User talk:Snafusam/Purifier (3.5e Prestige Class)

after removing one ability entirely im now stuck with the question is it balanced (yes i realize it's massive superiority vs undead)... Snafusam (talk) May 19, 2013 09:01(PDT)

I can do a review if you wish so, I did not read the class yet but I can point any issues (and potential issues) as well as providing ways to fix them. --Leziad (talk) 14:34, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

how do you do a review? i was just about to make a pair of level 20's and have them fight each-other. Purifier vs | True Necromancer Snafusam (talk) May 21, 2013 04:42(PDT)

Might not be the best way, i`l just look at it in an objective and critical way, compare it to similar classes and just post the result. --Leziad (talk) 05:26, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Not to mention that pitting it against a True Necromancer puts it in a situation where, to me, it has an obvious advantage. But yeah, the idea of having it fight other things to see what happened was kind of abandoned with the Same Game Test. As for this class, the biggest concern for me right off the bat is how extra turning attempts relate to Divine Metamagic and the cheesy things that the Cleric gets access to. Limitations on hydrokinesis would probably also be good (they seem to be implied, but not specifically stated) to prevent the purifier from drowning the whole world instantaneously (which, ironically, would not kill all the undead in the world). - TG Cid (talk) 17:18, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

your right, this would have an obvious advantage... I have taken a look at the Divine Metamagic and either 1. Don't understand it enough or 2. believe it's limited enough the double turning won't effect it enough. the limitations of 'hydrokinesis' are implied and stated in some places however, left vaguely open so as X-DM can limit it themselves to better fit X-campaign/player. the source which i have based this hydrokinesis never used it to 'potential' because of self-restraint which though some players have, most dont... as for "drown the whole world" I already made this impossible with rates of generation the world has countless ways of dealing with excess water without magic (rivers, lakes, oceans) adding magic into the equation makes this increasingly impossible however flooding a tunnel or water-way would be possible, if the dm doesn't create a water-drain (most tunnles do, its just another one of those little things the DM will have to think about when making his campaign or adding it in on the fly once said character gains X power.)

please give it a run-through and let me know what your thoughts are, hope it's not too much. Snafusam (talk) May 23, 2013 02:40(PDT)

Divine Metamagic (hereafter abbreviated as DMM) allows you to use turning attempts as metamagic levels. This allows you to add levels past level 9, provided you have enough turning attempts, and thus do all the cheesy things that clerics do (like persist divine power every day). So more turning attempts equals more metamagic abuse, which the cleric already gets plenty and does not need more of. That's at least the general gist of it, I believe. For the whole class in general, I am in favor of Prestige Classes being as short as possible. If it works effectively in five levels, there is no reason to extend it to ten, especially when in my experience most "high level" games are around level 14 or so and every level becomes precious. Having to throw more than five levels into any one PrC doesn't sit well with me. For more on this, I made a specific section below - TG Cid (talk) 00:29, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

just looked up this trick and it's the first I've heard of it, though i agree it is very powerful, there are many (VERY MANY) ways for a DM to counteract such things. however i agree with the worry and am currently trying to find a nice way to word a limitation. however these bonus turnings cannot be used for Divine Metamagic.?? i agree that shorter classes are easier for DM/players, do you think i should compress this class into a 5-level prestige? (do you really have an average "high level" of 14? my campaign went from level 1 to 55+ before i recently HAD to kill the entire campaign for a restart (level 3).) Snafusam (talk) May 24, 2013 19:28(PDT)

flooding continued

I have player-P that I know right off the bat would never think of attempting to flood a dungeon (simply unable... not unwilling.) and player-R that are capable wouldn't hesitate for a second to try, another player-K that actually wouldn't do it out of principle, unless required, and if any of said players were to try I would make my player try and reason it (for alignment purposes at least), otherwise it it flow's into the ocean/lake/river and nothing changes, flash flood maybe, but not drown the world. if they were to keep trying it (Player-S) then Pelor might take offense and the incompetent fool be decapitated DOWN COMES THE ANGELS! following a ban of said player playing said type of charactor... (Player-R isn't allowed to be undead anymore and Player-S is pushing hard for some kind of limitation.) Snafusam (talk) May 23, 2013 02:40(PDT)

That's a terrible way to try to justify sharing this ability with potential parties everywhere.

Well, assuming that they can only create one 30-ft radius sphere's-worth of water per round, that's only 0.0000001 cubic kilometers per round. Doubling the volume of the Earth's oceans would take 2,399,100,000 years.

Filling a dungeon, however, would take a couple of minutes unless it had a Peter Jackson LotR-style interior. If that's not using the ability as intended, I don't know what is. --Foxwarrior (talk) 16:29, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

keep in mind, flooding dungeons has always been an option for adventurers, it simply needs the right spells or situation this is no different.

keep in mind the DND oceans usually connect to the elemental plane of water (in a variety of ways) meaning that they can't really "overflow"...

(I don't get the Peter Jackson LotR-style reference. If its to the drain in the helms deep wall, then yes that's exactly what this means.) the method I'm wanting to use to avoid having a dungeon flooded is having a natural cavern beneath it, connected to the underdark you say? Snafusam (talk) May 23, 2013 15:06(PDT)

Flood attempt experiment

Lets see how long it would take to flood an Water-tight dungeon with 30'radius (generation max area) of water per 6 seconds (1 round). This would effectively force any air-breathing creature to drown (no fight experience) or be forced out of the dungeons nearest entrance (que fight) destroying any fire/water weak items(scrolls/books/important documents)

1. for my first dungeon I had my level 1 players(playing Adnd) go into a small cave which turned out to be much bigger than expected (as an inexperienced DM at the time I wound up having divine intervention save them many times) the cave was drawn out on a grid sheet and measured by 10 square feet per block, making my first dungeon cave 20x40 blocks x10 square feet. so that's 8,000 square feet. filling the 3770 cubic feet at a time would take (133 rounds) 13 minutes...

2. an later dungeon was called the "sunder canyon" it was more or less a thin yet long canyon with many small holes in the sides which monsters made their homes, the players job was to stand in the center, draw out all the monsters and survive while the local town guard rained down arrows/spells. it's size was 400 feet across and 25000 feet long at a depth of 5000 feet. so, 50,000,000,000 feet squared would take 2758 years to flood this canyon (not including evaporation/creatures drinking or time to sleep/live so you might as well double that, and continue to laugh when they die of old age)...

3. an laberynth, this was a simple maze i made which took 1 sheet of grid paper giving each square 5 feet, 43x33x5=7095/30= 23.6 minutes (lucky me it was already setup for water-drainage...)

so, though an adventurer could potentially flood many dungeons (if water-tight...) it doesn't kill things that don't breath and there are places (sealed/hidden doors) that won't be simply flash flooded and there are many spells (wall of fire!) which would prevent water-flooding... Snafusam (talk) May 23, 2013 19:10(PDT)

10 square feet per block? Do you mean that the blocks were ~3 feet wide, or did you mean to say 10 foot square blocks (100 square feet)? Assuming the latter, that's actually 40,000 square feet. It's not 40000 /30; it's a 30 foot radius sphere. A 30 foot radius sphere has a volume of almost exactly 3770 cubic feet, which means you can fill this cave at a rate of depth increase of 3770/40000 = 0.09 feet per round. So you can fill it to a depth of 6 feet (head height) in 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

Your canyon volume calculation was correct, but your sphere calculation still wasn't, so it would only be 921 days. --174.61.170.65 04:10, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

the "block" on grid paper = square... dnd calculates one "square" as 5 foot radius, on my DM-map, i made it 10 feet squared for each square on the DM-map. Where are you getting the calculation for 3770 cubic feet, I'm not getting any number near that. I'm not sure where you started using 'cubic feet' as it has an extra dimension in it's calculations but try and stick with feet squared, I've kept all the calculations to feet squared for this reason. it's presumed that any living creature will attempt to swim, so 6 feet won't cut it. Snafusam (talk) May 23, 2013 21:46(PDT)

Spheres are three dimensional; putting them in units of anything other than cubic feet is weird.

The volume of a sphere is (4/3)πr³. --70.199.243.111 18:15, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

yes a sphere is three dimensional, where does "sphere" come into consideration (the above topic said "sphere" after "radius" which is how it would appear if the purifier were to surround herself with water, however because the purpose is mass-creation it would not be held in place thus it would not actually gain the sphere appearance/quality.)? perhaps it is weird but either way, that's what dnd3.5 uses 99% of the time (to my knowledge).

the ability states Creation: Generate as much water as desired, within 30 feet of self, how it appears can be chosen (even direction traveling when created) Keep in mind, that destruction/evaporation can be achieved as well, at the same rate. and continues to state a number of example generation effects. the above topic realized the 30 feet can be any direction (spherical) however try for a second to imagine how creating water like that would look... a giant water-droplet that's leaking? or an exploding light-bubble? then explain it to the DM/player... Snafusam (talk) May 24, 2013 15:26(PDT)

Suggestions

As I mentioned above, this is one of those cases where less is more as far as levels are concerned. I think this could work as a five-level PrC, which will dictate pretty much all of the suggestions I make below.

• You already have create water as a spell courtesy of the bonus domain. I don't feel like giving it as an SLA really does anything for the class, and it also just clogs up the 1st level. For the sake of my five-level suggestion, I am suggesting that it be purged. On that note, what happens to your bonus domain if you already have the Good and Water domain? A probably rare occurrence, to be sure, but I think for the sake of fairness you should get a different bonus domain should it happen.
• Geyser is quite a problematic spell to give, seeing as how the dedicated enemies of the purifier are immune to non-lethal damage in the first place. Kind of a disconnect between mechanics and theme, I think, but not necessarily all bad since it means you aren't totally shoehorned into an undead fighter. That said, I think the spell itself could be improved upon.
• Purifying Prowess is problematic; an effective increase in caster level synergizes very strongly with blasphemy and those similar spells that will flat out kill (or at least daze/debilitate) anything with less HD than your caster level, with no save. I would try something else there and scrap that bit, since combined with other effective caster level boosters it amounts to lots of blasphemy abuse.

I will continue to update this as time allows. - TG Cid (talk) 00:29, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

agreed with the create water, and removed it. added an exception for the case of a purifier having both domains. Geyser is a very limited spell i agree it needs buffing (just don't know how to give it without making it too much, considering removing it from class too.), its purpose on this class is to give 'some' power against non-undead, and sense it's non-lethal it won't kill the living. blasphemy is already abused easily, this is no different. thank you for your help ;D Snafusam (talk) May 24, 2013 19:13(PDT)