His advice is heavy on the min maxing!

[Dictum Mortuum]

My favorite characters where bard with the blade kit (most awesome character ever, within 30 minutes you wear all adventurer's mart and know most of deidre's spells - even solo) and berserker/cleric, which basically gets immunity to nearly everything

[ninjarabbit]

Or how about a swashbuckler/wizard duel-class in BG2, that's basically a tri-class character.

[Littha]

My favorite characters where bard with the blade kit (most awesome character ever, within 30 minutes you wear all adventurer's mart and know most of deidre's spells - even solo) and berserker/cleric, which basically gets immunity to nearly everything

I am rather partial to Fighter/Mage/Thief myself

[Sunic_Flames]

Hey, they're right.  Monks do boast colorful and unique abilities.  Just, you know, not so many actually potent abilities. 

Still, stuff like this is a good reminder that the way the game is supposed to be played (as the designers intended it) is much lower powered than the game as it's made.  Tier 5 is actually what you're supposed to play... healbot Clerics and blaster Wizards supporting TWF Fighters and, well, Monks, with the Druid wielding a Scimitar in normal form in the background.  Monks and Fighters weren't the mistakes... Clerics, Druids, and Wizards were. 

JaronK

Except that they forgot to mention that the DM has to blatantly cheat to avoid killing the party this way. Which is what happened to the playtesters. I mean come on. If you fail a Beholder save, on a non 1 it's time to delete and reroll in real life.

[JaronK]

Remember that in the original game you were SUPPOSED to die a lot, whip up backup characters, and run right back in there.  But the playtesters didn't want to deal with the hassle of making new characters, so they just cheated a little to keep the flow going. 

But this is a good example of why you never do that.  If you have to cheat to keep things rolling, stop and figure out why you had to do that, and fix it.

JaronK

[The_Mad_Linguist]

One of the expectations was that your character had a good chance of dying over the course of their career.  As a part of the design goals, they actually balanced quite well for that.


Besides, making a new character is as simple as adding another roman numeral to your sheet.

[Sunic_Flames]

Remember that in the original game you were SUPPOSED to die a lot, whip up backup characters, and run right back in there.  But the playtesters didn't want to deal with the hassle of making new characters, so they just cheated a little to keep the flow going. 

But this is a good example of why you never do that.  If you have to cheat to keep things rolling, stop and figure out why you had to do that, and fix it.

JaronK

LOL LONG CHARACTER GENERATION.

Maybe you're thinking of earlier editions? Because that's not true in 3.x. In 3.x they were incredibly short sighted, and missed out on Iterative Probability entirely. It wasn't intentional.

[JaronK]

Well yes, I am thinking of earlier editions, because the people who playtested 3.5 WERE people who'd been playing since the very beginning, and had all the old biases from the earlier games (which included randomly dying to monsters, having to be REALLY NICE to your animal companion, not being in Wild Shape most of the time, etc).  Dying a lot was just part of the old equation. 

So yes, a lot of the playtest assumptions were treating 3.5 as though it were 3.0, or AD&D, or who knows what.  And a lot of what happened as a result was because of those assumptions.  People who came into the game at 3.5 didn't have those assumptions, so they stopped doing things like avoiding Wild Shape and not using your Animal Companion and expecting to die regularly.

JaronK

[Dictum Mortuum]

My favorite characters where bard with the blade kit (most awesome character ever, within 30 minutes you wear all adventurer's mart and know most of deidre's spells - even solo) and berserker/cleric, which basically gets immunity to nearly everything

I am rather partial to Fighter/Mage/Thief myself

I was, too, but i then learned that in expansion caster level matters.

[lans]

Maybe you're thinking of earlier editions? Because that's not true in 3.x. In 3.x they were incredibly short sighted, and missed out on Iterative Probability entirely. It wasn't intentional.

I think there was a lot of high level clerics playing the wish economy, and doing things for the LOLZ. Which lead to  very easy access to True Resurrection.

[Runestar]

Hey, they're right.  Monks do boast colorful and unique abilities.  Just, you know, not so many actually potent abilities. 

JaronK

Except that they forgot to mention that the DM has to blatantly cheat to avoid killing the party this way. Which is what happened to the playtesters. I mean come on. If you fail a Beholder save, on a non 1 it's time to delete and reroll in real life.

How is that different from monsters like the bodak, medusa or heck, t-rex (swallow whole)? Their version of "uses up 25% of the party's resources" seems to involve killing at least 1 PC with their gaze attack before the rest focus-fire and KO it in the next round.

[Sunic_Flames]

Hey, they're right.  Monks do boast colorful and unique abilities.  Just, you know, not so many actually potent abilities. 

JaronK

Except that they forgot to mention that the DM has to blatantly cheat to avoid killing the party this way. Which is what happened to the playtesters. I mean come on. If you fail a Beholder save, on a non 1 it's time to delete and reroll in real life.

How is that different from monsters like the bodak, medusa or heck, t-rex (swallow whole)? Their version of "uses up 25% of the party's resources" seems to involve killing at least 1 PC with their gaze attack before the rest focus-fire and KO it in the next round.

All of those except the T-Rex have low DCs, so competent characters are fine. The T-Rex is trivialized in other ways, because it has low Int. No, I do not necessarily mean Ray of Stupidity.

[Dictum Mortuum]

silent image? 

[Gods_Trick]

silent image? 

Best hypothesis circa 2005 was T-Rex had bad eyesight, but eh, its D&D. Paleontology buffs feel free to chime in if theres something more recent.

[Solo]

Good eyesight + low Int equals being fooled by illusions.

[Mixster]

silent image? 

Best hypothesis circa 2005 was T-Rex had bad eyesight, but eh, its D&D. Paleontology buffs feel free to chime in if theres something more recent.

Bulls have bad eyesight and are fooled by moving pieces of cloth.

I you could just make the silent image flashy enough to fool the T-rex.

[Gods_Trick]

silent image? 

Best hypothesis circa 2005 was T-Rex had bad eyesight, but eh, its D&D. Paleontology buffs feel free to chime in if theres something more recent.

Bulls have bad eyesight and are fooled by moving pieces of cloth.

I you could just make the silent image flashy enough to fool the T-rex.

Just have some hazy (maybe garish? do dinasaurs have colour vision?  ) movement that look vaguely medium sized and it should be T-Rex prepped.

Random question, are there any animals in the MMs that actually hunt based off Scent? Any rules for them? Because if there isn't, Silent Image's horizons just expanded in my campaign.

[Runestar]

Or heck, remorhaz instead of T-rex. It would ambush the party by springing out of the snow, swallowing a PC and then burrowing away, so no chance of distracting it with summons or illusions. Plus at that lv, you can't yet afford to reliably buff the whole party with freedom of movement.

Plus, the t-res has scent. How are you fooling it with illusions? I am not saying it is overpowered. Just that it is no fun for that one PC who got eaten up. My experience with it was "T-rex charges in 1st round, gobbles up a player (with a grapple mod of +30, you really have no chance of winning), the rest spam damage in subsequent rounds in a bid to gut it before the hapless fighter gets digested. And as luck would have it, the fighter had no light weapon."

Granted, facing monsters with gaze attacks, I just remembered you could simply close your eyes and suck up a 50% miss chance, since their damage output is pretty much negligible.   

[Solo]

Plus, the t-res has scent. How are you fooling it with illusions? [/quote[
What is the smell of a rock wall?

[X-Codes]

Plus, the t-res has scent. How are you fooling it with illusions?

What is the smell of a rock wall?

It'd still smell him through the illusory rock wall, and might poke it with his nose to check what's going on, so it'd still be entitled to a will save at least.