The Gaming Den

OK. Taking off from the Laugh/Cry thread-

I picked these up a while back as cheap pdfs rather than a $30 book. Keep in mind a couple things- these are just formal write-ups of Monte's recent (at the time) house rules, and it was mostly just the magic stuff, first. People bitched that he did nothing to help the classes that really need it (non-magic classes) so he did the second book later. Last, these are his 'no really, one last rpg book before retirement, *really*' publications. Yeah, whatever.

There are a lot of unrelated concepts in these books, and you really don't want to use everything. Partly because some of it is pure crap, and partly because some of it is just confusing or poorly written. And some of it doesn't mesh well. But there are some good ideas in here, and I will try to point some of that out

Book I: Wizards and Clerics and Druids. Yeah, bards and sorcerers are gifted with a big 'fuck you, you don't get crap.'

Ok, first thing- spells get split up from 9 levels to 20. For... some reason. Different progression chart, but bonus spells for high casting stat stays the same. Which means a high stat doesn't give you much since getting a bonus 2nd level spell doesn't give you a bonus slot for invisibility or glitterdust, it gives you charm person, ray of enfeeblement or true strike, since dividing up the spells into 20 levels essentially means he just splits the levels into 'strong' and 'weak' spells. By monte's criteria, which gets... funky. Some spells get shifted a lot more- shield gets bumped to level 3, because its really, really strong, and there are randomly new spells and some alterations. bear/bull/cats buff spells go back to the 3.0 version of +1d4, which is a kick in the teeth.

So, weird and clunky. DC is simply half the spell level, round up.
Metamagic gets seriously fucked, so it gets something like the Arcana Unearthed treatment. Take a feat, you can use it 3/day (or 1/day with quicken). Take each more times for 3 more uses, no alterations to the spell level or anything else.
And yes, this changes metamagic and spellcasting significantly. Particularly since, for no apparent reason, everyone now gets a feat every level rather than every 3. Well, he does give a reason for this- with all the supplemental books, it 'feels like' you just don't get enough feats compared to the number of feats 'out there'. Yes, balance didn't enter into and he does mention that it makes the fighter weaker relative to everyone else.

So, there is some question in my mind why a spellcaster wouldn't take quicken at every level once he meets the casting requirement (9th, in this book).

Class alteration part 2: Disciplines
Clerics, Druids and Wizards lose all their class features (including bonus feats). Instead they get disciplines. Clerics get one of choice, wizards get one of choice plus a set one, and druids get 2 set ones (animal companion and nature affinity, which gives back most of their class features), and can choose one.

They can also burn feats to gain a new discipline or enhance one they already know (but only at even levels).

Some of the disciplines are neat, some are fluffy, some are crap. The Wizard set discipline is Arcanist: essentially, sense magical auras all the time. (except enchantment and illusion, though you can enhance the discipline at later levels to do that. Spend a feat at 12th level and you can sense illusion auras and... negate illusionists utterly.
Other disciplines range from a force damage at will ranged attack, to familiars (which are neat, but complex, since they're spirits rather than frogs or rats), cantrips (which got excised from the spell list), a armor bonus, telepathy, telekinesis and a few other random things.

One winner is Bolt of Bedevilment. It starts out fairly weak- will save (1/2 level + int) for daze for 1 rnd + 1 rnd for every 3 levels. 25' range +5'/2 levels. Standard action, no to hit roll, only affects creatures if they have your hit dice +2 or less.
However.. enhancing it by sacrificing feats makes it absurdly awesome.
2nd: Increasing range to 100' +10' level,
4th: doesn't provoke AoOs
6th bump the will DC by 2
8th no hit die limit
8th multiple targets (1/ 2 levels)
10: STUN rather than daze
12: duration is 1 rnd/ 2 levels
And yeah, this isn't mind-affecting or anything. You just randomly have a stun effect that you can use all day long. from 200' away.

Clerics get a lot of the same disciplines, but also get some healing and enchancement things. Healing is annoying. No cap on how much overall, but there is a cap on how often you can heal a particular person (1+wis mod+level). It also doesn't scale well (d8 +1/level) and requires a standard action.

Anyway, thats mostly it. I can blather about some of the disciplines (which feel like reserve feats, without the stupid restriction on having a spell of whatever type memorized). Also some random skill rules that add very little.

There is also a new class, the 'runeblade', which is a mash-up of a fighter, and the runethane and mageblade from his Arcana Unearthed book. Obnoxious simply for using its own separate subsystem that doesn't interact with anything else.

Next post will be the warrior part, book II.[/i]

Voss wrote:No cap on how much overall, but there is a cap on how often you can heal a particular person (1+wis mod+level).

So the higher your level and the wiser you are, the less often you can heal a person? Huh.

Just one thing. Isn't Daze superior to Stun because almost nothing is immune to Daze and a fair number of things are immune to Stun? Wouldn't that be a downgrade?

Thanks for the interesting writeup Voss. I've found BOXM interesting, and it's good to hear other views on it. I've wondered if anyone else feels the double and uberfeat requirements silly and counterintuitive.

OK, book II. Fighters.
Or, Monte's response to accusations that Book I made spellcasters *even better* and he better fucking do something for the gimps.

Keep in mind the 'feat every level' rule from book I is very much in play in his assumptions.

Chapter I: Fighting Domains.
Basically fighting styles. You get a basic power and a bonus power if you have 8 feats associated with the Domain. (which, with the feat/level rule, a fighter can do by 5th level, 4th if human).
Fighters get 1 domain at 1st level, +1 at 9th and 17th.
Barbarians can trade improved uncanny dodge for a domain at level 5
monks can swap improved evasion at 9th
paladins can drop remove disease (which... why the hell not?) at 6th
rangers can ditch their animal companion at 4th.
rogues can ditch improved uncanny dodge at 9th.

Or a character can spend a feat at 10th level to gain a domain.

The domains frankly aren't very interesting. you get a minor bonus, and the bonus for having 8 feats is a little better, but... eh.
Examples:
Quick Defense:
Basic- dodge bonus +1 [+1/ 3 levels], usable 3/day
Bonus: 3/day, gain a 25% miss chance for one round.

Stalwart Defense:
Basic: gain permanent bonus hit points = what you would normal get (hit die + con mod)
Bonus: 1/day you can simply ignore a hit, including associated effects (poison, level drain, etc).

Intellect
Basic: 5/day, make an opposed int check. if you win, gain +1 to hit and damage for 1 round, +1 hit/damage per 5 levels.
Bonus: add int mod as a damage bonus and a dodge bonus. All the time.

So, yeah. There are others, including sword and board, dirty fighting, two weapon fighting, leadership, agility, and so on.


Part 2: Feats
first, the stupid:
if a fighter takes a feat with a fighter bonus feat, it is slightly more effective. Iron will, for example, would give +3 rather than +2. However, the booking makes me want to stab something. Or Defensive Stance (dodge, renamed, except it affects all attacks, rather than just one guy), gives you a +2 bonus rather than +1, if you are 17th level.

second, Feat Boosts.
Basically, you can overcharge feats.
Fighters get 1 boost at 3rd, and +1 at each odd level.
Rogues and barbarians get one at 4, 8, 14,and 20.
no one else gets them at all.

mostly this gives rerolls to hit or damage, or other things related to the feat. Or for limited use feats, you get an extra use.

This is a nice bonus for fighters... but again, its kind of bland, and is yet more bookkeeping for a fairly trivial bonus.

There are a shitload of fighting feats in this book. Some are actually good, but you pretty much have to read through them all, and copy the good ones, and ignore the bad ones.

There are 3 new feat types:
double feats
uber feats
oblation feats

Oblation- Basically, you track how many points of damage you've done, and once you hit a threshold, you get a benefit. Yay, more bookkeeping.
For example: Oblation to the god of Death. Do 200 damage to living creatures, and on a single attack, you can deal +3d6 negative energy damage. If you wait until you do 1000 points of damage, you can hit automatically and deal +8d6 negative energy damage.
There are others, but they are all this lame.

Double feats- basically, more powerful feats that cost two slots (which must be spent at the same time, which... largely limits into to fighters. Or high level rogues, or a lot of prestige classes. or... well. He didn't think about this too hard.

Some are good. Some are just random:
Anchor Foe: spend a move action to prevent an enemy from leaving his square.

Disrupt caster: 3/day attempt to disrupt an adjacent spellcaster (as per the normal rules)

Double Strike: if you use 2 weapons, you can make 2 attacks as a standard action at -2 to hit with both. Whee.


UBERFEATS-
right, so these are weird. They give a shitload of benefits but you 'retire' and can no longer use a certain number of feats in order to take them.
They also have hefty prereqs, including usually 16th level
But...
Avatar of Might:
every time you use a full attack, gain bonus damage = 2x your fighter level that you can split up among your attacks. (And yes, this is lame, especially since you have to be 16th level to take it and give up 4 feats).

Honored Master:
take a -2 to hit, to gain max damage on all attacks and auto-confirm crits
take an additional -2, and gain +4 dodge bonus
alternatively, you can take a full attack to automatically hit and crit.
plus you are immune to disarm, trip and feint attempts.

Living Fortress:
while in heavy armor, gain:
immunity to crits
+4 AC
DR 3/-
cannot be dazed, dazzled, stunned, sickened, nauseated, fatigued or exhausted.
(this one is worth it just for the large list of immunities and shoving AC to ridiculous levels)


Master and Commander
gain a pool of command points = level, each round.
you and allies can spend them to gain competence bonuses to attack, damage, save and skill checks (never more than charisma bonus on a single roll). No action required by anyone.


Most of the rest of the book is just feats. They vary in quality a lot.

Short summary: Buying these as cheap pdfs might be worthwhile if you want some ideas for tweaking 3.5. Paying $30 for a book, well, you should probably beat yourself to death with it and save people the trouble.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:

Voss wrote:No cap on how much overall, but there is a cap on how often you can heal a particular person (1+wis mod+level).

So the higher your level and the wiser you are, the less often you can heal a person? Huh.

No, thats an increase. The cap is just annoying considering the crappy scaling. You can heal an infinite amount of 1st level warriors to full, but you can only heal your party a limited amount.

IIRC, there's nothing to say that you couldn't choose to daze, and stunning negates Dex to AC. So it'd be an upgrade expect for when you mistake someone for stunning-vulnerable.

Double-/überfeats are crap ideas.

TOZ wrote:Thanks for the interesting writeup Voss. I've found BOXM interesting, and it's good to hear other views on it. I've wondered if anyone else feels the double and uberfeat requirements silly and counterintuitive.

Extremely. I don't get the idea that you've mastered a fighting style, so you can no longer do 3 or 4 things that you learned in the process of mastering that style.

Voss wrote:Extremely. I don't get the idea that you've mastered a fighting style, so you can no longer do 3 or 4 things that you learned in the process of mastering that style.

Clearly, your fighter is so powerful that he needs to be toned down before he can be given more power. Personally, I'd have doubles as fighter-only and leave the retire rule out of uber, which means fighters are the only ones who can get them with any ease.

Actually, most of the uber feats are based on fighter level. Not all of them, but a lot hand out a bonus equal to x*fighter level, which makes them pointless for anyone else anyway. Honored Master doesn't, but most of the others do.

Sword and board is utterly ridiculous, by the way. You gain a pool = fighter level, half of which is devoted to your weapon, and half to your shield; attack rolls, damage rolls and AC. So, at 16th level, you can sit on a +8 AC and split +8 to hit between your attacks. Every round you can full attack someone. So much for the RNG.

I had forgotten about the fighter level part. Even so, those that don't require so many feats that only the fighter can qualify and still be able to go elsewhere.

The points pool seemed far too troublesome to be worth the time. Of course, since the monsters the poor bastard is facing are off the RNG, he might as well be too.

This is just sad. I can understand that the 3.(Frank and K) style of game design might not appeal to everyone, but I really don't see how this 'shoveling more shit into the manure sack' philosophy of design would appeal to anyone.

Good to know I should save my quid. I was contemplating grabbing a copy.

Well, basically it's a printed book with solutions like the tomes. Because Cook has history, he gets to sell a book. Heck, he sold pdfs.

Sure, they're probably not as robust as Frank's solutions, but they're no worse (and probably less worse) than say... Paizo's.

-Crissa

It's all about presentation. Border frames, stunning cover ( or rather, Dazing cover), splash art, insert art, whatever else it takes... selling print takes more than just words.

Yeah might send Paizo a letter covered in monkey cum but that's about all I'd ever give their ideas as well. I bought Ptolus from Monte so his broken work has gotten enough of my money. Voss makes it sound like i'd be buying 2 pages of ok for 100 pages of whatever.

ckafrica wrote:Yeah might send Paizo a letter covered in monkey cum but that's about all I'd ever give their ideas as well. I bought Ptolus from Monte so his broken work has gotten enough of my money. Voss makes it sound like i'd be buying 2 pages of ok for 100 pages of whatever.

So what's bad about ptolus?

Curious. I've always been told that Ptolus is one of the better campaigns out there but I'm not one to go for campaign settings most of the time.

Ptolus is just stupid how it works sometimes. You've got the leader of the largest crime syndicate who is an 8th level Expert when the honorable thieves guide led by a 20th level rogue is getting overwhelmed. He says something like 200 adventures a week come to a city of 80000 people. It's not bad if you can suspend your disbelief but I think there is a bit too much your PCs are gonna say "yeah right" to. It would work better as an E6 or E10 setting IMHO.

Yeah, the integration of the high level material is lacking. Also, if I wanted Christians in my D&D I'd just put Christians in my D&D.

-Username17

But it's not christian it's an ankh so it's newagy and cool.

Yeah It makes an okay template but there is too much FUBAR to really want to use it as is... for the dezinens here anyways. I imagine many less opimized players would have no problem with it. I could actually run it with my group ok, i'd just be wincing every time I saw a major NPC with commoner, aristocrat or expert levels.

Is Ptolus the million page book/setting that's pretty much entirely set in one city and supposedly (I quote a fanboy) "Actually takes into consideration everything in the system when making the setting, so high level mages have already left a mark on the world and there are teleport-caravans and such." or am I thinking of something from Mearls? It's hard to keep track of the various works.

Koumei wrote:Is Ptolus the million page book/setting that's pretty much entirely set in one city and supposedly (I quote a fanboy) "Actually takes into consideration everything in the system when making the setting, so high level mages have already left a mark on the world and there are teleport-caravans and such."

You are correct, Koumei.

No it's really a level 10 (if that) world that they pretend goes to level 20. the only reason it exists as is is becauseMonte and his two parties (it is really just his personal campaign setting) let it exist for the sake of story consistency. You could break it in 5 minutes if you had the inclination.

It is what Monte would have wanted 3e to be had he known what he wanted when he wrote it.