- The designers got more experienced as the game went on. The classes in Core are not equally powerful, and e.g. fighters do not make the best leaders or guards like their flavour text claims they do (a bard or sorcerer gains more benefit from the Leadership feat due to being Charisma-focused, and fighters don't have Listen/Search/Spot as class skills or any way to divert damage). Splatbooks are generally better about this.
- Full casters who choose the right spells are more powerful than a non-caster could ever imagine ("One can summon angels, the other rides a BMX..."). Casters who don't choose the right spells are meh, and casters with fixed spell lists (warmage, beguiler and dread necromancer) are decent. To a lesser extent non-casters also vary in power depending on build choices, though the classes from Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords hardly vary at all; since they're about in the middle of the power range this can lead to them seeming overpowered in inexperienced groups. Oh, and psionics users are stronger than most, but weaker than normal casters; just remember you can't spend more pp on a power than your manifester level. The tier system provides a more in-depth look at this, though it does not account for player skill/optimisation.
- Damage isn't everything. A barbarian who deals 1 million damage with a greataxe is useless against enemies who can fly. A charm person spell can defeat an enemy instantly, and is useful outside combat too. Hindering or weakening your enemies makes them easier to kill. This is related to the previous point, since spellcasters have far more options than direct damage, while non-casters have a harder time attaining them (See this list? All of those are spells).
- There are more types of people in the world than "knight in shining armor", "savage axe-wielder", etc. Your class is not your identity, it's just what you can do (just ask Miko). You decide what your abilities look like, what you call yourself, and so on. "Barbarian" is not something anyone would refer to themselves as, nor is every tribesman a member of the barbarian class or vice versa. Sir Lancelot was a barbarian, because his fighting style was savage (and that is what the class truly represents); another barbarian might be a guy possessed by a demon, who rages by letting it take over. Likewise Gandalf was a paladin with a ring of elemental commmand, not a wizard (good combat ability, aura of courage, minor healing, effective against evil beings, special mount, check). Before you say you want to play a monk, compare your concept with the monk's abilities, not its description, and ask if it might be better represented by a swordsage or even the Improved Unarmed Strike feat (the answer is usually yes).
- Multiclassing is nothing to be afraid of; not every concept fits exactly into one class (which is why hardly anyone uses those XP penalty rules). Multiclassing can generally improve the power/versatility of a non-caster if used creatively, but with diminishing returns the stronger the class was to begin with; in particular, multiclassing into or out of a full casting class will cripple most characters (even if you multiclass two casters - a cleric 5/wizard 5 is much weaker than a wizard 10, and even a cleric 3/wizard 3/mystic theurge 4 isn't as strong as it appears).
- The game is extremely different at different levels. Low-level play usually depends as much on luck as your own abilities. High-level play has a higher number of things that can kill you instantly or negate your abilities, and assumes you have ways to counter this (aka "rocket tag"). Also, lv20 does not mean "best in the world", at least not in the realistic sense. Michael Phelps and Simo Häyhä are lv6-7; an lv21 character can theoretically destroy a planet. More on this in the article Calibrating Your Expectations.
- The D&D rules focus more on simulation than telling a story. That doesn't mean you can't tell a story, it just means that if you do something that would be stupid in real life (like trying to fight a powerful enemy by yourself, or sneak past guards when you don't have any particular knack for stealth) then you generally can't rely on plot armour to save you (though the lethality of the game varies heavily depending on the DM). If the DM asks "Are you sure?", he usually means "If you do this you will die."
- Alignment causes a lot of headaches, particularly when DMs and players disagree on what a particular alignment means - if you think this may come up then please, don't play a paladin unless you're a masochist. Remember that like class, alignment is not a straitjacket - don't think "my character keeps his word because he's lawful", think "my character is lawful because he keeps his word". Being Evil does not mean you do cruel things for no reason, being Chaotic is not the same thing as being insane, Lawful does not mean "follows the law" (it just means you like things orderly), and Good characters are compassionate but not necessarily naive. TVTropes has a good summary of what the alignments mean and what they don't mean.
- Magic items are as much a part of your character's abilities as their class features. Moreso, in fact, since apart from exotic races and the occasional obscure feat, they're the only way non-casters can gain vital abilities like flight and immunity to those instant-death effects (summary here). The game isn't balanced around characters who have only half their abilities, so if you want to run a "low magic" campaign then make sure you use only non-caster NPCs as enemies (no monsters) so that everyone is penalised equally. Because without a magic sword, a level 100 fighter will lose to a level 2 allip every time.
- Videogames have healing spells that can restore someone to full health in one go. D&D does not. Heal and mass heal are good, but otherwise healing in combat is generally a waste of an action (and the Healer class is the weakest full caster by far). Save the healing for downtime. See here for more details.
- Tanks in the sense of high-hp/high-defence characters just don't work. Enemies have an actual intelligence controlling them, so in normal circumstances they won't attack a non-threatening hard-to-kill guy when a highly threatening easy-to-kill one is standing right next to him. If you want to tank, play a crusader (when you attack it heals your allies, you can inflict penalties on people who attack them) or knight (can grab aggro, WoW-style). Otherwise, pick up a reach weapon and use Improved Trip + Combat Reflexes + feats with Combat Reflexes as a prerequisite (whenever anyone comes near you, knock them down); spiked chains are famous for this since they threaten as both reach and non-reach weapons at once, but this is mainly to avoid paying for multiple magic weapons - you can still attack adjacent enemies with gauntlets or armor spikes even if your hands are full.
- Mobility/gaining lots of actions is highly desirable. You can't move and full attack in the same round, but moving up to an enemy and attacking once will let him full attack you on his next turn (casters can move and still cast 1-2 spells... yay
). This is one of the monk class's many "things that look awesome but are actually useless", since they can't combine fast movement with flurry of blows. One level of barbarian with the lion totem substitution level (from Complete Champion, not the SRD ability with the same name) is the easiest way to gain Pounce, which lets you make a full attack as part of a charge - this is something that all characters should have been able to do anyway. If your PC isn't good at charging, Travel Devotion from the same book is a good alternative - take one level of cleric and trade in your Travel domain for it; you can now move your speed as a swift action. On a related note, Flyby Attack is better than Spring Attack+Ride-by Attack+Shot on the Run combined, while also having fewer prerequisites (yes you can use magic items to meet prerequisites). - Don't get wowed by attacks with lots of damage dice. 10d6 means you deal an average of 35 damage (and rarely much more or less, since it's a bell curve). You could deal 60 damage, but it's just as likely you'll deal 10 damage.
- At-will abilities like the warlock's eldritch blast are not inherently overpowered (normal attacks are also at-will, after all), and they reduce bookkeeping significantly. When a character with limited resources (generally spells for a caster, hp for a non-caster) runs low, he can just reset them by resting anyway. Access to at-will healing reduces downtime and can startle DMs who haven't seen it before, but ultimately it's not that significant outside of gauntlet runs.
- A lot of your enemies are very big; if you want to bull rush/trip/grapple them then you'll have to be very big as well (seriously, size bonuses to those checks are huge). It's also helpful for increasing your reach if you rely on reach weapons. The Powerful Build ability possessed by races like half-giant and goliath helps, as do magic items which increase your size; psychic warriors can eventually grow by two size categories using expansion, meaning a half-giant psychic warrior can make himself effectively Gargantuan. Plus, note that anyone under a freedom of movement effect can't be grappled.
- Wielding a single weapon in two hands and charging is the most effective fighting style - it grants the highest damage without investment, gains the most benefit from Power Attack, and can grow to insane levels by stacking charge-based feats and things like Leap Attack/Shock Trooper/Combat Brute. Two-Weapon Fighting requires heavy feat investment and doesn't deal a lot of damage; a dual-wielder must take advantage of his superior number of attacks by relying on effects which add damage to each attack, like sneak attack and the flaming weapon property. Wielding a weapon in one hand and nothing in the other is entirely pointless (if you're worried about having a free hand for casting, don't; you can hold a two-handed weapon in one hand while you cast, and it's a free action to change your grip like that). Shields also require a lot of investment to use, so wielding a sword and shield (which is one-handed or two-weapon fighting and shield use) isn't worth it; using a shield on its own, Captain-America-style, can work, but only if you choose your feats carefully.
- Exotic weapons are rarely worth it, outside of a few exceptions. Monkey Grip isn't worth it, since (-2 attack/+1 damage/can't be turned off) is far inferior to Power Attack's (-X attack/+2X damage/X is any value including zero)... and you don't need a feat just to say your weapon is big, greatswords are big already. The only place Oversized Two-Weapon Fighting is useful is the D&D MMO, and that's only because so many magic longswords appear in drops.
- Alertness (or any +2/+2 skill feat), Combat Expertise, Dodge, Great Fortitude, Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes, Point Blank Shot, Skill Focus, Toughness, Weapon Focus and a few other feats are extremely weak, but are commonly used as prerequisites. There are a few feats which count as them for the purposes of prerequisites (mainly in Tome of Battle and Magic of Incarnum), having a familiar grants Alertness as a bonus feat, and the otyugh hole magical location grants Iron Will.
- If you want to play a monster, beware - most Level Adjustments are massively overpriced (remember that both Level Adjustment and Racial Hit Dice count towards your effective level, because the designers seemed to have trouble with it). Even if you find something that's a decent tradeoff, having HD lower than the rest of the party makes you vulnerable to anti-mook spells like blasphemy and cloudkill, and makes an ogre barbarian squishier than a human barbarian. As a rule of thumb you should never play a race with racial HD, or a race/template combination with level adjustment greater than +2. The LA buyoff variant is also worth looking at.
- Pathfinder classes are generally an improvement balance-wise if brought into a 3.5e game (especially its version of paladin
), but Pathfinder has a lot of hidden nerfs to the mechanics they rely on (such as the fighter needing two feats to gain a weaker version of 3.5e's Improved Trip, and rogues having fewer opportunities to sneak attack), making non-casters weaker overall in pure PF.
« Last Edit: April 16, 2012, 07:58:41 PM by Prime32 »
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