in return for a standard action and pp. However, readying an action gives you nearly the same result for no pp cost and no power known for any character at all.
Readying an action normally puts a big hit on a character's initiative (resetting it to just before the trigger); Readying an action with Synchronicity doesn't affect the character's initiative. This doesn't matter much when it's "Party v. One Monster," but in "Party v. Multiple Monsters" it lets the Psion ready actions before one creature without essentially giving the other creatures extra actions in the mean time. It's essentially circumstantial extra actions for 1 PP - a pretty solid choice for characters wanting to screw with things outside the normal initiative sequence.
Re: Top Ten Worst-Written Spells, Class Features, Racial Abilities, Feats, Items, etc
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hecuba
I wouldn't worry about it: generally one would need to pluck out all of their own eye lashes first before they can use them. Not the kind of prep that you do on accident.
I just meant if you have a piece of Vecna on you, he could probably use his own former biomass as a sympathetic link to scry on you more easily.
Re: Top Ten Worst-Written Spells, Class Features, Racial Abilities, Feats, Items, etc
Quote:
Originally Posted by eggs
Readying an action normally puts a big hit on a character's initiative (resetting it to just before the trigger); Readying an action with Synchronicity doesn't affect the character's initiative. This doesn't matter much when it's "Party v. One Monster," but in "Party v. Multiple Monsters" it lets the Psion ready actions before one creature without essentially giving the other creatures extra actions in the mean time. It's essentially circumstantial extra actions for 1 PP - a pretty solid choice for characters wanting to screw with things outside the normal initiative sequence.
Well, fair enough, I can accept that synchronicity has a few legitimate uses after all. It still should have been written to avoid the abuses, of course.
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by Water_Bear
That's RAW for you; 100% Rules-Legal, 110% silly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hamishspence
"Common sense" and "RAW" are not exactly on speaking terms
Anyone knows blue is for sarcas'ing in · Use of gray may indicate nitpicking · Green is sincerity · "Take 10 SAN damage from Dark Orchid"
I often hop into threads for just one thing
Re: Top Ten Worst-Written Spells, Class Features, Racial Abilities, Feats, Items, etc
Quote:
Originally Posted by tuggyne
Well, fair enough, I can accept that synchronicity has a few legitimate uses after all. It still should have been written to avoid the abuses, of course.
But how would you do so? I can see defeating the psicrystal shenanigans and Quicken with a clause saying "This power fails if YOU did not spend a standard action to manifest this power", but Twin and Link would probably still work, and the arbitrariness of defeating Quicken but not Twin would be even more confusing.
Re: Top Ten Worst-Written Spells, Class Features, Racial Abilities, Feats, Items, etc
How about:
Quote:
Synchronicity
Manifesting Time: 1 standard actionSwift action
When you manifest this power, you can ready a standard action (without spending an action to do so) andIf you ready an action this round, you can use it whenever you choose before your next turn. Unlike the normal use of readied actions, you need not specify the condition under which you take your readied action. If you do not perform your readied action before your next turn, you lose that action.
Same function as presumably intended, minus the absurdity that brings it onto this list.
Re: Top Ten Worst-Written Spells, Class Features, Racial Abilities, Feats, Items, etc
Quote:
Originally Posted by eggs
How about:
Same function as presumably intended, minus the absurdity that brings it onto this list.
Yeah, that should work rather better; it also interferes with other swift-action action-economy improvers (like hustle), which is probably good. Not to mention it feeds into the existing ruleset more smoothly.
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by Water_Bear
That's RAW for you; 100% Rules-Legal, 110% silly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hamishspence
"Common sense" and "RAW" are not exactly on speaking terms
Anyone knows blue is for sarcas'ing in · Use of gray may indicate nitpicking · Green is sincerity · "Take 10 SAN damage from Dark Orchid"
I often hop into threads for just one thing
Re: Top Ten Worst-Written Spells, Class Features, Racial Abilities, Feats, Items, etc
Costing your swift action means it's far from the same functionality, especially if you're using Incarnum or something. But it's probably a good change even so, as Tuggyne points out. I'm leaning toward using this for my game; it seems like my Erudite Cerebremancer player might enjoy finding an item which offers numerous, but not limitless, uses of it (and which he can't address to learn the power, as he could with a powerstone, not that 1d6 uses of this power would be worth much).
Work on my homebrew system, CRE8, is still marching slowly onwards. I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel -- an Alpha release -- in the distance now. Read my Design Goals here.
Re: Top Ten Worst-Written Spells, Class Features, Racial Abilities, Feats, Items, etc
The bar for entry into the Top Ten is now 12 votes (!), which is pretty impressive. Not much has actually shifted around, but another vote in the right place can change any of the bottom five quite rapidly.
Statistics:
Spoiler
Nearly half the suggestions (51) have only one vote. There are 14 negative votes so far; 32 voters have used all their votes, 22 have only used one, and 19 of the remaining 23 have used between 2 and 5 votes each.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jade Dragon
One for Jump. The average commoner can jump anywhere between one foot and twenty feet, and has an equal chance for those and every foot between.
A fine choice. Also, I appear to have forgotten to put these in earlier.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vipren
Has anyone noted Weapon Specialization Net?
That's less a "poorly written feat" and more "unexpected corner case"; it is relevant, but I'm not aware of any place WS:Net would actually appear as such. (Also, it's such a minor flaw I'm not sure it belongs on the list of the top ten worst....)
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by Water_Bear
That's RAW for you; 100% Rules-Legal, 110% silly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hamishspence
"Common sense" and "RAW" are not exactly on speaking terms
Anyone knows blue is for sarcas'ing in · Use of gray may indicate nitpicking · Green is sincerity · "Take 10 SAN damage from Dark Orchid"
I often hop into threads for just one thing
Re: Top Ten Worst-Written Spells, Class Features, Racial Abilities, Feats, Items, etc
oh, i think I throw 3 towards the manyfang dagger. No matter how you look at it, it is stupidly overpowered. Knowledge devotion, craven, or (if you want to get creative) iaijutsu master are not even needed, a simple strength bonus is all it needs to break.
might I nominate the halberd of vaulting (arms and equipment 109, gives 30 to jump, removes max jump distance, deals double damage after a jumpcharge) ?
I'd like to give it one vote.
Another 3 I want to give to incorporality/ghosts and how they manifest. I wanted to throw a ghost which charges at my players and could not even with help of the forum figure out how that really works. It's main problem was to find out if ghost add strenght to their attacks. http://www.giantitp.com/forums/archi...?t-232034.html
-1 vote for factotum as a whole, it is a bit powerful but very fun to play.
1 for white raven tactics beeing usable on the user (which was ruled by the custserv, which makes it kinda offical. Or was that one culled, at last?)
1 for abrupt jaunt. That ability is an abomination AND poorly worded. And its seeing a lot of use.
Quote:
Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit.
where does that come from? sounds good.
edit: oops sorry. I didnt want to necro.
Last edited by Phaederkiel : 11-14-2012 at 11:04 AM.
Work on my homebrew system, CRE8, is still marching slowly onwards. I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel -- an Alpha release -- in the distance now. Read my Design Goals here.
RSS Feeds: 
Re: Top Ten Worst-Written Spells, Class Features, Racial Abilities, Feats, Items, etc
