I like 3E, but I miss...

[Pants]

That doesn't prevent the spell taking effect.

No, but it stops it from working.

3E Divine Power granted a cleric an Enhancement bonus to Strength sufficient to raise his Strength to 18. If his Strength was 20, that didn't mean he wasn't a valid target for the spell - as long as he satisfied "Target: Personal", he could cast the spell, and it would come into effect, and last for one round per level.

However, Divine Power had the clause if it is not already 18 or higher. If his Strength is 20, it goes down to 18.

If you cast Blindness on someone who has the "blinded" condition, the spell still comes into effect. If their pre-existing condition was temporary, and wears off... too bad, they're still blind from the spell.

That's why the Feebleminded workaround would actually work. I never said it was perfect.

As long as someone satisfies "Target: animal or tree touched", they can be awakened. Even if they already have humanlike sentience, they are now "awakened", and all the consequences of that occur.

You still have to read more than the Target listing.
How can you raise something that has human like sentience TO human like sentience? Would they lose Int if they were super smart? Or could you make the stupid Half-Orc slightly more intelligent? It's quite ambiguous, but if anyone ever tried to pull this on me, I'd point to the 'human-like sentience clause' and laugh.

 

[Hypersmurf]

If his Strength is 20, it goes down to 18.

No way. There's no such thing as a negative bonus. A negative modifier is a penalty. Divine Power never reduces a Strength score.

Would they lose Int if they were super smart? Or could you make the stupid Half-Orc slightly more intelligent?

Yes, and yes. Their Int becomes 3d6. If their Int was previously 21, and they roll a 5, they now have a 5 Int. And then someone has to carefully and slowly explain to them that they need to Wildshape into another animal and cast Awaken again, which lets them roll 3d6 again (plus giving them a Cha bonus and two more hit dice).

-Hyp.

 

[Pants]

No way. There's no such thing as a negative bonus. A negative modifier is a penalty. Divine Power never reduces a Strength score.

Whoops, I missed the not.

Yes, and yes. Their Int becomes 3d6. If their Int was previously 21, and they roll a 5, they now have a 5 Int. And then someone has to carefully and slowly explain to them that they need to Wildshape into another animal and cast Awaken again, which lets them roll 3d6 again (plus giving them a Cha bonus and two more hit dice).
-Hyp.

I still don't buy it, but I see where you're coming from.

 

[Gothmog]

I just have to note how dumb an argument this is. The reason that 3e is so tightly integrated is because it actually has a balance point. You can alter the rules just as easily as in earlier editions, but the problem many seem to have is that they miss the balance when they do so. Earlier editions, on the other hand, did not have a mainline balance and so making houserules did not come at a cost. But that was because the rules as written had no value to begin with. Many who wish to houserule 3e just don't like to be faced with the fact that their rules lack value, often adding needless complexity or butchering the options presented by the game as written, so they crow about 'tight integration' and unified mechanics. Some people just like to turn the virtue of a transparent design intent into a vice, because they can't do better....

I have great respect for your opinion, Woodelf. I really do. So with hesitation I pronouce that this argument has always struck me as the Dumbest Thing Ever Said About D&D. This idea has always been the most bizarre defense of the rabid D&D faction when arguing (pointlessly) about the relative merits of game system on Usenet.

In my mind it boils down to arguing: "AD&D 1e/2e has such hopelessly bad mechanics that nothing I do will noticeably improve or damage the system. Therefore D&D is an easer system to customize."

By the standards of 3e, every single customizable of 1e/2e is an utter failure, because the end result is a hopelessly unbalanced system. (No big surprise if that is what you started out with.)

For those of you who care not about play balance, it is theorectically possible that 3e is not an improvement for your style of play over 1e/2e. But then it becomes impossible to logically argue "one simple change echoes all over the place" in 3e. The echoes are all irrelevant -- they are mere play balance issues.

Its not as dumb as you might think. 3E was engineered with a dungeon adventuring environment in mind ("back to the dungeon" sound familiar anyone?). That means spellcasters were balanced against fighters in 3E/3.5 with the assumption of 3-4 encounters in a row before a break was needed and rest required. If you stick to that formula, 3E is very balanced and plays pretty well. If you don't focus on dungeon-delving and lots of fights however, 3E is even more lopsided balance-wise than previous editions in many cases. Spellcasters have more spells per day than in previous editions, so allowing more rest periods means more high firepower spells being used in every fight and spells being in situations where they might not have been in the dungeon hack style. If you don't follow the baseline assumptions the designers did when they designed 3E, the vaunted balance goes right out the window.

House rules then become a viable option if your play style differs from what the 3E designers inferred. This doesn't mean that house rules have "no value" or are "butchering" the system- in those cases where they are introduced, they are present to patch a hole the designers didn't consider that suits that group's play style better. The fact that 3E has trouble handling other styles is a design fault- and the fact that it is integrated into the core system makes it that much harder to rectify without changing a lot of variables.

As far as my house rules go, I said I had 5 pages in 2E, and over 70 in 3E. If I cut out new spells, feats, monsters, and PrCs I have made up, I'm still left with over 30 pages of houserules. These include the spellcaster classes for my world (I don't use wizards and sorcerers- I have 13 different magical traditions), domains than un-vanilla clerics (not needed in 2E), alt hp system, spellcasting roll rules, magical aura interactions, weapon skill grouping rules (similar to proficiencies but with classes of weapons- not needed in 2E), etc. Granted my world has developed over the years since my 2E houserules, but its still a big increase in houserules compared to previous editions to fix holes and/or bring D&D more in line with my world and playstyle. The 70 pages of houserules AREN'T my campaign setting though- that occupies over 700 pages of material.

Oh, and Ashrem- I have Midnight, played it, love it, and even played a session with Jeff Barber.

 

[diaglo]

This is, by far, the dumbest and cheesiest way to break a spell. If there was ever a reason to suggest that 3e is videogamey, then this is that example. Ugh, it boggles the mind and it rivals the 'bag of rats' crap.
If anyone ever brought this up to me, I'd hit them with a shovel.

hey, i know you.

 

[The_Gneech]

I miss when this thread was on-topic!

-The Gneech

 

[WizarDru]

That's a great come-back - but Balors have a Supernatural Ability to have a Vorpal Sword. You get Supernatural Abilities, and items removed from your body remain. Everyone I've talked to (including myself) agrees that this doesn't work - but the rules as written unambiguously give this the A-OK.

If it's so unambigous, why are there so many people disagreeing on an interpetation of the spell? Apparently it's more ambiguous than you might think. Where does the intersection between supernatural abilities and items remain intersection occur?

It controls everything it makes from Create Spawn - which can come out of any Creature (which is darn near anything).

Well, only if you mean that a humaoid is any creature, as in:
"Create Spawn (Su): Any humanoid reduced to Strength 0 by a shadow becomes a shadow under the control of its killer within 1d4 rounds."
And if

And if we're to abide by your strict intpetation of the wording, that means a Wiz 36 would, when killed, become a CR 3 creature. And one control undead spell would take the entire legion away from you in a heartbest.

In closing - if you make a broad statement about how you aren't using House Rules, and then get written rules wrong in a subsequent post then you manifestly are using House Rules. House Rules is any time you do things in-game different from how they are written in the books. Whether that's from a deliberate choice to change the rules or blatant ignorance of what the books say is irrelevent - you are House Ruling either way.

Well, to begin with, I haven't used any of these rules, period. Hence the reason that I'm not as familiar with them. I spend more time actually playing the game than arguing about it. Now, considering you misquoted the rules yourself, I'm not sure that you can tell me what is and is not a house-rule, yourself.

Are you saying that a Druid Polymorphed into a Frog cannot Wildshape into a Tiger because it turns you into an Animal? Because nowhere else in the rules does the game work like you describe.

Actually, I was being pedantic, there, but no, that wasn't what I was saying. The wording of the spell makes it clear that you are not the target at several points. If you were to ignore those, and be literal, then the animal's type (namely you) has changed to magical beast. You are no longer a wildshaped human/elf/what have you, but a magical beast that happens to be an awakened squirrel. You can't change back to your original form, because it doesn't apply to you any longer. The awakened squirrel can still wildshape to a tiger all he wants...he just won't be ponying up to the bar at the local tavern any time soon.

To my mind, a house rule is a change because you don't like the particular rule or think that it's broken, and change it to correct the problem. Everything you've mentioned are potential loopholes that might exist depending on campaign style and extremely literal and inflexible interpetations of a particular entry under a specific spell. I don't consider ruling with the obvious intent of the spell and consistency to be a house-rule, but we could agree to disagree on that point. I will gladly create a house-rule when I see the need for one, but as often as not, I find that the house-rule needs a lot of work to make sure that it doesn't have unexpected consequences that are as bad as the original intended correction.

Hmm? You can force him to comply with an opposed Cha check...?

You can, but the spell also mentions " Impossible demands or unreasonable commands are never agreed to." Getting 3 free wishes without compensation would be, to me, an unreasonable demand. Now, you might argue otherwise. In such a case, I'd argue that Djinni would have protections and guards against such an event, and probably even have something similar to what you see in "Lord of the Iron Fortress", where the Noble Djinni merchant has a non-Djinn guard who he grants wishes to in times of danger. Kidnap one Noble Djinn, and you get five to twenty more, with their bodyguards, to educate why you don't force them to do anything.

Even in a case where the mechanic could be potentially abusive, this isn't Everquest. A good DM makes in-game examples of why abusive tactics are a bad idea. And that has nothing to do with the version of game you're playing, or it's relative merits. I often find, when reviewing AD&D, that a ton of mechanics existed that we just ignored or didn't use properly. And it turns out, we still enjoyed the game. YMMV.

 

[Krypter]

I don't miss Planescape...because I'm running it right now! And it's great.
Not using 3E rules mind you, but it's still the best campaign world
that TSR ever created. Though I think that rewriting planescape for 3E
would suck it dry of all the fun and originality that Cook and Baer put
into it. In Planescape, the gods didn't even have stats of any kind;
they just did what they wanted, and PCs trembled in fear of their every
breath.

I also miss the Level Titles, the pleasure of levelling up without having
to consult 13 different sourcebooks about which PrC to take, and the
description tables from DMG2.

The cover art in 2E was much better, IMHO. I especially detest the
"fake pastiche jewel" look of the core 3E rulebooks. Awful. The cover
of the 2E DMG with the evil wizard opening the doors was the perfect
picture of a GM in his prime.

I also miss the monster and NPC descriptions that didn't have a whole
column or page of complicated stat blocks. The flavor text for the monsters,
for example the fabulous Fairy Dragon, it sorely missed.

God, it takes me hours in 3E just to make one NPC. In 2E - albeit with a lot of
fudging - I could have done it in my head.

As Mr. Nostalgia would have said if he were still alive: "Those were simpler days..."

 

[Staffan]

8) PO: Criticals where you had to hit by more than 5 to threaten a critical. Critical threats were actually based on the ability of the attacker.

They still are. That's what the confirmation roll is for.

 

[Staffan]

Speaking of house rules, I think it's rather important to differ between kinds of house rules:
1. Changes in the rules structure itself. This would include things like dying at -Con instead of -10, or changing the rules for breaking weapons, or something like that.
2. New stuff added. Stuff in this case includes spells, feats, domains, classes, whatever.
3. Changing stuff. Same definition of "stuff" as above.