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Making PrC's "Treasure"?
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<blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6065000" data-attributes="member: 6696971"><p>I understand your preferences here. But truly, we can regress this design tenet all the way back through the entirety of the mechanics; magic items (prestige classes) > feats > intra-class build features > classes > races > backgrounds. What we would end up with is an unwieldy collage of anarchy that would collapse in on itself with DMs trying to sort out a challenging framework with wildly disparate power levels inside their groups. Bob with the overpowered rod A, crystal ball b, and the prestige class that summons hordes of Celestials will know all, see all, destroy all while Jack and his + n armor, flaming sword, and the prestige class that hits MOAR harder with his flaming sword will be my undoing (as a DM).</p><p></p><p>I'm not sure what purpose a vacuum of balance with vague, abstract "advice" or "guidelines" serves. What's more, I'm not sure I trust such hand-waving advice as I've seen it before and I'll just have to end up performing my own play-testing to confirm the statistical confidence implied by a designer quantified, abstract power level definition within a system with wildly different resource schemes and wildly different bindings on "what magic can do" and "what mundane can do". Just as important, this will almost assuredly be adjudicated by multiple designers, especially as time goes on, with multiple subjective determination of malleable words like "epic" or "heroic" thereby further reducing the usefulness of such vague terminology.</p><p></p><p>I already have my fears about the impacts of, and inevitable reliance upon, magic items "off the books" on the output equation for PCs. Tethering Prestige Classes (and thus furthering the perturbation of paragon/epic play toward wild swinginess) to the same design framework seems to be asking for a house of cards.</p><p></p><p>On the other hand, if they used your idea (provided a hard-coded, play-tested, quality controlled "grade") for prestige classes, did the same thing with magic items, and then gave us a module that properly quantified the impact of magic item A and prestige class B within the scope of a PCs build output (and correspondingly against an encounter budget), then we would have something.</p><p></p><p>However, as is, if we're going to put both magic items and prestige classes "off the books" and then have a legitimate (gratuitous in this case) book for budgeting encounter design...well, I personally would expect 11th - 20th level play to be just as gut-wrenchingly maddening and dissatisfying in both prep and play that many (as has been the case in the past) will just forgo it altogether.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Manbearcat, post: 6065000, member: 6696971"] I understand your preferences here. But truly, we can regress this design tenet all the way back through the entirety of the mechanics; magic items (prestige classes) > feats > intra-class build features > classes > races > backgrounds. What we would end up with is an unwieldy collage of anarchy that would collapse in on itself with DMs trying to sort out a challenging framework with wildly disparate power levels inside their groups. Bob with the overpowered rod A, crystal ball b, and the prestige class that summons hordes of Celestials will know all, see all, destroy all while Jack and his + n armor, flaming sword, and the prestige class that hits MOAR harder with his flaming sword will be my undoing (as a DM). I'm not sure what purpose a vacuum of balance with vague, abstract "advice" or "guidelines" serves. What's more, I'm not sure I trust such hand-waving advice as I've seen it before and I'll just have to end up performing my own play-testing to confirm the statistical confidence implied by a designer quantified, abstract power level definition within a system with wildly different resource schemes and wildly different bindings on "what magic can do" and "what mundane can do". Just as important, this will almost assuredly be adjudicated by multiple designers, especially as time goes on, with multiple subjective determination of malleable words like "epic" or "heroic" thereby further reducing the usefulness of such vague terminology. I already have my fears about the impacts of, and inevitable reliance upon, magic items "off the books" on the output equation for PCs. Tethering Prestige Classes (and thus furthering the perturbation of paragon/epic play toward wild swinginess) to the same design framework seems to be asking for a house of cards. On the other hand, if they used your idea (provided a hard-coded, play-tested, quality controlled "grade") for prestige classes, did the same thing with magic items, and then gave us a module that properly quantified the impact of magic item A and prestige class B within the scope of a PCs build output (and correspondingly against an encounter budget), then we would have something. However, as is, if we're going to put both magic items and prestige classes "off the books" and then have a legitimate (gratuitous in this case) book for budgeting encounter design...well, I personally would expect 11th - 20th level play to be just as gut-wrenchingly maddening and dissatisfying in both prep and play that many (as has been the case in the past) will just forgo it altogether. [/QUOTE]
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