So how many of you made the switch?
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DungeonMaster
First Post
Never say impossible.jcfiala said:
I think the record is something like 668 spells in one round, or 643 without using up a lot of gold.
http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=457351
12+ was from abusing the artificer I beleive, and minimal gold expenditure. I don't track these things at all really. But these people do, for serious fun:
http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=292273
I run almost exclusively core 3rd edition game without any "prestige classes" incidentally. I've never had to quelch anything, not haste nor harm or any other spells but I have a strong beleif that the DM should quelch anything he deems broken for his game. People often have very different standards for what's "broken". I've challenged many PCs armed with haste, harm and even better magics with plain simple MM monsters, and sometimes killed them well within CR.
jcfiala
Explorer
DungeonMaster said:Never say impossible.
I think the record is something like 668 spells in one round, or 643 without using up a lot of gold.
http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=457351
12+ was from abusing the artificer I beleive, and minimal gold expenditure. I don't track these things at all really. But these people do, for serious fun:
http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=292273
These guys are going a little too deep into jargon, and a little too deep into odd books, but it looks to me that they only manage to do this by casting a whole bunch of spells, which then all go off on the same round or something - it hardly seems like something you'd see in a home game - it's like looking at element #108 - it's neat to know it can exist, but I'll never have to deal with it.
DungeonMaster
First Post
Not a problem anhar, the tone of conversation is just right.anhar said:
The sudden feats, and divine metamagic stack with the rods too. I understand your fix for the choker, it's more or less an RP fix. Roleplaying fixes can work, and work well, but you need the proper group. I'de be surprised that the same group of people that will cherry pick levels wouldn't read the MM and try to abuse chokers.
That's true, though two fireballs in one round at 5th level is on average 35 damage save for half.
It's good, but is 35 damage save for half that big of deal at 5th level? Two 3rd level NPC fighters can readily afford and throw javelins of lightning for 10d6 damage a round, or a single 6th level fighter with quickdraw. Red dragon breath is 6d10 at CR 6 and it can do it every 1d4 round. 35 area-of-effect damage, while respectable at ~5th level isn't going to break the game. If it does, then really there are a lot of other monsters, items and abilities that will do that as well and we have to throw those out too. Even if you come up against an NPC wizard armed with a wand and haste.
As an aside he would likely need a scroll of haste or be an evoker/transmuter on top of that because he only gets 2 3rd level spells even with ~22 int (<24!) and haste consumes one of those.
Defenders of the faith is not a good book. In fact it's pretty damn terrible, and complete divine is just as bad in my opinion (with worse editing). Different flavor of bad but will make your game sick either way without excessive pruning.
I agree, and the largest fraction don't even try to do this. In my experience the whole haste+quickened spells are not used either, people don't find quicken worth the trade-off and merely use haste. Very rarely have I seen a quickened spell from a PC. I've likewise seen haste cast on warriors and rogues much more often than on wizards or clerics. This is largely as a result of the fact that wizards don't often have the right spell or enough spells to overcome the monsters while swords cut through time and time again.
Metamagic rod cheese can begin quite early, as soon as craft rod comes around at 9th level. The maximize rod is the best of course and you can do all sorts of cheesy things like empowered maximized fireballs at 9th level. You memorize the spell empowered, it takes up a 5th level slot but the spell's level doesn't change per the metamagic rules so the lesser metamagic rod still works fine on it. Cheese is more expensive in 3.5, but it's also better and more versatile.
The metamagic rods first appeared in the 3rd edition splat books at 10 times the price. It's unreal they made it into the core 3.5 rules, at 10 times lower price too boot. I couldn't beleive it when I saw it.
Hit the quote button and that will show you the proper structure. It's basically [*quote] text you want [*/quote] minus the *s.
I could talk a lot about the 3rd edition ranger but I won't, just one paragraph. I've never had a player upset with playing one, and everyone thinks they're a good class. The main reason is there are 2 classes in the game, ranger and rogue, that get spot, listen, search, hide and move silently and these are the most used skills in the entire game. Spot primarily, especially if you actually USE the rules for starting encounters which many people here ignore wholesale. (Incidentally to these people: how do you determine who's surprised and who's not without these checks??! Hand waiving?)
The ranger is a skilled warrior, the rogue a skill monkey so to speak. You can't stand at the front as a rogue in 3rd edition, if you can your DM is doing something wrong. They really do have their niche, the most survivable party I've ever had is my current one - ranger, paladin, cleric, wizard (9th level not a single death). Without a d10 hit-die I guarantee the ranger would have died 4 times in this campaign, this is not a fabrication. It is really very important, from practice, to have a d10 hit die at the front lines in the low-mid levels when you don't wear heavy armor and don't have massive stat boosting items.
Druids outclass rangers in every way shape and form in 3.5. The have spot and listen in 3.5 as class skills. They even made the bonuses to hide from armor special abilities higher than any bonus you can get in 3rd edition. Wildshape in 3.5 give creature type and racial bonuses as a result so crazy high skills can be found. A few cross class skill ranks, wildshape and you're set. Non-core can get silly fast. I personally coined the term "priests of the coast" after reading the 3.5 core rules, someone else CodZilla some time later when it finally sunk in I wasn't merely some lunatic.
Bard song is a free action in 3rd edition, he can fight when he sings, be it intended or not. If you really want me to analyze the spell list I can, but the reply is getting long.
The wish loophole is that it's worded such that adding things and/or creating magic items does not have GP cap. So never give out a ring of wishes, because they can just wish for more rings or make other rings into rings of wishes and so forth. Infinite wishes.
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AdmundfortGeographer
Getting lost in fantasy maps
After seeing 3.0 abused like an unloved pet in Living Greyhawk games I jumped to 3.5 instantly and have been happy with the results ever since.
Hussar
Legend
Not sure how well the choker thing would work anyway. First, you lose all your spell components when you shapechange. Not a big deal, you could drop them and pick them up again, but, something to be aware of. Secondly, I'm not sure if you can actually talk in that shape. While chokers do speak undercommon, I'm not sure if you can actually cast. The same way that Druids shapechanged into a parrot can't cast spells either. The funky shaped hands and lack of elbows might make somatic casting a problem as well.
I'd think this is a bit that's pretty simply nerfed.
I'd think this is a bit that's pretty simply nerfed.
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Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
DungeonMaster said:
Did the ranger roll really well on his d10 each level, or did he hit average? If he was rolling average it would only make a difference of 10hp (2@1st, 1@other levels) - and could even be superceded by a character who had d8's for HD.
I find that the HD are rolled so infrequently that wild skewiness(tm) often comes into the picture that dilutes the apparent value of HD in a class statistics. Our campaigns have typically used one of two methods to reduce this skewiness (IMC if your HD roll is less than half max, it is raised to half max, so a d10 gives 5,5,5,5,5,6,7,8,9,10; another campaign uses you roll and DM makes secret roll. after seeing your roll you decide to take your own or take the DMs secret roll and keep your fingers crossed). House rules to try and make HD size reliably mean a little more.
Cheers
DestroyYouAlot
First Post
Plane Sailing said:
I've been using a method for a long time that I'm really fond of, it knocks the sharp corner off the lower end of the bell-curve really well.
Roll two dice for hit dice, your class die and the next "step" down - i.e., a fighter leveling from 1st to 2nd rolls a d10 and a d8 - and take the highest of the two results. This results in a lot less 1's and 2's, but I still do see them. However, wizards and sorcerors (especially) have a hell of a lot better chance to escape a "1" than with the base d4. It works for us, anyway.
Ok, folks, back on topic, now.
Oh god I just looked at 3.5 wish and you're completely correct, DungeonMaster. Thank god I found that before my PC's did. It does say that you lose 2x the experience cost for making a magical item if you wish for it, but I don't think that applies if you use a ring/scroll/spell like ability, so lots and lots of room for cheese there.
So did I, when I DM'ed 3.0. but I'm a clever/experienced DM, and I'm assuming you are too (given your name).
The problem is that Haste and Harm/Heal are extremely easy to find/abuse. Of course a DM has to look out for powergamers cheesing up his game (especially with non-core stuff). Sometimes you beat them with cleverness, sometimes you just cheese them right back (Had a hasted (potion) 15th level druid in a control-weather created thunderstorm drop two empowered/maximized DC 25 call lightnings on the party in the first round of combat. They had to fight that guy on three seperate occasions to beat him. Throughout those fights he killed 5 PC's (in a 4 PC party. He killed everybody at least once))
Normal players (non-powergamers) will find and use Haste and Harm/Heal. And inexperienced 3.0 DM's will have whole campaigns mauled by those unbalanced spells. That's the problem with them, they're ludicrously unbalanced, and they're well known spells at reasonably accessible levels. In case you really don't think haste is unbalanced think of this: Who, knowing what haste does, would make a wizard who loses the transmutation domain in 3.0? He'd be half a wizard. Less, since he's losing Teleport too! At best he'd be entirely dependent on potions.
You are correct on quickened spells. the earliest I've ever seen someone take the feat is 12th level, and most caster PC's have just ignored it entirely. (Until epic levels and automatic quicken spell OH GOD MY EARS ARE BLEEDING)
I imagine you have to be exaggerating when you say they were 10x the cost, as that would put a lesser rod of maximizing at 140k, and a medium one well into the epic levels of cost. (590k) It would be interesting to know exactly how much the prices were dropped.
I think the idea that the lesser metamagic rod could effect a spell brought to 5th level by metamagic is somewhat shady. I think a better rules-lawyer than myself would have to look at it to be sure, regardless of RAW though I wouldn't allow it, though honestly I don't think I'd allow metamagic rods in general.
I see what you're saying in terms of the Ranger's hit dice, but my experience is much like the two above posters, without a normalizing effect on hit dice, d10 is really very much like d8. I find Constitution to be much more important than 1 step of HD. As for your players being happy with the 3.0 ranger, that's great. I'm honestly glad your players are happy. I'm just saying that mine would not be. And given the 20+ people I've gamed with and the general feel from the internet (here and wotc (potc?) boards) I would have to say that you and your group are in the minority on this issue. Most people seem like they would like a class progression rather than a one step bonus in HD. But I think we may have to agree to disagree on this topic.
As for druids outclassing them, I honestly didn't know that druids got spot and listen now. I've never seen one played in 3.0 or 3.5. Dm'ed a few, but never seen a player use one. I'm going to skillfully ignore the wildshape issue you brought up for fear of bringing in people who feel very strongly (flamewar) one way or the other. I don't know if that fear is well grounded, but I know I've seen alot of angry internet over that and polymorph.
I know what you're saying about bard song in 3.0. I played a bard for a short while in a 3.0 campaign, and I argued with my DM (and won) that it was a free action. That's because I am a jackass. Internally, I thought at the time, and still do, that I was incorrect. This is simply because it only says "while singing, the bard can fight, but cannot cast spells" It never states that starting the supernatural, mind affecting ability is a free action. thus, unless there is errata, it would be a standard action to start, then you can continue it while fighting, etc. Not that having it be a free action would be broken, holy crap the 3.0 bard needs SOMETHING. Add to that that once again, you get more access to bardic music with ranks in perform, not bard level, and this is easily abusable.
As it stands now, my 3.5 bard/8 is very happy to run around in a chain shirt with no spell failure chance, while singing his (standard action to start) inspire courage at twice the effectiveness of the 3.0 bard.
From what I see of the 1st level bard spell list here, without going into much detail, they dropped the following spells from the 3.0 list
Mage Armor
Magic Weapon
Protection from Alignment
They added a bunch of new spells to the 3.5 list. {many of which, yes, are worthless. yay obscure item) I haven't looked at the other levels yet. Since they can wear armor now, they don't need mage armor. As for the other two, I guess they weren't bard-y enough? I guess magic weapon can be nice, but I never saw a bard actually take the spell. Prot/Align should be on the list I think. But it doesn't look like a real serious "nerfing" yet. maybe more investigation will yield more.
I guess the main thing for me is that I feel that almost everything they did with the core classes in 3.5 is a massive, massive improvement. Add that to fixing harm/heal/haste/stat-blocks and making swarms (favorite monster for this DM) and it just seriously outweighs the harm caused by metamagic rods (which are up to the DM to give out, unless a PC takes craft rod, which I've never seen anyone do) and the weapon sizing. especially since the weapon sizing includes a variant rule for doing it the other way.
As I said, I don't have the 3.0 DMG anymore, so I would like to know how traps are handled in there. I don't get if the issue with traps is that they broke traps in 3.5, or they just failed to fix traps in 3.5. The more I read the trap section the angrier I get, too. I may start up a new thread just to get a discussion/thread going on traps. Maybe someone has insight into what the idea is behind the CR/cost.
Oh and I didn't know my PC's were weird powergamers for ignoring polymorph/alter self/wildshape/shapechange until I read some threads on these boards about 2 years ago. I have successfully never ever mentioned any form of shapechanging in front of them since then for fear of clueing them in.
oh and btw, mod type peoples, do I need to control the length of my posts? cause I seem to post way longer than anyone else.
DungeonMaster said:
So did I, when I DM'ed 3.0. but I'm a clever/experienced DM, and I'm assuming you are too (given your name).
The problem is that Haste and Harm/Heal are extremely easy to find/abuse. Of course a DM has to look out for powergamers cheesing up his game (especially with non-core stuff). Sometimes you beat them with cleverness, sometimes you just cheese them right back (Had a hasted (potion) 15th level druid in a control-weather created thunderstorm drop two empowered/maximized DC 25 call lightnings on the party in the first round of combat. They had to fight that guy on three seperate occasions to beat him. Throughout those fights he killed 5 PC's (in a 4 PC party. He killed everybody at least once))
Normal players (non-powergamers) will find and use Haste and Harm/Heal. And inexperienced 3.0 DM's will have whole campaigns mauled by those unbalanced spells. That's the problem with them, they're ludicrously unbalanced, and they're well known spells at reasonably accessible levels. In case you really don't think haste is unbalanced think of this: Who, knowing what haste does, would make a wizard who loses the transmutation domain in 3.0? He'd be half a wizard. Less, since he's losing Teleport too! At best he'd be entirely dependent on potions.
You are correct on quickened spells. the earliest I've ever seen someone take the feat is 12th level, and most caster PC's have just ignored it entirely. (Until epic levels and automatic quicken spell OH GOD MY EARS ARE BLEEDING)
I imagine you have to be exaggerating when you say they were 10x the cost, as that would put a lesser rod of maximizing at 140k, and a medium one well into the epic levels of cost. (590k) It would be interesting to know exactly how much the prices were dropped.
I think the idea that the lesser metamagic rod could effect a spell brought to 5th level by metamagic is somewhat shady. I think a better rules-lawyer than myself would have to look at it to be sure, regardless of RAW though I wouldn't allow it, though honestly I don't think I'd allow metamagic rods in general.
I see what you're saying in terms of the Ranger's hit dice, but my experience is much like the two above posters, without a normalizing effect on hit dice, d10 is really very much like d8. I find Constitution to be much more important than 1 step of HD. As for your players being happy with the 3.0 ranger, that's great. I'm honestly glad your players are happy. I'm just saying that mine would not be. And given the 20+ people I've gamed with and the general feel from the internet (here and wotc (potc?) boards) I would have to say that you and your group are in the minority on this issue. Most people seem like they would like a class progression rather than a one step bonus in HD. But I think we may have to agree to disagree on this topic.
As for druids outclassing them, I honestly didn't know that druids got spot and listen now. I've never seen one played in 3.0 or 3.5. Dm'ed a few, but never seen a player use one. I'm going to skillfully ignore the wildshape issue you brought up for fear of bringing in people who feel very strongly (flamewar) one way or the other. I don't know if that fear is well grounded, but I know I've seen alot of angry internet over that and polymorph.
I know what you're saying about bard song in 3.0. I played a bard for a short while in a 3.0 campaign, and I argued with my DM (and won) that it was a free action. That's because I am a jackass. Internally, I thought at the time, and still do, that I was incorrect. This is simply because it only says "while singing, the bard can fight, but cannot cast spells" It never states that starting the supernatural, mind affecting ability is a free action. thus, unless there is errata, it would be a standard action to start, then you can continue it while fighting, etc. Not that having it be a free action would be broken, holy crap the 3.0 bard needs SOMETHING. Add to that that once again, you get more access to bardic music with ranks in perform, not bard level, and this is easily abusable.
As it stands now, my 3.5 bard/8 is very happy to run around in a chain shirt with no spell failure chance, while singing his (standard action to start) inspire courage at twice the effectiveness of the 3.0 bard.
From what I see of the 1st level bard spell list here, without going into much detail, they dropped the following spells from the 3.0 list
Mage Armor
Magic Weapon
Protection from Alignment
They added a bunch of new spells to the 3.5 list. {many of which, yes, are worthless. yay obscure item) I haven't looked at the other levels yet. Since they can wear armor now, they don't need mage armor. As for the other two, I guess they weren't bard-y enough? I guess magic weapon can be nice, but I never saw a bard actually take the spell. Prot/Align should be on the list I think. But it doesn't look like a real serious "nerfing" yet. maybe more investigation will yield more.
I guess the main thing for me is that I feel that almost everything they did with the core classes in 3.5 is a massive, massive improvement. Add that to fixing harm/heal/haste/stat-blocks and making swarms (favorite monster for this DM) and it just seriously outweighs the harm caused by metamagic rods (which are up to the DM to give out, unless a PC takes craft rod, which I've never seen anyone do) and the weapon sizing. especially since the weapon sizing includes a variant rule for doing it the other way.
As I said, I don't have the 3.0 DMG anymore, so I would like to know how traps are handled in there. I don't get if the issue with traps is that they broke traps in 3.5, or they just failed to fix traps in 3.5. The more I read the trap section the angrier I get, too. I may start up a new thread just to get a discussion/thread going on traps. Maybe someone has insight into what the idea is behind the CR/cost.
Oh and I didn't know my PC's were weird powergamers for ignoring polymorph/alter self/wildshape/shapechange until I read some threads on these boards about 2 years ago. I have successfully never ever mentioned any form of shapechanging in front of them since then for fear of clueing them in.
oh and btw, mod type peoples, do I need to control the length of my posts? cause I seem to post way longer than anyone else.
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