let me tell you about my character...I do it. Other people do it. We pretend to be posting about something else but we really just want to talk about our characters.
At least this way you have some warning, right?
When a character class, or a specific build, needs to have high stats in several attributes before they become as viable as a character in other classes.
This term first cropped up around the 3.0 psionic system. Each of the six psionic disciplines was linked to a different attribute.
Imagine a situation where a wizard uses all their attributes as their "primary casting attribute" based upon the sort of power it is.
So "movement powers" (teleportation) were based on dexterity, "creative powers" (summoning astral constructs) were based in intelligence, "sensing powers" on wisdom.
It was an innovative idea that really just didn't work in practice.
Most psions were pretty sucky. Specialization in one attribute generally didn't work. Except for a handful of builds which were so awesometacular that it boardered upon mindboggling.
The Psionic Insect Ogre
I knew someone who built, and played, in a real game, an insectoid half-ogre psion armed with a reach weapon.
They were large. Their strength stat was ~24. They manifested their strength based powers like a 24th level.
Oh, the character was bat- insane. The last game of the campaign they wiped out the entire party in solo combat.
I missed it, which I kinda regret in hindsight.
I only kind of regret it because I don't think I would have behaved particulalrly well if I'd had to actually sit there and get taken apart by that thing.
I was playing an elvin psionicist. Even with a 20ish dexterity I was so weak the DM made up special powers to the character would be useful.
I still sucked.
An example that's probably more understandable to the average gamer would be the 3.x monk.
You'd need strength the help with your sub-par damage.
You'd need dex to help with your sub-par AC.
You'd need con to help with your sub-par hit points.
You don't really need Int.
You need Wis to help with your sub-par AC (monk class feature).
You don't need Cha.
The key point is "sub-par". The monk naturally does less damage, hits less often, has lower hitpoints and worse armor than basically any other melee class.
You -do- get a bunch of interesting powers, like movement, some resistances, and so forth. But those powers are tricky to leverage to cover up your deficiencies.
Movement for example
In order for movement to actually act as defense you need to be able to attack and run away.
That means spring attack.
A monk needs to be
devoted exclusively to getting spring attack and in their mid-levels; OR
or fairly high level and willing to make only one attack a round
Not a build most people want to play...
So a monk is generally sub-par in every area, and it takes a significant character built up (or extra attribute points) to get yourself into the same league even as a rogue (not really a combat standout).
Exceptions of course exist...
Githzerzai + weapon finesse being the most popular choice.
With their +6 to dex and +2 wisdom bonus you get 4 free points of AC and a nice boost to hide and move silently.
But a class ought to be viable without that sort of thing.
The opposite of a character class with MAD would be the 3.x wizard.
You need Int.
That's it.
Other attributes are nice, but you can play a viable wizard with nothing else.
And, since all you need to buy is an 18 Int to rock sox you have another 16 points (in a 32 point game).
Plenty of space to plump up your defenses.
The artificer had some unique traits mostly because it was constructed to connect to a lot of existing systems in 3.5, specifically the crafting system (including both magic items and all the feats you needed to build them) and the Use Magic Device system, which allowed characters to use magic items they weren't technically supposed to be able to use. Originally the UMD system was really just for rogues but later a whole range of classes from Warlocks to Artificers would wind up tapping into it.
Connections to those two systems, which dated back to the original 3.0 core and had been added to in dozens of books since then, gave the class a lot of depth.
And they also offered something sorta new: infusions, which were a effectively spells with a longer casting time (sort of like pre-fight only buffs) -- except the artificer could spend an action point, another thing that Eberron introduced*, to cast them like normal spells (i.e. as a normal action).
*
OK. Action points aren't new, and they'd showed up other places before Eberron. But Eberron was the first WotC product where they were assumed to be an integral part of the world, and some classes, like the artificer, didn't work -- or were significantly less effective in play -- without them.
They were a sub-system that came with the artificer is basically what I'm saying.
All these systems made for a complex class; it was the first time I had to use a spreadsheet for my character. You couldn't deal with the class, especially with the crafting reserve, without some serious note taking.
Some specific little subroutines
The magic item creation system included feats; which the artificer got for free and which did extra things (gave them a bonus to Use Magic Device checks) when the artificer got them.
The magic item creation system is powered by XP and gold*. The artificer got a bunch of "fake" XP (their craft reserve) which had a restriction on it to make sure it didn't get out of hand.
Tthey often made skill rolls (Use Magic Device) to determine how awesome they were in any given round.
With their infusions they could create temporary magical weapons (and also to "spoof" spells).
*
I think Jonathan Tweet's talked a bit about why they did that, and, didn't have a hugely positive amount to say about the system.
IIRC they needed to "charge" for magic items, and it needed to be something that people wouldn't want to give up so they settled on XP + gold. But there wasn't really any beleif that it was a great system/encouraged good roleplaying/etc, they just wanted to have some sort of crafting system and couldn't think of a better way to "charge".
Anybody else seen the post, or am I just insane?
The last two bullet points are where balance goes to all to heck.
Skill checks correlating to power level creates a lot of problems for D20. Between races (granting direct and indirect bonuses -- think the githzerai +6 to dex), feats, class features and magical items (again both direct and indirect) the bonus to your roll varies to an extreme degree.
And that means you can't balance it. If a 'normal' character can make the checks an optimized character will nail them and leave balance in the dust; but if you balance toward the optimized character? The normal player loses out.
Magic items->There are a lot of magical items in DnD. And balance in 3.5 was fairly loose. Certain spells (true strike) were originally conceived as only being available to a specific class; certain item properties (bane) were "balanced" by the fact that they didn't come up often.
A simple example: Bane
Bane's a good example. It's only good against a specific, limited type of creature. Say: Dragons, or goblins, or aberrations. There were lots of creature types in DnD and, provided you weren't in a themed game, they weren't to powerful.
But what if you could have a bane weapon for every fight? What if you could make 50 bane arrows and bolts, and equip a bunch of ranged attackers for the cost of, effectively, one spell?
Well.. bane gives you +2 to hit and +2d6 to damage -> averages out to +2/+7. And you can stick that on another magic weapon.
So if your power attacking barbarian gets bane on his weapon it's a little bit like getting a +8 to strength (+4/+4) and then dumping most of the to hit bonus into damage (+2/+7 is pretty close to +2/+8).
Except it wasn't part of power attack so it stacked with his power attack bonus.
And it worked with his existing magic weapon properties.
Yeah, it was pretty sweet for a 3rd level infusion.
(I could talk about spell spoofing being unbalanced but I think I'll stop here. Mostly we used it to cover for powers that we need for plot reasons (change self to get into a noble's ball or what have you. I'm not so sure all artificer players were so restrained but I lack direct evidence.)
There was also a weapon property, which I'm having difficulty digging up online, that let you summon fire elementals once a day. Probably not too unbalancing if that's your permanent weapon bonus.
But when you could drop a 3rd level infusion a few times a day an gussy up a large fire elemental (or two mediums?).
Lets just say that we romped through Age of Worms.
I played an artificer* through the first two/thirds of the Eberron adventure path and I was a player in another game (the Age of Worms adventure path) with another artificer character. So I've seen it in action.
* Target, the little warforged who could
If it's in a spoiler block it doesn't count as telling you about my character, does it?
He was one of the original adamantine plated warforged models. Before they'd perfected the process..., when they opened the creation forge they realized he was a bit short... halfling short. (I used the warforged scout for stats)
Cannith used him for target practice (literally) for a while. They'd have their archers practice shooting at him, and when he got hit enough and went down, they'd repair light wounds him back up and send him out again.
Then one day -- probably realizing that it was a bit tacky to be shooting at something that could talk -- the shooting range staff didn't cast repair light wounds. They just stuck their little moving target into a crate and forgot about him.
Thirty years later the crate was accidentally delivered to a kindly old artificer who ran the Office of Unusual Objects (a store house for all the stuff that Cannith had picked up from excavations and other acquisitions activities (=tombraiding, etc) around the world but couldn't find a use for.)
His ghulra (the mark on his forehead) was three concentric circles; like a bullseye. And his name was Target.
(He was a preeeetty bitter little warforged.)
And having seen it in action I can say with reasonable confidence that you it was the only class where you could "pick your power level".
Did you want to be nice to your DM?
You stick a flaming or frost your crossbow and play skill monkey/support.
If you wanted to whip out the hurt?
Bane weaponry, and large fire elementals were the order of the day for our group, though I'm sure there were other combinations.
As an aside I should say that the artificer was, even without all the spell and magic item spoofing, a very versatile class.
They could find and disarm traps almost as well as a thief (a skill that was almost a requirement in 3.x).
If you had a melee-oriented warforged -- fairly common in eberron games -- they could heal as well as a cleric.
Sometimes they could even act as "face". (You needed a high charisma for Use Magic Device)
Decent hit points and could wear good armor, and infusions didn't trigger AoOs; you weren't leaping into combat by any stretch, but they didn't requiring the kind of careful tending that a traditional arcanist would.
So even if you weren't whipping out the most powerful (some might say abusive) item enhancements you were still usually a contributor.
Given the existing 3.5 framework the Artificer was a solid class; flexible and fun to play provided you could tolerate the bookkeeping (!!) and had a good understanding with the DM about how powerful you were supposed to be.
Posted 2nd July 2008 at 09:06 AM byGraf Updated 3rd July 2008 at 08:46 AM byGraf
Last in a four part series about skills in 3.x and 4e.
I'll talk about three 3.x characters I've made in the last year and compare them with my 4e experiences.
So I've talked a bit about a few different characters I've built and played in Play by Post 3.x games, and my irritations with how the concepts meshed (or didn't mesh at all with) the 3.x skill system.
Hudder -- A solid fighting character, I used magic items and ability score choices to keep up his fighting ability; despite 6 levels (out of 8) in diplomatic/skill classes the online version has a diplomacy skill of +5 and a knowledge nobility of +3; he has one stand out skill in search (+14) buttressed by a feat and a magic item.
Brodi was really a nightmare; a concept that is purely buy the book in story terms (a halfling who rides a dinosaur) that took 4 feats, 4/10ths of my skill ranks ~20% of my gp budget (~55% if you count the collar of healing) and still has a 15% of failing to get his dinosaur to "come". I should probably reiterate here that Brodi's fantastically indulgent; the DM was extraordinarily lenient in allowing me to pursue my dino-riding dream, which removed most of the pressure.
Kason/Kilx a changeling (straight!) rogue with a spectacularly set of thief checks (+8 for spot/listen|+10 for Hide/MS/Search) who couldn't afford to buy disguise.
And each one took hours to put together (and I mean hours just picking their skills -- the hours I spend writing backstories are my own problem ).
I'm in a couple fourth edition games.
And I'm pretty thrilled with how its shaking out. I am not getting all the skills I want of course, but I'm not having the same problems (or similarly significant problems).
For instance: Mirna, the tomboy wizard, doesn't have bluff, which is downright weird given that she spends most of her time lying to people.
She also doesn't have athletics
Which I'd originally wanted part of the "tomboy" aspect. But that was easy enough to push further into her past with the "she's been studying obsessively for the past few years" backstory.
Buying it later can easily reflect her hardening up after months or years on the road as an adventurer.
But being a wizard lets her have Nature (so she can hang out in the woods without starving) and being being human let her pick up another wizard skill (diplomacy - which is close to being bluff) and her two feats let her train Stealth and Perception.
In 3.x?
To get Stealth she'd need Hide and Move Silently. To have a decent stealth skill she'd need to spend two feats to make them class and then put 4 skill points in. With her low dex she'd be worse than the thief/monk/ranger of course but still decent.
Perception is even worse. She'd need Spot, Listen and Search again all out of class. And she'd need skill points for everything too.
Nature is also, as I mentioned above, nice to have. Most of the lower level monsters have a natural keyword, so she can act like the bratty little-know-it-all I imagine her being.
Diplomacy is also out of class in 3.x. While I wasn't dying to have it in the build it's proven very useful, especially since she doesn't have bluff, but is always getting herself into trouble. With a charisma of 10 she's not a replacement for the party face, but with a few decent rolls she made a contribution to the last skill challenge.
In retrospect I probably should have trained bluff and left perception for later levels. But I like noticing things and I'll be able to train bluff at 2nd level when I get another feat (and with retraining in 4e it's not like I'll be stuck with my feat choices even if I decide to switch later).
And the best part is, to my mind anyway, I haven't given up much to get this degree of proficiency.
The comparision with Brodi (another caster who I wanted to differentiate through his skills) is pretty striking: Brodi's Handle Animal Check for his mount, after 4 feats = +11 VS. Mirna's Nature check after 0 feats = +9.
Especially since Brodi is 6th level.
Alternative is difficult to compare to Kason. They're different kinds of rogues.
Kason is probably a more typically well-rounded rogue. He can steal. He can spy. If he has to he can kill. He's higher level (5th), in a more detailed world and has a much deeper back story.
Alternative (warforged rogue 1) is a rogue security officer from a city governed by repressive warforged. He stopped crime and repressed dissent.
Even so, certain things are instructive. Namely their skill ranks:
Leaving aside magic items the 5th level Kason has between +8 and +10 in thief skills (spot/listen/move silently/hide in shadows/search/tumble).
Alternative?
Stealth +9, Acrobatics +9, Thievery +9, Perception +7
Every skill is within one point of Kason's comparable skills.
Now 4e characters advance more slowly... so Alternative at 5th level is only going to have +11 ~ +9. But making Alternative also wasn't painful hours long grind.
The first level 4e rogue is good at things like climbing (I'd imagined Kason having done some "second story" work at some point, but a climb skill of +2 suggests otherwise) and sleight of hand (I imagined Kason passing an employer a document at a crowded watering hole in Thronehold - and spent a good 10 minutes staring at the numbers to get him that +2).
(Spending a feat to give him Insight, reflecting the hundred odd years he's spent spying on the lower cast humans that he oversaw in the construct-dominated city he served?
That's gravy. )
Someone could argue, I suppose, that wanting Kason to be "good at everything" is a sign of weak storytelling (the classic player who wants his alter-ego to be perfect to shore up their own psychological short-comings).
I politely disagree. I want him to be competent at the sorts of things that a thief/spy would be competent at.
If Kason is decent at climbing the DM can put a wall in a game knowing that he'll be able to get over it.
If he can palm things and pick pockets then the DM can write adventures that take advantage of that.
The 4e characters don't have every skill in the book, or even every skill I'd want them to have -- I'd like Alternative to have Endurance and Mirna to have Athletics and Bluff -- but I was able to spend a feat or two and get them the "extra competencies" that I felt supported their concepts.
And I'm happy that the 4e system lets me do that with a minimum of fuss and without dinging me too much in terms of combat ability (because, when push comes to shove, DnD involves lots of fighting).
It's not harmful to the story to have a character who can open up new venues of adventure.
I'd gotten into a few great PbP 3.x games and made characters and I was done (PbP games progressing at the, slow, rate that they do I'll probably have a second child before I have to level them again)
But there was one adventure I really really wanted to play for 3.5. Eyes of the Lich Queen. The initial line of Eberron adventures was.... lets no say weak.... lets say... they underperformed my expectations.
They were railroady (especially the second one); we gave up mid-way through the third.
EotLQ was supposedly different.
And a weird stroke of luck saw me pathetically lurking on an EotLQ OOC thread (imagine me face pressed up against the glass staring at a toy marked ALREADY SOLD) precisely when they were looking for a player.
A player I happened to know was probably gone (I was STing him in my vampire game).
One enthusiastic post to the DM (who was actually a player in a game I was running, or trying to run anyway) offering to fill the skill monkey role they were missing and I was in.
Continuing my trend of recycling old ideas (i'd wanted to play a changeling for a while; and play around with national identities in Eberron) he was going to be a Cyrian (what's more nationalistic than a nation that has an identity but no physical existence). He needed a military history, I love involving the Last War in character's backstories and he got one (that had been my only regret with Hudder).
But, for the first time I had external expectations
The rogue in an adventuring party needs to be "trap guy" and "scout" (that's six skills).
And 3.x adventure design presumes you're "on the curve" (at or near the max for your level.
So we're talking search/disable device/spot/listen/hide/move silently all as high as possible.
If possible I wanted to have a quirky magic weapon -- I knew the DM liked Weapons of Legacy and I loved the idea of being able to RP a magic item instead of it just being a bunch of +s.
I'd come into it open eyed. I knew what the system limits would be and I was determined to get a good character out (and fast, since the group was waiting on me).
One problem is that changelings suck at everything. Change Self is a fantastic power.... if you're playing a spy. But for virtually every adventure it's of little to no utility.
It certainly doesn't help with getting up the "seven key skills" or with my damage output.
Key Skills
Trap Guy -- Search & Disable Device
Scout -- Spot, Listen, Hide, Move Silently
"flanking + sneak attack" -- tumble
Not that I regretted the choice at all. As an RP choice it was just fantastic.
I love my backstory
I'm biased, but I think it's just a fun background.
Born to evil cultists, saved by crusading monks, joins the military under a false identity and experiences soaring success and crushing failure, disillusionment leads him to Thronehold (Eberron's Casablanca) where in he rediscovers his sense of patrotism just before his country is obliterated.
I even mixed in a daring pseud-robin hood type crime wave, romance, and got to touch on issues of charity and identity.
But the mechanics were giving me a headache.
I tried every combination of fighting, mobility and skill monkey I could, monk/rogue, swashbuckler/rogue, ranger/rogue, fighter/rogue.
But, with a spread of good ability scores -- I just couldn't see him blowing everything on one stat... and the fighting+trap guy+scout requirement discouraged it -- any divergence from rogue left him too far off "the curve".
So, to my own amazement, I went straight rogue and dumped everything I could (charisma + wisdom) to get Int up to the point where I could get some skill ranks.
I hit the curve where I needed to, but just barely and at the expense of some serious fighting weakness (32 hit points and an AC of 16?).
And I'm a changeling with no disguise, and a bluff check of +4!
Sneak Attack, of course,
I love Kil'x (that's Kason's real name). Objectively speaking he's probably the "best" DnD character I've ever made. A changeling who doesn't know any other changelings. A staunch Cyrian who pretends to be Brelish (and takes every opportunity to embody their worst stereotypes). A man who tried to trick a woman into loving him, failed, and when she seemed to be attracted to another persona of his ran off into the jungle rather than deal with the situation.
And, again, the concept doesn't require that he be awesome in a fight. So, in that sense the character (and the 3.x skill system) is a success.
But a changeling rogue 6 who bluffs like a 1st level character? With no disguise? It's a bit sad.
And if he gets killed in the first fight he gets into...?
I'm gonna
Next I'll talk a bit about my 4e experience so far.
Posted 2nd July 2008 at 05:23 AM byGraf Updated 3rd July 2008 at 08:47 AM byGraf
Second of a four part series on skills in 3.x and 4e.
I'll talk about three 3.x characters I've made in the last year and compare them with my 4e experiences.
So Hudder was a bit annoying, but it was more of a "meta" concern. (How often do you really roll Knowledge nobility or Diplomacy anyway?)
Arguably...
People should roll more, and 4e is trying to force that.
But, if you're a DM, and nobody in the party has diplomacy you wind up not forcing the issue. Either you write plots where it doesn't come up, or you give them powerful advocates, or you set the plot up so that "diplomatic failure" is the normal state of affairs.
The second character, Brodi, was a hair pulling experience.
4e was on the horizon and he was going to be my last 3.5 character and I wanted to fulfill a dream. A dino-riding halfing (go on, laugh, I loved the whole Talanta Plains shtick, with the masks and the riding around).
I'd wanted to play one since forever, and built a bunch of sample characters but always wound up being frustrated. Were you supposed to buy a mount? It didn't seem like there would be much of a connection really (and they'd probably drop like flies in a fight).
Halfling+Druid=dinorider is popular, but it seemed like cheating. Halflings on the Talenta Plains all ride dinosaurs.
I wanted to play a "regular class" and ride a dinosaur.
I'd also -- ever since reading Wulf's original Story Hour -- liked the idea of halfling arcanists. It seemed like it was a more interesting character than "I'm the halfling thief" (basically a less annoying kender) or the Bilbo/Frodo model.
So I figured Halfing-dinoriding sorcerer.
The DM was supportive (indulgent even).
The rules? Significantly less accommodating.
Ultimately I was satisfied with the character but it took
articles from dragon
articles from the web
two(!) flaws
a magic item I -probably- wouldn't allow if I was the DM
Of course, I got a pretty tough mount for my troubles (which allows me to move 50) and also managed a reserve feat + a maximum charisma in a full caster build (which is enough to redeem all the feats wasted buying Skill Knowledge (Handle Animal) and Skill Knowledge (Ride)).
But that worked with two "free" feats from the flaws. A less generous DM and I would have had to choose between being at all competent at riding my dinosaur and being a pretty weak mage with no chance of moving into a PrC.
And I there is still a 15% (3/20) chance that my soul-bound-mount, into whom I have dumped three ****ing feats* and 8 skill ranks, will not come when I call him.
[Handle Animal: Come Trick (DC 15)
My check bonus?
+11 ]
*
Four (!)feats if you count the free +2/+2 feat the DM gave us.
Still the character has been a lot of fun to play, so I'm not regretting any choices.
But I shouldn't have to spend hours cranking the system to get a pretty pedestrian concept off the ground.
Needless to say, I was pretty excited about 4e's simplified skill system. But I would wind up making one more character in 3.x.
Posted 2nd July 2008 at 04:46 AM byGraf Updated 3rd July 2008 at 08:47 AM byGraf
First of a four part series on skills in 3.x and 4e.
I'll talk about three 3.x characters I've made in the last year and compare them with my 4e experiences.
I made three 3.x characters in the last few months. In each case I found myself, to varying degrees, frustrated by the skill system.
None of the characters were supposed to be "optimized" for combat. I just wanted the game reality to match the story I had in my mind. And the story wasn't one of "supreme awesomeness in all areas".
It was usually competence in a reasonably small area.
Hudder d'Kundarakwas the second iteration of a character I'd originally played offline; originally he'd been a reaction to playing in a group where (one player in particular) was ladling on 1-level dips and PrCs to create obscenely powerful (an un-roleplay-able in my mind) concoctions.
The best example
Fighter 2/Barbarian 1/ Cleric 1/ some cleric PrC that gives bonus to will saves 1/Frenzied Berserker.
Half orc I think. The fact that the cleric PrC was of a god that didn't exist in the game world we played in (Eberron) was never addressed.
How this profoundly unspiritual combat machine ever got the PrC? Also not addressed.
But who cares what you're personality is like when you have a strength of 30 when you're raging~!
So I played a dwarven fighter. Of course I also loved the dragonmarked houses so I wound up making him a Dragonmarked Heir, which necessitated a two level dip into rogue to get the skills.
It was a tight fit, but it worked.
Annoyances popped up during the skills section. 7 levels of skill oriented classes (out of 9) and his diplomacy check was +6... Knowledge (nobility)? +4.
He was outshined by the combat monster, but wasn't really adding much in the skills department.
The rebuilt Hudder (a level lower) shows the same flaws (of course knowledge nobility and diplomacy both dropped a point to +3/+5).
If you're a noble scion shouldn't you know a bit about nobility? If you're in a class with a diplomatic function you'd like to see a check of higher than +5 at 8th level.
At least I would.
Of course, with some decent feats from the Dragonmarked book, Hudder stands up reasonably well in combat terms to Lo-Kag the Goliath (from the same game).
Hudder's probably weaker but with DR 5 and two more points of AC you can -sort- of see him as being comparable to the Goliath despite being 3 points behind in to-hit-bonus, lower damage and not having reach.
So maybe I should just have dropped a level of fighter and taken expert. Then people would truly fear my skills.
(Oh wait... multiclassing xp penality...)
Still. It was just an annoyance. Unlike the next character.
set of thief checks (+8 for spot/listen|+10 for Hide/MS/Search) who couldn't afford to buy disguise.
).
)
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