Talk:Wood Wanderers (3.5e Race)

Question

+40 Wisdom is a typo, no? -- Jota 16:57, 19 June 2009 (MDT)

Nope Jota it's meant to give over 50 wisdom at level 6. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.24.78.28 (talk • contribs) . Please sign your posts.

I can't tell if that's sarcasm or not, but some people put up some crazy shit here. I can only ask, in the nicest way I can, whether it's a typo or whether the owner enjoys breaking the game. -- Jota 19:00, 19 June 2009 (MDT)

No, I intended that wisdom to be so high. If you think the level adjustment is not enough, please change it to a more suitable number. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 99.242.210.65 (talk • contribs) . Please sign your posts.

+40 Wisdom adds +20 to Will save DCs for druids and clerics. You go from makable saves (DC 19 for a fourth level spell, assuming 13th level and 20 Wisdom) to game-breaking saves (an 8th level wood wanderer druid with a Wisdom of 60 would have the same save be DC 39). So to contrast, a 13th level paladin built for making Fortitude saves might get to +15 (8 base, 3 Cha, 2 Con, 2 or so item), which means he still needs to roll a 23 to make the save. No way. My brother was looking over my shoulder and threw out 15 LA, which, granted, was not calculated from anything concrete, but my point is simply that there's no way to balance an ability score discrepancy like that. You say 5, he says 15; it just cannot work. If you made it +6 Wisdom bonus, maybe +3 LA would work. I'm not really good with LA, but that doesn't seem too broken to me. -- Jota 13:47, 20 June 2009 (MDT)

Of LA and Wisdom

I guess there isn't any way to put it other than "bad design". That said, the problem is fixable if the design philosophy here is both explained and rethought. High LA is bad in general. Gaining special powers (or in this case, high ability scores) rarely is able to balance out for the loss of HD, saves, class abilities (in this case, spells and wild shape with its favored class of druid), BAB, max skill ranks, and everything else that comes with leveling up. The super-high Wisdom doesn't make this race balanced with any LA, its always going to suffer from those problems. When that Wisdom comes into play into the game, its just going to throw off the balance of everything else as well. With the automatic +20 on the DCs of all spells, a player with a base score of 18 ends up with a Wisdom of 58. A great wyrm gold dragon has a 32-33 Wisdom in comparison.

Now, why does this race (that is apparently a human with some sort of Template applied that makes it a race according to the descriptive text) require such a high Wisdom? Because a high Wisdom is totally radical for druids, so, the higher the better? No, that's bad in this case. Its just too much. The race needs a common grounds of gaining a bonus and not having a high LA to make it playable. Any LA that this race is given at the moment won't work and will never be balanced in any game of DnD. Sorry to have to be the guy to say it, but its true.

Just to round out the comment here, the languages should be spelled out for what they are for each area instead of having to make people guess. Also, why is an ability like Supreme Morality even listed? It offers no mechanics to punish a player for attacking, and seems to be infact purely roleplaying pigeonholing. This is also bad, the race should provide a guideline for how to make a character of a race, not try to force them into a personality. Fix that.

Good luck with everything. There is potential here, but it needs some work. --Ganteka 11:42, 20 June 2009 (MDT)

I wouldn't quite call it a 'race', but I'm seeing all your points. Should've mulled this over in my head a few extra days. Well, what's the next step?

Wisdom fixed!

All right, wisdom's set to a reasonable level.

Truth be told, I didn't put the wisdom that high for the druid skills. I set it so high so that a) you could never sneak up on this guy b) you could never fool this guy c) this guy could get along in the wild no problem

But I guess a +10 bonus is sufficient for all that, no?

You guys are really good at this. Would you mind taking a look at my Mountain Giant race? I feel confident in it, but.....wouldn't hurt, right?