User talk:MisterSinister/TOToM (3.5e Sourcebook)/SRP1

Tags

So, you use square brackets in your tags, and that makes it impossible to link to them in the page because of how wikis work with them in general. I don't know if you want to remove them from here or just go through and use {{{anchor|Tag Name}}} at every tag header so linking works. Note that you'll need to do this for all possible combinations of the multitags (Energy:Fire and Air) anyway.

Alternately, I can just remove the direct tag linking from the spell template if you want, though that seemed a useful feature. - Tarkisflux 18:24, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not particularly attached to the notation - it just happened to be the form I'm most used to using with tags in general. What would you suggest as a good alternative notation? MisterSinister 20:48, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I'd use the brackets in the text then, but not in the headers. That'll keep the same feel, which the spells share, and cut down on the number of anchors you need to add. Unless you like anchors, then you can just leave it. - Tarkisflux 21:55, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Or I'll just add anchors to the headers. Turns out that will mostly work too. I haven't touched the multi-attribute tags though, since I don't have an easy way to do them and I don't want to just do lots and lots of span ids. The persistable tag suffers a similar problem, since there's 20 different persistables. Everything else links nicely from the template though. - Tarkisflux 03:47, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Duration & Dissipation

Why did you choose a d6 instead of a d20? A d20 gives a higher range of %s to work with, and is more feat friendly. Not to mention the overarching system is called 'd20', so having such a roll not be a d20 is a bit weird. --Havvy 15:11, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Mostly because adding or subtracting from recovery rolls isn't something I support. Without some seriously hardcore bonus typing (i.e. one bonus type ever), what will happen to recovery rolls is the 4e Orbizard, and I have no desire to support such. Additionally, the system already uses non-d20 rolls for a whole bunch of things (such as damage rolls and durations and so on), so I'm not really sure why this is a problem.

As far as dissipation rolls go, I think using a d6 gives me enough grain to be happy. These are designed to simulate round/level durations, which I think they do quite well already. Anything which lasts longer than that will either be Slot, [Passive], or have a duration that's so long that there's not much need to track it unless your GM is being difficult.MisterSinister 19:07, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Aside from the stuff I emailed you, I think these are actually too easy to accurately replicate the round / level duration you intend on replacing. I also dislike these because there's little difference in recovering from a high level caster's spell and a low level caster's spell in that it's equally easy to recover from either of them. Are you opposed to an alternate formulation along the lines of "make a level check = DC 18 (or X for non-standard spells) + caster level of effect, with a +1 bonus for each additional check"? That makes it more difficult to get out of on the first roll, but progressively easier as the effect goes on (maintaining the round / level ness of an effect) while also maintaining higher CL effects being harder than lower CL effects. - Tarkisflux 20:15, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

I actually quite like that formulation. It also neatly addressed Havvy's concerns as well, and I'd be happy with it. It's also quite extendable to non-casty things. So yeah, let's do that instead. MisterSinister 21:51, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Actual math shows the suggestion I pulled from my ass is likely to mimic durations that actually matter in combat based on level differences instead of absolute level, and do so without invalidating ToP condition fixing / ignoring abilities, so yay for that. It's nice to be able to support my own suggestions. Thanks for pointing this out Havvy. - Tarkisflux 23:48, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Secondary issue with this change. Non-stacking duration rules are now dead, and need to be rethought in new setup. I'd suggest highest CL effect for recovery DC thingy, and each additional failed save resets counter (even if it's from a lower CL caster). Or something. - Tarkisflux 01:46, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Sorry if this sounds espically dense, but I'm not sure what you mean by 'non-stacking duration rules'. Could you please elaborate for my benefit? - MisterSinister 06:22, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Not dense, it's not a rule that comes up all that often. In standard magic rules, if you fail a save against glitterdust and then a few rounds later you fail another save against glitterdust, the new duration only matters if it's longer than what you have left on the existing duration. If the new one is worse, you get the whole of it, and if it's not worse it doesn't actually do anything to you at all; i.e. the durations don't stack.

I'm not at all sure how to deal with multiple instances of the same condition under the recovery setup. We probably want something similar though, because without it you can't extend people's suffering with repeat castings and I always liked that. For reference, the equivalent rule in the current increasing bonus system is "if the new old DC less your current bonus is smaller than the recover DC you just failed against, dump your bonus and use the new DC", and that sucks. If we changed it from an increasing bonus to a decreasing DC setup, you could just be stuck with the highest available DC at any given time, but I'm not sure the decreasing DC setup is a better call for tracking and simplicity reasons (though I could very easily be overthinking this). So it's either not deal with it and ignore the problems, use crappy formulation and hope it doesn't come up much, turn existing setup on head and do subtraction, or something else I haven't thought of. - Tarkisflux 07:16, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

As an aside, Dissipation and Recovery could work on the same system, but then Dissipation becomes something you want to roll low on, while Recovery is the opposite! Are we cool with this? - MisterSinister 03:14, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

No. d20 is a "roll high" system, and I don't want to move away from that. - Tarkisflux 04:15, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I was dense when I wrote this apparently, and now actually see what you mean. Yeah, "recovering" from a beneficial status effect is something you probably wouldn't want to do, and so would want to roll low on your checks. I'm not sure if that alone is sufficient justification to introduce another mechanic or not though... simplify mechanics, or simplify results expectation? - Tarkisflux 18:59, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Transferable

Would this make sense to have as a tag? --Havvy 15:11, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

This is certainly possible as a tag, but I'm not 100% sure it's necessary. Only [Passive] abilities are transferable, which means that it's better to have a [Passive:Transferable] and [Passive:Static] tags or something. MisterSinister 19:06, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I dislike having variables on descriptors. While the programmer part of me calls these flags, and doesn't mind variables on them, the point of these are, are that there are less variables to handle. At least, that is what I believe. This is why I also dislike [SR:Yes] and [SR:Special], though not the only reason. I can stand it for energy and elemental though. Common spell abilities should be given descriptors themselves,a nd I see [Transferable] as something that can become common.

Since I think I've talked him into dumping passive as a tag at all, using [Transferable] as a tag when it comes up should be fine. - Tarkisflux 15:22, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

What Tarkis said, pretty much. MisterSinister 19:25, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

SR Tags

Since [SR:Yes] is probably the default, I'm not really sure why it's a tag instead of [SR:No], the exception that needs to be called out. Actually, we could probably do away with [SR:No] in that formulation and just go with [SR Special], where not applying SR against the spell is just a special case that doesn't get it's own tag. Then there's no variables in tag, you just have to look up the occasional random SR exception in the spell text. - Tarkisflux

Good points - I'll do that as part of my revisions of Chapter 1. - MisterSinister 01:34, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Is there a word for 'hard to resist'? Tenacious maybe? Or Unresistable? [SR Special] just doesn't seem to fit the flavor compared to the other tags. --Havvy 21:27, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

The main issue I see with such a name is that basically, [SR:Special] as it stands is either 'no SR' or 'weird SR'. Naming it Tenacious or Unresistable rules out one or the other. - MisterSinister 22:23, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

[Ray]

Might it make sense to have the range of ray spells described as part of the ray type? That, or maybe make range tags and area tags specified.

[Range:Close/Medium/Long/Plane/Touch/Self] = Where the caster may specify the center of effect for the ability. [Area:Targets/Cone/ect.]

If the range on a ray is standardized for all ray spells, then putting it in the ray type would be good. Not sure if that's the case though.

Tag bloat is a concern, since individual tags lose importance as you get more of them or as they're used more often. Since this would also be duplicating other sections of the spell header, not just pulling useful info up from the spell text, new tags for that stuff seems completely redundant. - Tarkisflux 15:19, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree with this. MisterSinister 19:26, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Touch Attacks

While I disagree with your verisimilitude issues with them, I'm going to leave it for now. I am concerned about touch attacks keeping up at higher levels in the new bonus arrangement though, since it seems AC already pulls away faster than 1/2 bab and it's going to eat that +4 pretty easily. Have you done any comparisons to determine how viable touch attacks are at higher levels in the new system? - Tarkisflux 18:02, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

You may want to consider allowing touch attacks to use caster level in place of BAB. Then they will scale nicely and that +4 means the same thing at level 1 as it does at level 20. --Aarnott 18:20, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

More like character level since there are non-casters who can make touch attacks. But yeah, that's where I was headed if MS didn't have convincing math to the contrary. - Tarkisflux 18:38, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Which I actually don't. I'm not used to designing for higher levels, and I see your point. Do you think character level replacing BAB is enough? I suspect the +4 might need to stick around anyway, even with this change. - MisterSinister 19:40, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, it probably needs to stick around. And probably stack with flat-footed. And you probably need to be able to make all of your regular bab iterative attacks with your increased base (though it shouldn't grant you any extra). Probably. I'll take a look at some numbers later. BTW, is there a reason this is tied into the core TOToM instead of just a suggested variant? - Tarkisflux 21:16, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

OK, it is sticking around, and it does stack with flat-footed by default. The stuff on iteratives also should be around. The main reason is that touch ACs are a pet peeve of mine. - MisterSinister 03:57, 2 November 2010 (UTC)