JoeNotCharles
First Post
I've posted a draft of the new list of allowed material here: here There are a couple of things that stand out that are banned or amended that probably shouldn't be. So I propose:
1. Remove the amendment on Icy Sweep, from Dragon 367.
Rationale: The amendment is: "When sliding a creature with Icy Sweep, it must be moved to the target square by the shortest available path." I proposed this amendment because, using strict rules-as-written, you could slide the target all around the battlefield as long as you want as long as they end up next to you. However, I now feel that this is too broad: if there is a pit on the shortest path between you and the target, you are now forced to slide them into the pit (which grants them a save). I think it should be left up to the DM to ban outright abuses of this power. The other reason to remove this amendment fits the "cleanup" theme of this thread: there are other powers with similar wording which aren't amended, so this is now making our list of amendments more complicated than it has to be.
2. Allow the Orb of Entropy from Dragon 373.
Rationale: The only reason we banned this is because it's level 28, so we didn't expect it to ever come up, and we didn't want to bother listing it separately in the list of allowed sources. Well, now it's listed separately in the list of disallowed sources.
3a. Allow the Epic Faerun article from Dragon 367, and the Masters of the Planes article from Dragon 372 (except for Punisher of the Gods).
Rationale: We basically only banned these because we didn't expect Epic Destinies to ever come into play, so we didn't want to bother debating amendments to them. (And for Dragon 372, that didn't even pass, it's still at 1 YES, 2 NO.) Now that we're listing exceptions rather than allowed sources, the same reasoning means it should be approved until someone proposes otherwise. (However, in the case of Epic Faerun, covaithe did post a concern about the Elf High Mage destiny: it allows half-price rituals, which would make item creation cheaper. I propose we don't worry about it until someone actually gets close to being able to take it. For Masters of the Planes, we decided that Punisher of the Gods was too powerful, and that's well and truly banned.)
3b. Ban Epic Destinies entirely, with an explicit note saying that we are doing this because we haven't examined their balance closely, and when someone gets close to level 21 they should propose the destinies they want to take.
Rationale: If we don't want to adopt 3a, but instead keep our loose philosophy of not thinking about Epic Destinies until it's time for someone to take one, we should at least list that once instead of taking up a line in the list for every article with an Epic Destiny. (This means that Punisher of the Gods would remain banned, we just wouldn't have to list it separately.)
4. Allow the Ashen Covenant article from Dragon 364.
Rationale: The proposal thread for that is really hard to read, because it was the first one and so it's cluttered with discussion of how the proposal system should work and the Dragon 369 Minotaur (already). But it seems like the only reason this was never approved was that, in covaithe's words: "it's only a few items, and I feel like we ought to consider Adventurer's Vault before we start going crazy with the additional item sources. I'd be willing to reconsider a proposal for a specific item that someone really wants, but unless we actually expect to use items from this source, I feel like the default answer should be no." Now that we've changed the default answer to "yes", this isn't appropriate anymore, and I don't believe anyone brought up any problems with the specific items. (The voting or this stands at "2 YES, 2 NO", with the second no being garyh who said the same thing, so if I understand the proposal system right, it's still open and just needs 2 more YES votes or one of those NO's flipping...)
1. Remove the amendment on Icy Sweep, from Dragon 367.
Rationale: The amendment is: "When sliding a creature with Icy Sweep, it must be moved to the target square by the shortest available path." I proposed this amendment because, using strict rules-as-written, you could slide the target all around the battlefield as long as you want as long as they end up next to you. However, I now feel that this is too broad: if there is a pit on the shortest path between you and the target, you are now forced to slide them into the pit (which grants them a save). I think it should be left up to the DM to ban outright abuses of this power. The other reason to remove this amendment fits the "cleanup" theme of this thread: there are other powers with similar wording which aren't amended, so this is now making our list of amendments more complicated than it has to be.
2. Allow the Orb of Entropy from Dragon 373.
Rationale: The only reason we banned this is because it's level 28, so we didn't expect it to ever come up, and we didn't want to bother listing it separately in the list of allowed sources. Well, now it's listed separately in the list of disallowed sources.
3a. Allow the Epic Faerun article from Dragon 367, and the Masters of the Planes article from Dragon 372 (except for Punisher of the Gods).
Rationale: We basically only banned these because we didn't expect Epic Destinies to ever come into play, so we didn't want to bother debating amendments to them. (And for Dragon 372, that didn't even pass, it's still at 1 YES, 2 NO.) Now that we're listing exceptions rather than allowed sources, the same reasoning means it should be approved until someone proposes otherwise. (However, in the case of Epic Faerun, covaithe did post a concern about the Elf High Mage destiny: it allows half-price rituals, which would make item creation cheaper. I propose we don't worry about it until someone actually gets close to being able to take it. For Masters of the Planes, we decided that Punisher of the Gods was too powerful, and that's well and truly banned.)
3b. Ban Epic Destinies entirely, with an explicit note saying that we are doing this because we haven't examined their balance closely, and when someone gets close to level 21 they should propose the destinies they want to take.
Rationale: If we don't want to adopt 3a, but instead keep our loose philosophy of not thinking about Epic Destinies until it's time for someone to take one, we should at least list that once instead of taking up a line in the list for every article with an Epic Destiny. (This means that Punisher of the Gods would remain banned, we just wouldn't have to list it separately.)
4. Allow the Ashen Covenant article from Dragon 364.
Rationale: The proposal thread for that is really hard to read, because it was the first one and so it's cluttered with discussion of how the proposal system should work and the Dragon 369 Minotaur (already). But it seems like the only reason this was never approved was that, in covaithe's words: "it's only a few items, and I feel like we ought to consider Adventurer's Vault before we start going crazy with the additional item sources. I'd be willing to reconsider a proposal for a specific item that someone really wants, but unless we actually expect to use items from this source, I feel like the default answer should be no." Now that we've changed the default answer to "yes", this isn't appropriate anymore, and I don't believe anyone brought up any problems with the specific items. (The voting or this stands at "2 YES, 2 NO", with the second no being garyh who said the same thing, so if I understand the proposal system right, it's still open and just needs 2 more YES votes or one of those NO's flipping...)
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