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Post by SaintYin on May 19, 2015 0:08:49 GMT -7
Since there are players getting templates now and there is an official link, I've decided to open a thread designed for player feedback, since they make up a majority of the playerbase for DG. Here is the link for templates so far. I'm going to use this post as a primary link to suggestions and reviews to be made to further balance templates. Since they all have the same cost, each should be equally enticing. General:-Give more templates methods of returning to life after death. -Nerf Undead/Plant creature type. Death Knight:-Buff resurrection process to vampire-grade. Greenbound:- Half-Celestial:- Half-Fiend:- Half-Dragon: -Make Bite primary. Lich:-Dark Magic nerfed into Profane-typed. -Dark Magic's no-action reroll removed or replaced by Immediate action. Additionally, must choose to reroll before knowing the results of the original roll. -Nerf Draining Touch from being amazing all the time to being a situationally useful attack, or a useful healing mechanic. -Nerf resurrection process/infallibility to Vampire-grade. Shadow-Touched:- Vampire:-Allow for different vampire variants (Penanggalen, Vetala, Jiang-Shi, Nosferatu, and normal) Werebear:- Werewolf:- Worm that Walks:-Bring defensive capabilities down to more reasonable levels. -Remove Mind-Affecting immunity (It's not necessary with will rerolls and is negative with morale bonuses) -Increase utility or offensive capabilities. Possible Utility effects: -Can place a singular worm to detect in a radius as Alarm.
-Can charge a worm with a melee-range spell, then toss it as a ranged touch attack
-If concentrating, can directly control, manipulate, and speak from a singular worm as long as it is on the same plane as the WtW.
-Can hear conversations from any worm.Suggested methods to improve balancing:-2-tier balancing: Templates that are too powerful for level 12 are partially locked until 18th level. Templates that are too weak gain additional benefits at 18th level. Research sessions and gold must be sunk to unlock the second tier. -Everyone gets to live: All templates get a method of coming back from the dead at the cost of downtime days. -The Template Store: The gp cost of templates scale to the benefits granted by the template. Original Post:
Overall, I'm not too impressed with them. Since they all cost the same, they should be all around the same power level. Let's compare a martial template to some caster-only templates:
Worm that Walks (Caster level required):
DR 10/-
Blindsight
+2 insight AC (negates base natural armor, but virtually no PC is going to notice this)
Fast healing equal to hit dice (or 20 at 20)
Gains Slam (loses base creature natural attacks, but again no PC is really going to notice this). Slam has Grab ability.
Immunities: Critical hits, Flanking, Disease, Paralysis, Mind-affecting
Can reroll failed Will saves until a success is made.
No maximum age
Ignore resurrection costs
Lich:
+1 caster level (permanently, untyped).
Can reroll caster level checks that fail as a non-action with a +2 bonus.
Draining Touch attack that scales off caster level instead of hit dice, can be applied to spells (such as spectral hand), and is unlimited usage. Can also be used to self-heal.
Standard action Dazzling Display (with doubled range)
Immunities: con damage/drain/penalties (but not con bonuses!), 1 element
No maximum age
Ignore resurrection costs
Half-Dragon:
DR 10/magic (+1 weapon negates)
Blindsense
4 natural armor
Secondary Bite attack and 2 claws
Breath attack on a 2-8 turn cooldown, as Dragon's Breath at 1d6 per 2 caster levels.
1/day interesting secondary effect on breath attack (cannot be changed)
Immunities: Sleep, stun, one element
Now, which of these would be better for a martial class? If you answered the third one, you'd be wrong.
My recommendation on templates:
Either nerf caster-only templates down, or bring martial templates up. It's cool that you're trying to stick to the original template, but when all templates cost the same you're going to need to sacrifice some aspects of some templates so it remains balanced with other templates. Make a council or at least pass changes between more than one person when finalizing a template, because this current iteration is a mockery of balance.
Since it's one person playing a caster that's making all the decisions, I wouldn't be too shocked if this thread gets ignored and martial templates remain utterly inferior. Might as well try, though.
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Zanos
Leadership Council
No
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Posts: 684 
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Post by Zanos on May 19, 2015 3:32:00 GMT -7
1. The templates, like everything, have to be agreed on by a majority of the council. And they were looked at by everyone on the leadership council. I didn't just shit these onto the wiki without conferring with the others.
2. There was likewise a lot of discussion in the GM subforum that resulted in a pretty large number of changes to the templates, so I'm actually pretty offended at the insinuation that I was the only one who had any input. There wasn't a lot of feedback on half-dragon because I don't think people wanted to read all the variant breath weapons.
3. I'm getting extremely sick of the constant personal attacks from you. I have no problems with criticism, but you don't have to be so insufferable.
Breath weapon damage is d6 per hd. Not sure where you're getting 1d6 per two caster levels. CD was supposed to be 1d4 rounds like a regular dragon, but I guess I typo'd that.
I did want to change the dragon dr, but couldn't think of anything that would make sense for them.
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tkul
Death Knight
Banned
Posts: 406
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Post by tkul on May 19, 2015 9:20:53 GMT -7
So the base caster templates came out pretty far overtuned, like flat out silly abilities in some cases but Lich has been toned down fairly reasonably (I'd like to see it have a longer respawn time since it's a 100% safe respawn short of the GM saying "No you're dead dead now, go away").
I do think the Worm that Walks template is still too strong. Unbeatable 10 DR and a crazy amount of fast healing for very little expenditure (XP and GP in dragons gate are effectively infinite) would be pretty awesome without the respawn mechanic or other immunities. I would like to see the caster level requirement come off of that template since it's actually a great template for martials that don't mind being a pile of bugs.
The other martial templates are kind of lack luster though like Yin was saying. The Death Knight is the strongest of them but it requires you to be undead which is abhorrent to most people, and the respawn mechanic is a little iffy if your allies don't manage to get your armor to safety. Half-Dragon is actually pretty ok, secondary bite damage sucks, and is a bit weird, but when you're natural attacking that's not a huge loss. It is weird that it got stuck with DR Magic since the Zanos was very against setting that on other templates that had that as a base DR type.
Other than that the Lycanthropes are cool, kinda sucks that they're the only templates that have to use an action to get their defensive abilities and get less other abilities to use and less passive stats to boot. Greenbound is really only weak if you're a full druid, and only then because it duplicates some druid abilities. Vampire oddly gets less stats than the other templates but it doesn't reference essence yet so probably isn't updated. Shadow Touched gets less stats, and a weaker DR than the other templates but some interesting abilities but is actually closer to what I think the templates should be.
Full disclosure, when I did feedback on the templates I recommended all of them get cut back to only 2 passive stats, slashed elemental resistances down into to 10's in most cases, and cut out critical immunity for 50% fortification, and generally recommended for lower DRs or easier to bypass DRs. I also recommended changing WtW and Lich's respawn mechanic to something that was easier to stop and less SQ "lol I never die now".
Side Note - The wiki is now referencing the Essence mechanic that popped up in the GM thread but doesn't actually list what Essence is.
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Zanos
Leadership Council
No
how did i get here i am not good with computer
Posts: 684
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Post by Zanos on May 19, 2015 9:24:42 GMT -7
Essence is explained in the Unnatural Resilience(Ex) ability that all the undead templates have. It's just a virtual constitution score. And Half-Dragon dr/magic is still just because I can't think of something that makes sense. I dunno, maybe adamantine?
I could see removing the CL requirement from WtW and probably changing the fast healing to 1/2 hd. I did nerf the WtW respawn mechanic awhile ago, but people might not have seen it. It creates 6 centipede swarms with half your HD and your con/dex scores now. Also if it needed to said, "respawn abilities" do lock you out of downtime activities, so there is some loss.
Lycan shifting changed to swifts from moves.
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Geckilian
Leadership Council
Empires Mierely require time.
Posts: 1,026
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Post by Geckilian on May 19, 2015 10:06:43 GMT -7
Lich: Immunities: con damage/drain/penalties (but not con bonuses!), 1 element You missed immunity to soul-targeting magic plus the usual immunities from the undead typing, so mind-affecting, death effects, nonlethal damage, disease, paralysis, poison, sleep effects, ability drain, damage to physical stats (like strength and dex too), exhaustion and fatigue effects plus non-object fort saves. They also, as undead, get free weapon/armour proficiency, though that helps the Death Knight more. As such Liches are actually immune to a hell of a lot more than Worms that Walk. As for WtW abilities, I don't think they need the slam or distributed mind really - sure the attack and reroll is nice, but it's honestly not that much needed considering they wouldn't care about a lot of stuff that requires a will save anyway. Concerning the high fast healing, the template is pretty much designed to be purely defensive and offers pretty much nothing in the way of offence so I really don't see a problem with it. You become harder to kill, which is very nice, but unlike Lich you don't casts spells better or demoralize for crowd control, you don't buff your companions or summons like Greenbound, you don't get funky draining blast abilities like Death Knight. No breath weapons like the half dragon, no spell resistance or smite like the half-outsiders, no host of abilities like the vampire, no uncanny dodge and cmd-reducing like the werewolf. Basically nothing to boost what you actually do as a character, except stay alive (which arguably helps a fair bit as you can keep doing your own stuff). If the fast healing is reduced then sure, I can understand why people would want that, but it'd be nice to be thrown a nice thematic ability to do that isn't 'you get a slam attack'. |
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tkul
Death Knight
Banned
Posts: 406
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Post by tkul on May 19, 2015 10:19:08 GMT -7
I was actually looking at the swarm type, and think it would actually be pretty nice to take the DR off of WtW entirely, count them as a swarm comprised of tiny creatures so they take 1/2 weapon damage and 150% AOE damage and keep the destroyed (or discorporated in the case of the WtW) at 0 HP rather than entering the dying state. The Fast Healing would be as egregious if it was actually possible to put damage onto them, but pairing DR 10/- with Fast Healing 12-20 is just too much. The fact that none of the template's abilities eat your other actions is actually a plus for it since class abilities are generally the most efficient thing you can do anyway, and since it's currently a caster template why would you ever want to use the slam except for maybe attacks of opportunity.
The argument that X was taken from the base template so they need to be given Y is facetious though. Disk mentioned it before, the base templates are not meant to be used by players. They need to be based around what's in them not what was taken out of the NPC template.
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Geckilian
Leadership Council
Empires Mierely require time.
Posts: 1,026
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Post by Geckilian on May 19, 2015 10:23:21 GMT -7
The argument that X was taken from the base template so they need to be given Y is facetious though. Disk mentioned it before, the base templates are not meant to be used by players. They need to be based around what's in them not what was taken out of the NPC template. My last point was if the main focus of the template is reduced then it'd be nice to have something fun to do with said template features rather than having them all be static. I fail to see how that's facetious - I've neither used humour nor treated the issue flippantly. |
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Zanos
Leadership Council
No
how did i get here i am not good with computer
Posts: 684
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Post by Zanos on May 19, 2015 10:32:14 GMT -7
Lich: Immunities: con damage/drain/penalties (but not con bonuses!), 1 element They also, as undead, get free weapon/armour proficiency, though that helps the Death Knight more. Pretty sure those form of proficiencies only apply to creatures who's proficiencies aren't defined by their class levels. Apparently there was also a misconception that the reroll abilities can "be used until you succeed", which isn't the case. The intent was to have those limited to once per check. I have updated the text of the abilities to clarify this. |
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Post by SaintYin on May 19, 2015 10:53:26 GMT -7
I'd figured Zanos meant for those immunities to be removed, but it is entirely possible that he is trying to hide undead immunities behind typing, since there's nothing explicitly stating they are not granted.
Instead of working on pulling down the Lich/WtW template, I've decided to begin working toward boosting each of the other templates to comparable levels. The first aspect I'd recommend looking into is immunity to dying. I believe if each template had a response to dying, then it'd be a bit easier to balance.
Death Knight:
-I'd recommend changing the revive mechanics from the armor only to either the armor or its birthplace, as selected by the PC at time of death. Its birthplace is the location where its armor was imbued with powers. The counterbalance to this could be something like "cannot respawn at birthplace if it is under the effects of consecrate."
Greenbound:
-For their method of returning, I'd recommend a planted seed that grows into a new Greenbound after the original dies, or an effect similar to the Reincarnated Druid.
Half-Celestial/Half-Fiend:
-Due to the generally harsher nature of Outsiders and returning from the dead, my only recommendation is that they reform on their plane.
The ones I can't think of an apt response for would be Half-dragon, Werebear/Werewolf, and Shadow-Touched. WtW/Lich/Vampire already have an anti-death measure, though Vampire gets the short end of the stick in that group.
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Post by SaintYin on May 19, 2015 11:41:59 GMT -7
I've figured out a possible response in making templates more balanced between each other: make them in two parts. For example, another 10 research sessions at 18th level. The first tier (12th level) gives some of the absurd amount of power undead templates can give, the 18th level gives the rest. By that level, all those immunities won't matter as much, so I feel it's pretty fair.
For example:
Death Knight/Lich/Vampire:
Tier 1:
-Does not gain any undead immunities.
Tier 2:
-Gains undead immunities.
-Maybe more flavor for each (Vampires can select from one of the subtypes, liches get to select one of some small set of boosts, Death Knights get a less garbage melee attack boost).
Half-Fiend/Half-Celestial:
Tier 1:
-As it is now.
Tier 2:
-Become a full-blooded variant of a creature native to one's plane. This removes all base natural attacks, granting natural attacks as the selected creature. The selected creature must have fewer hit dice than one's character level and it must be Large or smaller.
Half-dragon:
Tier 1:
-As it is now.
Tier 2:
-Become a full-blooded dragon, with all the penalties and most of the benefits as assumed.
Worm that Walks:
Tier 1:
-Less defensive abilities (half HD to fast heal, typed DR)
-More utility abilities (Where's that grab effect?)
Tier 2:
-Fully gain defensive abilities (full HD to fast heal, untyped DR)
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diskelemental
Lich
Banned
A better world, whether you want it or not.
Posts: 781
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Post by diskelemental on May 19, 2015 11:46:55 GMT -7
For convenience, I'll copy-paste my thoughts on resurrection mechanics, undead bonus and my current proposal for a martial template, from the GM forums. Half-Celestial - Sent Back(Ex): When a Half-Celestial dies their body and equipment disappear in a blinding flash of light, treat as a Heal, effecting all allies within 30 feet of the half-celestial, with a caster level to the half-celestial's HD/2. If the half-celestial is in good standing with their patron or have not significantly violated their ethos; after three downtime days, they appear in a flash of light in the center of their home city, with their body and equipment fully restored. The hald-celestial may activate this ability as a standard action to have the Heal take effect at a CL equal to their hit dice. Half-Fiend - Fall in Flame(Ex): When a Half-Fiend dies, their body and equipment are consumed in a pillar of unholy fire, treat as a Flame Strike centered upon the half-fiend, caster level equal to the half-fiend's HD, DC equal to 15 + Cha mod. If the half-fiend is in good standing with their patron, or have not significantly violated their ethos; after three downtime days, they emerge from a crack in the ground on the edge of their home city, with their body and equipment fully restored. The half-fiend may activate this ability as a standard action to maximize the damage dealt, and increase the DC by 2. Shadow Touched - Shadow Gate(Ex): A Shadow-Touched may spend ten downtime days transcribing a Shadow Gate. This elaborate pattern must be transcribed on a solid object in an area of dim light or lower, and cannot be moved once transcribed. This gate represents the Shadow Touched's connection to the plane of shadow, and allows them to freely travel back and forth to the plane of shadow. A Shadow Gate can be destroyed by disrupting the carvings or exposing it to sunlight or a daylight spell. Shadow Touched - One With Shadow(Ex): When a Shadow-Touched dies, if they are not in an area of bright light, their body and equipment dissipate into shadowy mist. Two downtime days later, they emerge from their Shadow Gate, with their body and equipment fully restored. If the Shadow-Touched dies without a Shadow Gate, their soul is consumed by the shadow plane, requiring a wish, miracle, or true resurrection spell to return to life. Type Changes: Undead: 1. Gains a +4 bonus on all saves vs. Mind-Affecting, Paralysis, Stun, Exhaustion, and Fatigue effects. 2. Gains immunity to Bleed, Disease, Poison, Death Effects, Sleep, and Energy Drain 3. Whenever they would take ability damage or drain, they take 1 less point of damage. 4. +2 Bonus on Fort vs. effects which don't affect objects. 5. Gains Darkvision 60 feet Plant: 1. Gains +4 on saves vs. Mind-Affecting, Paralysis, Stunning 2. Immune to Poison, Polymorph. and Sleep 3. Gains Low Light vision Purpose of these changes was to bring the undead and plant templates more inline with the power granted by the other templates. As-is, Undead (and, to a much less extent, plant) both provide a bunch of defensive benefits which none of the other templates even come close to offering. As written, Undead provides immunity to Fort saves and immunity to mind-affecting, which are defensive abilities that no template, other than the un-nerfed WtW, even comes close to providing.
That being said, there should be some hefty benefits for choosing to become undead or a plant. Thus, my suggested changes. I think they retain a most of the immunities, and provide decent bonuses against the effects the creature lost immunity to.Proposed martial focused template: Ascendant |
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Ash
Approvals
This world is only big enough for one loli.
Posts: 277
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Post by Ash on May 19, 2015 13:17:13 GMT -7
I'd figured Zanos meant for those immunities to be removed, but it is entirely possible that he is trying to hide undead immunities behind typing, since there's nothing explicitly stating they are not granted. Are you going to have to sit in time out, Yin? The amount of vitriol you're spewing is getting a bit ridiculous. I'm not sure why this thread was even made when it's just the exact same conversation as the previous thread. No where did anybody imply undead immunities were being changed, disk simply suggested it. That said, again, with anything else having undead immunities, I stand by what I said in that thread. Yes, they have a lot of defenses, but every template that goes undead gets everything under the lich defensive abilities. WTW gets 2 ac, dr10/-, immunity to critical hits, flanking, and fast healing. This is at the cost of being immune to non object targeting fort saves, ability drain, nonlethal damage, energy drain, physical ability damage, stunning, sleep effects, and death effects.
Other than defenses, their features are blind sight and a slam attack, that's about it.
As I said, I'm perfectly fine with a rework of the WTW because I think the flavor is cool, but really any buffs they got during the earlier template review was basically throwing them a bone. If WTW is changed I don't think it should be a straight buff or nerf either way. |
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diskelemental
Lich
Banned
A better world, whether you want it or not.
Posts: 781
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Post by diskelemental on May 19, 2015 13:45:19 GMT -7
I'm not sure why this thread was even made when it's just the exact same conversation as the previous thread. No where did anybody imply undead immunities were being changed, disk simply suggested it. That said, again, with anything else having undead immunities, I stand by what I said in that thread. This thread exists because the other one took place entirely in the GM section. I'm posting here because, despite having support from multiple GMs and Leads, there's been no action taken to correct the most blatant imbalances in the templates. Hopefully community support will change that. |
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Post by SaintYin on May 19, 2015 14:24:40 GMT -7
I've updated the initial post to better track discussion of fixes/improvements to current templates. If anyone has anything to say on a specific template, feel free to post it, and I'll add it into the main post. AshI will admit, I may have been a bit abrasive in that statement. At the time of posting, I firmly believed that templates were meant to be balanced with all other templates. Having looked fairly deep into template balancing, I'd already come to the conclusion that no one would implement plant, undead, or construct as written for PCs, because the number of immunities granted results in extremely high values when put into a numeric system. On my sheets, undead were around 90 points before tacking on anything else, in a system where 32 was considered fairly priced at 50,000 gold. I apologize to Zanos if he found that statement as overly harsh. |
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Ash
Approvals
This world is only big enough for one loli.
Posts: 277
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Post by Ash on May 19, 2015 14:43:58 GMT -7
At the time of posting, I firmly believed that templates were meant to be balanced with all other templates. Having looked fairly deep into template balancing, I'd already come to the conclusion that no one would implement plant, undead, or construct as written for PCs, because the number of immunities granted results in extremely high values when put into a numeric system. On my sheets, undead were around 90 points before tacking on anything else, in a system where 32 was considered fairly priced at 50,000 gold. I believe part of the issue was the templates were originally being designed with the intention of being worth 150k of magic items. As they are now, pretty much all of the templates are underpriced. I do think the half dragon could use a boost, however. Like the half-fiends/celestials they seem like a decent all around class, however right now I think the half-fiends/celestials are just better since the half dragons lack all of the spell-likes. Half-Dragons get +2 ac over the others, but no SR, and an easier to bypass DR, and they also don't get to choose all three of their ability upgrades. All that said, if the breath weapon is supposed to be 1d6/HD and at a cooldown of 1d4 (Currently it's 1d6/2HD every 2d4 on the wiki) then that's significantly stronger, maybe just give them a small boost to defenses, if that. |
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Geckilian
Leadership Council
Empires Mierely require time.
Posts: 1,026
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Post by Geckilian on May 19, 2015 15:19:30 GMT -7
Yes, they have a lot of defenses, but every template that goes undead gets everything under the lich defensive abilities. WTW gets 2 ac, dr10/-, immunity to critical hits, flanking, and fast healing. This is at the cost of being immune to non object targeting fort saves, ability drain, nonlethal damage, energy drain, physical ability damage, stunning, sleep effects, and death effects.
Other than defenses, their features are blind sight and a slam attack, that's about it.
As I said, I'm perfectly fine with a rework of the WTW because I think the flavor is cool, but really any buffs they got during the earlier template review was basically throwing them a bone. If WTW is changed I don't think it should be a straight buff or nerf either way. This was something I'd agreed with in another thread concerning the differences between WtW being the 'defensive' counterpart to the lich template. |
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xemadus
Leadership Council
Sure
5000
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Post by xemadus on May 19, 2015 20:15:53 GMT -7
Just looking through things again since it's here, but why did worm that walks gain immunity to mind effecting? The original template didn't have it and I really don't see the point of it having been changed.
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Geckilian
Leadership Council
Empires Mierely require time.
Posts: 1,026
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Post by Geckilian on May 19, 2015 21:34:17 GMT -7
I certainly wouldn't argue with WtW losing immunity to mind affecting - as a cleric of glory it makes me immune to my main buff aura.
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Post by novasry on Jun 2, 2015 3:41:16 GMT -7
I mentioned this in chat the other day, but I would like to echo that the Half-Dragon bite attack should certainly be a primary attack and possibly add 1.5xStr to damage, thats a pretty standard thing that nearly all dragons have.
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Post by leary93 on Jun 2, 2015 7:04:56 GMT -7
I mentioned this in chat the other day, but I would like to echo that the Half-Dragon bite attack should certainly be a primary attack and possibly add 1.5xStr to damage, thats a pretty standard thing that nearly all dragons have. I agree |
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