Design & Development: Dislikes

[Psychic Warrior]

Floaty Shields - Funny, I've just been reading some griping about them. I've never had one in my game. I probably never will now.

The fighter in my party has his sights set on an animated shield. Personally I don't think it will be a problem as the party rarely has a lot of money so at best he is looking at a +1 Lg Shield for quite some time.

I may change it to make it use a standard action to activate sort of thing and last 'X' rounds. I would give it unlimited uses per day however (don't want to crush him too much ).

 

[Psychic Warrior]

My house rule for hp rolls: if you're not happy, you can reroll, but with a die one step smaller. If you're still not happy, you can keep rerolling until you decide to stop or until you're rolling a d2.

What about d1?

That's a pretty good system though. For the most part hp totals haven't been much of an issue. The reroll on a one works well enough for my purposes (and that elven fighter eventually rolled a '10').

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Polymorph - It occurs to me more often than you can imagine how truly blessed I am not to have players that are truly munchkin, rules lawyering, powergamers. I don't have a problem with it simply because this is a spell nobody bothers to use anymore. It now occurs to me that perhaps my players are too old, staid, and (dare I say it) unimaginative to really get creative with possibilities anymore.

I can see the problems inherent in the spell, however. Heck, I saw the problems with it even back in 1E days when people would pore over monsters looking for something INSANELY powered that wasn't more intelligent than their character.

There was mention of not being able to polymorph into anything you haven't actually seen. What's wrong with not being able to polymorph into a form that you haven't actually RESEARCHED instead? You know... just tell the DM what forms you want to have available for your PC, let the DM review all that that form is capable of as well as its limitations, and then the PC adds it to their list. If the form is for some reason too unbalancing then the DM simply disallows it until the PC is higher level, limits the duration of the change, EXTENDS the duration perhaps. It seems to me that CR should already be a good rough guideline for limiting what a PC can polymorph into - a creature of CR = LVL? CR x and no higher? Etc.

Antimagic Field - Another non-starter for me - it simply never comes up so I never have to even think about it. But again I can easily see how it's problematic and wonder why, oh why wasn't it just FIXED? If not in 3.0 then in 3.5? I've said for YEARS now (not terribly vocally or often, but well before 3E) that the spell levels and descriptions are the part of the game in need of the greatest overhaul. In point of fact I recall clearly being disappointed that the 2E revision failed to do anything in that regard and saying as much until 3E at last made some efforts there. I would very much be interested in seeing Chris Perkins 20-level revision. I've begun work along those lines on more than one occasion but abandoned the project as just a bit too much work. (I stopped wanting to rewrite the entire PH a long time ago. Call me lazy if you like.)

Floaty Shields - First I've ever heard this particular exploit. I'm fairly sure I'd just house-rule it to have them function much as a Dancing weapon including both the need to have it in hand at the start of the fight and its cost (as +4 bonus, not +2).

Raise Dead penalty - It sounds interesting but I have long advocated handling dealing with PC death issues from a much more role-playing standpoint, not by throwing rules at it because it addresses the symptom, not the cause of the disease.

20 level spell system - I would VERY much like to see it and hear some testimony on its strengths and weaknesses in actual play.

Ban stat-boosting items - Again, no problems here so no adjustments necessary.

"Smoothed" hp - I LIKE a decent range of hit points in PC's and DISLIKE the more "epic" leanings of the system already (I refuse to even TOUCH epic rules for my games).

Action dice - I prefer to think that there are better means of bettering the game than adopting a more game-ist approach to play. In any case it's a solution that's in search of a real problem - IME anyway.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

My house rule for hp rolls: if you're not happy, you can reroll, but with a die one step smaller. If you're still not happy, you can keep rerolling until you decide to stop or until you're rolling a d2.

Now THAT is interesting to me. Consider it yoinked until it can be further reviewed/playtested.

 

[Vocenoctum]

Like astral construct?

Not really, Astral Construct is a template with special powers. Polymorph needs to be more variable. Just a straight point value system is easiest probably. Astral Construct is a bit too restrictive and a different idea. Customizing a summoned vs openness.

 

[Odhanan]

Mike Mearls - less randomness on hp - Interesting. Can you give us the full list, Mike?

This is used in IH also. Just take the hit die of the class you want to convert, and transform it into a d4 + the amount for the maximum to be equal to the original hit die of the class.

Fighter becomes d4+6
Cleric becomes d4+4
Rogue becomes d4+2

The only exception is the wizard and classes with d4 hit dice, which becomes d2+2.

Edit: oops, looks like someone preceded me on this. Ah, well. Pardon my lateness.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Arcana Evolved already has "single form" equivalents of polymorph like lion form and wolf form. I like it much better because you control the levle of the change, and it spells out what you get.

I've been doing average hps for years. Your first die is full. Your second die is high average. Your third die is low average. (For example, a 3rd level fighter has 10, 6, 5 + Con bonus.) Rolling is fun - until you get a sucky number. Mike's method has some appeal, but it does boost up hit points above average. If you're doing that then the monsters get it too.

A twenty-level spell system is possible, but perhaps unwieldy. Right now there's a functional 10-level spell system. I like it just fine.

I'm on board with banning stat-boosting items. What I decided to do though was to allow each PC to have one item that boosts stats, and one alone. In my games you can either get an item that boosts your worst stat or your best stat.

 

[painandgreed]

Like many, must of these issues have never come up.

Polymorph - Currently, I'm playing a pixie that can ploymorph and haven't used it much except for high str monsters to grapple, mostly because I'd lose my really high dex that is most of my AC. My DM lets me browse the Monster Manual but our campaign also started at 6th level in the underdark in a mindflayer prison, so there's no telling wht creatures my character might have seen. That doesn't mean I haven't noticed its potential for abuse. I wonder if it couldn't mostly be solved by using CR instead of HD. As DM, I'd probably make a material component of flesh, hair or blood of the creature you're polymorphing into if I wanted to limit it. That would usually mean that the character would have to have fought the creature before or paid a great deal for the components while polymorphing into more common animals and monsters would still be trivial.

Hit dice - If I was going to get rid of randomness, I'd just give everybody (including monsters) max hitpoints. Worst it would do is drag out combat a little more and make the lucky crit less effective which would probably go in the players favor more often than not.

 

[Vocenoctum]

Wouldn't Polymorph (in the short term) be easily fixed by a Summon Monster type chart?

Though, hopefully with effective (but not abusive) forms.

(sidenote: I've house ruled Summon Monster so it's just one first level spell, that a wizard can memorize at any spell level, like psionic empowerment. So a sorcerer can take Summon Monster as a first level spell, then cast it at any spell level. Same for Cure X Wounds with a bard. This would work fine with a chart-based Polymorph)

 

[Michael Morris]

Antimagic Field - I'm very happy I've never come up against one. It is *so* much an effect that brings to mind some stupid cards in Magic: the Gathering. Kill it! Please!

And that close minded attitude from the RPG crew (and the CCG group is just as bad) is why there will never be an in house MtG to D&D adaptation. Well, at least I know whose books *not* to buy now.