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Story Hour
Piratecat's storyhour reborn! (updated July 4, 2006)
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<blockquote data-quote="Piratecat" data-source="post: 2845735" data-attributes="member: 2"><p>Actually, this is worth talking about for a sec. Not the favoritism part -- frankly, I'm probably stricter with KidCthulhu's characters than with other peoples', although I strive for being even-handed because this is a hot topic with me. Let's talk for a minute about the relative balance of prestige classes.</p><p></p><p>I don't think I'd use Rider of the Flame as is for a new or low-level character. Nevertheless, in the same way that not all feats are equal in power, not all prestige classes need to be as long as they're pegged to the relative power level of your game.</p><p></p><p>In this case Nolin was converted from the 2e bard, and KidCthulhu is a woman who dearly loves flinging around massive damage. The 3e bard had what one might politely call a paucity of Boom! spells. What to do? In this case, it made a lot of sense to codify and formalize a lot of the special powers that Nolin's phoenix heritage had been giving him in 2e. I chose to do so by adding fire-related spells to the spell list, along with a handful of other phoenix-related abilities. A lot of the special abilities were designed to occur only rarely or be nothing more than special effects, making the class (appropriately for Nolin) be more about show and less about effect.</p><p></p><p>Really, though, this class was designed to keep Nolin on an even keel with the other members of the Defenders power-wise. It was added to Nolin at about character level 15, and we back-filled to let KidCthulhu swap out several bard levels for RotF levels. We then eliminated all of Nolin's non-prestige-class related phoenix abilities. I seem to remember the switch going smoothly.</p><p></p><p>This is one reason that selling a pdf of the game's crunch is a very iffy proposition. I'm not designing for everyone out there, I'm designing to fit my own game and what will be most fun for my own players. I'm really pleased when other folks find this interesting or useful, but that's almost incidental. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite8" alt=":D" title="Big grin :D" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":D" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Piratecat, post: 2845735, member: 2"] Actually, this is worth talking about for a sec. Not the favoritism part -- frankly, I'm probably stricter with KidCthulhu's characters than with other peoples', although I strive for being even-handed because this is a hot topic with me. Let's talk for a minute about the relative balance of prestige classes. I don't think I'd use Rider of the Flame as is for a new or low-level character. Nevertheless, in the same way that not all feats are equal in power, not all prestige classes need to be as long as they're pegged to the relative power level of your game. In this case Nolin was converted from the 2e bard, and KidCthulhu is a woman who dearly loves flinging around massive damage. The 3e bard had what one might politely call a paucity of Boom! spells. What to do? In this case, it made a lot of sense to codify and formalize a lot of the special powers that Nolin's phoenix heritage had been giving him in 2e. I chose to do so by adding fire-related spells to the spell list, along with a handful of other phoenix-related abilities. A lot of the special abilities were designed to occur only rarely or be nothing more than special effects, making the class (appropriately for Nolin) be more about show and less about effect. Really, though, this class was designed to keep Nolin on an even keel with the other members of the Defenders power-wise. It was added to Nolin at about character level 15, and we back-filled to let KidCthulhu swap out several bard levels for RotF levels. We then eliminated all of Nolin's non-prestige-class related phoenix abilities. I seem to remember the switch going smoothly. This is one reason that selling a pdf of the game's crunch is a very iffy proposition. I'm not designing for everyone out there, I'm designing to fit my own game and what will be most fun for my own players. I'm really pleased when other folks find this interesting or useful, but that's almost incidental. :D [/QUOTE]
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