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Rules ?'s Answered

Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 10:26 am
by rydi
Can you give me a computer grid of the Toroidal Model of Alignment (TMA)? I'm fine with whatever point you want to put yourself at in alignment, as long as it isn't one of the standard 9.

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RKV Swift actions:
By RAW it is unlimited, up to the number of turn attempts available. I am amenable to change if people feel it is necessary, though the mechanic is somewhat limited by other factors. But Sage and CustServe have both suggested it be limited to 1/round. So, I leave it to the party, RAW or RAI?
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=121454 (post #8 in specific)

Ultimately, I think limiting it is reasonable, and is still worth the class all by itself. It just goes from stupidawesome to just plain old vanilla awesome.

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Celestial Armor (and Holy Avenging Spears, Frost Brand Axes, ect.):
By RAW, traits of special items are non-transferable to my knowledge. However, it makes sense that many such traits could exist on other types of items. Assuming that we go with the later stance, then the "celestial" part of celestial armor can be applied to whatever you like, for the cost difference between a base set of +3 chain and the celestial armor.

There are several ways to regulate this further, to prevent silliness, such as spot ruling every instance of this (irritating to me, and unfavorable since I'll just start saying "no" out of pique), limiting things to categories, or limiting based on commonsense and the descriptions. The problem with description based limitations however is that the specifications are not exactly clear; in the case of celestial armor, is the gold/silver an essential part of the enchantment, or just what armor's "standard" package is? Is the holy avenger inherently meant to be in the shape of an iron cross (sword) for it's magic to work?

My final ruling is that people can apply special item traits to other items, HOWEVER all items are ultimately at my discretion to allow, the player should attempt to avoid stupid/nonsensical pairings, and multiple special item traits are not to be stacked (i.e. no celestial infernal leaf-weave armor without special approval by me).

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Crafting and Starting Gold:
I honestly think it's fair to give the crafters the ability to buy double the stuff with their gold. Given the cost in feats, I'm fine with that. The problem is more that the items there represent gravegoods mostly... Meh, fine. You were banished with a few more trinkets on your person than everyone else. Whatever.

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Geomancer cheese:
The consensus seems to be in favor of spell versatility working with battle blessing, though most of them weren't playing a tristalted campaign and thus didn't have to worry about the ramifications... Reading the wording is ambiguous, b/c they make specific statements about how spell versatility is supposed to work, and don't specifically state "and any other optimizable options" or similar statement. But it is stated before the example. Ultimately, I'll allow it.
http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/ ... ed_Quicken

The last poster on the page makes a good point that we should remember as we explore geomancer however, namely that it doesn't help with spell PREP, just spell CASTING.
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards ... 708.0;wap2

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Racial class skills:
Only apply if you have racial hit dice, which you don't. You get only the class skills for classes you have HD in. Trust me, you're getting the better end of the stick, as what I've functionally done is replaced your crappy racial HD with awesome class levels. You lose a little, but gain a whole lot.

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Anything else I need to rule on?

Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 1:03 pm
by Avilister
It would essentially look something like this:

Code: Select all

LCGE LGE NGE  CGE  LCGE
LCG  LG  NG   CG   LCG
LCN  LN  TN   CN   LCN
LCE  LE  NE   CE   LCE
LCGE LGE NGE  CGE  LCGE
The 9 alignments in the core book are the 2letter aligns in the center. Outside are where there are overlaps - the top and bottom are the same, left and right are the same, and the four corners are the same. These represent all of the 'on the corners' alignments for the outside of the square.

The 'inside the square' alignments are:
LNG, CNG
LNE, CNE

Does that make any sense to anyone but me? I honestly can't tell. Basically you take the alignment grid and you stretch it across a sphere. Thus "Lawful Good" which is normally adjacent to Lawful Neutral, Netural Good, and True Neutral (on the two sides and the inside corner) is also adjacent to Lawful Evil, Chaotic Good, and Chaotic Evil.

I'm also heavily in favor of limiting the RKV ability to generate swift actions. My reading of the RAW actually does limit it to 1/round, but it seems that others (aside from CustServ) do not actually agree with that interpretation. Given the extreme resource value of swift actions, I think it is fair to limit the number of extras that can be generated at any one time, probably to 1, though I'm open to some sort of variable limitation based on stats, level, or some other such thing.

Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 3:48 pm
by Rusty
I discussed the swift action rkv thing with you some time ago, mostly because I needed to know that it was "real" and going to happen before I optimized a tristalt build around it, which I've been doing for some time now. I would find it dickish at the least to reverse that ruling, but if nobody else wants to play in a game with that feature in it, then obviously we won't.

I would like this to be resolved quite quickly, as I've been spending a great deal of time on this build and if I need to tear it down to basics and restart then I want to go ahead and do that now, with less suspense.

While a single extra swift action is quite potent, it is not "good enough" for my build to remain as is, or even as was before the geomancer interface came up, as those swift actions were being used to activate smites and enchantments. Basically I'll need to reconcept the entire character, or at least revisit every single aspect of it and determine if it still "goes" in any respect at all.

Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 4:11 pm
by Rusty
ahem. So, I immediately realize that my post is somewhat bitchy, and I wish to qualify.

I agree that the huge amount of swift actions my build gets, and how they can be used, is powerful if not broken. I realize the conundrum that cheyne must be at.

If he allows it, then he knows that anything that can be killed by spells will be killed by spells in the first round of combat, and should he desire any encounters to last longer than that he needs to consistently include creatures that can't be killed by spells, which is "selecting against" the advantage my character has, and would be "more fair" to the whole party but significantly less fair to me, and as a good GM, I know cheyne would rather use balanced and universally fair encounters. I would rather not introduce this complication to the game, I would rather not leave everyone else trying to beat me in initiative just so they get a turn, and if this is situation the consensus believes we would be facing, then I will happily do something else with my character.

Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 4:12 pm
by rydi
Hostility much?

I read it as RAW, which I was correct in. People were upset by the balance, I reviewed it, found several places with people talking about RAI being 1/round. I left it up to the party. These revisions happen, especially with broken tristalt stuff. I've had to do weird things with the dragon just to make it playable, and other characters have had weirdness too. Revision will be required.

The viability of the build is still intact, even if people decide they don't want to see unlimited swift actions, it merely loses a bit of nova potential.

Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 8:31 pm
by Liquidprism
The RKV thing doesn't really affect me, or my role in the game so I don' really care all that much. Objectively it does seem unbalanced in an extreme way. I could understand why other players might not want to deal with it. So I am in favor of whatever seems most fair, and fun to the party.

I don't understand the alignment thing. Am I suppose to be picking 3 alignments or what?? Why don't we just ignore them for purposes of this game? It would be less convoluted.

I will be chaotic, lawful, neutral...

Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 9:41 pm
by Amseriah
I don't care so much about the over-poweredness of the multiple swift actions, except that I think that the possibility exists to make the game not fun. If every combat consists of you spending over an hour going through all the buffs you are putting up and then all the attack spells that you are loosing, and finally all of your attacks, and by the end of your one hour turn nothing is surviving, then the game isn't fun for anyone else. If the ability is used responsibly then I don't care. Now if the temptation to solo everything all the time is too great, then I would have to vote in favor of limiting the number of swift actions that can be gained through rkv to just one.

Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 10:42 pm
by rydi
Gideon basically already stated he was fine with the nerfed version, so we'll just go with that. Ruling made.

Anyone have any clue what the LA on Tauric is?

Posted: Fri May 14, 2010 3:07 pm
by Liquidprism
My guess on Tauric, based on the template wording, and reading around, is +2. This is cheesy, and leaves a lot of room for abuse, but so many things in DnD have the same problem it doesn't seem to hardly matter. So yeah, pick two beasties, and smush em together for +2 LA... have fun.

Posted: Sat May 15, 2010 6:22 pm
by rydi
These classes are full:

Cleric
Paladin
Fighter
Warblade
Swordsage
Crusader

Presgiges:
Master of 9
Geomancer

Posted: Sat May 15, 2010 6:30 pm
by rydi
You guys may want to start posting your epic builds so we don't start stepping on one another's toes and have people get pissed (steven just found sadness...)

Posted: Sun May 16, 2010 3:31 pm
by Amseriah
Fochlucan lyrist will be mine!

Posted: Sun May 16, 2010 4:53 pm
by Ivanovich
my build up to 20:
warblade, swordsage, master of nine
fighter, shiba protector, slayer of domiel (modified)
rogue

my spic build:
warblade, swordsage
disciple of disipator, weapon master (OA)
assassin, binder

Posted: Sun May 16, 2010 6:36 pm
by Avilister
Sub-epic:
Crusader
Swordsage
Warblade

Epic:
Akodo Champion, Elemental Master, Eternal Blade, Hidecarved Dragon, Master of Nine, (Fighter), Dragon Ascendant

I am informed that Fighter is no longer available (I had planned to start taking it immediately in epic), so I'm seeking a replacement. Requirements include a full BAB and preferably class features that might help increase hit and damage (as PF fighter does) either via feat picks or directly as features.

Posted: Sun May 16, 2010 7:46 pm
by Liquidprism
I am not sure I like the class limit after epic. I stated before there was ever a discussion of limiting the number of classes that I wanted to go into epic with Fighter/Warrior/and one other fighty class. Warblade was suggested, and I had a plan. Then a limit cap was created, and I lost warblade as an option. Now apparently I have lost fighter as well? What exactly determines who gets dibs??

I want an simple epic progression with 3 base classes that have the same BAB, and saves. I am quickly running out of options. I was willing to concede warblade, as there was too much Bo9S anyway, but fighter? I know I called that class months ago for my epic progression, I remember discussing it in Carl's Jr.

My plan, which I really don't feel like changing, is Fighter 20/ Warrior 20/ Barbarian 20 in epic. Find me another base class that has a similar BAB, saves, and can function with the same equipment, and I will use that. However, I have not been able to find one.

My pre-epic plan is druid 10/geomancer 10 // summoner 20 // cleric 7/ thaumaturgist 5/cleric 8.