Epic Precision

Ideas and suggestions for game mechanics and rules.
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Xanthea
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Epic Precision

Post by Xanthea »

There tends to be a lot of combat in DM events in ALFA. There also tends to be a lot of sneak attack immune things in ALFA, such as undead.

This makes rogues a bad class a lot of the time, which is a shame, because rogues are cool. In light of this I have a couple of suggestions.

Give level 1 rogues Epic Precision for free.
or
Make Epic Precision a selectable pick for their level 10 bonus special ability choices.

Rogues having the ability to do 50% sneak attack damage to sneak attack immune things would not unbalance the game, but it would let them contribute in combat.
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Re: Epic Precision

Post by SwordSaintMusashi »

I support this, or even making the the Ruin weapon properties available.
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Re: Epic Precision

Post by Zelknolf »

This would be a pretty significant boost to roguely power-- though I wouldn't deny that rogues could use a little boost (or a reworking of sneak attack; they get super powers in that they can flank without threatening space, and thus can make ranged sneak attacks on creatures engaged in melee, but this just exaggerates the glass canon effect in that they can't flank things which target them).

I'd be a little hesitant to argue that it should be free, still. The first half of the above parenthesis still applies-- rogues in a party have super powers on account of NWN2's broken idea of "flanking," and I'm not sure that we actually experience a net gain if all rogues can sneak attack everything, including folk under short-term buffs that protect them from the sort (300 gold for a potion of living undeath; this is a fantastic thing for a fighter to carry right now, but would turn into merely a "meh" thing for a fighter to carry as all of those NPC rogues start sneak attacking anyway). Though I'm not sure that I have a good answer there-- if we make Epic Precision a rogue bonus feat, exactly zero characters are affected (level 10 rogues out there? 'course, maybe that'd change if it meant +9 damage to undead, oozes, and golems). If we put it in a big fighty feat tree we just encourage ftr/rog and leave single-classed rogues out.


Ruin weapons might be easier to manage, which has the advantage of being restricted by type and would also have impact for other character types (fighters and swashbucklers, particularly, come to mind, and they also suffer from the dread disease known as "not a cleric"-- and of course clerics tend to not have weapons with great crits on them, so they wouldn't have much reason to acquire such a thing). We'd continue to have our "golf bag of weapons" setup in 3.5, with just an extra desirable property on each item in the bag. Provided we could find a reasonable price point on them.

Or we could allow ruin to be taken as a feat. No prereqs, just "take this feat and you can crit or sneak attack constructs." Rogues would have a pretty strong incentive to take a couple of those, and they'd get a lot of utility out of it compared to everyone else.

Or we could do ruin as a feat -and- ruin as an allowed item property.

// edit -- also probably an option, but I need to review the class' technical construction: rogue bonus feats at levels 1, 4, and 7, with ruin feats being the only options. Rogue bonus feats as before, plus the other two ruin feats, at 10,13,16,19
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Re: Epic Precision

Post by SwordSaintMusashi »

For what its worth, Ruin from Magic Item Compendium was about 25kish I believe. As a starting point for looking at this.
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kid
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Re: Epic Precision

Post by kid »

Zelk's account is fairly accurate in detailing pros/cons.

Still my outcome would be different.

I won't say free, but a selectable feat is a good idea.

I do think we need a pre-req to make sure its a rogue bonus, and not a bonus for random sneak attackers (who have other abilities as it is) So i'd say give it a pre-req of 3d6 Sneak Attack damage, to avoid opportunists.

As for the Living Undeath becoming useless... I strongly disagree.
It still prevents crits, which is its main goal. (Fight vs giants? living undeath!) In 15 levels I only used it once vs sneakers.
And even vs sneakers, it would still be damn good to have DR of 50%, i'd drink that. (Well 50% of the sneaking).
Granted it will "only" give a significant advantage, and not render the of rival completely incompetent and win the fight with a lv2 spell...

I play a cleric so initially what Zelk said had appeal to me (Naturally) but if I look at it objectively, It should be an option for rogues.

Thumbs up.
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Ithildur
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Re: Epic Precision

Post by Ithildur »

Entirely reasonable to provide some pnp like options to rogues to get to use their primary combat strength more often, but getting it completely for free at lvl 1 seems way too good. Many of the options are also not rogue exclusive in pnp; probably fair to let improved crit/keen kukri/rapier guys have access to a few of them as well then; personally I've heard just as many (if not more) complaints from the latter than rogue players about this.
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kid
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Re: Epic Precision

Post by kid »

Free is too much.
But PnP solutions don't always fit ALFA.

Question is what we aspire for. Being as close to PnP as possible, or a good PW experience with a bit of help to poor rogues.

If it's the first then do ruin or whatever. (even if I don't like much, for a few reasons:
-it depends on DM willing to give you such an item.
-requires a very high level to be able to afford: spending 25k means its 25k not spent elsewhere so it doesnt really give you any boost as far as balance, you simply gave up +4 to ac or +10 to skills, or good magical dagger, or whatever.
-its a very partial solution to a non-problem. I don't think a rogue with epic P would break the game in anyway. It wont murder clerics left and right and so on. Living undeath would still give a huge advantage.

If by chance what we care for is enabling better playing of rogues in our heavy combat PW environment, then adding it as a selectable feat with some reasonable pre-req would achieve that better.

If you still think this is an issue as far as power creep, maybe can split it into two feats (25% each or something like that).
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causk
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Re: Epic Precision

Post by causk »

I think its a great idea. I doubt giving it away for free at level 1 would makee rogues the new clerics. If its added it should be as a rogue class feature, somewhere between lvl 5 and 10 where the rogue does not really get much besides more sneak attack. As one or two feats it would make the feat constraint even worse.
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Re: Epic Precision

Post by Heero »

Im against it since it quite clearly goes against the 1st Pillar of ALFA in that its homebrew -- not found in any rules manual aside from epic level game play which is out of the scope of ALFA.
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Re: Epic Precision

Post by kid »

We homebrew lots of things as it is. Half the spells aren't as PnP.
Full HP isnt like PnP. The XP per kill isn't PnP... and so on and so forth...

Granted this might be a bigger shift than we're used to, but it does not break anything in the game.
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Re: Epic Precision

Post by Heero »

P.N.P.
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Re: Epic Precision

Post by shad0wfax »

Rather than focus on hack and slash single class abilities, I would prefer that DMs showcase events requiring our benefitting from skills typically associated with rogues and skills that only rogues and bards tend to have the skill points to spare to take.

The problem is that much of D&D class balance is based on combat, skills, and magic from a group perspective, not combat only from a single class perspective. Also, DMs can adjust their spawns to include more humanoid targets with class levels, rather than going straight to monstrous critters.

Let's fix the heavy combat DM imbalance rather than make everyone a combat solo powerhouse vs any creature. And let's fix the DM tendency to overuse immune monsters.
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Re: Epic Precision

Post by Zelknolf »

Yeah, after testing this a bit, we should really be targeting the specific problem. We need a sniper; this proposes a nuke.

So,
There also tends to be a lot of sneak attack immune things in ALFA, such as undead.
This can be answered with the ruin feats without telling any other system to turn its head and cough. They're regular feats right now (lines 2129 to 2133) each targeting a specific type of uncrittable creature (undead, construct, elemental, plant, incorporeal). Having only one of these isn't super valuable, so asking the character to spend normal feats on them would probably be too much. We could add them to the rogue bonus feat list, force all of the current ones to be minimum level 10 (so you can't take crippling strike or slippery mind early), and add a couple rogue bonus feats on their duller levels (2 and 6?). On these levels, rogues would have to pick what they're super special good at sneak attacking, and then at level 10+, they'd choose if they wanted a special rogue power or the ability to sneak attack more stuff.



Though shad0wfax posted while I was posting this-- I was about to say "Y'all should see what the HDMs and DMAs think; this is how I would design a system to answer that specific problem."

We've certainly seen rogues feel more useful since we got actual spawning/respawning/dangerous traps in play. Shad0wfax's answer might still be a route to player happiness.
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Re: Epic Precision

Post by Mick »

shad0wfax wrote:Rather than focus on hack and slash single class abilities, I would prefer that DMs showcase events requiring our benefitting from skills typically associated with rogues and skills that only rogues and bards tend to have the skill points to spare to take.

The problem is that much of D&D class balance is based on combat, skills, and magic from a group perspective, not combat only from a single class perspective. Also, DMs can adjust their spawns to include more humanoid targets with class levels, rather than going straight to monstrous critters.

Let's fix the heavy combat DM imbalance rather than make everyone a combat solo powerhouse vs any creature. And let's fix the DM tendency to overuse immune monsters.
This captures my sentiment rather well. Unfortunately, featuring what rogues and bards are good at does take up more of a DM's time. This can become less of an imposition if there are more DMs about, which lately there have been. :)
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kid
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Re: Epic Precision

Post by kid »

That would be grand, but not something you can count on.

I don't quite understand why we're such sticklers for PnP stuff with some things, and then throw the book out the window with others.
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