making lemonaide out of lemons

[LilithsThrall]

Not sure I agree fully with this; in my view it's mainly the unbalanced spells and the complex spell prereq system that makes the class problematic.

Considering the significant role that spells play for sorcerers, I don't think you can seperate and isolate them out like that.

 

[Clovenhoof]

By the way, LilithsThrall, do you play 1st or 2nd edition?

In 1st ed, the Defensive Blast is pretty damn powerful -- too powerful for most groups' liking. There's nothing in the rules that prevents using Opportunitistic Sacrifice for Defensive Blasting, so essentially you can just keep exploding until all enemies are burned.
(Most groups fixed this with houserules before 2nd ed came up)

 

[Spectator]

PLEASE DO NOT EVEN BRING UP DEFENSIVE BLAST.
Yes I know its in all caps.
WAy too much ink has been spent on that.
If anyone (GM) let their scholar play as an opp sacrificing scholar bomb, just cause the rules were unclear, then the GM needs his head examined.

As for 1st v. 2nd edition rules, my impression is the scholar class changed very little except for the DB clarification, right?

Again. I have to say the Class is unbalanced.
LT, just make some house rules as I suggested on page 6 of this thread.

 

[kintire]

I asked what would change your mind - what kind of evidence do you need that the sorcerer class sucks.
You replied (and repeated and bolded)
Quote:
Its completely canonical: There's hardly a spell cast in any of Howard's Conan tales that isn't in the rules.

Oh, delightful. A perfect example of quote mining. Of course, what I actually responded was:

The Scholar is fine. Its completely canonical

Two statements, of which you quoted only one. Of course, it might be that you thought that the two were one... if it hadn't been for all my previous posts.

So, I addressed those reasons.

But you utterly and totally didn't. You burbled on about a bunch of stuff you made up out of your own head. Shall we see?

Taken together, you imply that what makes the system so good is that every spell in the canon is in the rules,

No I don't. what I imply is what makes the Scholar canonically good is that every spell in the canon is in the rules. It is mechanically good for other reasons.

but you also insinuate that there is a great deal of room in which game mechanics can manuever and remain true to canon - there's more than one way to write the game mechanics and, yet, have every spell from canon exist in the game mechanics.

Actually, I don't say this at all, since the spell we were discussing, Lesser Ill Fortune, is one of the ones which is NOT in canon, thus changes to it have little canonical impact. However, I'll give you a break on this one, since I would actually agree with the statement.

Given that, I have no idea what your objection is to this discussion

Well, either that or you are ignoring it. I suppose I should assume good faith. Allow me to explain: my objection is that I disagree with this statement

Sorcerers suck. We all know it. The rules are atrocious and the class is woefully inadequate

and this one:

In any event, the end point is the same. The Sorcerer class sucks as a PC. It isn't balanced in any conceivable manner

And also, seperately, this one:

I'm with DaveNC, Clovenhoof and LilithsThrall. I find the idea of a sorcerer PC completely anti-Howard...

from herve, which you seemed to run with a bit later on.

this discussion isn't about changing the flavor of the Sorcerer (I've said this so many many times that I've been tempted to create a macro to repeat myself rather than retype it every single time over and over again ad nauseum).

Well, maybe you should stop using the macro button and actually read what people are saying. I know this discussion is not about changing the flavour of the class, and I've never said it is.

This discussion is about changing the game mechanics to better reflect the canon and improve playability.

Indeed it is. I see you can spot that there are two questions here. Stop confusing them.

So you've addressed my reasons for thinking the Scholar is mechanically balanced eh? And yet you haven't even mentioned the fact that a low level Scholar is mostly about skills not spells, a fact which changes as he rises in level. In fact, you have now twice ignored my reasons for believing the scholar mechanically balanced, in favour of pretending that my arguments the it reflects canon well are the sum total. Want me to post them again?

LilithsThrall, this has been pointed out before, but I'll do it again. The name of the class is "Scholar". It is NOT a DnD Wizard, with no important contribution to party success other than it's magic. The class has a list of handy class features, and a butt load of skill points, rivalled only by the thief. The spell casting is an optional class feature. It is perfectly possible to build a scholar with no magic at all.

As far as Lesser Ill Fortune goes it is a spell of usefull point power and massive versatility. It will reduce the target's every quality by 1, not just BAB. With a -1 to listen and spot you might not have to fight that soldier at all, and if you are seen he has a -1 to sense motive. Enemy diplomats have -1 to diplomacy, and merchants you are bartering with can have a -1 to bluff. It penalises saves in prepation for a followup spell or poison, and if you have a connection to the target it has no range limitation or line of sight requirement. And its duration is long enough that that -1 is actually likely to be decisive to a low level adversary on a couple of occasions.

Yes, its not going to defeat an enemy all by itself, but it is just one part of the Scholar's arsenal at level 1.

Or CSmallo's version?

What I am reading from you is that: in YOUR group, with YOUR GM, in YOUR campaign; the scholar doesn't work. In someone else's it will work just fine.

Set the campaign in a major city with lots of intrigue and very little combat, your barbarian is pretty much useless at best and is jailed and executed at worst.

Even in an outdoors "Wolves Across the Border" campaign, a scholar with no spells but the right skills can make a major contribution to party survival.

or Korppis'?

You were asking why "sorceror" was presented at the beginning of the book with other core classes and not at the end of the book with npc:s/monsters (like NPC-class commoner).
As far as i can see you have handled Scholar just as a barbarian or soldier with downgraded fighting potential and couple of spells... but scholars first and foremost duty in a team isn't as a front-line fighter killing the enemies side by side with barbarians and soldiers. Scholar is a class with either as many skill points as a thief (when beefed up with spellcasting abilities) or most skilled character in party (non-spellcasting scholar, trading sorcery styles on skill-boosting feats and advanced spells on extra skill points). Unless the games you are playing in are mostly hack'n slash á la old-school D&D with most of the focus on fighting against next monster DM throws against you and little focus on events outside of combat, scholar is a character who shines (together with noble who shines in social skills) mostly outside the combat encounters. Scholar has also alchemy and herbal skills as his class skills with lots of skill points to use on them so he is able to create those nasty (or helpful) poisons and potions. If that is the main focus of the scholar, why should he -also- be "balanced" to be equal in combat with other characters

.

I'll repeat myself. What kind of evidence do you need that the sorcerer class sucks?

Well, I'll repeat myself. Refute the above. Recognise and confront the fact that the Scholar is not only, or (especially at low levels) even mostly about magic. Then we'll see.

 

[LilithsThrall]

By the way, LilithsThrall, do you play 1st or 2nd edition?

In 1st ed, the Defensive Blast is pretty damn powerful -- too powerful for most groups' liking. There's nothing in the rules that prevents using Opportunitistic Sacrifice for Defensive Blasting, so essentially you can just keep exploding until all enemies are burned.
(Most groups fixed this with houserules before 2nd ed came up)

I play 2nd ed. DB was nerfed - substantially. They overshot and now its useless.
And this isn't the only change to the Sorcerer. As was mentioned earlier, Calm of the Adept now doesn't give you immunity to hypnotism (a fact which another poster, I forget who, said makes the spell practically useless).
There are other changes too.
All of which lead me to believe that one of the issues in this discussion is that we are talking about different editions. The people who think the Sorcerer is powerful are those playing 1st ed - where the Sorcerer is powerful. The people who think the Sorcerer is weak are those playing 2nd ed - where the Sorcerer is weak. First edition isn't the current edition, but, I believe, many people in this thread are treating it like it is.

By the way, I was told by my shop dealer that my order of Secrets of Skelos is coming in today. I really hope they fixed all the problems with the class.

 

[kintire]

I play 2nd ed. DB was nerfed - substantially. They overshot and now its useless.

Which one? You can't just say they are ALL useless. The Oriental Magic one is superb.

And this isn't the only change to the Sorcerer. As was mentioned earlier, Calm of the Adept now doesn't give you immunity to hypnotism (a fact which another poster, I forget who, said makes the spell practically useless).

Wrong. Its a useful buff spell which you can do well in advance, and recover the power from. And it no longer renders an entire college of magic utterly useless, which is a Good Thing.

The people who think the Sorcerer is powerful are those playing 1st ed - where the Sorcerer is powerful. The people who think the Sorcerer is weak are those playing 2nd ed - where the Sorcerer is weak. First edition isn't the current edition, but, I believe, many people in this thread are treating it like it is.

Speaking as a second edition player, I would like to say that the differences between the editions are extremely slight. The changes to defensive blast are by far the biggest.

 

[LilithsThrall]

Which one? You can't just say they are ALL useless. The Oriental Magic one is superb.

The Summoning one is too powerful, not really useless, I was going to come back and edit that last post to make a note of that, you beat me to it. The Oriental Magic one, however, is useless.

Wrong. Its a useful buff spell which you can do well in advance, and recover the power from. And it no longer renders an entire college of magic utterly useless, which is a Good Thing.

I don't really agree that the fact that giving immunity to hypnotism is a good thing, but all the buffs it gives are far too weak. They should start at the level they are at and then go up by level.

 

[Style]

This link could solve all our problems: http://hardeggs.ytmnd.com/

 

[throrII]

Can't we all just get along?????

This topic has completely broken down to a personal pi$$ing match between you two.

 

[Clovenhoof]

It also just comes to my mind that, in other roleplaying games, I had read the spells and often thought "Why the hell would anyone want that" or "What the frak is this spell good for". Then when I'd mention this in passing to a more seasoned player of the respective system, they'd say "No no, that spell is excellent, you need to [...]" or "That's for when you [...]" and suddenly it all made sense. I just was too unimaginative to think of a proper use.

 

[kintire]

Can't we all just get along?????

This topic has completely broken down to a personal pi$$ing match between you two.

Welcome to the internet :wink:

 

[LilithsThrall]

I got my copy of Secrets of Skelos last night. There's a great deal about the class that has been changed and I think people who thought the class was fine just the way it was will now be disappointed.
The class is more powerful now - substantially so. I fear that they may have made it too powerful, but I'm not sure yet. They didn't nerf the spells which were already too powerful. That's a shame.
I like the book. I mean, its not perfect, but I'd give it an "8" which is nearly three times as high a rating as I'd give sorcerers as they are in core. There are some rough edges. Some things just don't seem to 'click' for me yet. Like I said, I'm cautious about just how much they increased the sorcerer's power. But the content is very flavorful and, I think, as long as you are careful about what you add from it to your game, it'll be a welcome addition.