Psion's list of rules from 3.5 he will NOT be using...

[BryonD]

Oh, I understand what it is trying to do. The problem is that it forgets what miniatures are trying to do in the first place -- represent creatures.

Hmm, I don't follow that.

A mini does not represent the creature anymore than a chess bishop represents the clergy.

Having the mini look like the creature is very nice indeed. But I have to work around that all the time anyway. Dice make minis constantly. Last night I used a triceratops to be a thunderbeast.

A mini's primary use is tactical representation. That should be more important than appearance. Appearance is gravy.

Plus, I have a bunch of horse type minis that are 2" by 1". I have never for an instant considered tossing them. I can A)just say that this is their "size" but they threaten the 2X2 area that I place them in the center of OR B) use a 2X2 paper under them if it every became an issue. I really don't see ever needing to back down to B.

As an aside, I think FD's excellent counters are about the only true 3E victim of the 3.5 change. (Though only for previously non-square creatures)

 

[BryonD]

Darn astute analogy! It's okay for a class to have an ability that is not useful in all situations. Heck, in fact I think that is part of what the "team of specialists" approach of D&D is all about.

Actually, I think it is a seriosuly flawed analogy. Because it misses the whole point.

The problem is not that the mount is only useful some of the time. The problem is that the mount must be kept up with all the time and therefore, going somewhere where the mount can not be used either severly disrupts the flow of the game or permanently disables the paladin by removing a class feature.

Now if a cleric had to use the turn undead ability daily or lose it and there were places where multiday adventures could occur and the cleric was banned from using turn undead there, the analogy would hold.

 

[Staffan]

Re: Re: Psion's list of rules from 3.5 he will NOT be using...

No inconsistency exists because there is no hit location chart in 3e, so it really doesn't matter that the base shows a theoretical shape. It's like an abstract snapshot of where the creature is.

The problem with rectangular facings does not have so much to do with where the critter is hit as it has with where it can attack others, and with moving around and turning and stuff. Why can a dire bear bite someone when his head is pointed in the other direction? What about when it moves from N/S facing to E/W facing - is that a 5' step, or what is it?

Power attack ALREADY will be made a must-have by the new DR rules. And two-handed weapon fighters benefit the most from the power attack, so this seems like it will really overemphasize the two-hander fighter, which is already a pretty strong type of fighter. I prefer more equally viable options.

The problem with D&D 3.0 power attack is that it's most useful for precisely the kind of people it should be least useful for - those wielding light weapons that don't do much damage. That's because each point of damage you add with Power Attack has a bigger proportional effect (the difference between 1d4+2 and 1d4+3 is pretty big, but who cares if you do 2d6+10 or 2d6+11?)

As Andy Collins said, if D&D had been a computer game (where math is taken care of behind the scenes, it should probably have been a multiplier of 0.5 for light weapons and 1.5 for two-handed weapons, but since the players have to do the math on the fly they made it 0 and 2 instead.

 

[Gargoyle]

• Square facings -- Doesn't bother me at all.
• School Specialization -- They shouldn't have treated divination as a weaker school. Expert players know it isn't.
• Nerfed spell focus -- I like the nerf. I feel like spellcasters had the ability to jack up save DCs much too easily. But more importantly, I feel like Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus are boring feats, much like Weapon Focus, Dodge or Toughness. Boring, passive feats should be weaker. Feats that are active and affect gameplay more should be more powerful to encourage their use. I'd rather see a spellcaster take an interesting metamagic feat than Spell Focus, just like I'd rather see a fighter take Power Attack rather than Weapon Focus. It's more fun when a player has to think about using the feat, rather than just adding numbers up.
• Doubled power attack damage -- Not many people like this one. I've decided that it does encourage what they intended: More two-handed weapon use with Power Attack. They wanted to see more people use greatswords and greataxes with Power Attack instead of rapiers and longswords. Whether that's a good thing, I don't know yet. I'm on the fence.
• Deflect arrows -- I dislike this change. Negating an attack outright with a feat is a bad design IMO, and the saving throw didn't really slow down play.
• Pokemon Paladins -- The flavor text for it in the PHB is much better than the derisive "Pokemon" paladin term I'm seeing thrown around here, and I like this change a lot. It makes the special mount a lot more useful than in any previous edition, and I have no problem with the believability of it. Calling your special mount from a celestial plane when you need it makes perfect sense to me, both from a flavor and gameplay standpoint. The paladin is a spellcasting class with lots of magical abilities, and this fits in fine.
  

 

[Piratecat]

Giving the paladin a summonable magic mount so he can 'always fight from atop his steed' regardless of his location...

is like making giving every monster in the game the 'undead' tag so a cleric can always use his 'turn undead' ability.

It's bogus and it's lame.

Your unilateral statement bothers me; I would accept "I think it's bogus and it's lame," but please try to avoid absolutes. Personally, I think it's neither.

In any case, I don't agree with your analogy. It would be more like saying "a cleric can use turning attempts to do things other than turn undead." Oh, wait - with the feats in Defenders of the Faith, he can! Huh. How about that.

In the same way that you wouldn't want to make a wizard's class abilities useless by giving every monster an unbeatable SR, you don't want the paladin's class ability to be useless. Since the rules can't make you provide certain types of encounters that involve the horse, a far more elegant solution is to allow the paladin an easy method of summoning or bringing the horse along with him.

Of course, this still doesn't give the paladin carte blanche to bring the horse into every combat; far from it. Since you can only summon it once per day, don't expect it to be your adventuring buddy. But if you're in a city and the bad guy is escaping, you'll no longer have to make a run for the stables. I think that's great.

 

[Umbran]

Re: Re: Psion's list of rules from 3.5 he will NOT be using...

Oh, I understand what it is trying to do. The problem is that it forgets what miniatures are trying to do in the first place -- represent creatures.

Hm. A small statue sitting on the shelf may represent a creature. But when you put it on a battlemap, it's doing something a little more specific - it's representing the functional space the critter uses in combat.

 

[Jesster]

Universal Square Facing

Oh, I understand what it is trying to do. The problem is that it forgets what miniatures are trying to do in the first place -- represent creatures.

Based on the rest of your response, I'm not sure you do understand what they're trying to do.

Why? Because the first purpose of minatures is to represent their shape.

No inconsistency exists because there is no hit location chart in 3e

The inconsistency they're trying to fix is not one of hit location. Its an inconsistency in orientation and movement. A 5x5 creature can freely rotate to face any direction within his square at any time. However, if a 5x10 creature rotates 90 degrees, he now occupys a different pair of squares on the battlfield grid. This can affect which of his enemy's are within his reach. Should simply rotating be considered a move action? A 5' step? If so, why should a 5x10 creature be required to use up movement to accomplish something that a 5x5 or 10x10 or 20x20 creature can do for free. On the other hand, if rotation doesn't require any sort of movement, then a 5x10 creature could combine a rotation with a 5' step and suddenly threaten a creature that was previously 15' away from him. Or he could do the opposite and use a combination 5' step and rotation to effectively move 10' away from someone attacking him, thus forcing them to move more than 5' and not get a full attack the next round.

Its an ugly situation and its unclear how its supposed to work in the current rules. Universal square facing, while it does not mesh well with the size and shape of some minitures completely eliminates the problem described above. Which, in turn, simplifies and streamlines combat.

-=The Jesster: Gatchaba Goose=-

 

[heirodule]

The 15 knights bear down on the square of 150 pikemen (15 wide and 10 deep

Old way: Facing of knights: 75', Facing of pikemen 75'

New way: Facing of Knights: 150': Facing of pikemen: 75'

Now the knights will wrap around the pikemen.

That's what's wrong with square facing.

 

[Psion]

A mini does not represent the creature anymore than a chess bishop represents the clergy.

Okay. My clerics are represented by clerics. Or close facsimiles.

Having the mini look like the creature is very nice indeed. But I have to work around that all the time anyway. Dice make minis constantly. Last night I used a triceratops to be a thunderbeast.[/b]

Well that's a different issue entirely. I use dice for opponents too. But I still get the shape right.

A mini's primary use is tactical representation.

Precisely. But this change doesn't help tactical representation save in the most generic "wander around an hit things" scenario, where tactical representation is the simplest.

Let's take a chariot with two horses pulling it. In 3.0. the horses would be able to attack to either side of them within 5'. Does a horse really attack to the side? Well, probably not really. But is is reasonably within the level of abstraction to assume the square grid is not exat, and the horse is slightly askew for long enough to affect a character there, or to have hit it while dashing by.

Now under 3.5, all of the sudeen the horses can attack creatures 10' to either side of them, which is ludicrous. You see, the shape of the creture should define what it can do and where it can reach. This "tactical zone of control" thing is silly, because with the reach and AoO rules, creatures already have a tactical zone of control.


I have a game to run tonight. I really didn't need this thread...

 

[Gargoyle]

Your unilateral statement bothers me; I would accept "I think it's bogus and it's lame," but please try to avoid absolutes. Personally, I think it's neither.

Aw, c'mon PCat, I think we can assume that people are posting their opinions, even when they don't use "I think" or "IMO". I don't think he was trying to say that his thoughts were facts. Err, I mean, he wasn't trying to say that his thoughts were facts.