Author Topic: Szatany's ultimate classes... or Pathfinder.  (Read 5769 times)

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Midnight_v

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Szatany's ultimate classes... or Pathfinder.
« on: January 15, 2011, 02:04:30 AM »
   I've been sitting here looking at all my 3.5 books. Been using frank & K's Tome series for a while(and yes I do enyjoy it quite a bit) but as I pondered the state of D&D and checked a couple times in the past 2 hours for the Underpowered Mundanes v Caster thread, I began to consider somethings that bother me.
1. Pathfinder.
  Yea pretty much that. I'm never going to play 4.0, and hell now they're producing those trading card enhancements for D&D and I just kinda threw my hands up at Wotc. So yea... pathfinder. It bothers me, irritates me on a profound level that the next nearest company just did do ANYTHING particularly good for the game. I'm leaning towards they broke even...
  So I sat and thought about the threads I'd read and the Tome Series, and other things I'd seen... and I was reminded of Szatany, who left the game many years ago, who I even made a feat or two for when I didn't know very much the state of the game, and I wonder if there might be some salvation for me there.
 The trouble with the tome series is ... well I think its largely people hate frank trollman,(or love him but mostly its the first sadly) that and the idea of "Power up everyone!" sits wrong on lots of shoulders.
  When you get to things like the wish economy and the such some people just  :shakefist, so its a loss out the door. . . but what if we looked back a bit for the future of 3.5.
Its a largely completed system, free to use, free to distribute and add to... I'm not in the mindset of Everything sucks like some people... I'm in the mind of not being pleased with the most popular options, ever been there? So I'm curious to know what the optimizers think of it. Briefly, I like the sorceror and the barbarian, notice the druid isn't uber but still interesting.
 Is there, anyone else that remembers, and or has used this stuff?

Edit: might help if I offered up a link to the liquid materia wiki.

http://www.liquidmateria.info/wiki/index.php?title=Ultimate_Classes
« Last Edit: January 15, 2011, 02:20:33 AM by Midnight_v »
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awaken DM golem

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Re: Szatany's ultimate classes... or Pathfinder.
« Reply #1 on: January 15, 2011, 04:29:55 PM »

... I'm never going to play 4.0 ...

Never gonna miss it either. Though maybe 6th edition will mix it in better.


Szatany's stuff was rather early in the 3.5e product cycle.
I don't remember any twinge of interest after
Caelic's Commandments came out.
As in the whole caster thing, overwhelming the non-casters.
I don't remember how S dealt with it.

Bozwevial

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Re: Szatany's ultimate classes... or Pathfinder.
« Reply #2 on: January 15, 2011, 04:32:38 PM »
Wait, what? Trading card enhancements?

awaken DM golem

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Re: Szatany's ultimate classes... or Pathfinder.
« Reply #3 on: January 15, 2011, 04:37:56 PM »
I think this is the first set, but I'm not sure.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Product.aspx?x=dnd/products/dndacc/316020000

Bozwevial

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Re: Szatany's ultimate classes... or Pathfinder.
« Reply #4 on: January 15, 2011, 04:48:35 PM »
So basically like swashbuckling cards, except not free.

juton

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Re: Szatany's ultimate classes... or Pathfinder.
« Reply #5 on: January 15, 2011, 05:14:26 PM »
I've been kind of disheartened that there haven't been other contenders to inherit 3.5's crown. Goodman games is making one, but I don't have high hopes for it. I wonder if people are waiting for 5e or if 3.5 just works for most groups.

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Re: Szatany's ultimate classes... or Pathfinder.
« Reply #6 on: January 15, 2011, 05:30:21 PM »
I've been kind of disheartened that there haven't been other contenders to inherit 3.5's crown. Goodman games is making one, but I don't have high hopes for it. I wonder if people are waiting for 5e or if 3.5 just works for most groups.
I've been considering instituting heavy changes to the system and posting them up here (see my Wizard idea), but that's a pretty heavy lift, and I've been swamped by college, work, and personal crap for sometime now.

oslecamo

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Re: Szatany's ultimate classes... or Pathfinder.
« Reply #7 on: January 15, 2011, 05:46:01 PM »
I've been kind of disheartened that there haven't been other contenders to inherit 3.5's crown. Goodman games is making one, but I don't have high hopes for it.

Hasbro still holds the D&D license, and they'll sue your ass if you try to publish a whole new D&D edition. So you'll have to pry said license from their cold dead hands if you want to officially publish a new D&D edition, because even if 4e mostly sucks they're still making loads of money from owning the license in the form of other merchandise, and more recently the collectible cards that do come in random boosters directly for D&D.

I wonder if people are waiting for 5e or if 3.5 just works for most groups.
I still see a lot of people gaming 3.5 around, each with their own subset of house/variant rules. Gestalt in particular is very popular. Sure it isn't perfect, but with the amount of material available (both oficial and homebrew) the players have plenty to entertain themselves for years to come (if not their whole lifes). So yes, I would say it works for most groups.

5e is a long hope in the horizon. Hasbro once saved D&D. Perhaps they'll do so again. Unless they turn it into a trading card game meanwhile.

Sunic_Flames

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Re: Szatany's ultimate classes... or Pathfinder.
« Reply #8 on: January 15, 2011, 06:42:04 PM »
I seen someone using one of those ultimate classes. It didn't work very well. They also didn't use it very well (hint: treating just about everything as if it has AC 10, and immunity to anything that slows you + high movement means PA FOR FULL DAMNIT) but even if they had it wouldn't be that great.
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veekie

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Re: Szatany's ultimate classes... or Pathfinder.
« Reply #9 on: January 16, 2011, 01:44:02 AM »
I've been kind of disheartened that there haven't been other contenders to inherit 3.5's crown. Goodman games is making one, but I don't have high hopes for it. I wonder if people are waiting for 5e or if 3.5 just works for most groups.
I've been considering instituting heavy changes to the system and posting them up here (see my Wizard idea), but that's a pretty heavy lift, and I've been swamped by college, work, and personal crap for sometime now.
Same here(though I focus more on raising the crap classes before taking out the worst of the hax). Eventually settled for Pathfinder for one simple reason.
It's got a better chassis and above all, continued support, setting wise, third party wise, adventure wise, mechanic wise. And the decent parts of 3.5 can be imported with small tweaks(from what I can see and try so far, Incarnum, ToB and the bulk of monsters/PrCs/feats can go right in)
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X-Codes

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Re: Szatany's ultimate classes... or Pathfinder.
« Reply #10 on: January 16, 2011, 02:09:40 AM »
I've been kind of disheartened that there haven't been other contenders to inherit 3.5's crown. Goodman games is making one, but I don't have high hopes for it. I wonder if people are waiting for 5e or if 3.5 just works for most groups.
I've been considering instituting heavy changes to the system and posting them up here (see my Wizard idea), but that's a pretty heavy lift, and I've been swamped by college, work, and personal crap for sometime now.
Same here(though I focus more on raising the crap classes before taking out the worst of the hax). Eventually settled for Pathfinder for one simple reason.
It's got a better chassis and above all, continued support, setting wise, third party wise, adventure wise, mechanic wise. And the decent parts of 3.5 can be imported with small tweaks(from what I can see and try so far, Incarnum, ToB and the bulk of monsters/PrCs/feats can go right in)
Frankly, I find SWSE to have a superior chassis to Pathfinder, and that's what I'm rather hoping to work towards.

Midnight_v

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Re: Szatany's ultimate classes... or Pathfinder.
« Reply #11 on: January 16, 2011, 04:21:04 AM »
I've been kind of disheartened that there haven't been other contenders to inherit 3.5's crown. Goodman games is making one, but I don't have high hopes for it. I wonder if people are waiting for 5e or if 3.5 just works for most groups.
I've been considering instituting heavy changes to the system and posting them up here (see my Wizard idea), but that's a pretty heavy lift, and I've been swamped by college, work, and personal crap for sometime now.
Same here(though I focus more on raising the crap classes before taking out the worst of the hax). Eventually settled for Pathfinder for one simple reason.
It's got a better chassis and above all, continued support, setting wise, third party wise, adventure wise, mechanic wise. And the decent parts of 3.5 can be imported with small tweaks(from what I can see and try so far, Incarnum, ToB and the bulk of monsters/PrCs/feats can go right in)
Frankly, I find SWSE to have a superior chassis to Pathfinder, and that's what I'm rather hoping to work towards.
Thats starwars sage edition?
If so... does it platform into greatsword dragon killing somehow? I cannot abide a jedi. . . but I'm open to suggestions at this point.
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Re: Szatany's ultimate classes... or Pathfinder.
« Reply #12 on: January 16, 2011, 04:49:58 AM »
There's no greatsword dragon killing written in the book, but it shouldn't be that difficult to homebrew it in.  SWSE is also significantly less rocket-taggy, although it rather had to be given that they made Initiative a skill.  :lol

Not really taking SWSE and just homebrewing stuff for that, but more like starting with 3.5e and taking the good ideas from SWSE, 4e, and PF... but mostly from SWSE.

Gods_Trick

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Re: Szatany's ultimate classes... or Pathfinder.
« Reply #13 on: January 16, 2011, 05:19:52 AM »
I've been kind of disheartened that there haven't been other contenders to inherit 3.5's crown. Goodman games is making one, but I don't have high hopes for it. I wonder if people are waiting for 5e or if 3.5 just works for most groups.
I've been considering instituting heavy changes to the system and posting them up here (see my Wizard idea), but that's a pretty heavy lift, and I've been swamped by college, work, and personal crap for sometime now.
Same here(though I focus more on raising the crap classes before taking out the worst of the hax). Eventually settled for Pathfinder for one simple reason.
It's got a better chassis and above all, continued support, setting wise, third party wise, adventure wise, mechanic wise. And the decent parts of 3.5 can be imported with small tweaks(from what I can see and try so far, Incarnum, ToB and the bulk of monsters/PrCs/feats can go right in)

Just testing the waters here, but are there still folk naive and optimistic enough to endeavor as a forum to actually produce a publishable 3.5 inheritor?

Nytemare3701

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Re: Szatany's ultimate classes... or Pathfinder.
« Reply #14 on: January 16, 2011, 05:33:42 AM »
INSPIRATION STRIKES

I accept the challenge!

I'm going to go find a editable PDF of the d20 srd, and systematically add "fixed" versions of each splatbook as I go.

I am aware that this is insane, and that I will likely burn out in a week, but DAMMIT I'M TRYING ANYWAY.

Midnight_v

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Re: Szatany's ultimate classes... or Pathfinder.
« Reply #15 on: January 16, 2011, 05:34:38 AM »
I've been kind of disheartened that there haven't been other contenders to inherit 3.5's crown. Goodman games is making one, but I don't have high hopes for it. I wonder if people are waiting for 5e or if 3.5 just works for most groups.
I've been considering instituting heavy changes to the system and posting them up here (see my Wizard idea), but that's a pretty heavy lift, and I've been swamped by college, work, and personal crap for sometime now.
Same here(though I focus more on raising the crap classes before taking out the worst of the hax). Eventually settled for Pathfinder for one simple reason.
It's got a better chassis and above all, continued support, setting wise, third party wise, adventure wise, mechanic wise. And the decent parts of 3.5 can be imported with small tweaks(from what I can see and try so far, Incarnum, ToB and the bulk of monsters/PrCs/feats can go right in)

Just testing the waters here, but are there still folk naive and optimistic enough to endeavor as a forum to actually produce a publishable 3.5 inheritor?
Dude... men can only dream.
Kudos to the guy above. . . find a great artist and a gimmick and you can totally sell that shit to people.
Paizo does.
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Nytemare3701

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Re: Szatany's ultimate classes... or Pathfinder.
« Reply #16 on: January 16, 2011, 07:02:37 AM »
I refuse to sell my work, D&D related or not. My Minecraft server (Realmz) is free to play, and my finished PDF will be free as well.

Nytemare3701

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Re: Szatany's ultimate classes... or Pathfinder.
« Reply #17 on: January 16, 2011, 07:06:07 AM »
Damnit...Looks like there is already a 3.5 rebalancing compendium on the homebrew forum.

Midnight_v

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Re: Szatany's ultimate classes... or Pathfinder.
« Reply #18 on: January 16, 2011, 02:55:49 PM »
Yeah we did that awhile back... with mixed results.
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veekie

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Re: Szatany's ultimate classes... or Pathfinder.
« Reply #19 on: January 16, 2011, 03:10:41 PM »
Several times. Good stuff came of it, but the saying about herding cats applies.
The mind transcends the body.
It's also a little cold because of that.
Please get it a blanket.

I wish I could read your mind,
I can barely read mine.

"Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. At 2:15, it begins rolling up characters."

[spoiler]
"Just what do you think the moon up in the sky is? Everyone sees that big, round shiny thing and thinks there must be something round up there, right? That's just silly. The truth is much more awesome than that. You can almost never see the real Moon, and its appearance is death to humans. You can only see the Moon when it's reflected in things. And the things it reflects in, like water or glass, can all be broken, right? Since the moon you see in the sky is just being reflected in the heavens, if you tear open the heavens it's easy to break it~"
-Ibuki Suika, on overkill

To sumbolaion diakoneto moi, basilisk ouranionon.
Epigenentheto, apoleia keraune hos timeis pteirei.
Hekatonkatis kai khiliakis astrapsato.
Khiliarkhou Astrape!
[/spoiler]

There is no higher price than 'free'.

"I won't die. I've been ordered not to die."