"You know what my days used to be like? I just tested. Nobody murdered me. Or put me in a potato. Or fed me to birds. I had a pretty good life.
And then you showed up. You dangerous, mute lunatic. So you know what?
You win.
Just go.
It's been fun. Don't come back."
Today I'll be discussing examples of powers and abilities I consider "bad" so I can hopefully impart some theorycrafting wisdom and methodology to you. I'll use several systems as examples so we can keep this to theory and avoid turning it into a single-game discussion. You won't need any system knowledge until we get to the Vampire bit. THAT game has a few too many terms to explain them all, but hopefully you can still get the gist of what I mean in that section. I will also be staying away from discussing equipment, since there's rarely an intended perfect balance in that area: Worse things do exist, whether they're cheap, old, or obsolete.
Today I'll be discussing examples of powers and abilities I consider "bad" so I can hopefully impart some theorycrafting wisdom and methodology to you. I'll use several systems as examples so we can keep this to theory and avoid turning it into a single-game discussion. You won't need any system knowledge until we get to the Vampire bit. THAT game has a few too many terms to explain them all, but hopefully you can still get the gist of what I mean in that section. I will also be staying away from discussing equipment, since there's rarely an intended perfect balance in that area: Worse things do exist, whether they're cheap, old, or obsolete.
But before we start, what do I mean by bad? I mean things you shouldn't take. That might be because something else is better at its job, but mostly I mean they're not worth what they cost. They're things you wouldn't want, even if they align with your character's theme. What I don't mean by that is abilities which are substandard but okay to take if you're going for a theme or you're okay with spending a bit more for something you think is cool. No, every system has dozens of things like those and it's a perfectly fine thing to take them. I'm discussing things everyone would want to avoid, and how to tell the difference. If you're impatient, core lessons will be at the bottom.
Let's begin with Pathfinder since I have a previously discussed example. Ultimate Wilderness has a feat tree called Beast Hunter. Over the course of three feats(You get one feat every odd level) you get a laundry list of abilities.
Sounds nice. However, you can only apply these bonuses to animals, which are one size category larger than you, which are native to a specific terrain. In addition to that distinction being insanely specific, we have two more problems. The first is that this feat's biggest benefit, the bonus to CMB, is conditional. Your character may not use combat maneuvers at all. The second is that there are extremely few animals past CR 10, meaning this ability has a shelf life. Even a GM who wants you to be able to use this feat tree would struggle to challenge you with animals past level twelve or so.
- +1 Attack
- +1 Dodge Bonus to AC
- +2 to Survival
- +4 to CMD and CMB
- +2 to Reflex Saves
- Ability to act in the surprise round
- +4 to confirming critical hits
Sounds nice. However, you can only apply these bonuses to animals, which are one size category larger than you, which are native to a specific terrain. In addition to that distinction being insanely specific, we have two more problems. The first is that this feat's biggest benefit, the bonus to CMB, is conditional. Your character may not use combat maneuvers at all. The second is that there are extremely few animals past CR 10, meaning this ability has a shelf life. Even a GM who wants you to be able to use this feat tree would struggle to challenge you with animals past level twelve or so.
Our next example is a quick one from Shadowrun. The Cool Resolve adept power gives you an extra die per level to resist the use of charisma linked social skills against you. It does not work on critter abilities, but it does work on other adept powers. Hopefully this one is obvious to you: PCs don't get social skills rolled on them. It's just inherent to the very idea of gaming that you can't do it. So, all this power does for a PC is protect him from a few adept powers. How likely you are to run into those is up to your GM...but I'm guessing the answer is "not often".
On to Fifth Edition Dungeons and Dragons. Here, feats are an optional choice. You get fewer of them than earlier systems, every four levels for most classes. Everyone also has a blanket option to put two points into stats instead of a feat, to a maximum of 20. This means feats really have to "pop" for you to want to take them. Only some of them achieve this, honestly. One that definitely doesn't pop, Weapon Master, is our next example of a bad ability. When you take this feat, you get +1 to STR or DEX(a concession for this being a feat with a lesser benefit) and proficiency with four weapons of your choice. Here are the problems with this.
First, the ability score increase you're getting might potentially be useless to you. An odd stat does nothing, and the game "caps" at twenty. You can balance this out four levels later by putting a +1 in STR and also another odd stat, which you may or may not have. If you don't, then there's a +1 somewhere that's just going to go to waste. Taking another feat with a +1 is a possibility, but there aren't many of those and chances are it's not going to line up in your build.
The second problem becomes clearer when you look at 5e's weapon list. There are a smaller number of weapons than previous editions of D&D, with fewer variances in abilities and damage dice. In addition, unlike its predecessors, 5e does not multiply the STR bonus to damage of a two handed weapon: you simply get the larger die. This means two things. One is that there probably aren't four weapons on this list you really want. Remember, there's no "tripping" or "grappling" weapons, or exotic weapons with funky rules. The other is that you probably already have a proficiency in a decent enough weapon just from your class, unless you're playing a spellcaster.
About that. Every class that gets the Extra Attack feature also gets decent weapons: Either all martial weapons for fighter/barbarian/paladin, Rapier for rogue, and punching faces for Monk. The classes which don't get decent weapons also don't get more than one weapon attack. If you're serious about wanting to take more attack actions, you'd multiclass. If you multiclass, you're going to receive some of that class's proficiencies. So the only characters who would take Weapon Master are non-martial classes who do not wish to multiclass. Basically, they're making a pretty poor decision: They're taking a minor improvement to something they'll never actually be good at. Even wizard has Quarterstaff, which can deal 1d8 damage. A greatsword isn't so much more damage that you'd waste a precious feat on it.
Can you take this for flavor? Sure. It's all it's good for, honestly. But even then, in 5e you're sacrificing a lot for flavor sometimes. Its feat and racial choices are relatively more important than in other systems.
Can you take this for flavor? Sure. It's all it's good for, honestly. But even then, in 5e you're sacrificing a lot for flavor sometimes. Its feat and racial choices are relatively more important than in other systems.
Our final example is from Vampire: The Masquerade, and it's a controversial one. If my old LARP friends are reading this they're howling at me. That's because the Sabbat-only Thaumaturgical path "Path of Father's Vengeance" sounds really cool. It certainly sounds powerful at first glance.
One dot lets you read psychic impressions of blood bonds in other vampires. This is, arguably, the most useful power in the path. There are plenty of situations where you would want this information, even though Sabbat are "protected" from blood bonds via the vinculum. It would be easy to use this to find traitors in your pack or city, even though it doesn't share the names of the people the target is bonded to.
Two dots reduces a target's appearance to zero for a night and specifies that all social rolls during this time generally fail, unless it's intimidation. Basically, it turns you into a Double Nosferatu for a night. If you're mainly combating the Camarilla in your game, this is an excellent way to force a brutal break of the Masquerade without making yourself a target. Still pretty useful.
Three dots is another curse, the Feast of Ashes. The victim of this power can't drink blood for an entire week, only eating ashes, and only being able to use "ash points" to rise. This sounds amazing and might have some edge cases for use, especially if you can briefly attack someone in a way to reduce their blood pool immediately, like Vicissitude's chest-collapse attack. If you don't, however, it's extremely likely that the victim of this is simply going to hide and/or save his blood for the inevitable fight with you. There are better ways to accomplish this that cost less experience.
Four dots is Uriel's Disfavor, which makes the target take a health level per turn of damage for every round they're exposed to light, even artificial ones. First off, the description even says most vampires hide for the entire week they're under this curse. Second, do you know what else is bright and causes health levels of damage? Fire. Thaumaturgy even has a path where all you do is shoot fire at people.
Five dots reduces the target to his original, non-diablerized generation for a week. This sounds awesome until you realize that diablerie is kinda rare when you're not playing a LARP and you're not likely to run across many foes that have done it to the point that this power is going to be worth using. Oh, and it takes three rounds to do it.
So, most of these powers would be pretty awesome if you could do them in secret. But you very specifically can't do that. No, you have to quote Vampire Scripture and clearly state the curse to the target for it to work. It's neat flavor, but it means sneaking is out. In addition to how hard these powers are to apply effectively, this is an extremely rare discipline to learn, even among Thaumaturgy paths. The GM is encouraged by the book to make Thaumaturgy a special or monumental thing for a Sabbat player to learn. To do all that work and blow your shot on taking Path of Father's Vengeance...it's a bit sad.
Three dots is another curse, the Feast of Ashes. The victim of this power can't drink blood for an entire week, only eating ashes, and only being able to use "ash points" to rise. This sounds amazing and might have some edge cases for use, especially if you can briefly attack someone in a way to reduce their blood pool immediately, like Vicissitude's chest-collapse attack. If you don't, however, it's extremely likely that the victim of this is simply going to hide and/or save his blood for the inevitable fight with you. There are better ways to accomplish this that cost less experience.
Four dots is Uriel's Disfavor, which makes the target take a health level per turn of damage for every round they're exposed to light, even artificial ones. First off, the description even says most vampires hide for the entire week they're under this curse. Second, do you know what else is bright and causes health levels of damage? Fire. Thaumaturgy even has a path where all you do is shoot fire at people.
Five dots reduces the target to his original, non-diablerized generation for a week. This sounds awesome until you realize that diablerie is kinda rare when you're not playing a LARP and you're not likely to run across many foes that have done it to the point that this power is going to be worth using. Oh, and it takes three rounds to do it.
So, most of these powers would be pretty awesome if you could do them in secret. But you very specifically can't do that. No, you have to quote Vampire Scripture and clearly state the curse to the target for it to work. It's neat flavor, but it means sneaking is out. In addition to how hard these powers are to apply effectively, this is an extremely rare discipline to learn, even among Thaumaturgy paths. The GM is encouraged by the book to make Thaumaturgy a special or monumental thing for a Sabbat player to learn. To do all that work and blow your shot on taking Path of Father's Vengeance...it's a bit sad.
@}-,-'--
So I hope you learned something, but just in case my examples confused you, here's some lessons I wanted you to take away from this discussion.
Think about when you'll be able to apply the ability. As we saw with all of our examples today, even something that sounds awesome isn't very good if you're not able to use it often. This obviously varies from GM to GM, but some powers just plain aren't ever going to come up no matter how hard your GM tries. This is particularly true of things like Cool Resolve. You also need to keep in mind any restrictions the power has, and how often those will get in your way.
Make sure the ability's usefulness won't fade. Some things are more useful early or late and that's fine, on some level. However, some rare few are simply useless at higher levels, and you should watch out for that if your game is likely to get to that level.
Think about what you're paying to get it. Sometimes a power plain isn't worth its cost, like Weapon Master. Other times something is defined as rare and thus will likely take some sort of laborious adventure or cost in-game to get it. Rare doesn't always mean good. Remember that, particularly if you're playing a White Wolf game.
Think about what you're paying to get it. Sometimes a power plain isn't worth its cost, like Weapon Master. Other times something is defined as rare and thus will likely take some sort of laborious adventure or cost in-game to get it. Rare doesn't always mean good. Remember that, particularly if you're playing a White Wolf game.
Analyze if everything you're getting is useful to you. The Big Game Hunter feat tree feels like a big value until you realize you're not likely to use everything it gives you. It makes you feel like you're getting more value than you really are. Character builds in even the simplest games can vary a huge amount, but some things just aren't likely to come up in tandem with each other.
I hope that helped. This feels basic and remedial to me, but I often see people miss these judgement points and treat people who are good at analysis as wizards. We're not. Well, some of us are, in the sense that we're playing wizards. The rest are just putting these abilities through a mental wringer before deciding to take them.
