Just Plain Broken

[AllisterH]

against medium creatures. Unless you're talking about an incredibly narrow scope of events, how *often* something is broken is not terribly relevant to the question of whether it should be allowed in a game. Anything that is broken as often as "any time you are fighting medium or smaller creatures" needs to be fixed, period.

Hmm...while I'm of the "SDS isn't inherently broken" camp, I don't think arguing "any time you are fighting medium or smaller creature" is a valid argument since using the monster filter, from CR 13 go up, you shouldn't be fighting medium or smaller creatures since assuming you are a good party (a fair assumption), the only non-good creature from the SRD that is of that size or smaller are the Werewolf and the Mummy Lords (and the mummy itself is already immune to SDS so you really only have the Werewolf Lord as a medium sized creature.

Sure, the mooks and the minions have a good chance to be smaller but then, a regular full attack should kill them OUTRIGHT.

re: Stun Effects in Manoeuvers
Strange, I tend to find stun effects manoeuvers less problematic than pure damage. Rystil, I think you mentioned you allow the FB and yet have more problems with the STUN effect of some manoeuvers? For our campaigns, stunning is easily dealt with as listed in manoeuvers since a number of creatures (constructs, elementals, oozes, plants and undeads) are plain immune to it and unlike say the illithid mind blast, it only lasts 1 round meaning it best works in a party environment which, again, I'm more likely to allow.

(Plain and simple, if ability X gets more powerful with more party members while ability Y is static but in the individual case, is more powerful than X, I will look more harshly on ability Y)

There's just not much one can do to mitigate the damage dished out by a FB. Worse yet, howabout a barbarian with the class subsitution from Complete Divine that gives the Pounce ability who then takes FB.

re: Warmaster's Charge
The reason why I think this should be uncapped is that I WANT players to try and break it since, unlike say Shapechange, the player can't simply metagame to make it broken. This manoeuver only gets broken with the player IN_GAME using above average teamwork, setting up favourable environmental conditions (something which is pretty much dependent on the DM being lenient) and a fair bit of luck (the target has so many options and low-level at that since even a windwall plays havoc) to get massive damage. This manoeuver, if you actually get it to work, is the time of thing you talk about for years afterward. For a 17th level melee combatant, I WANT this to work.

Now remember, this is a 9th level manoeuver thus at least a 17th level party where the usual shenanigans is simply "I use spell X, I win". That's it and frankly, not very memorable IMHO.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Hmm...while I'm of the "SDS isn't inherently broken" camp, I don't think arguing "any time you are fighting medium or smaller creature" is a valid argument since using the monster filter, from CR 13 go up, you shouldn't be fighting medium or smaller creatures since assuming you are a good party (a fair assumption), the only non-good creature from the SRD that is of that size or smaller are the Werewolf and the Mummy Lords (and the mummy itself is already immune to SDS so you really only have the Werewolf Lord as a medium sized creature.

Sure, the mooks and the minions have a good chance to be smaller but then, a regular full attack should kill them OUTRIGHT.

In fairness, IanB should have definitely added Large to that, which increases dramatically the number of options for SDS messing up your game, and Huge is pretty fair to add too, though not a gimme for the Jump check like Large is. Level 13 Warblade and friends versus level 20 Wizard? Thanks to the stun, that's going to be a win for the Warblade and friends. That White Raven Hammer adds insult to injury by being the perfect follow-up. Heck, even an enemy Dweomercheater, Rainbow Servant, Frenzied Berserker, or similarly broken build will automatically lose if there are two Warblades. Versus enemy Balor? Many level 13 teams could beat it with the amount of auto-stun the Warblade gives out. With two Warblades, it's again an auto-win. How about the high level group versus Demogorgon or the fellow at the end of Shackled City, supposed to be an epic battle? The Warblade and his auto-stun make it silly.

Strange, I tend to find stun effects manoeuvers less problematic than pure damage. Rystil, I think you mentioned you allow the FB and yet have more problems with the STUN effect of some manoeuvers? For our campaigns, stunning is easily dealt with as listed in manoeuvers since a number of creatures (constructs, elementals, oozes, plants and undeads) are plain immune to it and unlike say the illithid mind blast, it only lasts 1 round meaning it best works in a party environment which, again, I'm more likely to allow.

Having some creature types that are immune to it doesn't fix it. That would be like saying that if the Rogue's Sneak Attack ability became an instant kill, no save and doesn't count as a death effect, it would be okay since many critters are immune to sneak attack. But against the critters that are not immune to sneak attack, the instant-death sneak attack makes the game less fun.

(Plain and simple, if ability X gets more powerful with more party members while ability Y is static but in the individual case, is more powerful than X, I will look more harshly on ability Y)

Unless you're playing with a lot of loners who like to go off and solo monsters, I think abilities should be judged assuming you have a group to back you up.

There's just not much one can do to mitigate the damage dished out by a FB. Worse yet, howabout a barbarian with the class subsitution from Complete Divine that gives the Pounce ability who then takes FB.

To mitigate that damage? How about damage reduction, or just HP? I find that monsters tend to have a large amount of HP around the higher levels. I can post you some of the critters my group with a FB had to face, and they were nasty opponents which spawned memorable fights. Many of them, however, were not immune to stunning because they were of creature type Humanoid, Dragon, Outsider, Giant, Fey, Magical Beast, and Aberration (there are other types not immune to stunning, but those are the ones I tend to use, rather than Monstrous Humanoid and friends). The Warblade with SDS would have made those fights less fun. The FB actually did not.

As to the class substitution, isn't that from Complete Champion, actually? It's quite broken, as is most of that book that I've come across as a non-owner. In fairness, I may only have been exposed to the broken bits, but still, there's a lot in there as such.

 

[Moon-Lancer]

would save dc/2 make swooping dragon balanced?

 

[IanB]

Hmm...while I'm of the "SDS isn't inherently broken" camp, I don't think arguing "any time you are fighting medium or smaller creature" is a valid argument since using the monster filter, from CR 13 go up, you shouldn't be fighting medium or smaller creatures since assuming you are a good party (a fair assumption), the only non-good creature from the SRD that is of that size or smaller are the Werewolf and the Mummy Lords (and the mummy itself is already immune to SDS so you really only have the Werewolf Lord as a medium sized creature.

Sure, the mooks and the minions have a good chance to be smaller but then, a regular full attack should kill them OUTRIGHT.

I have never, ever in my life played in a game where there were not significant numbers of classed NPCs (evil high priests, wizards, whatever) as opponents throughout the life of the campaign, including levels 13-20+. Sure, if you are talking about an odd game where you only fight monsters from the monster manual, then it might not be that often - but in 20-odd years of gaming, I've never played in a game like that.

 

[Rystil Arden]

would save dc/2 make swooping dragon balanced?

Do you mean save DC of 10 + 7 (for level) + Str mod? That would be perfectly fair. If you mean Jump check / 2, then no, not at all.

Let's put it this way. A Balor is a CR 20 opponent, which means a level 13 group should stand no chance. Ark has shown that getting 84+ on the Jump checks by that level is quite easy. 84 divided by 2 is 42. A Balor has +22 Fortitude save.

 

[Moon-Lancer]

well i meant d20+jump (strength+skill ranks+bonus)/2

but

"DC of 10 + 7 (for level) + Str mod" also sounds reasonable also is reasonable, as long as the final result is not divided by 2.

DC 10+(skill rank)+ str mod also seems to work well. a little stronger then the above, but not as abusable or scalable as my first proposal.

 

[Rystil Arden]

well i meant d20+jump (strength+skill ranks+bonus)/2

but

"DC of 10 + 7 (for level) + Str mod" also sounds reasonable also is reasonable, as long as the final result is not divided by 2.

DC 10+(skill rank)+ str mod also seems to work well. a little stronger then the above, but not as abusable or scalable as my first proposal.

If you want to give it a bit of a boost without being crazy, you could try DC 10 + (skill rank / 2) + str mod. That would be more powerful than other effects due to scaling and starting out 1 higher if you maxed out your ranks (at level 13, it would be 18 + Str mod instead of 17 + Str mod), but at least the DC would not scale more quickly than anything else (if you want to use a scaling DC, it should never scale faster than 1 for every 2 levels, since that's the scale rate of good saves. That doesn't count stat increases of course).

If you let it scale, I would leave the 10d6 within the saving throw. If you keep it static, I would make the 10d6 automatic and just have the stun in the save.

 

[Moon-Lancer]

DC 10 + (skill rank / 2) + str mod

I like that idea, thanks. I think when i was doing math in my head i forgot the inital +10.

 

[Arkhandus]

would save dc/2 make swooping dragon balanced?

No. As I demonstrated around two pages back or so, it's not too hard to get a Jump check result of 80 or 90 at 13th-level, and you even have a chance of getting a check over 100 at that point (if rolling high). So a save DC of 80/2 = 40, or 100/2 = 50, is still a rather high save DC. And by the time you reach 20th-level as a PC, you'll likely have another +10 or so on your Jump checks if still focused on maxing out Swooping Dragon Strike (so save DCs of 50+ will be fairly common with 'DC/2').

 

[Arkhandus]

DC 10 + (skill rank / 2) + str mod

I like that idea, thanks. I think when i was doing math in my head i forgot the inital +10.

That version is quite alright.