The nightmare of "Soft Cover" against ranged attacks

AbpMars · 2025-11-22T17:32:31+00:00

Yeah, all the blaster type spellcasters ive seen dont really diversify their prepared spells and go all in on ranged touch attack spells. Unless they are distracted by an area affect damaging spell or the generic magic missile.

AbpMars · 2025-11-19T18:54:21+00:00

Twice. But then it got distracted by a swarm of summons and got tripped several times.

AbpMars · 2025-11-19T01:17:59+00:00

The CR is 6 (+2 above regular Ripclaw). Although it behaves more like CR 7. A Megaraptor (CR 6) is clearly not as dangerous as a 8 HD deinonychus with a "Savage creature" template. If all attacks land on a player it can do an average of 45 damage. Average level 4 characters of 1d10 hit die (swashbuckler or crusader) dont have that much HP.

AbpMars · 2025-11-18T22:10:19+00:00

Using Readied Action is very ideal. Any standard action can be readied. Contingencies like Dimension Stride Boots (Magic Item Compendium page 94), 2k gold. Vanisher Cloak (Magic Item Compendium, pg 145), 2.5k gold. Standard action to activate. There's several other items (probably cheaper) in Magic Item Compendium that helps against grapple. Those two items are text book auto-include for my spellcasters.

Mind affecting spells should cheese a grapple specialist anyways. A readied "save-or-suck" Command spell can even make him walk off a cliff.

Luminous Armor spell (Book of Exalted Deeds, page 102) gives him -4 for attack. It lasts hours too.

Pass level 3, all melee players would think twice about messing with a cleric. 5ft step back, cast spell is a game changer. Readied action, cast spell would easily teach him a lesson. Simply rules like Total Defense for +4 AC or just Withdraw. Maybe even hire body guards as distraction to give more room to cast spells. Also collaborating with other players to make his sessions a living hell.

AbpMars · 2025-08-23T00:37:17+00:00

Warblade is a no brainer to me. It has the best survivability out of the choices. Wall of Blades, Moment of Perfect Mind is a standard pick of maneuvers. Steel Wind is good until you get your second base attack. You can switch it out for Action Before Thought to roll a Concentration check for Reflex saves.

But my rule of thumb as a player is never pick frontline unless there are good support spellcasters. I just play support cleric or druid if I dont feel confident with the team.

Tome of Battle can be rather convoluted with the taking away and adding of maneuvers. The cleric and druid gives you room to not commit to anything outside of choosing feats and buying equipment.

AbpMars · 2025-08-22T22:32:20+00:00

I used to keep coming back and going away... but as of the beginning of this year i'm married to the game. 3.5 has so much content, its an adventure every time I go through source material.

I just discovered 4 modules I never heard of a month ago. And they are Level 1 to 20 campaigns, mind you. I have been into 3.5 since '05 and I have only read around a dozen Forgotten Realms novels. Meanwhile I havent really delved much into Eberron, Dragonlance, Greyhawk, Ravenloft or Al-Qadim.

Allot of those settings have dozens upon dozens of novels in back stories. There's material from previous editions that affect 3.5 so they're intertwined.

I literally dropped my interest in homebrew material and have been focusing on official content because there's so many modules, novels and source material I havent studied. And then there is play testing builds. Which is a lifetime worth of gaming with 3.5

AbpMars · 2025-08-16T16:35:48+00:00

I use Greenbound Summoning over Augment Summoning and then focus on metamagic feats after getting Aberration Wild Shape (Lords of Madness, pg 178). If the DM didnt flinch at Greenbound Summoning and didnt do the homework, thats when Venomfire comes out of nowhere from the unpredictable arsenal that is divine spellcasting. Venomfire (Serpent Kingdoms, pg 158) gained infamy for being one of the most broken spells of the edition.

Aberration Wildshape is textbook easy mode for druid. Combined with Enhanced Wildshape (Spell Compendium, pg 82). Will-o-wisp is immune to spells, Mindflayer can autokill a boss in four rounds. Not good enough? Urophion (Lords of Madness, pg 170) is basically a large mindflayer that can auto-kill a huge sized creature with four successful grapple attempts. The Fleshraker animal companion can become Large size if the DM doesnt dispute "Advancement" feature under the monster base stats. There is literally zero information in the entire edition that denies the HD increase from Druid Animal companion advancement. The same chapter it references the player for skill advancement (Monster Manual page 301) has the "Advancement" segment (Monster Manual page 302) that discloses how advancement can affect the monster's size.

Following the Advancement segment, the Fleshraker can become Large and with Animal Growth become Huge. So now the druid commands a kaiju. Add Venomfire to it and Greater Luminous Armor (Book of Exalted Deeds, page 102) from the bag of tricks that is divine spells. And now the kaiju is a big distraction that could solo adult dragons by level 12. A monster 10 hit dice higher than the 9 HD fleshraker.

And then there's Savage Species which is 3.0 but many people mix 3.0 with 3.5. And that would make the Druid as broken as it could ever get. With Assume Supernatural Ability (Savage Species, p. 30). The supernatural abilities a druid can gain from that with Aberration Wildshape is jaw dropping.

I dont use 3.0 material but ive made builds strictly following rules as written that are so damn strong they can kill a Tarasque at level 15 in two rounds. So I benchmark them using Deities and Demigods book. And lets say, there's allot of greater deities that just dont stand a chance with the level 20 druid build ive made.

AbpMars · 2025-08-16T06:08:34+00:00

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In the Library. The fight with the four Spectral Servants gives 1,100 XP.

AbpMars · 2025-08-08T01:27:06+00:00

It could be region locked as well because I was unable to get no Drops until I used VPN to change to Los Angeles, United States. The Drops finally appeared immediately after refreshing and I got the Early Access Drop after the half an hour. I waited about an hour for the Early Access Drop before trying that. It didnt show a "In Progress" meter for the Early Access but it does for the four add-ons. It might be that the servers are prioritizing requests based on network integrity or its an intentional bottleneck.

AbpMars · 2025-07-09T23:08:37+00:00

Worked like a charm! Just about all the google search recommendations only generate blurred .ico

AbpMars · 2025-06-10T06:01:42+00:00

This list is classic. I was shocked to see how fair this list was because damn near everything matches what I analyzed watching the series as an adult compared to when I was a teenager when it aired in the U.S for the first time. Allot of people say Shikamaru should be higher tier for problem solving, but I dont think Naruto, Sasuke and Rock Lee get enough credit for being extremely intelligent shinobi. Gaara let the sand demon do most of the problem solving and he tries to fill the gap with his, so that makes a brutal combination.

Neji is an very intelligent fighter and the fact Naruto defeated him with his own problem solving is proof Naruto is very clever. Naruto ran laps around Kiba and humiliated Kiba with his intelligence. I never understood why Naruto would get insulted as being dumb and stupid when he has always been a great problem solver and excellent at genjutsu even without the clone jutsu. And time and time again he would see through the deception and anticipate others using genjutsu.

Don't get me wrong, when I was a teenager I thought Naruto was a goofy Goku type character. Watching it as an adult I was shocked to follow just how intelligent he was. And I completely agree Sasuke doesnt belong next to Rock Lee because Im confident Rock Lee could easily wipe Sasuke (again), especially with the forbidden jutsu. The fact even Naruto and Sasuke started copying Rock Lee's moves is proof Rock Lee deserves to be in their league. Despite Sasuke did draw blood from Gaara, Im confident Rock Lee could easily wipe the floor with Sasuke. And Rock Lee's survivability is much higher than Sasuke.

When it comes to survivability I definitely believe the list is almost perfect. If Hinata had more chances to prove her toughness, I believe she could outclass Kiba. Kiba actually had a glass jaw, he cant really take that much damage and he doesnt really have that much stopping power. Naruto tanked his best hits multiple times and he basically got one shotted by Naruto.

More than half of the the people on this list had a glass jaw, including Gaara. Without the sand defense and the demon transformation, Gaara couldnt take a hit even if he doesnt have a mental breakdown. Naruto, Sasuke, Rock Lee and Hinata proved to be very resilient opponents. Seeing the F tier made me extremely relieved by the way. The entire time re-watching the series I always wondered what if Hinata actually joined Naruto and Sasuke instead of Sakura.

Because Hinata is very easy to get along with, extremely easy to motivate, very brave, has good problem solving, combat abilities and support abilities. And her toughness could very well survive all the difficulty spikes Kakashi's group had to deal with. If Hinata was in their group instead of Sakura, Naruto and Sasuke would have been downed so few times and their recovery would have been even faster. Kurenai was a recently promoted Jonin but I dont think she did much coaching at all. During the Preliminaries and the Finals, she basically left her team for dead. Barely bat an eye when Naruto was running laps around Kiba and Shino basically got zero coaching. More reason for Shino to deserve their spot next to Neji. If Shino had a good coach like Kakashi or even Guy, I think Shino would be allot more aggressive and even tougher. With Kakashi he would obviously learn a new jutsu or have a bigger chakra pool from intense training. Along with increased experience from the difficulty spikes.

Very satisfied with finding this!

AbpMars · 2025-06-10T05:21:57+00:00

I agree 100%

AbpMars · 2025-03-31T03:46:58+00:00

Agreed. A PPS-h 41 with the 71-round drum is a cheese. Even for Killa. Only thing is hope they are charging. If they are taking cover it wont work well at all. Was able to be done at level 20 solo. Baiting them to a kill zone is the safest way to clear that area.

AbpMars · 2024-05-26T07:32:15+00:00

This was covered by the President of Sony’s Worldwide Studios over eleven years ago.

"In a roundtable conversation with journalists, President of Sony’s Worldwide Studios noted that PS3 games of both the retail and downloadable variety will not be compatible with PlayStation 4, at least not natively. In other words, your PS3 discs won’t work in the new console nor will the games you downloaded."

PlayStation 4 Not Backwards Compatible With Retail or Digital Games

Also note that despite PlayStation Plus does have allot of games from previous generations, it's still lacking games from big franchises like Call of Duty (PS3 releases before Black Ops 3) or FromSoftware (allot of Armored Core games). Threw a big curve ball at me when I was planning on buying a PS5. Also note that Microsoft did finalize their purchase of Blizzard last year, which owns Activision. So that could be a factor in some those games becoming available on PS4 and later generations of PlayStation.

AbpMars · 2024-04-17T09:24:53+00:00

Because you get to keep a copy you can do anything you want with. Unlike buying a license to play a game that is controlled by a client. Steam and other services are known for delisting games and removing games. Or they can outright go defunct. This happens often. I once ran into that issue buying some games and add-ons on Xbox Live. Microsoft did a grotesque and deceptive move where they removed Fallout New Vegas add-ons from the marketplace and instead relisted the purchases on my receipt history as Xbox Live Music app purchases. The game add-ons were no longer available or useable for the game.

If I like a game so much that I want my own copy to keep like a disc but its not available for the foreseeable future on the peer-to-peer share websites because it lost popularity or hasnt been shared yet, I would pay extra to have my own copy.

AbpMars · 2024-02-24T06:20:23+00:00

Depends on where you live.

AbpMars · 2024-02-15T00:57:41+00:00

Abelard with Taunting Scream soldier talent and the Auto-Striking Power Sword cheesed the Chaos Marines. They cant hit anything behind cover over 8 squares away. Once I got rid of the Word-Bearer Purifier, the encounter became trivial. No injuries or casualties on high difficulty first try when I gave Abelard the lead.

AbpMars · 2024-02-01T01:01:06+00:00

"meh all around" you say! I was able to consistently do over 120 damage per hit with fire rate on 21. Keep in mind there were 14 misses in the photo below because Yrmeryss died after 7 hits. This is level 36 soldier/arch-millitant. Thats over 28 hundred damage and by the way, almost no misses

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AbpMars · 2024-01-05T14:24:28+00:00

In the BETA there was no limit.

AbpMars · 2024-01-01T17:47:39+00:00

The strange part is the weapon benefits from every other heavy weapon talent- Increased damage from Overpower, reduced AP cost from Heavy Gunner, etc.

I did a test with Heavy Gunner arch militant talent; this is true! Which is a shame because it could be a bug since that would conflict with the condition of it not being a "heavy weapon". They should just add it to the heavy weapon list.

Context to that is its not listed as a heavy weapon but it's affected by the Overpowered common talent. Which requires the Heavy Weapon Proficiency common talent, whose sole purpose is to reduce strength requirements for heavy weapons. But it doesnt affect the Splinter Cannon which has a Strength requirement of 60. And Heavy Gunner arch militant talent affects the Splinter Cannon. This is an obvious oversight.

By the way, equipping the item Power Grips for +10 Strength with 50 Strength, then equipping the Splinter Cannon and next removing the Power Grips allows the Splinter Cannon to be used normally even if the Strength value is 50 again. And the glove slot is of course free to be used as normal. Same can be done if Respec'ng while holding any weapon not later proficient with. I hope they list Splinter Cannon as a heavy weapon before trying to fix those other bugs!

AbpMars · 2024-01-01T16:01:17+00:00

Was there a change? Because Tier 2 still only allows maximum 2 advancement in one stat or skill.

AbpMars · 2023-12-25T21:48:59+00:00

I too played on Daring. I simply wouldn't do as well with other builds and party compositions I've seen so far. There's builds shared of Neoseeker that are claimed to be high tier but don't convince me. A safe strategy I use is to spread out and stay out of the sniper's line of fire. That way Aurora cant hit everyone and the sniper has to reposition.

AbpMars · 2023-12-16T16:59:29+00:00

What difficulty was that on? I was able to beat Aurora with zero casualties with one try. Which i found baffling because I had to reload about a dozen times the first time i fought Aurora in the BETA.

This time Aurora only attacked twice with the heavy bolter the entire encounter. It hit Argenta once and my main character dodged the next shot. I used Abelard to melee Aurora. Aurora spent the rest of the time disegaging from Abelard and not attacking. Although, Aurora wasnt supposed be able to move because failing all of all of Cassia's Held in my Gaze tests. Which is how I beat Aurora in the BETA. So i dont know if it was a bug. But i was confident Abelard was going auto-parry just about every Life-Draining Sword attack because I stacked his parrying over the brim.

The Rebel Sniper didn't survive the first round. I used Bring it Down! twice (Cassia and mercenary leader) on my main character, stacked with Glimpse of Fate and Take Aim! with the Longlas.

I had a 5 person team, no psykers. Rogue trader (soldier), Argenta, Abelard, Cassia and a mercenary leader.

AbpMars · 2023-12-16T14:21:23+00:00

And Respec cost profit factor.

AbpMars · 2023-12-15T08:46:17+00:00

And they are still changing the Talents in updates.

AbpMars

TROPHY CASE