3.5 Scoops Discussion

[Psion]

I do hope Star was wrong about specialization. Sure a +2 to spellcraft checks is fine. but the fact you have to pick TWO schools AND it can't be divination?! What the heck?!

Yeah, not to fond of that change.

The metered thing was more confusing, and it toom me a while to get used to it, but it worked. I think this stands to make most wizards a lot more cookie cutter. I see few wizards skipping evocation, transmutation, or conjuration anymore.

Write this down as "one I won't be using."

 

[Psion]

For balance. Any munchkin worth his cheetohs would take Divination as an opposed school. You can't blast anything with Divination!

I have this image in my head of an aghast munchkin player gawking with cheetos falling out of his mouth because his PC lacked see invisibility and his character got backstabbed by an invisible assassin.

Divination - the school of choice for players with rat bastard DMs.

 

[Psion]

I was hoping for a move more like the mechanics in HOHF:Elves, which assigned a point value to each school -- by specializing, you had to prohibit an equal point value of schools, but you could restrict any of them.

This is the sort of thing I worried about when I started hearing the magnitude of some of the changes in 3.5. Invalidating good material by undermining the premise.

Has anyone ever heard much in the way of vocal complaints about the way specialization was done (other than the "spell slot" issue?) To me it seems as if many of these changes were "personal peeves of the R&D team."

The changes aren't bad, mind you. If I had a fresh game and no supplements, it would not have been a problem at all and it is bona fide a better game. But I REALLY think that they should have made backwards compatability a higher prioirity and think this is an example of too much change over too small an issue.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I was hoping for a move more like the mechanics in HOHF:Elves, which assigned a point value to each school -- by specializing, you had to prohibit an equal point value of schools, but you could restrict any of them.

Easily my favorite part of the whole Elves book. Thanks for noticing it!

There has been enough interest in this recently that I will post a free preview PDF of this entire section to the website in the next couple of days.

I make no guarantees that this section will be otherwise fully 3.5 compatible (though it should be...) I haven't even started thinking about revisions to prior Heroes of High Favor books considering the curve ball it threw into my current release plans.


Wulf

 

[Psion]

LOL, true, no powergamer should be without Horrid Wilting (or anyone else, for that matter ...).

Personally, I think invisibility is a little more pressing of a spell.

But perhaps that's from a "DM with players that kill any opponent that moves" perspective.

 

[Storm Raven]

What about trying specialist wizards in this manner?

1) By choosing to specialize in one school all spells of that school are cast at +2 DC. All other spells have a -1 DC penalty (-2 on 7 schools is a bit much);

or

2) Specialize with one school (as above) but instead of having *forbidden schools* as proposed such spells are cast with a -2 DC penalty. That would create a -2 net loss so one could also chip in 'Arcane defense' relating to the specialty. The end result would encourage wizards to specialize without losing access to any given school but still inhibit them in some manner.

By the way, I tend to have diviners in my campaign.

The only problem with this is that it has little effect on schools with few spells that have save DCs. For example, this change would be of almost no benefit to Abjurers or Diviners, while being of tremendous benefit to Evokers or Enchanters.

Perhaps a better options would be: by choosing to specialize in a school, all spells of that school are cast at +1 caster level, and all spells of other schools are cast at -1 caster level (yes, this severely limits your options at 1st level, specializing should have a price).

 

[Psion]

Sorcerer spell swaps: guess it's only one spell at each level. That's a nice feature, and balances nicely (though not as flavorful as thematic spell chains, but that would require reworking the whole mechanics).

I thought so too.

This is not a compatability problem for me at all, as I have been using a rule very much like this one already. Except I merely phrased mine "whenever the spellcaster/psionicist gains a new level of spells" (which I think more adroitly handles the issue of classes with slower spell advancement.)

 

[Lord Rasputin]

Well, now I'm wondering which school my necromancer gives up, and what the GM will give me in return. I'm hoping for a pair of extra spells when I reach 9th level (one adventure away, maybe two). If I drop abjuration, I lose dispel magic; if I drop conjuration, I lose mage armor; if I drop evocation, I lose lightning bolt; and if I drop illusion, I lose invisibility. If WotC moved mage armor to abjuration where it belongs IMNSHO, that makes the choice easy, otherwise, it's evocation, I think, but lightning bolt is my main non-necromancy offensive spell.

 

[The Blue Elf]

Re: Re: 3.5 Scoops Discussion

I just hope the sources of supplements they have won't be so screwed over, because Wizard of the Coast seem to not know Greyhawk world as well as they thought when I did read the sources they had from the old 1st and 2nd edition moduals they had I found out they change a lot of stuff. They had some industry veterans, but it seems they didn't know Greyhawk that well like the commented that that "game is very old so we can't remember it", well of course it is its a fun world to play.

They need to research on which works and what doesn't work to see if there system of gaming can be fun for everyone to buy.I understand wizard of the coast has there plains on making Magic the Gathering roleplaying game which I don't think they would have done in a million years.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

I don't like the sorcerer getting bluff.

Not that I don't think they need chr based skills, but that this isn't a real change. This feels much more like they heard the complaints, and said fine here's bluff now shut up already, sorcerors aren't a class we want to waste are precious time on.

Wow bluff and spell swapping. They must have speant a whole 3 minutes looking at the sorcerer.

Oh I forgot they didn't have time to playtest metamagic feats.