by Bart Carroll
This month sees a crystal ball, orc raiders that must be stopped, and a certain assassin who might be part of the party.
Talk about this preview here.
and why is the witch yet another wizard subclass? the baseline wizard already does the arcane controler thing well, as does the mage.
why not the sorcorcer, who fits the lore better anyway, needs support, and has no subclasses yet?
Ugh.
This looks like the first draft of somebody's first ever homebrew race.
i'm sure there must be ways to abuse it you are thinking that i'm not aware of but i do think the alt limit solves some of the most glaring problems. a pixie can't fly up a hole in the cieling to the next floor or avoid an impassable obsticle. a pixie still needs to make a climb check unless it's flying to a 5 foot ledge.
That's not how altitude limits work. A creature with an altitude limit can fly higher than its altitude limit. All that happens if it does is that it falls and crashes at the end of its turn. That means that a Pixie can fly up a hole in the ceiling and avoid impassable objects. Taking a double run, a Pixie can make it 16 squares vertically and/or horizontally without any need at all for jump or climb. Hell, if a climb is higher than that, a Pixie can simply fly up and "land" on the wall, grabbing onto it before the end of its turn when it would fall.
the size thing isnt a problem for impliment users and the pixie would be terrible at most melee classes.
This is not acceptable. Pigeon-holing is bad.
Also, I hope you don't think this rude of me to say, but please use capitalization in your posts. It makes them much easier to read. This is a discussion board, not a text message.
Edit: sorry what I meant to say is that I'm dyslexic and some days I try really hard to make things look perfect and correct and other days I don't because it makes posting a bit more of a chore for me. I slip up more often when I want to get a simple point across or if I'm excited about a new release.
Edit: added missing s to dyslexic
Edit capitalized all of my Is... I's... whatever
Edit: removed second c from across and corrected dyslexic in first edit.
That means that a Pixie can fly up a hole in the ceiling and avoid impassable objects. Taking a double run, a Pixie can make it 16 squares vertically and/or horizontally without any need at all for jump or climb. Hell, if a climb is higher than that, a Pixie can simply fly up and "land" on the wall, grabbing onto it before the end of its turn when it would fall.
Yup.
Although there could be air based obstacles to consider ... not all the time but the pixie is small enough that if there are heavy gusts of wind the DM might have that pixie making athletics checks (replaces climbing/jumping with flying ) ...perhaps the gust of winds could cause them to loose a minor action stabilizing their flight some times. Shrug
You knoww...these arguments about pixie balance are kinda getting annoying... If you have a player who's playing a pixie that flys up to every pedastal in sight, then that player should be kicked out of the froup or atleast given a talking to and one more chance before you do so. There are plenty of builds on the character optimization that can break a game at level 1, and flying up to high places isn't the first time this can be done. If you don't like the pixie don't use it...
the problem is that a player should not have to ignore there main ratial abilty because it is so good as to overshadow everyone elses. that shows bad design
and while encounter flys are not hard to get a fly speed is very hard to get, the earlyiest I know of it is 16 unless you count things that only last untill the end of the encounter
Most ceilings are 10 feat. Nothing "anti-pixie" about that. That's just the size most medium creatures would use (larger creatures would use larger ceilings, but they have larger reach).
So as long as the DM can railroad the party into never having a fight outdoors, in a natural cavern, or any sort of large antechamber, throneroom, auditorium, greathall, theater, battlefield, ruin, forest, ship or airship, this race is just as easy to lock down as any other. Man, it's a good thing nobody ever has fights happen in places like that!
As mellored said, most of the places you describe have enough open space that shift charging is easy. In fact, DMs already have to abritrarily mess with terrain to make shift charging not easy. You're claiming the pixie gets a 50% benefit, when really it gets a 15-20% benefit.
You knoww...these arguments about pixie balance are kinda getting annoying... If you have a player who's playing a pixie that flys up to every pedastal in sight, then that player should be kicked out of the froup or atleast given a talking to and one more chance before you do so. There are plenty of builds on the character optimization that can break a game at level 1, and flying up to high places isn't the first time this can be done. If you don't like the pixie don't use it...
the problem is that a player should not have to ignore there main ratial abilty because it is so good as to overshadow everyone elses. that shows bad design
and while encounter flys are not hard to get a fly speed is very hard to get, the earlyiest I know of it is 16 unless you count things that only last untill the end of the encounter
I'm not saying that they should, I'm saying they just shouldn't abuse it. They can still fly, they just shouldn't be jumping to every pedestal or hanging cieling fixture they can see.
You knoww...these arguments about pixie balance are kinda getting annoying... If you have a player who's playing a pixie that flys up to every pedastal in sight, then that player should be kicked out of the froup or atleast given a talking to and one more chance before you do so. There are plenty of builds on the character optimization that can break a game at level 1, and flying up to high places isn't the first time this can be done. If you don't like the pixie don't use it...
the problem is that a player should not have to ignore there main ratial abilty because it is so good as to overshadow everyone elses. that shows bad design
and while encounter flys are not hard to get a fly speed is very hard to get, the earlyiest I know of it is 16 unless you count things that only last untill the end of the encounter
I'm not saying that they should, I'm saying they just shouldn't abuse it. They can still fly, they just shouldn't be jumping to every pedestal or hanging cieling fixture they can see.
then why have it? that is the point of a fly speed. its like telling a elf that he should not shift in difficult terrain every time he can just some of the time.
it is much better to make something limited and then have players use it as much as possible then have something that is overpowered and exspect that they wont use it as much as they can.
what boggles me is that there are several ways they could have gone that would get rid of most of the chesse, like having an at-will fly power instead of a fly speed, so they can hop but they cant stay in the air
You knoww...these arguments about pixie balance are kinda getting annoying... If you have a player who's playing a pixie that flys up to every pedastal in sight, then that player should be kicked out of the froup or atleast given a talking to and one more chance before you do so. There are plenty of builds on the character optimization that can break a game at level 1, and flying up to high places isn't the first time this can be done. If you don't like the pixie don't use it...
the problem is that a player should not have to ignore there main ratial abilty because it is so good as to overshadow everyone elses. that shows bad design
and while encounter flys are not hard to get a fly speed is very hard to get, the earlyiest I know of it is 16 unless you count things that only last untill the end of the encounter
I'm not saying that they should, I'm saying they just shouldn't abuse it. They can still fly, they just shouldn't be jumping to every pedestal or hanging cieling fixture they can see.
then why have it? that is the point of a fly speed. its like telling a elf that he should not shift in difficult terrain every time he can just some of the time.
it is much better to make something limited and then have players use it as much as possible then have something that is overpowered and exspect that they wont use it as much as they can.
what boggles me is that there are several ways they could have gone that would get rid of most of the chesse, like having an at-will fly power instead of a fly speed, so they can hop but they cant stay in the air
I just snapped alright...I'm sorry, it's just that there are people that are already play testing these things and I am really tired at the moment, I just don't like seeing this conversation taking over any thread that's talking about pixies. I just want to see what happens for it when people start commenting how their games wen't with the pixie PC.
What boggles my mind is the people who, as DMs, will not take the flight in stride when building encounter areas and puzzles and things for the players to do. It's not like flight is overpowered if every damned switch is withing reach, and all the monsters know that knocking down the chandelier deprives the pixie of a place to fricking sit. I mean really, is this that hard? Thinking about player abilities should always come in while making an encounter map or hazard. It can even reward the PC that can fly. What a concept.
[sarcasm] But DMs shouldn't need to be creative. Until now, DMs could always simply follow the script and the players never did anything that wasn't accounted for by the DM (or module writer) beforehand. [/sarcasm]
I learned early on in my DMing career that the players will NEVER follow the plan exactly as laid out. As a result, the DM will ALWAYS need to be able to adjust on the fly.
Adjusting for flight is no different. While At-Will flight in 4E may be slightly problematic in some areas, they have put on the necessary limiters to prevent it from being plot busting like it was in previous editions.
It's not going to break my game. How about some of the folks who are complaining take the time to see if it will break their's before breaking out the torches and pitchforks?
Guys.
Pixies can weigh 1 pound.
A Floating Lantern can hold 1 pound witout falling. It moves 10 squares via it's user's move action.
Boom. Fly 10, no altitude limit, just ride the lantern. Sure, you can't use any equipment that weighs anything, so you'd be limited to wands and ki foci and would have to go without armor... but IMO going without armor is a small price to pay for being permanently immune to melee and being able to hover out of range of many ranged attacks.
What boggles my mind is the people who, as DMs, will not take the flight in stride when building encounter areas and puzzles and things for the players to do. It's not like flight is overpowered if every damned switch is withing reach, and all the monsters know that knocking down the chandelier deprives the pixie of a place to fricking sit. I mean really, is this that hard? Thinking about player abilities should always come in while making an encounter map or hazard. It can even reward the PC that can fly. What a concept.
This.
Hey.
Guys.
Pixies can weigh 1 pound.
A Floating Lantern can hold 1 pound witout falling. It moves 10 squares via it's user's move action.
Boom. Fly 10, no altitude limit, just ride the lantern. Sure, you can't use any equipment that weighs anything, so you'd be limited to wands and ki foci and would have to go without armor... but IMO going without armor is a small price to pay for being permanently immune to melee and being able to hover out of range of many ranged attacks.
That object would most likely have According to the DMG rules on damaging objects:
AC/Ref 10, Fort 5 and 5 HP.
Good luck with that.
Most Level 1 minions deal about 5 damage. You also mention that you will be out of range of most attacks but you wont be making many implement attacks past 20 either.