Complete Arcane - What's in it!!

[Nightchilde-2]

A 20th level barbarian with Power Attack and haste gets 5 attacks, each doing on the order of 40 points of damage.

A 20th level archer with Rapid Shot and haste gets 6 attacks, each doing on the order of 25 points of damage.

10d6 per round is peanuts....

Yeah, after reassessing my initial statement, I concur with these conclusions.

Part of the issue was that my brain decided to kick out the "a spell-like ability is a standard action" thing. I had an image of a warlock with 4 attacks dishing out 36d6 damage in a round...

 

[JoeGKushner]

Well, one of my friends picked up this puppy and boy is he happy with it. We've already started using some of the spells in the game and so far it's working out well.

 

[Li Shenron]

This feat from today's preview seems TOO GOOD imo...

Collegiate Wizard

You have undergone extensive training in a formal school for wizards.

Prerequisites: Int 13, wizard level 1

Benefit: You begin play with knowledge of six 1st-level spells, plus 1 per point of Intelligence bonus. Each time you gain a wizard level, you may add four spells to your spellbook. You gain a +2 bonus on all Knowledge (arcana) checks.

Normal: 1st-level wizards begin play with knowledge of three 1st-level spells, and add two spells per level to their spellbook.

Special: You can take this feat only as a 1st-level character.

 

[hong]

This feat from today's preview seems TOO GOOD imo...

It would depend on how easy the DM is in terms of allowing access to new spells. If the DM is a tightwad, then it's great. If you can be fairly confident of eventually getting all the spells you want, it's not so great.

Of course, one can always sidestep such considerations, by the simple act of banning wizards.

 

[Fingers Boggis]

This feat from today's preview seems TOO GOOD imo...

Id tend to agree, but how many wizard colleges do you have in your world? how many alumni can each of those colleges realistically have? Whilst I'll be allowing the feat factors such as these will reduce the number of players taking it in my campaign (the only wizards are those sanctioned by the government after a huge magical war, any unauthorised arcane casters are hunted down and killed)

Fingers

 

[Gez]

In the realms of color art, I still wouldn't miss Crabapple.

I miss his absence.

Also there are 5 energy types (force in theory not being an energy type, negative/positive could be tho) and 4 traditional elements, and there is no obvious association. I would myself prefer to see Air with Sonic, and perhaps Water with Acid (although I would even like better if Acid was not part of the game at all, it just strikes me at somewhat anacronistic!), but I can't figure out what Earth could be

Me, personally, I have simplified things a bit, element is a synonym of energy, and there are 13 energies.

• Air
• Cold
• Corrosion (often called Acid, but this is a misnomer, as bases are elements of corrosion too)
• Darkness
• Earth
• Electricity
• Entropy (Negative Energy)
• Fire
• Force
• Light
• Sound
• Vitality (positive energy)
• Water

It is theorized, by firm believed of the Rules of Fours, that there are three other energies, undiscovered to this day, because they are subtler, more ephemeral. Proposed energies include sentience (mental energy, the spiritual equivalent of positive energy, the energy manipulated by psionicists in their psychic magic), belief, emotions... Other claim the primordial alignments (order, chaos, balance) should be added. Still other claims that the elements of wood, flesh and void should be considered. And you have people thinking that the feminine and masculine principle deserve this honor. Bleak figures claim the three other elements are curse, disease, and poison. It's all very blurry past the thirteen acknowledged elements.

Anyway, to cut the IMC fluff stuff, I've found that considering energies and elements to be the same thing solves problem. Of course, you need to accept you're going to have "air damage" (caused by wind and pressure), water damage (pressure again), earth damage (crushing, pelting, etc.)...

For those who wonder what "light damage" could be, I refer you to the Lantern Archon's attack.
Light Ray (Ex): A lantern archon’s light rays have a range of 30 feet. This attack overcomes damage reduction of any type.
Of course it does, since it's an energy -- energy aren't affected by damage reduction.

 

[Li Shenron]

It would depend on how easy the DM is in terms of allowing access to new spells. If the DM is a tightwad, then it's great. If you can be fairly confident of eventually getting all the spells you want, it's not so great.

But the feat alone let you have basically double the normal amount of spells for free and as soon as you level up. Even if your DM lets you buy scrolls of any possible spell for copying, it still seems a very good advantage to me!

I know it's a completely unfair comparison, but in T&B a single extra spell known (and up to 1 level less than your highest) costed a feat. The feat was obviously intended for sorcerers and very little worth for a wizard, but now this is at the other extreme IMHO.

I may be wrong but to me it sounds like spontaneous casters keep getting more and more the shorter stick (see metamagic)... and it didn't seem to me that people thought wizards were worse than sorcerers, right? Or are the new sorcerer-only feats very good? What is there in Complete Arcane to help the Sorcerer get more known spells for instance?

 

[Vecna]

Id tend to agree, but how many wizard colleges do you have in your world? how many alumni can each of those colleges realistically have?

It's not a requirement to be a student of a college.
Just Int 13 and Wizard 1.

 

[Li Shenron]

Id tend to agree, but how many wizard colleges do you have in your world? how many alumni can each of those colleges realistically have? Whilst I'll be allowing the feat factors such as these will reduce the number of players taking it in my campaign (the only wizards are those sanctioned by the government after a huge magical war, any unauthorised arcane casters are hunted down and killed)

Yeah I know, DM can just not allow these feats... but it's like saying "we publish these stuff, if it's not good / too good, gaming groups can simply ignore it" or even "buy these basket of fruit, the rotten fruit have the special feature that you throw them away if you don't like them"

I don't in fact know what the rest of the chapter says, it looks like there could be a strong tie with the organization (sort of "prestige feats" idea, but no new mechanics). Putting aside the dangerous subject of balancing game features with roleplay requirements, this is a first-level-only feat; how can you tell a player that she can't take the feat just because she wants to have this character background? Isn't it actually very much fitting with the most common wizard archetype to have been trained at a school of magic?

 

[Taren Seeker]

Here's an odd bit: Split Ray is now +2 spell levels, but it no longer splits the damage dealt and you can focus both rays on one target.

Enervation as a 6th level spell that does 2d4 neg levels, or Scorching Ray as a 4th level spell that does 24d6 at 11th caster level. I haven't checked the new ray spells in CA yet.

Suddenly Split Ray is far superior to Empower for ray spells.

Anyways, I'm liking this book, almost as much as CW. The Seeker of Songs actually makes me want to play a Bard . It helps that the PrC reflects some changes I had been looking to make, namely making his songs more "magical" and dropping spellcasting. I am somewhat disappointed that so many spells are Wu Jen only though. (to answer another poster, Giant Size is Wu Jen only)

Edited to add how much I like some of the feats, like the new Mage Slayer line and the Cold/Neg energy one. Lord of Utter cold or something.