Hey Buugipopuu!
If you list everything (you have found) 'broken' in Ascension I'll update it and release the new version. Can't say fairer than that.
However, by 'list' I mean an actual list.
Like...
1. Shapechange: Problem is...etc.
2. Entropy Portfolio: Problem is...etc.
I have looked at the wall of text in some of your paragraphs below and it really just looks a quagmire.
That would be what is termed a 'proofreading service'. I should be charging you for that. If I compiled all the problems into a big list, then I've done all the work for you.
I think that, while numerically fairly weak, its the abuse of Shapechange thats really the problem here.
Abuse? How is using shapechange to turn into a powerful monster 'abuse'? That's the only use for shapechange. What's a non-abusive use of that ability?
Sorry I thought that it was common sense you had to actually encounter a monster before you could shapechange into one. How did you imagine a wizard (or character with shapechange) knew what to shapechange into?
Because he has max ranks in every knowledge skill and superhuman intelligence? Any anyway, you can't go around assuming limitations just because you think it's common sense. That's not what rules are for. That's "DM Makes Something Up".
Up to Level 100 individual powers and abilities are about as balanced as the core rules or epic level handbook (allowing for greater potential min-maxing of course).
Which is not very well balanced. Ergo the IH is not very well balanced. Something you have yet to admit.
Actually I just looked over Ascension and on the Divine Ability table it lists Shapechange as requiring Wildshape 5/day. Thus it should only be available to Druids. Unfortunately, in the entry for that Divine Ability the wildshape thing is not mentioned under the Prerequistes.
Text overrules tables. Not my fault the IH needs a lot of copy-editing.
I disagree. I don't think the monsters (and lets be honest we are talking about my Epic Bestiary here) are designed in the power gamer tradition. They are given a flat Challenge Rating so that typical campaigns will base their threat level on that.
No, I'm saying that if you take only combat feats you'll be better in combat than someone who has taken skill feats and so forth.
But I'd rather not force people into becoming power gamers.
I'd believe you if about 95% of the feats you made were't intended to be used primarily in combat. For someone who claims to care about roleplaying, and insults "roll players", you're not doing much to support the former.
So one combination of four different powers is better than another combination of four different powers. If I choose 4 random feats from the PHB will they be as useful as someone choosing 4 combat feats from the PHB? No, of course not.
And here we're getting to the crux of the problem. If you build characters by selecting feats at random from the PHB, it's no wonder you think anyone who's not incompetent is a 'power gamer'. It's not some super-arcane ability combination were talking about here. It's Combat Expertise and Dodge, and improved versions thereof. One feat chain versus another. I'd hate to be in a game DMed by you. "Oh no, sorry, not going to let that through. You took Improved Critical while wielding a Scimitar, that's obviously Power Gaming. You should only take Improved Critical with weapons that already have poor threat ranges."
So in your opinion, every feat, divine ability and so on MUST give a combat advantage or its worthless? Can we not have feats or abilities that are just for fun? That just let you do some cool roleplaying stuff?
Did you even read what I just wrote? I just said that Thieving [Effect] doesn't even have roleplaying applications. Anything you'd want to steal with it is too expensive. You can only steal cheap crap, which is only cool if you're roleplaying a petty kleptomaniac. And really, things with no combat utility but roleplaying applications are better off being made Epic uses of skills or skill tricks. That way people can take them without having to worry about whether or not they're sabotaging their combat effectiveness.
First fight against who? Not the monsters for one thing. Maybe the first fight on min-maxed versus boards.
Because the rest of the party built characters that weren't awful, the monsters will necessarily be more powerful in order to challenge them. That is why keeping a balance of power in the party is important. I made an encounter with a dragon once. Its breath weapon did about half the HP of an average character in my players' party, which is to be expected, as few dragons will survive to breathe a second time. When I actually ran the encounter, another player had joined the game and didn't submit his character sheet until late. He made his save against it, but got killed anyway. First combat. Dead. Spent the rest of the session sitting out waiting to rejuvenate.
Exactly, some feats and abilities and spells DON'T NEED TO BE USEFUL IN COMBAT!
Except that that ability isn't useful out of combat either. What does stealing a two dimensional quality even do? Ooh, you can steal the stripes of a tiger so that it will be slightly less evolutionarily well adapted and have a few percent higher chance of being unable to catch prey. Or make a princess fractionally less attractive to people who prefer particular eye colours. This is hardly world-changing epic stuff. And it's Epic Skill material anyway.
Why should the Immortals Handbook be judged by higher standards than the core rules? As I said before, I'm flattered by it, but it seems a bit out of place.
Because you're making claims that it's well balanced. Which you should not be. And no, I'm not judging it by a higher standard, as if I were, I'd have a lot more to say about spelling, punctuation and procrastination.
I get the impression that the last thing you are concerned about is overshadowing 'underpowered members of the party'.
That would be true, because as a DM, I'm not a member of the party. I never build PCs. And what I am concerned about is my players overshadowing other players. And the only way to fix that is to tell them that what the rules say they can do, they can't. "DM Makes Something Up". I also have to be concerned with not accidentally making NPCs too strong or weak for their roles, which again is confounded by the fact that you can make a character to a theme and then find that even though it technically has the ECL you wanted, it'd utterly destroy the party or barely be a speed bump.
Simply because I don't wear the power-gamer tinted glasses that you do. There is game balance and then there is power-game balance. I'm only going for game balance.
Well then, "only going for" game balance isn't wonderful.
If you think stealing pocket change from thousands of commoners is fun, then just let your players do it anyway. If an ability has no mechanical effect, then it should have no cost either.
Sweatborn means you don't have to run around pregnant for 9 months.
No, that's Egg Born. Sweat Born gives very little over it for six times the cost.
Surely this is useful when you get attacked by mobs of weaker creatures? I mean I understand its not much use against beings more powerful than your character, but it is still useful.
Why spend DvAs on destroying mobs of weaker creatures? You can scatter them all with the fear aura you're given for free. And if they're immune to fear, then you can probably still ignore them, since they're not capable of damaging you past your DR. If you really need to kill them, say there are some civvies you need to protect, just Anyfeat some AoE.
Heavenly body is an AC bonus, Weapon Depreciation gives an AC bonus (effectively) AND reduces enemy damage.
An AC bonus that works less than one third of the time. 1-16 damage loss per hit isn't worth mentioning.
It is a bit vague, apologies for that. Its meant to let you stack spells on top of arrows (or any missile weapons). So for instance you could shoot an arrow and it will explode like a fireball etc.
Even that's insufficient to specify the ability. What kinds of spells? Restrictions on area, target, range, or school? Does it expend the spell slot as if it were cast? Does it provoke an AoO? Are targets still allowed a reflex save if they're struck by the missile? What about if it misses? What about spells which already allow attack rolls? Or ones which already allow multiple attack rolls? What's the limit on casting time? What action does it take? Can you put a different spell on every arrow in a Many/Rapidshot? Can a spell crit? If it could crit before, does it benefit from abilities which improve your ranged attack criticals or damage? And don't come back with some like about WotC and thousands of testers. I thought of all those issues sitting here in about as long as it took to type this paragraph up. These are the sorts of things you should be thinking about before writing an ability up. "What do I need to specify to make this unambiguous in actual play" is something you should always consider. Spell Shot is the worst offender, but there are so many vague abilities that I haven't mentioned because they're not particularly notable for their balance, only their vagueness.
Its not meant to be a combat 'take down' of the BBEG. Its more of a Roleplaying ability.
Which should be given away for free. And practically is, given that you can get
suggestion at will for having a lot of Bluff. You can role-play being a superhuman charmer without taking a DvA to let you do it.
In my experience, vorpal weapons are quite popular at epic levels.
That's not the point. Mutability gives decapitation immunity and a bunch of other stuff and has no prerequisites. It's strictly better. And don't go "OMG SOME ABILITIES ARE WEAKER THAN OTHERS WOTC DOES IT TOO SO I'M ALLOWED TO BE BAD". Even WotC haven't printed two abilities within two pages of each other where one is strictly better than the other.
*Which I assume means you're counting all the portfolio abilities, which is very generous given how many of them are copies of each other.
You would still be hasted in Anti-magic.
Blinding Speed already gets that and has it as a prerequisite. And combat is so fatal at this level that there's no justification for taking Blinding Speed more than about three times, even if you're rolling in unspent feats, let alone something that costs six times as much.
I still think the game is well balanced with only 1 cosmic in play. I think the big trouble starts when multiple cosmic abilities start to come into play.
Actually, the opposite is true. When lots of cosmics are in play, everyone has them, and the game turns into "Does your 'I Win' Ability trump the other guy's 'I Win' ability". When only one cosmic is around, some people have cosmics and others don't, and cosmics (especially the ones low level characters actually qualify for) are so muc
Divine Abilities are worth more than feats. Thus any swing in disparity will be greater.
Proportionally, they're not. Sub-epic characters get seven feats at 20th level. You surpass seven DvAs before even get half-way up the Immortal hierarchy.
Its not unbalanced up to Level 200 unless you start power gaming for TEH L33T character builds.
Have you ever GMed a game of your own system? I've got two regular power gaming players, who consistently make powerful characters and need rules patches to reign in, and three (or four, depending on who's available) so-so players who are new to the system tend to make characters of massively differing powers with no consistency over who's weakest.
You punch them.
...you know that Nullification only works on feats don't you? It doesn't work on Divine Abilities...or Magic Items...etc.
With your 1d3 nonlethal damage dealing punches that provoke attacks of opportunity when you attack? And look at the prereqs of most Monk DvAs. Most of them have feats in them. They're now useless. And without Double Standards or Dire Charge, you're probably restricted to making a single such attack per round, because you can't make AoOs or Trip attempts any more, so have no way of controlling the movement of other characters. Losing all your feats has pretty serious knock-on effects. Especially if you have a PrC with a feat as a prerequisite.
...you could have always just asked me, you know, like TrueSpade did. You don't have to bottle it all up, that way leads to the dark side.
Well, I just rewrote everything myself. The point here is not to get clarifications, it's to get you to admit that you were wrong.
Alzrius said:
Much like your citation of his saying it was "perfect" didn't exist? You shouldn't say that someone else's assertions don't hold up when yours don't.
Show me where I said that. Post number and quotes. I'm tired of you putting words in my mouth.
You're again making the fatal (for your argument) mistake that someone your experience is some sort of truism. It's not. I've actually observed the play reports of other people in U_K's forums saying that you're wrong (because you are). It is not "almost impossible to get four players making characters that can adventure with each other" without a heavy handed DM; it was almost impossible for your players.
You don't speak for everyone, or even anyone. Stop pretending you're revealing some sort of greater truth.
Well, you're certainly being very reluctant to show these reports.
This is exceptionally hypocritical considering that you were just referring me to other threads.
I referred you to a single other thread because you asked where an improvement over the IH was. You referred to an entire forum. Moreover, you made a claim, and have yet to provide evidence of it. I was not referring to said thread to provide evidence for a claim I made. If you can't provide any examples of IH games going swimmingly with no house rules or other collaboration to ensure equally powered characters, then they don't exist.
I think before that, you should read the links I provided previously in that there's no such thing as "equal power," and that "balance" is a meaningless term.
Have you ever played an RPG? Like, ever? There are times when everyone contributes equally, and times when they don't. What is that if not balance?
See above. All you're saying is "I broke it so it's bad," rather than admitting that just because you broke something doesn't mean that it's inherently breakable.
No. I'm saying "Most players I've seen break it, and extra special effort has to be put in to not break it, so it's bad."
Wow. This is so wrong it's staggering to behold. You can't identify anything in an RPG that's an "absolute standard" for anything else. The fact that you don't realize that is more evidence that you don't know the difference between your personal experience and everyone else's.
Cleric 20 Wisdom 6, Str 6, Dex 18, Int 10 Cha 18. Feats: Skill focus in seven different Knowledge skills it doesn't have ranks in. Skills: Only different profession skills, ranks spread as thinly as possible, doesn't have any of the tools necessary to practice said professions. Wealth: Spent entirely on expired canned tomatoes.
You're saying that that character's only relatively bad, and that there are some people who would consider it good? Also Challenge Rating proves that there is a standard independent of individual experience by which characters are made.
Wrong. He released a product that could conceivably be better; that doesn't make it unfinished. This is like saying that WotC owes you money because 3.0 was unfinished compared to 3.5. It's unforgivably arrogant, and flat-out wrong.
Show me the spelling and grammatical errors plaguing nearly every page of the 3.0 PHB. Or the giant white spaces where the art was supposed to be but they couldn't be bothered to draw. Or the fact that it was meant to be released with a Monster Manual but wasn't. Or the years the 3.0 PHB was delayed after they'd already started taking preorders. None of the problems I mentioned have anything to do with the 3.0 to 3.5 change.
Just because it refers to material in another book doesn't make it unfinished. WotC does that all the time with their books.
Give me one example of a reference in a WotC book to another book that was never even written. Just one.
Just because material was cut from a book before its release doesn't make it unfinished; that happens with a significant number of all books.
Material that was advertised specifically while preorders were taking place?
Just because the art isn't all there doesn't make the book unfinished; it just means that you got all the art that was available at the time.
There are giant holes in the formatting where the art's supposed to be. He couldn't even be bothered to redo the page breaks, something that literally takes seconds.
You are owed nothing; not even an answer to your questions. You should be thankful for the fact that he does answer them (and with much more respect than you deserve, based on your conduct here).
So you're perfectly okay with the fact that the product he shipped is not the product he advertised? If you went to a restaurant and ordered a fish and chips, and they took your money, and several hours later than you expected, were presented with a plate of chips, because the cook didn't feel like making any fish today, you'd be fine with that?
Quite simply, your entire argument boils down to "I don't like it." The fact that you think that if you keep saying that over and over, you'll actually somehow make that anything other than your opinion, is sad. That you think that somehow you're owed something to quiet your tantrum is foolish.
Actually, I haven't even gotten to the stuff I don't like. That's different. I'm deliberately focussing on mechanical and formatting issues here. If you want me to talk about the things I don't like about the book, I can.
Dandu said:
Ok, while I don't think the Immortals Handbook is that good, I don't think it's bad enough to warrant this amount of attention.
This is true. However, arguing on the Internet is fun enough to warrant me continuing to do so.
