BSF
Explorer
irdeggman said:
I almost ran it as a dump 4 in one stat, add 4 in another stat. I decided that was a little harsh.
See, Macbeth's character didn' try the Portal. He may not have known, and certainly did not mention all the specifics. But that's fine because it really isn;t the point of his thread.
The specifics: You had to swap 4 points from other stats, in multiples of 2, to bump one other stat up by 4, to your racial maximum.
Note a couple of conditions here.
- These aren't bonuses/penalties. You are changing stats.
- If you enter, you have to juggle your stats.
- Juggling your stats only allows you to increase a stat to 18 if you are human. Since most people already have better than a 14 in their prime stat, they had to scavenge two other stats to buff a secondary stat.
It was interesting watching many of the players figure out which of their average stats they were willing to drop to bump a secondary stat. Out of a party of 7 PCs, two of the PCs decided they didn't want to make those decisions. Out of the remaining 5, two of them had strong reasons to go through the change.
(Macbeth, skip the next couple of paragraphs if you aren't interested in the metagame reasons for the encounter.)
See, one of the players is new. She built her PC based on the advice of her brother and ended up with a somewhat stereotypical ranger build. She seems to be enjoying the game, but is looking for a little something different. She and I have been looking at a few different ideas and we are working her toward a PrC. Based on her brother's advice, she ended up with a near-dump stat. The PrC we are looking at would benefit with have a better than average score in that stat. I told her I would give her a way in the game to reallocate her stats to be more in-line with the PC she wants to play now that she understands the game a bit better. So, this encounter is specifically geared to allow her to swap 4 points from one stat to the other.
But if I am going to give the opportunity to one PC, I need to be fair and give it to all of them.
The second PC is a cleric. The player is OK at playing a cleric, but he tends to always choose a very sinmple, straightforward spell list because the spell choices are overwhelming.
Enter the Complete Divine with the Favored Soul class. The player and I have discussed converting his cleric to a Favored Soul. I think this would be a great thing for the player since he would end up with his spells known list and would not be crippled trying to figure out what the best spell to memorize on any given day would be. I think changing to Favored Soul will reduce his options, but make it easier for the player to focus on characterization and having fun. However, the player rightfully pointed out the disadvantage of the Favored Soul with Wis & Cha dependencies. Since he had built a cleric that doesn't turn, he had Cha set to 10.
Well, now he has a 14 and the next time the PC levels, we will swap out the Cleric for Favored Soul.
(Macbeth, done with the explanation.)
So, I don't see it as unbalancing. None of the PCs were able to increase a stat above 18. They juggled things around a little and might have optimized point buy to squeeze in an extra bonus, but really none of the players was thinking about that. They were trying to figure out what they could give up without losing too much.
Back to Macbeth's question. A serious drain in a stat will take out many character concepts. He has built a PC that has breadth of flexibility at the expense of depth of one single area of strength. In itself, this is a strength. Really, a drain in any single area doesn't terminate the PC's effectiveness. But, a minimal drain in any given area might close off the options that the PC is built around. Kill Cha and the intimidate and Kiai Smite aspects suffer. Kill Wis and hsi Psychic abilities suffer. Kill Int and he no longer has the skill points to keep dumping into the skills that let him use these abilities. Any stat drain will affect his PC somehow. Sure, it will with all PCs, but not all PCs are built around such a wide range of options.
Still, this is a strength as much as a weakness. A feeblemind won't take the PC completely out. Nor will a Ray of Enfeeblement.
My advice as a player? Deal with it. You built the PC around a multitude of options and any single attack type cannot shut the PC down. Treat that as the strength it is. Heck, even a multitude of weak buff items will be valuable to you, so keep looking out for the hand-me-downs and cast-offs from the other players. When people start ditching those +2 stat buff items, pick them up and make them useful.
My advice as Macbeth's DM? Heh. I recognize some of Li's weaknesses. Yes, I construct scenarios for the group, but I won't likely target Li specifically unless the NPCs have a reason to. Just watch out for the NPCs whose gimmick revolves around stat drain. Otherwise, trust that I will try to keep the game interesting and challenging and I will trust that you will creatively solve the challenges before you. I mean, you did fine in last night's game and Li was staked to the ground at one point.
