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Delnyn
Senior Scribe

USA
883 Posts

Posted - 26 Nov 2020 :  03:48:16  Show Profile Send Delnyn a Private Message  Reply with Quote  Delete Topic
Greetings again scribes,
I got to thinking about the shenanigans involving Divine Metamagic. One of the problems involved separate pools for allowed turn/rebuke/destroy/command attempts. This allowed clerics to apply Persist Spell to multiple protection/buff spells to somewhay cheesy degrees.

I propose having only one pool which allows multiple options in the same spirit as divinity feats. Channel Divinity was a rather welcome 4e innovation that allowed deity-specific options. These deity-specific options can be converted to 3.x ed. By default, clerics and paladins would get both turn undead and the deity-specific option at 1st level. Clerics of certain deities, especially elemental powers, may opt to trade turn undead for turn/rebuke (monster type) without having to select a domain that provides the relevant domain power.

I encourage anyone to share their concerns with this proposal. I have not attempted this proposal in my own game, so I plead ignorance if this has been attempted in your own campaigns already.

Diffan
Great Reader

USA
4425 Posts

Posted - 26 Nov 2020 :  15:38:40  Show Profile Send Diffan a Private Message  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by Delnyn

Greetings again scribes,
I got to thinking about the shenanigans involving Divine Metamagic. One of the problems involved separate pools for allowed turn/rebuke/destroy/command attempts. This allowed clerics to apply Persist Spell to multiple protection/buff spells to somewhay cheesy degrees.


Usually this was only achieved by taking multiple base classes that used their own separate pools of Undead turning (Clr 1, Pal 4, Dread Necro 1, etc) and it Only worked with Turn/Rebuke Undead. So your Cleric who took a Domain that added Turning Elementals or oozes or Lycanthropes didn't count towards using Divine Metamagic.

Still, the amount of ways of jacking up your Turn limits got ridiculous. Even when I limited Night Sticks so they didn't stack, Clerics were gaining excessive amounts of turn undead attempts. I even though about limiting Extra Turning, which I felt should only be taken once for each separate pool of turning you have (ie. they couldn't stack) unless you had multiple sources. Making Clerics dip 4 levels into Paladin could really wreck certain builds.


quote:
Originally posted by Delnyn

I propose having only one pool which allows multiple options in the same spirit as divinity feats. Channel Divinity was a rather welcome 4e innovation that allowed deity-specific options. These deity-specific options can be converted to 3.x ed. By default, clerics and paladins would get both turn undead and the deity-specific option at 1st level. Clerics of certain deities, especially elemental powers, may opt to trade turn undead for turn/rebuke (monster type) without having to select a domain that provides the relevant domain power.


Why not make it a feat they can just add to their existing options? That way they're not giving up their versatility but rather expending resources (a feat) for an option that may or may not come up very often? For example, Clerics of Selūne still hate undead creatures, they just hate evil Lycanthropes more. Having the ability to grab a feat that will affect Lycans at a later level sounds good, while still having the versatility of affecting Undead (which crops up more often at lower levels).

Second thing about this is that the game design was slightly skewed to different lengths with 4th Edition. The notion was that you had several combats in a day, which you could recoup certain amounts of your power (ie. Encounter powers) that isn't necessarily represented to large degrees in 3.5 (Tome of Battle was a good source, but outside of this not much). In 3.5 the idea is that you have to pool your resources for the long haul (between 8-hr rests) and once you were out, well tough luck. Do you plan to address this difference? Is it even needed? If I have a Paladin 6 of Torm with Channel Divinity (Turn Undead, Torm's Justice) and I grabbed Divine Might as my 6th level feat (free action, spend 1 turn attempt to add CHA bonus to weapon damage rolls 1 round). How does that work? That seems like a rather poor feat for 1/round boost when - as a normal 3.5 Paladin - I could do that 3+ times a day or even more times in one important battle.

You might have to adjust some of the Divine Feats that syphon off Turn Attempts to be better overall because of the notion that you get it 1/encounter. And I'd say you could convert the 4E ones, but if you are then I'd take the really bad ones (like Torm's Judgement - for example) and make them better.

Otherwise, I find the proposal very intriguing. I like that you can't spam Divine Metamagic like a crazed fool and pump up Divine Power and Righteous Might for 24-hour durations AND still get some uses of your Turning against undead or use it for Divine Might attacks or even to Quicken spells. That was one Cleric I played back in the day, had 12 uses of Turn Undead that I used to quicken up to 2 spells a day for free at 9th level. I felt that was just too broken but it was with RAW rules.

Couple of Questions: Do you plan on using Encounters as a source of regaining abilities like the Tome of Battle does (wording for how to do this in 3.5 is in there) and does it reset after 5 minutes (like in 4E) or 1 Hour (like in 5E)? And this will affect how you handle feats like Divine Metamagic. Also, how do you handle the feat Divine Metamagic specifically? Even if you limit it to using one of your Channel Divinities, if you spam a 24-hr buff what happens when you eventually get back your Channel Divinity?

My idea is that you keep Encounter powers like 3.5 Tome of Battle (1/battle or 5 minutes) and honestly just remove Divine Metamagic completely OR use it like the Sudden Metamagic feats and they can only be used 1/day. So sure you can regain multiple uses of your Channel Divinity but you can only use Divine Metamagic 1/day (that goes for Persist Spell, Quicken Spell, Empower Spell, etc.) Are you still getting a 24-hr buff? Sure, but at least it's not multiple per day and you're still required to meet all the prerequisites for those feats.

quote:
Originally posted by Delnyn

I encourage anyone to share their concerns with this proposal. I have not attempted this proposal in my own game, so I plead ignorance if this has been attempted in your own campaigns already.


I hoped I helped here bring about some ideas while voicing some concerns about how to apply this to your 3.5 games. And if you want we can continue converting 4E Channel Divinities to 3.5 on this thread so we have one cohesive area to view them?
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Delnyn
Senior Scribe

USA
883 Posts

Posted - 26 Nov 2020 :  19:13:45  Show Profile Send Delnyn a Private Message  Reply with Quote
The 1/day use of Divine Metamagic sounds more amenable to my campaigns than using encounter powers (but see below). Clerics and paladins get turn undead/channel divinity replenished when they pray for spells.

My understanding was Divine Metamagic requires 1 turn attempt plus one for each level of metamagic enhancement. So a Persist Spell would require 7 not 6 turn attempts for one spell. As a houserule, I also made clerics take the appropriate metamagic feat to be able to incorporate the effect via Divine Metamagic. If I use the 1/day limit as you mentioned, I would be very willing to weliminate that houserule.

I certainly would keep divinity feats to allow for more options.

Converting 4E Channel Divinity to 3.5 use is appealing. With all I said before, I would scale power of deity-specific channel divinity features as if they were encounter powers.
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Diffan
Great Reader

USA
4425 Posts

Posted - 26 Nov 2020 :  20:22:01  Show Profile Send Diffan a Private Message  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by Delnyn

The 1/day use of Divine Metamagic sounds more amenable to my campaigns than using encounter powers (but see below). Clerics and paladins get turn undead/channel divinity replenished when they pray for spells.


So once per day they get to replenish their turn/CD? Or can they do this more often in a day?

quote:
Originally posted by Delnyn

My understanding was Divine Metamagic requires 1 turn attempt plus one for each level of metamagic enhancement. So a Persist Spell would require 7 not 6 turn attempts for one spell. As a houserule, I also made clerics take the appropriate metamagic feat to be able to incorporate the effect via Divine Metamagic.


Correct, it's 1 + spell level increase. So a Quickened Spell takes 5 turn attempts, Persist takes 7. Empower takes 3. Etc. Further, the Errata suggests that you need the appropriate feat before you can add DMM to it. So you'll need Extend Spell then Persistent Spell, and THEN DMM [persist] to use it.

quote:
Originally posted by Delnyn

If I use the 1/day limit as you mentioned, I would be very willing to weliminate that houserule.
I would still keep it. Being able to persist a spell of 4th level and higher is ridiculous.

quote:
Originally posted by Delnyn

I certainly would keep divinity feats to allow for more options.

Converting 4E Channel Divinity to 3.5 use is appealing. With all I said before, I would scale power of deity-specific channel divinity features as if they were encounter powers.



That makes sense.
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Delnyn
Senior Scribe

USA
883 Posts

Posted - 29 Nov 2020 :  17:34:58  Show Profile Send Delnyn a Private Message  Reply with Quote
I looked at the 4E version of Torm's Justice in 4E Forgotten Realms Player's Guide, page 137. If we keep the 1/encounter premise, here is my proposed 3.5ed conversion:

Effect: You gain a +2 morale bonus to melee weapon attack rolls against all enemies within reach until the end of the encounter.

At 11th class (not character) level, increase morale bonus to +3; melee weapon attacks bypass damage reduction as good and lawful aligned.

At 21st class level, increase morale bonus to +4; melee weapon attacks bypass cold iron and silver damage reduction.

All effects are supernatural abilities.

On some reflection after my earlier posts on this topic, I would require the player to take a divinity feat rather than grant for free. If possible, I would also like to make such features scale with class level. Feedback would be appreciated. I have never attempted such a revision at my gaming table, so any advance warning would prevent a session wreck.

EDIT: Specified melee weapon attacks for Effect.

Edited by - Delnyn on 01 Dec 2020 00:50:23
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Diffan
Great Reader

USA
4425 Posts

Posted - 30 Nov 2020 :  14:28:16  Show Profile Send Diffan a Private Message  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by Delnyn

I looked at the 4E version of Torm's Justice in 4E Forgotten Realms Player's Guide, page 137. If we keep the 1/encounter premise, here is my proposed 3.5ed conversion:

Effect: You gain a +2 morale bonus against all enemies within reach until the end of the encounter.

At 11th class (not character) level, increase morale bonus to +3; melee attacks bypass damage reduction as good and lawful aligned.

At 21st class level, increase morale bonus to +4; melee attacks bypass cold iron and silver damage reduction.

All effects are supernatural abilities.


Interesting take. You might want to clarify that the Morale bonus is to weapon attack rolls (which isn't listed, I just inferred) unless you want it to apply to other things too - sort of like how the Pathfinder 1e Paladin gains a bonus to AC/Attacks/Damage vs. Smite opponent.

Also, it's a lot better than just a minor bonus against already weakened foes (also, not exactly "knightly" either IMO).

quote:
Originally posted by Delnyn

On some reflection after my earlier posts on this topic, I would require the player to take a divinity feat rather than grant for free. If possible, I would also like to make such features scale with class level. Feedback would be appreciated. I have never attempted such a revision at my gaming table, so any advance warning would prevent a session wreck.



There's a lot one can do, and draw upon for references. For example I always found looking at Pathfinder 1E as a good direct go-to fix in certain circumstances. There, Paladins and Clerics draw from a pool to hurt undead. Unfortunately it's a full-system overhall of everything, which can also be daunting in it's own right.

One thing is that you can sort of do both - a Turn Unead Pool like 3.5 does AND add on a separate system that utilizes Channel Divinity in it's own separate "sphere" if you will. There are a lot of Prestige Classes that add their own elements into the mix on-top of what you can already achieve. For example, the Mage of the Arcane Order (Complete Arcane, pg. 48) has their own spellpool they can do things with. What about something similar for Clerics except it's called Channel Divinity and it's a series of Feats (think Combat Form feats for the Fighter). These allow you to draw upon the well of faith for certain affects and there are Deity-specific ones too.

If that's a bit too convoluted (and it is, in-depth mechanically), then simply adding Channel Divinity as a feat that draws power from itself in a form of 1/encounter powers is just as good. These can be worked similar to Skill Tricks (needing so many ranks in Skill X, Y, Z) to perform 1/encounter abilities. Channel Divinity works in similar fashion.
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