I been thinking about playing a barbarian. What´s stopping me? i can´t make a satisfatory build without having to dump charisma and wisdom to 6 or 8. And i kinda don´t want to rp these stats. The thing is that the barbarian needs 21 con to get the damage reductions and the mighty rage and it needs 25 for dev critical. This push you to go for the earth genasi to even try to reach these huge stats and you end with a minmax spawn of a character.

I was thinking that it could be a incentive to play "more balanced" characters like special class feats gained when the usual dump stats from that class hit around 12 or 13.

Maybe it would be wise to dump the stats requirement of the epic feats too, since they are designed for 40 lvl characters. Even from 25 to 24, or from 21 to 20 so at least you wouldn be stuck with the odd stats.

I always hated that from D&D, feels like the only charismatic people are paladin, bards and sorcerers, the only spiritual people are clerics, druids and monks; etc.

This is just going to be the life of a point buy system.

We can't really lower the requisites of the epic feats either without causing a host more issues than we solve, and frankly, making the powerbuilds you don't want to happen, much much easier. They weren't designed for level 40, either, or they would have pre reqs that you couldn't hit until then. The epic feats are designed along a sliding scale of pre-reqs just like pre epic feat are.

Feats are specifically, by design, created to have odd stat pre requisites - the idea is even stats get you a modifier and odd stats qualify you for feats in order to make up not getting a modifier at that level. It allows you to gain rewards along character progression since feats and stat points don't come at the same levels.

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Davion Telemos - Monk of the Four Winds
Korthan Isharnos - Dragon Shaman of Thunder Spirit Zamasham

Specifically from an IC perspective, the feats you're describing should require a drop in other stats. Namely because they take a huge amount of IC training and sacrifice to attain. A barbarian who wants to hit someone so hard it knocks them down and stuns them has to train his body to not only be physically strong enough to do that, but train his muscles to remember how and where to strike.

What I would be in favor of is characters who are around the server for long periods being given a sliding wisdom scale. Something like every six months or a year or whatever, you gain a point of wisdom to represent your experiences on Amia and life in general. But that sounds very complicated. Besides, wisdom is really the only non combat ability score you could theoretically gain over time. You're not likely to become more intelligent once your training is over, and you're definitely not likely to become more charasmatic.

I get what you're saying here, but I think where we're at now with these feats is about the best that can be done with the system we have.

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I think ability score requirements should be removed from feats all together. It would really open up character building to allow for some real rp.

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ANT ALARM

ANT ALARM

Kind of that when everyone's super nobody is mentality? Could work. Would at least remove the focus on builds and push it toward rp. Not a fan of the IC implication that someone with a 16 strength can hit as hard as someone with a 25 strength though.

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Well strength is still a part of the damage formula, and you can't undo that. But we can diminish the effects of it.

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ANT ALARM

ANT ALARM

Well i still think that a one point drop on requirement wouldn´t be to crazy ic. Anyways what about of making things to reward investing on dump stats? like fighters and barbarians with hight charisma being able to summon an npc of his same class

Well right now summons are basically the only unique utility casters have, so I'm all for giving an epic summon to martial classes willing to take a stat hit to pump cha, as that's pretty balanced and goes a long way to close the 'caster gap' that we currently have on Amia.

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ANT ALARM

ANT ALARM

Yeah but...should we? I mean, is it logical to say someone who can lift 1000lbs can hit someone as hard as someone who can lift 300? And Devastating Critical is all about hitting someone particularly hard. The argument could be made that the feat should represent more HOW to hit, and not how hard to hit. But it seems nonsensical to me.

Now, that's just one feat. There are others I think that make just as much sense with less or no ability requirements.

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I don't see why a dexterity character couldn't unleash a 'devastating critical' via precision.

Remember most strength users that don't min-max and like to RP instead of 'be the best' use a 2 hand and get a bigger strength bonus as a result. If dev crit was available to everyone, the 'proper' strength builds would still deal the most damage simply because of how strength works.

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ANT ALARM

ANT ALARM

Cool new stuff around 13 points in an ability would be nice. But I don't think it would avoid dump stats, because those that minmax (like me) would still minmax and if the cool stuff isn't good enough for this build, it won't be part of it.

It's a bit of a shame, though, that the high-prereq feats are all-or-nothing and need exactly this amount of that ability. (STR 25, DEX 25, CON 21, caster stat 20, WIS 100 ;). Unlike AB, AC or DCs, there's little incentive to trade that last +1 for a less cheesy character concept.

But in theory, it's possible to make them scale:
Epic Dodge could provide concealment against the first hit that scales with DEX. Each Epic DR feat could enable 3 DR with a total no more than something based on CON. DevCrit has the round-based thing already, which could be a bit shorter at STR 20 instead of STR 25.

Of course, due to synergies with AC, HP, or the DC for DevCrit, these already scale a bit with their stats. Just usually not enough to be seen as more than requirements in almost all builds.

I'm not claiming these are good ideas balance-wise (not that I gave numbers, but still), but coming from class-less point-buy GURPS, I like things that scale or at least exist at multiple power levels.

Regards
Ts

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Ralghok & Hazamir "The Weasel"

Yeah, I buy that. Sold. The next question would be Ts' point. Is it just given as is or scaled? I like the scaling idea. Means you still have a reason to invest in particular stats if you want.

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Feats aren't losing stat pre reqs.

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Davion Telemos - Monk of the Four Winds
Korthan Isharnos - Dragon Shaman of Thunder Spirit Zamasham

Exactly. And it would open a ton of new build possibilities.

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ANT ALARM

ANT ALARM

The idea of a DEXer with high AC, Epic Dodge, and Dev Crit is rather frightening. Especially if you manage a DEX WM build with it.

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Whomst've'll'd'mn't I play:
Salema Nefahri :: A penny for your thots
Zrae'a'stra'fryn :: That which nightmares are made of
Khasir :: From the East a storm is coming

You can do that now though. Hit tumble tank ac with epic dodge and dev crit. Since you're fishing for 1's either way the low save doesn't matter.

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ANT ALARM

ANT ALARM

pretty sure you can´t get 25 dex and 25 st for that. Even if you could, that character would be pretty cripped.

Takes a lot of feats and rdd but its not only possible it's pretty great. The builds I've seen incorporate barb too so the rage str bonus really helps offset some of the shortcomings. Then you can rock tumble tank ac and Ed and dev crit. Can't make wm tho and that's a shame.

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ANT ALARM

ANT ALARM

That's not a shame at all. And you are talking about a couple highly specialized builds that, honestly, can't compare to the possibilities that will come about based on what you suggest.

It's a terrible idea, same as giving EMD to non-casters would be.

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Whomst've'll'd'mn't I play:
Salema Nefahri :: A penny for your thots
Zrae'a'stra'fryn :: That which nightmares are made of
Khasir :: From the East a storm is coming

I don't see how it's op at all. One kind of caster that specs for summons isn't op so why would a melee the specs for summons? We already have dev crit Rangers with hawk companions that hit sixty ac. Why lock it to only Rangers?

Its time to open the game up to more builds so we cn break the shackles of the current pvp build meta and focus on rp based builds. Should have happened a long time ago frankly.

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ANT ALARM

ANT ALARM

Additionally a lot of long time players still don't understand the game as well as they should as far as builds go. This would help them most of all.

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ANT ALARM

ANT ALARM

call bullshit on that :p. To have ED you need to be assasin, rogue or sd. To have rdd you have to be sorceror or bard, and to have rage you have to be barb. So we are talking about 4 classes there.

And the thread was more about the thing that every build in the fish section has negative stats and a lvl of rogue at the end. That´s the fail. The problem is not how op can you get, the thing is how much rp has to suffer for it to happen. I would rather have umd has a cross skill for every one that see that rogue lvl ( or even worse a bard lvl) on each build.

You can always tweak the stats. I tend to not fully optimize at times, either. One char I gave up Overwhelming Crit and Dev Crit, took 2 Great STRs so I could end on 26 STR but have 10 WIS and CHA still. I've had a mage that had a decent CHA, and even a rogue/monk with 12 CHA (on a -2 CHA race, even!) and they are all still viable builds.

You don't have to min/max, but something has to suffer depending on the build you are going for.

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Whomst've'll'd'mn't I play:
Salema Nefahri :: A penny for your thots
Zrae'a'stra'fryn :: That which nightmares are made of
Khasir :: From the East a storm is coming

'I gave up Dev Crit so I could still have 10 WIS and CHA' makes me want to cry into a handkerchief that I've kept on my desk ever since I discovered the TaMtF subforum. I've always felt that the server's base assumption should be that we're not optimized, rather than the polar opposite. If you stop worrying about stat prerequisites, the sheer variety in character possibilities improves by an order of magnitude, but we have to take it into consideration if we want to keep up with the pack. I might go so far as to suggest that instead of trying to lower or eliminate stat prerequisites, we simply stop normalizing them. The idea that our characters live in a world where you HAVE to have Dev Crit, Epic Dodge, powerful summons, etc. is disturbing not just because it's kept the status quo of one big, constant power competition (intentional or not) going for some time, but because it unnecessarily limits our potential.

In short, part of our problem is the endemic view that these abilities are 'HAVE to haves' instead of 'wouldn't it be cool ifs'. Epic feats have such strenuous prerequisites because they're supposed to be rare, even among the already-exceptional. It's like giving everyone the ability to bench-press 20 tons. Previously that would be an insane superpower, but when it's expected it goes from 'you're so cool to have this!' to 'you're inferior if you don't'.

Should we rely on a change to server mechanics to enforce a paradigm shift for us, or should our incentive to increase our dump stats be going outside the norm? That's not a rhetorical question, but I've made it plain where I stand.

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Contents subject to change without warning, reason, necessity, or logical imperative.

Y'know, part of the reason I did what I did in the build form was specifically to help with this. I thought people might have an easier time building around their rp and back story if they had yard stick builds to compare. That way they didn't have to focus so much on the build itself; they could just move some abilities around or skills and call it a day.

In truth though, this isn't a problem that's really solvable, because enforcing negative ability RP is impossible. Kudos to the OP for paying attention to that, but it's still not done extremely often. Not because people are necessarily doing it on purpose, but more because it's an entirely grey area how to do it. There are a ton of ways to portray low wisdom and charisma. Intelligence, not so much, but those two are very widely interpreted.

In short, I dig on the ideas here, but it's not impossible to make a character without min maxing that has a very acceptable build. Even a barbarian. Of course, if you're making a character with decent wisdom or charisma, barbarian may not be the thing you're actually looking for. But, you do you, man.

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