Jondor_Battlehammer
First Post
Zappo said:
All intant kill spells could be tweaked to resemble Sleep, which only affects a certain HD of creature. Cap any instant kill spell to twice it's level in HD. Still useful, just probably not on the BBEG.
Giving fighters something to do.
- Thread starter RangerWickett
- Start date
All intant kill spells could be tweaked to resemble Sleep, which only affects a certain HD of creature. Cap any instant kill spell to twice it's level in HD. Still useful, just probably not on the BBEG.
Victim
First Post
Cedric said:
3.0 triple casting and bonus spells seem like they wouldn't fair too badly compared to 1e. Still, I remember playing a in 1e game and plotting to use this one scroll in a big fight. Slow had no saving throw. Ouch.
I can't imagine the guy who invented the waste of a high level spell 'Instant Summons' to have been all that impressive.
Cedric
First Post
Ok...I'll give you that one, but everyone else impressive just left my brain at the time.
Oh...as for differences between 1.0 and 3.0 magic, you have to also take into account the difference in hit points. While a fireball still does d6, it's now limited to 10d6. Meanwhile, Con Bonuses can easily rise in excess of +4 and hit points are gained for each character level instead of stopping at 9-10 and going up by +2-3 thereafter.
Cedric
RangerWickett
Legend
Okay, obviously I don't have the numbers straight as far as who does how much damage. Let me state what I want, rather than what I want to change:
- People of a certain class should be particularly well-suited to taking out opponents of the same class, if you assume a default build of that class. So fighters are best for dealing with fighters, spellcasters with spellcasters, and sneaks with sneaks. This should not be rock-paper-scissors where fighter beats rogue, rogue beats mage, mage beats fighter. I enjoy duels, when two similar foes have a test of skill, and the better one wins (perhaps with help from an ally if the situation is dire).
- Everyone should be able to deal damage to everyone else in a pinch, but different classes would have different specialties. Fighters should be good at taking care of foes of great physical might, like huge monsters with lots of hit points. Rogues should be good when the group coordinates their attacks, but vulnerable on their own. Mages should be good against groups of weaker foes, and should be useful at removing defenses of singular foes.
- Short of catching someone off guard and assassinating them, people should last several rounds of combat. Defeating a foe that is of the same power level as you or higher should be an exercise in degrees. Perhaps you first flank them, then wound them, then kill them with a critical hit or coup de grace. Perhaps you lower their mental defenses, then enscorcle their mind, then kill them with a death spell. Perhaps you feint them, disable some aspect of their physical defenses (shield, armor), then kill them with a strike to their weak spot.
- Spellcasters, as they improve in power, have to increase their combat and utility magic separately, so a mage who deals tons of damage won't overshadow the party with having more nifty tricks outside of combat. Mundane skill training should also be able to reach seemingly magical effects for characters who are powerful enough, so warriors can cling to ceilings and run through the leaves of bamboo groves, and scoundrels can mind control people or turn invisible.
- Magic should not be listed in spells per day. It's much better to have weaker effects available more often, and then to have some mechanic to allow for a few powerful spells with drawbacks.
Elder-Basilisk
First Post
Well that just about covers every aspect of D&D.
However, if you want to keep playing D&D, there are a few things you can do to get closer to that goal:
1. There's not much you can do about this because, as the rules work, fighter beats rogue in a fight, rogue, fighter or monk beat wizard in a fight, rogue sneaks by fighter if he gets the chance (but doesn't beat him in a fight), and cleric picks whether he wants to be fighter or wizard on any given day. However, switching to a workable version of the wounds/vitality system from Arcana Unearthed that makes (for a workable system, I suggest making the fort save to avoid being stunned easier, adding character level to wound points, and reducing the number of wounds dealt by a critical (to avoid routine instantakills, I suggest wounds damage=weapon dice+enhancement bonus only--not strength or other bonusses and the weapon deals vitality damage in addition to the wounds as normal). That would marginally encourage spreading damage out rather than concentrating it and would thereby remove a disincentive to duels.
2. Not too much change needed there but you are pigeonholing high level arcane casters to a few concepts--waves of exhaustion, acid fog, meteor swarm, and presumably summon monster are fine, but Disintegrate, Polar Ray, Finger of Death, Bigby's Grasping Hand, Bigby's Crushing Hand, Wierd, Wail of the Banshee, the Power Words, Dominate Monster, Mass Hold Monster, etc. are out.
3. You can push the game this way with a few changes:
A. Go back to 3.0 power attack. 1/1 at all times, not 2/1. 2/1 power attack is a big factor in the deadliness of fights between the warrior classes.
B. NPC construction. Focus on AC and defenses rather than maxing damage. This means, PCs will face more fighters than barbarians, and more foes with tower shields and combat expertise than greatswords and great cleave.
C. NPC construction. Give NPCs defensive feats. Iron Will, Great Fortitude, Lightning Reflexes, Close Quarters Fighting, Prone Attack, etc. Give them feats that slow down combat like Improved Disarm and Improved Sunder.
D. For NPC wizards, have them spend spells on defense or debuffs. Combat lasts longer if the NPC hits the fighter with a quickened ray of enfeeblement. It also lasts longer if the NPC casts a quickened mirror image or a quickened invisibility spell.
E. Effects like darkness and fog are also your friend for extending combats. Sometimes these can be introduced by simply paying close attention to the lighting conditions in a room. Candles create shadowy illumination throughout the whole throne room (20% miss chance for non-darkvision, non-low-lightvision characters). Keep the radius of torchlight in mind during the battle too. (And keep in mind that clever enemies might extinguish the torch (Gust of Wind, sunder or disarm or dispel magic for a magic torch) in order to escape or prolong the conflict.
F. Re-introduce long-term defensive buffs. Bear's endurance and Owl's Wisdom at 1 hour/level. Magic Vestment at +1/3 levels. False Life at touch range. These will make the stripping of defenses more important. You could also do things like extend the duration of spell turning or remove the material component from Protection From Spells. Make Mind Blank SOP for all high level characters with access to magic. And then don't allow Reciprocal Gyre into the game. All of those will tend to beef up characters' defenses and thus allow combats to last longer.
4. Remove the Wizard class and allow only sorcerers and bards as arcane casters. The spells known limitation will create a competition between combat and non-combat magic. At high levels, sorcerers can be good at both, but not as good as a sorcerer more exclusively focussed on one or the other.
5. Alternatively, you could replace arcane magic entirely with Psionics from the XPsiHB. It's not spells per day, it's almost balanced, and the powers known limitation forces the same kind of combat/non-combat focus choice on psionicists and wilders as it does on sorcerers. Obviously, this can't be accomplished with the core D&D magic system.
Those won't completely achieve your list, but they will help you get closer to it while still playing D&D.
However, if you want to keep playing D&D, there are a few things you can do to get closer to that goal:
1. There's not much you can do about this because, as the rules work, fighter beats rogue in a fight, rogue, fighter or monk beat wizard in a fight, rogue sneaks by fighter if he gets the chance (but doesn't beat him in a fight), and cleric picks whether he wants to be fighter or wizard on any given day. However, switching to a workable version of the wounds/vitality system from Arcana Unearthed that makes (for a workable system, I suggest making the fort save to avoid being stunned easier, adding character level to wound points, and reducing the number of wounds dealt by a critical (to avoid routine instantakills, I suggest wounds damage=weapon dice+enhancement bonus only--not strength or other bonusses and the weapon deals vitality damage in addition to the wounds as normal). That would marginally encourage spreading damage out rather than concentrating it and would thereby remove a disincentive to duels.
2. Not too much change needed there but you are pigeonholing high level arcane casters to a few concepts--waves of exhaustion, acid fog, meteor swarm, and presumably summon monster are fine, but Disintegrate, Polar Ray, Finger of Death, Bigby's Grasping Hand, Bigby's Crushing Hand, Wierd, Wail of the Banshee, the Power Words, Dominate Monster, Mass Hold Monster, etc. are out.
3. You can push the game this way with a few changes:
A. Go back to 3.0 power attack. 1/1 at all times, not 2/1. 2/1 power attack is a big factor in the deadliness of fights between the warrior classes.
B. NPC construction. Focus on AC and defenses rather than maxing damage. This means, PCs will face more fighters than barbarians, and more foes with tower shields and combat expertise than greatswords and great cleave.
C. NPC construction. Give NPCs defensive feats. Iron Will, Great Fortitude, Lightning Reflexes, Close Quarters Fighting, Prone Attack, etc. Give them feats that slow down combat like Improved Disarm and Improved Sunder.
D. For NPC wizards, have them spend spells on defense or debuffs. Combat lasts longer if the NPC hits the fighter with a quickened ray of enfeeblement. It also lasts longer if the NPC casts a quickened mirror image or a quickened invisibility spell.
E. Effects like darkness and fog are also your friend for extending combats. Sometimes these can be introduced by simply paying close attention to the lighting conditions in a room. Candles create shadowy illumination throughout the whole throne room (20% miss chance for non-darkvision, non-low-lightvision characters). Keep the radius of torchlight in mind during the battle too. (And keep in mind that clever enemies might extinguish the torch (Gust of Wind, sunder or disarm or dispel magic for a magic torch) in order to escape or prolong the conflict.
F. Re-introduce long-term defensive buffs. Bear's endurance and Owl's Wisdom at 1 hour/level. Magic Vestment at +1/3 levels. False Life at touch range. These will make the stripping of defenses more important. You could also do things like extend the duration of spell turning or remove the material component from Protection From Spells. Make Mind Blank SOP for all high level characters with access to magic. And then don't allow Reciprocal Gyre into the game. All of those will tend to beef up characters' defenses and thus allow combats to last longer.
4. Remove the Wizard class and allow only sorcerers and bards as arcane casters. The spells known limitation will create a competition between combat and non-combat magic. At high levels, sorcerers can be good at both, but not as good as a sorcerer more exclusively focussed on one or the other.
5. Alternatively, you could replace arcane magic entirely with Psionics from the XPsiHB. It's not spells per day, it's almost balanced, and the powers known limitation forces the same kind of combat/non-combat focus choice on psionicists and wilders as it does on sorcerers. Obviously, this can't be accomplished with the core D&D magic system.
Those won't completely achieve your list, but they will help you get closer to it while still playing D&D.
RangerWickett said:
Fedifensor
Explorer
Sounds like the Warlock from Complete Arcane. Their main combat ability is Eldritch Blast, which is the automatic spell attack you're looking for.RangerWickett said:
RangerWickett
Legend
In my game I do use Wound Points. You get WP equal to your Con score, and you only take WP damage when you're out of HP.
Hmm. I think I've found my solution. Instant kill spells knock out all your hit points, but do no WP damage. But they do a minimum amount of damage equal to how much the spell would do on a successful save, so if you're at 2 HP and you get hit with slay living, you'll take 3d6+9 damage, which will probably kill you even if you succeed the save.
Still doesn't fix polymorph, but I can deal with that. Contingent break enchantment is a solid defense.
Hmm. I think I've found my solution. Instant kill spells knock out all your hit points, but do no WP damage. But they do a minimum amount of damage equal to how much the spell would do on a successful save, so if you're at 2 HP and you get hit with slay living, you'll take 3d6+9 damage, which will probably kill you even if you succeed the save.
Still doesn't fix polymorph, but I can deal with that. Contingent break enchantment is a solid defense.
drnuncheon
Explorer
The crazy thing is that 3.5 went to great lengths to eliminate, say, instant death poisons, but they went ahead and left in instant-death spells. I never understood that.Cedric said:
Instead, what if 'flesh to stone' damaged your Dex, with the effect that you were partially turning to stone - and you became a statue when it hit 0? How about Disintegrate doing Con damage? Phantasmal Killer draining your Wis? etc, etc
J
Acid_crash
First Post
Use Arcana Unearthed, it has a similar magic system with more versatility and less direct damaging spells and more support like spells... IMHO, I think AU does it better, but it better fits my style of game. I just don't like the world of The Diamond Throne.
Squire James
Explorer
Using the Warlock as the only arcane caster is not a bad option, though in that case I would remove the alignment requirement and perhaps put "positive" versions of some invocations in for the "good guys". Unless, of course, you might WANT all arcane casters to be non-good, which would certainly reinforce certain stereotypes.
Using the 3.5e Psionics system and renaming all the odd-sounding names back to "magic-speak" is not a bad option either. The problem here is that it doesn't address the power issue too much... psions can actually be deadlier than a wizard or sorcerer over a small period of time. There's even less reason for a psion to spare his MP in a big encounter than there is for a wizard to spare his save-or-die spells.
I suppose some sort of hybrid system is possible... perhaps a Warlock with more invocations that use Magic Points.
I've considered using MP as a HP-like stat that gained dice at each class level (use 16 - HP die as the MP die, so a fighter with d10 hit die for HP would have a d6 hit die for MP), with Charisma bonus applied per level like Constitution for HP. MP can be used to cast spells, or be taken away forcibly with "mental damage" effects. When MP hits 0, the character becomes insane (under a non-dispellable Confusion) until he regains at least 1 MP. Natural restoration of MP return at a rate of character level per hour (similar to Vitality Points).
Using the 3.5e Psionics system and renaming all the odd-sounding names back to "magic-speak" is not a bad option either. The problem here is that it doesn't address the power issue too much... psions can actually be deadlier than a wizard or sorcerer over a small period of time. There's even less reason for a psion to spare his MP in a big encounter than there is for a wizard to spare his save-or-die spells.
I suppose some sort of hybrid system is possible... perhaps a Warlock with more invocations that use Magic Points.
I've considered using MP as a HP-like stat that gained dice at each class level (use 16 - HP die as the MP die, so a fighter with d10 hit die for HP would have a d6 hit die for MP), with Charisma bonus applied per level like Constitution for HP. MP can be used to cast spells, or be taken away forcibly with "mental damage" effects. When MP hits 0, the character becomes insane (under a non-dispellable Confusion) until he regains at least 1 MP. Natural restoration of MP return at a rate of character level per hour (similar to Vitality Points).
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