In article <4rf313t1fn0ljlua5bv80o2jre90141bd3@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Erol K. Bayburt <ErolB1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>If it exists, it's razor thin. I blame the official "+2 levels = x2
>power" power curve. IMO teen-level characters need to have room for
>having a couple of levels of variability in their actual power level
>vs their nominal level without this breaking the game - but they
>don't.
Yes. The variability among characters seems to go up with level.
Pretty much by accident, I put the party fighter into a "sweet spot"
of the system: I didn't make an effort to minimax him, but his design
is naturally optimal. He contrasts with the swashbuckler (who
has levels of fighter, rogue, scout, and dervish) who I had to optimize
fiercely to get her to work at all. This was a success till around
level 8, and then it became apparent that the fighter was still
useful, even increasingly useful, and the swashbuckler had become
totally ineffectual. The level difference seemed huge to me--by the
time they were both 11th I think the fighter looked like 14th and
the swashbuckler looked like 9th.
Part of this is a changing environment. We started hitting DR against
which no one had the necessary countermeasures. (This is much more
prevalent in v3.5 than it was in v3.0.) The fighter had no trouble
as he could consistently use Power Attack, Weapon Specialization, and
a two-handed weapon to go through even DR15. The swashbuckler, using
a d6 one-handed weapon, was stymied. We also started hitting increasing
numbers of foes immune to sneak attack, critical hits, and precision
damage, negating most of what her rogue and scout levels offered her
as a combatant.
Part of it is just that what the swashbuckler was doing didn't scale
to high levels as well as what the fighter was doing. The scout
precision damage is great when you get only one attack, but using it
requires taking only one attack, so it's a bust when the fighter is
getting 3 or 4. The swashbuckler always had superior AC but after a
point, serious foes would hit her anyway and she had 20% fewer hp.
I think this was a pretty modest discrepancy compared to what you can
do to yourself if you allow prestiege cl*****. It's not just that
some are overpowered (an alert GM may catch that) but the majority
are grossly underpowered for at least a few levels somewhere in the
progression--anything that reduces a primary spellcaster's spell
progression, for reasons you've noted elsewhere in this thread, almost
*does not count as a level increase*. A player incautiously taking
an interesting-sounding prestiege class for his primary-caster
PC may reduce the whole party's effective level by 1 or more.
Mary Kuhner mkkuhner@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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