Welcome to thread two of AnCap's Epic Pony Adventure.
As we left off last time, the party of ponies and a cow had been teleported away by Discord. They are waking up in the back of a wagon, as a creamy colored pony with a multihued brown mane gazes at them over the wagon's edge.
/vx/ - Videogames and Paranormal
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944 replies and 123 files omitted.
TIL Psions get Contingency.
Badass. Nothing can kill a contingent-caster.
Badass. Nothing can kill a contingent-caster.
Sister Ash seems almost ecstatic as her eyes gaze across the rugged hellscape of the dragonlands
"It's been so long.. It's as beautiful as ever." She says, levitating across pools of lava
"It's been so long.. It's as beautiful as ever." She says, levitating across pools of lava
>>114157
Topaz looks to the side, somewhat taken aback by Ash's words.
"It looks so... barren and inhospitable. I would certainly not trust my followers alone in this place."
Topaz looks to the side, somewhat taken aback by Ash's words.
"It looks so... barren and inhospitable. I would certainly not trust my followers alone in this place."
>>114159
Sister Ash seems ironically calm
"well, of course not. Your followers are ponies, and this is the home of the dragonkin." She replies
"All lands are beutiful, because they're inhabited by so many different creatures. Evry race has it's place. Every beast has it's habitat. Thus is the harmony of nature." she continues, smiling
"And that, is beautiful. The vulcan tremors, the lavafields, the arcane weather.. they all make this land unique, and it's only because of that that that it could be home to so home to so may of these covetous and destructive dragons. The creatures match the land beneath them, and by that they're all able to live in harmony with the earth, or at least on their terms."
Sister Ash seems ironically calm
"well, of course not. Your followers are ponies, and this is the home of the dragonkin." She replies
"All lands are beutiful, because they're inhabited by so many different creatures. Evry race has it's place. Every beast has it's habitat. Thus is the harmony of nature." she continues, smiling
"And that, is beautiful. The vulcan tremors, the lavafields, the arcane weather.. they all make this land unique, and it's only because of that that that it could be home to so home to so may of these covetous and destructive dragons. The creatures match the land beneath them, and by that they're all able to live in harmony with the earth, or at least on their terms."
>>114160
Phospy flaps his wings a little faster so both Topaz and Ash are next to eachother. She seems conflicted.
"I know. Forgive me. I was quite shocked to hear your words but I forgot you have that connection with dragons."
She smiles sheepishly.
"You are right, though. These dragons, albeit with as much tact as stone, did seem content before we arrived."
Phospy flaps his wings a little faster so both Topaz and Ash are next to eachother. She seems conflicted.
"I know. Forgive me. I was quite shocked to hear your words but I forgot you have that connection with dragons."
She smiles sheepishly.
"You are right, though. These dragons, albeit with as much tact as stone, did seem content before we arrived."
>>114162
"It's their homeland. It's only natural that they'd ind a sort of rugged peace here. This is the place where dragons are free to be dragons."
"It's their homeland. It's only natural that they'd ind a sort of rugged peace here. This is the place where dragons are free to be dragons."
>>114163
Topaz looks solemn.
"Where dragons are free to be dragons..."
Diamonds pats her on the back, changing her mood into a small smile.
"I see. Tell me, what do dragons usually do?"
Topaz looks solemn.
"Where dragons are free to be dragons..."
Diamonds pats her on the back, changing her mood into a small smile.
"I see. Tell me, what do dragons usually do?"
>>114164
"Usually, fight over treasure and scorch things." she says a bit flatly
"But they're a lot more sophisticated once you get to know hem. They're extraordinarily clever, and they have natural affinity for magic."
"Usually, fight over treasure and scorch things." she says a bit flatly
"But they're a lot more sophisticated once you get to know hem. They're extraordinarily clever, and they have natural affinity for magic."
>>114165
Phospy looks at Ash as if she's undermining his features at her first sentence, but recedes when she starts to indirectly compliment hi.
"Is that so?" Topaz says, a bit surprised. "What hobbies you admire of them? Some sort of past time that isn't pillaging or fighting?"
Phospy looks at Ash as if she's undermining his features at her first sentence, but recedes when she starts to indirectly compliment hi.
"Is that so?" Topaz says, a bit surprised. "What hobbies you admire of them? Some sort of past time that isn't pillaging or fighting?"
Maybe I should have animated some statues the previous day, in game...
Oh well, too late for that now.
Oh well, too late for that now.
Maybe a couple Simulacrum clones would be good to have handy. I could make a shadow solar. Would be nifty.
Hopefully, we can get through this session without the wifi cutting out.
>>114166
"I wouldn't say I admire any of their hobbies per say.. It's more of a matter of experience. Dragons are just another part of this world. They're as natural as any one of us."
>>114166
"I wouldn't say I admire any of their hobbies per say.. It's more of a matter of experience. Dragons are just another part of this world. They're as natural as any one of us."
Also, who wants to be teleported if I use word of recall?
I'm not going to burn an 8th level slot to teleport us out of danger if it means leaving half of the party behind.
I'm not going to burn an 8th level slot to teleport us out of danger if it means leaving half of the party behind.
>>114174
Topaz nods.
"Oh, so you simply value their existence in the grand scheme of things. Understandable."
Phospy is a bit bummed out over her words though.
Topaz nods.
"Oh, so you simply value their existence in the grand scheme of things. Understandable."
Phospy is a bit bummed out over her words though.
>>114177
Phospy, understandably, is shocked at the mare assaulting his snout, turning his head away. The small line of steam coming out of his nostrils.
Topaz giggles at the dragons' actions, patting his head.
"Oh, don't be so flustered. She means well."
This doesn't really comfort the dragon's embarrassed demeanor, only increasing the steam output.
Phospy, understandably, is shocked at the mare assaulting his snout, turning his head away. The small line of steam coming out of his nostrils.
Topaz giggles at the dragons' actions, patting his head.
"Oh, don't be so flustered. She means well."
This doesn't really comfort the dragon's embarrassed demeanor, only increasing the steam output.
>>114182
I think I'll set us to teleport to an Island in Thalasia then. No evil creatures could reach us there.
If we need to get back to ye old ponyville, Sister can Planeshift us.
"Humility is better learned young." The nun chides.
I think I'll set us to teleport to an Island in Thalasia then. No evil creatures could reach us there.
If we need to get back to ye old ponyville, Sister can Planeshift us.
"Humility is better learned young." The nun chides.
>>114183
Phospy looks at her indignantly, speaking in Draconic.
>"I'm not a hatchling!"
He grumbles, generating more pats from the mare.
>"I'm an adult."
Phospy looks at her indignantly, speaking in Draconic.
>"I'm not a hatchling!"
He grumbles, generating more pats from the mare.
>"I'm an adult."
[1d20+25 = 39]
>>114184
>"~Sure you are." the ancient mare coos
*Pets dragon*
Rolling Proffesion (masseuse)
>>114184
>"~Sure you are." the ancient mare coos
*Pets dragon*
Rolling Proffesion (masseuse)
>>114185
The dragon coos before biting his tongue, moving away from her soft hooves.
>"C-cheater! I won't fall for your dirty tricks and charms."
Topaz giggles in turn.
"D'aww, look at him. He's acting the same way as when we first met."
Also roger that on the changed destination.
The dragon coos before biting his tongue, moving away from her soft hooves.
>"C-cheater! I won't fall for your dirty tricks and charms."
Topaz giggles in turn.
"D'aww, look at him. He's acting the same way as when we first met."
Also roger that on the changed destination.
>>114186
On second thought, I'm not sure if that's wise.. I'd have to use my planar bubble ability to use it to travel between planes, and I'm still not sure if the party consents to being teleported across the planes yet.
Sister bullies the dragon a bit more before returning to her turtle.
On second thought, I'm not sure if that's wise.. I'd have to use my planar bubble ability to use it to travel between planes, and I'm still not sure if the party consents to being teleported across the planes yet.
Sister bullies the dragon a bit more before returning to her turtle.
>>114187
Ash could swear the dragon's scales got a bit wetter than usual, clenching his teeth in a vain attempt to show weakness against the invading nun.
As she leaves to the turtle, he gasps for breath, letting out a long stream of steam from his nostrils yet again.
Topaz simply giggles at this display.
>>114188
Basically, yes.
Ash could swear the dragon's scales got a bit wetter than usual, clenching his teeth in a vain attempt to show weakness against the invading nun.
As she leaves to the turtle, he gasps for breath, letting out a long stream of steam from his nostrils yet again.
Topaz simply giggles at this display.
>>114188
Basically, yes.
>>114188
So, how many dragons are around here? A few hundred? A thousand? How big are they on average?
So, how many dragons are around here? A few hundred? A thousand? How big are they on average?
"That's not a 'portal'. It's a storm." the nun corrects
"A lot of ponies these days don't know it, but all storms in the world are connected. If you know the right tricks, they can be incredibly helpful."
"A lot of ponies these days don't know it, but all storms in the world are connected. If you know the right tricks, they can be incredibly helpful."
Cowe makes a 'tch' sound. "Spellcasters,..."
>>114226
"Well, not a wandering cloud. I cloud that I called." The nun says, as she levitates ever-forward
"Well, not a wandering cloud. I cloud that I called." The nun says, as she levitates ever-forward
>>114229
Topaz giggles.
"Right. Forgot your weather powers. So we basically became droplets in the cloud until we came here?"
Topaz giggles.
"Right. Forgot your weather powers. So we basically became droplets in the cloud until we came here?"
>>114235
She squints at her
Candy's Eye's becoming as slanted as the Kirin's
"What do you mean by priestess?"
She squints at her
Candy's Eye's becoming as slanted as the Kirin's
"What do you mean by priestess?"
>>114236
"You know. A shrine maiden. An oracle. A mare of faith. Religious duties cover most of my schedule on a centuries basis."
"You know. A shrine maiden. An oracle. A mare of faith. Religious duties cover most of my schedule on a centuries basis."
>>114239
The mare seems almost exasperated by this display of fedora-ism
"You've never even heard of that... really?" she says, incredulously
"Well, I guess my kind aren't exactly the most flamboyant, or the most visible. Members of my sect prefer to keep to our own territories and remain subtle when we can."
The mare seems almost exasperated by this display of fedora-ism
"You've never even heard of that... really?" she says, incredulously
"Well, I guess my kind aren't exactly the most flamboyant, or the most visible. Members of my sect prefer to keep to our own territories and remain subtle when we can."
>>114240
"Nope i mostly stayed at home, studying books and Forging equipment with my Father. I Haven't gotten out much, and when i tried some dragon thing turned me into a beach umbrella. I Would like to know more about your race if you are willing to Share. "
"Nope i mostly stayed at home, studying books and Forging equipment with my Father. I Haven't gotten out much, and when i tried some dragon thing turned me into a beach umbrella. I Would like to know more about your race if you are willing to Share. "
>>114248
"Neither do mine..." She groans
"But I guess there's a first time for everything.. and a second for that matter."
She looks at the cave, seemingly infinitely far away
"That storm should have dropped us a lot closer.."
"Neither do mine..." She groans
"But I guess there's a first time for everything.. and a second for that matter."
She looks at the cave, seemingly infinitely far away
"That storm should have dropped us a lot closer.."
>>114250
""Hmmmmm how are we gonna get all the way over there? i have my broom."
She pulls out her broom of flying.
""Hmmmmm how are we gonna get all the way over there? i have my broom."
She pulls out her broom of flying.
>>114251
"It won't take that long. It's just an annoyance." The nun replies
As soon as player #5 shows up...
"It won't take that long. It's just an annoyance." The nun replies
As soon as player #5 shows up...
I'm going to focus on other stuff for a bit.
Ping me if we're ready to start, if we ever get ready.
Ping me if we're ready to start, if we ever get ready.
While Candy and Ash talk to eachother, Topaz decides to prepare a contingency (psionic) with Greater Teleport, Psionic whenever an attack is about to hit her, costing her 15 XP and 2 power points.
Usual cost is 11 and 15 respectively without the Torc of Power Preservation.
Usual cost is 11 and 15 respectively without the Torc of Power Preservation.
>>114258
I guess I should go ahead and declare some spells at well, since it looks like the game this is cancelled this week since the players couldn't show.
I prepared Bone Talisman enough times to have a surplus of turn undead, invade anypony needs a persistent buff.
Idk if we need Persistent spells though, since a battle won't last more than 15 minutes and I could probably use that to Teleport us to the next gem instead.
I guess I should go ahead and declare some spells at well, since it looks like the game this is cancelled this week since the players couldn't show.
I prepared Bone Talisman enough times to have a surplus of turn undead, invade anypony needs a persistent buff.
Idk if we need Persistent spells though, since a battle won't last more than 15 minutes and I could probably use that to Teleport us to the next gem instead.
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>tfw you built into Divine Metamagic Radiant Servant a with Planning Domain and Persistent Spell and excessive Charisma for turning undead so that your buff spells would last all day, because you expectected that PCs would get dogpiled would multiple hard battles per day without time to rest or plan, but you can't see how effective that'll be because PCs haven't faced an encounter yet all you've gotten to use it for as of now is grant yourself a 2-day insight bonus to Wisdom
I've heard that GM might have to cancel this weekend's session.
In the meantime,does anybody have an idea of what they want to do when we get to the cave? The PCs have plenty of time to discuss, and it'd be awkward if we just charged into the cave of an advanced great wyrm without a plan.
In the meantime,does anybody have an idea of what they want to do when we get to the cave? The PCs have plenty of time to discuss, and it'd be awkward if we just charged into the cave of an advanced great wyrm without a plan.
>>114757
Well, I, personally, think it'd be better to try to negotiate with Mr/Mrs White-tail. I've got a heroic diplomacy mod, and plausibly the means to compensate him/her for the quest item. Murdering what might be the largest dragon in the area is probably not a good idea.
If this wyrm is old/advanced enough, it might be an ascendant dragon, so we could be looking at a low-ranking deity, which has it's own implications.
Sister will purge invisibility with her SLA once we get close to the front of the cave. Invisibility is only helpful in avoiding drawing attention from far-away dragons, since they'll all be able to detect us with scent and blind-sense anyway.
Sister still has ~12-17 hours of Titan Wildshape left since last night. If things get messy, she could try to blind the most dangerous hostile with Blinding Spittle so we can escape with Gate/Etherealness.
>>114779
That seems like a good plan. The question is what to offer an ever-so-covetous dragon in exchange for what may be his/her favorite new addition to his hoard?
Well, I, personally, think it'd be better to try to negotiate with Mr/Mrs White-tail. I've got a heroic diplomacy mod, and plausibly the means to compensate him/her for the quest item. Murdering what might be the largest dragon in the area is probably not a good idea.
If this wyrm is old/advanced enough, it might be an ascendant dragon, so we could be looking at a low-ranking deity, which has it's own implications.
Sister will purge invisibility with her SLA once we get close to the front of the cave. Invisibility is only helpful in avoiding drawing attention from far-away dragons, since they'll all be able to detect us with scent and blind-sense anyway.
Sister still has ~12-17 hours of Titan Wildshape left since last night. If things get messy, she could try to blind the most dangerous hostile with Blinding Spittle so we can escape with Gate/Etherealness.
>>114779
That seems like a good plan. The question is what to offer an ever-so-covetous dragon in exchange for what may be his/her favorite new addition to his hoard?
>>114780
Well... Topaz does have a lot of muns with all the boiz.
If dragon boyo likes quantity over quality, that could work.
Well... Topaz does have a lot of muns with all the boiz.
If dragon boyo likes quantity over quality, that could work.
>>114781
I feel like I'd rather speak of this in-character.
"Dragons aren't always the easiest to negotiate with... They prefer to take what's 'theirs' by force before anything else comes to mind. Still, they're far from unintelligent; and they can even be reasoned with, at times..." Sister says, trailing off for a bit
"Still, i'd prefer not to have anypony be injured fighting over some rock before we even know what to do with it. While that object is clearly magical, we can't know for certain exactly what it is or it it'll be useful to us. If the wyrm who picked it up hasn't eaten it already, that wyrm quite likely has several centuries more experience in handling treasure than any of us. Perhaps they could tell us something, if we're polite." she continues
(No personal bias against fighting over treasure here. Absolutely none at all.)
I feel like I'd rather speak of this in-character.
"Dragons aren't always the easiest to negotiate with... They prefer to take what's 'theirs' by force before anything else comes to mind. Still, they're far from unintelligent; and they can even be reasoned with, at times..." Sister says, trailing off for a bit
"Still, i'd prefer not to have anypony be injured fighting over some rock before we even know what to do with it. While that object is clearly magical, we can't know for certain exactly what it is or it it'll be useful to us. If the wyrm who picked it up hasn't eaten it already, that wyrm quite likely has several centuries more experience in handling treasure than any of us. Perhaps they could tell us something, if we're polite." she continues
(No personal bias against fighting over treasure here. Absolutely none at all.)
>>114782
Topaz stares at Ash surprised.
"Did you not witness its arm disintegrating the moment it even poked the thing? It obviously is a method to stop it, so it should be something that must be acquired to stop the clouds above among anything else this being has under his hoof."
She stares ahead for a bit.
"Or claw. In any case, the idea of talking with the dragon about the artifact is a solid choice before we even try asking to take it."
Topaz stares at Ash surprised.
"Did you not witness its arm disintegrating the moment it even poked the thing? It obviously is a method to stop it, so it should be something that must be acquired to stop the clouds above among anything else this being has under his hoof."
She stares ahead for a bit.
"Or claw. In any case, the idea of talking with the dragon about the artifact is a solid choice before we even try asking to take it."
>>114783
Sister Ash seems unconvinced
"It could be that, or it could just as easily be a trap.. I find the prospect of a beast so casually exposing its weakness to be rather suspicious..." she says through gritted teeth
"That creature has been tainting the global environment with extra-planar contamination for at least two days now.. I underestimated it, taking it for merely one of the Dragons Of Limbo.. If its power truly reaches so far and it's capable of such magic, one might wonder why walking up to it's supposed 'weakness' would be so easy if it could interfere at any time.. Could it be luring us into a trap? A cruel joke? A plot to distract us while it carried out its own plans? It didn't hesitate to distribute those stones right in front of us, afterall..."
Sister looks up at the sky, where the clouds conjured by her Stormwalk are still dispersing
"Our journey has had very little difficulty since this morning.. but that was the second time in my life that I misfired a teleport. If that beast did not interfere itself, then the cause o which may very well be the weave itself unraveling.. Either way, fixing all of this will be more complicated than it seems, and even more tiresome to cleanse the damaged environment and contaminated plane in the long term..."
Sure, I know how he show goes, but Sister doesn't.
Sister Ash seems unconvinced
"It could be that, or it could just as easily be a trap.. I find the prospect of a beast so casually exposing its weakness to be rather suspicious..." she says through gritted teeth
"That creature has been tainting the global environment with extra-planar contamination for at least two days now.. I underestimated it, taking it for merely one of the Dragons Of Limbo.. If its power truly reaches so far and it's capable of such magic, one might wonder why walking up to it's supposed 'weakness' would be so easy if it could interfere at any time.. Could it be luring us into a trap? A cruel joke? A plot to distract us while it carried out its own plans? It didn't hesitate to distribute those stones right in front of us, afterall..."
Sister looks up at the sky, where the clouds conjured by her Stormwalk are still dispersing
"Our journey has had very little difficulty since this morning.. but that was the second time in my life that I misfired a teleport. If that beast did not interfere itself, then the cause o which may very well be the weave itself unraveling.. Either way, fixing all of this will be more complicated than it seems, and even more tiresome to cleanse the damaged environment and contaminated plane in the long term..."
Sure, I know how he show goes, but Sister doesn't.
>>114784
After careful consideration, Topaz nods.
"It could very well be this is all a goose chase, but if there is the slightest chance it's an actual way to defeat that being, then I'm obviously going to try. The sooner we can end this, the better."
She scratches her chin lightly.
"This dragon should have a clue what's in it, too, so he may help in identifying how true is its anti-chaos properties."
After careful consideration, Topaz nods.
"It could very well be this is all a goose chase, but if there is the slightest chance it's an actual way to defeat that being, then I'm obviously going to try. The sooner we can end this, the better."
She scratches her chin lightly.
"This dragon should have a clue what's in it, too, so he may help in identifying how true is its anti-chaos properties."
>>114785
"If that doesn't work, I have a spell or two that could reveal it's properties." Sister replies
"If that doesn't work, I have a spell or two that could reveal it's properties." Sister replies
>>114787
"It never hurts to think ahead. I'll be plenty busy trying to reverse these atrocious weather patterns and banishing any monsters that leaked into this plane."
"It never hurts to think ahead. I'll be plenty busy trying to reverse these atrocious weather patterns and banishing any monsters that leaked into this plane."
*makes snow angels in illusionary snow as the party continues to travel through a seemingly endless pause*
I don’t want to bring up any drama that has been settled, but I suspect that this is an issue which has not been fully resolved and probably never will be. In any event my laptop is broken so I am bored and will type up thoughts I had two weeks ago that were never written. On the issue of Ash being OP, there is a perspective here that no one discussion has the issue has even mentioned nor taken into consideration. And yet, it is the most important perspective of them all: that of the GM.
What I think everyone needs to understand, but perhaps does not understand, is that GMing is insanely difficult. A GM needs to create a world that feels real enough to engage the players and interest them. They need to create a conflict that motivates their players to go forward. The story needs to have a recognizable beginning, middle, and end. In order to avoid the story from being simply bland and predictable, there need to be some twists and turns which are satisfying, set up, not entirely stupid, and not entirely predictable. The GM has to create not a single character like the platers do, but often dozens. These characters need their own peculiarities, motivations, flaws, and participation in the story. All of these are things the players mostly don’t have to deal with, but the GM has to do on top of going to school, working a job, having family and friends and other activities.
But after discussing all of that, we still haven’t even gotten to the most difficult part of a GM’s job: making combat challenging and fun, while keeping the action relevant to the story and setting. The formula to do this is best summarized by the words of the creator of Dungeons and Dragons: “every encounter should have a 70% chance of victory and a 30% chance of death. But it should feel like there is a 70% chance of death and a 30% chance of victory.” Now of course, not every encounter has to be particularly hard or fair, and I am every skeptical that any campaign with a fully 30% chance of death in an encounter would last more than an in game day, but his point remains. Fun in combat comes from facing a challenge, especially a challenge that you feel feel you may not overcome, then overcoming it anyways. The point of Dungeons and Dragons is not being power. The struggle and the challenge is itself the point.
Suffering is not merely an essential condition to a fun and meaningful campaign - it damn near is the meaning. Imagine you have a god like character that can simply snap its fingers, or nod its head, and all conflict is resolved. So it does so. What is the point of that campaign? Where are the heroics? Where is the chance to show off how cleverly you can use your character? And the same is true if the campaign is dragged along through dozens of painless encounters. Such a campaign is boring as well as meaningless. Of course, the same is true of any campaign that is too difficult. Players generally like their characters, and don’t like them being killed. A total party kill often means the end of a campaign. Excessive resurrection reduces the fear of death, thus taking some of the feeling of challenge out of the game, and GM who has to fudge dice rolls or use deus ex machinas to get the characters out of certain death takes away much of the tension and feeling of the consequences of player’s actions from the story.
Obviously, the GM’s duty is to make encounters difficult enough to provide challenge and a credible threat of killing the player characters, without actually ending the campaign or requiring a bending of the rules. All or most of you act or talk about the issue as if you believe that balancing combat is the easiest thing in the world, and that simply ramping up the number and power of spells and elements provides little difficulty to the GM. But that is very far from the truth. Creating balanced and fun combat that provides challenge without killing the party while blending into the story is insanely difficult in dungeons and dragons. This is mostly because of the way power scales. A character with a level of 10 is many times more powerful than one with a level of 5, and a challenge that would kill a character at level 5 will often not provide even much of a fight to one that is level 10. Encounters in Dungeons and Dragons are thus extremely sensitive to even minor changes in the magic and the numbers, and are easily thrown out of balance.
All of these problems are compounded one hundred fold by the fact that this is epic level. You don’t have to play epic level very long to understand that the game was never designed to be played this way, and it certainly wasn’t play tested at this level. The numbers are so high that they fail to register in the human mind and become meaningless. The power of spells is so great that they render even extremely powerful mundane powers meaningless, entirely nullifying most kinds of threats and problems. And then the number of powers increases, meaning the GM must take even more of those into consideration, all the while the number of possible threats to overcome decreases. The classes are flagrantly unbalanced, with some classes (like Druids) being blatantly far more powerful and versatile that other classes. The character levels of players and the CR rating of enemies become meaningless as level increases because the underlying rules are badly designed and not balanced.
What I think everyone needs to understand, but perhaps does not understand, is that GMing is insanely difficult. A GM needs to create a world that feels real enough to engage the players and interest them. They need to create a conflict that motivates their players to go forward. The story needs to have a recognizable beginning, middle, and end. In order to avoid the story from being simply bland and predictable, there need to be some twists and turns which are satisfying, set up, not entirely stupid, and not entirely predictable. The GM has to create not a single character like the platers do, but often dozens. These characters need their own peculiarities, motivations, flaws, and participation in the story. All of these are things the players mostly don’t have to deal with, but the GM has to do on top of going to school, working a job, having family and friends and other activities.
But after discussing all of that, we still haven’t even gotten to the most difficult part of a GM’s job: making combat challenging and fun, while keeping the action relevant to the story and setting. The formula to do this is best summarized by the words of the creator of Dungeons and Dragons: “every encounter should have a 70% chance of victory and a 30% chance of death. But it should feel like there is a 70% chance of death and a 30% chance of victory.” Now of course, not every encounter has to be particularly hard or fair, and I am every skeptical that any campaign with a fully 30% chance of death in an encounter would last more than an in game day, but his point remains. Fun in combat comes from facing a challenge, especially a challenge that you feel feel you may not overcome, then overcoming it anyways. The point of Dungeons and Dragons is not being power. The struggle and the challenge is itself the point.
Suffering is not merely an essential condition to a fun and meaningful campaign - it damn near is the meaning. Imagine you have a god like character that can simply snap its fingers, or nod its head, and all conflict is resolved. So it does so. What is the point of that campaign? Where are the heroics? Where is the chance to show off how cleverly you can use your character? And the same is true if the campaign is dragged along through dozens of painless encounters. Such a campaign is boring as well as meaningless. Of course, the same is true of any campaign that is too difficult. Players generally like their characters, and don’t like them being killed. A total party kill often means the end of a campaign. Excessive resurrection reduces the fear of death, thus taking some of the feeling of challenge out of the game, and GM who has to fudge dice rolls or use deus ex machinas to get the characters out of certain death takes away much of the tension and feeling of the consequences of player’s actions from the story.
Obviously, the GM’s duty is to make encounters difficult enough to provide challenge and a credible threat of killing the player characters, without actually ending the campaign or requiring a bending of the rules. All or most of you act or talk about the issue as if you believe that balancing combat is the easiest thing in the world, and that simply ramping up the number and power of spells and elements provides little difficulty to the GM. But that is very far from the truth. Creating balanced and fun combat that provides challenge without killing the party while blending into the story is insanely difficult in dungeons and dragons. This is mostly because of the way power scales. A character with a level of 10 is many times more powerful than one with a level of 5, and a challenge that would kill a character at level 5 will often not provide even much of a fight to one that is level 10. Encounters in Dungeons and Dragons are thus extremely sensitive to even minor changes in the magic and the numbers, and are easily thrown out of balance.
All of these problems are compounded one hundred fold by the fact that this is epic level. You don’t have to play epic level very long to understand that the game was never designed to be played this way, and it certainly wasn’t play tested at this level. The numbers are so high that they fail to register in the human mind and become meaningless. The power of spells is so great that they render even extremely powerful mundane powers meaningless, entirely nullifying most kinds of threats and problems. And then the number of powers increases, meaning the GM must take even more of those into consideration, all the while the number of possible threats to overcome decreases. The classes are flagrantly unbalanced, with some classes (like Druids) being blatantly far more powerful and versatile that other classes. The character levels of players and the CR rating of enemies become meaningless as level increases because the underlying rules are badly designed and not balanced.
>>114801
You (Ash’s player) at several points causally point out how unbalanced the epic levels are, and even say “CR rating is really a meme.” Well please tell us how in the hell a GM is supposed to create a balanced encounter if CR rating and and character levels are no guide? How is a GM supposed to take all of the many variables into his mind, comprehend all of the numbers, and create combat that is between too easy and too hard? Yes, I know very well that you have at one point explicitly said “it is harder for a GM to design an encounter than it is for a player to counter it.” What I am not as sure about is if you understand the full implications of your own words.
All of this leads into what I think is really the problem with the Ash character being “overpowered.” The problem is not that the character is too powerful, or that it has limits that are too high. In that event, the GM could maybe work around it to design balanced encounters. The problem is that we don’t actually know how powerful the character is or what limits it has. Bare with me please, because the argument I am about to make might be difficult to understand, but I assure you it reflects a real problem. You say that the character is made using abilities, spells, classes, etc from “a few outside sources” or “3-4 books.” I know that the class is from eberron, there’s mention of a spell from the spell compendium, there’s a “tome dragon” which is comes from I don’t know where, there’s fears and abilities from the book of exalted deeds, and there’s surely a hell of a lot more parts to this character comprised from various sources that I have never heard of and cannot name. Really, I can’t even guess the number of sources this character takes powers from. But that’s my exact point. I don’t think anyone here with the possible exception of you could name all of the sources this character takes abilities and spells from, or even count them. And most importantly of all, no one else has read them. We don’t know what all of these powers are, we don’t know what the rules behind them are, and we certainly don’t know how these rules play against each other.
In order for a GM to design a balanced encounter, they need to know what a character is vulnerable to, what powers it has, and how strong it is. In order to do that, he must have a full understanding of the rules. But when you have a character comprised of a unknown number of powers from an unknown number of books beyond the player’s handbook, that GM must now have read these unnumbered additional books, must understand the rules in them, and must hold all of these various rule sets in his mind to understand how they work with each other. Do you honestly think this GM or any other GM you are reasonably likely to encounter has done that? It’s difficult enough just to understand the player’s handbook. Add to that, Eberron, the spell compendium, the book of exalted deeds, and a number of other rule books known but to you and God, and no GM on earth that you are likely to play with has any idea what powers your character has or what kind of abilities you are going to claim. This problem is compounded by the fact that you like to take the rules and abilities from various sources and blend them together in combinations that the writers of these books obviously never anticipated or intended, so you can make your character even more powerful.
The 60 wisdom spell is one example of that, but surely not the only one. The fact is, none of us except for you know how powerful your character is or what powers or abilities you are going to claim. We have absolutely no idea if you are making things up, faithfully following rules, or taking a creative interpretation of the rules, because you are combining rules we don’t understand from rule books we haven’t read in ways that give far more power than each of the rules taken on their own. We don’t know what powers and spells you are going to claim to resolve each new challenge. We only know that every time there has been something vaguely resembling a challenge, you pull out three spells or powers that we didn’t know your character had to instantly resolve it, so we assume you will do that every time, without really knowing what kinds of issues your character doesn’t have an instant-fix spell for.
Of course, even if a GM could know what Ash’s limits were, it would still be extremely difficult to design s balanced encounter for her and several similarly extremely powerful characters. With so many books involved there are hundreds or really many thousands of spells and spell like abilities. There are dozens upon dozens of large numbers that work together. All of this is like an extremely complicated calculus or algebra equation with dozens or even more variables that need to be known, quantified, then factored. And all of this needs to be done not by a purpose-built computer program, but by an all too human GM. How many people can really do that well? Even a computer program running too many variables and too large numbers at once starts to lag, so much the more so fur a merely human GM. And all of that is assuming all relevant variables are known. When a GM doesn’t know the powers and limits of a character - an essential set of variables to the combat equation - solving for X, X being the encounter difficulty, becomes impossible.
You (Ash’s player) at several points causally point out how unbalanced the epic levels are, and even say “CR rating is really a meme.” Well please tell us how in the hell a GM is supposed to create a balanced encounter if CR rating and and character levels are no guide? How is a GM supposed to take all of the many variables into his mind, comprehend all of the numbers, and create combat that is between too easy and too hard? Yes, I know very well that you have at one point explicitly said “it is harder for a GM to design an encounter than it is for a player to counter it.” What I am not as sure about is if you understand the full implications of your own words.
All of this leads into what I think is really the problem with the Ash character being “overpowered.” The problem is not that the character is too powerful, or that it has limits that are too high. In that event, the GM could maybe work around it to design balanced encounters. The problem is that we don’t actually know how powerful the character is or what limits it has. Bare with me please, because the argument I am about to make might be difficult to understand, but I assure you it reflects a real problem. You say that the character is made using abilities, spells, classes, etc from “a few outside sources” or “3-4 books.” I know that the class is from eberron, there’s mention of a spell from the spell compendium, there’s a “tome dragon” which is comes from I don’t know where, there’s fears and abilities from the book of exalted deeds, and there’s surely a hell of a lot more parts to this character comprised from various sources that I have never heard of and cannot name. Really, I can’t even guess the number of sources this character takes powers from. But that’s my exact point. I don’t think anyone here with the possible exception of you could name all of the sources this character takes abilities and spells from, or even count them. And most importantly of all, no one else has read them. We don’t know what all of these powers are, we don’t know what the rules behind them are, and we certainly don’t know how these rules play against each other.
In order for a GM to design a balanced encounter, they need to know what a character is vulnerable to, what powers it has, and how strong it is. In order to do that, he must have a full understanding of the rules. But when you have a character comprised of a unknown number of powers from an unknown number of books beyond the player’s handbook, that GM must now have read these unnumbered additional books, must understand the rules in them, and must hold all of these various rule sets in his mind to understand how they work with each other. Do you honestly think this GM or any other GM you are reasonably likely to encounter has done that? It’s difficult enough just to understand the player’s handbook. Add to that, Eberron, the spell compendium, the book of exalted deeds, and a number of other rule books known but to you and God, and no GM on earth that you are likely to play with has any idea what powers your character has or what kind of abilities you are going to claim. This problem is compounded by the fact that you like to take the rules and abilities from various sources and blend them together in combinations that the writers of these books obviously never anticipated or intended, so you can make your character even more powerful.
The 60 wisdom spell is one example of that, but surely not the only one. The fact is, none of us except for you know how powerful your character is or what powers or abilities you are going to claim. We have absolutely no idea if you are making things up, faithfully following rules, or taking a creative interpretation of the rules, because you are combining rules we don’t understand from rule books we haven’t read in ways that give far more power than each of the rules taken on their own. We don’t know what powers and spells you are going to claim to resolve each new challenge. We only know that every time there has been something vaguely resembling a challenge, you pull out three spells or powers that we didn’t know your character had to instantly resolve it, so we assume you will do that every time, without really knowing what kinds of issues your character doesn’t have an instant-fix spell for.
Of course, even if a GM could know what Ash’s limits were, it would still be extremely difficult to design s balanced encounter for her and several similarly extremely powerful characters. With so many books involved there are hundreds or really many thousands of spells and spell like abilities. There are dozens upon dozens of large numbers that work together. All of this is like an extremely complicated calculus or algebra equation with dozens or even more variables that need to be known, quantified, then factored. And all of this needs to be done not by a purpose-built computer program, but by an all too human GM. How many people can really do that well? Even a computer program running too many variables and too large numbers at once starts to lag, so much the more so fur a merely human GM. And all of that is assuming all relevant variables are known. When a GM doesn’t know the powers and limits of a character - an essential set of variables to the combat equation - solving for X, X being the encounter difficulty, becomes impossible.
>>114802
Imagine what a balanced combat for Ash would look like, in the fantasy scenario that any GM could anticipate what that would be. Ash would be noticeably more powerful than any other character in the party. This means that the same encounter that would challenge Ash would kill the other party members. So the GM has to have all (or a disproportionate number) of the baddies attack Ash, which both would seem kind of forced from a story perspective and naught make the game too easy for the other players since the dangers don’t approach them. Don’t even say “smaller enemies attack the rest of the party while the big ones attack Ash” because we all know Ash would go after the smaller ones just as quickly. And further more, the combat would be really dry and boring. The GM can’t poison Ash or try to mind control her or frighten her or anything like that, because surely there is some spell or immunity for that somewhere. As the Swedish poster so elegantly put it, “Ash cannot be outmaneuvered. Only overpowered.” Raw, brute force. Boring.
Let me tell you what is actually going to happen, given that no GM outside of a small handful on Min-max.net has any idea what Ash’s limits are. The GM is going to stop bothering trying to play by the rules, because there is no way he could possibly understand them. He is going to give up trying to build a challenge for the players - since he doesn’t really know what the player’s capabilities even are - and instead just wait for Ash and possibly the other players to declare an action, and then nullify it with GM fiat. It won’t be players navigating an encounter designed by GM, it will be Player saying “I do this,” and GM saying “nuh uh” or “for reasons unknown, that doesn’t work.” Do you really think that rolling a skill check with an insanely high modifier does you any good? It’s hard enough to think of a good DC for most skill rolls. When you have an unreasonable modifier the GM is instead going to completely ignore your modifier, look at your roll, say you fail if it’s a 5 or below, say you succeed if it’s a 15 or more, and if it’s in between will say whatever helps his story and scene the most. All that time you spent trying to do math and trying to put together spells will be pointless. GM is just going to ignore it.
This has already started happening in the game. At one point, you ( Ash) asked for a two week weather forecast. No reasonable GM is going to actually give you an answer to that question and stick to it. First, they don’t want their scenes to be bound by their answer. They want freedom to improvise. Second, GMs don’t plan their stories that far in advance to that kind of detail. They don’t know what the weather is like when you fight the orcs two weeks before you ever encounter the kingdom that is even fighting the orcs. They do that work later. Thirdly, they know damned good and well that you are not asking for aesthetic reasons or because you’re looking to plan your small talk ahead of time. The weather affects spells or powers, and no GM wants to lock themselves into consequences they didn’t intend. Finally, this is a game with entities that can change weather. There shouldn’t be such a thing as a two week weather forecast. So what did GM do? He nullified the spell. Please don’t misunderstand me, it was executed in an excellent manner that was foreboding, helped to establish the threat, and was completely consistent with the world and characters. But it is unreasonable to believe a GM can be perfect all the time when they have to nullify the player’s actions. Also occurring in this game, Ash tried to teleport directly to the dragon land crystal. That was nullified by having them teleport away from it. Ash has tried to take initiative to act the cult leader first. That was nullified. And dozens upon dozens of spells have been declare, but the GM never even acknowledges them. And the reason he doesn’t s knowledge them is because he couldn’t and didn’t account for them when building the scene and his story, so he writes them out.
All of that is assuming the GM wants to continue playing in a game with a character he does not know the limits of. This is an online game. It is very easy to quit. Simply stop posting. Maybe give an excuse if asked. Or just delay acting if you haven’t decided on quitting, but also find GMing unpleasant. GMs don’t have 40 hours to study your character, then read all of the rules of all of the rule books it is built from, then work out mathematically what the appropriate encounters are. They are human beings with lives too. They have better things to do than to figure out how to make Eberron balanced, a task even the creators of Eberron couldn’t do. They have to understand the powers of all of the players, and design story, characters, world building, set scenes, and so forth. They don’t have the time or inclination to understand your character’s powers to the degree you do.
Imagine what a balanced combat for Ash would look like, in the fantasy scenario that any GM could anticipate what that would be. Ash would be noticeably more powerful than any other character in the party. This means that the same encounter that would challenge Ash would kill the other party members. So the GM has to have all (or a disproportionate number) of the baddies attack Ash, which both would seem kind of forced from a story perspective and naught make the game too easy for the other players since the dangers don’t approach them. Don’t even say “smaller enemies attack the rest of the party while the big ones attack Ash” because we all know Ash would go after the smaller ones just as quickly. And further more, the combat would be really dry and boring. The GM can’t poison Ash or try to mind control her or frighten her or anything like that, because surely there is some spell or immunity for that somewhere. As the Swedish poster so elegantly put it, “Ash cannot be outmaneuvered. Only overpowered.” Raw, brute force. Boring.
Let me tell you what is actually going to happen, given that no GM outside of a small handful on Min-max.net has any idea what Ash’s limits are. The GM is going to stop bothering trying to play by the rules, because there is no way he could possibly understand them. He is going to give up trying to build a challenge for the players - since he doesn’t really know what the player’s capabilities even are - and instead just wait for Ash and possibly the other players to declare an action, and then nullify it with GM fiat. It won’t be players navigating an encounter designed by GM, it will be Player saying “I do this,” and GM saying “nuh uh” or “for reasons unknown, that doesn’t work.” Do you really think that rolling a skill check with an insanely high modifier does you any good? It’s hard enough to think of a good DC for most skill rolls. When you have an unreasonable modifier the GM is instead going to completely ignore your modifier, look at your roll, say you fail if it’s a 5 or below, say you succeed if it’s a 15 or more, and if it’s in between will say whatever helps his story and scene the most. All that time you spent trying to do math and trying to put together spells will be pointless. GM is just going to ignore it.
This has already started happening in the game. At one point, you ( Ash) asked for a two week weather forecast. No reasonable GM is going to actually give you an answer to that question and stick to it. First, they don’t want their scenes to be bound by their answer. They want freedom to improvise. Second, GMs don’t plan their stories that far in advance to that kind of detail. They don’t know what the weather is like when you fight the orcs two weeks before you ever encounter the kingdom that is even fighting the orcs. They do that work later. Thirdly, they know damned good and well that you are not asking for aesthetic reasons or because you’re looking to plan your small talk ahead of time. The weather affects spells or powers, and no GM wants to lock themselves into consequences they didn’t intend. Finally, this is a game with entities that can change weather. There shouldn’t be such a thing as a two week weather forecast. So what did GM do? He nullified the spell. Please don’t misunderstand me, it was executed in an excellent manner that was foreboding, helped to establish the threat, and was completely consistent with the world and characters. But it is unreasonable to believe a GM can be perfect all the time when they have to nullify the player’s actions. Also occurring in this game, Ash tried to teleport directly to the dragon land crystal. That was nullified by having them teleport away from it. Ash has tried to take initiative to act the cult leader first. That was nullified. And dozens upon dozens of spells have been declare, but the GM never even acknowledges them. And the reason he doesn’t s knowledge them is because he couldn’t and didn’t account for them when building the scene and his story, so he writes them out.
All of that is assuming the GM wants to continue playing in a game with a character he does not know the limits of. This is an online game. It is very easy to quit. Simply stop posting. Maybe give an excuse if asked. Or just delay acting if you haven’t decided on quitting, but also find GMing unpleasant. GMs don’t have 40 hours to study your character, then read all of the rules of all of the rule books it is built from, then work out mathematically what the appropriate encounters are. They are human beings with lives too. They have better things to do than to figure out how to make Eberron balanced, a task even the creators of Eberron couldn’t do. They have to understand the powers of all of the players, and design story, characters, world building, set scenes, and so forth. They don’t have the time or inclination to understand your character’s powers to the degree you do.
>>114803
Excuses don’t solve the situation, it is simply a fact excuse or none. You say that Epic levels are already super complicated and unbalanced? That just means that the problem is already bad and really doesn’t need to be made worse. Having cancer doesn’t make being infected with AIDS better, it just makes it worse. You say that there are people on the internet that have read these books and could understand it? I promise you that none of those six people are present here, nor are you likely to ever play a game with any of them. You say that you could have min-maxes you character even more than you already have? That does not change the fact that your character takes too many powers from too many books the GM has not read or know how to work with. You say that Cowe or whatever other players are also breaking the game? That just makes the situation worse, and means that they also need to heed what I have written here. You might say that “it’s only few books” or something. But the fact remains that the Ash character is Frankenstein’s monster of powers and spells from many different sources, and that no one except you knows her limits or exact powers.
And finally, you might say that “GM approved all of this.” That might shift the blame, but blame does not change facts. The GM made a mistake and must either quit the campaign, go back on it, or devote an entire month of his life to reading books to try to figure out what your character can do. GMs are human. They like to be nice to people and to give people what they ask. They falsely believe that when they approve a power from some book, that all they need to do is read the paragraph about that power, without thinking about how that power will interact with every other power. They can be overly optimistic. They can get themselves into bad situations without realizing it. Because GMs have “godlike” powers over the game its easy to not think about them, and just assume that they can handle anything you throw at them. But they are humans just like you, with all of the sane limits to their own abilities and personalities. Please be considerate of them.
You may not know who I am or think I have no right to comment here. But these words, written by anyone else, would be just as true, and I think it’s a perspective that really needs to be taken into consideration.
\r
Excuses don’t solve the situation, it is simply a fact excuse or none. You say that Epic levels are already super complicated and unbalanced? That just means that the problem is already bad and really doesn’t need to be made worse. Having cancer doesn’t make being infected with AIDS better, it just makes it worse. You say that there are people on the internet that have read these books and could understand it? I promise you that none of those six people are present here, nor are you likely to ever play a game with any of them. You say that you could have min-maxes you character even more than you already have? That does not change the fact that your character takes too many powers from too many books the GM has not read or know how to work with. You say that Cowe or whatever other players are also breaking the game? That just makes the situation worse, and means that they also need to heed what I have written here. You might say that “it’s only few books” or something. But the fact remains that the Ash character is Frankenstein’s monster of powers and spells from many different sources, and that no one except you knows her limits or exact powers.
And finally, you might say that “GM approved all of this.” That might shift the blame, but blame does not change facts. The GM made a mistake and must either quit the campaign, go back on it, or devote an entire month of his life to reading books to try to figure out what your character can do. GMs are human. They like to be nice to people and to give people what they ask. They falsely believe that when they approve a power from some book, that all they need to do is read the paragraph about that power, without thinking about how that power will interact with every other power. They can be overly optimistic. They can get themselves into bad situations without realizing it. Because GMs have “godlike” powers over the game its easy to not think about them, and just assume that they can handle anything you throw at them. But they are humans just like you, with all of the sane limits to their own abilities and personalities. Please be considerate of them.
You may not know who I am or think I have no right to comment here. But these words, written by anyone else, would be just as true, and I think it’s a perspective that really needs to be taken into consideration.
\r
>>114801
All of these are good points. I've repeated most of them very many times on other RPG blogs and meta channels. 3.5e is broken; it only works if all of the players are consciously good sports.
>>114804
>The GM made a mistake and must either quit the campaign, go back on it, or devote an entire month of his life to reading books to try to figure out what your character can do
I have to ask here, why can't you trust GM to handle his own game? All this time youve repeatedly spoken up on matters that should really be up to the DM to Decide. I prepared this character for 3 months, pinging him countless times to get approval for every step of my build. Even though my character may seem high-op (i think we have a different standard for high optimization though), that doesn't mean I was hell-bent on destroying the game or making it all about myself. Every part of my build and my capacity to play comes from GM approval, and I know very well he can decide to retroactively nerf it whenever it's appropriate, or just tell me not to use it in a certain fashion. It was obvious to me why the weather prediction and teleportation didn't work, and i'm fine with that; I even addressed it in character to imply that my PC wasn't going to try it again.
Just mind that our characters haven't actually entered combat yet, save for 2 shots at discord and a joke battle involving Midnight getting her teats pinched by a crab. That means that all this recent arguing that's occurred about power, optimization or balance that's occurred has been completely hypothetical. Just because my character "could" break the game, that doesn't necessarily mean she will. All epic spellcasters can break a game, any epic character can break a game; epic level adventures only work if all of the players play in good faith and have boundaries and/or know when to hold back; and believe it or not, I know how to do that too.
I like to talk about TO metamechanics a lot, but there a difference between what's build-able in theory and what's practical/fulfilling to play.
And for the record, my PC is not invincible. She'll still die if she takes an enormous amount of damage or fails a save vs a deadly spell. One Mordenkinen's Disjunction is all it takes to rip away all of her passive wards to make her vulnerable to attacks, and the ELH has a monster that can spam that spell 24 times in a row a free action. She couldn't handle a protean that's made itself immune to every kind of attack and split into infinite copies of itself; or at least she couldn't by herself. She'd struggle to fend off against another powerful spellcaster (especially a Wizard or Cleric) who actually used epic items to boost their power, let alone a higher level one. Her hooves would be tied if an entity as powerful as Atropus drifted towards the earth and caused every corpse on the planet to reanimate at once.
If a war-hulking hurler threw a big enough rock at her, she'd go splat. She's just a mortal; even if i built her to try her hardest to struggle through an apocalypse. I made her so that she could solve a wide range of problems and provide protection for very many defenseless creatures; not to be able to kill anything or be impervious to anything instantly, like some minmaxed TO build.
All of these are good points. I've repeated most of them very many times on other RPG blogs and meta channels. 3.5e is broken; it only works if all of the players are consciously good sports.
>>114804
>The GM made a mistake and must either quit the campaign, go back on it, or devote an entire month of his life to reading books to try to figure out what your character can do
I have to ask here, why can't you trust GM to handle his own game? All this time youve repeatedly spoken up on matters that should really be up to the DM to Decide. I prepared this character for 3 months, pinging him countless times to get approval for every step of my build. Even though my character may seem high-op (i think we have a different standard for high optimization though), that doesn't mean I was hell-bent on destroying the game or making it all about myself. Every part of my build and my capacity to play comes from GM approval, and I know very well he can decide to retroactively nerf it whenever it's appropriate, or just tell me not to use it in a certain fashion. It was obvious to me why the weather prediction and teleportation didn't work, and i'm fine with that; I even addressed it in character to imply that my PC wasn't going to try it again.
Just mind that our characters haven't actually entered combat yet, save for 2 shots at discord and a joke battle involving Midnight getting her teats pinched by a crab. That means that all this recent arguing that's occurred about power, optimization or balance that's occurred has been completely hypothetical. Just because my character "could" break the game, that doesn't necessarily mean she will. All epic spellcasters can break a game, any epic character can break a game; epic level adventures only work if all of the players play in good faith and have boundaries and/or know when to hold back; and believe it or not, I know how to do that too.
I like to talk about TO metamechanics a lot, but there a difference between what's build-able in theory and what's practical/fulfilling to play.
And for the record, my PC is not invincible. She'll still die if she takes an enormous amount of damage or fails a save vs a deadly spell. One Mordenkinen's Disjunction is all it takes to rip away all of her passive wards to make her vulnerable to attacks, and the ELH has a monster that can spam that spell 24 times in a row a free action. She couldn't handle a protean that's made itself immune to every kind of attack and split into infinite copies of itself; or at least she couldn't by herself. She'd struggle to fend off against another powerful spellcaster (especially a Wizard or Cleric) who actually used epic items to boost their power, let alone a higher level one. Her hooves would be tied if an entity as powerful as Atropus drifted towards the earth and caused every corpse on the planet to reanimate at once.
If a war-hulking hurler threw a big enough rock at her, she'd go splat. She's just a mortal; even if i built her to try her hardest to struggle through an apocalypse. I made her so that she could solve a wide range of problems and provide protection for very many defenseless creatures; not to be able to kill anything or be impervious to anything instantly, like some minmaxed TO build.
And the preferable shorthand for her would be 'Sister', instead of just Ash. Just calling her Ash implies that it's her name, and it distinctly is not her name, but rather a space-filler that indicates the lack of one.
Muh pronouns.
Muh pronouns.
>>114811
>I have to ask here, why can't you trust GM to handle his own game?
The reason I included that paragraph was because I knew that when I tried to explain that your overuse of supplement books is unfairly taxing in the GM, you would try to say “no, it’s alright because GM approved it.” Lo and behold, what do you say in the next sentence? “The GM approved it, there must be no issue.” You are excusing yourself from thinking about how expanding the rule set complicates already complicated matters. None of this changes the fact that encounter construction can and almost certainly will be an issue. Why do you just trust that you aren’t making things unnecessarily difficult on the GM by using so many books? Is it possible that maybe you could make things easier on him even if he could handle it all, just so things go more smoothly? And is it possible, just vaguely possible, that maybe, just maybe, he did write a check he couldn’t cash?
>Just mind that our characters haven't actually entered combat yet... That means that all this recent arguing that's occurred about power, optimization or balance that's occurred has been completely hypothetical. Just because my character "could" break the game, that doesn't necessarily mean she will
Are you sure you haven’t intimidated him off? Why do you just assume that she won’t break the game? Isn’t the fact that she could worth talking about? Does it need to be proven beyond all doubt before anyone can say “dude, your character sheet is too complicated. Maybe simply it a bit so things are easier for the GM.”
>One Mordenkinen's Disjunction is all it takes to rip away all of her passive wards to make her vulnerable to attacks, and the ELH has a monster that can spam that spell 24 times in a row a free action.
Do you think that such an enemy would be a balanced opponent? My point wasn’t that Ash was unbeatable, my point was that Ash’s make up us so complicated that a GM can’t adequately guess what her limits are, and so can’t create a balanced encounter. An enemy that kills the entire party is as bad or really even worse than an enemy that is effortlessly defeated.
>Her hooves would be tied if an entity as powerful as Atropus drifted towards the earth and caused every corpse on the planet to reanimate at once
Just read what I said above. If saturation and overkill are the only ways to be sure your character would face a challenge, then it’s pretty safe to say it does not have limits well defined enough to construct an encounter which would find that happy and very narrow medium between too hard and too easy.
You say “if a rock hurler threw a big enough rock at her shed go splat.” No shit. That’s why I said “she can be overpowered.” The problem is the difficulty in finding a happy rock size that is high enough to give worry but doesn’t actually splatter her, while having the thrower live long enough to throw it in the first place. That is far more difficult than normal when you don’t know everything the character can do. The GM’s job isn’t to kill the player character, it’s to put them in situations that definitely could kill them but probably won’t.
>it only works if all of the players are consciously good sports
And my position is that you’d be a better sport if you constructed your character out of the player handbook, or at least used fewer additional books. Epic level is hard enough to grasp as it is
\r
>I have to ask here, why can't you trust GM to handle his own game?
The reason I included that paragraph was because I knew that when I tried to explain that your overuse of supplement books is unfairly taxing in the GM, you would try to say “no, it’s alright because GM approved it.” Lo and behold, what do you say in the next sentence? “The GM approved it, there must be no issue.” You are excusing yourself from thinking about how expanding the rule set complicates already complicated matters. None of this changes the fact that encounter construction can and almost certainly will be an issue. Why do you just trust that you aren’t making things unnecessarily difficult on the GM by using so many books? Is it possible that maybe you could make things easier on him even if he could handle it all, just so things go more smoothly? And is it possible, just vaguely possible, that maybe, just maybe, he did write a check he couldn’t cash?
>Just mind that our characters haven't actually entered combat yet... That means that all this recent arguing that's occurred about power, optimization or balance that's occurred has been completely hypothetical. Just because my character "could" break the game, that doesn't necessarily mean she will
Are you sure you haven’t intimidated him off? Why do you just assume that she won’t break the game? Isn’t the fact that she could worth talking about? Does it need to be proven beyond all doubt before anyone can say “dude, your character sheet is too complicated. Maybe simply it a bit so things are easier for the GM.”
>One Mordenkinen's Disjunction is all it takes to rip away all of her passive wards to make her vulnerable to attacks, and the ELH has a monster that can spam that spell 24 times in a row a free action.
Do you think that such an enemy would be a balanced opponent? My point wasn’t that Ash was unbeatable, my point was that Ash’s make up us so complicated that a GM can’t adequately guess what her limits are, and so can’t create a balanced encounter. An enemy that kills the entire party is as bad or really even worse than an enemy that is effortlessly defeated.
>Her hooves would be tied if an entity as powerful as Atropus drifted towards the earth and caused every corpse on the planet to reanimate at once
Just read what I said above. If saturation and overkill are the only ways to be sure your character would face a challenge, then it’s pretty safe to say it does not have limits well defined enough to construct an encounter which would find that happy and very narrow medium between too hard and too easy.
You say “if a rock hurler threw a big enough rock at her shed go splat.” No shit. That’s why I said “she can be overpowered.” The problem is the difficulty in finding a happy rock size that is high enough to give worry but doesn’t actually splatter her, while having the thrower live long enough to throw it in the first place. That is far more difficult than normal when you don’t know everything the character can do. The GM’s job isn’t to kill the player character, it’s to put them in situations that definitely could kill them but probably won’t.
>it only works if all of the players are consciously good sports
And my position is that you’d be a better sport if you constructed your character out of the player handbook, or at least used fewer additional books. Epic level is hard enough to grasp as it is
\r
I just want to take this opportunity to point out that I'm being good and letting sleeping dogs lie.
Holy crap, I thought we were over this bullshit.
>>114827
>Isn’t the fact that she could worth talking about?
Literally any epic level vancian spellcaster could break a game using only PHB content. 80% of the most broken/exploitable spells and feats are in the game is in the PHB: natural spell, leadership, Planar Binding, Gate, Simulacrum, Shades, etc. It's a badly written book that released 3 overpowered classes and 5 underpowered classes, and didn't even try to balance them. The entire business model of WoTC was to make n incomplete game and then make money by fixing it with other books.
The only content i took out of other books that significantly increased her power of her build was the Planar Shepherd PrC (which i'll admit is powerful) from Faiths Of Eberron, and the Embrace/Shun The Dark Chaos spells from the fiend folio.
Didn't we all though? Don't tell me you didn't notice that the Swordsage, taken from the Tome Of Battle (the last dying breath of 3.5e in 2007), was significantly more powerful and versatile than the underpowered and lame PHB monk? I can tell you for certain that Your character is far more powerful, versatile, more complicated, and more fun than any boring PHB martial build. If you didn't intentionally make the worst possible choices for your character, you're probably fairly optimized yourself.
I'm not the only optimized one here either. Topaz is about as powerful as a psion of her level can possibly be without abusing infinite loops (see: PunPun). She only uses mostly "core" content because the Complete Psionic was a wet fart of a book and all of the relatively good content (and most of the broken content) is in the PHB.
Candy is an Artificer. That's an Eberron class, like my Planar Shepherd. She probably has feats from Magic of Eberron too, because that's what supports the kind of character she wants to play.
>If saturation and overkill are the only ways to be sure your character would face a challenge
>Do you think that such an enemy would be a balanced opponent?
What i mentioned were 23-27 CR challenges. Elder Evils was a book made to actually challenge epic characters, unlike the poorly-written ELH. The gibbering orb (24-eyed beholder) is in the ELH as well, and is CR 27. A Protean (ELH) can make itself immune to practically every kind of attack and split into infinite copies of itself, CR 25. The restless death is the third stage of one of dozens of apocalypses, not unlike the one that the setting may experience shortly. Allk Epic content is grim-and-gritty Gygaxian style rocket tag where a single unblocked attack means death for a PC or a whole party. Even then, PCs are supposed to win. There's no problem so long as everypony gets a fair number of turns and has fun in the fight.
Heck, i have two backup ideas for this game just in case Sister dies.
>Are you sure you haven’t intimidated him off?
Dude, fuck off with that nonsense. I made a few metaposts here and there, but you're the one who's repeatedly brought up balance arguments and thinking up new reasons why everyone should be concerned about issues that might arise. Even so, it's rather rude of you to repeatedly put words in the GM's mouth.
The game is cancelled this weekend because AnCap is being dragged out of town.
>Why do you just trust that you aren’t making things unnecessarily difficult on the GM by using so many books?
Because he said so. What better authority is there? I took his word for it and have tried my best to be respectful of his story.
All this shit and we haven't fought even one battle yet. Can't you give this a freaking chance and then complain after it's been applied practically? I've barely even done anything but scry and teleport, and I did not have to optimize to do those things.
>>114827
>Isn’t the fact that she could worth talking about?
Literally any epic level vancian spellcaster could break a game using only PHB content. 80% of the most broken/exploitable spells and feats are in the game is in the PHB: natural spell, leadership, Planar Binding, Gate, Simulacrum, Shades, etc. It's a badly written book that released 3 overpowered classes and 5 underpowered classes, and didn't even try to balance them. The entire business model of WoTC was to make n incomplete game and then make money by fixing it with other books.
The only content i took out of other books that significantly increased her power of her build was the Planar Shepherd PrC (which i'll admit is powerful) from Faiths Of Eberron, and the Embrace/Shun The Dark Chaos spells from the fiend folio.
Didn't we all though? Don't tell me you didn't notice that the Swordsage, taken from the Tome Of Battle (the last dying breath of 3.5e in 2007), was significantly more powerful and versatile than the underpowered and lame PHB monk? I can tell you for certain that Your character is far more powerful, versatile, more complicated, and more fun than any boring PHB martial build. If you didn't intentionally make the worst possible choices for your character, you're probably fairly optimized yourself.
I'm not the only optimized one here either. Topaz is about as powerful as a psion of her level can possibly be without abusing infinite loops (see: PunPun). She only uses mostly "core" content because the Complete Psionic was a wet fart of a book and all of the relatively good content (and most of the broken content) is in the PHB.
Candy is an Artificer. That's an Eberron class, like my Planar Shepherd. She probably has feats from Magic of Eberron too, because that's what supports the kind of character she wants to play.
>If saturation and overkill are the only ways to be sure your character would face a challenge
>Do you think that such an enemy would be a balanced opponent?
What i mentioned were 23-27 CR challenges. Elder Evils was a book made to actually challenge epic characters, unlike the poorly-written ELH. The gibbering orb (24-eyed beholder) is in the ELH as well, and is CR 27. A Protean (ELH) can make itself immune to practically every kind of attack and split into infinite copies of itself, CR 25. The restless death is the third stage of one of dozens of apocalypses, not unlike the one that the setting may experience shortly. Allk Epic content is grim-and-gritty Gygaxian style rocket tag where a single unblocked attack means death for a PC or a whole party. Even then, PCs are supposed to win. There's no problem so long as everypony gets a fair number of turns and has fun in the fight.
Heck, i have two backup ideas for this game just in case Sister dies.
>Are you sure you haven’t intimidated him off?
Dude, fuck off with that nonsense. I made a few metaposts here and there, but you're the one who's repeatedly brought up balance arguments and thinking up new reasons why everyone should be concerned about issues that might arise. Even so, it's rather rude of you to repeatedly put words in the GM's mouth.
The game is cancelled this weekend because AnCap is being dragged out of town.
>Why do you just trust that you aren’t making things unnecessarily difficult on the GM by using so many books?
Because he said so. What better authority is there? I took his word for it and have tried my best to be respectful of his story.
All this shit and we haven't fought even one battle yet. Can't you give this a freaking chance and then complain after it's been applied practically? I've barely even done anything but scry and teleport, and I did not have to optimize to do those things.
I'm done arguing here. These arguments are redundant and shit-up the thread.
If you have something to say, dm it to me. If you have a balance complaint, just tell it to the GM directly so he can make his own freaking decisions.
If you have something to say, dm it to me. If you have a balance complaint, just tell it to the GM directly so he can make his own freaking decisions.
File (): 0F5CFE8FF34E66BBF976347392296BBD-1967786.png (1.9 MB, 1200x2134, Dramaticevencurlew_437b76_7292762.png)
*snow angels multiply*
*fake coyfish jump through fictional water*
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>tfw more scheduling complications
*plucks mistletoe out of mane*
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