Wulf Ratbane
Adventurer
*cough* Trailblazer *cough*
-
NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
3.5e -- What REALLY needed fixing?
- Thread starter loseth
- Start date
*cough* Trailblazer *cough*
Wulf Ratbane
Adventurer
I agree that it's the province of pedants and obsessive-compulsives, but I think the argument uses Gate. (Which isn't, strictly speaking, a summons...)
Anyhow, I never had a problem with it either. Some folks are just fixated on closing loopholes that any half-decent DM would just close himself with a quick "
off." to his abusive players.
Mustrum_Ridcully
Legend
You know, I am seriously considering picking it up, but on the other hand, I really don't see me ever using it. I like a lot of your ideas, but I still don't have the feel they will "fix" the game for me. There are things you accept I just don't (like to-hit outpacing AC). Not all of them might need fixing in the playability or balance point of view, but they are just "aesthetically" displeasing to me.
Well, maybe I can still steal something from it, or it will be just a read for a train ride home...
Mercule
Adventurer
Gate? Seriously? Isn't that a 9th level spell? That's just shy of epic level and summoning a swarm of red dragons.
I think daisy-chaining balors at is pretty minor by 17th level, especially considering only the first one is under compulsion.
Actually, the ability to summon another balor is still a summoning effect, so there isn't a way to daisy-chain them. You'd need to gate in something that itself has gate.
I love a good academic abomination as much as the next guy, but I still don't see that this one was put together by someone who actually followed the rules.
Wulf Ratbane
Adventurer
What can I say? I don`t spend a lot of time working through these pointless exercises.
Maybe the trick is Wish related? You could find it on Paizo if you really wanted to. I remember reading it and being unimpressed.
It was the sort of thing that pretty much requires the DM to play along with a clear abuse of the rules. I mean, any game can be broken if the DM is working in concert with the players to do it.
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
Solar is the creature of choice for this.
Interesting to see it used in Sepulchrave II's story hour, where it was known as the "Solar Cascade" or something similar and it ended that battle pretty sharpish. To his credit Sepulchrave embraced it into the story (which was outsider heavy anyway) and campaign implications played out after that.
Cheers
Desdichado
Hero
Oh, and AC was problematic. Specifically that it doesn't come anywhere close to keeping up with BAB without tons of magic.
Granted; fixes have been in place as optional rules for a long time, but why that needed to be fixed (or why it wasn't at the 3.5 breakpoint) kinda mystifies me.
Granted; fixes have been in place as optional rules for a long time, but why that needed to be fixed (or why it wasn't at the 3.5 breakpoint) kinda mystifies me.
OneWinged4ngel
First Post
Pssh, I could give a hundred of these.
1) Uneven Progressions hinders customization, particularly multiclassing.
2) Most weapon styles suffer heavily from breaking points.
3) Armor is significantly unbalanced, to the point that there is always one "best" armor for any given class.
4) "Top down" combat flow, particularly with spellcasters. Blow your best and slug it out with whatever's left. In 3e, usually no one survives the nova, and in 4e, you're left with an extended at-will slugfest. Top down flow lends itself to falling action rather than rising action. Fixing this would actually also fix Save or Dies in the process; the problem with save or dies is their setup, not the fact that they cause death. For example, when was the last time someone complained about Coup De Grace?
5) Optional level-based skill bonuses are inherently divergent from the RNG.
6) No rules to facilitate chases.
7) Social interactions are broken, due to the inherently divergent skill system and a downright awful mechanic for Diplomacy.
8) Aerial combats cause headaches for all.
9) The economy is difficult to manage, WBL is not nearly as reliable a mechanic to manage the second scaling tier of power as the level system.
10) Items are severely unbalanced, to the point that 90% of them are never, ever used, quite simply because they're priced too high for their benefit and everyone would rather have one of the Big Six.
11) Little love is given to the extraordinary mundane, to the point that extraordinary mundane items tend to arbitrarily become "magical." The greatest smith of legend produces a "masterwork" sword, and it's the sole domain of a level 2 character. This bias applies to a lesser extent in the class system.
12) HP and healing is flavorfully inconsistent at best. For example, it's an abstraction that doesn't necessarily represent real damage, but then you need bigger and bigger spells to heal the same wounds.
13) Barbie Dress Up itemization. The problems with this are myriad.
14) Skills are inherently unbalanced, and some simply are too high "cost" to ever take with the very limited amount of skill points you have. Use Rope cannot compare in any way to UMD, and playing a knowledgeable scholar comes at the cost of most other practical skills.
15) Skill points tend to be too limited in comparison to the scope of skill selection choices.
16) Cross class skill restrictions.
17) Little room for interesting flaws. The existing flaws system is deeply, well, flawed. The ones available don't really affect your character, but merely an optimization tool. "I have slightly less Dex, but... not really. Can I have another feat?"
18) Non-caster/ToB classes have far too little abilities, and tend to grow boring and repetitive. They tend to stay much the same over the level progression, and tend to scale linearly, while classes with the levelled (1-9) ability selections wholly renew their playstyle every 2 levels and tend to scale geometrically.
19) Current spell preparation system requires far more preparation time as you increase in levels, to the point where you have some 50 minor spells of little consequence to prepare.
20) Many systems need to be unified. There is no particularly good reason why, say, saves should be a wholly different mechanic than AC. And there is simply no defending things like Turn Undead.
21) Item damage is a headache at best, right up to needing to guess out thickness. Object hps and such need to be more easily referenced.
22) Combat tends to be too immobile for the types you'd expect to be most mobile (the guys running around with swords, not the ones pulling spell components out of their pants).
23) Crazy bonus stacking. Problems are obvious.
24) RNG divergence or making the RNG obsolete. Problems are obvious, and the main reason why higher levels break and no one likes them.
25) Irregular and erratic and overly varied scaling models for various systems (skills, BAB, AC, saves, etc etc).
26) LA does not even remotely come close to working at all.
27) Racial penalties in practice only serve to shoehorn, rather than make someone more of an adherent of that race. In fact, they can even make them LESS so. For example, you have a Human wizard (going for grapplemancer, so he wants strength too) and a half-orc wizard (going for grapplemancer, so he wants strength too), both building with point buy. They both take 16 Int. The half-orc pays 6 points more for his 16 int, but he gets +2 strength and has 10. But the Human uses his extra 6 points to get 14 strength. The human and orc have spent the same number of skill points. The human has 16 int and 14 strength, and the half-orc has 16 int and 10 strength. Tell me, who came out being more "orcish" in this equation?
Can go on...
1) Uneven Progressions hinders customization, particularly multiclassing.
2) Most weapon styles suffer heavily from breaking points.
3) Armor is significantly unbalanced, to the point that there is always one "best" armor for any given class.
4) "Top down" combat flow, particularly with spellcasters. Blow your best and slug it out with whatever's left. In 3e, usually no one survives the nova, and in 4e, you're left with an extended at-will slugfest. Top down flow lends itself to falling action rather than rising action. Fixing this would actually also fix Save or Dies in the process; the problem with save or dies is their setup, not the fact that they cause death. For example, when was the last time someone complained about Coup De Grace?
5) Optional level-based skill bonuses are inherently divergent from the RNG.
6) No rules to facilitate chases.
7) Social interactions are broken, due to the inherently divergent skill system and a downright awful mechanic for Diplomacy.
8) Aerial combats cause headaches for all.
9) The economy is difficult to manage, WBL is not nearly as reliable a mechanic to manage the second scaling tier of power as the level system.
10) Items are severely unbalanced, to the point that 90% of them are never, ever used, quite simply because they're priced too high for their benefit and everyone would rather have one of the Big Six.
11) Little love is given to the extraordinary mundane, to the point that extraordinary mundane items tend to arbitrarily become "magical." The greatest smith of legend produces a "masterwork" sword, and it's the sole domain of a level 2 character. This bias applies to a lesser extent in the class system.
12) HP and healing is flavorfully inconsistent at best. For example, it's an abstraction that doesn't necessarily represent real damage, but then you need bigger and bigger spells to heal the same wounds.
13) Barbie Dress Up itemization. The problems with this are myriad.
14) Skills are inherently unbalanced, and some simply are too high "cost" to ever take with the very limited amount of skill points you have. Use Rope cannot compare in any way to UMD, and playing a knowledgeable scholar comes at the cost of most other practical skills.
15) Skill points tend to be too limited in comparison to the scope of skill selection choices.
16) Cross class skill restrictions.
17) Little room for interesting flaws. The existing flaws system is deeply, well, flawed. The ones available don't really affect your character, but merely an optimization tool. "I have slightly less Dex, but... not really. Can I have another feat?"
18) Non-caster/ToB classes have far too little abilities, and tend to grow boring and repetitive. They tend to stay much the same over the level progression, and tend to scale linearly, while classes with the levelled (1-9) ability selections wholly renew their playstyle every 2 levels and tend to scale geometrically.
19) Current spell preparation system requires far more preparation time as you increase in levels, to the point where you have some 50 minor spells of little consequence to prepare.
20) Many systems need to be unified. There is no particularly good reason why, say, saves should be a wholly different mechanic than AC. And there is simply no defending things like Turn Undead.
21) Item damage is a headache at best, right up to needing to guess out thickness. Object hps and such need to be more easily referenced.
22) Combat tends to be too immobile for the types you'd expect to be most mobile (the guys running around with swords, not the ones pulling spell components out of their pants).
23) Crazy bonus stacking. Problems are obvious.
24) RNG divergence or making the RNG obsolete. Problems are obvious, and the main reason why higher levels break and no one likes them.
25) Irregular and erratic and overly varied scaling models for various systems (skills, BAB, AC, saves, etc etc).
26) LA does not even remotely come close to working at all.
27) Racial penalties in practice only serve to shoehorn, rather than make someone more of an adherent of that race. In fact, they can even make them LESS so. For example, you have a Human wizard (going for grapplemancer, so he wants strength too) and a half-orc wizard (going for grapplemancer, so he wants strength too), both building with point buy. They both take 16 Int. The half-orc pays 6 points more for his 16 int, but he gets +2 strength and has 10. But the Human uses his extra 6 points to get 14 strength. The human and orc have spent the same number of skill points. The human has 16 int and 14 strength, and the half-orc has 16 int and 10 strength. Tell me, who came out being more "orcish" in this equation?
Can go on...
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Vague Jayhawk
First Post
Some of the posts in this thread make me want to remind people that there are games other than D&D out there.
3.5 was a mostly solid system. I have some mild preferences, but there was little of the core that was actually "broken".
Stat bonuses, buffs, penalties, and losing levels would grind the game to a halt.
It became very hard to balance hundreds of prestige classes.
DM prep time was retarded long. Leading to burn out.
3.5 was a mostly solid system. I have some mild preferences, but there was little of the core that was actually "broken".
Stat bonuses, buffs, penalties, and losing levels would grind the game to a halt.
It became very hard to balance hundreds of prestige classes.
DM prep time was retarded long. Leading to burn out.
The summoning problem is the result of
1) Using Called creatures that can summon. they aren't under summoning restrictions. Planar Binding and Planar Ally, as well as Gate, fall under this category.
2) Summoning creatures with caster levels. They can still use their cast spells to summon other monsters.
The Celestial Cascade was the result of gating in a Solar who summoned a Planetar and gated in another solar, and then the Planetar would use its cleric levels to bring in a Deva, and the new Solar would summon another Planetar, and the first solar would cast Planar Ally or something, ad infinitum.
====
CODzilla draws its strength from using multiple buffs. Its typically using Wildshape to assume forms that mean the Druid doesn't need to have good physical stats of their own, which enhances their spellcasting ability, and for the Cleric using Divine Favor, Divine Power, and righteous Might to emulate a Fighter while still retaining full spellcasting power. Add in some other powerful buffs and a cleric could easily fill a melee tank role and still change his spells around the next day to be a nuker, skill monkey, healbot, or summoning/controller.
I mean, truly, how does a melee compare with Bite of the werebear, giving +16 Str, +8 Con, +2 Dex, a nat AC bonus, etc? There's so many stacking buffs, it's just nuts.
=============
There's a poster that said Persistent Spell was broken, not DMM. that's not true. DMM allows a cleric to break the metacap on casting spells over their knee. Persistent spell is a +6 LA. Divine Favor all day as a 7th level spell isn't that bad. Nor, really, is Divine Power as a 10th level spell (epic). When you can cast it at level 7? yeah, that's broken. Likewise, take out Persistent and they just use Quicken to buff instafast before a fight. You can get a lot of turn attempts very easily to power this stuff.
Although I strongly advocate that Persistent Spell should be in a class like Permanency, and only spells specifically listed as working with it do so. Others, well, too bad. Actually, you could almost restrict it to the Permanency list, and it'd be pretty balanced. heh!
===================
There's a couple more issues I haven't really seen.
The importance of Reach. This is so critical in melee builds you either are told to walk around permanently enlarged or to use a spiked chain (or a polearm with Short Haft). Reach should be made much less powerful.
The power of Touch Attacks to ignore AC. 4E gets around this by forcing a target on reflex saves and so forth, but when you have things like brilliant and wraithstrike ignoring all armor and shields, well, why wear them?
The easy access and dominating power of size and size bonuses to Str, Dmg and reach. There are almost no negatives to speak of for just plain being BIG.
Severely broken spell combos and rules, and just plain stupid magic items. We all know these from the optimizer boards...they should just be struck from the game.
Unlimited spell lists. Clerics and Druids have access to ALL cleric and druid spells that come out! Notice that many of the more recent classes have VERY tight spell lists, but can cast anything on it. CoD should have the same, with the main expansion being their domains. new spells should all fall under the aegis of being accessible to characters with X domain. Another option is restricting spells by level according to stat, as 1E did...you had to pick and choose what spells you might EVER want to cast, meaning each divine caster has a custom and much smaller spell list.
Spells that replace the roles of other classes. Uber buffage spells that give physical stats higher then a melee can match (or magic items provide). Spells that give huge skill bonuses so you don't need a skill monkey...or just render a skill useless (like knock).
The thinking that because I can do this all day, I'm balanced with a caster that can do it a couple times a day so much better then me. newsflash, when the caster is out of spells, your day stops, too, unless the DM is feeling particularly mean. This is why the warlock, with his huge potential/day for dmg, and the melees, are overwhelmed by casters with fewer but stronger attacks.
One hit anything attacks. That goes for uber charging for melees to save or suck/dies for spellcasters.
Horrible language. I'm in a debate on the WotC site over the language of Animate Dead. By the language it uses, 'the eye or mouth socket of the corpse', it is effectively assuming every corpse is a cyclops! If a corpse has multiple sockets, it's basically saying the spell doesn't work (too many sockets) or you have to fill them all! And we all know examples of equally oblivious language.
Overhauling the skill system. restrict what can be done by skill ranks instead of DC's. Bonuses only help you do something faster, or reduce penalties. You can't create super skill effects with high bonuses without high ranks (and levels) coming first. So, no +20 UMD rings letting everyone in the party use the Wand with Persistent Divine Favor on it.
Fixing weapon dmg via style. The advantage of THW, especially reach weapons, over TWF and Sword and Board, is just plain dumb. 4E did this by getting rid of the str bonus and folding it into the weapon itself, and making shields actually important.
Different bonuses should either not stack or cancel each other out. For instance, Sacred and Profane bonuses should cancel. Insight (taking advantage of coming opportunities) and Luck (coming opportunities naturally benefit you) should not stack. One just sees them coming, the other does not. COmpetence and Morale bonuses shouldn't stack...one is emulating the fact you are good with a skill, the other makes you think are better at something then you are.
Feats should be condensed and scale, being worthwhile at low as well as high level.
PrC's should NEVER grant better benefits then a core class...only different ones. If you have a different concept to try out for a melee, make a feat tree for it. 4E is adhering VERY strictly to this.
Multiclassing useful without being predominant as it was in 1E. I use a variant where you get sort of a gestalt class, but your level is limited to your main class/2 levels, +1, and your benefits are very core-restricted (Int bonus for skills only in main class, for instance...skill points for multiclassing cannot be spent cross class, etc.). Thus, if you are a f/10 and want to learn divine magic the best you can be is a cleric/6...which makes clerical magic a useful supplement, but your main class is still your focus.
'taking advantage' of paying xp for stuff to be lower level and earn more xp from encounters. Ugh.
==Aelryinth
1) Using Called creatures that can summon. they aren't under summoning restrictions. Planar Binding and Planar Ally, as well as Gate, fall under this category.
2) Summoning creatures with caster levels. They can still use their cast spells to summon other monsters.
The Celestial Cascade was the result of gating in a Solar who summoned a Planetar and gated in another solar, and then the Planetar would use its cleric levels to bring in a Deva, and the new Solar would summon another Planetar, and the first solar would cast Planar Ally or something, ad infinitum.
====
CODzilla draws its strength from using multiple buffs. Its typically using Wildshape to assume forms that mean the Druid doesn't need to have good physical stats of their own, which enhances their spellcasting ability, and for the Cleric using Divine Favor, Divine Power, and righteous Might to emulate a Fighter while still retaining full spellcasting power. Add in some other powerful buffs and a cleric could easily fill a melee tank role and still change his spells around the next day to be a nuker, skill monkey, healbot, or summoning/controller.
I mean, truly, how does a melee compare with Bite of the werebear, giving +16 Str, +8 Con, +2 Dex, a nat AC bonus, etc? There's so many stacking buffs, it's just nuts.
=============
There's a poster that said Persistent Spell was broken, not DMM. that's not true. DMM allows a cleric to break the metacap on casting spells over their knee. Persistent spell is a +6 LA. Divine Favor all day as a 7th level spell isn't that bad. Nor, really, is Divine Power as a 10th level spell (epic). When you can cast it at level 7? yeah, that's broken. Likewise, take out Persistent and they just use Quicken to buff instafast before a fight. You can get a lot of turn attempts very easily to power this stuff.
Although I strongly advocate that Persistent Spell should be in a class like Permanency, and only spells specifically listed as working with it do so. Others, well, too bad. Actually, you could almost restrict it to the Permanency list, and it'd be pretty balanced. heh!
===================
There's a couple more issues I haven't really seen.
The importance of Reach. This is so critical in melee builds you either are told to walk around permanently enlarged or to use a spiked chain (or a polearm with Short Haft). Reach should be made much less powerful.
The power of Touch Attacks to ignore AC. 4E gets around this by forcing a target on reflex saves and so forth, but when you have things like brilliant and wraithstrike ignoring all armor and shields, well, why wear them?
The easy access and dominating power of size and size bonuses to Str, Dmg and reach. There are almost no negatives to speak of for just plain being BIG.
Severely broken spell combos and rules, and just plain stupid magic items. We all know these from the optimizer boards...they should just be struck from the game.
Unlimited spell lists. Clerics and Druids have access to ALL cleric and druid spells that come out! Notice that many of the more recent classes have VERY tight spell lists, but can cast anything on it. CoD should have the same, with the main expansion being their domains. new spells should all fall under the aegis of being accessible to characters with X domain. Another option is restricting spells by level according to stat, as 1E did...you had to pick and choose what spells you might EVER want to cast, meaning each divine caster has a custom and much smaller spell list.
Spells that replace the roles of other classes. Uber buffage spells that give physical stats higher then a melee can match (or magic items provide). Spells that give huge skill bonuses so you don't need a skill monkey...or just render a skill useless (like knock).
The thinking that because I can do this all day, I'm balanced with a caster that can do it a couple times a day so much better then me. newsflash, when the caster is out of spells, your day stops, too, unless the DM is feeling particularly mean. This is why the warlock, with his huge potential/day for dmg, and the melees, are overwhelmed by casters with fewer but stronger attacks.
One hit anything attacks. That goes for uber charging for melees to save or suck/dies for spellcasters.
Horrible language. I'm in a debate on the WotC site over the language of Animate Dead. By the language it uses, 'the eye or mouth socket of the corpse', it is effectively assuming every corpse is a cyclops! If a corpse has multiple sockets, it's basically saying the spell doesn't work (too many sockets) or you have to fill them all! And we all know examples of equally oblivious language.
Overhauling the skill system. restrict what can be done by skill ranks instead of DC's. Bonuses only help you do something faster, or reduce penalties. You can't create super skill effects with high bonuses without high ranks (and levels) coming first. So, no +20 UMD rings letting everyone in the party use the Wand with Persistent Divine Favor on it.
Fixing weapon dmg via style. The advantage of THW, especially reach weapons, over TWF and Sword and Board, is just plain dumb. 4E did this by getting rid of the str bonus and folding it into the weapon itself, and making shields actually important.
Different bonuses should either not stack or cancel each other out. For instance, Sacred and Profane bonuses should cancel. Insight (taking advantage of coming opportunities) and Luck (coming opportunities naturally benefit you) should not stack. One just sees them coming, the other does not. COmpetence and Morale bonuses shouldn't stack...one is emulating the fact you are good with a skill, the other makes you think are better at something then you are.
Feats should be condensed and scale, being worthwhile at low as well as high level.
PrC's should NEVER grant better benefits then a core class...only different ones. If you have a different concept to try out for a melee, make a feat tree for it. 4E is adhering VERY strictly to this.
Multiclassing useful without being predominant as it was in 1E. I use a variant where you get sort of a gestalt class, but your level is limited to your main class/2 levels, +1, and your benefits are very core-restricted (Int bonus for skills only in main class, for instance...skill points for multiclassing cannot be spent cross class, etc.). Thus, if you are a f/10 and want to learn divine magic the best you can be is a cleric/6...which makes clerical magic a useful supplement, but your main class is still your focus.
'taking advantage' of paying xp for stuff to be lower level and earn more xp from encounters. Ugh.
==Aelryinth
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