Creating ECL creatures using FCTF !!!

[Cheiromancer]

Reach is too cheap: Price at 4 instead of 2.
Increased Speed is too cheap: Price at 2 instead of 1.

I wonder if these superpowers could be "cross-class skills" in D20 fantasy? I.e. two hero points will only give you 1 rank, and the maximum permitted (level +3) is halved.

I worry about how 4CTF handles ability increases. More for PC's who take a level of hero, but raising Con is a much cheaper way of raising hit points than buying hit points. And you also get a boost to Fort saves and Concentration checks. I would make ability increases a "cross-class" use of hero ranks too.

But that worsens Ogry's problem- he needs more points of strength (and armor) than 6 levels of hero will get him.

Perhaps, instead of buying the powers individually, monsters buy a template which gives all the features of size large (or huge, or whatevre). Problematic features like increased speed, reach, and really high strength and Con, could all be bundled up.

Thoughts?

[edit] Ogry needs a few skill points, too. [/edit]

 

[Forrester]

Perhaps, instead of buying the powers individually, monsters buy a template which gives all the features of size large (or huge, or whatever). Problematic features like increased speed, reach, and really high strength and Con, could all be bundled up.

Thoughts?

[edit] Ogry needs a few skill points, too. [/edit]

Wow, with the skill points, the buy comes even closer to 48 Hero
points. Cool beans.

The thing is that the 4CTF templates ARE, in essence, buying all of the powers individually. They're bundled up afterwards to make it easy on players and GMs, but at some level there is an individual buy, with no changes to costs.

I think that making ability increases cross-class makes them way too expensive -- six hero points for +2 to an ability is just way too steep. I think it's working out well -- +3 up to the limit, and make it "cross-class" afterwards. An ogre being ECL +6 is probably about right!

As far as the Heightened Constitution vs Buying Super Toughness issue is concerned, I don't think it's as big problem, because of the cap on how many points you can spend.

A 6th level Hero can only give himself +6 to Con (netting him 18 hp for 9 Hero points). It's certainly possible that he'll want even more hp, if he's going for the Uber-Tank schtick; after all, he's got a lousy d4 hp per level!

So he spends another 9 Hero points to net him another 18hp using Super Toughness (+2hp/Hero Point). Not as good as a Con boost (no increase to Fort saves), but he needs all the hp he can get.

Now, I will agree that using this system, Super Toughness becomes exceptionally lame by the time he's a 12th or 15th or 20th level Hero. Each 3 points he's put into Heightened Constitution nets him 15hp at 15th level; each 3 points he's put into Super Toughness nets him a lousy 6hp.

This ties into the "Toughness is a really lame feat, especially at high levels" problem that people have noticed in 3E.

It might be worthwhile to modify it (attn: Ranger & Morrus!) so that Super Toughness scales like Speed does. Increasing Speed moves in 10' increments early on, but the increases get bigger and bigger as more ranks are taken. It might be worthwhile to do something similar (though less drastic) with Super Toughness.

2hp/point for the first five points spent.
3hp/point for the second five points spent.
4hp/point for the third five points spent.
5hp/point for the fourth five points spent.
6hp/point for the fifth five points spent.

And so on. By the time someone can put 21 Hero points into Super Toughness, they're 18th level, and every 3 Hero points they put into Con nets them 18hp. Putting 3 Hero Points into Super Toughness at that level also nets them 18hp (but no Fort boost).

And they've bought a bunch of Super Toughness that is still netting them only 2hp/point, unless the change noted above is retroactive. Which might not be a bad idea.

It looks good to me! What do you think? Maybe in your 2E version, guys?

 

[Forrester]

Re the cross-class skills thing . . .

I dont' know how to add this to the system in a sensible way, but it is a fact that using the system as-is, it's not very difficult at all to make a Tank that has exceptional mobility (i.e., speed), which doesn't quite tie into the image we have of tanks like the Hulk, the Thing, and so on.

The "templates" (or example characters) for tanks in 4CTF are all really tough, but have lousy mobility. This weakness is pointed out in the text. However, a little more max-minning and this weakness would be easily disposed of. It would not be difficult to find four or five Hero Points (maybe one less buy of Heightened Strength, one less buy of Super Strength) to bump up this Tank's movement rate from 30' to 80'. In fact, the urge to do that would be really hard to resist for most who have any powergamer in their veins.

I'm wondering what a variant would look like that would make mobility and super strength cross-class to some degree. In other words, if you want to be super-duper fast, you can't be super-duper strong, and vice-versa. Of course, Mr. Blue Tights breaks the rule here, but doesn't he always?

Any ideas? I'm wondering whether this came up at all during playtesting.

 

[Cheiromancer]

Maybe you're right about the cost for ability increases. I was thinking of a 4th level fighter who picks up a level of hero. He buys the following:

Heightened Strength
Heightened Constitution
Bonus feat (weapon specialization)

He doesn't get a +1 to BAB, but he does get a +1 strength bonus to attack and damage. He only gets d4 hit points, but his boost to Con gets him another 5 hp on top of that. And a +1 to his Fort Saves.

A pretty good deal, and one that will get better with another level of hero (at level 2 is +1 to BAB). Probably no less problematic than taking a level of Ranger, though. Or cleric. Eventually, he's going to fall behind in his BAB, which will hinder his ability to take prestige classes and feats...

What did we say the price of +1 BAB should be? Does +3 Hero Points seem reasonable?

I'm also worried about Wizards bumping up their Intelligence and boosting their save DC's through the roof. And getting lots of bonus spells in the process. I'm thinking that if an ability bonus affects spell DC's, it should cost 3 hero points rather than 2.

 

[Forrester]

Maybe you're right about the cost for ability increases. I was thinking of a 4th level fighter who picks up a level of hero. He buys the following:

Heightened Strength
Heightened Constitution
Bonus feat (weapon specialization)

He doesn't get a +1 to BAB, but he does get a +1 strength bonus to attack and damage. He only gets d4 hit points, but his boost to Con gets him another 5 hp on top of that. And a +1 to his Fort Saves.

A pretty good deal, and one that will get better with another level of hero (at level 2 is +1 to BAB). Probably no less problematic than taking a level of Ranger, though. Or cleric. Eventually, he's going to fall behind in his BAB, which will hinder his ability to take prestige classes and feats...

What did we say the price of +1 BAB should be? Does +3 Hero Points seem reasonable?

I'm also worried about Wizards bumping up their Intelligence and boosting their save DC's through the roof. And getting lots of bonus spells in the process. I'm thinking that if an ability bonus affects spell DC's, it should cost 3 hero points rather than 2.

I think that it works fine! This fighter is getting a LITTLE more than he normally would for just taking another level of fighter. Personally, I think that if he took a level of Barbarian, he'd be getting more -- boost to movement speed, ability to Rage, 4 skill points, and a BAB increase. Heck, if he wanted to buy all that using the Hero class, he'd be spending

+4 (Rage), +1 (Movement), +2 (Skills), and he's still stuck without the BAB bump, saving throw bump, and d10hp.

There's also the issue of multiclassing penalties, though I'd be tended to make Hero a favored class for all characters .

I agree about the cost of an Int boost -- we talked about this in House Rules before.

As far as the BAB increase goes . . . +2 or +3. I'm not sure which. Maybe +2.5 .

Hey, RangerWickett -- maybe Asgard should put out a little supplement about modifying 4CTF for use in a 3E campaign?

 

[Cheiromancer]

I agree about the cost of an Int boost -- we talked about this in House Rules before.

Why so we did. With the conversation being spread over three forums, it gets easy to lose track.

I've been thinking about the "per hit dice" problem. Ogry has 6d4 hp instead of 3d8. Changes in constitution have a bigger effect on him than it should. Any ideas on how to fix this?

 

[Cheiromancer]

Ok. I was trying to reverse-engineer the Fighter, and I found something interesting:

This is how much it costs a 4th level fighter/16th level hero to emulate a 20th level fighter. I'm assuming that +1 BAB costs 3 HP (hero points). I'm starting off with a few levels of fighter so that maximum hp at first level, extra starting skills, the ability to specialize, etc., are all taken care of.

+48 hp: 24 HP
+8 BAB: 24 HP
32 skill points: 16 HP
+3 Fort save: 3 HP
+8 feats: 16 HP

This includes everything but the "+ Intelligence Modifer" per level of skill points. And how much is that going to be for a fighter? The extra hp and BAB require the hero to "go over" a little the max number of ranks (should only be 23). Let's double the cost for the overage. 25+25+16+3+16=85

There is a total of 85 HP here, and 16 levels of hero will net you 128 HP. That's 43 HP extra after emulating the fighter. The only difference between the hero fighter and the regular fighter is "Intelligence Modifier" x 16 skill points. I have difficulty believing that each "Intelligence Modifier is worth more than 2 HP.

However... suppose that one's Constitution bonus didn't apply to a hero's hit dice? After all, high intelligence doesn't give a hero any extra skill points- why should high constitution give any extra hit points?

Then we could give quite reasonable costs to the value of the Intelligence modifer (say +1 per hit dice) and the Constitution modifier (+2 per hit dice), which would increase the cost of emulating the fighter to 133; a little more than the number of HP we have to play with.

And that, I think, makes a lot more sense.

So increase the cost of Ogry the Ogre by 8 HP; 4 of his hit dice get Con bonuses, and 2 don't. Add 1 more HP to apply his intelligence modifier once (which actually hurts him).

He gets 8 skill points, for which he pays 4HP (This amount, less two for his poor intelligence, is divided equally between climb, listen and spot. The MM entry confused me until I realized that his Hide armor was penalizing his Climb skill.)

This is another 13 HP which is more than we have. Ogry needs another level of hero to pay for all this. Luckily his saves and BAB don't change, and his new hp total (7d4=17.5) is very close to the hp of a real ogre (4d8=18). He is still a little over the number of HP a 7th level hero has, but this is close enough.

In other words, using the 4CTF rules (slightly modifed), we get the Ogre as an ECL of +7.

[edit- there is an error in the above discussion, which I have not corrected: the Con bonus should cost only 1 HP per hit dice. And the Hero should not get any save progression. See further down the thread for the reasoning]

 

[Forrester]

Interesting, interesting. Not having Con apply to the Hero hit-dice seems a little iffy, though.

Ranger said that in the initial version of the Hero, the Hero didn't get Hit Dice at all (or BAB, or saving throw advancement). It's possible that making the PCs *buy* hit dice would help solve the problem . . . but probably not. With the Heightened Constitution Superpower, all d4s essentially turn into d10s with just a nine-point buy of Con (netting a 16th level Hero an extra 48hp).

A modification that might work better is not giving the Hero a BAB increase at all, but keeping it as-is otherwise. So the 16th level Hero doesn't have +8BAB naturally -- he has to buy it.

That'd be another 24Hero Points. If you took away the advancement to saving throws, that's another 15 Hero Points, and we're only four Hero Points shy of what "it should be".

That being said, this is, IMO, too harsh!

I doubt there are too many 20th level fighters out there. Maybe a few 1st level Rogues/1st level Barbarians/18th level Fighters. Maybe a few 5th level Fighters/Xth level Fighter-based PrCs. But probably not a ton of straight 20th level fighters.

In other words, I think that straight 20th-level fighters are underpowered in most 3E campaigns, relative to other classes at 20th level, and that we probably shouldn't balance the 4th level fighter/16th level Hero against them.

I think that if we keep the Hero as-is, but nuke BAB advancement, we'd get close to what it "should be". For one, Ogry would have to pay 12 more Hero Points, making him ECL +7. I think that might be an easier fix than not allowing Constitution to give bonus hp to Hero hit dice.

Either way, it loses the easy "A Hero advances as a Commoner with no skill points but 8 Hero Points" description, unfortunately.

I wish Morrus or Ranger would show up and let us know what they think . I think Ranger said that he thought that the Hero class was a bit underpowered as-is, but I think this math shows that it may be a *little* overpowered (?).

 

[Cheiromancer]

My analysis is basically the same for a 4/4 hero/fighter trying to emulate an 8th level fighter. While I agree there may not be a lot of 20th level fighters around, there are a lot more 8th level fighters. And mid-range fighters are, to me, the epitome of balanced. (high level wizards are too tough, low level wizards too weak, clerics of any level are a bit too powerful, bards of any level are a bit weak, etc. High level fighters can be outshone by spellcasters, but that's not their fault, IMHO).

The thing I like about removing the Con modifier to hit points (besides the parallel with the lack of Int modifier to skill points) is that it enables one to easily adjust the number of hit dice. If a creature is "supposed" to have 4 hit dice, you can make it have 4 hit dice, even if more than 4 hero dice were required. Just buy the 4 copies of "+ Con modifier". Unless it is undead, in which case you don't buy any.

When I next feel industrious, I think I will try to reverse engineer a wizard. With any luck I'll figure out a way to accurately model the spells/day abilities of various critters.

Regards,

 

[Forrester]

The thing I like about removing the Con modifier to hit points (besides the parallel with the lack of Int modifier to skill points) is that it enables one to easily adjust the number of hit dice. If a creature is "supposed" to have 4 hit dice, you can make it have 4 hit dice, even if more than 4 hero dice were required. Just buy the 4 copies of "+ Con modifier". Unless it is undead, in which case you don't buy any.

That's true that you can work Undead into the system this way . . . hmm.

So your proposed system is simply 2 Hero Points per level to get + Con bonus for that level? By the rules, you can't spend that many Hero Points, though -- for instance, a 16th level Hero can't spend 32 Hero Points "officially" on one attribute.

Before I continue -- am I getting the proposed system correct?