Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Witch 03-13-07, 03:00 PM	Hmm. I agree that epic needs a 3.5 overhaul, but I am not certain that we agree what that overhaul would consist of. Since I never played 1e, I don't know how they handled it, but I don't have a problem with HD advancing, or the saves being modified so that they don't fall completely out of wack. I don't think BaB should have been modified. I think more care should have been taken with some of the feats and their impact on the game. Now, full BAB's wouldn't have a problem. Low BAB's wouldn't either, as they're not particularly concerned with it. But wouldn't this be problematic for characters with medium BAB if you continue standard advancement? I'm not quite sure how it could be. 3/4 HD = BaB. That formula works for 50th level characters the same way it works for 15th. Afterall, racial HD, such as elemental or animal, keeps its 3/4 BaB. The only modification they needed to make to BaB is to cap attacks at 4-5 interitive attacks and allow one to take epic feats if they wanted more attacks a round. At level 20: Medium BAB: 15 High BAB: 20 Difference: 5 The AC difference is hence pretty doable. At level 100: Medium BAB: 75 High BAB: 100 Difference: 25 The difference comes to mean that if you want to challenge the hit rate of the full BAB, the medium BAB will never hit, while if you want to allow the medium BAB to stand a chance, the full BAB will always hit. Creatures such as elementals and animals are given more HD to make up for their lower BAB. As to not derail another thread :)
Kain Darkwind 03-13-07, 03:11 PM	Ok. The reason saves need to be within capability on a d20 is because failed saves can kill you. Finger of death. If one's fortitude save is more than 20 less than another party member's fortitude save, then save or die becomes literal. One member always saves, and one member always dies. That's why switching over to 'all good saves' after 20th level is a good idea. BaB does not need to be within that range however. Missing a creature's AC does not automatically kill you. Plenty of magic and circumstances can aid in granting attack bonuses. Now, the hypothetical 100th level monk/rogue vs the 100th level fighter. Monsters designed to be a CR 100 should assume the fighter is going to hit, and have damage reduction to counter that. A fighter fighting a CR 100 creature should be nearly forced to use Power Attack (or some other damage increasing ability) to hurt the creature. The AC should be set around the average attack bonus for a monk of 100th level. Damage reduction, fast healing, regeneration and just tons of hit points can all be used to keep the fighter's foregone conclusion of hitting from mattering too much. In addition, I think Epic feats should have 'Extra Attack', that allows a fighter to make an additional attack while inflicting a -2 penalty to all attacks made in the full round. CR 100 threats shouldn't just be concerned with mere AC vs attack bonus issues. They should provide multiple threats on many different levels. They shouldn't just be huge hit point sponges, or a failed fortitude save away from defeat. It should take all of the options available to a 100th level party to stop them.
Witch 03-13-07, 03:25 PM	Those're good points - only, what do you see as for instance a monks role, who will be doing far less damage, and will not hit every time?
Kain Darkwind 03-13-07, 03:33 PM	Those're good points - only, what do you see as for instance a monks role, who will be doing far less damage, and will not hit every time? Monks have incredible speed, and a host of other skills. They are not only melee combat artists. Challenging a monk in your party should be more involved than treating her like an unarmed fighter. At that level, she can run 360 feet per round, assuming a 30 foot original movement rate. Probably run along the clouds without magic. Surely there is something more challenging to her than expecting her to move into melee with the CR 100 and flurry of blows until one or the other falls? A monk is part melee combatant, part physical skill user, and part AC master. She should be capable of dodging spells and attacks in distracting manuevers. And of course, much like the tarrasque at level 20, certain things are more challenging given a situation that isn't "fight to the death in the dungeon". An epic dragon rampaging across the countryside, while the fighter tries to hack away at it and the wizard tries to stall it with spells, the monk can be running from town to town like a miniature Flash, bearing the news and possibly small children who are too young to flee on their own.
dok 03-13-07, 08:06 PM	Two thoughts occur to me here... First, iterative attacks. One 'feature' of iterative attacks at non-epic levels is that even if your first attack is certain to hit, your last attack is considerably less likely to hit. Which means the attack roll still means something in a full-attack action, just only for the later attacks. Using "normal" BAB at epic levels doesn't just mean the Epic Fighter always hits, it means he always hits with all his attacks, while the Poor BAB guy always misses (that happens at level 40) or while the Average BAB guy always misses (level 80) Second, BAB as something other than attack. Once the fighter always hits with all of his iterative attacks, it's a safe bet he has Power Attack, and/or Combat Expertise & Improved Expertise, so at that point, the fighter will always default extra bonuses into damage. Which means he's now hitting more often than the Monk and doing more damage as levels rise. Not saying this rules out the idea, just pointing out that after a certain threshhold, extra BAB stops being used for hitting, and becomes AC/damage output.
Kain Darkwind 03-13-07, 08:14 PM	Two thoughts occur to me here... First, iterative attacks. One 'feature' of iterative attacks at non-epic levels is that even if your first attack is certain to hit, your last attack is considerably less likely to hit. Which means the attack roll still means something in a full-attack action, just only for the later attacks. Using "normal" BAB at epic levels doesn't just mean the Epic Fighter always hits, it means he always hits with all his attacks, while the Poor BAB guy always misses (that happens at level 40) or while the Average BAB guy always misses (level 80) Second, BAB as something other than attack. Once the fighter always hits with all of his iterative attacks, it's a safe bet he has Power Attack, and/or Combat Expertise & Improved Expertise, so at that point, the fighter will always default extra bonuses into damage. Which means he's now hitting more often than the Monk and doing more damage as levels rise. Not saying this rules out the idea, just pointing out that after a certain threshhold, extra BAB stops being used for hitting, and becomes AC/damage output. Actually, that is exactly what I am talking about. The epic monsters should take into account that their AC is useful for foiling 3/4 BaB attacks and that they will almost certainly be getting hit with a Power Attack. They should take into account that they may be required to hit insanely high ACs due to Combat Expertise. In short, the very thing you mention is what crazy-high epic monsters should be anticipating, not designed to foil.
runestar 03-14-07, 06:30 AM	Ok. The reason saves need to be within capability on a d20 is because failed saves can kill you. Finger of death. If one's fortitude save is more than 20 less than another party member's fortitude save, then save or die becomes literal. One member always saves, and one member always dies. That's why switching over to 'all good saves' after 20th level is a good idea. Not really. If saves continued to accrue at their pre-epic pace, eventually, no one would make their saves at all. No mage is going to be stupid enough to cast finger of death at a fighter with a maxed out fort save. He is going to target his ultra crappy will save. Obviously, we are going to target their weak saves. That is the reason why epic monster have so much racial HD. They do not benefit from epic save progression, and thus need lots of HD to shore up their weak saves, since that is what any smart player will be aiming at. Epic save progression partly resolves this problem for the PCs, although the significance of this change probably becomes apparent only at higher lvs. Now, the hypothetical 100th level monk/rogue vs the 100th level fighter. Monsters designed to be a CR 100 should assume the fighter is going to hit, and have damage reduction to counter that. How will you plan to manage that? Dr in 3.5 is a joke. Not only will any fighter worth his salt be able to power attack through it with ease, but by that time, he should have no problems bypassing it altogether(his weapon should be able to penetrate every single combination of dr by this time) AC will still matter. The monster will still need to have an AC of at least 10+fighter's to-hit rating. And this means that rogues and monks can forget about hitting their foes in combat. In addition, I think Epic feats should have 'Extra Attack', that allows a fighter to make an additional attack while inflicting a -2 penalty to all attacks made in the full round. Wotc mentioned that they wanted to cap base attacks at 4 to prevent the game from being bogged down with too many die rolls.:) Actually, that is exactly what I am talking about. The epic monsters should take into account that their AC is useful for foiling 3/4 BaB attacks and that they will almost certainly be getting hit with a Power Attack. They should take into account that they may be required to hit insanely high ACs due to Combat Expertise. This sounds like a very convoluted way of managing a problem which does not exist under the current epic rules due to the unique manner in which epic bab/saves is being handled. There are assumptions and there are assumptions. What if I wanted a foe which specialized around evading attacks, and by its very nature, mandated a super-high AC which would challenge even tricked out fighters? Does that not mean that monks are essentially left twiddling their thumbs for the duration of the fight? As it is, I think I will continue supporting the epic rules as is. It means that regardless of what happens, a rogue's bab will only be 5 less than a fighter, and thus assured of at least hitting with their first attack. That is good enough for me.:P
Kain Darkwind 03-14-07, 08:20 AM	Not really. If saves continued to accrue at their pre-epic pace, eventually, no one would make their saves at all. No mage is going to be stupid enough to cast finger of death at a fighter with a maxed out fort save. He is going to target his ultra crappy will save. Obviously, we are going to target their weak saves. That is the reason why epic monster have so much racial HD. They do not benefit from epic save progression, and thus need lots of HD to shore up their weak saves, since that is what any smart player will be aiming at. Epic save progression partly resolves this problem for the PCs, although the significance of this change probably becomes apparent only at higher lvs. You obviously haven't paid attention. 'Switching to good save progression at level 20' is identical with 'using epic save progression'. No one is suggesting that we change epic saves. How will you plan to manage that? Dr in 3.5 is a joke. Not only will any fighter worth his salt be able to power attack through it with ease, but by that time, he should have no problems bypassing it altogether(his weapon should be able to penetrate every single combination of dr by this time) AC will still matter. The monster will still need to have an AC of at least 10+fighter's to-hit rating. And this means that rogues and monks can forget about hitting their foes in combat. This is based off of what evidence, exactly? A CR 100 monster you've seen published with epic DR? I doubt it. Just because WotC doesn't go higher than DR 20 with their monsters doesn't mean that a CR 100 monster won't have such. Nor does it mean that WotC has built monsters to be epic challenges. Considering that using my method, at 50th level, a monk will have a BaB of +38 for his (3) high attacks and a fighter will have a BaB of +35 for his lowest attack, there isn't even cause for immediate concern. If in 50 levels we can't establish enough discrepancy to make the d20 meaningless, it isn't a pressing issue. Beyond level 50 there exists a potential problem, I admit, but not if one designs the mosnters with it in mind. Wotc mentioned that they wanted to cap base attacks at 4 to prevent the game from being bogged down with too many die rolls.:) Did you not even read what I said? We would be capping the attacks at a max of 4 or 5. This sounds like a very convoluted way of managing a problem which does not exist under the current epic rules due to the unique manner in which epic bab/saves is being handled. There are assumptions and there are assumptions. What if I wanted a foe which specialized around evading attacks, and by its very nature, mandated a super-high AC which would challenge even tricked out fighters? Does that not mean that monks are essentially left twiddling their thumbs for the duration of the fight? No. There exist other methods for making such a creature, that exist within non-epic d20. Just because you aren't being creative with your design doesn't make my idea flawed. Even with your high AC monster, if it was high enough to foil 'tricked out fighters' on their first attack (I assume that means you want them to roll at least a 15 or higher) then the 3/4 crew would still be boned, needing a natural 20. As it is, I think I will continue supporting the epic rules as is. It means that regardless of what happens, a rogue's bab will only be 5 less than a fighter, and thus assured of at least hitting with their first attack. That is good enough for me.:P Well I am glad that is good enough for you. With the sheer amount of 'fighter sucks' and 'spellcasters rule' threads out there, I don't feel that 'making the fighter too powerful in epic' is a threat to game balance, just the opposite. Again, I'd like to point out that the problem doesn't become a serious issue until past level 50. Aside from gods, I have never seen a 50th level character other than those statted up from scratch. I've certainly never seen or heard of a game that ran from 1st to 50th level. But just for a break down: Level 25: 7 points difference Level 30: 8 points difference Level 35: 9 points difference Level 40: 10 point difference Level 45: 12 point difference None of these differences will break the d20 effect. If the classes are truly focusing on attack roll based combat (rather than touch attacks, flat footed ACs, etc) then they should probably consider taking the Epic Prowess feat.
runestar 03-14-07, 09:10 AM	This is based off of what evidence, exactly? A CR 100 monster you've seen published with epic DR? I doubt it. Just because WotC doesn't go higher than DR 20 with their monsters doesn't mean that a CR 100 monster won't have such. Nor does it mean that WotC has built monsters to be epic challenges. Which brings me to my 2nd point - does it matter how high the dr is? Unless you plan on giving every monster dr/-, any fighter should be well equipped to pierce it however well you mix and match. Even if a monster has dr100000000/epic, cold iron, silver, adamantine and all 4 alignment types, players should be more than able to overcome those types of dr all at once by that time. I am quite interested to see how you handle the whole dr aspect.:) I don't want it to become a long, protracted battle with my fighter doing 1-2 damage each time.
Kain Darkwind 03-14-07, 10:58 AM	Which brings me to my 2nd point - does it matter how high the dr is? Unless you plan on giving every monster dr/-, any fighter should be well equipped to pierce it however well you mix and match. Even if a monster has dr100000000/epic, cold iron, silver, adamantine and all 4 alignment types, players should be more than able to overcome those types of dr all at once by that time. I am quite interested to see how you handle the whole dr aspect.:) I don't want it to become a long, protracted battle with my fighter doing 1-2 damage each time. Well, with a CR 100 monster, I can see at least a few of its epic feats going into Damage Reduction, so it should have at least some impenetrable damage reduction. I personally have reinstated the '+' back into DR formulas, so that a +6 weapon doesn't work universally. I call it high magic (+3) and high epic (+8), but I don't tend to anticipate for PCs higher than 40th level to be honest. With CR 100, you could easily have something requiring a +15 weapon or better to penetrate the DR. Double alignment can be a difficult thing to penetrate. At the best, you need two cleric spells prepared to deal with that, assuming your weapon doesn't hold the required alignment already. At worst, you need a minimum of +4 enchantment on your weapon. When you have epic weapons, that drives the price up a ton, especially if you already need it made out of a special material and to penetrate epic DR. A +6 weapon costs 720K gold. A +6 weapon with the holy and axiomatic enchantments costs 2M gold. Another possibility is adding a 'major alignment' component to DR, requiring a weapon of holy power (+7 enchantment) to penetrate it. Or perhaps a 10th level heightened align weapon spell. The point is, you can arrange it so that a PC cannot carry around a golf bag of weapons to penetrate all DR types. Or that in doing so, they rob themselves of a single truly powerful weapon. Damage reduction isn't the only way to reduce the amount of damage dealt over time either. Regeneration ala the tarrasque or fast healing can also be very effective. Particularly if the material to penetrate the DR is not the same as the material to overcome the regeneration. I agree that dealing 1-2 points every round on a creature with probably thousands if not tens of thousands of hit points would be an insane pain in the ass. The key is to create a creature that challenges every party member. The problem with that is that with 100 levels there are a vast number of possible combinations that don't exist when you have 10 levels of combination. The thing is, 3.5 hasn't paid any attention to epic rules. We have epic progressions of classes, but that is it. The game very clearly doesn't carry a lot of support for past 30th level. The things I mention about Damage Reduction overhaul, they would need to be made for an effective epic game regardless of whether or not you left BaB alone or used Epic aB.
Krispieman 03-14-07, 11:58 AM	One solution to the Monk vs. Fighter to hit imbalance at higher levels might be a simple feat akin to the following: Brilliant Ki Strike [Epic] You know exactly where to strike opponents so they benefit little from their armor. . Prerequisites: Wis 25, Improved Ki Strike . Benefit: Your unarmed attacks, or those made with monk's weapons, are resolved as touch attacks, ignoring armor, natural armor and shield enhancements to AC. This way a monster with sky-high AC to challenge the fighter, needs different kinds of AC enhancements to challenge the monk. But the monk deals about 1/10th of the damage the fighter does anyway, so I think this matters little. Now to find something for rogues :P K-man :cool:
Alias 03-14-07, 12:31 PM	Chink in the Armor (General) You know precisely where to strike. Prerequisites: Dex 25, sneak attack +10d6 Benefit: By sacrificing all but one attack in a round, you make a more precise strike. If you use this attack to make a sneak attack, you can bypass the target's armor and natural armor bonuses to Armor Class. This certainly makes rogues more effective - they could deal damage nearly on a par with fighters, even if it's only one attack. They can only do it on sneak attacks, which excludes undead and constructs, and they have to be able to reach a weak spot, which would exclude the extra-huge monsters in most circumstances. The "sacrifice all your attacks but one" thing simulates the rogue watching the monster for the perfect opportunity to strike, when it lifts its arm to reveal the softer scales underneath, or exposes its eye, or whatever.
Holy_Beholder 03-14-07, 01:09 PM	Since when do golems have weakspots? Also, not all armor does either. Take chain, its simple enough to have no weakspot(except for the face, but you can hardly hit someone in the face when they don't know you're there(unless you shoot them. Also this would be blocked by some armor, and I'm not sure about completly penetrating natural armor. Maybe only account for half of it. Just a thought. This is...
rob_douglas 03-14-07, 02:24 PM	Golem weak spots can be presupposed going back to Jason and the Argonauts fight with Talos. The archer Bard, who killed Smaug is another example of bypassing natural armor. The hit point system of combat does not do well at mimicking where you are hitting. I think a feat like Chink in the Armor is a fine feat to simulate that kind of precise strike. ROB
Alias 03-15-07, 11:24 AM	Take chain, its simple enough to have no weakspot(except for the face... Chainmail doesn't protect against piercing weapons very well - give me a rapier or a spear or even a dagger, and I guarantee I can deal extra damage to someone. but you can hardly hit someone in the face when they don't know you're there(unless you shoot them. There's this thing called invisibility. And getting a sneak attack has nothing to do with the target not knowing I'm there - it's based on him being flanked or flat-footed. If I pop out of a doorway in front of him and he's surprised - hey, he's flat-footed! I can sneak attack him. In the face, no less!
GAMBLE_d13 03-16-07, 02:09 AM	By Level 100, the Rogue will be naturally "invisible" through his Hide and Move Silently skills, this means (If I'm not mistaken) that the CR 100 monster will loose its Dex to AC versus the Rogue, and if it is not immune to Sneak Attacks, the Rogue will inflict unbeleivable damage to it (easilly surpassing 1,000hp). At Level 100, the Difference between the Fighter's BAB and the Rogue's, is only 25, design monster's that the Rogue can hit and let the F9ighter Power Attack, the Rogue will still dish out more damage.
bluemage55 03-16-07, 03:58 AM	By Level 100, the Rogue will be naturally "invisible" through his Hide and Move Silently skills, this means (If I'm not mistaken) that the CR 100 monster will loose its Dex to AC versus the Rogue, and if it is not immune to Sneak Attacks, the Rogue will inflict unbeleivable damage to it (easilly surpassing 1,000hp). At Level 100, the Difference between the Fighter's BAB and the Rogue's, is only 25, design monster's that the Rogue can hit and let the F9ighter Power Attack, the Rogue will still dish out more damage. You forget that a CR 100 opponent can be expected to have sufficient Spot/Listen checks to detect you, and is likely to spend the paltry sum of money necessary for fortification armor.
bluemage55 03-16-07, 04:03 AM	Addressing the main point of the thread, I think that ditching Epic BAB would be a bad idea. In addition to the aforementioned scaling discrepancy between full BAB classes and medium BAB classes, there's also the issue that under the current system, monsters are designed to be hit 100%/75%/50%/25% by the martial classes. If you restore regular BAB, you're going to have martial classes that deal a whole lot more damage with added hits and/or Power Attack. There's also the issue that once you get up to mid-epic and higher (40+), nobody misses attacks anymore, thanks to limited wish for automatic hit coming out of items. In that case, the only thing regular BAB is going to do is up the damage of all martial classes by +2 (assuming a 2-handed weapon) every 2 levels.
runestar 03-16-07, 08:23 AM	By Level 100, the Rogue will be naturally "invisible" through his Hide and Move Silently skills, this means (If I'm not mistaken) that the CR 100 monster will loose its Dex to AC versus the Rogue, and if it is not immune to Sneak Attacks, the Rogue will inflict unbeleivable damage to it (easilly surpassing 1,000hp). By lv100, I think you can assume the foe is flat out immune to just about everything...:P
Kain Darkwind 03-17-07, 10:42 PM	Addressing the main point of the thread, I think that ditching Epic BAB would be a bad idea. In addition to the aforementioned scaling discrepancy between full BAB classes and medium BAB classes, there's also the issue that under the current system, monsters are designed to be hit 100%/75%/50%/25% by the martial classes. If you restore regular BAB, you're going to have martial classes that deal a whole lot more damage with added hits and/or Power Attack. There's also the issue that once you get up to mid-epic and higher (40+), nobody misses attacks anymore, thanks to limited wish for automatic hit coming out of items. In that case, the only thing regular BAB is going to do is up the damage of all martial classes by +2 (assuming a 2-handed weapon) every 2 levels. I'm sorry, could you point me to the thread where it discusses how overpowered fighters are in epic? Or perhaps a thread where melee classes are the clear superiors to spellcasting at high levels? People go on and on about how broken Auto Quicken/Multispell is, and Epic Spellcasting given some vacuum and infinite resources (aka ad hoc mitigators) but then someone suggests giving melee classes back their balls and everyone screams overpowered. If the rogue and the monk are dealing less damage than the fighter thanks to Power Attack, that's a GOOD thing in my book. Rogues still get to do all the cool skill things, monks get to break the sound barrier with their movement rate, clerics are rivaling their gods in spellcasting power, druids get to shapechange into the tarrasque.....cry me a river if barbarians and fighters are asking to get to do something in epic too.
bluemage55 03-18-07, 12:10 AM	If you weren't aware, the presence of immunities leaves melee attacks as the only reliable way of dealing damage. Not surprisingly, the melee classes are best at using this tactic. Believe it or not, the fighter is the one who is doing most of the killing at epic levels; the spellcasters are mostly there to provide epic buffs, battlefield control, healing, and dispels. I personally feel that being the one to kill the enemies is an appropriate and fun role to play.
Kain Darkwind 03-18-07, 12:13 AM	If you weren't aware, the presence of immunities leaves melee attacks as the only reliable way of dealing damage. Not surprisingly, the melee classes are best at using this tactic. Unless the immunity in question is 'immunity to all magic period' I can't see that actually being true. Even if it were though, there exist enough buff spells and such that spellcasters can always contribute, even if they can't claim the direct kill. Tenser's Transformation. A mage casting this spell at epic levels, say 40th level, actually has a BaB 10 points higher than a 40th level fighter. That's crap.
bluemage55 03-18-07, 12:25 AM	Unless the immunity in question is 'immunity to all magic period' I can't see that actually being true. Even if it were though, there exist enough buff spells and such that spellcasters can always contribute, even if they can't claim the direct kill. Near-perfect immunity is to be expected. It should be anticipated that all characters at mid-epic and higher walk around with universeal energy immunity, improved evasion, 95% successful saves, Exceptional Deflection, and immunity to mind-affecting attacks/death effects/movement inhibition/poison/disease/ability damage/ability drain. Epic spells can and will be used to reflect all non-epic spells, and the few epic spells that a spellcaster has are 50% likely to be reflected. Tenser's Transformation. A mage casting this spell at epic levels, say 40th level, actually has a BaB 10 points higher than a 40th level fighter. That's crap. See the 3.5 Player's Handbook for the latest version, which caps the BAB to +20, just as with divine power.