Forked Thread: Proposal: Minotaur Race from Dragon

[garyh]

Errata can essentially do the same thing (see changes to stealth, or more recently Veteran's armour or the like). While it is unfortunate it is part of balancing the game. The question is, is balance something that L4W is looking to uphold and to what extent? What is the stance on erratta, is that something that is going to be automatically adopted, or will each be reviewed and taken or rejected piecemeal.

The reason I bring this up, is that anytime you introduce something that changes how a mechanic works you're liable to affect someone, how should that be resolved?

Well, as for errata, our policy is to automatically adopt it, unless there's a formal proposal to do otherwise.

 

[renau1g]

I don't like new write-ups removing appealing parts of PC options (like the minotaur article did). It seems like a big downer when compared to articles that were purely expansions (warforged, gnolls).

I know it's not quite the same, but what if errata removes something that I thought was appealing? Would it be adopted? i.e. if I have Veteran's Armour from AV because of the daily power and it was errata'd out I wouldn't be happy because that's why I wanted that item.

 

[renau1g]

Funny that we had the same thoughts Oni, but you beat me to it.

 

[Lord Sessadore]

Well, one thing with, say, an item getting errata'ed is that you can get a new item. Sure, it might take some fancy footwork in character, but it can happen. Same with a feat or a power - just retrain it to something you like better.

If a race loses an ability, any character of that race gets hosed. That character is fundamentally different than it started, and there's nothing to fix it, other than not taking the ability away in the first place. It's not like you can retrain your race.

Also, if errata changes or removes something that you feel is better 'the old way', you are free to propose that. If I'm not mistaken (and correct me if I'm wrong), you could even propose something in between the original and errata version, if you think the original was broken, but the errata overcompensated (essentially creating a house rule).

 

[Oni]

I am assuming then that any change that is proposed and voted in will be applied across the board. Errata being automatically adopted and able to be changed by proposal or rule changes brought to bear via proposal (this case being the latter). At some point people will see changes to how their characters functions they may not agree with. I think it would be in everyones best interest to set down and agree on the methodolgy of how rule changes will be applied in general before proceeding to making changes.

This is kind of deviating from the original proposal a bit and maybe warrents a seperate discussion.





Maybe there should be a chirurgeon in daunton that can swap races and classes so that you can retain your backstory. I.E. you're not longer happy with minotaur, but you don't want to lose your character so you can switch you stats to human but still look like a minotaur so you needn't break continuity with your character. I'd like to play a gnome with minotaur stats, rawr...gore!

 

[covaithe]

There's a long discussion in the Dragon 364 proposal thread about whether or not Oversized is balanced, which I quote:

[sblock=previous discussion]

Yes I agree if oversized remains in play it must be selectable by new players. Either its available to everyone or to nobody.

Having read over some threads on the topic upon various forums I begin to think that it is sensible to eliminate oversized. Though as a player I remain hugely ticked off at wizards, and at the situation. Since I have no interest whatsoever in the racial feats or paragon paths it is a pure no win downgrade for Brudd , but one I might just have to suck up.

I really wish I could get hold of the actual article though.

Further more I am going to suggest we vote on this change now and disregard the three month policy for the oversized aspect. My reasoning behind this is that we want new players who bring in races with this ability to know where they stand.

I'd rather not have Hrav downgraded without even seeing what options he'll get (Bugbears aren't on any calendar I've seen). Perhaps instead a large disclaimer that MM races are subject to revision if and when they are published and fully expanded in another source?

Halford, your current e-mail references animated pasta, yes? (The Judge conversations are sometimes confusing for me, as folks use EN World and real names.)

You're correct, the Oversized nerf was not 364, it was 369. It was just brought up because it's in the same kind of race article as the warforged. Essentially, in the full PC write up, the minotaur loses Oversized and gains a special charge attack and an AC boost versus OA's while charging (which didn't impress me). And Halford is right, Mearls himself has stated here on EN World that Oversized will be taken from races that have it, and no new races will get it.

Which is a bummer.

After having had a chance to read the Minoatur article, thanks to certain good samaritans , I remain distinctly underwhelmed. In exchange for the power I cared about that was always on they upgraded the power I did not care about, never used, and am never likely to use - because it is an encounter power which does less damage than my basic attack. No wait it makes them prone, except that I'm probably flanking anyway - because I have a brain - so I get no benefit from that other than causing my foe to use a minor action.

Lose, lose for Brudd, but then he can probably afford it with his luck. Despite my reservations I am in favor of implementing it.

Yeah, that was my impression of the oversized-for-charge swap. Total powerdown. I can understand oversized being considered too powerful (even if I disagree), but give them something good but balanced in exchange, not something blah and super-situational.

Makes me worried what they'll do to bugbears. The Str/Dex still makes for a great brutal rogue (and the flavor still works perfect for Hrav), but the only other thing they have besides oversized is Predatory Eye, which is pretty weak (an extra 1d6 per fight on an attack with CA? Basically an extra 1.75 damage per fight, assuming a 50% miss rate), and I don't know what else they'd get.

But I digress.

The minotaur article is a big problem for me. Instead off adding to the MM races (like the other dragon race articles) it changes them. This ends up giving you TWO official minotaur races and one is dragon subscription only. Neither is 'more' right and the article isn't errata so doesn't automatically override it.

Lets face it, someone without the dragon subscription is only ever going to have one official minotaur and it has Oversized. If the new article becomes 'official' for L4W, you make it so the race can't be used unless you get dragon. None of the races are like that, since the new and old races still work together. It's a mess.

Well, it's quite simple. I'm not a subscriber so I haven't read the article, nut it's sufficient to allow feats and other new options (if we want) and keep the oversized feature, ditching the substitution ones. After all, I think everyone will be happier that way.

This is true. This is OUR game, after all. If we like Oversized, we can keep it and WotC won't take our books or internets away.

This idea works for me.

That would make things MUCH easier Atanatotatos. Drop the lame charge feature the article gave and let the oversized stand. That way, a quick look at the MM (or a look at the compendium) will let someone make a minotaur. They might not have all the fancy options from the article, but they can make one.

I too don't have a subscription. I've seen enough posts on it to know what's been done. That's why it bugs me that they altered the base MM class instead of adding to it like the other races. You can't just make up a minotaur any more. You have to find out which version you're talking about first.

As someone who cheered when he heard and later read the proposed changes to the minotaur I am probably in the minority. However being that the core ideal of L4W was that it would allow (agreeably on a controlled basis), to me to disallow WOTC's attempt to correct what may have seemed ok at first and even playtested well but later was found to be broken is unbalanced. To me the minotaur does not have enough negatives to balance out. The changes that were made rectified this and brought the race into balance with the rest of the races.

I'd never choose a minotaur for race (mechanically speaking), honestly. Maybe the new abilities in the article would have made me change my mind, I don't know, but as it was in the MM, oversized wasn't enough for me to prefer it to, dunno, a dwarf or a human. Weapon Size increase is a good deal, but certainly it's not groundshaking.

Since this issue has come up quite a few times, I'll say clearly how I see it and compare the minotaur (MM version) with the dwarf, which is a core race and is likely to be used with similar classes

Ability bonus:
Minotaur:+2 Str,+2 Con
Dwarf:+2 Con,+2 Wis
I'd say we're pretty even here.

Speed:
Minotaur:6
Dwarf:5
The minotaur's better

Vision:
Minotaur:Normal
Dwarf:Low-light
Low-light vision is clearly better

Skill bonus:
Minotaur:+2 Nature, +2 Perception
Dwarf:+2 Endurance, +2 Dungeoneering
The Minotaur probably wins here

Other Features:
Minotaur: Ferocity(meh),Oversized(very good),Goring charge(Tide of iron's better than this)
Dwarf: proficiency with warhammers, second wind as a minor, +5 to saves vs poison, reduce push effects
I'd say the dwarf's way better. What's more, I don't know what new racial feats the Minotaur has, but I doubt they can compare with two absolutely first-class racials the darves get, Dwarven weapon training (proficiency with all axes and hammer and +2 to dmg rolls with them) and Dwarven durability (+2 healing surges/d and add constitution to surge value)

Now, obviously this is my idea. But I wouldn't trade all those nifty benefits for some more dmg. 'Cause that's what you get.

Now, if you are a Minotaur cleric who reveres Hades and he looks favorably upon you from his Invisible castle,then that's a whole different story

Personally I think it was a mistake to make a blanket allowance of the MM races in the first place, since the intro to that section makes it clear that they may not be balanced:

I would have considered them for inclusion after the game was running for 3 months, just like for new content.

But that cat's out of the bag now, so I'd suggest we officially add two subraces of minotaur to the setting (perhaps the "Angus" and "Longhorn" Minotaur). The Angus, having no horns, would get Oversized Weapons and the MM stats, while the Longhorn would get the Dragon stats and access to the feats. (We could even decide on a feat-by-feat basis which are appriate to give to the Angus, bearing in mind that its basic ability is more powerful than the Longhorn's.)

Also, I'd say the Minotaur with oversized weapons is problematic not because it's better than the Dwarf at all points, but because it's perfect for min-maxing a fighter. Str and Con bonuses AND oversized weapons is too much. The Dwarf has powers that are better for a fighter alone than oversized weapons, but the Wis bonus doesn't help quite as much. When you're in a persistent world where strangers are playing together they're going to be more sensitive to having one race that can't be touched for damage output.

Maybe a good fix would be to give the L4E minotaur all the powers from the MM and Dragon article, and add a penalty for the use of oversized weapons that brings it back into balance. For instance they could be prohibitively expensive, or have a critical fumble chance. Anyone who feels that their character is being nerfed would be compensated by the fact that they'd pick up extra abilities in exchange for some penalties, rather than having to give up their ability.

I'd also like to suggest that if a class or race gets altered, characters of that race be allowed extra retraining the next time they level up so they can swap in some of the new feats and powers easily.

Well, we've got pretty good number of approved / created characters, and only two Oversized weapon users - a minotaur battle cleric (Halford's character Brudd) and a bugbear brutal rogue (my character Hrav). So I don't see Oversized having skewed the PC population any.

Now, githyanki, on the other hand, comprise 75% of our level 2 characters! Obviously unbalanced!

On a serious note, Oversized may be an issue that the Judges need help with. Given that two of the Judges are playing the only current Oversized-using characters, we may not appear (or be - I like my 1d10 rapier!) completely unbiased.

That's pretty much the way I've looked at it too. Without oversized, the minotaur is pretty weak for a race with stats that effect the same save. The warforged is a MUCH better pick for a + str and con race in that case.

If this is the case then it should be errata'd in the MM to match the new race article. From my understanding they aren't going to do that so it doesn't seem SO out of balance. If it's ok to use for people without dragon, it should be ok for people WITH dragon to use.

Wisdom doesn't help much? You miss combat superiority? Distracting Shield? Polearm gamble? The pitfighter paragon path?

If a player wants to make a striker/defender, what's the problem with that? Quarry/sneak attack is a much bigger damage boost than oversized, so no problem there. Oversized might net you an extra point per die average, while the striker bonus is +3-8. The only issue I've ever seen is oversized is with the brutal weapon trait. 2d6 with a brutal 2 is SO much better than 1 size smaller damage of 1d12. It's more an issue with brutal than oversized.

I foresee a house ruling about brute weapons when we'll discuss Adventurer's Vault, indeed.

Doesn't help as much.



You're right, I was kind of stuck in previous editions where maximizing your damage output was everything for fighters, and it was the other classes that got cool abilities.

[/sblock]

Some quick thoughts:

• Halford seemed to be okay with the nerf, though not terribly happy about it.
• I'm not sure I followed the balance discussion as closely as I should have, but it didn't convince me that Minotaurs are unbalanced as they currently stand. I don't have a problem with a racial power being more powerful than a single feat. Look at... well, any of the racial powers. Human, Dwarf, Dragonborn... lots of stuff out there that you can't get with feats. I'm disinclined to nerf Minotaurs solely on the basis of oversized.
• I'm not very excited about the idea of grandfathering characters for longer than the duration of their current adventure. I think we all should be playing from the same set of rules, regardless of when the character was created.

 

[Dunamin]

I don’t really lean strongly one way or the other.

As judge of the game that used to have the only PCs with Oversized, I haven’t noticed game-breaking advantage for those PCs. I may not be completely unbiased, though, considering they’re also judges and in turn DM’ed and judged the game I play in.

 

[hafrogman]

From some of the discussions I've seen around, oversized weapons seem to start running into trouble when combined with some of the superior weapons from the AV. Which I believe is under proposal right now.

The "Brutal" property in particular wasn't very well designed, and hinges specifically on the dice that is being rolled. When the weapon gets upsized, it often changes to two dice ([W] = 2d6, etc.), doubling the brutal effect.

Even if that isn't a problem by itself, I think its sort of indicative that nothing that comes out from here forward will assume that PCs can use oversized weapons.

 

[Lord Sessadore]

Personally, I lean a little towards oversized being too much. I don't think it's too much of a problem right now - it's only about +1 damage per attack - but once the characters get higher level with more feats and powers with higher [W] multiples, oversized becomes more and more powerful.

That said, I'm a little loathe to take abilities from characters and leave them stuck with it, as it were. So, maybe we can work with it. I was thinking that perhaps using an oversized weapon gives you a -1 to attack rolls? Think of it like the tradeoff between a sword and an axe. I know 4e likes to avoid giving penalties, and the only real precedent for this kind of thing is Power Attack, which is admittedly pretty crappy. I think -2 is too much to apply to every attack, so that's why I suggested -1. I dunno, thoughts?

As for goring charge ... I'd be totally fine if we houseruled the damage up to 2d6 at least

On large brutal weapons, we can create a damage dice progression for brutal weapons that makes them match normal weapons; it's not very hard if you just look at the numbers.

The point that future options will be designed with oversized out of mind is good to think about too - keeping oversized will force us to look at some things more closely in the future.

 

[renau1g]

I think that this needs to end up with either we use the minotaur from the MM or the minotaur from the Dragon article, but not both and go forward with that (which will also dictate how we handle the other monstrous races, i.e. bugbear, on a go-forward basis)

i.e. 1) oversized, but no racial feats, or
2) goring charge + racial feats, but no oversized weapons.

Although I'm not a fan of oversized weapons and the potential issues I see with them, I am changing my stance and leaning towards the MM version for the following reasons:

1) Accessability - otherwise we require everyone to buy DDI (which still isn't anywhere near its promised functionality) and I also am quite upset by WOTC shutting down Ema's site so I'm loathe to send any business their way
2) Community Enjoyment - It seems that the racial feats, etc. are pretty weak relative to the other races (which I'd expect as typically minotaurs are monsters, not PCs), therefore those PC's are penalized
3) Less Houseruling - I also don't like the idea of adding houserules into this as it will create a poor precedent that might start to intimidate new players if the list of houserules starts to grow with each issue/racial write-up.

Anyways, I'm no judge so it's my two coppers.