Proposed Rules Changes - Public Comment (February 2015)

I also want to point out that due to how DG is organized, it makes the disparity between martial and casters even worse due to the fact most of the sessions we run are 15 minute adventure days. Partial/Casters never really run out of spells which eliminates one of the biggest advantage martial characters over casters. I am unsure how this can be solved.

Theres a difference between limiting character options and dipping 1 level for +2 damage to each dice for every spell until the end of time.

I could bitch and complain about the Natural Attack changes, but I won't. I hadn't realised that any considered it to be overpowered, but I can respect peoples opinions on that.

I wanted to ask about how the animal companion size changes will affect mounts. As listed, all of the small size characters with mounts will end up with large companions at level 7, meaning they won't be able to dismount as a free action with Ride. It also seems odd that the small characters have two more options of large creatures to take, while medium PCs are still stuck with just Horse and Camel.

I can't help but think maybe the crafting changes are going in the wrong direction. The problem seems to be that they are making too much money, so why should the non-crafting players have to pay them MORE? I'm still going to be buying a cloak of resistance, for example, so some crafter is definitely going to be getting 900GP under the new rules, as opposed to 750GP under the old rules. Just something to think about.

This is actually a really good point to touch on. Should a crafter be making the full 75% on the sale? If I give a crafter 750 GP to make me a cloak of resistance, surely they should still have to PAY 500 GP to buy the materials? Perhaps the rules should be that the crafting characters only get the difference in cost between what they make it for and what they sell it for.

Edit - Just to expand with an example

Ashmock wants to buy a Belt of Strength +2, which would cost 4000 GP base. He approaches a crafter, who can sell said Belt for 3000 GP. They come to a deal and Ashmock pays the 3000 GP. The crafter now needs to buy materials, costing 50% of the base cost (2000 GP). Ashmock has spent 3000 GP and the crafter has made 1000 GP in profit. I think this deals with the WBL issue quite well, the issue we have is that player gold is going to other players instead of back into Rook, so that there's crazy inflation happening in the player base.

Ah, I didn't realise that was already the case. With that in mind then, I honestly don't see why non-crafters would have pay more. Why not go for a 65%/75% split, reduce the profit margins but keep the cost to non-crafters the same.

Thats an interesting idea shroud, I do agree that animate dead needs a nerf.

The combat minion nerf also applys to summons if that wasn't clear. I am honestly in favor of something like: Your permanent minions cannot exceed 1.5x your hit dice on top of a cap to prevent mass summoning. That way you dont have someone running around with 2 giants at level 6 and having 20 hit dice of creatures.

Edit: I just realized that means level 1s couldnt bring there pets lol, maybe just have that apply to animate dead? its really the only crazy one I can think of.

i gave a quick glance over at art of war.

most of the maneuvers and stuff seem fine. some of the actual class features of the classes seem a bit op. The reason for that is repeatability of manuvers. So, i dont think that standard action do X, 1 /encounter is OP (the actual maneuver). But free recovering of a ton of manuvers +extra damage+lose nothing action economy wise? that's a too much imo.

my main beef though, is with the feats of the book. i mean, every feat not specific for maneuvers should be instabanned imo:

there are things there like:
dex to damage with no prerequisits, usable with ALL light and finessable weapons
ignore hard terrain and walk on water without activation, without prereq and always on, just need a ki pool
if you have maneuvers, you have a weapon specialization on steroids, usable with ALL weapons in 3 different weapon groups, that also add other bonuses as well. keep in mind, that weapon specialization is like the trademark of fighters
and etc

edit:
so, there is already paizo stuff that DO all the above things. I believe that we should stick to it.
mainly:
slashing grace/fencing grace/agile: dex to damage
dragon style/nimble moves: ignore hard terrain
weapon specialization: weapon specialization ^^
and etc

We'll, compared to regular martial feats and classes they do seem op. But compared to the toys casters get?

I do have a problem with traditional martials being overshadow'd by PoW classes but they already get destroyed by partial casters so maybe its just a case of the PoW classes actually being able to compete with partial casters as full BAB classes. 

It might be as simple as limiting those feats to full bab classes. I do agree that letting the partial casters get more tools intended for pure martials is dumb.

To ease your worries a bit shroud, all the 3rd party stuff (if we even decide to bring it in..) is weeks if not months away, so seeing as alot of people want PoW and we do decide to go ahead, I think having another discussion for just PoW (or other 3rd party) and finding broken/possibly abusive stuff would be a great thing to do.

I can kind of agree on Shroudb's opinion in 3rd party.

Generally I believe we are just treating DG as 2 different type of games. People like Shroud are probably more into the RP and story aspect than the actual gameplay which I tend to agree. I am not playing PnP type of games because of how great the combat is, I am playing it because of the cooperative story telling experience. If I want to play a game for combat then I would play The Witcher or some other RPG. As much as I love PoW, adding them doesn't enhance the story telling aspect. It essentially just adds to gameplay and a whole new system for the DMs to learn. 

Thematically the Pazio books has more than enough classes and archetype to fill everybody's fantasies. Gameplay wise? Eh.

I would be all for it if this was allowed right from the start but to add it in now feels awkward. Maybe if it is allowed, let the DMs have control of it first. Build enemies based on PoW and play out a few encounters. Once they are fine with it, then it can be slowly integrated in assuming the notion to add 3rd party material passes.

If the PoW stuff goes live you'll almost have to retire the Fighter class. In a world where those types of characters exist, fighters basically become what Warriors are to Fighters now. I know when I ran my home game we swapped in swordsage for monk, warblade for fighter, and crusader for paladin. The average power level of the party jumped, which was nice, and let the martials actually participate in more of the fights. Now I haven't played with the Path of War classes and my first read through actually makes them look quite a bit weaker than the Tome of Battle manuevers that basically had our swordsage swinging handfuls of D6's and teleporting all over the place, but they give a lot more room for the martials to shine.


On the topic of the crafting stuff, there really is no way to leave crafting in and stop the wealth disparity from happening. Unless crafting is made into a 0 margin system there's no way you're ever going to balance the wealth around it. Crafting in D&D/Pathfinder is fine in the paradigm of a small designed team that's sharing wealth with the character that took the crafting feat, a party like this distributes their wealth in a manner that keeps it even for everyone, your wizard doesn't end up with a pile of gold because the rogue got a new belt, the fighter ends up with a matching belt. Everyone profits. In DG it's a bunch of individuals who are managing their personal wealth which breaks the balance. You can up the wealth gaining mechanisms outside of crafting but all you're doing then is causing inflation, if everyone ends up breaking the WBL curve then things are going to spiral out of control fast. Even that wouldn't be insurmountable with a set party because the GM would be able to know what every player at the table has on them and their range of capabilities so they can be accounted for and encounters can be adjusted. In DG you never know what is going to sit down at the table and there's no way to know what the people even have on them and then you're playing encounter roulette. Either the party steam rolls the encounters, or the encounters crush the party and that's not good either.

I honestly don't know what you can do to fix the wealth issues that crafting brings, but I do think it should go for permanent items. It's not going to fix the damage that's already done on the wealth front but everyone is currently low enough level that the curve should start to self correct a little at least.

Yeah new toy syndrome is a distinct possiblity. I want to ease GM's minds that when and even if third party is introduced, it will come with heavy limitations at first. On top of this any third party will have to have extremely high community warrant its inclusion.

Were not trying to overload an admittedly bloated system, it just seems some of the really good third party is wanted by alot of people and may lessen some of the martial/caster gap.