Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5474557" data-attributes="member: 4937">akbearfoot: I'm not going to disagree with you about what happens when you play RAW according to the most obvious path.  I've already on this thread argued much the same thing as you.   And yes, as I said, under RAW you absolutely have to have the absolute immunities at high level.I will simply say that I've looked at the whole of the problem.  I'm not arguing for 'nerfing' mind blank as you put it in isolation.  If that was the only change I was making, then sure you end up where you say.  But, my point is that when you play by RAW you end up in something of a bad place IMO even if you don't add changes.  Fighters shouldn't have to depend on a stack of 5-6 buffs simply to represent a moderate threat to an equal level caster.  The game shouldn't be so binary as 'if I don't have mind blank, I can't make my save, but if I do have mind blank I can't fail my save'.  So I made a lot of changes, some of which I've talked about.  For example:"All the save DCs are high 20s-mid 30s."I've talked about that earlier when I said that because the DC of saving vs. an attack goes up by 1 per 2HD, saving vs. a monsters abilities becomes increasingly problimatic.  Guess what?  In my game saves don't go up by 1 per 2HD.  Those 40HD monsters?  The saves versus their attacks would drop by as much 20 DC points in my game.  DC's above 20 are fairly rare in my game.  Granted, with low magic, non-fungible items, and no magic supermart (all near necessities I admit in the standard game to ensure you can face opponents of the standard DC), your best saves might not be quite as good but you certainly won't ever find yourself in the situation of having a high level character that can only pass a save by rolling a 20 - something not unthinkable under the RAW.In my game, that's a walk over (even if we don't assume, as I would, that saving vs. one provides protection from all for 24 hours).  Not only does the default Will save DC drop from 14 to 12, but all fear effects are translated into Fear Checks (similar to Ravenloft) so even if a 1 was thrown there is a good chance that no effect would be indicated on a 15th level character and only rarely would a 15th level character be as much as shaken.  Not only that, but if it was really a critical situation, someone would spend a destiny point to reroll a failed save.  Characters - regardless of class - are assumed to inherently have significant resources and not be utterly dependent on a particular buff being available. See, I see that as a problem that is significant enough that simply saying something like, "Well, then they should have Mind Blank up.", isn't sufficient to patch the problem.  A more extensive reworking is a necessary to fix that basic problem, and once you have that reworking then one of the minor upshots of that is that you don't need absolute immunities.  I started out as among one of my many goals removing that need for absolute immunities, then, when I'd worked out how to do it, I removed them.  I'm not just doing this at random with no thought put into it.Right.  Which is why the '15 minute adventure day' concievably exists anyway.  But, what if you aren't 100% dependent on going nova with a bunch of spells and having a huge stack of buffs?  What if you simply deescelated the power creep?  What if you backed down from the fight between the irresitable force and the immovable object?  You end up with a full adventuring day that doesn't depend on super powered buffs.  It's nice to have them, but if they aren't there for some reason (dispel magic, party composition, etc.) you aren't 100% screwed.I have no problem with the durations.  I have a problem with the fact that the spell prevents you from being scared by the God of Fear unless you state 'This attack can penetrate even a mindblank'.  I have a problem with the fact that this sort of thing makes non-casters utterly dependent on casters.  I have a problem in that it utterly restricts party composition.No.  Defense always has to be more accessible than offense or it isn't worth taking.  That's because defense is passive.  The counter to something always has to be more accessible and more powerful than the thing it counters or its not very good defense.  If you don't encounter one of those abilities being used against you, your faerie fire is useless.  And since you can't know what particular threats you will face, if counters cost more than the thing that they counter then it's usually better to simply not try to defend.  Weak, situational counters will be overpowered by cheaper and more effective threats.  And not only that, counters aren't a path to victory.  So even when you do pull off a counter successfully, you still have to win the fight.  They aren't win buttons the way a threat presented with no counter is.  One of the big problems with D&D magic in general and the 3e implementation in particular is that typically the counter to some thing is less accessible than the thing it counters.  The counter should be able to nullify something stronger than itself, or it really won't get used.And it really isn't used very much anyway, suggesting that it is not in fact overpowered.</blockquote>

Verification