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This thread is really just a place to jot down ideas and to toss them around until they are ready for running.

Right now, the CoCo has a character design challenge for Gladius each fall (September/October time frame), but I would like to have a spring or summer offering as well. We did a map competition earlier last year which worked out real well (adding one map to Gladius and one to Sagaris).

Feel free to suggest something for the character design contest (as a theme or general idea) or to suggest something completely different.

Story / creative writing (which is often an element of the design contests, or has been, in the past, but could be free standing - including old "Scribelords" type things like writing out fight description {say, best write up of any fight from the last 3 months, for instance})

You could a an Unearthed Arcana contest.  Also, racial paragon contest might be interesting.  Lycanthropes can be made into a contest as they are so varied.

I do like the creative writing idea, but I think a character design contest would be good to help higher levels and because of the new players.

If you win a character contest, what do you get? If it included being able to activate your character without credit costs, a UA character contest could be pretty cool. It would give folks a chance to get their hands on some UA stuff without needing credits (and if they don't win they can set that char aside for a later date) and get some wacky and interesting character concepts going.

Maybe something like "you may only use UA material" (well, for classes and races), or "You must use 2+ UA classes" or something along those lines. 

Feel free to look at the previous contests for ideas on what happened for the winner. If we get more entrants - we get more winners - so we might even see those the next time the annual one comes around.

For the "lesser" competitions in between - it is mostly just a couple of free credits.

how about a blood line build contest?  see if the underated UA varient has some use...

I love bloodlines!  But yeah, it is hard to find purpose for them....

Pantheon design contest.  I've always wondered who this god of Magic and Darkness is, whose so popular in Gladius.

Maybe a 'create a new bloodline' contest, where the winning template is allowed by COCO.

Campaign design contest.  Runners-up may join the winner's campaign without credit cost.

make a viable high LA character.
most interesting use of assassin prestige class.
design an intellegent magic item (with max price). 

C c c combo breaker!

but the god contest seems interesting... 

Mar 12, 2012 -- 7:41PM, Vathelokai wrote:

Campaign design contest.  Runners-up may join the winner's campaign without credit cost.

As part of our partnership with Real Adventures - I'm relegating campaigns to their forums. If a campaign is designated "CoCo Compatible," then when the campaign ends, the characters can come here (and theoretically, characters from here can go on campaign there).

Mr0bunghole's Keep on the Shadowfell (once upon a time) was one of these. My open gate and They might be giants games were also compatible.

The reason why is when we have a lower number of players, having a couple "tied" up in campaigns and not actively participating, they were effectively not here anyway. This also gets to take the "bad" percentage of completion of campaigns (something under 50%) and not have to worry about tight deadlines.

Quests would be an idea though - if we wanted something along those lines - then designing a quest would be cool.

Mar 12, 2012 -- 7:37PM, Vathelokai wrote:

Maybe a 'create a new bloodline' contest, where the winning template is allowed by COCO.

I'm not interested in creating new material for use within the CoCo. We already get derisive snorts about "being core" and then allowing some stuff beyond the core. I'd rather not add homebrew stuff in.

Mar 12, 2012 -- 6:28PM, Bobthe6th wrote:

how about a blood line build contest?  see if the underated UA varient has some use...

Bloodlines really haven't seen any large use yet (Hogarth got a bloodline "for free" once upon a time, and I'm not sure that anyone has used it since).

This would be a good way to try to get them in though - so this is a possibility at some point.

I was under the impression that Bloodlines could be pretty powerful... but probably only for wacky builds which need a bit more freedom than Core. Still, "design a character using a Bloodline" would be a possibility.

3-week quest contest would be pretty cool. Maybe something a bit more than just three fights strung together.

I would suggest something like "design a character with a level adjustment (or +X or higher)" but that would probably be a bit similar to the previous two.

"Design a character using four or more classes" could be interesting. "A character using a Racial Paragon class" might work too, at the risk of being a bit mundane.

RE the Bloodlines, more of the abuse I've seen seems to hinge upon a very favourable reading of the rules. A bloodline contest would be cool but I think there's some ambiguity which would have to be thrashed out first.

oh? what?

Bloodlines make all your classes count as being one level higher for anything which works based directly off the number.

E.g. a Bard would get extra uses per day of Bardic Music and his Caster Level would go up.

Progression classes like Mystic Theurge say "essentially you add your levels in mystic theurge to your levels in other classes, then determine spells per day etc etc." Unless you interpret the "essentially" to mean this isn't literal, that is something Bloodlines would advance.

So, Wiz 3/Cleric 3/MT 1 with a level of Bloodline would get Wiz and Cleric spellcasting advanced by 2, not 1. Thus you have 5/5 casting (though you are ECL 7). This is exactly the same as being a Wiz 3/Cleric 3/MT 2 only you have less HP, BAB, skills etc... except Bloodlines also advance your CLs, so you have 5/5 casting but caster levels 6 and 6.

With a two Bloodline levels (e.g. major bloodline) you have 6/6 casting and CL8/8 at ECL 8.
At ECL19, W3/C3/MT10 with 3 bloodline levels you have 16/16 casting and CL 19/19 - if you could take MT to L13, you'd have 16/16 casting but only CL 16/16.

That in itself is actually not so bad - you'd give up some HP and other stats to boost your CLs, which the Practiced Caster feats (non-Core, mind) could do anyway (though I think here you could use both). It's also really shaky in the early levels when you have Bloodline levels but no MT. However it gets a bit screwy if you throw in other non-core classes and PrC. What they seem to like to do is have everything that works off existing levels (e.g. the famously-broken Ur-Priest) get progressed at least twice so they get stupid stats. With Tome of Battle some people rule that Bloodline boosts your Initiator level for ALL classes, so by dipping a lot of classes you can get an IL way above your actual level - and ToB manouevres, unlike spells, are picked soley based on your IL.

Personally, I can see the interpretation of things like Mystic Theurge, and that doesn't even look that overpowered. I think people get carried away when they start applying it to stuff like Tome of Battle (which is pretty powerful stuff anyway) and are probably too generous to themselves in their interpretation of the rules.

My impression of all (AD&D-4E) D&D is that once you leave the core material you set yourself up for unbalanced and wack rules.

Well, it's more just the quantity of the stuff - there's so much more scope for combining things in ways that were never intended or even thought of. A lot of the non-Core stuff is far better balanced than the Core stuff (*cough* Natural Spell Druid), but there's plenty which just simply isn't.

It's when you start combining sketch splatbook stuff (Ur-Priest, Tome of Battle) which is already powerful with not-quite-so-well-thought-out variants (Bloodlines) that things get really screwy.

But anyway, a Bloodline contest could work. Maybe we should make this into a contest contest. The person who suggests the best contest wins. 

Mar 14, 2012 -- 3:40PM, The_Fred wrote:

Well, it's more just the quantity of the stuff - there's so much more scope for combining things in ways that were never intended or even thought of. A lot of the non-Core stuff is far better balanced than the Core stuff (*cough* Natural Spell Druid)

Actually not nearly as overpowered without non-Core spells (e.g. Bite of the Werebear) as with them.
I'd actually be pretty interested in seeing how a Natural Spell druid actually does in the arena.  I'm more of a synergy person myself, so my druid took the variant for the bonus AC (and speed, because kiting is great when you can pull it off).

True, though other characters have more overpowered spells in splatbooks too. It's just that the idea that Core is perfectly balanced and splatbooks are the root of all evil is not entirely fair.

To be honest, I'm not really that keen on shapeshifting, especially Wild Shape. I don't really know why. I'm thinking of taking the Aspect of Nature variant for Kaleisa if she ever gets that far (though partially because she's going to want to be mounted). Actually, the simple Druid variant would have been perfect for her - I'd take it anyway most days but she doesn't even use armour due to the wizard multiclassing (and Mage Armour). Before L5, that variant is kind of ridiculous (Druid have to pay double for armour anyway and can't use mithral), though I'm not sure how it would hold up to a Wild Shape Druid. 10 credits is more than I have, too.

EDIT: Also, Animal Companions. 

Mar 15, 2012 -- 3:05AM, The_Fred wrote:

True, though other characters have more overpowered spells in splatbooks too. It's just that the idea that Core is perfectly balanced and splatbooks are the root of all evil is not entirely fair.

Definitely true.  That's part of why we have house rules.

EDIT: Also, Animal Companions. 

What about them?

This.

That's more a question of stoneskin being quite powerful, plus a bad time to roll low on the balance check.  If it had been an unbuffed hawk companion against a nonbalancing rogue, I'd put my bets on the rogue.

I don't know...

First of all, the ability to buff your animal companion is one of their main points.  Also, aside from the hawk, look at Vathilia's companion.  You had entire fights where Vathilia did next to nothing and the dog did it all.  A level 3 druid has a riding dog with 26 HP, 18 AC without any items, +6 to hit without feats/items/buffs, 1d6+4 damage, and free tripping. 

I bet I could make a character who was a druid who did nothing but buff the animal and send it frontline and never engage himself. 

Heh, perhaps. Certainly at L1, though at L3+ the animal starts to get pretty neat stats. You can have a hawk with better base HD than the rogue (d8 vs d6, same 3/4 BAB, good Fort as well as good Reflex), the same evasion, and an NA bonus on top of what a normal hawk would get.

I think Riding Dog is the real winner though. It starts with 2HD and thus a decent survivability, a decent base attack, and Trip to top it all off. That makes him pretty comparable to a similar-levelled Fighter, even.

Hence the quote: "I have special abilities which are more powerful than your entire class". Remember the Druid also has all of being a Druid, including full spellcasting.

But anyway, I'll agree that whilst Core may not be as balanced as some people make out, you don't really get any of the blatant broken abuse of certain splatbook features.

I think the real broken-ness comes from how every book felt the need to add an entire full list of spells to classes which already have enough spells.  With over 100 spells a level to chose from, it isn't suprising a few broken ones got through.

Plus, spellcasting feats added in the books are just better than non-spellcasting feats.

Also, duskblades. 

True.

Also, new monster lists make things like polymorph way more powerful. That's why a thing which isn't really balanced even in Core can get so out of hand.

Anyway, we digress. How about "make the most cheesy and overpowered character you can think of"?

How about a companion contest?  Make an ally based character like Lady Fayne or a druid.

Mar 15, 2012 -- 3:31PM, Uknits wrote:

I don't know...

First of all, the ability to buff your animal companion is one of their main points.

Definitely.  But in this case that was more the result of Stoneskin being a very powerful buff than the general ability to buff an animal companion.

Also, aside from the hawk, look at Vathilia's companion.  You had entire fights where Vathilia did next to nothing and the dog did it all.

Usually, Vathilia was providing support in the form of buffs or healing, and Vathilia is someone better at that than most due to having access to a +4 AC buff that most druids can't get.  (Two, actually, but one overlaps the barding).  But yeah, animal companions are definitely a valuable asset, if not one that would itself be overpowered.

I bet I could make a character who was a druid who did nothing but buff the animal and send it frontline and never engage himself. 

I doubt it.  There are some encounters where the companion is the right choice, and some where it's the wrong choice.  Part of a druid's strength is the ability to attack in so many different ways, which is of course most powerful outside a balanced party (as a balanced party already has that ability).

Mar 15, 2012 -- 5:12PM, The_Fred wrote:

Heh, perhaps. Certainly at L1, though at L3+ the animal starts to get pretty neat stats. You can have a hawk with better base HD than the rogue (d8 vs d6, same 3/4 BAB, good Fort as well as good Reflex), the same evasion, and an NA bonus on top of what a normal hawk would get.

Note that level 1 and level 3 are the only levels where that holds, though, as past that the rogue's superior hit dice will cause the difference.

Perhaps more importantly, you're comparing to a class that is primarily focused on out-of-combat matters.

Hence the quote: "I have special abilities which are more powerful than your entire class".

And yet his action was merely a minor part of Nale's general plan (a plan that a rogue could pull off far better than a druid.)

Mar 15, 2012 -- 5:23PM, Uknits wrote:

I think the real broken-ness comes from how every book felt the need to add an entire full list of spells to classes which already have enough spells.  With over 100 spells a level to chose from, it isn't suprising a few broken ones got through.

Also, with so many spells and the ability to add them relatively cheaply, it's not too hard to be prepared for any occasion you have advance warning of.  Restricting to Core only helps a lot there too.

Mar 15, 2012 -- 5:31PM, The_Fred wrote:

True.

Also, new monster lists make things like polymorph way more powerful.

Quite.

Anyway, we digress. How about "make the most cheesy and overpowered character you can think of"?

That's easy: Twinned Bestow Power (high augmentation) on yourself for an infinite pp loop.  Combine with manifesting powerstone powers from your own pp for added versatility.

Ok.  A level 10 druid.

8 HD Riding Dog
60 HP
24 AC sans items/buffs
+10/5 to hit for 1d6+6 and a +4 free trip.

Give him 2 feats.  Let's say basics like weapon focus and improved natural attack.  Also, chain barding.   Basic buffs, of course.  Let's say Bull's Strength, Greater Magic Fang, and Barkskin.  We can afford that at ECL 10.  No gold spent, note.

60HP
32 AC
+15/10 to hit for 1d8+11 damage with a +6 trip.

This is without buying any items for him.  You see where this is going?  Of course, a goblin druid woud be riding him for even better protection.  Share spells means he is just as well protected with your cover, and he can heal you or attack seperatley at his leasure.

When I made Hadrida, I was going to go Goblin with Riding Dog mount so the dog could do the attacking too, but I think that's already been done so I went for mount with shared buffs (so it's far harder to kill the mount, meaning in theory I have a permanent ride for cover option and improved mobility). Being mounted on a riding dog is cool because you can both attack (with a Ride check). Also, Druid X/Wizard 1 is nice since you can cast Enlarge Person on your animal.

Mar 15, 2012 -- 9:29PM, Uknits wrote:

Ok.  A level 10 druid.

8 HD Riding Dog
60 HP
24 AC sans items/buffs
+10/5 to hit for 1d6+6 and a +4 free trip.

Give him 2 feats.  Let's say basics like weapon focus and improved natural attack.  Also, chain barding.   Basic buffs, of course.  Let's say Bull's Strength, Greater Magic Fang, and Barkskin.  We can afford that at ECL 10.  No gold spent, note.

60HP
32 AC
+15/10 to hit for 1d8+11 damage with a +6 trip.

This is without buying any items for him.  You see where this is going?  Of course, a goblin druid woud be riding him for even better protection.  Share spells means he is just as well protected with your cover, and he can heal you or attack seperatley at his leasure.

Yeah, it's impressive, perhaps even overpowered.  But not with a hawk, and there are other builds that are comparable at that level.

A hawk might actually be quite cool for harrying casters with. At L3 it gets a BAB and Dex boost and thus a decent AB modifier. You could give it Flyby or whatever too. It's AC would also be about 20 unbuffed with that Dex and NA. Sure it's not a riding dog, but then it can fly.

In order to make an effective harrier for casters, you need something with the ability to threaten at least to 5ft and to fly with good maneuverability. Air elementals are great for this; hawks - much less so. If you can't threaten, then the caster can cast with impunity.

An air elemental parked overhead of a caster can use AoO to grab scrolls or to attack for damage, etc. Granted - the damage potential is low - but at early levels it is all about getting that forced concentration check (either from casting defensively or because you dealt damage).

The big thing is why would you ever use hawk when you have an Eagle? 

Because... hawks... have a better Reflex save? Actually, the hawk has a better AC than the eagle (1 more NA, smaller size, better Dex), and a slightly better AB which is more important than damage for harrying. However, the average manouevrability makes either a bit hard to work with.

Mar 16, 2012 -- 9:16AM, TelinArtho wrote:

In order to make an effective harrier for casters, you need something with the ability to threaten at least to 5ft and to fly with good maneuverability. Air elementals are great for this; hawks - much less so. If you can't threaten, then the caster can cast with impunity.

An air elemental parked overhead of a caster can use AoO to grab scrolls or to attack for damage, etc. Granted - the damage potential is low - but at early levels it is all about getting that forced concentration check (either from casting defensively or because you dealt damage).

That concentration check is also something that hawks are bad at; until pretty far along, you're not going to be doing enough damage to have a particularly difficult check.

Well, anyway, how about:
"Build a character based around a certain ability or power"
?

So you could make a Druid based around Animal Companion if you wanted (I already had an idea actually for a Druid with a Tower Shield whose AC did the dirty work whilst he buffed and healed with Total Cover). A Wilder based around a certain power a la Scorpio would work (though maybe wouldn't get 100% for creativity, depending). Alternatively you could make a monster character based around such an ability (for example I had the idea to do so with a Krenshar based around Fear, but it's not great).

Or is that too general? You could feasibly pick almost anything. 

A fear based character sounds intriguing.

maybe something based on fatigue/exhaust, or stun/stagger. 

The problem I had with the Krenshar was that even though it might work quite well to begin with, at slightly higher ECLs it simply wouldn't work since its fear effect works like the Scare spell. My Yeth Hound should be more reliable... 

had an unfinished idea for a 'build a no expendibles character' sort of contest.

would also like to see some sort of tournament again.  those are fun. 

more of a tournament idea: how many goblins can you take down before their horde takes you down?

something like: round 1-5, 1 goblin appears per round; 2-10, 2 per round; etc.  Monsters would have a set of published tactics and would all be identical.  each participant would have their own thread, and it would keep going until the PC went down.

could use a different horde creature for a higher level contest (bugbears, grimlocks, etc.)

What if you are a goblin?

You have to face off against a horde of dragons obviously.

Vath - the idea has some fun to it - so I wouldn't be opposed to it. Do you want to draw up more of the details?

Some of the complication will be to deal with the mapper (since it has a finite number of pins it can support), not sure what else yet.

It would be very easy for a character to be only hittable on a 20 (even with flanking and the like) at ECL3, so it could be a very long fight - especially for a character with a wand of CLW at play - so it might be good to have tactics depending on how many creatures are on the field. Goblins probably wouldn't go for disarm - unless there's ten of them and the opponent is healing all of the damage they are dealing. They also might not normally go for grappling, but with a bunch of them to be able to attack without dealing with a massive dex bonus would be worth it - if only for a round.

Apr 1, 2012 -- 2:50AM, The_Fred wrote:

What if you are a goblin?

Then you become the Goblin King!

Apr 1, 2012 -- 5:43AM, TelinArtho wrote:

You have to face off against a horde of dragons obviously.

If I can make that work, I would be all over it.

Apr 1, 2012 -- 5:43AM, TelinArtho wrote:

Vath - the idea has some fun to it - so I wouldn't be opposed to it. Do you want to draw up more of the details?

I'll doodle some stuff. definitely will have use fancy tactics or fancy equipment on the horde to make sure it doesn't end up taking a year waiting for enough 20s.

On the positive side, most of the people who could force 20s no matter what condition would involve at least some short term buffs (wand of shield, wand of shield of faith, etc), so if the tactics include stuff like - destroy the wands/dorjes - that would help. Then they just need to deal with the long term buffs - mage armor/inertial armor.

Once you have some more to work with - send me the details via PM or post it to its own Council thread to flesh out.

Scoring would be a good idea to incorporate as well - duration + number of kills (since duration could be exaggerated with intense avoidance tactics (total defense while moving away or otherwise turtling up).

moved to Council Thread

Sorry, didn't see the suggestion before posting.

Another option is build a certain ECL must use LA, like ECL6-8 must use LA, or ECL6-8, can have max of 1-2 hd or something...

I think a template contest would be a good idea for that.