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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Buugipopuu" data-source="post: 5777693" data-attributes="member: 41173">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.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?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".Which is not very well balanced.  Ergo the IH is not very well balanced.  Something you have yet to admit.Text overrules tables.  Not my fault the IH needs a lot of copy-editing.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.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."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.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.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.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.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.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.No, that's Egg Born.  Sweat Born gives very little over it for six times the cost.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. An AC bonus that works less than one third of the time.  1-16 damage loss per hit isn't worth mentioning.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.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.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.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.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 mucProportionally, 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.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.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.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.Show me where I said that.  Post number and quotes.  I'm tired of you putting words in my mouth.Well, you're certainly being very reluctant to show these reports.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.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?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."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.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.Give me one example of a reference in a WotC book to another book that was never even written.  Just one.Material that was advertised specifically while preorders were taking place?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.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?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.This is true.  However, arguing on the Internet is fun enough to warrant me continuing to do so.</blockquote>

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