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[Tawa]

Update: Everybody's good except for Immaterial (Looking at the changeling, I've decided it's not allowed, partly because I'm turning down Eberron stuff and partly because it's the exact kind of thing you'd be sent to kill without hesitation) and DwArfY, who hasn't actually posted a sheet.

[My Name is Immaterial]

Dissappointing, but okay. I'll figure out something else.

What tier is Wilder?

[Tawa]

* Tawarochir checks tiers

Not on the list. I'd guess roughly 3 or 4.

[My Name is Immaterial]

Okay, skill-monkey support bard is in the works.

[Tawa]

Bump.

PM'd DwArfY, he said he'd have it ready today. Immaterial, how's it coming?

[My Name is Immaterial]

Been busy. Tonight.

[Tawa]

Excellent.

[My Name is Immaterial]

I'm assuming that feat retraining is allowed.

Gerbo Stumbleduck Filchbatter Nackle.

Are we doing the infinite cantrips thing?

[Nerjin]

I hate gnomes... But anyways, can we NOT do the Infinite Cantrip thing?

[Flying Dice]

I honestly don't understand the resistance to Pathfinder-style cantrips. It's one of the more significant quality-of-life changes for a reason, as anyone who has ever played a caster in a low-level campaign knows. Not to mention that the Bard cantrip list is pretty short already; the closest they get to combat-useful cantrips are Flare and Daze.

Just speaking personally, but I don't want one or more party members to be standing around doing nothing but increasing the difficulty of encounters because they've already used their handful of spells/don't want to waste them when something more challenging might show up. It's boring and tedious for them to spend every turn saying, "I shoot and miss again with my [insert light ranged weapon here] -- or do nothing because I don't want to make untrained shots into melee," when they could be doing something useful. :|

Besides, it's technically not infinite; a caster can cast a maximum of 14400 cantrips per day, assuming they cast one every six seconds without rest, in which case they're going to have an awfully sore throat if there's a verbal component. Or, of course, using metamagic'd cantrips.

[Nerjin]

I dunno. From what I've heard [again, I'm going off what I've read about] a melee class [say a Fighter] can't do much at higher levels. THe low levels are their time to shine. Then it flips at around level 4 or so. Then Wizards just breeze through encounters. Fighters can't do much. *Shrug* I dunno, I figure that if you choose Wizard or Sorcerer for your starting class you should deal with the consequences of that.

Part of it, also, is my feeling that you should start of as weak as possible and work your way up to a total power house. If you start off as a weak little babby and then become a demigod... Well you'll appreciate it a lot more.

Granted, that's my peferred playstyle anyways. I was just giving my vote.

[Tawa]

Gnome looks good. ^{_{Enjoy your necrosis.}}

I, personally, like the infinite cantrips thing, because magicky-type classes suck at the lower levels. Considering that we have a bard as our sole core-magic casting class*, and bards' playstyle is basically beating people up and using the occasional (comparatively) cruddy spell in between ally buffs and using Charisma-based skills, unlimited cantrips won't affect us much. Besides, Prestidigitation and such is great for random stuff like roleplaying your character as being a guy who uses magic to get everyday problems out of the way or as an excuse to have something like 'magic tricks' or 'stage magician' for a Perform skill.

So yes.

^{_{*Unless the elusive DwArfY1 sheet is a sorcerer, for which unlimited cantrips basically means spamming Ray of Frost and Acid Blob (which isn't too bad and just makes them marginally more magicky)}}

-snip-

Have you looked at the 0-level spell lists? They certainly don't make you the demigod of magic at level 1. Unlike 1st level warriors, none of the spells can even one-shot average constitution commoners without spell damage minmaxing.

[Nerjin]

Well after thinking about it for a while I think I can better articulate what I mean. I'm not AGAINST it per se. I understand that they don't make you 'Unlimited Demigod' or whatever. Where I take a bit of issue with it is that it robs the non-casters of their Screen time. Essentially the martial classes [to my knowledge] start getting eclipsed by casters at around mid-level. So the lowest level is the time for martials to shine.

...

I realize that I've made this argument twice and both times were when I was a fighter... Hm... Sorta seems like I have a vested interest in this.

Eh, but since we do have unlimited cantrips I guess it doesn't matter too much.

[Tawa]

Screw it, I'm going to put up the IC thread. I'm giving DwArfY until Sunday to put up his sheet, I've been waiting a week by now.

[Flying Dice]

Nah. The casters you're really going to be worried about at high levels are wizards and CaDzilla. The latter is the one which directly eclipses martial classes by way of being better melee combatants than they are with a buffet of abilities besides. Wizards can at best indirectly compete for that role if they specialize in summoning -- though only some of the Summon Monster # spells are actually worthwhile. What makes wizards broken if optimized is that they trivialize a wide array of problems (Lost in the desert with no water? Need to scale a massive sheer cliff? Fallen off of an airship? Army of mooks to stop? Need to cover hundreds of miles in a race against time? BBEG has mountains of magical defenses? There's a spell for that.), rather than that they eclipse martial classes in terms of direct damage; a properly optimized martial class is always going to do more direct damage than even the best blaster-specced wizard. Which is why wizards are better off as buffers/debuffers, battlefield controllers, and utility. A way that it's commonly put is that the best wizards make their meatshields feel like gods, rather than visibly being a god themselves.

Now, granted, a high-level sorcerer with access to sufficient splatbooks (in particular the various Orb spells) can be a very good blaster. But a bard isn't the sort of thing you worry about in a discussion of primary casters -- and at any rate, a campaign which starts at 1st level is going to take a very, very long time to get to the point where primary casters become overwhelming.

And, as I've said before, even with unlimited use of their cantrips, a direct-damage arcane caster is at best going to be doing 1d3 damage per round, which is measurably less than just about anything else in the game. Even at 1st level they have better options than direct damage. Not to mention that unlimited prestidigitation is one of the most wonderful RP tools there is.