Avatar d20 fixes

[dman11235]

Okay, since the GitP crew is dense (actually has said to me that they didn't want to change it because they were lazy, so didn't take my advice), this will be the place we fix up the avatar project they worked on.  Mainly, the system is nice, and works pretty well at capturing the show (very well, actually), but the seeds suck.  They are all over the place: Tentacle is uber for a water bender yet Water Whip can be replaced by either that or Ice Shards, no problem (and they do more...), for example.  Mostly these things have become apparent as I tried to make a character using this system, as I noticed that Water Whip was useless, and Tentacle was insane.  And seeing the playtest in action, it's apparent where these errors are coming from (can you say druid playtest?).  So let's have it, let's go through and see what we can fix with those seeds.  I'll link this back in the GitP thread later, so I don't have to type out every one again, maybe seeing an entire forum doing testing and revision will help them see the light.

This is our Avatar project.

[AfterCrescent]

Dman, do we have a list of the seeds that don't need fixing?

[dman11235]

No...I haven't looked really well through the air, fire, and earth benders, and tomorrow I'm going through water to jog my memory a bit more and I'll make a list of what seeds I think don't need fixing.  Think being the key word, since (hard to believe) I'm not perfect.

Mainly right now I just through out one seed and am trying to see who's helping.

[Guyr Adamantine]

I'm glad to see this, and I'll probably bring more tasty comments tomorrow.

One thing before leaving: have you seen how the new guy (AstralFire) is going through the same things as you? Eight is practically yelling him to shut up sice he ask too often the right questions.

[dman11235]

There's a reason I'm just reading it right now instead of commenting...

[Omen of Peace]

Can your whip be wielded with two hands ? The original one in the PHB can, but it's a rule oddity without much justification - we might as well fix it.

I looked at the project but it was some time ago. Is there a table with the Bending DCs an (optimized) character can reach at each level ? To make sure that the reach or damage doesn't increase too quickly, for instance.

[AfterCrescent]

What would be the DC increase (if any) to make two whips in one move action?

[dman11235]

Not sure.....

There is a list in the bending thread I think of average bending bonuses over the levels.  One thing I was thinking though was changing it from a skill (potential abuse and a history of failure) to a level check+wis, with some bonuses granted by levels, and then reducing the DCs by 5.

The table started with 9 at 1 or so (4+3 skill focus+2 wis) and then ends with 30 at 20 with the same wis.  They didn't include skill boosting items.

[AlterFrom]

[EDIT]: Ah-ha. Max Bending Modifier makes sense. Good catch AC.

[AfterCrescent]

Just guessing, but it looks like Max Bending Modifier.

[dman11235]

See, that having such a low (i.e., nothing but skill focus+3+synergy+wis+class level) DC leads to the change of a level check (class level+1/2 other class levels+wis) not being that far off.  It would lower the MBM by...8.  So....class level+wis and DCs of 5 lower....with a bonus to check spaced out in the classes to fill dead levels....

Also, as promised, here's my list of water seeds that don't* need fixing.

[spoiler]Water Blast (note: possible increase in damage)
Deflect Attack
Manipulate
Mist(note: possible additions of augments for it)
Tentacle (note: needs attention, not fixing necessarily, namely in wording)
Ice Shards (note: see tentacle and mist (augments for the spike field version))
Steady Stance (note: needs attention, wording and DC increase possible.  Also more augments)
Propel (nix it, doesn't need to be there, it's just a fancy form of manipulate)
Golem (ironically, one of the harder things to do came out pretty good.  Might need some attention though)[/spoiler]

Everything I did not list has multiple problems and overall needs an overhaul.

*though I could be wrong, take a look at these first and see if you agree.

[AlterFrom]

My list of notes on seeds:

[spoiler]
Manipulate: More of a general thing, but waterbender seeds need a better way of telling you how much water you need to use them. I think addng Manipulate into a form was intended to let you get around this, but it needs a better way of figuring it out. For example, say I want a 10-ft radius (12 5-ft cubes) mist effect, but I don't want it next to water. Should I have to use manipulate to move 12 cubes of water (DC +53!) or a single application of the manipulate seed into the form (DC +5)?

Water Whip: Good as it is, except Capture needs a mention about whether the target can breathe or not.

Tentacle(Octopus): Needs a clarification as to how many tentacles can be used at once to attempt to negate an attack. As it stands, it can be read that you could use all your tentacles at once to attempt to negate. If you can, a waterbender becomes an excellent turtle by virtue of having the ability to make 4+ attempts to negate per attack.

Ice Shard(Entrapping): Should work as per Ranged Pin (CW,p104), maybe substituting the modifier for something else.

Healing Water: Fine as it is.

Water Shield: Needs to clarify whether you are subject to the effects as well.

Steady Stance(Offensive): DC on the strength check?

Steady Stance(Defensive): Gee, wow, this works against...um...bull rushes? And...is there anything else that this would work on?

Pressure: Nothing really wrong with it, but it seems lackluster.

Water Walk: I would say DC 40 is a bit high to to focus for free on waterwalking, but since the swift focus is just DC 25 and there's not much else a waterbender could do with their swift action, it's probably fine.

Propel: Definitely added just to adhere to canon. Could be replaced with a sub-seed under manipulate.

Armor(Ice Armor): Needs a clarification regarding making higher masterwork level armor.

Armor: Needs a clarification if it can be used over regular armor. Liquid would make sense over regular, but not ice.

Wave: Useful, well-written. Needs an augment on Transport.

Golem: Definitely well-done, but the example for Enhancement needs to be rewritten, since adding +5 to two scores would require a DC augment of +20, would it not?

Feel the Flow: Needs a mechanical definition of its benefit. At the moment, it seems to suggest you can pinpoint their square, but they would still have total concealment relative to you.

Bend Plants(Entwine): Flavor text suggests that the vines should have some sort of natural attack so they can damage foes caught in them.

Blizzard(Snow): How much water is needed? I get the feeling that starting with the mist seed would summon the proper humidity for it. Then, however, would it use up all the mist and remove the mist seed's effect, or just get snowy and misty?

Blizzard(Ice): If the snow was summoned with the Snow seed, does that seed need to be used again to summon more or does the snow just settle again? Probably the latter, I'm thinking.

Bloodbending: "This seed takes the bender's full turn..." seems out of place after the first sentence, unless it was meant to disallow quickening the seed. Would it be unbalanced to let the bloodbender try for a DC 60 check to get a move action in addition to the targets full round?
[/spoiler]

[Omen of Peace]

See, that having such a low (i.e., nothing but skill focus+3+synergy+wis+class level) DC leads to the change of a level check (class level+1/2 other class levels+wis) not being that far off.  It would lower the MBM by...8.  So....class level+wis and DCs of 5 lower....with a bonus to check spaced out in the classes to fill dead levels....

I support this. They start with low Wis, never buy +Wis items nor +competence items... Perhaps they are deemed not to exist in that world but to make it usable in D&D at large, getting away from skill checks as fast as possible seems like a good idea.

And we can always introduce bending-specific items if we want to give higher levels a power boost (the level+ability check might scale too slowly on the other hand). They could be either worn items (Pearl of Waterbending) or 1-time items that give permanent (inherent) bonuses (Sacred Scroll of Waterbending).

[dman11235]

That's why I suggested a couple boosts in class to fill otherwise dead levels.  And then items, of course.

[DetectiveJabsco]

Maybe we should See if Astral Fire would like to come over here and help us with fixing the bending. Also, I will be Playing a Fire bender in an up coming RL game 1-20 I'll report on how it goes, I will be using Astral's Firebender remake.

I think the classes them selves Should use the Monk template in a 3.5 world, they are already wisdom based classes, so give them the armor and unarmed strike and flurry, or something like this, The Firebender already has Flurry, and they all have weird armor bonus, but the avatar world has armor as DR, so it works weird in standard 3.5. Any thoughts?

[dman11235]

To a degree...yes.  And they already do to a degree.

And I support AF coming here.  I'll look more thoroughly through his fix later (I'm on waterbenders right now, need to change the paradigm).

So.  Who's in favor of changing to a class level+1/2 other level+wis+misc (fill in some dead levels with a +2 bonus or so, -5 to current DCs) change in the mechanic?  In addition to this step, I think we should move around some things in the classes to place what are currently dead levels on the least painful levels.

EDIT: Totally just sent AF a PM inviting him to help here.

[AlterFrom]

Whatever we shift the system to, I think it needs more variability in regards to how high your check can get. At the moment, you can predict to within +/- 1 (as evidenced by the MBM table) the maximum check a bender can manage. We should add something so that players who want to really MAX their bending modifier can do so, like a "Font of Bending" (progression like font of inspiration for bending mod, may or may not be overpowered), so that they system has at least a better illusion of difference between different benders of the same level.

[dman11235]

That would be a good idea, but then why wouldn't they max their bending?  Rhetorical question btw.

SO, how about a feat, basically the same thing as FoI, but for bending checks...first time you take it: +1, second: +2 third: +3, etc.  The 7th time (all feats from a non-human no flaws) you have a +28 above normal benders.  This will allow you do do some pretty insane stuff, but you can't do some of the things other benders are doing (battlefield control for water and earth, for instance).  Firebenders, being the blasters they are, will spend most of their feats on this, so they can do as much damage as possible.  I'm assuming each class (using my outlined method of fixing) has +8 within the class itself (filling otherwise dead levels), so that's 56+wis at level 20 with this, 64+wis for humans.  That's every feat on this, so I don't think it's too bad, there are a good number of feats, even for firebenders, that you'd want to take.

[AlterFrom]

Isn't that what I suggested?  :-\ I must be missing something in your post, or I just wasn't clear enough.

Anyways, I like it being a feat precisely because of what you laid out. Sure you could bump your bending mod to 64+WIS. BUT. What else can you do? You gave up all 7 feats (plus human) to get there, so not much else. Spending half of that (4 feats) gets you +10, but you're still spending 4 feats (a little more than a feat chain's worth). I imagine it's better balanced than FoI since bending mod is a lot less versatile than Inspiration Points.

On a different note, something I really think needs to be done is to just brute-force through all the seeds and make sure their effects are well-defined and easily found. For example, the hardness/HP of ice should be mentioned in each waterbending seed that uses it, and a lot (if not all) of the other ones should define how many inches of water are produced in case a bender decides to combine it with the Freeze seed.

[AstralFire]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4591881&postcount=5
I've got a bit of groundwork done on those, but I'm no balance master... I just run numbers. Frankly, flattered I've been asked to help. Switching up gears to focus on the waterbender first is fine by me, I don't want people to get the impression I'm a pyro or anything.

The idea of a recursively scaling feat to improve bending actually sounds like a good idea for once, unlike its versions in psionics. Considering a lot of the big tactical options open to you from all of the splatbooks, it could be a tough tradeoff. And it'd really help in differentiating the martial benders from the... er... bendy benders.

One of the big things that bothered me when I looked at the project was the bending range, and my major standard change outside of seeds has been capping everything to 60 feet and then adding range-boosting template seeds. Range is pretty big in the setting, 140 feet away at 20th level by default didn't seem accurate. It's kind of late and I'm tired and somewhat nervous, sorry if this post is disorganized. I've wrote up a few lists of things that concern me, I'll try to put them in something like an intelligent order in the morning.