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<blockquote data-quote="Sylrae" data-source="post: 5268144" data-attributes="member: 48520"><p>Some of these are great. I'll touch on the specifics of what I think below.</p><p></p><p>I'm not sure I agree that only class balance for encounters matters, but I definitely think it's the biggest piece of the puzzle. I think number of class skills and ranks are important as well, and utility abilities that can be used quickly (particularly to avoid an encounter), such as hold portal, arcane lock, and featherfall. They're nothing to scoff at when they can mean the difference between dying and not dying. I don't think a purely skill based or purely social character is viable, but I think that someone who excels in the areas outside combat should take a hit in combat for it, otherwise balance both separately (and balance what people can do IN combat, then balance what they can do out of combat completely ignoring their combat abilities).</p><p>I guess what I'm saying is, I like that TB balances their classes based on encounters, but I don't think they should be *ONLY* balanced for in combat. I believe out of combat should be balanced as well, though I don't think it should be a matter of in-combat vs. out of combat, I think it should be combat balance, and out of combat balance as separate entities (AFAIK nobody has done that).</p><p></p><p>Personally I don't really like the new rest mechanic. I like the old one. I don't give back all the hit points after 1 day, and I don't let them refresh all their abilities that often. I approach it from the standpoint that players should endure 4-5 encounters with the abilities they have. If they do the '10 minute adventuring day' they either lose their chance to deal with the enemy (who gets away), or the enemy gets reinforcements, and then the fight is a hell of alot harder when the PCs come back. Instead of say 2 CR 4 fights they might get one CR 9 or 10. Reinforcements are a substantial increase in troops. The players would have to have something pretty clever up their sleeves to take them on, or now need to change their strategy to one of stealth.</p><p>This is probably aided by the fact that I don't like dungeon crawls, and tend to run wilderness/city campaigns with the occasional 1-2 session delve thrown in. I also make use of alot of NPCs.</p><p></p><p>I personally like action points. Problem is, my players hate them. I tried to use the mechanic, and the players constantly forgot they had them, or what they could do with them, no matter how many times I explained it. after the campaign finished I opted not to use them again.</p><p></p><p>This is a pretty neat mechanic, though it's alot of bookkeeping.</p><p></p><p>Yeah, pretty much. There are some pretty broken spells. Mostly I see them as something that needs to be dealt with on a case by case basis, cause there are so many of them. Some are problematic, some aren't. I think many of the 3.5 revisions floating around have a handful of fixes that are really good. I don't think any of them handled everything the way I would like to see it handled. That's why my games thend to be monstrous chimeras of rules from different d20 games and house rules carved up to fit together.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Sylrae, post: 5268144, member: 48520"] Some of these are great. I'll touch on the specifics of what I think below. I'm not sure I agree that only class balance for encounters matters, but I definitely think it's the biggest piece of the puzzle. I think number of class skills and ranks are important as well, and utility abilities that can be used quickly (particularly to avoid an encounter), such as hold portal, arcane lock, and featherfall. They're nothing to scoff at when they can mean the difference between dying and not dying. I don't think a purely skill based or purely social character is viable, but I think that someone who excels in the areas outside combat should take a hit in combat for it, otherwise balance both separately (and balance what people can do IN combat, then balance what they can do out of combat completely ignoring their combat abilities). I guess what I'm saying is, I like that TB balances their classes based on encounters, but I don't think they should be *ONLY* balanced for in combat. I believe out of combat should be balanced as well, though I don't think it should be a matter of in-combat vs. out of combat, I think it should be combat balance, and out of combat balance as separate entities (AFAIK nobody has done that). Personally I don't really like the new rest mechanic. I like the old one. I don't give back all the hit points after 1 day, and I don't let them refresh all their abilities that often. I approach it from the standpoint that players should endure 4-5 encounters with the abilities they have. If they do the '10 minute adventuring day' they either lose their chance to deal with the enemy (who gets away), or the enemy gets reinforcements, and then the fight is a hell of alot harder when the PCs come back. Instead of say 2 CR 4 fights they might get one CR 9 or 10. Reinforcements are a substantial increase in troops. The players would have to have something pretty clever up their sleeves to take them on, or now need to change their strategy to one of stealth. This is probably aided by the fact that I don't like dungeon crawls, and tend to run wilderness/city campaigns with the occasional 1-2 session delve thrown in. I also make use of alot of NPCs. I personally like action points. Problem is, my players hate them. I tried to use the mechanic, and the players constantly forgot they had them, or what they could do with them, no matter how many times I explained it. after the campaign finished I opted not to use them again. This is a pretty neat mechanic, though it's alot of bookkeeping. Yeah, pretty much. There are some pretty broken spells. Mostly I see them as something that needs to be dealt with on a case by case basis, cause there are so many of them. Some are problematic, some aren't. I think many of the 3.5 revisions floating around have a handful of fixes that are really good. I don't think any of them handled everything the way I would like to see it handled. That's why my games thend to be monstrous chimeras of rules from different d20 games and house rules carved up to fit together. [/QUOTE]
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