D&D 3.5 has many shortcomings. Let us discuss the tallcomings.

>>50110531
Yeah, that's a good book. Needed another copy-editing pass, though.

I really like binders from the Tome of Magic, myself. Pity the rest of the book is shit in comparison.

>>50110531
The 3.5 character optimization community was amazing; the game's massive pile of well specified and often ad-hoc rules really made it a blast to work with. I haven't found a game that's as fun to tinker with since. And the community developed its own strange lore; Pun-Pun being a god, all wizards being Conjurers and Transmuters, throwing the Elemental Plane Of Earth at people, all that stuff.

The tier system the charop community eventually developed is really interesting too - a "tier 3 only" game is a strange world of mystic swordsmen, bards, various vaguely evil wizards, and Legolas can turn into a bear. Every other tier is its own strange world that nobody would have written a system for intentionally.

>>50110531
I loved Incarnum. It's the only 3.5 book I own that isn't collecting dust.

>>50110567
Shadow casting was half of a good idea. The author of the book put out an article/forum post/something or other, detailing fixes he wished he had made. Using those (as close as you can get to official errata), the class is actually playable.

>>50110531
I don't think ToB maneuvers were too interesting in general (except setting sun maneuvers, because nothing is more fun than wielding enemies as weapons). But I love the ToB maneuver-recovery mechanics

Spending actions to meditate and regain maneuvers was great, it gave a real ebb and flow to combat

I really enjoyed the variety within the system. Want to be a Lucha? You can do that. Want to be a generic anime character? You can do that?

>>50110531
>I, personally, am a fan of psionics, incarnum, and Tome of Battle maneuvers.
in-fact, if you run a game using ONLY ToB and Psionic classes, it functions.
>>50111141
>I really enjoyed the variety within the system. Want to be a Lucha? You can do that. Want to be a generic anime character? You can do that?
Building fluff-boiled-in options, most of which are not viable, is not really variety. If you separate the tiers, and consider them each a separate game (and if you want your game to function without god-tier players, you need to limit your game to 1 or MAYBE 2 tiers,) each individual tier doesn't have more variety/versatility than any other game.

>>50110531
Personally I think where Fourth really fucked up was looking at ToB and deciding everyone should play similarly. ToB was fun because it gave martials a unique and interesting system distinct from more traditional Casters. I would love to see a D&D where each archetype has a distinct system for how their powers work. Really just a pipe dream though.

>>50110531
>I, personally, am a fan of psionics, incarnum, and absolute fucking trash made by retards.

Interesting preferences, OP...

>>50111788
Found the wizard

For all its faults, and as much as I love 2e, 3.5 took D&D in a positive direction. Having players just want to roll high (instead of having some rolls where a low roll is good) is simply logical. The board game aspect made fights more interesting and opened it to more strategy. And the OGL was a smart idea (even if it did result in a lot of bad products).

>>50110531
>tfw my favorite thing with 3.5 is the wacky stupidity that the million and two splats give you
>while also hating the fact that core mechanics are shit, and one trillion splats make reading chars hell

>>50111247
>in-fact, if you run a game using ONLY ToB and Psionic classes, it functions.
Doesn't that get a bit limited in healing, though? I don't remember much in the way of non-selfish psionic healing.

>>50111247
>tiers
Shoo shoo

>>50111788
> Wizard players

I like the XP/CR system design(even though the actual CR numbers are often wrong). I don't think I've seen another XP system that allows lower level characters to catch up without the XP requirements scaling exponentially.

>>50112589
Nope, Devoted Spirit can chip in on healing.

>>50112629
The problem is that since magic items cost XP to make, careful abuse of the system can put you ahead of everyone else and go unnoticed.

>>50112648
How does it handle non-HP healing like petrification, ability damage, diseases etc.?

>>50112669
The Warblade could make martial scripts of Iron Heart Surge, I guess.

>>50112703
You can't Iron Heart Surge away being a statue, anon.

>>50110531
Rot Grubs and fake equipment that deals damage to the player or mimic-like things are always fun. Also enemies that can destroy player equipment are a personal favorite of mine

Cursed necklace too

>>50110813
>lol so random exdee

>>50111325
Have you ever played Tales of Maj'Eyal? 4e would have been interesting if the power source idea had been developed further, with each having it's own resource that controlled power use and pushed a different playstyle.

>>50112589
I kind of expanded on "3.5 with ToB and Psionics Only" for my group, it's grown into a monster of its own accord. It's unrelated, but we also removed half-ranks, favoring the "if you train a skill that is a class skill for one or more of your classes, gain a flat +3 bonus in that skill" thing and making max ranks = your HD.

We introduced the concept of alchemy to the game; essentially, a number of potions, extracts, oils, powders and the like are available, and all they really take to create are the necessary ingredients, a Craft (Alchemy) check and being at or above a certain level. The costs are calculated the same way as they would be in 3.X with magical items for the most part, but everything from curative potions to weapon oils that alter your weapon's properties (like making your weapon's damage override DR, making your strikes deal a non-stacking debuff to targets for X rounds, et cetera), bombs and a number of processes which relate to normal chemistry in the real world are possible through this.

Healing via potions (instead of, say, Devoted Spirit) takes place as a form of regeneration here: If your potion's spell equivalent would heal you for 2d8+3 damage, it instead heals you for 3 HP automatically, as well as 2hp/round for 8 rounds (gaining 5 on the first, 2 on the second, etc). You always get the full benefit of the potion's HP potential this way, just not all at once.

>>50112648
If you're playing PF psionics, the vitalist is one of the most interesting healer classes I've seen.

>>50112892
Yes, it's almost as if he wants some kind of unusual or dare I say "fantastic" elements in his strictly period-accurate medieval roleplaying game.

>>50112961
Have you seen that document that converted the core magic into psionics? I can't find the PDF, but I remember it being interesting.

>>50111141
Yeah, yeah that was the customizability that earned it the nickname of "The world's least granular point-buy system". But here's the thing, other point buy systems exist and had already existed before 3.5. If you want to build a Lucha or a generic shounen protagonist in any one of about 200 other rpg systems, you can do that, and you can do it just by going "I want to be Goku, I'll buy flight, strength, reflexes, endurance, energy blast, and variable power". You don't have to start with monk and at 5th level pick up a single level of sorcerer to prestige into Somatic Adept, go for that three levels until you get a certain class feature and then take a two level dip in *another* class along with getting a Headband of Hair-spiking for SSJ hair, then take yet another class that gives you something else, and...".

Point buy systems let you just make what you want, and you'll usually wind up with parity with any other party member, rather than being crippled compared to a straight-up Conjuration wizard.

>>50113196
It's like you don't understand the appeal of a challenge.

>>50113157
I try to limit the influence of core magic (as it was one of my main points of dislike for 3.X, alongside the class system that loved said magic so much) in our little group homebrew. Keeping alchemy as mystic chemistry and psionics where it lies makes the martial adepts stand out a little more than they would if I started pulling the 3.X spell list and magic items into the game.

>>50110531
What about psionics appeals to you? Is it more about the fluff or the mechanics? I ask because there are some similar point-buy alternative rules for normal magic, if that might interest you.

>>50115224
It's a bit of both, really.

I am aware of spell-point variants, but I also like having the ability to augment powers. I even think psionic focus is really cool.

I like the fluff too. It's kind of a cosmic crystal pseudoscience meets flying swordsman orientalism aesthetic with glowing i-ching symbols and ectoplasmic blades.

>>50112961
I like that skill point house rule.

As for alchemy, have you read Dragon magazine issue 358? That one lists psionic alchemical items.

Does anybody here have any good weapon houserules? One of my chief complaints about 3.5 is that weapon damage does not scale to keep up with hit point inflation.
I think it would help if weapon damage scaled the same way the monk's unarmed strike damage does.

>>50115224
The spell point variant is broken as fuck, though.

At least Psionics has some checks in it, like needing to pay to augment stuff.

>>50115634
Generally there's a fuckton of miscellaneous bonuses that help scale to keep up with the hit point inflation, for better and worse - and eventually the base weapon damage becomes mostly irrelevant.

>>50116036
I think I'd like it better if base weapon damage stayed relevant though. Or at least stayed relevant much longer, for 'feel' reasons if nothing else.

I don't think it should be too hard to just step up your weapon's damage every four character levels. Might help if there was a more unified progression.

>>50116239
*unified progression*

I mean, yeah there is that table...

This guy pokes at it a bit
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=13278.0

>>50115634

>Does anybody here have any good weapon houserules?

By the time I started reworking damage and CR math I just realized it'd be easier to rework the system from the ground up.

>>50116356

What the hell, my homebrew bone is itching.

How would you rework the system?

>>50116373

>gut the skill system entirely and have skills based on class, race, and background a bit like how 5e did it.
>restructure the classes to use Star Wars Saga's talent trees for class features to make multiclassing actually work. Prestige classes just get rendered down into talent trees with entry requirements. Do the same with 3/4ths and half casting classes.
>go through all of the spells and either cut them, rework them into 4e style rituals, combine redundant spells (ie cure X wounds), and then place the remainders into specific talent trees
>throw out feats. Rework into talent trees
>severely reduce monster crunch to prevent massive statblocks that are never fully use

By the time I started going I realized the resulting system would look nothing like 3.5 when finished, and spending that much time on another fantasy heartbreaker wouldn't be work it in the end.

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>>50110531

>>50116553
>>severely reduce monster crunch to prevent massive statblocks that are never fully use
Good fucking christ this was 3e's biggest problem. Look at a 4e statblock, it has literally everything there. You could rip a statblock out of a page and give it to me and I'd be able to use it.

d20? You have to look up its spells, feats, weapon abilities, it's ridiculous. The only good thing about it is that it makes it easy to convert anything to player use.

>>50112605
Are you honestly saying classes don't have a disparity in versatility? A fighter can do everything a wizard can?

>>50116373
Well I personally would do exactly what Legend d20 did. That game grew out of several pages of houserules to make PvP in 3E fair.

>>50111788

Reeeeee! Why can't martials just stand there and be my wizard's fucking meatshield instead of getting to actually fight back themselves?

>>50113196

Any recommendations other than GURPS/M&M?

>>50117488
HERO system, if only because it's the halfway point between both of them.

>>50117488
Savage Worlds?

>>50117497

Thanks. I'd heard it be described as 'like GURPS, but instead of being awful for superheroes, it's awful for non-superheroes'.

The one flaw with point-buy systems is that you need a certain amount of system mastery to make sure your character isn't really weak, so you need to make sure your players have a decent knowledge of the system, but aren't munchkins who'll make everyone else useless.

>>50110531

I've been GMing for a long time, but never any DnD (save for ADnD a long ass time ago) but now I've got a new group and they are kind of deadset on playing 3.5 for w/e reason. One of the players really wants to be a monk, but I know just from the memes-and skimming through it-monk is not viable.

Whats a good monkesque class from a supplement or not broken homebrew?

He wants to be a "jacky chan" type character, fighting with ladders or w/e shit is at hand etc.

Its mainly going to be a slapstick/comedy campaign is the vibes I'm getting.

>inb4 trying to fit humor inbetween 3.5 rules

>>50117520

Savage Worlds is my go-to generic system actually. It doesn't allow for as much customisation as GURPS and the like, but it's easy to homebrew new stuff in, and character creation is much quicker.

>>50117574

The Tome of Battle should give him the tools he needs.

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>>50110813
>all this cancer in one post

>>50117564
My problem with pointbuy systems is that it doesn't foster the gameplay I like class based system for.

Either everyone has similar capabilities, making actual differences between characters smaller and making team-play secondary.

Or everyone specializes at which point you may as well have went with a class based system to make character generation quicker.

If your goal is to have a more simulationist game and don't care about considerations like that however, pointbuy systems are perfectly fine.

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>>50110926
Same, it's the only 3.5 book I have anymore.

Incarnum was very underrated.

>>50117628

This is a problem, but there's usually ways around it. For example, M&M has archetypes and lots of easily reconfigured premade characters (with lots of options and background left open to the player), so you can create a character with nothing more than a basic understanding of the rules.

Most decent games do this. I don't think the GURPS corebooks do, but I wouldn't be surprised if the supplements do.

>>50117209

>Good fucking christ this was 3e's biggest problem. Look at a 4e statblock

I refuse to look at anything in that pile of garbage.

>>50111788
t. CoDzilla player

>>50117574
Unarmed Swordsage

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Forever THIS! >>50117209

>>50118085
Trying too hard. tone it down and you will get genuine replies.

>>50117154
I love the book and I only call it by this name.

>>50118553

Same. It gives me a nice warm feeling that reminds me of early /tg/.

>>50117683
It also had some fucking atrocious editing.

Not the worst I've seen (that's a tough competition - the worst editing in an actually decent product might be Eldritch Wizardry, I think), but Magic of Incarnum has some issues.

>>50119104
Eh, I'd say worst editing was the official ToB errata.

And what the fuck is Eldritch Wizardry? I have every official 3.5 book and I've never heard of it...

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Working on my houserule document.

>>50119211

>>50119104

I know of an OD&D book called Eldritch Wizardry. Didn't know there was a 3.5 version too...

>>50110531
It instilled an amazing sense of wonder in me as a 15 year old, seeing the huge amount of options already available, with more still being regularly released.
I eventually grew to resent all the trawling through books and how useless so much of it was, but the possibilities seemed endless at first.

>>50119211
Oh, I'm talking about the same book >>50119380 is - OD&D Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry.

Magic of Incarnum's editing isn't THAT bad in the grand scheme of things. It ain't got shit on some of the pre-digital stuff out there.

>>50119496
Heh, wasn't there a post-digital book out there that accidentally replaced every instance of "mage" with Wizard, getting such golden stuff as "iWizard"?

>>50119449
I think the problem is largely with you, because you somehow got stuck being unable to adapt ideas, and that's left you bitter.

The possibilities really are endless.

>>50119669
More like realising you don't need a specific class to represent a specific order of specific wizards, just use a little bit of creativity.

>>50119669
Or he's tired of spending time on the chargen game.

>>50110531
>but it says here that this is how this spell works
>wtf are you reading, let me see
>oh here's your problem, you're reading 3.0!

>>50110531
>Book of Weeaboo Fightan Magic
>Complete Series
>PHB2
>Expanded Psionics Handbook

Honestly these books are great and all character archetypes can be built from them. There are also very few truly broken classes - although a few too many useless ones.

>>50112963
Why is that? Personally I have way more 3.5 experience than PF experience but I've seen a couple really interesting and unique psionic classes that PF has popped out.

>>50120123
I don't even remember what was in the PHB2. Gestalts, I think?

>>50120194
Beguilers. Duskblades. And a few other classes that no one cares about - Knight, Dragon Shaman, and I think one more.

Beguilers and Duskblades are both super balanced, strong without being overpowered, and fill really cool niches.

>>50120221
I love Duskblades but my god could they ever do with a better spell list and more spells known.

>>50120373
I agree about the spell list, it has some weirdly missing spells, and a few spells given that are just a touch too strong for their level. Them getting full BAB and full CL means that you can do some awesome stuff with familiar feats though. Duskblades and Beguilers are in my opinion the ideal that classes should be balanced to; both feel very strong, can do multiple things without feeling like they can carry parties, and are simply fun to play.

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>>50120221
>Beguiler, better than rogues, sorcerers, and wizards.
>balanced
Sure thing fag

>>50110531
The BEST thing that 3.5 edition did, and the thing that it RIGHT is the balance of Barbarians and other martial classes

They are some of the most powerful classes in the early game in DnD history, everyoen else is literally chump change to them until 6th level AT LEAST and they remain balanced and strong afterwards

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The Binder is the best spellcaster class period.

Think about it: When people talk about 3.5 being "thematic" or "simulationist" I don't imagine stupid subrules for the Profession skill or Tower Shields granting bonuses to hide checks.

I'm talking about a system of magic that's based around a theme and a premise and the mechanics actually aiming to support that theme and premise and doing it proficiently. Clerics, Paladins and Sorcerers/Wizards all use the same system of powers with a few tweaks which ultimately makes them feel inerchangable but I literally do not know how you could reflavour Binders and that makes them fascinating.

>>50120476

Glitterdust.

Grease.

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>>50120476
True

>>50120510
You lose initiative, and get killed in one hit.

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>>50120697
>every fight takes place in a small room

>>50120744
>Close range spells not within charging distance

Well ain't you a snowflake

>>50120456
Beguilers are better than Rogues but are in no way better than Wizards or Sorcerors. Wizards can do the exact same shit but better with several PrCs, with Unseen Seer being the most obvious one.

>>50120813
If you where going to be an enchanter/illusionist, there is no reason not to be a Beguiler. You are a wizard with more hit points, double the skill points and at 5th level you do what any wizard does, prestige class.

With the same level of min/maxing beguiler is just wizard++

>>50119669
Chargen is the least fun part of playing a game

>>50120922
An illusionist/enchanter will still probably want to dabble in a few other schools to pick up key spells here and there. Beguiler is awesome, and a lot of people overlook just how amazing the number of skills they bring to the table - especially UMD - can be, but it's no wizard.

>>50120922
>locking yourself into a single school worth of spells
>thinking this is better than the raw choices of a vanilla wizard
I bet you think monk is fucking awesome because of all those class abilities

>>50120922
>there is no reason not to be a Beguiler.
Except for the part where the Wizard isn't limited to Enchantment, Illusion, and a handful of other spells. Beguilers can't bust out half of the insanity a Wizard can - even as early as level 3 they've got massively cheesy spells like Alter Self.

>>50116553

What do you think about making all feats into soulmelds?

One of the problems that creates the LFQW problem is that feats do not scale; the +1 that Weapon Focus gives you at level 1 is still a +1 at level 20. Soulmelds, however, do scale. You can invest them with essentia or bind them to chakras for more powerful effects.
What if, instead of talent trees, you just give everybody soulmelds?

>>50121197
It would also be nice to just do away with all the trap options that gave +1 to specific rolls rather than flavorful/useful new character options

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>>50121372
Or at the very least roll those skill bonuses into more useful soulmelds with good binding options, like many of the good soulmelds from MoI.

>>50121197
Imagine if you could take something like attachment related instead of Two-Weapon Fighting.

>>50121372
I house rule that weapon focus and a few other of the +1 bonus scale when you hit the level for the next feat in the tree. I know of doesn't fix the fighter giving him weapon spec, weapon mastery, great weapon focus/spec. But it gives him a lot more wiggle room for what he wants to do.

>>50119634
One of those big books that contained every single AD&D spell ever, yes. Dealing 1d6 daWizard per level, or creating 1d4 Mirror iWizards, is pretty funny.

That's a find-and-replace fuckup, though - Eldritch Wizardry (which, remember, I called a decent product) has the absolute worst layout of any OD&D book, with bits of systems spread scattershot throughout. I've said before in the OSR threads that the rules for psionics are interrupted by the rules for Druids THRICE, except they're also interrupted for the rules for initiative and also IIRC part of the rules for monsters.

>>50120489
Word. I think as far as kickass fluff goes they're beaten by the Truenamer, but the Binder has the crucial advantage of actually having the mechanics back it up.

>>50120922
>Being a Beguiler
>Not being fucked in the ass by everything immune to [Mind-Affecting] stuff
Pick one and only one.

Also, if you really think a min-maxing Beguiler is going to be stronger than an equally min-maxed Wizard then I envy your innocence. The Beguiler's a decently strong class, don't get me wrong, but it's no Wizard. The Beguiler has an optimization ceiling - the Wizard got spell support in almost every single product.

>>50121858
Beguiler has quite a few of the stronger generally useful Wizard spells like Glitterdust and Solid Fog.

>>50121858
Just for reference, if anyone's curious: Dndtools says that Beguilers have 111 spells.

The Wizard has 2463, although I'm pretty damn sure that some of those are duplicates. Mostly because the first page of result has three copies of Absorption.

And they could potentially know them all. Or, more feasibly, know all of the worthwhile ones. (Although knowing all of them only takes IIRC seven Blessed Books and something like a third of level 20 WBL, I think? Shit be bananas.)

>>50121875
And the Warmage has Prismatic Wall. (And the Truenamer is even better at Solid Fog than both of them, but that's a weird one-off outlier and one of the only worthwhile bits of the class. At-will Quickened Solid Fog at level 9 is killer.)

The beguiler's still a strong class, note - there's a reason that people usually put it in Tier 3 but put a little post-it on it that says "but potentially Tier 2 in the right hands". It's no Healer or Soulborn, or even a Warmage or Warlock for that matter.

But it lacks the versatility of a Wizard or Sorcerer since it's actually limited in its pre-chosen spell list, rather than being able to make a Sorcerer's "best of" selection or a Wizard's complete boxset.
Support is everything, and while non-core casters got very little support in general due to the "pretend the only products that exist are core and this book" policy, the fixed list casters apparently had an additional policy that said that they really shouldn't get expanded lists for obvious reasons. (It was in the Spell Compendium, IIRC.)

>>50122028
Too many people think that Tier 3 always means worse than Tier 1 and 2. Tiers 1 and 2 just show how gamebreaking the class can be and can easily be outplayed by stronger Tier 3s in many situations. Not saying that the Beguiler is better than Tier 1 and 2s, just that in many instances they can outshine as consistency is way more important than potential when actually playing.

>>50122280
Yeah, Tier 3 just means "is a good class, can do its job, functions even when its job is not directly relevant".

Tier 2 & 1, meanwhile, mean "can break the fucking game in half if they want to" - the specific tier depends on their flexibility in doing so. (Generally Tier 2 has a fixed list of spells known and thus only one way of snapping the rules in half, while Tier 1 are prepared casters and thus can prepare a new and exciting snappery on a daily basis.)

Like, you want to know a really dumb combo? It's called the Dark Chaos Shuffle. There's a spell called Embrace the Dark Chaos, which replaces one of your feats with one from a list. There's another spell called Shun the Dark Chaos, which lets you replace the chaos feat with another feat that you qualify for.
The problem is that the feat you get back in the end doesn't need to be one that you gave up to the dark chaos. This is the Dark Chaos Feat Shuffle - you get to swap out literally all your feats for ones that you qualify for based on your current level rather than the level you originally got them. Also, you can do stuff like customizing your feat loadout like you'd customize your spell loadout.

These spells were in the same book, meant to interact with eachother, and clearly written by the same guy. Even worse, trying to force people into only getting back the feats they gave up creates a ton of paperwork, so it's entirely understandable why they did it.

My absolute favorite weird-ass break-the-game-tier trick, though, has to be the one where a Psion can, with some very specific powers and whatnot, create a Final Fantasy-esque savepoint crystal that rewinds time if you're MIA. There's a power that lets you rewind time for a round, see - Forced Dream. It's basically a panic button for if you had one really bad round, and you need to manifest it in advance.
The problem here, then, is that there's some planes where time doesn't advance.
So you stick your crystal-familiar there.

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>>50118000
You want the supplements for this.

>>50122585
You can also stick your crystal-familar in Quintessence. You can use a power to create a type of jelly that suspends time. That's in the SRD, too.

Beguiler is tricky and can seriously fuck with just about anything, but the moment a golem shows up he fucks off to the bar because he's got shit to do.

Meanwhile the wizard, realizing that he can do little to hit the golem...turns the fighter into a fucking dragon or something.

What are some things you wish Pathfinder had fixed?

>>50122845
Monk. Just...monk. I mean, it's better, but it's still a class that really wants to hit a whole bunch and move very fast...in a game where you can only do one in a turn.

>>50122845
>>50122858
martials in general desu

>>50119669
GURPS is better for autisticly homebrewing stuff.

>>50122835
>realizing that he can do little to hit the golem
Or just use stoneshape to build a coffin around the golem, laugh and walk into the next room as the golem is now stuck forever.

>>50122845
I wish Pathfinder didn't give casters UMD for no fucking reason.
>oh this thing has magic in the name
>better give it to all the casters xD
Beguilers have it because they're part-rogue, not part-wizard, it's a rogue and rogue-analog skill.

>>50122892
Or a million other things, because unlike the beguiler, wizard has flexibility. He has flexibility in spades. He can use completely stupid, silly, bullshit nonsense and wreck campaigns.

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>>50122858
>>50122865

It seems that the best way to build a monk in 3.5 is just to take a one level dip and multiclass into psychic warrior. The psiwar at least gets you your choice of Hustle or Lion's Charge so you can pounce or move as a swift action and still get your full attack in.
That's what the monk needs most of all; the ability to move and full attack in the same turn. That's what all the martial guys need.

...What about this:
Only martial characters can make full attacks (casters don't get iterative attacks at all) and martial characters can all make their full attacks and move in the same turn.

Think it could work?

>>50122906
No one is arguing that the Beguiler is better than the Wizard, just that it's not way worse and can easily compete. The fact that the Beguiler's spell list is also the spell known list is insane as the Beguiler always has a ton of spells available to him. Wizards might've prepared the wrong spell, not have the right scroll, or simply didn't have time to prepare for the specific situation. I swear that there is this attitude on /tg/ that Wizards always prepare the right spells for every situation and haven't used those spells already today. Not to mention that Wizards spellbooks aren't even that large in most cases - unless the player really goes out of his way to expand it.

>>50122929
While the wizard can certainly prepare the wrong spell or not have the right scroll. That is absolutely true and can or will fuck over the party if it comes up.

The problem is that there are a bunch of possible situations where the beguiler does not and -cannot- have the right spell for the situation.

Undead, golems, anything immune to mind influencing, really.

>>50122957
I don't think you've looked at the Beguiler's spell list.

>>50122923
It's a start, but not nearly enough. The core of the issue is that martials are generally limited to 'swing weapon at other guy to do a poorly-scaling amount of damage' while casters get 'there's a spell for that', and difference is baked too deeply into 3.x to just houserule over it.

As much as it gets memed on, Tome of Battle gives a reasonable idea of what martials should have been from the start; having actual options instead of "I try to hit it" or investing multiple feats just to be able to go "I try to trip/grapple/bullrush it" and have something resembling a chance of success.

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>>50110531
>Lore,
>Yes Lore
In an obscene amount of obscure lore: I've always thought the book of nine swords was the continuation of the story of the Shrine of the Nine Styles- A shrine which originally housed nine unnamed swords that spawned their own fighting styles from Oriental Adventure/Greyhawk. The like... Twelve? pages that explained that rise of fall of a lone wanderer bringing these styles to the more traditional fantasy lands put a smile on my face.

Also adds a whole new level when you say "Weeaboo fighting magic" because if the link is true: they really are from Weeaboo land, not just a clever name.

>>50122957
Anon did you know mindless creatures can't interact with illusion? Undead and golems can't even target the Beguiler.

>>50122998
Oh, I have. The vast majority of it are illusion and enchantment spells. A few other things here and there, and most of it pretty damn good.

Everything they get is something a wizard can also get. Wizards can also get a million other spells that aren't on the Beguiler list.

There are very few situations in which a Beguiler can potentially have a solution, but a wizard cannot. Their chief advantage over a wizard is that they don't prepare spells and can cast any spell on the beguiler list.

The reason that isn't broken is that the beguiler has a smaller, narrower list of spells, and as an extension of that, fewer problems it can solve.

>>50123083
I did. Being safe from a monster doesn't mean you're contributing to it's defeat. Beguilers get no buffs of note, and no summons. In the event their spells cannot target or affect a monster, they're not doing much.

>>50123023

The fluff in Tome of Battle is great. One of these days, I'm going to read through it all start to finish.
I tend to just skim through my rpg books though, reading just enough to familiarize myself with the rule and pick up snippets of fluff as needed.

I like the Reth Drekala. Are those guys a reference to anything in previous fluff? I understand they are from Acheron.
These are the undying warriors eternally burning with sorcerous flame. The only way they can lift their curse is to hunt down and slay their own descendants.
I kind of wish there were bloodline feats or even playable races for mechanically tying PC's to the Reth Drekala.
I'm actually disappointed that Tome of Battle does not have any playable races in it. You would think they would have converted over races from 3.0 Oriental Adventures.

>>50123011
Maneuvers are pretty damned cool. I wish we had more of them. They could have put a couple in Dragon Magic, at least.

>>50123116
Rainbow Savant says the wizard spell list is tiny compared to spontaneous cleric spells, yes all of them

>>50123148
>The fluff in Tome of Battle is great. One of these days, I'm going to read through it all start to finish.
>I tend to just skim through my rpg books though, reading just enough to familiarize myself with the rule and pick up snippets of fluff as needed.
>I like the Reth Drekala. Are those guys a reference to anything in previous fluff? I understand they are from Acheron.
>These are the undying warriors eternally burning with sorcerous flame. The only way they can lift their curse is to hunt down


That's basically my biggest complaint about the ToB. It's an awesome book with cool lore and awesome abilities. It's also very insular and has no support from any other supplements.

>>50123164
That's a prestige class available to basically any arcane class, right? Including wizards?

>>50123168

Well, Dreamscarred Press has Path of War at least. I haven't looked at it since I'm not a Pathfinder fan, but I hear it is supposed to be good.

I liked that Tome of Battle had a couple of feats that interact with psionics, so you can integrate those too, at least.

I'm kind of tempted to stat out some martial vestiges tied to each of the nine disciplines. Maybe the vestiges are ancient masters of these styles or even founders of important fighting schools. That could have been a cool web expansion. I mean, we got psionic vestiges after all.

So insular. :(

>>50123144
That's some stupid weak sauce right there. Just because the monster isn't dead doesn't mean the monster isn't defeated and none of these monsters are boss monsters.

Silent Image is a first level no save just lose auto win against any mindless creature. You may not kill the thing but you just auto win.

>>50123215
Beguiler and Warmage make best use of it because they get their whole spell list spontaniously, and all it does is expand their spell list. If a Wizard takes it, they just have the ability to prep cleric spells now.

>>50123148

You know, one of my players in Taiwan looked at the Azurin from Magic of Incarnum, those blue people, and asked if he could play as a red guy. He wanted to base his character on a figure from Chinese folklore.

We should have homebrewed something instead of just reskinning the Azurin.
I am in such a homebrew mood right now.

>>50123229
Well, that's true. Though liches are boss monsters and still immune to mind influencing effects, along with every other type of intelligent undead. Most of them are not boss monsters, but liches are.

Of course a beguiler's spells can certainly help against a lich. Just not as much as a wizard's.

Beguilers are tier 3 because while they're very good, there are a number of situations where they're not as effective. Just not many where they are utterly helpless.

Wizards are tier 1 because unless you take away their toys, they're always dangerous.

>>50123252
...well now I know how to make the ultimate necromancer. Dread Necromancer uses the same casting type, right?

>>50110813
>>50117614
That's not cancer Anon, it's just a viewpoint.

>Charop communtiy was amazing.
3.5 came out about the time where the internet was hitting mainstream consciousness. Bet you if 2nd Edition or 4thed had been coming out at the time it would have had the exact same result, and you Do get charop habits with 4th and I'd be surprised if 5th didn't have the same already, and would bet it would shortly.

>Variants and rules making it fun to tinker with.
Even something as simple as magic/psionic transparency or lack there of can make for a very different setting and interactions between NPC's and party members.

Pun-Pun was a silly side-note made of a lot of time sunk into various books and ideas brought together into one unreasonable character. The Conjurors/Transmuters bit I'm not so sure of, as I tend to see Illusionists doing things from other schools more, but w/e.

The Tier system does make for a cool way to chose the ammount of power your characters have, either as a Player to choose what kind of difficulty or level of complexity they want to handle, or as a DM choosing the same across the board for the campaign. Having a campaign full of full-casters, T2 and T1 PC's, lets you do high-powered supernatural stories and challenge the forces of the world at large. T3 and T4 lets you do as that Anon said. T5 and lower is a very difficult game ahead of you, but you can build past it with charop as a player or plan around it as a DM to make sure that the players are either offered resources to make use of or even gestalting a pair of very limited classes to make a much more functional one.

It's a convoluted mess to deal with but once you're fluent in it and have the SRD, you can make the system do a heck of a lot. Ivory tower bullshit makes it difficult to get to, but I've got most of a decade's worth of rewarding experiences with it that have made it worthwhile.

>>50123311
Yes, yes they do

>>50123287
Fuck off, by that time you are leeching off other spell lists, making your point moot.

Beguilers are better than wizards cuz you can't take their toys.

>>50123351
Isn't that prestige class literally just taking an entire class' spell list and bolting it onto a beguiler?

Beguilers still require spell components, so yes, you can take away their toys. More to the point, if the only way to shut down a character is to take away everything it can do, you've already proven that it's way too powerful.

A wizard can fight a lich just fine with what are just wizard spells, anyway. They don't need to leech anything.

>>50123343
4e charop is great, but the thing that makes 3.5 charop fun is how ludicrously broken the game is

3.5 was successful due to the time when it came out, but the insanity of 3.5 charop is a unique feature. After all, there's no way in 4e to lift the known universe, no way in 5e to draw and throw 18 katanas in one turn, no way in 2e to kill a god with a single divine word

>>50117209
>Feats, usually three to five itterations of either Toughness, Save-boost feats, slightly bigger damage dice, weapon focus/specialization, ability focus, or natural armor boosts.

This is all entry level stuff you should recognize and know on sight before DMing, so that you can realize the monster feats are garbage and switch them out for something more useful and challenging. The spells are all in the SRD or the book and likewise, are pretty much all core stuff unless it's from a splatbook, which also usually has the spells it refers to later in the book. Yeah, it's a few extra moments' effort but you can either have the SRD open on a few tabs these days or just post-it note the pages like you would for any textbook study.

>>50123422
>2e to kill a god with a single divine word
Yeah there is.

2e had arguable even more "Broken" shit than 3e, but there was no rules to it. It was all fluff and rewards written into adventures.

But 2e was hands down more powerful than 3e, you just couldn't ever create a build on it.

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>>50122923
Start Monk then multiclass into a Martial Adept. Go far enough that you have the core monk features then use Diamond Mind to immitate the resistances and immunities along with Iron Heart maneuvers, while exemplifying either the soft-hand grappling with Setting Sun or the offensive, vicious aspects of unarmed combat with Tiger Claw and use Girrilon Windmill or whatever it's called to replace your Flurry of Blows.

>>50123489
Oh... hmm

Well, I think my point still stands

>>50110531
>>50110926
>>50117683
Nice to see the love for Incarnum. In the same way that Tome of Battle made high-tier martial classes, Magic of Incarnum made low-tier magic user classes. The flavour is really interesting and the resource management of Essentia is pretty rad. I loved using dollar-store gemstones and placing them on index cards representing my soulmelds to indicate how powerful they were at the moment.

Tome of Magic is still my favourite 3E supplement. Binders are really interesting, Shadow Magic is cool in an edgy sort of way, and Truenamers... well, they suck but if you reduce the Truespeak DC to 15 + CR (instead of 15 + twice CR) and halve (or more) the adjustment of Meta-Utterance feats, it's surprisingly viable. Hell, I once played an Awakened housecat who became a Truenamer because they could not speak Common, but nothing said they could not speak truenames. I rode in a wicker basket the Barbarian carried around, and occasionally I'd pop out and do stuff like bend space-time and knit wounds just by talking. It was rad as hell.

>>50123489
I think part of that was that the players weren't supposed to read the DMG or any book that they didn't need for their characters, though that might be a Hackmaster thing which was how I was introduced to 2e. You also weren't likely to have Access to every single 2e book unless you were obsessively collecting all of it and saving every single copy of Dragon that came out.

>>50123668
Christ, how many times have I heard that same logic applied to 3.X products?

Yes true, anon. Didn't stop people, simply put.

I'm just glad somebody actually managed to port the beguiler over to PF without losing any of the feel of the class, even though he dropped the "knows whole spell list" mechanic. It also doesn't hurt that the PDF looks like a work of art.

>>50120489
Wait, people say that 3.5 magic is "thematic"?

What the fuck? One wizard can cast invisibility, fly, suggestion, fireball, enlarge person, summon monster and protection from evil. There's nothing thematic about baseline 3.5 magic

That said, dread necromancers are fantastic

>>50123829
>dread necromancers are fantastic
I wish that they finished off the little group of specialist magicians by making a abjurer/transmuter with a dash of conj. Yeah 3 is a bit much, but conj seems to be really split already so you might as well continue that to make it feel like it's not left out.

>>50112589
You need complete psionic, with the ardent. The ardent is a cleric equivalent, and got a full suite of healing powers at cost. With the healing domain, the healing was pretty solid.

>>50115224
I view psionics as a second pass revision of the magic system. They had magic and its bullshit, now they could do it again but less shit. The general nerfs of some of the more broken mechanics, and the general removal of the more bullshit spells.

>>50124154
You can also get the healing mantle through an egoist or psychic warrior alternate class feature from a web expansion.
There's also the sangehirn prestige class online that lets you use (self only) psychometabolism powers on allies.

>>50123947
>abjurer/transmuter
Abjurant Champion and Warshaper?
Yeah they dipped into melee, but seriously. They were both crazy. AC kept full casting, forget if Warshaper did or not.

>>50122929
Hmm... you seem to be under the impression that time is relevant to a wizard. Unless DM fiat, wizards can just rope trick into a power nap into a new list of prepared spells... and that is the lowish level really dumb answer. Higher level wizards can have demi planes and such, which obviate even trying the care about combats.

The only way wizards start to kinda be reasonable is with a lot of DM fiat. But, with enough DM fiat anything is good or bad. To be able to have any sort of relevant discussion about class balance, we have to assume RAW.

RAW, tier one shits all over every other tier. This is objective truth.

>>50123168
ToB was at the very end of the 3.5 run. You can see how it was kinda a playtest for the mechanics of 4e.

As for a playable race for ToB, I liked the idea of playing a hobgoblin given the fluff. Issue was they are kinda shitty as a race. I want racial substitution levels for all the ToB races for hobgoblins.

>>50124463
>those bandits are about to destroy that village!
>dammit, they know we're here, we have to hurry, grab the treasure and get out!
>wait guys, I need my spells, let's just sit in this magical box for 8 hours k?

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>>50123829
Baseline wizard was a very blank baseline concept and class and that was what made it powerful, but a hell of a lot of splat-classes like Dread Necro, Beguiler, and Binder all had a specific theme that their spells and class features were tailored for. The best concepts and classes for a thematic development were the ones that narrowed your focus. Sorcerer at the least narrowed your spell set so you could just be "Magic user" in terms of your fluff, but between PrC's, racial specs, and feat selections you could easily shift toward "school specialist" so that you'd have a Sneak (illusionist) a Warrior (Transmuter) a Guardian (Abjuror) or even a healer (Spellfire feat, Faerun spells).

...though yeah, the baseline core classes really Needed specialization and narrowing down to make it taste anything other than bland in its base features without accounting for characterization.

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>>50124279
Warshaper had no casting advancement, it just augmented your simple fighting capacity and resilience. Extended reach, anti-crit/precision damage, boosting Str/Con, etc.

The one that boosted the hell out of your transformations AND gave casting advancement was Master Transmogrifist.

>>50124509
Both examples don't actually take a specialized response, though again, demi planes are the real answer. Also scrolls of whatever you need, which are largely fairly cheap and can cover a massive number of basses.

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>>50124504
>As for a playable race for ToB, I liked the idea of playing a hobgoblin given the fluff. Issue was they are kinda shitty as a race. I want racial substitution levels for all the ToB races for hobgoblins.

Well, I'm in a homebrewing mood, so how is pdf related for a start?

>>50110813
>throwing the Elemental Plane Of Earth at people
I'm intrigued. tell me more.

>>50125180
Eh... doesn't really pop. Maybe a racial bonus to initiative?

>>50112777
You can Iron Heart Surge any negative effect away from you provided you can have access to a swift action.

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>>50125358
"Effect" is a specific term in the core rules that may not include being a statue depending on how it happened, and being a statue may prevent you from having a swift action.

This is why you take CWI and custom craft Iron Heart Surge as an item with the maneuver as an immediate action instead, though some DM's may rule that IHS would then be too early as it gets you Out of an existing effect, but that doing it as an interrupt means there's not yet anything to surge out of, while after you're still a statue with no option to take actions on account of statueness.

IHS is a quirky thing if you aren't sure how the terms work.

I just did my first campaign today, and it was somehow turned into a survival horror game because of the one memester in the group. As a joke, he wanted to do a perception check for Harambe, and our DM rolled, and he got a goddamn crit 20, at first I thought he was just gonna laugh it off and forget about it, but instead he stood up and started yelling
>YOU FEEL THE GROUND SHAKE AND HEAR A LARGE BEAST HEADING TOWARDS YOU
>YOU DODGE OUT OF THE WAY AS A HUGE GORILLA RUSHES PAST YOU WITH RAGE IN IT'S EYES
So now we constantly have to check for for gorilla footprints and listen for gorilla noises and this dark and damp dungeon, and we stopped when we finally encountered Harambe in his chamber wearing golden armor with 2 gorilla bodygaurds wielding coconut guns, not sure how this is going to turn out but we're all level 2 and my character definitely isn't suited for combat

>>50122858
The unchained monk in PF can actually do both

Unfortunately it gives up its will save to do it, because only caster classes are allowed to have a good will save

>>50120922
>HP
>Skill Points
>Mattering to casters in general or wizards in particular
Mmm mmm mmm this is some tasty bait.

>>50126437
It's not like a Wizard can't get both of those things.

>>50125673
>though some DM's may rule that IHS would then be too early as it gets you Out of an existing effect, but that doing it as an interrupt means there's not yet anything to surge out of
By RAW, readying an action to slam a door shut once a party member passes through causes you to slam the door shut right in the guy's fucking face. It's at times like these that any good GM will go with RAI.

>>50125673
Using IHS as written and not as intended means you can't use it to resist Charm or Dominate or even Sleep
Using IHS as written and not as intended means you can use it to KILL THE NIGHT because night incurs a concealment effect if you don't have darkvision

>>50110531
My last 3.5 campaign was Gestalt.
Why argue between Warblade and Fighter when you can have both?

Gestalt Warlock/Rogue is pretty great. Shores up the weaknesses of both classes without being particularly overpowered. With a little creative rebranding you can use it as a stand-in for any sort of combat caster you want, without having to worry about the bullshit that wizards et al bring to the table.

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>>50126759
You can do that outside of Gestalt, you just front-load with fighter and fighter feats for 4 to 8 levels and then run Warblade the rest of the way. You can even qualify as a Master of the 9 pretty easy if you plan it out.

Gestalt's pretty cool though. Got one DM running Gestalt with the requirement that fullcasters are out and one side Must be full base martial adept of some sort.

It's been pretty cool so far.

>>50110531
Fuck yes son. Never got really invested in pisonics personally but I appreciated them.
Incarnum though, that shit was my fucking bread and butter. I created a personal wiki for soulmelds so I could link them with tags for easy searching. Spent probably a solid week making that.

3.5 has my favorite class: factotum
My weeb ass iaijutsu factotum.

>>50110813
You get it. I love 3.5 like I love E.Y.E Divine cybermancy.
I've spent months pouring over the various forums and guides. I have my own patchwork bibles and patched srd.

I've spent so much of time just being immersed in 3.5 content.

>>50123664
If you ever patch Truenamers they're actually kinda bullshit. An insight I probably share with a grand total of 5 people who've managed to both play a truenamer and a truenamer that has had patched mechanics. They're much like a real casting class with more sustain at that point. Reverse utterances are fucking great.

>>50122923
you can just go lion totem barbarian at level 6, abandon being lawful, and not look back because most of monk past 6 is awful.

>>50110813

I wish a lot of that effort and introspection into the system existed in my 5th ed communities outside of here. I genuinely prefer autistic craziness to the number of smug retard assholes that cant do basic math that keep telling shit like

>>How can Paladins keep up with Wizards in damage?
>>Bladelock is an awesome damage dealing class the way I play it
>>Aracoccra are totally balanced you just shoot arrows at them
>>A PC keeps doing X thing and it works.What ways can I screw him out of using his basic class abilities and punish him for it? Im a good DM

>>50126938
My player, she did even better. She was Knight (PH2) // Fighter/Warblade. A bit MAD but she used Zhentarim Soldier to optimize the Charisma.

I allowed them high point buy, and the Party was based into crafting.

She had TWF boosyted by the warblade, charge feats (she switched TH/TWF as learned by the previous guy that played a Fighter for 40 levels) and used feats, Zhent and Kinght for "aggro".

When she left, they missed her a lot, no more major threats one-shotted or nasty fuckers kept at bay. She still had to learn how to use polearms and bows, she struggled with flyers and big monsters.

>>50127046
5e doesn't have that much introspection because there's less stuff to introspect. Simple as that

>>50123422
The opposite is true, too.
I mean, people struggled and sometimes succeeded in optimising options known as sub-par using 2563725376 splats just to allow character concept, or as an exercise.

>>50127086
Something about this really triggers my autism. I get the distinct distinct feeling this was not even remotely optimized. Knight//Warblade leads to one of the nicest tanking combos possible in the game but realllly requires a reach weapon to get it fully online. Thicket of blades+reach+Knight challenge is fucking great.
Really bamboozled by how TWF even remotely fits into any of the things described. The whole "tanking" thing also works on like the different end of the spectrum to how a 3.5 charger works. I'm very triggered by this post. It is entirely likely I'm wrong and the full details of the build and circumstances explain it all well but if there was ever a place to show my 3.5 autism I guess this thread is it.

>>50127117
This really leads to what I love most about 3.5. Creating character concepts you reallly reallly can't even remotely duplicate in systems like it. I can't think of a D&D clone or edition where I can make the weird fucking characters I made in 3.5
Made a Jetsetradio character that left a flame trail wherever they walked and moved at absolutely ludicrous speed who dealt with flying enemies by harpooning them with a harpoon that was chained to an immovable rod and then skating up the chain and kicking them in the face.

I always liked how 3.5 just had such a sheer number of options available that it seemed like there was a way to break everything, or make anything viable.

>>50127120
She needed fighter to get the charge feats fast (the ones to boost power attack and to subtract AC instead to hit).
She took flaws to get even more feats.
She played tricks, like charge, devastate one target and heavily damage another one with cleave, get almost nuked by retaliation (often a prepared action healing could help, one of the few instances of decent in-combat healing).
The turn after, she would switch to TWF and pump combat expertise, activate a defensive weapon, use TWdefense.
The power attacking enemies would miss all their attacks (or many).

BTW you can pull similar shit with a normal fighter. Fighters in 3.X are treated badly, needed way more than PF did and so on, but is true, too, that many people cannot use feat and equipment for shit and blame the system.

>>50127135
Stuff like the harpoon and the bolas are dramatically underrated.
Fighters needed way more and magic needed nerfs, and PF did not do enough: but many people are not able to use their character without point-and-click gimmicks or combos read in internet.
Is like scatbikes lists for eldar in 40k. 75% of those people using those would not be able to use a hypothetical nerfed Eldar army.

>>50127120
Also: if it It was not optimized... so?
The party was middle-tier in power, no tier 1 classes, and the campaign involved a lot of diplomacy, treaties, travel and crafting.

>>50127220
I am full aware of what a 3.5 fighter does. I also know all of the feats in question before you've mentioned them. 2H Power attack ->Leap attack->Shock trooper is the absolute bread and butter of 3.5 martials. I couldn't forget that chain, and also the more tricky bits of that chain like Battle jump, even if I lost part of my brain in an accident.
It is the other stuff that absolutely fucks my shit up.
cleave???? combat expertise???? TWdefense?????
>>50127250
This isn't even about optimization.
Say you like cars a lot. You see someone roll up to you with a car that has the back half missing and instead there is just a single bicycle tire, there is also a tank turret on top of it. Thats me right now. I'm not telling everyone to optimize or even think they should but this is such a wild mix of weird options that you've got me fucked up.

>>50127135
Nothing will ever top the iaijutsu katana chucker

technically possible in other systems, but no other system has the insane series of abilities and rules that makes it a semi-viable build

>>50127239
Harpoons in 3.5 were one of the best weapons. I have no idea why everyone didn't just carry them around at least as a scondary. I'll admit eating EWP for them is a steep cost but its so easy to grab something like that with a 3.5 build without ever wasting a feat or class level for it.
but seriously:
>If it deals damage, the harpoon lodges in an opponent who fails a Refl ex saving throw (DC 10 + the damage dealt). A harpooned creature moves at only half speed and cannot charge or run. If you control the trailing rope by succeeding on an opposed Strength check while holding it, the harpooned creature can move only within the limits that the rope allows (the trailing rope is 30 feet long). If the harpooned creature attempts to cast a spell, it must succeed on a DC 15 Concentration check or lose the spell. The harpooned creature can pull the harpoon from its wound if it has two free hands and takes a full-round action to do so, but it deals damage to itself equal to the initial damage the harpoon dealt.
> The harpooned creature can pull the harpoon from its wound if it has two free hands and takes a full-round action to do so, but it deals damage to itself equal to the initial damage the harpoon dealt.
Who everyone else didn't think that was the TIGHTEST shit ever I'll never know.

>>50127300
No EWP means only you only have a -4. If properly buffed, or just lucky, it does not even matter that much, many times.

>>50120476

> Martial classes worked great in 3.5!

Yeah, they totally weren't completely overshadowed by a single class feature from other classes.

>>50122585
The save-point thing uses another power that jumps your psicrystal forward 24 hours, not plane time trait shenanigans.

3.5 TO got weird

>>50120476
They weren't even well-balanced against each other, let alone casters

>>50127120
Also, to elaborate: the control was performed by a Rogue//Psywarrior with a build called "that's a paddle" from the Simpsons: he used Dragon magazine and any splat possible to increase size (psy), gain reach with a Kusari-gama, and then punish, trip, SA or whatever is an increasing number of actions were or were not performed.
You attack? That's a paddle.
You move? That's a paddle
You cast? That's a paddle.

The lady was "tanking" using threat, killing stuff and being dangerous or just attracting focus with Goad and knight class skills. She would have probably gone thicket of blade later but I moved and the campaign stopped.

>>50127337
Which feature? Please don't say animal companion.

I am the first to say that 3.X sis far from being balanced, but if one says that an animal companion is like a melee warrior, means that played, or played in a group in which such warrior was used at 20% of its potential.

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>>50127354
Sorry mate, I didn't mean to be harshing on your players. You just presented with me a strange mix of options. The Rogue sounds a lot more standard in control for martial.
You've now also pointed out my favorite 3.5 weapon of all time. The 3.5 Kusari-gama is thing of mechanical beauty, If you really want to go full on anime, there is very little stopping you from, and even encouraging you, wielding two of them. Maybe not for any real practical reason as one of them does everything you'd want to to.

>>50127385

I say to you that you haven't played in a group where an animal companion was used at its potential. A single shared spell from a Druid turns most animal companions into stupid sauce.

But actually I was more talking about things like summoning, either in combat, or Planar Binding. Then there is Domination, Geas, etc for just stealing a fighter. Then there is building a construct. Then there is creating undead.

A martial is just a walking BABstick which can use equipment. Yes there are some broken stuff that martials can take advantage of, but most of them can be used by the things I suggested.

The only thing that keeps martials anywhere close to being useful beyond very early levels (and at those levels, everything is a crapshoot) are very specific feat chains, ToB builds, and cheese.

>>50127389
Oh, no worries. It was a weird party and I did not elaborate well. They split among them healing/buffing and dps/tanking, in a way that in a party of 6 there were 2 players very good in one thing, 2 decent and two that could do only in emergency, with items, and suck at it.

I guess it was a way to change from the previous campaign, was a classic very vanilla single class 3.X in which a given player was very good at one thing, but they ere 10-11 and generally had a backup with a different spec (say, two clerics, one more anti-fiend, one more anti-undead but both good in clericing).

And yes, the Kusari-gama is patrician. Cheers!

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>>50127385

Animal companions get Improved Trip, which requires like 5 feats or a prestige class that even get something similar.

A large riding dog with some extra strength, one or two extra bite attacks, and barding can easily have AC in the low twenties, equal chance to hit as the fighter, with the bonus of trip chances on any hit, and tripping on the AoO when the opponent rises. Even gets a feat like power-attack if you want.

Not only that but the spells used to do that work double duty on the Druid that's a spell-caster but can effectively be doing the exact same thing.

>>50127466
If you say using a BUNCH of class features, yes I can agree with you.
Raised dead, golems, summons, binds, geased(?) become an army, and an army is better than a warrior!
To a certain extent.

Remember that magic can fail, can be dispelled, regions can have impeded magic, dead magic, planar restrictions. Summons are great, but are not 100% reliable.

A geased(?) character can hold grudges, if you play the game as a MMORPG cast spells on people has no consequences, but if you think the world as a living multiverse, bind being at your will, if abused, can lead to reprisal.

You can buff an animal companion as much as you want, but will never used properly harpoons, bolas, tower shields, or just be ready when teken by surprise at a social dinner. There are places where a fighter can stay, when a golem or an animal companion cannot.

I will never deny the limitations of 3.X and I do adjust what I can when play but the gameworld is more than a series of encounters, and a Fighter is more than his BAB.

>>50127509
> Combat expertise + Improved trip is 5 feats.

>>50127523
I think he means the free trip wolves get

>>50127523

I forgot the jank of how it works in 3.5.

Improved trip means you don't get an AoO from making a trip attempt, and you get to make an attack if you succeed.

What wolves and trained riding dogs have (plus other creatures) is the other way round. You get to make a trip attempt after ANY successful bite attacks (or attacks with you nat weapon).

That is much, much better.

>>50127547
>>50127558
Knockdown is the feat you'd want here. But it is 3 feats total to reach it.
Combat expertise (total feat tax) + Improved trip+ knockdown.
However at that point you've got something that is much better than a wolf bite.
There is also a ToB maneuver that does this that you can just grab with one feat iirc

>>50127558
>what is Knockdown
That's 3 feats anon. 3<5

And inb4 "b-but that's three feats" I KNOW.
I HATE feat chains it should be 1-2 max.

Now ask your wolf to shoot down the rock, then to tie back the rope bridge.
You fucking autists and our MMORPG-like rpg gameplay. God I hate you all.

But

>>50127586
>Roc, the bird not the Rock. I haz the dumbz

>>50127582
>>50127586
Worgpelt soulmeld also does it which you can grab with a feat

>>50127513

> If you say using a BUNCH of class features, yes I can agree with you.

Any singular feature I mentioned is better than a fighter - WBL calculations notwithstanding.

> Remember that magic can fail, can be dispelled, regions can have impeded magic, dead magic, planar restrictions. Summons are great, but are not 100% reliable

Martials aren't 100% reliable either. If you are really good at hitting stuff with a big club while angry, and you're up against spectral creatures flying in the air firing goop at you.. you're fucked.

Not all these techniques even require magic constantly "on" work. You can't dispel Geas or Planar Binding, not without very specific spells that you'd have to have foreknowledge of.

> A geased(?) character can hold grudges

So? They have to "walk by [your] side and fight [your] enemies till one year is ended". Geas says *must*, they can't refuse and take damage.

> if you think the world as a living multiverse, bind being at your will, if abused, can lead to reprisal.

You do it to creatures who you have defeated and would otherwise kill. Nobody will give a shit. Except the martial who is upstaged.

> You can buff an animal companion as much as you want, but will never used properly harpoons, bolas, tower shields, or just be ready when teken by surprise at a social dinner

You're saying a fighter AT A SOCIAL EVENT is going to be more prepared to fight than an animal trained to guard people and used to fighting with weapons attached to its body?

All those things are useful tools, but they can be used by all sorts of other things available to other classes.

> There are places where a fighter can stay, when a golem or an animal companion cannot.

I can't really think of any. But even if there was, that just means martials are only better than these options under specific circumstances. Which is an argument against them.

> a Fighter is more than his BAB.

They objectively are ONLY a BAB and extra feats.

>>50127586

Knockdown still isn't better, because you have to do a certain amount of damage. Yeah 10 doesn't sound like a lot, but it's still a limitation that will come in to play.

So your argument against animal companions is that they don't have ranged attacks or hands?

Neither do goddamn Rocs. And animal companions *can* have ranged attacks.

If you want to essentially say Fighters are better than Animal Companions because they have hands, go ahead.

>>50127582

> However at that point you've got something that is much better than a wolf bite.

It's the same except you have to also do 10 damage. That's not really "better".

>>50127634
If this is as you play, is your problem.
Do you really think a fighter is fucked agains a flying target? No tamed beasts, items, missles?

who do you geased? Who are his friends, tribe, ancestors? Are you 100% of the time in control? What if is freed, and simulates being under control? What if is rescued and tells things about your lair?

You arbitrarily decided that nobody will give a shit. Or that nobody will opose things like dead animation. Or that magicc will work fine in 100% of the territories you will visit, when is not the case by core.

The social event is just an example. It was an example of a place in which bring a bear could be problematic (it can worked around by magic, but detected by magic as well).

Again, is legitimate play and DM as you do, bu then do not complain that magic is too powerful (it is, but not in the extent of the easy-mode people think it is).

So, looks like I already missed the important part of the raid outfit

Shit, now what?

>>50127666
Indirectly, yes. Is part of the point.

>>50127689

> If this is as you play, is your problem.

"It's not broken if you play the game like it isn't", is not an argument.

This isn't how I play, this is how the classes and features are DESIGNED.

> Do you really think a fighter is fucked agains a flying target? No tamed beasts, items, missles?

If you're going by tamed beasts, then you stray into any class buying a fucking tamed warbeast for pennies that have insane CR. Or things like Figurines for broken monsters.

There is nothing a fighter has an advantage against flying targets over these other features from other classes. They do in fact have a disadvantage, in that they have to constantly be aware of the limitations of the thing they spent half a dozen feats trying to achieve.

> who do you geased? Who are his friends, tribe, ancestors?

They are dead. You killed them. They were Hobgoblins in a cave.

> Are you 100% of the time in control?

They 100% have to follow the Geas.

> What if is freed, and simulates being under control? What if is rescued and tells things about your lair?

Then you have an interesting story, but all those things could apply to Fighter who is secretly under mind control. Something I wouldn't hold against a Fighter.

> It was an example of a place in which bring a bear could be problematic

Well.. social situations are DM Fiat or broken by other class features. Like Diplomacy. Fighters certainly have an advantage in a naked wrestling match with wizard with no spells though. So.. yeah..

I don't know what your last sentence means, but it's probably

> "The way WE play the martials are balanced"

Well cool, you discovered how PnP RPGs and friendship works. Doesn't change the way the game is built.

>>50127666
>>50127673

10 damage is actually all but guaranteed you've qualified for the feat chain. By the level you get the feat and with the 15 strength that is required by the feat. It is entirely possible however to build so fucking poorly that you don't hit that 10 damage but I want to say if you know enough to take this feat chain with any sort of intent you really can't fuck it up.

Its better because you'll have a higher trip bonus than the wolf and you'll have an extra attack over the wolf.
Wolf: attack->trip
You: attack->trip->attack

Then again it isn't like I disagree with your argument in full but focusing on just a wolf's ability to trip or any specific animals ability to do something isn't really going to hold water with how easy it is to get any sort of feature tacked on to a fighter. The better argument I'd make is that you have much much more versatility than the fighter with your summons or companions or whatever as they're not a character in and of themselves but simply an add on to another fully functioning character. If every party member has half a fighter, thats quite a bit better than one party member being a fighter.

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>>50127726

>>50127732
Being said I love fighters and while you might be right in that fighters are given the short end of the stick, I don't know why you've kept your strange hate boner for what is basically a dead and very old edition. A hate boner so strong you felt compelled to shit post about it in a thread dedicated to talking about what we enjoyed about said dead edition. Like fuck, we get it. Martials weren't treated right in 3.5. Not a person disagrees with that but you're here trying to shit on people who enjoyed the Martials none the less.

>>50127732

> 10 damage is actually all but guaranteed you've qualified for the feat chain.

Against a dummy. Not against monster which could have all sorts of resistances to damage.

> Its better because you'll have a higher trip bonus than the wolf and you'll have an extra attack over the wolf.

Nope. "If you trip an opponent in melee combat, you immediately get a melee attack against that opponent as if you hadn’t used your attack for the trip attempt."

I agree I could make make things easier on myself and argue what you suggest, but I don't want to. That's boring. I'm going to argue that those class features are in fact better than most martial choices overall, WBL notwithstanding.

>>50127765

Shit my bad, I've been reading that as "if", not "as if".

Well that was stupid on my part. Knockdown is probably better overall.

>>50127739
I chuckled, but you know I meant a different thing.

>>50127730
>flying target
the point was: can the fighter overcome, or at least try? the answer is yes.

>Hobgoblins in a cave
k anon

> 100% in control
a lesser geas can be broken by something as break enchantment. And even the greater one does not impede a creature to talk about their problem to stranger.
I bet you are one of those people that treat charme as a total mind control.

>you have an interesting story
you are moving the goalpost; here we are just showing that you are thinking that magic-created minions are perfectly feasible, while there are problems in tactics, social situations, reliability of magic, and so on.

>social situations are DM Fiat
again, moving the goalpost. The point is not the situation per se, but the fact that you cannot bring with you zombies, robots, dire bears in most villages and civilized places.

>The way WE play the martials are balanced
No, I advocate that even PF did not do enough, and by a long shot. I just hold that most people do not exploit perfetcly the martials, give too much leeway to magic, and this exacerbate problems that a system, undeniably, has in spades.

>>50127765
The other comments aside you're being incredibly pedantic about the 10 damage. At the bare minimum level that you can acquire that, you're absolutely doing that 10 damage to every printed monster of your CR. At higher levels where monster defenses get weirder you also have way more options and means to hit those monsters for 10 damage. That 10 damage is trivial to hit.

Also I just realized you've technically got an even better advantage over the wolf, knockdown aside: reach. Which enables you to do what the wolf does on it's turn outside of your turn. Leaving your turn to do even more.

>>50127732

Oh and I mean to make things extra stupid - and I'd argue this is just cheese - you can straight up buy things that in a lot of the situations you'll find yourself in will be better than a fighter are just straight fights.

I mean for 10K you can buy a Figurine of Wondrous Power (Limestone Crab). It becomes an infamous Monstrous Crab, which is basically a TPK with claws. It's crazy under CR'd.

But easily the dumbest thing are Warbeasts. A CR8 Dire Tiger (trained for war!) costs only 1300gp. Which is cheaper than a +1 weapon?

I mean silly things exist that make someone good at brawling sort of pointless.

>>50127794

> the point was: can the fighter overcome, or at least try? the answer is yes.

So can a lot of animal companions. No they don't have a short bow or throwing knives stuffed away, but there are plenty of options given they share spells with a druid.

> k anon

Jesus who does your party fight? Pretence Elementals?

> a lesser geas can be broken by something as break enchantment.

I know, I said Geas. Not Lesser Geas. LG is a shittier version of Disease.

> even the greater one does not impede a creature to talk about their problem to stranger.

No, but a gag does. Not like it would matter though, you could use the victim for half an hour if you want, in a dungeon.

> I bet you are one of those people that treat charmed as a total mind control.

No, but I can look at the attitude rules and understand they are stupid and broken. I can also read what Geas and Domination actually say.

> you are thinking that magic-created minions are perfectly feasible, while there are problems in tactics, social situations, reliability of magic, and so on.

You are presenting narrow exceptions, which proves my point. Extremely specific circumstances that even require DM cooperation to matter.

"What if they are freed from control" is the same as me saying, "What if your fighter is put under control".

I don't hold that against a fighter. Spells are spells.

> again, moving the goalpost.

No, I'm not. There are extremely specific circumstances where a fighter is better than just mind controlling enemies. Say in a vermin infested cave. But that doesn't make them better. That makes them only useful in specific circumstances.

> the fact that you cannot bring with you zombies, robots, dire bears in most villages and civilized places.

That's entirely based upon setting, i.e DM Fiat. The rules do not say anything about that.

One of the salvations of D&D and a ruleset I like for all it's foibles.

>>50127794

> I just hold that most people do not exploit perfetcly the martials

Otherwise known as optimisation. An optimised anything (except say, Truenamers) beats an un-optimised fluffy anything.

I understand your position, and I am deliberately being vociferous deliberately. But I don't think you're looking at this rationally.

From a rules perspective, there is nothing a fighter (or even most martials) bring that makes them overall a better choice than other features from other classes.

Yes, they can be better in specific circumstances, but can't you see that's a negative?

> At the bare minimum level that you can acquire that, you're absolutely doing that 10 damage to every printed monster of your CR.

Yeah Knockdown is probably better, but it's got a feat tax and tripping is only good for the first third of the game anyway. Animal Companions are onto pounce/rend/grapple @ +40 mod or some shit by then. You're stuck with feats unless you retrain.

Yeah reach is a good point, if you're doing Spiked Chain stuff.

>>50127730
>Geas

Broken by Iron Heart Surge :^)

>Geas
HAHAHAHAHAH

>>50127920

Yes, and? Is Troggo the Winestealer, the scourge of the Neppra Valley, an Ogre Warrior, going to have IHS?

I'm not talking about 1 v 1 duel bullshit. Don't Geas the guy with initiator levels, Geas his unconscious friend who drank too much wine.

>>50127884
> a gag

I think I am done. And YOU talk bout DM cooperation? DM cooperation is treating spell in a lenient way, as you do.

Do you realise a particularly spiteful being could just attack the caster?
Geas is a curse you deliver, then get the fuck out in a way that the best thing to do for the victim is do do what asked. That could or could not bring to unintended consequences. Used is as a 6th level dominate monsters (9th level) is asking for troubles. Jesus fuck.

Dead magic or social situations are not "exceptions" unless you play the game as a grindfest. DO NOT PLAY it as a grindfest is not an houserule. You keep calling extremely specific a set of circumstances and gameplay style that, go figure, make the game more interesting for everybody.

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>>50127937

"A geas places a magical command on a creature to carry out some service or to refrain from some action or course of activity, as desired by you. The creature must be able to understand you. While a geas cannot compel a creature to kill itself or perform acts that would result in certain death, it can cause almost ANY other course of activity."

"The geased creature MUST follow the given instructions until the geas is completed, no matter how long it takes."

>>50127971
I think you have to be VERY carefully when you formulate that, anon

>>50127971
>I haven't played high level d&d or played with people even dumber than me

>>50127971
Whole text:

Geas/Quest
Enchantment (Compulsion) [Language-Dependent, Mind-Affecting]
Level: Brd 6, Clr 6, Sor/Wiz 6
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Target: One living creature
Saving Throw: None
This spell functions similarly to lesser geas, except that it affects a creature of any HD and allows no saving throw.

Instead of taking penalties to ability scores (as with lesser geas), the subject takes 3d6 points of damage each day it does not attempt to follow the geas/quest. Additionally, each day it must make a Fortitude saving throw or become sickened. These effects end 24 hours after the creature attempts to resume the geas/quest.

A remove curse spell ends a geas/quest spell only if its caster level is at least two higher than your caster level. Break enchantment does not end a geas/quest, but limited wish, miracle, and wish do.

Bards, sorcerers, and wizards usually refer to this spell as geas, while clerics call the same spell quest.

> wizard: do not kill me and kill the hobgoblins, ogre
> ogre: not today
> proceeded to smash the wizard, the hobbos shaman heals him the following X (caster level) days.

>>50127968

> I think I am done. And YOU talk bout DM cooperation? DM cooperation is treating spell in a lenient way, as you do.

"Lenient" being.. literally as written. What.

What exactly is the problem with gagging a creature you have Geas'd?

> Do you realise a particularly spiteful being could just attack the caster?

The Wishmaster argument. Yeah okay, so the first time that happens you get annoyed at the DM, who looks at you smug as fuck saying you didn't SPECIFY - and then next time you just create a fucking contract of extreme specificity, and everyone gets mad.

> Geas is a curse you deliver, then get the fuck out in a way that the best thing to do for the victim is do do what asked.

No, not if the instructions include things like not attacking your, being your bodyguard or whatever.

They MUST follow those instructions. They can't elect not to.

> Used is as a 6th level dominate monsters (9th level) is asking for troubles. Jesus fuck.

No, it's not. Not unless you have a Wishmaster DM.

> Dead magic or social situations are not "exceptions" unless you play the game as a grindfest.

Dead Magic doesn't effect Geas or Planar Binding AFAIK. It also nerfs everyone, including fighters.

I don't see what you're getting at with Social situations. There is equal chance that the society hates fighters but loves necromancers. Who the fuck knows. It's not implicit in any rules.

"-4 to CHA based skills while the creature is near you" would be. Or the undead that actually do have fear based auras or whathaveyou.

Using class features doesn't turn a game into a "Grindfest". Fighters are fucking useless in social situations anyway!!

>>50128021
> wizard: do not kill me and kill the hobgoblins, ogre
That's two orders, so the wizard has to remember to bring some snacks and refreshments for the ogre while he spends 20 minutes casting the geas.

>>50128021

That's from a very abridged version from a different site. The excerpt I quoted is from the PHB, from what I recall.

You'll notice my quoted text isn't even in what you posted.

>>50128021
Geas, Lesser
Enchantment (Compulsion) [Language-Dependent, Mind-Affecting]
Level: Brd 3, Sor/Wiz 4
Components: V
Casting Time: 1 round
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target: One living creature with 7 HD or less
Duration: One day/level or until discharged (D)
Saving Throw: Will negates
Spell Resistance: Yes
A lesser geas places a magical command on a creature to carry out some service or to refrain from some action or course of activity, as desired by you. The creature must have 7 or fewer Hit Dice and be able to understand you. While a geas cannot compel a creature to kill itself or perform acts that would result in certain death, it can cause almost any other course of activity.

The geased creature must follow the given instructions until the geas is completed, no matter how long it takes.

If the instructions involve some open-ended task that the recipient cannot complete through his own actions the spell remains in effect for a maximum of one day per caster level. A clever recipient can subvert some instructions:

If the subject is prevented from obeying the lesser geas for 24 hours, it takes a -2 penalty to each of its ability scores. Each day, another -2 penalty accumulates, up to a total of -8. No ability score can be reduced to less than 1 by this effect. The ability score penalties are removed 24 hours after the subject resumes obeying the lesser geas.

A lesser geas (and all ability score penalties) can be ended by break enchantment, limited wish, remove curse, miracle, or wish. Dispel magic does not affect a lesser geas.

>>50128027
> What exactly is the problem with gagging a creature

Not sure if autistic or just retarded

> No, not if the instructions include things like not attacking your, being your bodyguard or whatever.

Not sure if reading comprehention issues or just retarded

>I don't see what you're getting at with Social situations

Hello high Queen, this is my friends, the Killbot, the planar bind Glabrezu and a pair of zombies. Sorry for the stink.
Please tell me you are trolling.

>>50128039

Where did you get that from? It's rules of lesser geas, but says it is lesser geas?

>>50128033
Yes, that too.
Fuck, I am even for overall nerf of magic and buff of martials but many problems people had with magic is just functional illiteracy.

>>50128067
Is both from here

http://www.d20srd.org/

>>50128038
Quote the whole part from PHB, go on.

>>50128058

> Not sure if autistic or just retarded

Assume both. Tell me what the fucking problem is.

> Not sure if reading comprehention issues or just retarded

Assume both. What's the issue?

> Hello high Queen, this is my friends, the Killbot, the planar bind Glabrezu and a pair of zombies. Sorry for the stink.


Wow that is an astonishing beautiful construct. I must have it for my collection, can I buy it?

[Almost kind of construct]

And who is your stunningly beautiful friend there? The one with the sparkling eyes?

[Polymorph At Will]

Your two armoured fellows beside you, they smell most pleasant.

[All sorts of effects]

Like.. yeah there can be social situations where your created/crafted/summoned/controlled things aren't welcome - same as the fighter. It''s entirely down to how the DM wants the game to work.

NOT THE RULES.

>>50128039
>7 or fewer hit dice

The level 8 fighter watches you fiddling with your hands and making strange gestures at you, and then he impales you on his spear.

>>50128128
Oops, hit dice is basically your level minus 1, so the level NINE fighter guts you with his spear.

>>50128092

PHB is pretty much as >>50128039

Just has an example of "open ended", and how instructions might be subverted.

>>50128073

You Geas beings you defeat but don't kill. Tie them up or immobilise them, cast the spell.

I don't see anything that allows someone to simply disobey instructions from anything in the PHB.

>>50123465
That's the problem though.

Why do I have to cross-reference bullshit just to throw an encounter at my party, who will likely just murder the thing within 1-3 turns anyways.

It's just added work for a fraction of the return. The SRD certainly helps but I'd rather just have all the relevant information already be there on an index card for fast referencing.

>>50128128
>>50128149

We aren't talking about duelling you fucking retard. Geas has a casting time of 10 mins, but no save.

This isn't about who beats up who, but how a class feature REPLACES the Fighter.

>>50128096
What has the creature in his hands? I mean seriously?

For the geas, read the above posts.

>It''s entirely down to how the DM

It''s entirely down to the DM to create a believable world in which actions have consequences, magic has a price, spell commands must be carefully spelled put, and so on. A shitty game from a good one.

I just give up anon. Hell, I am not even trying to defend 3.X too much, I am just sad that your usual hater shitposting derailed the thread. It was better when people just talked about builds, what they did in 3.5, and so on.

But this cannot be right? We have to devolve to repeat things we all know about 3.X martials and spellcasting, exaggerate them by 10, and then shitpost.

Thank you very much. I really "assume both".

>>50128152
You will have to kept them gagged and immobilized to do not have tell you away.

If you order them to slaughter the other hobbos, does not mean they cannot yell "help! this fucker is forcing me to kill you! CALL EVERYBODY AT ONCE IN THIS ROOM"

>>50128173
>range
>close
>25ft+.5ft/2lvls

Sure going to live long for those 10 minutes when the fighter sees you from 30 feet away.

>>50128174

> What has the creature in his hands? I mean seriously?

I don't know what you mean.

> For the geas, read the above posts.

Half of them are me frankly - but it's easy to link to anything you think proves your point.

Even Lesser Geas can't be ignored, you must do what it says.

> It''s entirely down to the DM to create a believable world in which actions have consequences, magic has a price, spell commands must be carefully spelled put, and so on. A shitty game from a good one.

Right, but none of that is implicit in the rules.

It's like me saying that Harpoons aren't in this goddamn setting and invalidating something a fighter can do.

> I am just sad that your usual hater shitposting derailed the thread.

What? We are both having a discussion, there has been zero shitposting you cretinous whinging baby.

> Thank you very much. I really "assume both".

But refuse to explain yourself. I reckon it's pretty easy to feel smart if you just assume that everyone is too stupid to understand you.

Geas works as I've described. If it doesn't, it's down to the DM, not the rules.

>>50128152
Geas is hardly foolproof. Says so right in the spell.

>A clever recipient can subvert some instructions:

>>50128197

This is shitposting. We aren't discussing casting a spell on a fighter.

We are discussing using a mind controlled creature AS the fighter.

Christ almighty.

>>50128203

So don't use is on clever recipients. I didn't say it was foolproof, I said it could replace the fighter.

>>50128199
read the other posts I am tired of you.

>>50128206
But what if the creature IS a fighter?

Checkmate, wizards.

>>50128190

> If you order them to slaughter the other hobbos, does not mean they cannot yell "help! this fucker is forcing me to kill you! CALL EVERYBODY AT ONCE IN THIS ROOM"

So add, "without communicating to anyone but me in any way".

>>50128220

You bring him to <0 HP with your entire party, then cast the spell.

As I have said, repeatedly.

>>50128231
That's second geas.

>>50128199
>cretinous whinging baby.
We were talking about the ups of 3.5, you devolved it in the usual fighter vs wizard.

YOU are the cretinous whinging baby.

>>50128218

I've responded to them all.

You're just being purposefully obtuse. I want to understand you, because what you're saying makes zero sense to me whatsoever, and the feeling may be mutual.

>>50128243
That's another 10 minutes. But time does not matter in Wizardswinland.

>>50128238
What if the creature took Die Hard as a feat?

>>50128243

No, it's not. It's not a short verbal command (such as Command or Hypnotise) it's a specific instruction. It can carry out a service or any course of activity so long as it isn't suicidal.

Read the spell description. You are just assuming it works a certain way.

>>50117443

Except don't do what Legend d20 did, which was die off before they even released the promised bestiary. The fan-made bestiary on the forums is shit.

>>50128258

Then you kill it and do it on something else.

>>50128249

So I'm solely responsible? Not the other person arguing with me? Or multiple anons?

>>50128251
You have to compel the creature to attack his allies, and then to not give away the position.
First, that is two geas, that could or could not work. The more high you go in level, the higher is the chance you find immunities and gods know what shit.

If you just gag, with no compulsion to not alert the dungeon, the creature will find ways to remove the gag or alert other with noises.

If you cast twice, assuming you have two geas, the time could attract patrols and more nasty shit.

I said read the thread because people pointed out this and other problems and you ignored. You answered to what was convenient to answer to, and partially.

>>50128289
What if ALL the creatures had Die hard?

>>50127748
Not him but I think you're under the impression that a discussion is only met when both parties agree on a particular subject.

Nobody ITT truly hates 3rd edition, it's just people clarifying details that might have been missed or misunderstood due to the GM changing things around for a particular instance of his campaign.

I went through the same shit when I was allowed to play a CG monk for my one friend's campaign, only to be told that that's a no-go when I tried to do the same in another campaign.

If people don't explain why you were wrong, or at least mistaken, it'll just breed confusion and make the game seem more inconsistent than it actually is. Not to say that it's all that consistent in the first place but you know where I'm getting at.

"You shall count every grain of sand on this beach, and for each grain you will think of one crime you have committed, or a person you have murdered, or through your actions have harmed. When you count a grain of sand and your mind is at peace, not able to think of a crime or harm you have committed that you have not previously recalled, you are free".

Is a perfectly fine Geas that would be thematically used.

Why are you idiots talking about pvp or even combat in general? That's about the only aspect of the game the game where the fighter has any chance of challenging the wizard. Oh well, I suppose it fits the topic of the thread. Fighters: not actually totally useless if optimised.

>>50127815
Not him but.

Reach is fine to a point and there's nothing stopping any other class from picking up a reach weapon.

And 10 damage isn't really a lot, until it suddenly becomes the most important shit ever and you end up becoming frustrated about how little damage you're dealing because of weird defenses making them practically immune to your attacks.

>>50128330
More like Fighters: Not actually useless with a belt of AMF.

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>>50128319

I'm the supposed shitposter with a hateboner or whatever - and I adore 3.5

The problem comes when people wilfully ignore the problems it had. Sure this might not have been the thread for that, given how shitty the discussion got in the end.

Martials had severe problems. I made my point, if people disagreed but didn't want to discuss it, they didn't need to respond.

Fuck, I mean.. can I say that I *like* how insanely powerful magic was compared to martials in 3.5? I actually am fine with imbalance or asymmetrical balance.

In my games it's balanced by me, in that Casters are expected to do so much more than a martial. Martials are chill, nobody gives a fuck if their party screws up something. They were just a mook.

But the casters, they have to pay. Their superheroes who fly around for fucks sake!

I get balance, I get making people happy. They are good design choices. But I sort of want to play someone who is mostly useless and just likes to smash things, or get paid.

>>50128330

> That's about the only aspect of the game the game where the fighter has any chance of challenging the wizard. Oh well, I suppose it fits the topic of the thread.

The thing is, that's what everyone keeps saying the discussion is about - but it isn't.

>>50128352

Exactly. But knockdown working as was explained does make it mechanically better. Whether it's overall better without feat retraining, not sure.

>>50128355
AMF would kill their own magic items.

So goodbye to that belt of ogre strength friend.

That and mages can still cast certain spells even if they're in an AMF.

>>50128418
>their own magic items

Doesn't matter. I don't need my magical items to skewer you on my metal stick. You need your magic to not get skewered.

>>50128355

Fighters need magical equipment to kill most monsters bub. You can't wrastle a Hydra

>>50128425

You do to kill monsters, which is your goddamn job clanky.

Woo you can kill casters with AMF. Great. Can you kill one that is also a Dragon?

I've played white box, 2e, pathfinder, and 5e; should I bother playing 3.0/3.5?

>>50128447
>can you kill one that is also a dragon?

On a good charge, yeah.

>>50128425
Shows how much you know.

A Fighter without magic items is basically just an above average NPC guard.

Not to mention, there are still spells that can be cast inside an AMF, so you'd only be limiting your own effectiveness to do effectively nothing to the mage in question.

>>50128453
No. Martials can't actually do their jobs without such specific and book intensive builds that the PF fighter and monk are core competent in comparison.

>>50128296

> You have to compel the creature to attack his allies, and then to not give away the position.

Easy instruction on a No Save spell that you can cast on a creature while you are safe, resting etc, and they are stabilised but completely at your mercy.

> First, that is two geas, that could or could not work

No, Geas has never worked that way, that's Command.

> The more high you go in level, the higher is the chance you find immunities and gods know what shit.

So don't use it on them, use it on something else and have it fight them. This isn't an offensive spell, it's a spell that creates an offensive tool.

> If you just gag, with no compulsion to not alert the dungeon, the creature will find ways to remove the gag or alert other with noises.

So just say don't communicate or make noise as part of the instruction.

> I said read the thread because people pointed out this and other problems and you ignored. You answered to what was convenient to answer to, and partially.

I have pointed what wrong about this argument at least twice already, so perhaps you read the thread.

>>50128468
>there are still spells that can be cast within an AMF

Nope, unless you take specific feats to do so.

>A Fighter without magic items is basically just an above average NPC guard.

Wow, I had no idea an NPC guard had 8 different feats that boosted his charge damage into the thousands.

>>50128429
Nothign stopping me form keeping my anti-magic shit on my trusty steed and grabbing it later when I need it.

Of course I can always just win on initiative and charge the caster anyway.

>>50128453

I say yes. There is a crazy amount of content that exists, mountains of material, and once you have an understanding of how things work, what is broken, how the game can be derailed - then you can have a great time.

It's basically Pathfinder anyway. Honestly I'm not sure you'll get that much out of it unless you want to run specific content you know about in 3.5.

It's basically Pathfinder without any kind of controls. You have to do that by yourself

>>50128504

> Nothign stopping me form keeping my anti-magic shit on my trusty steed and grabbing it later when I need it.

Except your friends who have magic items who will all hate you when you do it because it nerfs them as well.

But there are ways to make an AMF useable. It's actually better for casters who have it as a spell.

> Of course I can always just win on initiative and charge the caster anyway.

What caster!??! This isn't a Fighter Vs Wizard fight thread for fuck's sake.

How useful is a Fighter who spent most of their WBL on a AMF belt? Not really very!

>>50128481
Who is going to carry the monster on a safe place? Who knocked him down (another spell, possibly, ut that's another slot that goes).
If is just in the middle of the dungeon, what makes you sure you are safe?

And more importantly, if we are struggling so much for this servant, are we sure the fighter is "easily replaced"?

And again, you are assuming you can give a lot of instructions with a single spell.

>>50128296

See

>>50128325

>>50128504
>Nope, unless you take specific feats to do so.
Why wouldn't a mage take those feats though?

Keep in mind, all a mage needs is one spell to completely disable you and you're also assuming that the mage is just going to stand inside of your AMF instead of running away and coming back with a plan to murder your shit after realizing that, hey, if I telekinetically throw this boulder at him, he'll get squished.
>Wow, I had no idea an NPC guard had 8 different feats that boosted his charge damage into the thousands.
It's just too bad that even with thousands of damage, a Fighter is still just a glorified NPC class.

>>50128534
>Except your friends who have magic items who will all hate you when you do it because it nerfs them as well.

It's only 10 feet. I can hitch the horse somewhere, don't be a giant faggot.

>What caster!??! This isn't a Fighter Vs Wizard fight thread for fuck's sake.

Somebody brought it up before. Maybe you should read the thread.

>How useful is a Fighter who spent most of their WBL on a AMF belt? Not really very!

I only NEED a masterwork weapon. And as stated, even WITHOUT an AMF item, caster on fighter, I win if get initiative.

>>50128552
>a Fighter is still just a glorified NPC class.

Oh for sure, that's why I play a Warblade. It's more of a Martials vs Casters argument.

>>50128386
I don't understand why you insist on denying being a shitposter, and the going ahead and shitposting this badly.

Here's your (you).

>>50128548

> Who is going to carry the monster on a safe place? Who knocked him down (another spell, possibly, ut that's another slot that goes).

Your party. Druid, Cleric, hell even the Rogue. Their summons, their spells, whatever. A hireling. Doesn't matter, arguing monsters can't be knocked down is idiotic.

> If is just in the middle of the dungeon, what makes you sure you are safe?

Nothing. It's not foolproof. But you can take measures to make sure you are safe. You could cast it on the boss of the entire area after you killed everyone. 10 mins isn't an eternity, except if it's in rounds.

> And more importantly, if we are struggling so much for this servant, are we sure the fighter is "easily replaced"?

But it isn't a struggle. It's 10 mins with a defeated enemy. You are trying to present it as difficult by saying it isn't foolproof.

> And again, you are assuming you can give a lot of instructions with a single spell.

It's not an assumption it's verbatim.

If you have ever played any 3.5 D&D and actually come across NPCs who are under a Quest or Geas, you can see that's exactly how it's intended.

You are assuming it has to be short instruction. It's not even implied in any of the spell's description.

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>>50128583

Giants do make great targets for mind control yes, but trolls have that pesky regeneration.

>>50128515
>I say yes. There is a crazy amount of content that exists, mountains of material

Dispite anyone's complains of 3.x, it had mountains of lore and awesome adventure paths. Most every book is worth that alone even if you don't understand the rules.

>>50128565

No I mean if you stray too close to them they are suddenly turned into a fighter. Which is terrifying to most classes.

I don't know who keeps bringing up a Wizard and a Fighter going at it, but they are dumb as fuck. Duels are stupid.

> And as stated, even WITHOUT an AMF item, caster on fighter, I win if get initiative.

Who fucking cares?!

You have to do something more than kill a Wizard to be useful to anyone.

With no equipment but a belt of AMF you can do nothing BUT that. Woo.

Fighters need magical equipment to be useful.

>>50128577
It's not an argument man, martials lose, period.

And the reason they lose is because any advantage that they get can easily be taken by a mage or emulated through the cast of one spell.

Martials get boons from magic items sure, but mages can actually produce said magic items, in addition to scrolls, wands, orbs, etc. that gives them options when their spells per day is exhausted.

And even if the Fighter does get in close and kills the mage, it still wouldn't matter because for all you know, that level 20 mage that you just fought was just a simulacrum, or the lich will just respawn in a few days using his phylactery, or whatever and now you've lost the element of surprise while the mage has the option of just scrying you and murdering you while you're in the middle of taking a shit or something.

It's ultimately pointless because there are too many variables to consider and variables that are innate strongly favors the mage because of their spells.

>>50128613

Yeah I've made sure to grab everything I can from Dragon Mag and Dungeon Mag. Just reading the paths is great.

>>50128638

Don't do it man. It's pointless to have that argument.

1 vs 1 fights between classes/players are just childish. They tell you nothing.

The game is based around teamwork. It's important if one player in the team can do another's job better. It's not important who wins in a fight between them.

>>50126973
Patched Truenamers are basically like Tier 3 Sorcerers. They don't know a ton of magical effects, and they're effectively limited to 6th level and below magic with a few exceptions (the Gate and Earthquake utterances), but they get a lot more casts than even a Sorcerer can perform. Another good analogy might be to Bards, if Bards had five or six times the number of spell slots in return for not getting bardic music.

The main problem with Truenamers, even patched ones, is that in return for 'endless' spell uses they have an increasingly higher chance of the magical effect just not working at all. Remember that Utterances still have save DCs, so you're tacking on a second % failure chance onto a spell that already has a % failure/reduced effect chance. A sorcerer that gets unlucky just has their enemies save against their spells and take reduced effect. A truenamer that gets unlucky does literally -nothing- for multiple turns in a battle.

>>50128634
>No I mean if you stray too close to them they are suddenly turned into a fighter. Which is terrifying to most classes.

What part of "I keep it on my horse" Do you not grasp, you illiterate fuck.

>With no equipment but a belt of AMF you can do nothing BUT that. Woo.

AGAIN, If I bought just standard equipment, which was the SECONDARY point, I could kill the wizard easily AND still contribute to content outside of wizard murder.

>>50128638
>martials get boon from magic items

What part of "Warblade" did you not understand? I don't need all my magic items to be good. I just need my pointy stick and the ability to move my arms.

>>50128684
>What part of "Warblade" did you not understand? I don't need all my magic items to be good. I just need my pointy stick and the ability to move my arms.

So do most creatures that focus on melee, except that they also get the benefits of shit like grab, rend, constrict, or the like which happen on attack.

>>50123351
>Take away a wizard's spells and its useless!
>Take away a Beguiler's spells and it's
>Oh wait it's useless my bad

>>50128683

Honestly I feel like Truenamers should just be Planar Binding as a class. That's all they do.

Obviously take it away from everyone else - but it's such a powerful effect - why not give it to a class and let it be all it does?

You can try to balance it with some additions to the spell, limits on HD controlled, and maybe make the namer totally shit outside of that?

>>50128684

> What part of "I keep it on my horse" Do you not grasp, you illiterate fuck

I figured you had to wear the belt for it to work, like most magic items? Does the horse wear the belt? Does it need to be activated?

I don't have an example of an actual Belt of Anti Magic Field as a magic item, so I'm just assuming how it works.

Given that - then everyone else is worried about getting too close to the horse then.

Even if you just had mundane equipment, at the level you get a belt like that you have to face monsters that will rip you apart unless you have decent, magical equipment. Important things like a cloak of resistance.

CR is balanced against WBL. Nothing else. Your WBL would be fucked. And the Hydra would eat you.

You would be a literal one trick pony.

>>50128713
And I can get a wide variety of neat abilities on my attacks as well. It's what made martials viable in 3.5, and it's what lets me know a DM is shit when they say it's banned in their campaign.

>>50128728
>I figured you had to wear the belt for it to work, like most magic items? Does the horse wear the belt? Does it need to be activated?

The point made was that I don't HAVE to always carry it. How dense are you?

>>50126144
Well, if they shoot ya, it's gonna hurt.

>>50128733
>martials
>viable
Whoa whoa whoa, let's not get ahead of ourselves chief.

You're still a BABstick that only works in combat. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're bad but it does mean that you're not very versatile, which in 3rd edition is a big problem.

>>50128742

> The point made was that I don't HAVE to always carry it. How dense are you?

"Nothign stopping me form keeping my anti-magic shit on my trusty steed and grabbing it later when I need it"

This sounds like you meant keeping it on your horse till you need it, then taking it from the horse.

And I don't know if a AMF on a belt would always be on. Only thing I can find is an Anti-magic Torc, from Underdark.

25k gp, command word to activate 1 per day. Anti magic field centred on wearer. So .. 110 continuous minutes per day?

Not sure if you could activate it and put it on the horse, don't think the command word works unless you're wearing it. You could use a parrot or familiar?

Couldn't something kill the creature before it reached anyone anyway? Wouldn't it be safer on you as it's like, a lot of gold?

>>50128733

TOB was pretty neat. I don't really call them martials myself, I think they are basically GISH, like Hexblades. Just like.. not awful.

I'm fine with them, so long as nobody plays (what I call) martials with them, as they get outclassed.


I had a player play a Samurai, promising he wouldn't get salty if it was suck. It was very suck.

>>50128791
What are you not understanding about keeping it somewhere away from me and grabbing it later when I need it?

Do I turn on a flashlight and keep it in the cupboard, turned on until I need it?

No, I keep the belt in a saddlebag, or on me, depending if the DM ruled the belt as being always on (a problem) or command activated.

>>50128782
Can do plenty of other stuff. Decent enough charisma score, decent amount of skill points leads me to being able to smack things in combat and contribute to character devolpement situations like negotiations and be a party face.

Besides, somebody has to be the BAB stick (with supernatural abilities), might as well be me.

>>50127385
>Name a feature better than entire martial classes
>Don't say the feature better than entire martial classes

Thanks for making yourself look like a retard, I didn't have to even do anything.

>>50128849
BAB-stick can basically be anything that's built for melee though.

An undead is technically a BAB stick with the benefits of sometimes being able to paralyze foes and turn them into more zombies

A golem is technically a BAB stick with the benefits of being strong as fuck, almost indestructable depending on the materials, and also functioning even in an AMF.

An animal companion is technically a BAB stick with the benefits of creature powers that allow them to do more shit anytime they successfully attack someone.

I mean fuck, an eidolon from PF could technically become a storm trooper charging badass if it wanted to, assuming it met the prereqs to do so.

And these are all things that only mages can produce or benefit more from the mage's abilities.

I wish it weren't true but when you get right down to it, anything that a martial could do, a mage will likely get more of a benefit out of since they can just spawn minions to fight for them.

>>50128849

> What are you not understanding about keeping it somewhere away from me and grabbing it later when I need it?

I get that. That's the assumption I was working on.

When you were using it, people would have to be wary as you nerf them by being within 10ft of them. That's very dangerous to the party.

You called me an illiterate fuck for saying if you strayed too close to your party they would become a fighter. Did you not understand I meant *when you were wearing the belt* ?

Always on AMF on an item, from what I've looked up, would be 135'000 GP. The Torc is your best bet, and is honestly quite overpowered for what it is.

I could imagine in a silly, optimised world you'd just buy dozens of them and use them with ballista or some shit.

Regardless, you have to get to whomever you are going to fight *without any magical assistance*. That can be pretty tricky if they are flying, or have created something that an AMF does nothing to, like a stone wall.

And in the mean time, you're inordinately vulnerable as you have no magical defences. No spells to buff you, no resistance items, no immunities.

Perhaps there is a specific tactic or stances with the Warblade that makes this negligible, I don't know.

It's just not a great idea to put all your eggs in one basket, and think that you'll get by without your WBL going into stuff like protection.

>>50128898

Hey don't just put it on Casters.

Almost anyone can grab leadership. Buy Warbeasts or other trained animals/beasts. Use Figurines of Wondrous Power. Just spend their money on hirelings.

There are loads of options. Take the WBL you'd give to a martial and instead just buy shit with it, and you'd get a helluva lot more bang for your buck.

>>50128865
On average animal companions are stupid, smelly, afraid of unnatural places and can't properly climb ladders. Well built companion will do instead of a martial in a pinch, but if possible it's better to have an actual intelligent martial capable of climbing ladders and using tactics in combat.

>>50128174
>But this cannot be right? We have to devolve to repeat things we all know about 3.X martials and spellcasting, exaggerate them by 10, and then shitpost.

>I'm wrong but too much of a child to admit it, so we must both be wrong

>>50128931
Again, mages can do all of that stuff too. They'd probably be able to afford all that more efficiently too since they'd have surplus gold from all the magic items they produce.

Not to mention the fact that mages also benefit more from CHA since they only need one stat to do their jobs, compared to martials who need like four stats to do their jobs and INT/CHA ain't one of them.

>>50128953
When was the last time you heard of an adventurer bathing?

Also, simians such as monkeys and apes are elligible for being animal companions as well.

And if it's intelligence you need, awaken is a spell that a druid could cast.

>>50128174
>What has the creature in his hands

Hands that are unable to take the gag off because they're Geased to obey and they thus physically cannot take off the gag.

Geas prevents someone from disobeying. THE CHARACTER CANNOT DISOBEY FOR ANY REASON AT ALL. The only way they can is if some physically prevents them from obeying, which hurts the person under the Geas and can, in fact, kill them.

Of course, you're under a Geas to never admit you're wrong, and this whole argument is just trying to distract from the fact that a Druid's animal companion is objectively better than a Fighter. You just know you can't win that argument, so you decide to argue about a spell you clearly don't understand instead. Go be an idiot somewhere else. /b/ seems more appropriate for your level of mental acuity.