Terrible Woes Of Playing A Fighter On Sigil

[*Ceremorph]

Trying to keep the grumpy under control. :lol:

My point on that was really more akin to your earlier post, where people take a level of a class not because it fits the character but because it gives them a feat. EDM, Evasion, Blindfight, and Protection from Evil with one level of cleric (best... level....ever). "Get out of combat free", a.k.a. HiPS, with one level of shadowdancer. 1 level of monk so a druid can get AC and wear monk boots without UMD. 2 levels of rogue taken mid-build for no other reason than to full UMD to the necessary point. Silly builds like Favored Soul 18/Stormlord 10/Cleric 1/Shadowdancer 1 (I've seen this one several times).

[*rapsam2003]

Trying to keep the grumpy under control.  :lol:

My point on that was really more akin to your earlier post, where people take a level of a class not because it fits the character but because it gives them a feat. EDM, Evasion, Blindfight, and Protection from Evil with one level of cleric (best... level....ever). "Get out of combat free", a.k.a. HiPS, with one level of shadowdancer. 1 level of monk so a druid can get AC and wear monk boots without UMD. 2 levels of rogue taken mid-build for no other reason than to full UMD to the necessary point. Silly builds like Favored Soul 18/Stormlord 10/Cleric 1/Shadowdancer 1 (I've seen this one several times).

That just...makes no sense. I mean, from the powerbuild side of things? Yeah, it does. From the roleplay side of things?...Wtf kind of god is that FS/stormlord worshipping?!

[*Mander]

Ched-dor, patron god of cheese.

[*shadowblizmasta]

Storms can get pretty dark, you know! And lightning strikes where you least suspect it. It's honestly one of the more tame and easily explainable builds I've seen. As long as someone was actively roleplaying it, it'd be neat to see someone explain it. I always enjoy seeing other peoples homebrewed worlds, and it would likely have to come from one.

[*rapsam2003]

Ched-dor, patron god of cheese.

LOL. Must be a halfling god?

Storms can get pretty dark, you know! And lightning strikes where you least suspect it. It's honestly one of the more tame and easily explainable builds I've seen. As long as someone was actively roleplaying it, it'd be neat to see someone explain it. I always enjoy seeing other peoples homebrewed worlds, and it would likely have to come from one.

Question? Have you actually ever seen anyone roleplay that build?

[*Born2BeWild]

1. Create new martial feats and edit existing martial feats to improve them based on combined levels of melee classes.
This is actually something that's been discussed and seems to be a popular idea. It doesn't prevent the gish or the dedicated caster build from taking them, but in the hands of someone with greater combat skill they become more dangerous.

2. Adjust UMD to be a little more selective.
Every character, even dedicated casters, seems to walk around with a bundle of wands. Which gets somewhat silly when you've got epic mages casting a gerbil-ball full of cleric and druid spells, or blackguards rocking holy sword. This would be a larger project, but it would push things more towards "play your character sheet" and less "play your inventory". This would also play into making dedicated rogues and warlocks, who actually are supposed to be superior because of their ability to get extremely high scores in UMD and the warlock feat, more useful than current.

3. More UMD locking.
You've probably run into certain items that UMD can't get around. This would allow selective item tweaking to prevent UMD access of things that a character really shouldn't have (for example, evil characters using holy sword wands). Of course it would require notation on the item description of some sort.

4. Gish-busting.
And by this, I mean the practice on many other servers requiring a certain number of levels in any class (although in our case it would be via script and not nosy DMs). This would do away with the common practices of 1 shadowdancer for HiPS, 1 cleric for free feats, 1 monk for AC and so on. Scripting it would probably be a huge pain, but this would definitely be seen as a blow against power-builders.

5. Dedication bonuses.
Kind of the reverse of #4, and even something that could go hand-in-hand with it, this would dole out notable bonuses for those who build within a theme. For example, if all of your levels are within a certain archetype (all melee, all stealth, all divine) or a specific combination (arcane/stealth).

6. Diversification bonuses.
A little wackier, this would provided bonuses to those who actually make a point to go halvsies on very diverse archetypes. A character with no wider than a 60/40 split between divine and stealth, for example. A reason to go outside the comfort zone of "I need X levels to be undispallable and X DC on my avasculate to beat the Hellfire Erinyes".

7. No, your God of Home and Hearth does not support the Travel domain.
Not suggesting that we go to the "Your god is Tits McGee so your domains must be Jiggle and Bounce" extreme, but preventing certain blatant powergrab combos would not be a terrible thing and might actually lead to some diversity of builds.

Again, just ideas and nothing actually planned, but I'd love to hear feedback.

1. Create new martial feats and edit existing martial feats to improve them based on combined levels of melee classes.
Good idea
2. Adjust UMD to be a little more selective.
I don't see the point, builds just gonna adapt to this(it's not hard to make 40 umd on pure melee build with 8 cha)
3. More UMD locking.
Also not a bad idea
4. Gish-busting.
It won't change anything.Some rare unique build become impossible and that's all, 95% of builds just gonna adapt for 3b20 rule with loss of 1ab\ac\dmg, or already under that rule.
5. Dedication bonuses.
This is much better
6. Diversification bonuses.
I like that too
7. No, your God of Home and Hearth does not support the Travel domain.
same with p.2 and p.4, it won't change anything

[*Strawberry Jam]

Sometimes a level or two in shadow dancer make perfect sense. The stealthy rogue that doesn't want to forgo their "anatomy" training, the shadow mage or illusionist that's primarily caster, or the warlock with a shadow fey pact. I would be more concerned in people in full plate and towershield with monkey grip great sword are stealthing freely under your nose.

[*PenguinNinja]

That build is Deliang's, and while defensively it's not insane, offensively I've seen it repeatedly plow through the Carceri mobs like a knife through scrib jelly. As for roleplay, I've never seen him roleplay it much, and I know it was fully optimized, as its a legacy Khaasta, which were like, the most OP race ever created.

EDIT: A certain problem I've noticed, and fequently used myself, is tht one or two levels of cleric will drastically change a build, mix it with the right RPC and you can easily get EDM and divine shield, along with free extra tuning, luck of heroes, or blind fight.

[*shadowblizmasta]

Question? Have you actually ever seen anyone roleplay that build?

I've never quite seen someone RP that, no. Might be fun to actually RP a character like that and have it make sense, but I lack the patience these days to spend hours grinding characters, even if that would be just about the least gear dependent character possible.

[*Taihou]

3. More UMD locking.
You've probably run into certain items that UMD can't get around. This would allow selective item tweaking to prevent UMD access of things that a character really shouldn't have (for example, evil characters using holy sword wands). Of course it would require notation on the item description of some sort.

4. Gish-busting.
And by this, I mean the practice on many other servers requiring a certain number of levels in any class (although in our case it would be via script and not nosy DMs). This would do away with the common practices of 1 shadowdancer for HiPS, 1 cleric for free feats, 1 monk for AC and so on. Scripting it would probably be a huge pain, but this would definitely be seen as a blow against power-builders.

Decisively against!

One of main reasons, why I preferred SCOD over other servers is fact, that those screws had nay been put on in this regard and this would ruin a GREAT deal of unique gameplay we have there, that is or was inaccessable on other servers.

Also I find EXTREMELY REGRETFUL, that there happened to come into being alignment locks on certain races and classes and my STRONG and UNCOMPROMISED opinion is, that this nonsense should be lifted.

***

Honestly, all problems, discussed in this thread, are nay more, than cooked up out of thin air and you, people, better stop rubbing, where it does nay itch! *mass staredown*