Alara wrote:You keep coming back to CvC, when the argument presented earlier was based on on the average taken over all levels and situations. How frequent do you think it is in ALFA? How frequent do you know it is? Clearly not the regular modus operandi, can we agree on that?
AlmightyTDawg wrote:The problem I have with the entire line of argumentation being made here is that it's inconsistent. One has to argue that because the snapshot of lvl1 LA versus lvl1 normal ends up in the LA's favor, that justifies a system that offsets them. But when the reverse is noted - that the offset creates a snapshot that's unfair, then you want to look at the full spectrum over all levels.
What we choose as our starting system makes surprisingly little difference once you hit the mid levels, where the only time LA-races dip back into fewer levels below normals than their LA-penalty might imply are over brief XP windows. The XP penalty quickly brings the different races to offset levels that match the LA penalty, so only the early levels make a real difference. In general, they still trail by the amount they're supposed to. Measured against the number of variables in XP, and averaged over all levels, the starting system is largely irrelevant.
Given that, what we should be doing is figuring a system that's more appropriate for levels 1 - 4.
Alara wrote:Basing most of your balance arguments off CvC same class same ECL is insufficient, and disappointingly blinders-visioned.
Actually, my main concern is mobs and DM-spawned material; the CvC is what I hedge on because there are clear competitive advantages - though no worse than low-level fighter v. low-level wiz (the moral being, don't get involved in CvC as a low-level wiz). And my point is that if you take ECL to its logical extension, which is putting a group of lvl1 drow consistently up against CR3 mobs, you're going to have a lot of TPKs and eventually conclude "wow, maybe they aren't 3rd level equivalents." I also use CvC because it's a direct normal v. LA-race comparison of capability on a more level playing field than arbitrary CRs, which can be based on odd choices like high HP, low damage potential and so on.
Alara wrote:They aren't, they're average power-equivalents to a level. Of course, I fully concede that on say, ECL 3-5 or so they're inferior to class levels, as those are the levels where the first hit die suddenly boosts your hit points by +100%. However, later on they clearly are more powerful - I'm not certain about your depth of in-game ALFA / CRPG combat experience, but dismissing abilities as invisibility and darkness in a real-time combat environment where you can't always choose the fights is short-sighted.
Over that level period, normal PCs would clearly have the option of acquiring these "escape" abilities. The only portion where you'd give the innate "escape" abilities the nod is over the period of CL 1 - 3 where PCs conceptually couldn't acquire them. Personally, I'm not fully convinced that darkness is a magical escape tool either. Nor are they necessarily a help except in instances where you can identify the disadvantage early enough, at which point running is often just as effective. Still, even later on, scaling abilities which become more powerful are still situational - it's tree falling in the woods material. If a drow fights a non-magic using creature, the SR is temporarily irrelevant. So even while more powerful (and more relevant because more challenges trigger SR) it's still situational in nature. I'm just arguing that's a different dynamic than the ECL system addresses.
Alara wrote:By the way, copying ALFA 1s system is clearly not the most simple system available to us - Obsidian standard would be - but I will blame your attempt at obfuscation on your lawyer-nature
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AlmightyTDawg wrote:I just don't think anyone's made a remotely convincing case to deviate from what we did in NWN1, which I think is a decent - and much simpler system with greater canon fidelity than anything else proposed except for Obsidian's base system - map of the canon rules onto ALFA's structure.
Emphasis added. I've argued that we had a system and should need to justify shifting from that - given the experiences we had where even that system had huge issues with how difficult CL1-2 were, I saw Obsidian as such a nonstarter it didn't merit discussion. Apparently I was wrong, but I'm at a loss as to why.
Alara wrote:Of course, lesser races still wins in every aspect of consideration, and I'm not saying that because I drank its kool-aid. It fixes every and all problems both for regular hardcore drow players as well as "try out" LA players as well as the rest of the normal community. The only thing it does is require is for you to assume that "resistant to magic" isn't such a powerful property as you've known it to be - that this is not a loss in flavour, but in power, is apparent; it's same flavour less strong taste. It's a good indicator to me that the LA community is fully aware their LA properties outperform class levels later on, however, here we have to consider broader interests as well.
Like I said, lesser races - the "full nerf" proposal - solves the technical issues involved. It's basically saying "well, we can't make LA work, so screw it." I just don't see why we need to go there - it's a cop-out to me. Particularly because I haven't seen anyone identify a serious "problem" with the NWN1 system - except for technical issues, such as possibly cheating the low-level treadmill by skipping out on the XP penalty because low-level as an LA-race stunk - the only problem has been lack of canon-fidelity (to the XP system) which has been demonstrated as pretty much irrelevant in our scheme. And seeing as the proposed solution to the problem produces an arguably larger break from canon, I think the big picture has been lost here.
By contrast, I believe the adage "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is startlingly relevant.
