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<blockquote data-quote="mmu1" data-source="post: 2890796" data-attributes="member: 319">Sorry if this was brought up already - I haven't followed the General forum in a while - but did the Knight's challenge abilities strike anyone else as the epitome of crappy game design?First of all... Why does everything need to be a swift action all of a sudden? I think that the challenges are, in many ways, quite similar to bardic music, which is always a standard action. It smacks of someone playing with new toys, rather than consitent game design.Second, why is an ability that is essentially a mind-affecting compulsion effect classified as Extraordinary, when the Bard - the class that actually specializes in manipulating others with words - has only Supernatural and Spell-Like abilities? If it acts like magic (and IMO it does, considering that it even works on things that don't speak your language), then label it as magic.Third, I realize that it's a combat ability, and it should be relatively uncomplicated... but virtually every other mind-affecting ability and spell (from Charm and Fascinate all the way to Dominate) tends to have some circumstance modifiers listed, to reflect the circumstances it's used under.&nbsp; Also, the fact that you can't, for example, choose to refuse the challenge and end up with a morale penalty as a result, but are instead forced into a fight outright, seems extremely heavy-handed and artificial to me. (unless the ability was outright magical, but it's not)It's not like any of these things are a threat to the world as we know it, but IMO it's just a prime example of inconsistent and inelegant design, of the sort that ends up unnecessarily undermining a unified ruleset. (and that after all the trouble they supposedly went to in order to make 3.5 more consistent)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="mmu1, post: 2890796, member: 319"] Sorry if this was brought up already - I haven't followed the General forum in a while - but did the Knight's challenge abilities strike anyone else as the epitome of crappy game design? First of all... Why does everything need to be a swift action all of a sudden? I think that the challenges are, in many ways, quite similar to bardic music, which is always a standard action. It smacks of someone playing with new toys, rather than consitent game design. Second, why is an ability that is essentially a mind-affecting compulsion effect classified as Extraordinary, when the Bard - the class that actually specializes in manipulating others with words - has only Supernatural and Spell-Like abilities? If it acts like magic (and IMO it does, considering that it even works on things that don't speak your language), then label it as magic. Third, I realize that it's a combat ability, and it should be relatively uncomplicated... but virtually every other mind-affecting ability and spell (from Charm and Fascinate all the way to Dominate) tends to have [i]some[/i] circumstance modifiers listed, to reflect the circumstances it's used under. Also, the fact that you can't, for example, choose to refuse the challenge and end up with a morale penalty as a result, but are instead forced into a fight outright, seems extremely heavy-handed and artificial to me. (unless the ability was outright magical, but it's not) It's not like any of these things are a threat to the world as we know it, but IMO it's just a prime example of inconsistent and inelegant design, of the sort that ends up unnecessarily undermining a unified ruleset. (and that after all the trouble they supposedly went to in order to make 3.5 more consistent) [/QUOTE]

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