Forum:SGT Madness

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This post is to address two things: 1) SGT issues. 2) Balance point issues in general.

I'm going to talk about the second point first. It's clear to me that we cannot go on like this with balance points. It's become way too polarized and too many feelings are being hurt. When we're talking about people who are doing stuff for fun, that's bad. That's really bad. At this point, I really think it would be better if the author just set the balance point and that was it. Their opinion could be changed through a reasonable argument, but they'd be the ones who have to change the point itself. That's not great, but I think it's better than authors getting pissed off. Which is, quite honestly, the last thing I want. The wiki survives at all through a flow of new contributions, and if authors get pissed off then that flow of new contributions dries up. So whatever we do, authors not getting pissed off needs to be the #1 point.

I think we're small enough and have reasonable enough people that this can work. If in the future it becomes clear that it doesn't, policy can be changed.

Now let me talk about #1. It's become clear over the past year (this is approaching our one year anniversary) that the SGT is a bit too generic when it comes to items. For this matter I propose the following item rule additions to the SGT:

• You get the Big Six, plus two sets of three spell potions each (as in, if you choose a spell you get three such potions).
• You can give up some element of the Big Six for an equivalent-cost item (lesser than or equal to).

This should deal with a lot of nagging item issues in the SGT.

So, there is my proposal. I'd like comments on this. Surgo 19:32, August 6, 2010 (UTC)

Leziad pointed out to me that a lot of different endless money loops exist, and not all of them require being a wizard. With this fact in mind, I think any such loop should be avoided in discussing the balance of anything. Surgo 19:35, August 6, 2010 (UTC)

I for one, think we should take a more flexible approach of balance points. One thing to remember is that all classes are made with a different game design philosophy, and we have no stated balanced game template or anything the author can relate to when balancing his class but the SGT. As Surgo pointed the SGT got a few issues, I will address this later in my post. I strongly believe each authors should still have to answer to a "higher authority" because reason is not a gift given to all, but instead of forcing a balance level upon a class we could simply add another parameter in the author template like "Balance level Questioned: yes/no" but that would be a little invasive imo.

The thing I want to avoid is drowning new authors in page of advanced debate, I don't think I would be here if I had such welcome at the beginning of my homebrewer career (and god know my old stuff suck). When it come to game design, we have seen many times taht some people cannot agreed together and the discussion quickly stretch on for pages. Maybe we could add game philosophy or similar on the author template,such as "Tome Games", "Grimoire Games". Right now that idea is terrible and I should feel terrible (I do not), however maybe the community can make something of it?

As for the SGT, I agree with Surgo rules change. I can explain why later if I need. --Leziad 20:07, August 6, 2010 (UTC)

Regarding SGT changes, they look basically fine though I'd like clarification on what the "big six" are. I'd like to suggest that classes with UMD on their class list be able to simply treat one challenge in an SGT10+ as a sure win and otherwise ignore it (it's not big enough at level 5 to work reliably, but we could maybe allow them to treat one challenge as a toss-up and otherwise ignore it). UMD adds lots of flexibility to lots of challenges and will boost results in play, but since it's a horribly gear dependent thing it's really hard to model. This just ignores those issues and raises the classes average by a set amount. Ghostwheel's made the point that anyone can have UMD with some items and cross class ranks, but I think that's so unlikely in an actual game that we can reasonably ignore it and this works as a fair approximation. Simply ignoring or hiding it under the gear restrictions proposed won't do us any favors in gauging class power though, it needs to be in here somewhere.

On balance levels, I'm not in agreement with you on the "author sets the balance point and that's it" thing. I really don't like making people change them, but if balance levels are going to mean anything they need to be somewhat consistent. That's somewhat hard to do with the broad balance levels that we want, but if the community calls something balanced wrong in sufficient numbers (which is one of the reasons I wanted to stack the vote against the guy calling for it) then we need to go with it. The rule as it stands is done in such a way that it's the community requesting the change, even though one guy has to get annoyed with discussion enough to push it that far. I know it can lead to hurt feelings, but I think I'd rather have some hurt feelings and balanced material than happy fun time and not in line stuff. Besides, we already have one of the strictest image policies of any wiki I've seen and an incomplete template that frustrates people, arguments over balance and getting it forcibly changed seem down the line in things that annoy new contributors.

If we get the SGT thing better sorted out I'd be happy to move balance levels into a more solidly SGT related way and use that as a force for change. But I think removing any force for change dilutes the balance levels sufficiently that we might as well just be rid of them. - TarkisFlux 20:39, August 6, 2010 (UTC)

I support Leziads Philosophy-compatibility idea, but I think it solves a completely different problem than the one we're dealing with here. There are more than a few new mechanics in any complete fix, so things built on them will reference the new mechanics. For instance, my Elemental Brute (3.5e Class) has a major ability that doesn't do anything unless you're playing with the advanced combat rules in Races of War (3.5e Sourcebook). Having something as "This is built for Tome games" "This is built for Grimiore games" or even "This is built for Pathfinder games" if people write anything for that and so on will clarify what set of new mechanics it's supposed to plug into, and, for the former two, what balance point it's supposed to try to hit. The only issue with that is that we'd need to keep a manually-updated Design Types page, but since it only needs to be updated with philosophy statements for new major projects (and kept up-to-date when the philosophy changes), that's not much work at all. Going through and updating everything with their design philosophy might be, but for the Tomes at least we've been using categories for that.

I like the fixed-items idea. The Big Six are Weapon, Armor, Offhand (Weapon/Shield), Cloak of Resistance, Stat Increaser, and Other AC Booster (Protection, Natty armor, whatever), correct? All of them are pure bonus items unless you're trading out plusses? What bonus do your items have at the various SGT levels?

What TarkisFlux said also makes sense. Use Magic Device can easily be a wildcard win (pick one challenge and auto-win it). Cross-classing UMD can be ignored safely, since any real build will acquire enough minor tricks as they play to perform better than an artificial SGT build; cross-class ranks in UMD can be stuck in that list of minor tricks. Also, like he said, if we have a way to empirically determine balance points, we should empirically determine balance points rather than rely on guesswork and persuasion. Possibly even put in a guideline that if you're new and don't have much of an eye for balance points, leave it blank, slap an assistance request on it, and someone will eventually come by to give you a balance point, rather than even asking people to guess.

Also, are we ever going to do anything regarding completing the balance point system for 4e? As it is, it's a stub with the name of one tier and no way to do any empirical balance? At that point, you might as well get rid of it. Is the name of the tier even up-to-date? Is Righteous Brand still any good, or did it get nerfed? --IGTN 01:40, August 7, 2010 (UTC)

Correct--basically the things apart from some of the standardized ability boosts on this table. Magic weapon, armor, resistance, natural armor, deflection, and ability boost. That said, I think the whole SGT needs to be redone with each challenge being able to be beaten around 50% of the time with one's own power for some of the rogue-level classes.

Let's actually discuss one of the rogue-level classes--namely the rogue. In "real" games, the rogue rarely pops for either Perfect TWF at level 10 or the ring of blink (I've actually never seen either of them taken by a rogue for the purposes discussed on the board). In... well, almost a decade now, I've never seen it happen. That's not saying it doesn't, but I don't think it should be the standard for "what rogues can do". In fact, I've also rarely seen rogues actually use UMD apart from out-of-battle healing with the party's wand of lesser vigor. However, what the rogue *does* do often is have flanking buddies and ways to move around quickly, kinda like the mobile blender does. Now, let's looks at a rogue that's actually built for the SGT, one who's meant to win on his own in 1v1 fights and do so decently.

In fact, it won't even be a straight rogue. (NOTE: If mechanical tech-talk bores, skip to the next break-paragraph.) Rogue 8 / Swordsage 2 works, picking up Shadow Blade, Cloak of Deception, Burning Blade, and Flashing Sun along with Shadow Jaunt to GTFO of grapples. Assuming the table above (I know it's not canon, but just for example), we have two +1 Shocking short swords, 28 Dexterity after ability bosts and racial (we're a halfling), and our armor will be something like 10 (base) + 1 (small) + 6 (dex) + 7 (mithral chain shirt) + 2 (deflection) + 2 (natural armor) + 6 (wisdom) = 37 AC, which isn't bad for a squishy level 10 character. Attack is going to look like 9 (Dex) + 7 (BAB) + 1 (Magic) - 2 (TWF) + 1 (Size) = +16/+16/+11/+11, which is enough to hit fairly reliably most of the monsters. Base damage is 1d4+1 (sword) + 9 (Shadow Blade) + 6d6 (SA + Assassin's Stance) for 1d4+6d6+9 per attack.

But what about our actual attacks? Let's assume for a moment that we win init, get a surprise round to get close to our enemy, and screw them over in melee while they're still denied dex to AC. Flashing Sun + Burning Blade gives us +14/+14/+14/+9/+9 each dealing 1d4+6d6+9+1d6+6 or 42 damage on average with every attack. When weighted against the bebilith's AC, this does exactly 105 damage on average--not bad for a solo rogue, eh? Next round finish them off with a distracting ember or cloak of deception and a full attack. (EDIT: Forgot weapon focus and shocking enhancement in there, damage will be slightly higher.) However, we might hit a lot more and finish it in one round. Or he might spot us and then we have a slightly harder fight on our hands. Or he might grapple us and we could try to Shadow Jaunt out of reach (and we have a decent chance of being missed with our high AC). In short, the fight comes out almost perfect to a 50/50 chance of winning depending on specific circumstances and rolls.

My point with all this tech-talk is that the straight rogue isn't really worthy of the SGT. Even with a with an autowin, without the ring of blink/eversmoking bottle+blindfold of true darkness/other third-party additions it's not going to pass the SGT. But that's because it's not meant to. It's meant to be a team player who full attacks in melee while flanking. However, it can be turned into a solo-er with a little help, and we're still keeping the build 80% rogue. But we don't need to resort to things like UMD to do so when the basic tools are there for us without having to delve into abilities that are completely up to DM fiat rather than what comes part and parcel with the class. Along with that, we should revise the challenges. Take a look at the dragon, for instance; most rogue-level classes don't have an innate ability at level 10 to fly. By being cheesy as hell, the dragon could make strafing attacks out of range until the character dies without being hit. Rather than making the ability to fly be a gimmick that one must have to pass the dragon (you must be this high to beat this encounter...), we should remove that encounter. The fact that most rogue-level classes don't have the innate ability to fly *gives us an indication that the dragon might not be a good challenge for the SGT*. On the other hand, the troll encounter is for the most part laughable. Any rogue-level character worth his salt will either deal enough damage to knock a few trolls out every round, or not be hit at all. It's there just to be another "you must be this high" where monk- and fighter-level characters fail. Rather than having both these encounters and one being an autowin and one being an autolose for most rogue-level characters without non-class-abilities help ("balancing" each other out in a bad way when it comes to the final tally), we should replace both with encounters that a number of rogue-level characters fail ~50% of the time.

By taking away stupid auto-win/lose encounters and designing a rogue that's actually created to be able to challenge the SGT instead of resorting to third-party, DM-fiat, seldom-seen-in-games tricks, I think we could have a much more balanced SGT that will fulfill its role in a far more cogent fashion.

Oh, and I don't think rogue-level classes can in general go into infinite money loops without wizard-level help in the form of scrolls or items. I don't see a rogue, warblade, crusader, swordsage, psychic warrior, or duskblade getting infinite money just on their own class abilities even at level 20 without third-party/extraneous help. Rather than contributions from items, I think the SGT should focus on class levels--and rogue-level classes usually have more than enough tricks to fare well against equal-level challenges. (I could show you the same above with most of the classes mentioned above, I think, without the need for any items beyond the Big Six.) --Ghostwheel 10:53, August 7, 2010 (UTC)

Addendum: Cid mentioned on the channel that if the dragon's wings were simply clipped it would solve a lot of the issues, and I think I agree. The fight would still be a hard one for the above rogue, but I think it might come fairly close to 50/50 with the right tactics. Could "fix" that encounter simply by assuming that the encounter takes place in a low cave or that the dragon is unable to fly. --Ghostwheel 14:18, August 7, 2010 (UTC)