Complete Champion excerpts

[Felon]

The primary resource is the action. Deciding what to do with that resource is a form of resource management. 3rd ed has done a good job of making combat interesting for non-casters, I'd like to see them go even further down that road.

Correction: The primary resource is the action in combat.

Abilities with unlimited uses lend themselves quite handily to abuse outside of the initiative chart, where actions are a greatly devalued commodity. This is the very reason why a character with 100+ HP can be brought back to full with a crappy little CLW wand after all.

 

[Remathilis]

1/2 hp eh?

Not bad. Better than nothing. I'd still use it.

 

[Sejs]

Wouldn't the use of such a spell break a Paladin's code of conduct? (truth over falsehood, and all that)? I see no problem with a Bard having use of it, of course, or even a non-lawful cleric, actually, but a Paladin? That just seems odd . . .

*shrug* Even core paladins have Undetectable Alignment on their spell list.

I think the way to look at it is that for a paladin, sometimes chaotic means to a good end is justifiable. After all, they don't lose their status if they willingly commit a chaotic act - just if they do it so frequently they stop being lawful good.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Correction: The primary resource is the action in combat.

That's true. Outside combat, money is the most important resource.

 

[Felon]

Wouldn't the use of such a spell break a Paladin's code of conduct? (truth over falsehood, and all that)? I see no problem with a Bard having use of it, of course, or even a non-lawful cleric, actually, but a Paladin? That just seems odd . . . .[/edit]

There's something impractical about prescribing paladins as unwaveringly obtuse.

It's certainly possible for paladins to abuse such a spell, and thus violate the code, but their are times when not concealing your alignment is like not avoiding a trap. Just as one could call the act of concealing one's alignment "lying", one could decide that sidestepping that big boulder rolling down the corridor is "cowardice".

 

[Kunimatyu]

Wow! If I were playing a Bard, Cleric, or Druid, I'd LEAP at that version of the feat. The entire party would be healed from any hit point injury at zero cost inside of 5 minutes, assuming the caster reserved his highest level curing spell.

Yep! And you'd burn a feat for this ability, when a few wands of lesser vigor(cost split between party members, of course) would see you through most of the campaign. And it would keep you away from nasty things like the Turning feats, things that can really break a divine magic user.

It''d be very helpful in those long dungeon crawls, of course, but since my games tend to involve big cinematic fights, often with little to no time in between, it really wouldn't alter play in any negative way. Given that I'm a RBDM, I'd make you think very carefully about burning those powerful healing spells, perhaps even getting you to spend multiple valuable spell slots on redundant cures to make sure you keep the feat's benefit.

Sounds good to me!

 

[Felon]

From an outside perspective....it's an overreaction.

In fact, the fact that the reserve feat only fills HP up to half makes it pretty crappy compared to wands of lesser vigor or even wands of CLWs.

I think I'm going to alter this one for my Savage Tide game to work past half HP, just to tempt the cleric into wasting a feat.

Heck, don't even bother with the feat. Just automatically let everyone go back to full hit points one minute after the fight's over.

Or go one better still and just make characters invulnerable. They never lose HP to begin with. With god mode activated, there'll be no risk of downtime at all. What's the downside? Most encounters aren't desinged to be genuinely deadly, they're just designed to wear characters down and kill time until the climactic battle, and it's already decided that wearing characters down is a bad, boring thing. Even if they're invulnerable, they still have to polish off the opposition, so the "killing time" requisite is fulfilled.

 

[Felon]

Given that I'm a RBDM, I'd make you think very carefully about burning those powerful healing spells, perhaps even getting you to spend multiple valuable spell slots on redundant cures to make sure you keep the feat's benefit.

Well, the bards and the positive-aligned clerics need not spend a slot on multiple cures, since they can spontaneously cast them as long as they have a slot open. Thus, it really just boils down to reserving one spell.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

*shrug* Even core paladins have Undetectable Alignment on their spell list.

I think the way to look at it is that for a paladin, sometimes chaotic means to a good end is justifiable. After all, they don't lose their status if they willingly commit a chaotic act - just if they do it so frequently they stop being lawful good.

I'm not sure a disguise (spell or mundane) really counts as chaotic. Choosing to not disguise oneself when sneaking into, say, some city full of enemies (including hiding or altering their aura) isn't Lawful Good, it's Lawful Stupid.

 

[Henry]

Yep! And you'd burn a feat for this ability, when a few wands of lesser vigor(cost split between party members, of course) would see you through most of the campaign. And it would keep you away from nasty things like the Turning feats, things that can really break a divine magic user.

Why would it keep you away from other feats? It's one feat out of the 7 or 8 a character gets over the career; to me, the only really valuable turning feats are the spontaneous domain, and the divine spell power feats. Divine Metamagic, maybe, but that one is too costly to be that good. However, I wouldn't need the feats if the rest of my party (especially the fighters and rogues) were at full strength for every single encounter we faced. (Again, I'm talking the version you suggested without the 1/2 healing limitation.) Hit points are the FIRST resource that a group needs to preserve, and spell power the second; the turning-powered feats don't really do enough to warrant sacrificing the group's health over them.