Talk:Pale Touch, Improved (3.5e Feat)

I don't think DMs would allow 1d6 per HD at will in a moderate game. Better to peg this as high IMO. --Ghostwheel (talk) 10:50, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Hey Ghostwheel, I know that it's already been changed to High, but wouldn't a 2-feat tax warrant a d6/HD ability that's limited to a standard action, even in Moderate? I know we have differences of opinion on balance, but I honestly want to hear your input. Spanambula (talk) 02:34, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Think of it from a DM's point of view. What's another moderate-level feat that has a feat as a prerequisite? Weapon Specialization--and that only comes if you spend 4 levels in Fighter. I've been playing a considerable amount of Pathfinder recently, and most of the meleers in that edition operate at a Moderate level, and many DMs see Weapon Spec as a very worthwhile feat. Even if you take the entire two-weapon fighting tree and hit with every single attack (7 attacks in all), Weapon Specialization would grant you an additional 14 damage overall (equivalent to 4d6 on an average roll). Add on that this is a touch attack, that iterative attacks have a lower chance of hitting, and you can easily equate this to being stronger than Weapon Specialization.

Am I saying that this is a strong High-range feat? Nah. It falls in the lower end of that spectrum. But many Pathfinder DMs would go bonkers if characters could make a touch attack at will that dealt this amount of damage with only another feat as an investment. As I've said before, and as the Reddit thread has proven more recently, people don't care if a wiki holds underpowered stuff, and DMs can always bump it up. But 3rd party resources have a horrible reputation for being a cesspool of OP crap that breaks games. If people understand the rating system, then we make some headway. But if they understand the rating system, and then bump up against something they feel is powerful for that range, then we lose credibility overall, which is something in my opinion that we should attempt to stay away from at all costs. This is the reason for the last few years why I've been saying (on and off in various talk pages throughout the entire wiki, I can't be bothered to find specific examples but I've said it a bunch) that we should over-estimate balance levels rather than under-estimate how powerful something is.

Just off the top of my head, consider a moderate game of Pathfinder where someone uses a Conductive weapon to channel this ability, adding an additional xd6 damage once per round to their already decent damage in a moderate-level game. A DM who was lenient previously, allowing moderate-level things from the wiki, would decide that from this one example everything on the wiki has the potential to be "broken", and we would lose credibility.

Hopefully I haven't been too verbose, but that's my reasoning for the most part.

On an aside for the above example, I think that homebrew should be considered in a vacuum in relation to other homebrew, but should be taken into consideration with published material. And since Pathfinder has for the most part taken over where 3.5 left off, I think it should be taken into account for our material here. The vast majority of PF content meshes with what 3.5 did (and is generally at a lower level, even), meaning it has little-to-no impact on what we have here, but sometimes corner cases need to be considered in my (perhaps incorrect) opinion. --Ghostwheel (talk) 23:14, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation, it's appreciated. I know I sometimes picture you as this Lawful Neutral Judge with "RNG" on your badge instead of "DREDD," but I've always respected your committment to game balance and making sure wiki articles are fairly balanced for most games, not just the ones we personally enjoy playing. You make good points, and I will keep this in mind when balancing my own stuff. Spanambula (talk) 11:03, 15 June 2016 (UTC)