Converting to 3.5 woes...

[James McMurray]

Again, you miss the point. Here is the point: A 18th level fighter should not be able to kill a base CR 25 monster in 2 or 3 rounds. Sure I could make it more difficult. I'm not talking about an actual encounter here, I'm talking raw numbers. The fighter's ability to do damage vs a base monster's ability to take it. This is an example based on predictable numbers.

Yes, but if you strip most of the creature's abilities, you no longer have a CR 25 creature.

Second, it's not hard for a fighter to get close to a dragon if you really want. Just get the cleric to scry and find one, cast fly, improved invisiblilty, and silence, and you're off. At 18th level, you've got over half a day to slowly approach the beast. Once you're near, 12 seconds later you've got one dead dragon.

Sure, if you ignore the dragon's Blindsight and Scent. Nowhere does it say that the dagon's blindsight is useless vs. a silenced creature.

So, here's what we'll do. Cleric scrys on a Leviathan. Then he casts freedom of movement, followed by water breathing, and then teleports without error to the Leviathan. Ok, the Leviathian has 496 HPs, and an AC of 22. Using the math above, nearly all 5 swings a round will have a chance to hit, and to crit as well. So it will take 1, and with bad rolling maybe 2 rounds to kill it. Even if the Leviathan uses it's Gulp ability to swallow the fighter, that just means he has no chance to miss (not that he really had one anyway) so that's moot. He might get in a Bite attack, or a few Tail Slaps for for 26 or 44 points of damage respectively. Oooh! Fighter scared!

True, but many would say that the Leviathan is not a true CR 25 creature, given its lavk of special abilities or defenses. and of course, if you give the party time to prepare and ambush the creature, you have beaten CR 25 monster, but not an EL 25 encounter.

But we could go back and forth with examples and counter-examples for months. I think that if you remove the two R&R spells from the equation, you'll drop the fighter's effectiveness tenfold, even with the new addition to Power Attack.

 

[rushlight]

"But we could go back and forth with examples and counter-examples for months. I think that if you remove the two R&R spells from the equation, you'll drop the fighter's effectiveness tenfold, even with the new addition to Power Attack."

True, and that's basically what I did. I never presented this as the test-case for converting to 3.5, but only as a side note of some of the things I'd encountered.

 

[sithramir]

Yes it can go back and forth. The point being your character does a lot of damage up to 1000 in 3 rounds. Your examples of a cleric scrying and teleporting in mean the fighter didn't get close to the creatures in any way. He simply was used as a damage tool of the cleric so who cares that he got close (which he wouldn't to a dragon who can have prot from teleport spells up and blindsight to see you still).

We could move to the fact that my cleric can kill 3 dragons in 3 rounds a haste a few harms and a spell that does a min of 4 damage to all 3 or several such spells as you are hasted would do the same thing. Notice how haste and harm are being changed because thats insane. Notice that this is the same as your original post were its not taking into account what the dragons are actually doing just the fact that without interruption the spells would succeed.

However, while your character is only being reduced slightly in power (as was shown above in a post) and these spells are being fixed so they are balanced with the game, neither your fighter nor cleric can succeed at this any longer. You're buffed up fighter is still a damage machine but those slight tone downs are what made it more balanced the same as with the cleric.

Why be mad at that? He's still totally effective, just not waay overpowered like he was before. Neither is the cleric's harm. I know it sucks when something isn't as potent as before, but it totally makes sense in a game design terms. That was too powerful and now its balanced, but neither class lost effectiveness.

 

[rushlight]

"However, while your character is only being reduced slightly in power "

He's not my character, he's a character in the game I DM.

"However, while your character is only being reduced slightly in power "

He's being tremdously reduced in power.

"Why be mad at that? He's still totally effective, just not waay overpowered like he was before. "

Who said I was mad? *I'm* the one who banned said spells. I didn't like that one fighter could take on nearly all the encounters with little involvment from the other party members.

 

[sithramir]

(snip Mega Fighter of Doom stats)

But wait - here's another problem. This revision won't power down your munchkin's character very much at all! Andy Collins has said that the Weaponmaster PrCs increasing threat ranges will still stack with other means of increasing threat ranges. The non-core spells he's been using won't be altered at all. The only things that will change is that the GMW will drop to +4 instead of +5, and his Keen scabbard won't stack with his Improved Critical feat anymore. So instead of having a +39 to hit and threatening on an 11 or better, he'll have a +38 to hit and threaten on a 13 or better. Wow, he's been powered down a lot

I don't think thats a huge change? Perhaps my reply was not to the post you are thinking?

 

[Geoff Watson]

On other D20 products: "Sales figures just don't bear that assumption out."

Then why are there so many different companies producing things? Are there that many people producing products no one buys? How are they producing more than one product? What about the larger houses like White Wolf? Didn't the Scarred Lands series do alright? They sure made alot of products for that line. I find it difficult to believe that they were cranking out books that never sold. WW is an established game company which probably knows when to cut it's losses and when something is doing well.

They did OK.
But the Players Handbook outsold any of the supplements more than 20:1.

Geoff.

 

[Valiantheart]

Grog said:
Now, this isn't quite, "Go home, dual-wielder, you're useless", but the playing field is definitely tilted in favor of the two-handed fighter. And if they run up against a monster whose DR they can't bypass, the dual-wielder is basically screwed, while the two-hander has a good chance to remain at least partially effective.

I think this was all a conscious decision on the part of WOTC. Dual wielding is pretty clearly the optimal style for rogues now. They can use two light finessed weapons for accuracy and the reduction in feat cost benefits them more than fighters. 7 fighter attacks from dual short swords is hardly any better than 4 great sword attacks, but 6 rogue sneak attacks is a whole nother story.

The power attack and monster DR changes give the fighter class a real incentive to use a two handed weapon for maximum effectiveness. This seems to be the style of a dueler/adventurer. Its easier to carry one weapon rather than a shieldand weapon, its optimal for bypassing the new DR, and it is much more difficult to disarm.

The best combat style is still sword and shield though. A Fighter with a 3 to 4 point AC bonus over the other two will easily pick up the win.

 

[Anubis the Doomseer]

Originally posted by rushlight
Why do people keep complaining that things aren't "Core"? Are you telling me that there's a whole bunch of people who just buy 3 books and never ever ever buy another d20 book? Not even those by WOTC? I mean, that's fine if you do, BUT THE POINT OF THE D20 SYSTEM IS TO ALLOW OTHERS TO MAKE SUPPORT MATERIAL.

Sure. Okay. But try answering these questions:
1. Did the dragon have access to any 3rd party feats, spells, PrCs or Magic Items? You know, like you PC had access to. Imagine a Dragon with Assassin Sense, Improved Crit (Bite) and Keen Edge cast on his bite attack. Or how about some of the elemental aura spells out there, double or triple empowered by a metamagic rod and a couple of levels of Arcanatrix?

2. Why is the dragon standing still, letting you get into melee? Why isn't it using fly-by attacks, ranged spells/breath, feats which enhance its fear auras, etc?

3. Why doesn't the dragon use feats like Leadership? or (since we are talking a CR25 creature) Epic feats/classes/etc?

4. We are talking an evil dragon here - no Book of Vile Darkness stuff?

In essence you are saying that your PC, using a whole bunch of non-core, unbalanced stuff, taken out of the context of that particular campaign setting for which it was meant managed to defeat an unmodified, 'stock' dragon fighting as if it were a 1st level Goblin commoner with a dagger? Get serious.

Get that? That's WHY they converted to d20. That's the point. So that you have more options.

You DM is using Scarred Lands materials in a non-SL setting and finding it unbalanced? I. Am. Shocked. And/Or. Appalled. Maybe the DM will think and look over third-party stuff before just waving in anything and everything, with an eye to how various things balance each other out.

 

[Grog]

Woops on the dual wielding BAB, still though the % chance to hit is still actually higher.

Oh, the dual wielder may very well get in more hits. But the question is who will do more damage.

Since DR is going down across the board the 25+/x DR is hopefully a thing of the past and dual wielders should have less trouble forcing through it.

Actually, the lower levels of DR is what screws the dual-wielder over relative to the two-handed fighter. High DR would pretty well shut two-handed fighters down too.

Take a simple example, two 2nd level fighters, 16 STR, vs. a DR 5 creature. The two-handed fighter gets one attack for 2d6+4 damage, the dual wielder gets one attack for 1d6+3 and one for 1d6+1.

The two-handed fighter will always do damage to the DR 5 creature unless he rolls a 2 on 2d6. So, he has a 1 in 36 chance of not doing damage. The dual-wielder will fail to do damage with his primary attack if he rolls a 1 or a 2 on 1d6 (1 in 3 chance), and he'll fail to do damage with his secondary attack if he rolls a 1-4 (2 in 3 chance). This gives him a 2 in 9 chance of not doing damage - much greater than the two-handed fighter's 1 in 36 chance. The two-handed fighter will also inflict much more damage to the creature overall.

So, despite the fact that it now costs one less feat, I still maintain that dual-wielding is less effective now than it was in 3.0.

 

[Oracular Vision]

After reviewing the changes, I will be using the 3.5 monster manual with the 3.0 PHB and DMG, as it beefs up the creatures and fixes the problems with powerful parties not having powerful enough foes. I have to bump up several CR already, I think the more powerful monsters will fix this.