| Post/Author/DateTime | Post |
|---|---|
| The_Wild_King04-02-08, 11:49 PM | My DM does not believe me when I say a high level caster can destroy a high level melee class. He doesn't believe any duel or such can prove it either way, so I was wondering if anyone would mind sharing some memories in-game that either prove myself or him right. |
| Taeldrin Laesrash04-03-08, 12:18 AM | There should be threads on the CO board to show him. Or tell him that a wizard can fly out of a fighter's reach, take 1d4+1 rounds to his one, and force him to save with his worst save or die after reducing it. (That's just core. Feel free to bring in Celerity, which lets the wizard do this first thing in battle). |
| The_Black_Hand04-03-08, 12:24 AM | My DM does not believe me when I say a high level caster can destroy a high level melee class. He doesn't believe any duel or such can prove it either way, so I was wondering if anyone would mind sharing some memories in-game that either prove myself or him right. This is subject to what type of game the DM is running. From what I have noticed if the DM is running a high powered game then the things shift to the melee side of the fight, however if the he is playing a low- powered or low-magic campaign then things shift greatly to the magic users side of the combat. |
| Cuindless04-03-08, 12:36 AM | 13th level Focused Specialist Necromancer / Incantatrix (ray debuffer build) vs. a 16th level Fighter/Barbarian/Bear Warrior/Master of Many Forms (grapple build). That melee'er didn't stand a chance. Round 1: Quickened Daze plus Waves of Fatigue. Round 2: Escalating Enfeeblement. Round 3: Phantasmal Killer. And that was that... |
| The_Black_Hand04-03-08, 12:52 AM | 13th level Focused Specialist Necromancer / Incantatrix (ray debuffer build) vs. a 16th level Fighter/Barbarian/Bear Warrior/Master of Many Forms (grapple build). That melee'er didn't stand a chance. Round 1: Quickened Daze plus Waves of Fatigue. Round 2: Escalating Enfeeblement. Round 3: Phantasmal Killer. And that was that... Normal, High Powered, or Low Powered campaign? |
| Eldritch_Lord04-03-08, 12:54 AM | My DM does not believe me when I say a high level caster can destroy a high level melee class. He doesn't believe any duel or such can prove it either way, so I was wondering if anyone would mind sharing some memories in-game that either prove myself or him right. I doubt anecdotes from us will convince him, but you can try. For a very convincing example, Lycanthromancer's example of powerful magic vs. psionics is absolutely classic: While within a Time-Stop (Extended via a metamagic rod), a simple 5th level spell (Wall of Stone) domed around the wizard can invalidate the need to worry about Antimagic Fields, casting while silenced or grappled, Energy Balls, Energy Bolts, Mordenkainen's Disjunctions, Crystal Shards, Ectoplasmic Cocoons, and a huge number of other spells, powers, tactics, and effects. Building a WoS inside of a Prismatic Sphere protects the WoS from taking any kind of damage until the Sphere is taken care of (and unless your psion has a Rod of Cancellation handy, he ain't taking it down). The Ring Gates I mentioned earlier could just as easily be held by some summonables, rather than glued to the foreheads of some really nasty CR 27 dragons (which I also did via Time-Stop). And guess what? Many of my summoned creatures have some very high-level casting abilities - and you'd better believe that an army of them is coming for you. The only way to get in is to Metamorphosis into a creature that can burrow (which is why I'd plan on casting Wall of Iron to push over and stand on), or to teleport in (which is why I'd cast Dimensional Anchor on the walls). I could have my familiar running around in an Antimagic Field effect. All it would have to do would be to run within 10 feet of you. Then the aforesaid dragons would likely eat you alive. If that didn't work, I'd make a Knowledge: Psionics check, likely figuring out that it was your psicrown that was giving you invulnerability, and have my dragons use their entire attack routines to sunder it (and any other equipment you were carrying, just in case). Assuming that you managed to kill my familiar, and survived the Summoned/Gated creatures, then found ways around my turtle-shell, AND somehow got to me, I used my free time in my temporal plastic bubble to cast Shapechange, which means that I'm now an incorporeal undead, so you'll likely not be able to hurt me. And if you get past the 50% miss-chance imposed by incorporeality, I also used a Limited Wish to get a Contingencied Dimension-Door to transport me 5' underground, if something actually can damage me; since I'm incorporeal, I can exist within solid matter, so that's specifically allowed. Good luck getting to me there. Also, to counteract your Schism effect, I have about 5 10th-level Simulacrums running around, trying to hit you with Forcecages and such (and unlike yours, they have no duration, have a full complement of spells as 10th-level casters, and don't drain any of my current resources). They were in my Bag of Holding, which I dumped out as a move-action on one of my plastic-bubble rounds, or perhaps on a later round; it doesn't matter that much. And, assuming that you somehow managed to survive, have taken down all of my defenses, and then *killed* me, remember that it wasn't actually *me.* You've been fighting my Astral Projection this whole time, which has instantaneously returned to my real body (which is in my Bag of Holding, inert and in stasis). What this means is that I can learn from my mistakes and try to kill you all over again. By that time, you're likely down to 1/2 your power points or less, assuming that I haven't killed you after my familiar's AMF, my MKDs or my dragons' sunders and MKDs (or AMFs) take out your Timeless Body. Stat damage/drain is horrible, especially to either a manifesting stat (Int) or one of your weaker stats (Con or Cha), not to mention innumerable save-or-dies that target your rather weak Fortitude save (and that's not even including the spells that make you suffer without a single save - such as Otto's Irresistable Dance or Maze). And to keep you and that pesky psicrystal from galavanting about with teleportation spells, my dragons and I have hit you with a half dozen Dimensional Anchor spells - touch attack, no save. You ain't going anywhere. And, assuming you killed me AGAIN somehow (as I Extended Time-Stopped before teleporting out of the bag, and put up my defenses again), note that I had at least one Clone in my Bag of Holding (which is now me, and I could have more - note that all it costs is, at most, 1500 gp, and that I can have as many of these as I like, up to my gp limit), and that it's about to be teleporting out to keep up the barrage of spells that I've been flinging at you. And before you start yelling about how I'm chewing through my spell-slots like mad, note that I've perhaps only actually casted a few spells from slots. The rest have been through my chock-full Rods of Absorption, and perhaps a few scrolls (and I can have tons of these, if I wanted them). Thus, I've only used a fraction of my resources thus far. We are, at most, 15 rounds or so in. You've hardly been able to touch me, very likely, and if you have, I'm still in the running. Still want to duel using legitimate maneuvers? Every single one of those are RAW, RAI, allowable uses of arcane power. ...And I've barely scratched the surface. Keep in mind that's a 20th level wizard vs. a 20th level psion. A 20th level wizard vs. a 20th level fighter? Goodbye fighter. |
| Cuindless04-03-08, 01:01 AM | Normal, High Powered, or Low Powered campaign? I considered it high-powered. What do you mean by the question? We had pretty standard wealth for level, and it was largely "anything goes" as far as optimization was concerned. |
| The_Black_Hand04-03-08, 01:15 AM | I considered it high-powered. What do you mean by the question? We had pretty standard wealth for level, and it was largely "anything goes" as far as optimization was concerned. If you are at standard wealth then you are in a normal powered campaign. Unless you have some freakishly high stats and some heavy gear, however then you no longer be in a normal powered campaign. Basically I believe that in low powered and normal powered campaigns the duel advantage goes to casters, while in a high powered one the duel advantage goes to the melee. P.S. Phantasmal Killer is a luck required spell. It only work about 15% of the time. |
| Shaggy_Shaggs04-03-08, 01:27 AM | FWIW, all spells that allow any kind of saving throw or spell resistance or use attack rolls have an element of luck to them. That doesn't mean they're unreliable. Selective targeting and careful manipulation of the modifiers connected to the basic chance of success make an enormous amount of difference. |
| pigknight04-03-08, 01:35 AM | HAHAHAHAHA!!! :rofl: Sorry, couldn't help myself...go on now...nothing to see here. |
| The_Black_Hand04-03-08, 01:48 AM | FWIW, all spells that allow any kind of saving throw or spell resistance or use attack rolls have an element of luck to them. That doesn't mean they're unreliable. Selective targeting and careful manipulation of the modifiers connected to the basic chance of success make an enormous amount of difference. Please point out something else that is obvious. I understood that he spent the first 2 rounds debuffing the guys saves. In my experience though phantasmal killer (even with debuffed saves) still has a low chance of working. |
| arizonahotrock04-03-08, 02:04 AM | As much as I hate to admit this (since I love playing melee classes)...spell casters are so much more powerful than the melee classes, especially in straight up D&D. Now, if you are running a low magic, Conan/George R.R. Martin style campaign, spell casters are weaker, if not rare...though still powerful. I wish it were more balanced in the core...but, it just wouldn't make sense for it to be. I mean, how can anyone justify that a wizard who can throw fire, stop time, fly, etc...compete with a warrior who charges in with a sword? |
| arizonahotrock04-03-08, 02:08 AM | Please point out something else that is obvious. I understood that he spent the first 2 rounds debuffing the guys saves. In my experience though phantasmal killer (even with debuffed saves) still has a low chance of working. Depends on what/who you are fighting... In my gaming group, there is a gnome illusionist that has spent his entire life (almost) studying phantasmal killer...and has a ton of bonuses attached to it (arcane thesis, for example)... The saves on that spell, at level 14, are completely absurd. It's like a DC 28 for both... |
| calronmoonflower04-03-08, 02:43 AM | Show him this. For this tactic, you just need to be a Human Sorcerer 6 with the Metamagic Specialist variant in exchange for your familiar. Take two flaws so that you can take Arcane Thesis (Locate City), Born of Three Thunders, Energy Substitution (electricity), Explosive Spell, Flash Frost, and Snowcasting your feats. Make sure you have Locate City on your spell list, and pack along several scrolls of Lesser Globe of Invulnerability. Cast Lesser Globe of Invulnerability from a scroll so you'll be immune to the havoc you'll be causing. Now grab some ice from a freezer as a move action and spend the entire next round casting Locate City, spontaneously applying Flash Frost, Energy Substitution (electricity), Born of Three Thunders, and Explosive Spell in that order. That'll use up a 3rd-level spell slot due to Arcane Thesis, but you should have four 3rd-level spell slots assuming you have 18 Charisma. Because of Snowcasting, the Locate City spell gets the [cold] subtype. Flash Frost makes it deal 2 cold damage to everyone in the area. Energy Substitution (electricity) changes the spell's subtype to [electricity] and turns the damage into 2 electricity damage. Born of Three Thunders then makes that 1 electricity damage and 1 sonic damage, and forces a Fortitude save against being stunned as well as a Reflex save against being knocked prone. Explosive Spell only affects spells that force a Reflex save, so we've got that covered. Locate City affects a 10-mile/level radius, centered on you. At caster level 8th, thanks to Arcane Thesis, that's an 80-mile radius, or a 422,400-foot radius. Anyone who fails both the Fortitude save and the Reflex save, which should each be DC 15 assuming you have 18 Charisma, will be pushed to the nearest edge of the area, taking 1d6 damage for every 10 feet moved. If someone was right in front of the caster and failed both saves, he'd be hurled the full 80 miles and take 42,240d6 damage (average 147,840 damage). That's going to be a very forceful and painful trip indeed. Once you cast it, all structures in a 80-mile radius will be utterly destroyed, and approximately a third the population will fail their saves and violently get killed. Now that I think about it, the ground would take damage and auto-fail its saves as well, so you'd end up with a crater 80 miles deep. Then after a round of being dazed from Born of Three Thunders, you cast it again and again and again, putting up a Lesser Globe of Invulnerability as needed. That is what you can do at 6th-level. Now we'll need to go Incantatrix for the next 10 levels, but unfortunately, we don't happen to have Iron Will. However, the retraining rules from the Player's Handbook II lets us switch out a feat of our choice for another feat before leveling up, so we're free to switch out Born of Three Thunders for Iron Will right before we take Incantatrix. We'll get BoTT right back since Incantatrix gives you a bonus metamagic feat at 1st-level. Right before hitting Incantatrix 4, we'll switch out Energy Substitution for a non-metamagic feat, and then get the former right back as a bonus feat. Before hitting Incantatrix 7, we'll do the same by switching out Explosive Spell for another non-metamagic feat of our choice, and then get Explosive Spell back as a bonus feat. Once we reach Incantatrix 9, we'll simply take Heighten Spell as our bonus metamagic feat. As a Human Sorcerer 6/Incantatrix 10/Stormcaster 1/Archmage 3, this is what your feat list should look like: Arcane Thesis (Locate City), Born of Three Thunders, Draconic Heritage (any electric), Draconic Power, Energy Substitution (electricity), Explosive Spell, Flash Frost, Greater Spell Focus (divination), Heighten Spell, Iron Will, Skill Focus (spellcraft), Snowcasting, Spell Focus (divination), Spell Focus (any). A Snowcasted, Flash Frost, Energy Substituted (electricity), Born of Three Thunders, Explosive, Heightened to 9th-level Locate City with Arcane Thesis and Improved Metamagic will take up but a 6th-level spell slot. Fill out your lower level slots with less metamagic'd Locate City spells. Assuming you took Spell Power as your High Arcana three times, you should have a caster level of 28th (20 base + 3 Spell Power + 2 Storm Spell Power + 2 Arcane Thesis + 1 Draconic Power), so your devastating spell will now cover a 280-mile radius. Assuming you have 34 Charisma (18 base + 5 stat boosts + 5 stat tomes + 6 Cloak of Charisma), the Fortitude and Reflex save DCs should each be 34 (10 + 9 spell level + 12 Charisma bonus + 1 Spell Focus + 1 Greater Spell Focus + 1 Draconic Power). 1d6 damage per 10 feet moved. If you eat the full 280 miles, that's 147,840d6 (average 517,440 damage). We'll take the average for the purpose of calculations. If you somehow have regeneration 1, you'd fully heal the damage in 862.4 hours or 35.93 days. The tarrasque, with regeneration 40, would heal it in just 21.56 hours. Arcane Thesis, Flash Frost: Player's Handbook II Born of Three Thunders, Explosive Spell: Complete Arcane Snowcasting: Frostburn Stormcaster: Stormwrack Draconic Heritage, Draconic Power: Races of the Dragon Locate City: Races of Destiny Incantatrix: Player's Guide to Faerun |
| Drackthor04-03-08, 02:55 AM | Show him this. For this tactic, you just need to be a Human Sorcerer 6 with the Metamagic Specialist variant in exchange for your familiar. Take two flaws so that you can take Arcane Thesis (Locate City), Born of Three Thunders, Energy Substitution (electricity), Explosive Spell, Flash Frost, and Snowcasting your feats. Make sure you have Locate City on your spell list, and pack along several scrolls of Lesser Globe of Invulnerability. Cast Lesser Globe of Invulnerability from a scroll so you'll be immune to the havoc you'll be causing. Now grab some ice from a freezer as a move action and spend the entire next round casting Locate City, spontaneously applying Flash Frost, Energy Substitution (electricity), Born of Three Thunders, and Explosive Spell in that order. That'll use up a 3rd-level spell slot due to Arcane Thesis, but you should have four 3rd-level spell slots assuming you have 18 Charisma. Because of Snowcasting, the Locate City spell gets the [cold] subtype. Flash Frost makes it deal 2 cold damage to everyone in the area. Energy Substitution (electricity) changes the spell's subtype to [electricity] and turns the damage into 2 electricity damage. Born of Three Thunders then makes that 1 electricity damage and 1 sonic damage, and forces a Fortitude save against being stunned as well as a Reflex save against being knocked prone. Explosive Spell only affects spells that force a Reflex save, so we've got that covered. Locate City affects a 10-mile/level radius, centered on you. At caster level 8th, thanks to Arcane Thesis, that's an 80-mile radius, or a 422,400-foot radius. Anyone who fails both the Fortitude save and the Reflex save, which should each be DC 15 assuming you have 18 Charisma, will be pushed to the nearest edge of the area, taking 1d6 damage for every 10 feet moved. If someone was right in front of the caster and failed both saves, he'd be hurled the full 80 miles and take 42,240d6 damage (average 147,840 damage). That's going to be a very forceful and painful trip indeed. Once you cast it, all structures in a 80-mile radius will be utterly destroyed, and approximately a third the population will fail their saves and violently get killed. Now that I think about it, the ground would take damage and auto-fail its saves as well, so you'd end up with a crater 80 miles deep. Then after a round of being dazed from Born of Three Thunders, you cast it again and again and again, putting up a Lesser Globe of Invulnerability as needed. That is what you can do at 6th-level. Now we'll need to go Incantatrix for the next 10 levels, but unfortunately, we don't happen to have Iron Will. However, the retraining rules from the Player's Handbook II lets us switch out a feat of our choice for another feat before leveling up, so we're free to switch out Born of Three Thunders for Iron Will right before we take Incantatrix. We'll get BoTT right back since Incantatrix gives you a bonus metamagic feat at 1st-level. Right before hitting Incantatrix 4, we'll switch out Energy Substitution for a non-metamagic feat, and then get the former right back as a bonus feat. Before hitting Incantatrix 7, we'll do the same by switching out Explosive Spell for another non-metamagic feat of our choice, and then get Explosive Spell back as a bonus feat. Once we reach Incantatrix 9, we'll simply take Heighten Spell as our bonus metamagic feat. As a Human Sorcerer 6/Incantatrix 10/Stormcaster 1/Archmage 3, this is what your feat list should look like: Arcane Thesis (Locate City), Born of Three Thunders, Draconic Heritage (any electric), Draconic Power, Energy Substitution (electricity), Explosive Spell, Flash Frost, Greater Spell Focus (divination), Heighten Spell, Iron Will, Skill Focus (spellcraft), Snowcasting, Spell Focus (divination), Spell Focus (any). A Snowcasted, Flash Frost, Energy Substituted (electricity), Born of Three Thunders, Explosive, Heightened to 9th-level Locate City with Arcane Thesis and Improved Metamagic will take up but a 6th-level spell slot. Fill out your lower level slots with less metamagic'd Locate City spells. Assuming you took Spell Power as your High Arcana three times, you should have a caster level of 28th (20 base + 3 Spell Power + 2 Storm Spell Power + 2 Arcane Thesis + 1 Draconic Power), so your devastating spell will now cover a 280-mile radius. Assuming you have 34 Charisma (18 base + 5 stat boosts + 5 stat tomes + 6 Cloak of Charisma), the Fortitude and Reflex save DCs should each be 34 (10 + 9 spell level + 12 Charisma bonus + 1 Spell Focus + 1 Greater Spell Focus + 1 Draconic Power). 1d6 damage per 10 feet moved. If you eat the full 280 miles, that's 147,840d6 (average 517,440 damage). We'll take the average for the purpose of calculations. If you somehow have regeneration 1, you'd fully heal the damage in 862.4 hours or 35.93 days. The tarrasque, with regeneration 40, would heal it in just 21.56 hours. Arcane Thesis, Flash Frost: Player's Handbook II Born of Three Thunders, Explosive Spell: Complete Arcane Snowcasting: Frostburn Stormcaster: Stormwrack Draconic Heritage, Draconic Power: Races of the Dragon Locate City: Races of Destiny Incantatrix: Player's Guide to Faerun Glorious. |
| Zillah04-03-08, 02:59 AM | artificer. wanna talk about melee vs caster? this guy can be a better CLASS then anything in the game. im not gonna explain how(not my build, so i have no right to explain it) but an artificer at i think level 12(not sure, but meh its guaranteed before 20) has can have infinite time to craft whatever he wants with NO xp cost, and NO gold cost. period. o, and there are ways(contingency chain) that when you roll initiative the other player dies/loses. the contingency i believe is "when combat begins" or something like that. combat begins at initiative roll. |
| X0_Lt_0X04-03-08, 03:41 AM | Glorious. It truly is..... |
| Kouk04-03-08, 03:44 AM | I wish it were more balanced in the core...but, it just wouldn't make sense for it to be. I mean, how can anyone justify that a wizard who can throw fire, stop time, fly, etc...compete with a warrior who charges in with a sword? Well, wait 'til 4th edition and see. All classes are supposed to be relatively equal to each other in power. |
| Sunic_Flames04-03-08, 08:18 AM | artificer. wanna talk about melee vs caster? this guy can be a better CLASS then anything in the game. im not gonna explain how(not my build, so i have no right to explain it) but an artificer at i think level 12(not sure, but meh its guaranteed before 20) has can have infinite time to craft whatever he wants with NO xp cost, and NO gold cost. period. o, and there are ways(contingency chain) that when you roll initiative the other player dies/loses. the contingency i believe is "when combat begins" or something like that. combat begins at initiative roll. Indeed. Artificers are that class that says "Anything anyone can do, I can do better." You don't even need infinite wealth. You just need a metric :censored: ton of it. Did you know that if you have Extraordinary and Legendary Artisan, and make all your items restricted to your class and alignment, with x ranks in y skill where x and y are something you have you can craft at 11.25% of the gp and xp price? That means an item that costs 100,000 gp instead only costs 11,250 gp and 900 xp. That's about... 6.75 million gold to play with. Massive overkill. And as we all know, money is power. You are what you wear. No non magic class can even hope to compete with this. Anyone who believes high level melee > caster has either: 1: Never played anywhere near high level. 2: Only seen utterly horrible casters, like ones that think Fireball is a good spell. 3: Suffered a trauma causing them to become disconnected with reality and delusional. Kouk: Supposed to be maybe. Didn't they say that about 3.5? And 3.0? For that matter, hasn't just about every gaming company in existence given a similar, and just as meaningless assurance of balance because as has been proven many times, they aren't playing the same game we are at best, and not playing at all at worst? |
| The_Wild_King04-03-08, 08:41 AM | Thanks for all the replies, hopefully now he'll see reason. I think its because he's never gotten past single digit levels, so that would skew his opinion. To answer The_Black_Hand's question, we usually play low-magic and low-power campaigns, meaning no magic items or gold really (I was a level 10 fighter in my first campaign and I had just barely gotten enough gold for regular full plate.) |
| The_Black_Hand04-03-08, 08:58 AM | Thanks for all the replies, hopefully now he'll see reason. I think its because he's never gotten past single digit levels, so that would skew his opinion. To answer The_Black_Hand's question, we usually play low-magic and low-power campaigns, meaning no magic items or gold really (I was a level 10 fighter in my first campaign and I had just barely gotten enough gold for regular full plate.) OK then the advantage is definatly to the casters in your campaign. |
| Zombie_Babies04-03-08, 09:46 AM | 13th level Focused Specialist Necromancer / Incantatrix (ray debuffer build) vs. a 16th level Fighter/Barbarian/Bear Warrior/Master of Many Forms (grapple build). That melee'er didn't stand a chance. Round 1: Quickened Daze plus Waves of Fatigue. Round 2: Escalating Enfeeblement. Round 3: Phantasmal Killer. And that was that... Forgive me if I missed something, but doesn't Daze only work on creatures with 4HD or less? To the OP: The spellcaster will win. It's just that simple. I can't give you a specific example because I rarely play them (and there are soooooo many examples that can be given). Fly + Spells with "Long" range= dead melee dude. Add in Stoneskin and Greater Invis and even the best archer won't have a prayer. I know there's faster methods, but it really is as simple as Fly and bomb. |
| Sunic_Flames04-03-08, 09:59 AM | OK then the advantage is definatly to the casters in your campaign. +1. Low magic = casters are even more awesome, non magic is utter garbage (more so than usual) because it depends so heavily upon magic items, which the likely overcontrolling DM is keeping away from you. High magic = casters still awesome of course, but the others at least get a variety of items to come closer to par. By the way, that's not low power. Low power for you, and for the non spell slingers maybe... |
| Nephlite04-03-08, 11:27 AM | My DM does not believe me when I say a high level caster can destroy a high level melee class. He doesn't believe any duel or such can prove it either way, so I was wondering if anyone would mind sharing some memories in-game that either prove myself or him right. Have a Wizard Fly above him enervating him to death. Try to Get the Enervaryions Empowered and Maximized if you can. (better than Energy Drain) He loses 5 hps per negative level lost. If he loses all his levels: he dies. Add any slot reducers like Metamagic Rods so it isn't a true 9th level slot. Arcane Thesis also reduces Slot cost. 6 levels lost per E.M Enervation = 4 needed to kill him if under 25 levels. No Save. Losing 30 hps per slot. And -1 saves, asttack, etc. |
| Mereille04-03-08, 11:54 AM | Forgive me for asking, but...why does it matter? If "Eric" is happy playing his wizard, and "Becky" is happy with her fighter, then where is the problem? Who cares which one would win in the danger room? Now if the GM's opinion means that "Eric" is feeling left out as a wizard, because the GM is favoring "Becky"'s fighter...that is a different story. |
| The_Wild_King04-03-08, 12:09 PM | Forgive me for asking, but...why does it matter? If "Eric" is happy playing his wizard, and "Becky" is happy with her fighter, then where is the problem? Who cares which one would win in the danger room? Now if the GM's opinion means that "Eric" is feeling left out as a wizard, because the GM is favoring "Becky"'s fighter...that is a different story. It matters because the DM is threatening to ban my melee class for being overpowered... |
| Zombie_Babies04-03-08, 12:12 PM | It matters because the DM is threatening to ban my melee class for being overpowered... What class is he thinking of banning? |
| Mereille04-03-08, 12:18 PM | It matters because the DM is threatening to ban my melee class for being overpowered... Ahh...well that changes things. Has your DM said why he thinks the class is overpowered? Is his complaint with that class overall, or your specific build? Have you been instrumental in breezing past your DM's favorite challenges recently? Instead of trying to prove your DM wrong, maybe try to figure out why he feels the way he does, and try to address those specific complaints? |
| Zillah04-03-08, 12:41 PM | dude what level are you right now with your melee character? cause if he bans it, i would suggest you come to these boards, and tell us. then you tell him because your melee is OP, you are going to roll a magical class...then you come tell us that too. and hilarity will ensue. i promise. i would say you have to go for a gish build. absolutely. hexblade, or duskblade. I would say hexblade just to be funny against your DM. o look, -2 to to this and that. o look, -2 to everything, o look -2 to everything again, o and it stacks. o look, he's stunned, o look, i have full base attack progression, im a fighter with spells. rawr. |
| Hsien04-03-08, 12:59 PM | As prev stated, normally casters are much more powerful, esp at higher levels There are variables that can affect that, such as allowed books, campaign type, and also that perception of "power" is influenced by what other party members have made and how they play those characters. i.e one Char Op Board melee combat machine can seem very overpowering when played with and then compared to quirkie/just fun to play casters. My prev melee characters, well ranged actually, were a Master Thrower and a Swift hunter. No caster typr we came across lasted more then one round and often never got to act, actually with the MT most things didn't last long if they could be crit/sneaked. Now I'm playing a warlock/cleric tyat is much more fun, albeit a non-direct combat design |
| Sunic_Flames04-03-08, 01:09 PM | If the point is to make a magical class even more powerful to show him that it could be far worse and wasn't that bad the way it was so as to get him to allow it on the grounds it was just him having a knee jerk reaction... why in the Nine Hells are you recommending Hexblade, of all things? A Core Only Druid (CoDzilla) will have him crying in short order. This will prove in one fell swoop casters >>>>>>>>> melee by far and that casters make better melees than melees at the same time. Without having any idea of your case, and just taking a guess as to what it could be... You made a tripper, aka a real tank. Your DM is upset because you can actually do something useful without magic. Because you're a fighter (even if you aren't a Fighter) you don't get nice things. You made a charger, aka the other real tank. Your DM is upset because your sheer damage output might make you comparable to a lower end caster. Moreover, having someone dish out the pain like that makes them a target aka tank. You made something out of ToB, and the kneejerk reaction is either 'OMG 100 damage at level 17! Nerf!' or once again an inherent bias against melees. |
| Zillah04-03-08, 01:22 PM | to be funny? :D and to **** off the DM more. full BAB and spellcasting is all he will see. you know im right :P |
| blade26504-03-08, 01:24 PM | artificer. wanna talk about melee vs caster? this guy can be a better CLASS then anything in the game. im not gonna explain how(not my build, so i have no right to explain it) but an artificer at i think level 12(not sure, but meh its guaranteed before 20) has can have infinite time to craft whatever he wants with NO xp cost, and NO gold cost. period. o, and there are ways(contingency chain) that when you roll initiative the other player dies/loses. the contingency i believe is "when combat begins" or something like that. combat begins at initiative roll. If you are talking about taking Extraordinary and Legendary Artisan multiple times, you can't. You can only take them once. From the EBCS Errata p1 Page 49: Feats Table—Item Creation Feats Remove the superscript “2” after the feats Exceptional Artisan, Extraordinary Artisan, and Legendary Artisan. Each feat can be taken once only, not multiple times. |
| Mereille04-03-08, 01:27 PM | I just don't think that 'proving the DM wrong' is right thing to do. The "You-think-that-was-unbalanced-I'll-show-you-unbalanced" approach is only going to cause grief all around. This isn't a competition. After all is said and done, both the OP and the GM will need to be able to sit down at a table and keep playing. The only thing that the 'I'll prove you wrong' attitude will achieve is hard feelings. Have an honest chat (not argument!) with the DM. Find out what exactly he is concerned about regarding the class. Is it the class? A certain combination of feats? Your build? See if you can address those specific things. It might require compromise on both of your parts. |
| Sunic_Flames04-03-08, 03:17 PM | to be funny? :D and to **** off the DM more. full BAB and spellcasting is all he will see. you know im right :P Eh? If that's all it took you could just use a Paladin or Ranger. But you and I both know that won't work. Cleric with Divine Power for the win. :P |
| The_Wild_King04-03-08, 04:39 PM | Sunic Flames, you got it right. Looking at either a Warblade or Crusader. |
| Cuindless04-03-08, 04:56 PM | So, if I understand this, your DM thinks that the ToB classes are overpowered and doesn't want you to play one, to the point that he's going to ban it. Are you asking for objective proof that ToB is balanced? Because if that's the case you need to take a look at Tempest Stormwind's extensive review of ToB vs. Core. If you want advice on how to make a caster that is uber-powerful and a better melee'er than a Warblade or Crusader, then Druid 20 is your best bet. Take a trip to the CO boards and check it out. |
| Drackthor04-03-08, 05:00 PM | Show him how to make Pun Pun in 5 levels using a Caster, then simply ask him to reproduce it with Melee classes. Pretty simple proof, actually. |
| Cuindless04-03-08, 05:13 PM | Show him how to make Pun Pun in 5 levels using a Caster, then simply ask him to reproduce it with Melee classes. Pretty simple proof, actually. Drackthor wins the thread... |
| Nephlite04-03-08, 05:19 PM | Show him how to make Pun Pun in 5 levels using a Caster, then simply ask him to reproduce it with Melee classes. Pretty simple proof, actually. Actually, you just need to a Kobold (non-spellcaster) , say 3x Pazuzu, wish for the Sarrukrk Ability (Shapechange), and you become Pun-Pun. This can be done by level 1. You go one step closer to evil though so keep that in mind. |
| Sunic_Flames04-03-08, 05:37 PM | Sunic Flames, you got it right. Looking at either a Warblade or Crusader. I had one of those before. His basis wasn't that they > casters though, it was that they > core melees. Even if this were the case, core melees < just about everything else anyways. Therefore, the flaw is with core melees and not ToB. There's actually very little in ToB that can be broken. IHS, because it's worded poorly. RKV, because of the turn attempt thing and I think bad wording. White Raven Tactics, due to bad wording. A smack with the common sense stick and you're all good. The primary appeal of the book is not needing a black belt in optimization fu to make a non magical martial character who is both fun to play and not trivial. Hard to break, both in the sense of being over the top and in the sense of being useless. And, they're worth taking 1-20, but don't have to be. This is balance. |
| Drackthor04-03-08, 06:51 PM | Actually, you just need to a Kobold (non-spellcaster) , say 3x Pazuzu, wish for the Sarrukrk Ability (Shapechange), and you become Pun-Pun. This can be done by level 1. You go one step closer to evil though so keep that in mind. Note underlined part. |
| Zillah04-03-08, 07:08 PM | If you are talking about taking Extraordinary and Legendary Artisan multiple times, you can't. You can only take them once. From the EBCS Errata p1 Page 49: Feats Table—Item Creation Feats Remove the superscript “2” after the feats Exceptional Artisan, Extraordinary Artisan, and Legendary Artisan. Each feat can be taken once only, not multiple times. no. im not taking about doing that. its something different. and no i will not explain how. it is not my build, it is not my place. but point being, for example, belts of magnificence. you can have them slotless, and give different bonuses except for holy/profane. so, +6 to all stats normal belt= cheap for articifer +6 circrumstance= cheap for artificer +6 insight +6 luck anything else i missed? i think there is a few more. anyway. can you imagine an artificer with +24 to everything legally? yea legally. and its free. and costs no time to make. anyway, point being, artificers can do everything better then everyone else. period. he could be a better fighter then a fighter. he can make items that give him infinite feats with slotlessness. so, that limit to taking a feat thing don't really matter. you can change the type of bonus granted by anything. its seriously limited only by your imagination. rawr. but if he really wanted to PO the DM, pick up a druid. Master of many forms+10th level druid=win... |
| The_Wild_King04-03-08, 09:57 PM | It started out with me wanting to play a crusader in his new campaign. He said that they made melee equals to casters, so I tried to show him evidence otherwise. However, he then declared that melee was already overpowered, and thats how I got here |
| -thisisacat-04-03-08, 10:10 PM | Note underlined part. Yes, that is Wish the spell, panzuzu will grant a wish to anyone who says his name 3 times in exchange for moving your alignment closer to his. You use it for a candle of invocation, which you use for 3 wishes from an effriti, those will get you manipulate form. |
| Cuindless04-04-08, 12:41 AM | It started out with me wanting to play a crusader in his new campaign. He said that they made melee equals to casters, so I tried to show him evidence otherwise. However, he then declared that melee was already overpowered, and thats how I got here Wait... man what? ToB making melee equal to casters is a bad thing? No... how about the fact that it doesn't even come close yet is the bad thing. Melee already overpowered? Is he on crack?!?? Hammergun FTW. |
| Goreg Skullcrusher04-04-08, 01:40 AM | It started out with me wanting to play a crusader in his new campaign. He said that they made melee equals to casters, so I tried to show him evidence otherwise. However, he then declared that melee was already overpowered, and thats how I got here The thing with the ToB classes is they're as strong as the top fraction of optimized melee builds, without the necessary system mastery. They obviate the need for any of the core melee classes, which may irk some DM's. Further, they're far more powerful than spellcasters at low levels, and only match their prowess towards higher levels. If your games are like ours where the PC's don't often go past level 10 and only allow certain splatbooks, then they can in fact be disproportionally overpowered compared to even spellcasters. To make a blanket statement that spellcasters are better at all levels of play and all variations of playable rules is preposterous. I've read Stormwinds proposal; it simply doesn't apply to every game. |
| Cuindless04-04-08, 01:57 AM | The thing with the ToB classes is they're as strong as the top fraction of optimized melee builds, without the necessary system mastery. They obviate the need for any of the core melee classes, which may irk some DM's. Further, they're far more powerful than spellcasters at low levels, and only match their prowess towards higher levels. If your games are like ours where the PC's don't often go past level 10 and only allow certain splatbooks, then they can in fact be disproportionally overpowered compared to even spellcasters. To make a blanket statement that spellcasters are better at all levels of play and all variations of playable rules is preposterous. I've read Stormwinds proposal; it simply doesn't apply to every game. I disagree with just about everything you said. First, fighters, paladins, rangers and barbarians make great dip classes no matter what, and can be optimized well beyond ToB classes. That's what makes the ToB classes so well balanced. They're very difficult to break, unlike the leap-attacking shock trooper barbarian with 3 PrCs or the Tripomatic Chain Gun. Second, optimized low-level wizards can still be God. One well-placed grease or glitterdust ends a combat faster than some melee'ers can draw their weapon. Third, I defy you to show me a single ToB class that beats the awesome power of the low-level Druid. Free "flanking friend" + spells + wild shape = pure win. 'Nuff said. |
| Goreg Skullcrusher04-04-08, 02:17 AM | I disagree with just about everything you said. First, fighters, paladins, rangers and barbarians make great dip classes no matter what, and can be optimized well beyond ToB classes. That's what makes the ToB classes so well balanced. They're very difficult to break, unlike the leap-attacking shock trooper barbarian with 3 PrCs or the Tripomatic Chain Gun. Second, optimized low-level wizards can still be God. One well-placed grease or glitterdust ends a combat faster than some melee'ers can draw their weapon. Third, I defy you to show me a single ToB class that beats the awesome power of the low-level Druid. Free "flanking friend" + spells + wild shape = pure win. 'Nuff said. Well, like I said, only the truly optimized melee monstrosities are ever brought up to compare with generic ToB builds. Compared to less than optimal class selection (Fighter10, for example) they've got nothing on the ToB classes. Not every gamer is capable of the level of system mastery required to make core melee classes on par with standard ToB fare. Grease and glitterdust, while excellent low level spells, simply don't kill things. They aid the fighters kill those things. It's around level 7 (give or take, depending on available source material) that the caster surges past the melee'ers and never looks back. Druids Wildshape at level 5 isn't that impressive without multiple splatbooks. Using only the MM, they become don't become bonafide kill-engines until level 8 or so (I recognize that I'm disregarding their spell-list; Druids are the most overpowered PHB class understandably. They're not the only class to obtain flanking partners however) I'm not saying that ToB is a powergaming munchkin's wet-dream or anything of the like. In some campaigns, particularly low level ones that limit optional material, they out-class core options significantly and a DM is well within his rights to not want to introduce such a problem. |
| Half_Dragon_Infernal04-04-08, 07:48 AM | *Cough* Hydra *Cough* |
| Sunic_Flames04-04-08, 09:56 AM | It started out with me wanting to play a crusader in his new campaign. He said that they made melee equals to casters, so I tried to show him evidence otherwise. However, he then declared that melee was already overpowered, and thats how I got here This is a real hammergun. http://www.wwgreener.com/Adams.jpg Use it well. |
| Grovel_hits_it_yes04-04-08, 09:06 PM | Classes are like tools, it all depends on the one USING the tool. |
| Tequila_Sunrise04-05-08, 12:40 AM | Wild King, you're never going to convince your DM to change his opinion. If you try to argue the point with him, you'll just come off as whiny and you'll both be POed at each other. Your only real options are: 1. Quit the game and find another. 2. Play a spell caster NOT as a way to prove him wrong, just as a way to have fun playing the game as normal. 3. Play a non-ToB melee character. I'm currently playing in a low-wealth game with a rather quirky DM (he wouldn't let my first character have a scabbard for his great sword because it couldn't realistically fit), but ya know what? That fighter was my favorite character of the campaign despite the fact that he was the first to die. 4. Run a damn game yourself. If you want players to have access to ToB, take matters and responsibility into your own hands. TS |
| Kargush04-05-08, 06:23 AM | Show him this. For this tactic, you just need to be a Human Sorcerer 6 with the Metamagic Specialist variant in exchange for your familiar. Take two flaws so that you can take Arcane Thesis (Locate City), Born of Three Thunders, Energy Substitution (electricity), Explosive Spell, Flash Frost, and Snowcasting your feats. Make sure you have Locate City on your spell list, and pack along several scrolls of Lesser Globe of Invulnerability. Cast Lesser Globe of Invulnerability from a scroll so you'll be immune to the havoc you'll be causing. Now grab some ice from a freezer as a move action and spend the entire next round casting Locate City, spontaneously applying Flash Frost, Energy Substitution (electricity), Born of Three Thunders, and Explosive Spell in that order. That'll use up a 3rd-level spell slot due to Arcane Thesis, but you should have four 3rd-level spell slots assuming you have 18 Charisma. Because of Snowcasting, the Locate City spell gets the [cold] subtype. Flash Frost makes it deal 2 cold damage to everyone in the area. Energy Substitution (electricity) changes the spell's subtype to [electricity] and turns the damage into 2 electricity damage. Born of Three Thunders then makes that 1 electricity damage and 1 sonic damage, and forces a Fortitude save against being stunned as well as a Reflex save against being knocked prone. Explosive Spell only affects spells that force a Reflex save, so we've got that covered. Locate City affects a 10-mile/level radius, centered on you. At caster level 8th, thanks to Arcane Thesis, that's an 80-mile radius, or a 422,400-foot radius. Anyone who fails both the Fortitude save and the Reflex save, which should each be DC 15 assuming you have 18 Charisma, will be pushed to the nearest edge of the area, taking 1d6 damage for every 10 feet moved. If someone was right in front of the caster and failed both saves, he'd be hurled the full 80 miles and take 42,240d6 damage (average 147,840 damage). That's going to be a very forceful and painful trip indeed. Once you cast it, all structures in a 80-mile radius will be utterly destroyed, and approximately a third the population will fail their saves and violently get killed. Now that I think about it, the ground would take damage and auto-fail its saves as well, so you'd end up with a crater 80 miles deep. Then after a round of being dazed from Born of Three Thunders, you cast it again and again and again, putting up a Lesser Globe of Invulnerability as needed. That is what you can do at 6th-level. Now we'll need to go Incantatrix for the next 10 levels, but unfortunately, we don't happen to have Iron Will. However, the retraining rules from the Player's Handbook II lets us switch out a feat of our choice for another feat before leveling up, so we're free to switch out Born of Three Thunders for Iron Will right before we take Incantatrix. We'll get BoTT right back since Incantatrix gives you a bonus metamagic feat at 1st-level. Right before hitting Incantatrix 4, we'll switch out Energy Substitution for a non-metamagic feat, and then get the former right back as a bonus feat. Before hitting Incantatrix 7, we'll do the same by switching out Explosive Spell for another non-metamagic feat of our choice, and then get Explosive Spell back as a bonus feat. Once we reach Incantatrix 9, we'll simply take Heighten Spell as our bonus metamagic feat. As a Human Sorcerer 6/Incantatrix 10/Stormcaster 1/Archmage 3, this is what your feat list should look like: Arcane Thesis (Locate City), Born of Three Thunders, Draconic Heritage (any electric), Draconic Power, Energy Substitution (electricity), Explosive Spell, Flash Frost, Greater Spell Focus (divination), Heighten Spell, Iron Will, Skill Focus (spellcraft), Snowcasting, Spell Focus (divination), Spell Focus (any). A Snowcasted, Flash Frost, Energy Substituted (electricity), Born of Three Thunders, Explosive, Heightened to 9th-level Locate City with Arcane Thesis and Improved Metamagic will take up but a 6th-level spell slot. Fill out your lower level slots with less metamagic'd Locate City spells. Assuming you took Spell Power as your High Arcana three times, you should have a caster level of 28th (20 base + 3 Spell Power + 2 Storm Spell Power + 2 Arcane Thesis + 1 Draconic Power), so your devastating spell will now cover a 280-mile radius. Assuming you have 34 Charisma (18 base + 5 stat boosts + 5 stat tomes + 6 Cloak of Charisma), the Fortitude and Reflex save DCs should each be 34 (10 + 9 spell level + 12 Charisma bonus + 1 Spell Focus + 1 Greater Spell Focus + 1 Draconic Power). 1d6 damage per 10 feet moved. If you eat the full 280 miles, that's 147,840d6 (average 517,440 damage). We'll take the average for the purpose of calculations. If you somehow have regeneration 1, you'd fully heal the damage in 862.4 hours or 35.93 days. The tarrasque, with regeneration 40, would heal it in just 21.56 hours. Arcane Thesis, Flash Frost: Player's Handbook II Born of Three Thunders, Explosive Spell: Complete Arcane Snowcasting: Frostburn Stormcaster: Stormwrack Draconic Heritage, Draconic Power: Races of the Dragon Locate City: Races of Destiny Incantatrix: Player's Guide to Faerun I need the build. The complete and utter build. Please. I beg you. |
| The_Wild_King04-05-08, 09:24 AM | Wild King, you're never going to convince your DM to change his opinion. If you try to argue the point with him, you'll just come off as whiny and you'll both be POed at each other. Your only real options are: 1. Quit the game and find another. 2. Play a spell caster NOT as a way to prove him wrong, just as a way to have fun playing the game as normal. 3. Play a non-ToB melee character. I'm currently playing in a low-wealth game with a rather quirky DM (he wouldn't let my first character have a scabbard for his great sword because it couldn't realistically fit), but ya know what? That fighter was my favorite character of the campaign despite the fact that he was the first to die. 4. Run a damn game yourself. If you want players to have access to ToB, take matters and responsibility into your own hands. TS Tried running the game myself, then quickly found out I'm a much worse DM than him :P. I'm working on 1. I was a caster in the last game, so I'm trying to branch out a bit, and if all else fails, I'll probably just go to a barbarian. I disagree with not changing his opinion, because with evidence supporting the other side, it would be ridiculous to keep believing he was right. Anyways, he's agreed to let me play a crusader for the first session and he'll judge from that. We are level one, so this is kinda skewed. I'm going to be one of the more powerful members of the party, so my question is this. Should I play my guy badly so he'll allow the class or just play normally? |
| Shaggy_Shaggs04-05-08, 09:31 AM | I wouldn't play it badly, but I would play it reactively. Being aggressive and having the capability to back it up can make a character look disproportionately powerful if the others aren't similarly proactive or more so. Holding yourself in reserve, minimizing your own spotlight time and only stepping in when you've seen that circumstances dicate you must act might help to allay fears of taking over the game. |
| Justaidan04-05-08, 11:55 AM | Why not just run a Galdiator match with everyone (DM included) playing their own character at various levels? Won't affect your campaign at all. |
| The_Wild_King04-05-08, 12:36 PM | Why not just run a Galdiator match with everyone (DM included) playing their own character at various levels? Won't affect your campaign at all. He doesn't believe duels prove anything, so it would just be a waste of time. I suggested the same thing :/ |
| Eldritch_Lord04-05-08, 12:52 PM | I wouldn't play it badly, but I would play it reactively. Being aggressive and having the capability to back it up can make a character look disproportionately powerful if the others aren't similarly proactive or more so. Holding yourself in reserve, minimizing your own spotlight time and only stepping in when you've seen that circumstances dicate you must act might help to allay fears of taking over the game. Seconded. I'd suggest taking Stone Power (or whatever the one is that trades attack for temp HP) and hanging back, mostly playing defensively. Let delayed damage + Stone Power soak up damage, pick up the healing maneuvers, and don't try to outdamage anyone until your DM is used to it. It's better to have your DM think you're too good defensively than too good offensively, if he doesn't like the Crusader, so try to heal the other party members and guard them rather than going into the thick of things. |
| Sunic_Flames04-05-08, 12:52 PM | He doesn't believe duels prove anything, so it would just be a waste of time. I suggested the same thing :/ Which is why I don't show a level 12 gish having roughly even chances of killing a level 20 mage spamming 9th level spells. |
| PhaedrusXY04-05-08, 10:31 PM | Show him this (http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=10582589). Along with the example given on the first page with the wizard vs. the psion, that's about as convincing as you can get I think. The funny thing is, both of those were done by Lycanthromancer, who says he'd never played a high level wizard before doing them. They also use core only material for the wizard, while the fighter in this example was allowed any book he wanted. |
| Cuindless04-06-08, 12:19 AM | That's interesting. I had a similar experience with a core-only wizard against an "anything goes" melee type. I was even caught unaware and unprepared, but still managed to trounce him. We were equal level too, if I recall correctly. |
| Roelandt04-06-08, 12:33 AM | I tend to agree. Well...actually that they are quite well balanced. If you don't agree...why convince him? Just play a caster and secretly imagine that you have an advantage...you don't...but its fun to dream. I can't imagine any melee character of 14th level or higher surviving against a wizard 100 feet away. I can't imagine any caster character of 14th level or higher suriviing against a melee character in threat range. BANG...okay Mr. Wizard. Please make a DC 87 Concentration check to cast your next spell....cough. Oh...you're not alive? Nevermind. Oh how we forget our times playing a wizard.... |
| Jo_Pistachio04-06-08, 12:40 AM | I can't imagine any caster character of 14th level or higher suriviing against a melee character in threat range. Hasn't been a problem since contingency came out. In core. Initiative hasn't been lost since nerveskitter, alter fortune and foresight came out. It happening in subsequint rounds hasn't been a problem since celerity/time stop came out. |
| Roelandt04-06-08, 01:35 AM | I'll comment in Quotes then continue after: Hasn't been a problem since contingency came out. In core. Actually its still a problem since a 14th level wizard doesn't have enough HP to survive an assault from a fighter/monk/rogue/assassin, et al unless they roll bade...AND contingency only effects themselves and even if its False Life or some such...he's still dead. Death is the best deterent. Initiative hasn't been lost since nerveskitter, alter fortune and foresight came out. Naysayers insist that these spells are memorized, available, or cast prior to the fight. As a wizard player for many years, I more often didn't have it when I needed it. This random nature in itself is a huge disadvantage. It happening in subsequint rounds hasn't been a problem since celerity/time stop came out. Concentration Check: DC 10 Plus Damage Taken!! Time Stop has been out since Basic but even this spell (for example) has a standard action casting time. Your chances of getting it off with a monk/fighter/rogue beating on you are absurdly remote. Your only chance is swift or free action spells, or spells memorized with Quicken enabling you to cast...and certainly fail, then cast again...but again...what are the chances of having these combinations prepared unless you had foreknowledge...and even these still don't prevent you from just not having enough HP to survive the initial attack. Otherwise, tactically setting up the time and place of the battle can save you...but that's true for anyone, isn't it? I'm not saying melee's are more powerful. I'm saying Casters are not overpowered as some carelessly say. Their powers are situational and melees aren't. In discussions of power level, some less broad minded folk imagine that only the "situational situations," ever occur. Its just fanboy talk (Spider-man can beat Superman in a fight because...I like Spider-man better). My wizard dies as much and more than the melee guys and I've played him for many years. He can do things they can't, but, as we've learned, the worst thing that can happen to our party is the for the Vassel of Bahamut to be dominated, as he can take out both casters using his Boots of Speed (the Ur Priest and Wizard) in a single round if they are close enough. Boosting his Will save is now the highest priority when entering the unknown. Hehe. Sure I can take him out with an Amber Sarcophagus...but only if I get to go first. Last game in a fight against a powerful Rakshasa, I ended up on the ground with negative 213 HP. The Ur Priest had some sort of contingency that triggered a True Rez on him when he dropped the same round, but next round...his contingency was spent and he stayed down. Hehe. Sometimes he's the top of the hill. Masses of badguys in tight little groups are charging toward the party. The fighter kills one, I kill 32. Other times I am utterly and in every way useless and the party has to wildly protect me, like when we are fighting golems or creatures with high SR. Not a situational situation. Hehe. I kill me. But, for arguments sake, lets say the thing that never happens actually happens: The wizard has cast every buff he needs on himself and has all the one shot nastiness...not lame stuff like Time Stop (yawn...besides, few get high enough to cast this spell and is considered EndGame and is therefore unreasonable to consider for most circumstances regarding balance), but a good spell like forcecage (no save...fight over), and amber sarcophagus (no save...fight over) and the like. He manages to win intiative against the fighter (who, in all fairness...we can be fair, right?) goes right down...then the rogue he brought with him sneak attacks him and he goes down. Okay...that's not really fair. 2 against 1. Okay...its a rogue. He has a 26 Hide and Move Silently skill. He hides. The wizard casts True Seeing. It doesn't help (Hide is the ultimate power in the universe without blindsight). Next round, he takes 158 points of damage and his contingency fails go to off because he's sadly dead. That was fair. Hehe. We've been in the trenches. Posts from number crunchers on boards don't alter our actual experiences. It is all these situations and perspectives that your DM has. But still, I ask. Why convince your DM that Casters are more powerful? Again, I say, Let him think Melees are more powerful and make a Caster and imagine that you have the advantage, and everyone here pretend that you actually do! Problem SOLVED! NEXT! |
| calronmoonflower04-06-08, 02:11 AM | I need the build. The complete and utter build. Please. I beg you. I picked that up from someone else and copied it to a notepad file for future reference. If you really want a full build try the co op boards. |
| Cuindless04-06-08, 10:15 AM | BANG...okay Mr. Wizard. Please make a DC 87 Concentration check to cast your next spell....cough. Oh...you're not alive? Nevermind. Oh how we forget our times playing a wizard.... Ha ha! That's hilarious... Oh, wait, you were serious. A 14th level wizard with less that 77 hp?!? What game are you playing? With d4 hit points, we can assume an average of 2.5 per level. +2 for a starting Con of 14 (at least). An additional +2 for Amulet of Health +4 (not ridiculous at 14th level). That's 91 hit points base. With the duration of false life being what it is, that's completely survivable damage, and we're not even talking full optimization here. A contingency teleport or dimension door... it's all over. Besides, 14th level is close to the sweet spot. After that, it just gets worse and worse... |
| Optimator04-06-08, 10:43 AM | I'm not saying melee's are more powerful. I'm saying Casters are not overpowered as some carelessly say. T You're wrong. Wait... man what? ToB making melee equal to casters is a bad thing? No... how about the fact that it doesn't even come close yet is the bad thing. Melee already overpowered? Is he on crack?!?? Hammergun FTW. Hey, some people play extremely sheltered games. |
| windscar1804-06-08, 11:00 AM | Does the DM actually HAVE justification for melee's being overpowered? Like, individual aspects? We can argue that casters are more overpowered than melee all day, but, unless we disprove the opposing notions, the DM might not change his mind so easily. |
| Sunic_Flames04-06-08, 11:12 AM | I once seen someone who believed barbarians were stupidly overpowered, more so than CoDzilla and would not allow them. Turns out the reason for this is all the casters were playing dumb, and as a result had like a 1 in 4 chance of getting off a Fireball, instead of using their tools properly. So rule out skewed viewpoints (or not) first. |
| Eldritch_Lord04-06-08, 11:39 AM | Next round, he takes 158 points of damage and his contingency fails go to off because he's sadly dead. That was fair. Hehe. If we're being fair and assuming the wizard's all buffed up, and that he's high enough level to cast contingency: --the wizard could detect the rogue without true seeing (detect thoughts); --the rogue has to pick the right target (mirror image); --the rogue has to get past the wizard's full concealment (blink); --the rogue has to get through the wizard's buffed AC (mage armor + shield + protection from X); --the rogue has to deal enough damage to the wizard's actual HP (stoneskin + false life); --the wizard has to not be invisible; --the wizard has to not be polymorphed into either a good melee form (lots of HP) or a form immune to crits; --And so forth. The rogue, then--assuming the wizard hasn't detected him and escaped--has to be able to see the wizard, choose from among at minimum 1d4+3 images, bypass a 50% miss chance, make sure he hits the new higher AC, and then deal enough damage to matter, which is unlikely given polymorph. And that's just 10 spells, in Core, out of a bare minimum of 25 spells per day. Nerveskitter, celerity, and headbands of intellect never entered the equation. A lot of people who don't want to admit that casters are unfortunately overpowered overlook many options. You can't just state "the rogue hits him for lots of damage" because first the rogue has to (A) find him, (B) hit him, (C) deal enough damage to drop him in one, and (D) get away before he annihilates the rogue when he survives. |
| Jo_Pistachio04-06-08, 12:38 PM | Actually its still a problem since a 14th level wizard doesn't have enough HP to survive an assault from a fighter/monk/rogue/assassin, et al unless they roll bade...AND contingency only effects themselves and even if its False Life or some such...he's still dead. Death is the best deterent. That's the funny thing about contingencies. It stops you from assaulting the wizard. That's the point of it. Naysayers insist that these spells are memorized, available, or cast prior to the fight. As a wizard player for many years, I more often didn't have it when I needed it. This random nature in itself is a huge disadvantage. You did know that at high and low levels, whoever goes first wins, right? Concentration Check: DC 10 Plus Damage Taken!! Time Stop has been out since Basic but even this spell (for example) has a standard action casting time. Your chances of getting it off with a monk/fighter/rogue beating on you are absurdly remote. Your only chance is swift or free action spells, or spells memorized with Quicken enabling you to cast...and certainly fail, then cast again...but again...what are the chances of having these combinations prepared unless you had foreknowledge...and even these still don't prevent you from just not having enough HP to survive the initial attack. Otherwise, tactically setting up the time and place of the battle can save you...but that's true for anyone, isn't it? I'm laughing here. Seriously, this is funny stuff. Celerity is an immediate action spell that grants a standard action. I can cast a time stop during your turn, and kill your fighter with a readied action from 800 feet away as your sword swings at nothing. And concentration is 15+spell level, unless you waste every round to stop 1 and only 1 of my spells, which let's me fling off another, and then a celerity based spell in your round just for kick. |
| The_Wild_King04-06-08, 01:11 PM | I think my DM has Roelandt's viewpoint, so seeing the counters to it should hopefully cause him the truth. Thanks for everyone's replies. |
| Grovel_hits_it_yes04-06-08, 07:37 PM | I have a simple question to everyone here who is 'pro-caster'. Have any of your casters(the ones you've played in games, actual games not duels) ever been injured or killed by say...a fighter/barbarian/paladin , large dumb monster, or some other melee focused critter? Simple yes or no. Thank you in advance. |
| Cuindless04-06-08, 07:41 PM | Yes. Now for those of you not setting up a false dilemma, I have had several casters die from a beatstick or big monster. They were without exception either poorly optimized and/or poorly played. Therefore, it was my fault they died, not the opponents. |
| Grovel_hits_it_yes04-06-08, 07:46 PM | Yes. Now for those of you not setting up a false dilemma, I have had several casters die from a beatstick or big monster. They were without exception either poorly optimized and/or poorly played. Therefore, it was my fault they died, not the opponents. OK, that's one. Anyone else? |
| Shaggy_Shaggs04-06-08, 07:47 PM | Played back when I thought direct hp damage was the greatest thing magic-users could do: Yes. After I figured out differently: No. Lesson learned (one of many): Colour Spray will do more to save a squishy unarmored 1st-level character's ass than Burning Hands ever can. I should add that this character I'll be playing on Tuesdays soon may get squished, we'll see. This'll be my first time playing a sorcerer specifically since I got a sense of what I was doing with casters, and fighting against a racial Cha penalty knowing that'll make life a bit more difficult may lead to trouble. |
| Grovel_hits_it_yes04-06-08, 07:51 PM | After I figured out differently: No. You mean your spell casters don't ever take damage? EVER? |
| Shaggy_Shaggs04-06-08, 07:53 PM | You mean your spell casters don't ever take damage? EVER? I mean that I don't consider a character Injured if he's still got 75% or more of his hp remaining. If we want to call loss of even a single hp an injury, a hot day is at least as dangerous as a fighter. |
| Grovel_hits_it_yes04-06-08, 07:55 PM | I mean that I don't consider a character Injured if he's still got 75% or more of his hp remaining. If we want to call loss of even a single hp an injury, a hot day is at least as dangerous as a fighter. OK, that's two. Anyone else? |
| DaidojiTaidoru04-06-08, 08:09 PM | Have any of your casters(the ones you've played in games, actual games not duels) ever been injured or killed by say...a fighter/barbarian/paladin , large dumb monster, or some other melee focused critter? Yes, becuase I don't ever cast polymorph, contingency, celerity and a chunk of other ridiculous spells that effectively end the game. It's part of the unspoken arms treaty at the table. One of my GMs made the mistake of casting disjunction on us. Sadly I'm only a cleric so the retaliation will not be earth shattering, but there will be consequences. |
| Grovel_hits_it_yes04-06-08, 08:25 PM | OK that's 3. Anyone else? Keep 'em coming ladies and gents. |
| Shaggy_Shaggs04-06-08, 08:33 PM | Uh, so far you've got one "I screwed up", one "about as badly as a stubbed toe", and one "I intentionally nerf myself". This doesn't really seem like the strongest evidence for your case... |
| Eldritch_Lord04-06-08, 08:47 PM | I have a simple question to everyone here who is 'pro-caster'. Have any of your casters(the ones you've played in games, actual games not duels) ever been injured or killed by say...a fighter/barbarian/paladin , large dumb monster, or some other melee focused critter? Simple yes or no. Thank you in advance. When first playing 3e, yes. Nowadays...injured, yes, but only when facing another caster, like a wizard being occupied and attacked by another wizard and a quickened summoned monster attacks from the rear. Against just a melee character or a group of them, no equal-level caster? No. One disclaimer--I'm the DM, so I regularly have tons of wizards and such die to the ToB melee PCs. However, when I'm a player and I'm fighting to win, not to just give the PCs a challenge, that's when my wizards get optimized and when the above answers apply. |
| Cuindless04-06-08, 08:49 PM | Uh, so far you've got one "I screwed up", one "about as badly as a stubbed toe", and one "I intentionally nerf myself". This doesn't really seem like the strongest evidence for your case... At this point, I'm not sure what his case is... he seems to be in the gathering evidence phase. |
| Shaggy_Shaggs04-06-08, 08:55 PM | True, but given the question, and the black and white nature of the answers he requested, one could take a guess... |
| TheFlyingAsian04-06-08, 08:56 PM | Yes. I was playing an extrordinarily apathetic, insane litch necromancer, focusing on single-target debuffs and save-or-dies. I fought a BBEG (BBGG?), utterly annihilated him, and let myself become over-run by his "army of light" (mostly for flavour purposes, but also because I didn't feel like preparing anything good that day beyond obscene amounts of Finger of Death and Bestow Curse). Then the rest of the party wiped them (the army) out and saved my gear. I "respawned" during the subsequent resting period, re-equiped myself, and was back to normal. Edit: And also yes, at early levels. Damn ogres with greatswords...how they managed to ambush us, only the DM knows... |
| Jo_Pistachio04-07-08, 12:22 AM | I have a simple question to everyone here who is 'pro-caster'. Have any of your casters(the ones you've played in games, actual games not duels) ever been injured or killed by say...a fighter/barbarian/paladin , large dumb monster, or some other melee focused critter? Simple yes or no. Thank you in advance. No. Only casters have managed that, or a combination of my own party attacking me, as well as a large whatever. And it's never been permanent. One of my GMs made the mistake of casting disjunction on us. Sadly I'm only a cleric so the retaliation will not be earth shattering, but there will be consequences. That's easy enough to do. Take everything that increases caster levels, then cast dictum, holy word, blasphemy or word of chaos. On everything. |
| DaidojiTaidoru04-07-08, 12:32 AM | That's easy enough to do. Take everything that increases caster levels, then cast dictum, holy word, blasphemy or word of chaos. On everything. Well as you might expect we're a little below wealth by level. What with being Disjuncted and all. But I figure Summoning 3 Huge Storm Elementals a round and having them mob the BBEG while healing themselves with their free action electrical attacks might suffice. Of course I'll be incorporeal while this all happens.... :D |
| Cuindless04-07-08, 02:15 AM | True, but given the question, and the black and white nature of the answers he requested, one could take a guess... Possibly... I originally thought this was going to be a terribly fallacious "see... melees can still hurt casters" argument, but now I'm not so sure. I was originally thrown off by the "yes or no only" schtick too. Still, nothing yet can persuade me that melee characters can even hope to compete with casters passed 13th level, ToB or no ToB. Hmm... ToB or not ToB... that really is the question... |
| Grovel_hits_it_yes04-07-08, 07:54 AM | The reason I asked the question is just to get a feel of other people's games. When ever I see such talk about fighters not having a chance and all the caster tough talk I'm always dubious. Mostly it seems like the DM must coddle these players because a good DM can challenge any build/race/class/alignment/spell selection. Because even one hit can end your character's life ...vorpal weapons, slaying arrows(I used these last time I dueled using a fighter), Dev Crit, or even justs crits, spell storing weapons, Iron bands of Bilarro, grappling, poison, disease, level drain, etc. OK here is my other question if you guys/gals are still interested.... Can anyone here make a fighter-type that CAN have a much better chance at defeating spell casters, or is it just a waste of time to try? |
| Sunic_Flames04-07-08, 08:19 AM | The reason I asked the question is just to get a feel of other people's games. When ever I see such talk about fighters not having a chance and all the caster tough talk I'm always dubious. Mostly it seems like the DM must coddle these players because a good DM can challenge any build/race/class/alignment/spell selection. Because even one hit can end your character's life ...vorpal weapons, slaying arrows(I used these last time I dueled using a fighter), Dev Crit, or even justs crits, spell storing weapons, Iron bands of Bilarro, grappling, poison, disease, level drain, etc. OK here is my other question if you guys/gals are still interested.... Can anyone here make a fighter-type that CAN have a much better chance at defeating spell casters, or is it just a waste of time to try? See, the thing about challenging anyone is it means that challenge is there. It's the same reason why you can still challenge the uber character partied with a half orc bard. But anything capable of threatening the uber character will utterly annihilate the half orc bard. Therefore, while you might be able to kill the uber character it is far more likely you'll kill everyone else. What is a 'Dev Crit'? Oh and if you want 5% chance of killing you don't need to bother with vorpal, slaying arrows, poison... Why is disease even on there? For 5% chance of killing, just do 50+ damage a hit. Actually that's better than all of these because it means no confirm roll lowering the chances, and no super expensive one shot consumables who still don't always work, even if they aren't just flat out immune. As for killing casters, I could make a gish do it easily. Unless they get into Celerity + Daze immunity crap. Even abusing Time Stop, MGJ (game disjunction), and so forth. Probably not Gate, because Holy Word is an I win button... unless of course I actually bothered to level above 12. :P About even with a level 20 IooSV, despite not using 9th level spells, Belt of Battle, and so forth. |
| Cuindless04-07-08, 11:24 AM | The reason I asked the question is just to get a feel of other people's games. When ever I see such talk about fighters not having a chance and all the caster tough talk I'm always dubious. Mostly it seems like the DM must coddle these players because a good DM can challenge any build/race/class/alignment/spell selection. Because even one hit can end your character's life ...vorpal weapons, slaying arrows(I used these last time I dueled using a fighter), Dev Crit, or even justs crits, spell storing weapons, Iron bands of Bilarro, grappling, poison, disease, level drain, etc. OK here is my other question if you guys/gals are still interested.... Can anyone here make a fighter-type that CAN have a much better chance at defeating spell casters, or is it just a waste of time to try? It's not coddling, it's just the sheer awesomeness of magic in the 3.5 rules. It was worse in previous editions. I don't know if I can make a fighter type that can take down a caster alone, but I could make one that would be challenging. As usual, the best way to challenge a party is with a good mix. One primary caster type (it need not even have caster levels), a couple glass cannon types and a couple BSF types. I typically include at least one waste of space just for the fun of doing stupid powers that have no chance of hurting anyone. |
| PhaedrusXY04-07-08, 12:20 PM | OK here is my other question if you guys/gals are still interested.... Can anyone here make a fighter-type that CAN have a much better chance at defeating spell casters, or is it just a waste of time to try?It depends on alot of things, mainly how well built and played the caster is. Alot of these kinds of things come down to player skill. If the caster is built specifically to be able to take down an anti-caster melee build, there probably isn't much the melee can do about it, though, unless the melee uses so many spell-reproducing magic items that it might as well be a caster itself. I've built both anti-magic melee builds and casters designed to take them out. This kind of thing is a common thread theme on the CO board. Check the "Mage Killer" link in my sig for an old thread on the topic, and I posted links to 2 or 3 even older threads in that one. |
| Jo_Pistachio04-07-08, 12:22 PM | Can anyone here make a fighter-type that CAN have a much better chance at defeating spell casters, or is it just a waste of time to try? I have a caster build who is rather literally unbeatable when it comes to a fight with a non-caster. I can get a full days worth of actions in during the fighters turn if I lose initiative, put down so many summoned elemental monoliths during the time between that he'll never kill them all, and an infinitely large army of illusory pit fiends that can still kill you. All this is during your turn. Heck, I could put the fighter into an air tight, body shaped tomb made of magically reinforced obsidian and enchant it with anti-magic so that he suffocates during his turn. If the caster player truly optimizes the caster, he has a few "win" buttons, and only another optimized caster has a chance. If the caster ignores time stops, infinite chains, celerity, etc., then a well made fighter has a chance. Go over to CO, and they sould have some examples. |
| Clawhound04-07-08, 01:04 PM | There's been well over 1,000 pages written on this topic. Folks have made some truly obscene examples of all classes. Fighter seem weak? How about a fighter polymorphed into a solar with customized magic items to get his own crazy-cool combos? Yeah, you say, BUT he requires someone else to cast the spells. Let's me state the rules clearly: In a open resource, anything-goes character building frenzy, melee has access to most of a spellcaster's options via custom magic items. You may not like that fact, but that is the fact. Who made the item or cast the spell does not matter. What the DM will allow doesn't matter. If a character can get it, it is valid in a no-hold-barred building contest. And most duels are no-holds-barred contests to see who can build the most evilly devious character. If you want to restrict melee options, you can, but what spellcaster options will you restrict? I doubt that you will accept any. That's where a double-standard occurs. You can't have an even comparison with one side having "all options open" and the other "all options open except those I don't think that you should have." |
| Shaggy_Shaggs04-07-08, 01:25 PM | That sounds good, Clawhound, until you stop to consider that it doesn't work the other way around. Restrict both sides to using nothing but what their own class can come up with (hell, restrict it further, restrict both sides to using nothing but what the individual example character has created him or herself), and the melees collapse again. The casters would be less impressive, but still quite dominant. |
| Grovel_hits_it_yes04-07-08, 02:36 PM | It's relatively easy to defeat fighter-types when in a static enviroment where each of you can be easily seen before combat begins. It is something entirely different to battle in an area with obstructions, buildings, water, trees, large distances apart, fog, etc; where the combatants start in areas completely unknown to the other. That's how my gaming group does our duels and fighter-types almost always have a fair shake at winning (dependant on many factors of course). Most casters won't place many skills in spot or listen and in most settings those casters are almost too easy to kill, trueseeing doesn't help. When our gaming group duels we have a place we call the 'parking garage' and as you can imagine it resembles a parking garage...fighter-types generally lose in there though there have been some fast kills made by them. In all the other 'non-static' areas the probability of anyone winning gets extremely close to 50/50. Whoever gets challenged has his choice of available books to pull from(on both sides) and location for the duel. Alot of my tactics involve waiting for their spells to wear off (if I play a fighter). It has been my experience that gear selection is the most valuable aspect of all duels, then of course the randomness of the dice. My initial comment about characters being merely tools and the one using the tool is all that matters; I really believe that. |
| Jo_Pistachio04-07-08, 02:48 PM | It's relatively easy to defeat fighter-types when in a static enviroment where each of you can be easily seen before combat begins. It is something entirely different to battle in an area with obstructions, buildings, water, trees, large distances apart, fog, etc; where the combatants start in areas completely unknown to the other. That's how my gaming group does our duels and fighter-types almost always have a fair shake at winning (dependant on many factors of course). Most casters won't place many skills in spot or listen and in most settings those casters are almost too easy to kill, trueseeing doesn't help. My example is of a caster who can be blindfolded, in the dark without darkvision and without clear line of sight to anything that could potentially kill him, without knowing which continent he's in, and with only maybe 3 of his spells prepared.. He'll still kill your fighter in your fighters turn. |
| Grovel_hits_it_yes04-07-08, 02:49 PM | My example is of a caster who can be blindfolded, in the dark without darkvision and without clear line of sight to anything that could potentially kill him, without knowing which continent he's in, and with only maybe 3 of his spells prepared.. He'll still kill your fighter in your fighters turn. Prove it. |
| Clawhound04-07-08, 03:02 PM | You are right. Applying restrictions does change outcomes. CONTEXT is everything in such debates. Over on the optimizing thread, they spend pages arguing about whether, when given actual adventures, spellcasters were better. In general, the so-called "better" spellcaster builds did not survive or only did marginally better than a random fighter. However, they eventually worked up some truly wicked-evil-badass builds that did some amazing stuff. The point here is that a different set of circumstances produced a different set of builds than previously posited as "best", even those posited by caster fans. |
| Clawhound04-07-08, 03:13 PM | I've written about duals before. Most duals occur in locations PERFECT for casters. Given random locations, against random OPPONENTS, and a random number of encounters, you get a far more dynamic battlefield. If a caster knows about an opponent, he can predict 90% of what he needs to know. That means that he wins. If a caster must prepare for all types of problems, and does not know his final opponent, preparations are far harder. In contrast, melee is all about equipment. They do not get to change what they can do very much. On the other hand, hitting things with a stick until they die is a universally successful tactic if you can do it hard enough, often enough. All of that is mute, really. D&D is a lousy dueling game. It's boring (which is my MAJOR gripe against it) and unbalanced (which could be forgivable if it wasn't boring). |
| CrimsonDeath04-07-08, 03:21 PM | Let's me state the rules clearly: In a open resource, anything-goes character building frenzy, melee has access to most of a spellcaster's options via custom magic items. You may not like that fact, but that is the fact. Who made the item or cast the spell does not matter. What the DM will allow doesn't matter. If a character can get it, it is valid in a no-hold-barred building contest. And most duels are no-holds-barred contests to see who can build the most evilly devious character. But then, you can take the Fighter's equipment list and put it on a spellcaster, except for those items that duplicate spells the spellcaster can cast. Then have the spellcaster spend the money he saved by casting spells instead of buying items on more items. And then cast more spells. And then still have spells left to cast during the fight. It's relatively easy to defeat fighter-types when in a static enviroment where each of you can be easily seen before combat begins. It is something entirely different to battle in an area with obstructions, buildings, water, trees, large distances apart, fog, etc; where the combatants start in areas completely unknown to the other. That's how my gaming group does our duels and fighter-types almost always have a fair shake at winning (dependant on many factors of course). Most casters won't place many skills in spot or listen and in most settings those casters are almost too easy to kill, trueseeing doesn't help. Why do your fighters place more ranks in Spot/Listen than casters do? In an arena match, where you know there are going to be places to hide, why don't casters go ahead and put ranks into detection skills? And why don't the casters use Divination spells/Clairsentience powers to find the noncasters? Also note that the Druid has Wisdom as a primary spellcasting attribute and both Spot and Listen as class skills. And they can Wild Shape into stealthy animal forms, and remain that way for hours at a time disguised as harmless creatures. Druids should rule in an environment like this (just like they do everywhere else). You are right. Applying restrictions does change outcomes. CONTEXT is everything in such debates. Over on the optimizing thread, they spend pages arguing about whether, when given actual adventures, spellcasters were better. In general, the so-called "better" spellcaster builds did not survive or only did marginally better than a random fighter. However, they eventually worked up some truly wicked-evil-badass builds that did some amazing stuff. The point here is that a different set of circumstances produced a different set of builds than previously posited as "best", even those posited by caster fans. Are you talking about the "Overpowered Spellcasters" thread from a couple of months back? First, it was solo adventures, not "actual" adventures. Spellcasters work best in a party. (Of course, almost any character works best in a party, but the difference is generally more noticeable with spellcasters.) Second, the characters were level 5 (at least, that's where they started, and that's where they were when I stopped paying attention). That's about when solo spellcasters and solo meleers are roughly even; it's not until around level 7 that the spellcasters clearly start pulling ahead. Third, they were up against a string of five CR 5 encounters, which a normal group of four level 5 characters would have trouble with. Finally, not only did several spellcasters complete the level 5 gauntlet, but I believe at least one of them managed it without getting hit (a feat not duplicated by any of the melee characters). |
| Grovel_hits_it_yes04-07-08, 03:28 PM | Given the near limitless spell selection, near limitless gear selection, near limitless terrain, near limitless feat selection, near limitless race selection, and near limitless tactics it's impossible to guarantee a win on any side. |
| Grovel_hits_it_yes04-07-08, 03:33 PM | Why do your fighters place more ranks in Spot/Listen than casters do? In an arena match, where you know there are going to be places to hide, why don't casters go ahead and put ranks into detection skills? And why don't the casters use Divination spells/Clairsentience powers to find the noncasters? Some do, some don't. That is my entire point...everyone will play their class differently. |
| Vintar04-07-08, 03:35 PM | I know this was awhile ago - but gonna adress several early ideas. #1 - A DC 28 phantasmal killer is enough to consistently kill a level 12 tank. Wrong - at level 12 my tank had a will save of +13 (when combat focus is on) and a fort save of +22 - not to mention that he has mettle so no damage if he passed either one. And even if it did - he had 178 HP - not to mention a touch of 22 (tower shield w/shield ward). #2 - An artificer can take the artificer feats more than once each. You can only take a feat more than once if it specifically says that you can - otherwise wizards starting at level 6 would just start taking improved toughness every feat. Now - I totally agree with the general sentiment that a caster at higher levels dominates a melee character. However - if a melee character is power-gamed well (do not read as munchkin as munchkin = evil) I would bet on his side in a 2v2 where the other three characters are all casters. The only build that has a chance 1v1 with a high level caster is a dread commando (read full BAB with stealth) has a spiked chain, mage slayer feat, improved initiative, fast movement and high dex. That way if he gets the drop on the mage (read wizard/sorceror) and rolls reasonably well the mage can never get a spell off. |
| DaidojiTaidoru04-07-08, 04:00 PM | #2 - An artificer can take the artificer feats more than once each. You can only take a feat more than once if it specifically says that you can - otherwise wizards starting at level 6 would just start taking improved toughness every feat. The Artificer trick works by taking 6 feats. The Ebberon artificer feats for -25% to cost, XP and time, then 3 X a Forgotton Realms Crafting feat that gives 25% off all 3 to any item Crafted with a Crafting feat you choose. The Ebberon discount feats are [Item Creation] Feats and the Forgotton Realms feat specifically says you can take the feat more then once so long as you apply it to a different [Item Creation] Feat. So any item costs 16% of it's base price. Use "limiting factors" (can only be used by me) for extra cheese. Now as for Melee vs Caster, lets make this simple. Which class is stronger?: Class 1 - Can kill opponents in combat. Class 2 - Can kill opponents in combat AND can move an entire party accross the Planes AND can solve any puzzle AND can find and dispel magical traps AND can make items at reduced cost AND can set magical traps AND can negate any harmful terrain or effect give 8 hours. |
| Vintar04-07-08, 04:38 PM | Again - not saying a high level melee character can take a caster but... Thing a melee character can do that a caster can't - Survive a nasty hit. I do think that casters are much more powerful at high levels - but not as much more powerful as many claim. I blame this primarily on the fact that most people power-gaming melee characters focus almost entirely on offense as opposed to HP, AC (especially touch), and saves. And if you're breaking artificers with forgotten realms - that's a whole nother' ball of wax. Frankly, much of forgotten realms is on the broken side - that merely being one of the more extreme examples. |
| Zombie_Babies04-07-08, 04:47 PM | For the duel scenario where the duelists start by not seeing each other, there's fog, etc: All the Wizard needs to do to win is cast Invis and Fly. Fly up and wait until he sees the fighter come out and then bomb him. Simple. If it's a Fighter with a great Hide/MS then he can cast battlefield control spells to limit the areas that the Fighter can be in. I'm not trying to say martial classes suck, it's just that the spellcasters are better. I play melee guys more often than anything else. I don't have the love for casters that some posting here do. I am not biased towards them. It's just a fact. And, as a martial character player, "a man's got to know his limitations." ;) |
| Bozwevial04-07-08, 05:03 PM | The typical example of how casters are superior goes as follows: Round 1: Fighter goes first. Wizard casts Greater Celerity, Time Stop (maximized if you have Sudden Maximize or a rod), and then Gates in some 40 HD monstrosity. With his remaining rounds, he protects himself. Fighter, who was charging Wizard, suddenly sees Wizard vanish and a dragon appear out of nowhere to devour Fighter. It's so hard to believe melee is superior, it isn't even funny. Your typical wizard's response to some ubercharger's attack roll is going to be "Greater Celerity, Time Stop." Just Time Stop alone puts casters way higher on the list. Greater Celerity is so broken, I can't verbalize it. Plus, casters get range. They can fly. Their attacks force save-or-die. They can turn invisible. Their attacks work from more than 5 feet away. Forcecage, kill the helpless fighter. Fighter has magic gear? Extraordinary Spell Aim an Antimagic Field. You get magic, fighter does not. Melee is not anywhere close to casting. |
| Clawhound04-07-08, 05:04 PM | Are you talking about the "Overpowered Spellcasters" thread from a couple of months back? First, it was solo adventures, not "actual" adventures. Spellcasters work best in a party. (Of course, almost any character works best in a party, but the difference is generally more noticeable with spellcasters.) Second, the characters were level 5 (at least, that's where they started, and that's where they were when I stopped paying attention). That's about when solo spellcasters and solo meleers are roughly even; it's not until around level 7 that the spellcasters clearly start pulling ahead. Third, they were up against a string of five CR 5 encounters, which a normal group of four level 5 characters would have trouble with. Finally, not only did several spellcasters complete the level 5 gauntlet, but I believe at least one of them managed it without getting hit (a feat not duplicated by any of the melee characters). Yes. With those criticisms, my point still stands. Given a particular set of circumstances, the results changed from other particular circumstances. The explosive rune build was masterful. No one had ever seen anything like it. It is the only beautifully broken build that I have ever seen. Myself, I am a firm believer that you can build good, effective, and fun examples of any class. They may not be equal in power, but they all do their job in the party. Once you crank the characters to the point where the "weak" class is killing only one balor per round, you've passed the point where "weak" is a credible term. Our optimizing knowledge now is so good that no class is "weak". Lame maybe, but not weak. If you want to argue that melee is lame, have at it. |
| Shaggy_Shaggs04-07-08, 05:07 PM | The thing about being able to survive a nasty hit is, it only really matters if you take the nasty hit in the first place. Even targetting a magic user playing defensive is difficult. A wizard under effect of blink, displacement, and greater mirror image, for example... you've got about a 3.1% chance of getting an opportunity to test your attack roll against his armor class. Yes, 96 or 97 out of 100 of your swings don't even get to the attack roll stage. And that's not even trying hard, this wizard isn't even flying. |
| Clawhound04-07-08, 05:11 PM | Round 1: Fighter wishes polymorph any object on the air, turning it into water. The wish doesn't trigger celerity. All is now water. Mage starts drowning. Can't cast spell. Time stop helps him to drown even faster than before. The fighter can hold his breath for longer. Like I said, the ring of 3 wishes makes the win go to the person with the best wishes. The ability to alter the battlefield catastrophically can do really weird things with balance. |
| CrimsonDeath04-07-08, 05:12 PM | Some do, some don't. That is my entire point...everyone will play their class differently. So, in an environment where the character with the better Spot/Listen modifiers consistently wins, there are players who intentionally build characters with poor Spot/Listen modifiers? Again - not saying a high level melee character can take a caster but... Thing a melee character can do that a caster can't - Survive a nasty hit. First, casters are much better at simply not getting hit in the first place. Second, casters have more options for extra HP, DR, energy resistance, and healing. |
| Shaggy_Shaggs04-07-08, 05:20 PM | Round 1: Fighter wishes polymorph any object on the air, turning it into water. The wish doesn't trigger celerity. All is now water. Mage starts drowning. Can't cast spell. Time stop helps him to drown even faster than before. The fighter can hold his breath for longer. Like I said, the ring of 3 wishes makes the win go to the person with the best wishes. The ability to alter the battlefield catastrophically can do really weird things with balance. Except "the air" is not an object. Being generous with the interpretation of "one nonmagical object of up to 100 cu. ft./level", by assuming the air is a discrete object, you could get 2,000 cubic feet of water out of the wish... so about 20'x10'x10' of water. That's not exactly a tidal wave, you're not going to drown anything with that except in a relatively small room with no drainage and no way out. By the way, your Ring of Three Wishes? Made by a wizard or cleric, not by a fighter. Not possible for a fighter to come up with by being a fighter. Even if your plan did work, which it doesn't, that would be a wizard or cleric (or possibly an artificer) defeating another wizard, not a fighter doing so. |
| DaidojiTaidoru04-07-08, 05:38 PM | Round 1: Fighter wishes polymorph any object on the air, turning it into water. The wish doesn't trigger celerity. What next? Claiming that the Fighter is ballanced because it can use a candle of invocation to become Pun-Pun? :rolleyes: When none of your stratagies actually use a class feature it's time to find a different class. And that doesn't work for 2 reasons. Polymorph any object targets One creature, or one nonmagical object of up to 100 cu. ft./level. The atmosphere is more cubic feet then a ring of 3 wishes can effect. And you can't target part of an object, it's all or nothing. Celerity is an immediate action that can be taken at any time regardless of circumstance. It's triggered "when I want it to be" not by an action. So it still goes off and the wizard does something horrible to you while leaving your AOE. So you cheated and it still doesn't work. |
| Hsien04-07-08, 05:53 PM | Celerity is an immediate action, which means if the caster loses init he is considered flat-footed and cannot take an immediate action before/during the melee acts; therefore no Celerity. See Immediate Action description in Co Arcane ( I think ) And despite the nasty caster killers I've made or seen, in general casters are more powerful tdue to power and versatility of spells. Plus, obviously there is a big difference between characters made for PvP and those made for specific campaigns and just for fun. Perhaps in the OP game he made an optimized melee while the caster players simply made "fun" characters. |
| DaidojiTaidoru04-07-08, 05:59 PM | Perhaps in the OP game he made an optimized melee while the caster players simply made "fun" characters. Huh, that's usually how my games end up being psuedo ballanced. Then again it's possible my idea of 'casual' spellcasting is a little skewed. |
| Shaggy_Shaggs04-07-08, 06:00 PM | Celerity is an immediate action, which means if the caster loses init he is considered flat-footed and cannot take an immediate action before/during the melee acts; therefore no Celerity. Sorry, no. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/foresight.htm) |
| Hsien04-07-08, 06:22 PM | I was speaking in general terms of the spell itself which still holds true. Having Foresight alters that sure, but that assumes the premise that the character has the spell and has cast it already and that it hasn't already worn off. I prefer not to discuss specific scenarioe issues as they are to subjective. For example, it's just as easy to say, yes the character has forsight but in this scenario it's a PvP Round 1, no pre-cast spells and the caster lost init...foresight/celerity becomes a non-existent factor for Round 1. Outside of the assumed context, these type of discussions usually only provide valuable info in regards to spell combinations and optimization. I'll stick to the general statement that casters are indead more powerful due to the power/versatility of even with just the core book spells. Add the splat books and Spell Comp and it's simply more noticable. |
| Grovel_hits_it_yes04-07-08, 06:29 PM | So, in an environment where the character with the better Spot/Listen modifiers consistently wins, there are players who intentionally build characters with poor Spot/Listen modifiers? I have dueled players that admitted later that they had no ranks in spot or listen. Sometimes spot and listen won't even be needed, some time they will. |
| Hsien04-07-08, 06:40 PM | One caster I played used flaws and he had a -8 Spot check for continous campaign I'd still be playing him if my group hadn't changed campaigns. |
| Jo_Pistachio04-07-08, 07:03 PM | The explosive rune build was masterful. No one had ever seen anything like it. It is the only beautifully broken build that I have ever seen. Is that one the purified explosive runes guy you're talking about, because if so, then thank you. :D |
| MetZen04-07-08, 07:09 PM | Just 2 words: Fate Spinner |
| Jo_Pistachio04-07-08, 07:11 PM | Prove it. Wizard 17, magical trickster 3. I require metamagic school focus, transmutation, metamagic school focus divination, spell focus: transmutation, arcane thesis, time stop, extend and persist spells. Spells prepared: Celerity, persistant time stop. Spells already cast: Extended foresight. So, I'm standing there like a total knob, when I know that a big hurty thing is about to... Whatever from the foresight. I cast celerity as an immediate action, and a persistant time stop. I rest 8 hours, regain my spells, yada yada. I can legend lore your fighter for whatever information I need, and it's got a short time since you're right there. If I don't already have the feats, alternative components, or whatever, I can major creation them, wish for them, miracle them, or whatever. I also cast shapechange at this point in time to ensure that I can have blindsight. So when the time stop ends, I hit you with a readied action maximum caster level dictum, word of chaos, or whatever I know will work via another wish from the legend lore. This will kill your fighter automatically, no save. And before you say SR, the penetration is huge from this spell, due to the buffed caster level. Of course, knowing my luck, this has been haxed to death by errata, but I can't find anything that does. |
| DaidojiTaidoru04-07-08, 07:18 PM | Of course, knowing my luck, this has been haxed to death by errata, but I can't find anything that does. Can't persistant Time Stop. However the same effect can be done by Planeshifting to a Plane with a high enough Time Distortion. Say the one you created/found with a divination spell. Shift out, spend the next week (round in real time) reading up on your foe and running simulations. Then pop back into the material plane* with a billion buffs running, Disjunct the Fighter**, Time Stop, Gate in some Dragons and retreat to a safe distance while watching the whole mess via scry o' vision and eating popcorn. * Or better yet let your Astral Construct do that. **Disjunction is only to drop his Nondetection. Otherwise the Scrying wont work and you'll have to settle just for popcorn. |
| Jo_Pistachio04-07-08, 07:22 PM | Can't persistant Time Stop. However the same effect can be done by Planeshifting to a Plane with a high enough Time Distortion. Say the one you created/found with a divination spell. Shift out, spend the next week (round in real time) reading up on your foe and running simulations. Then pop back into the material plane* with a billion buffs running, Disjunct the Fighter**, Time Stop, Gate in some Dragons and retreat to a safe distance while watching the whole mess via scry o' vision and eating popcorn. * Or better yet let your Astral Construct do that. **Disjunction is only to drop his Nondetection. Otherwise the Scrying wont work and you'll have to settle just for popcorn. The example given in the planar traits section of the SRD is a year translates to 6 seconds RT, so I could use that, and actually be back before his first round ends. Where did the make it so you can't persist a time stop? |
| PhaedrusXY04-07-08, 07:31 PM | The example given in the planar traits section of the SRD is a year translates to 6 seconds RT, so I could use that, and actually be back before his first round ends. Where did the make it so you can't persist a time stop?The FAQ I think. |
| DaidojiTaidoru04-07-08, 07:33 PM | The example given in the planar traits section of the SRD is a year translates to 6 seconds RT, so I could use that, and actually be back before his first round ends. Where did the make it so you can't persist a time stop? Don't know the exact details. I think it has to do with Time Stop lasting 1d4+1 rounds "Apparent Time" thus not actually having a real duration, but don't quote me on that. |
| CrimsonDeath04-07-08, 07:54 PM | I was speaking in general terms of the spell itself which still holds true. Having Foresight alters that sure, but that assumes the premise that the character has the spell and has cast it already and that it hasn't already worn off. With a greater rod of Extend Spell, it lasts around six hours. Add a couple of Pearls of Power level 9 and it lasts around 18 or 19 hours. |
| calronmoonflower04-07-08, 08:20 PM | A spellcaster that get involved in combat without a melee class is the melee guy. Only he has low base attack bonus and hit points. Any wizard worth his salt will try to make sure that this doesn't happen. An in case of emergencies there is always contingency items. |
| drunkendrake04-07-08, 08:31 PM | If you do have no Foresight for some reason, you just get your Contingent one to activate as you roll initiative, meaning you aren't flatfooted if he's going first, meaning you can do all the stuff above even if you got Disjoined just before. -Drake- |
| Clawhound04-08-08, 08:53 AM | Is that one the purified explosive runes guy you're talking about, because if so, then thank you. :D Yes. You are welcome. It was GRAND. |
| Clawhound04-08-08, 09:29 AM | Myself, I don't care what casters can do during duels or at 20th level. That doesn't affect a campaign game at all, because most campaigns are not dueling and not 20th level. In fact, 99% of all campaigns are not dueling and not 20th level. Casters are uber-powerful if you choose certain, particular builds. Players usually eschew those builds in real games as they don't want uber-powerful characters. Most DM's won't allow such blatant breakage. Thus, Pun-Pun is a wonderful exercise but simply won't actually appear in most games. Next down are dominating builds. These builds "dominate" play in a campaign. The player playstyle that wants such character is a minority playstyle. This playstyle is often termed a "problem character" elsewhere on the boards. "This PC is ruining my game" or "this PC is overpowered" is often the headline. The same player will make a dominating wizard or a dominating commoner. He'll figure it out. Class does not matter. Most players choose a level of voluntary moderation (both in power and RP). They do not want to go down a pre-chosen path with everything arranged for maximum benefit. They want to experiment with different approaches. They want to try different role-playing ideas. They want their friends characters to be useful and to have fun. They want to be challenged in a fight. They like the idea that they might lose. They enjoy the idea that their own skill as players and thinking on their feet contributes to their win, not just their super-built characters. I believe that this is the majority playstyle. This is the playstyle that the designers aimed at. Most players see the rules as fine and not-broken because they play this style of game. Next down, we have RP centric characters, who have abilities chosen for RP value over tactical value. This is a minority playstyle. Can cause issue when combined with other playstyles. Due to the way that D&D works, this often leads to an underpowered character. Not all decision in D&D are equal. At the other extreme, we have the pure-RP character that is a great concept, but is not-at-all built for an actual D&D game as actually played. Those are equally bad as the "dominant" build characters. With this in mind, that makes this discussion irrelevant to most games out there. Most games self-regulate. Where this does become relevant is when you have a character whose play style is significantly different than his peers and he breaks the voluntary moderation of power, or you have a game geared towards high power. In high-powered gamed, your choice of class is critical to success, so relative class power becomes very important. Now, are casters better than melee. Yes. Are they better than melee in a real game. Yes. Do most players want to play that kind of game? No. They want to play the style of game that THEY WANT to play. Class power is most important to those who are looking for power. For everyone else, the top criteria is something else. Can you see that? |
| Shaggy_Shaggs04-08-08, 10:01 AM | All of which is irrelevant when the fool behind the DM screen is wanting to ban a class or class combination somebody wants to play, and cites it being overpowered as his reasoning when it's not. Cute rant though. Bonus points for invoking Pun-Pun to try to make the reasonable people here sound ridiculous, when he's totally not needed to take over a game or demonstrate the error of the OP's DM's judgement. |
| kriskey04-08-08, 11:06 AM | Honestly, if you're using core 3.5 rules few of these examples apply. Most entail exploitable combinations from expansion books. When they are discovered, I think most DM's know how to curb them to keep their campaigns sane. Generally speaking, a nearby fighter getting initiative on an unprepared caster will likely take him down immediately, even at high level. The contingency examples don't really ring true to me either if they assume foreknowledge of the fight. |
| Shaggy_Shaggs04-08-08, 11:11 AM | The thing is, a smart caster has foreknowledge of the fight, even without stepping outside of core. Any time he's not already scouted out the area with greater s You know what? Screw it. There's no point in putting in the time and typing effort to demonstrate anything to people who are willfully ignorant. |
| kriskey04-08-08, 11:41 AM | The thing is, a smart caster has foreknowledge of the fight, even without stepping outside of core. Any time he's not already scouted out the area with greater s You know what? Screw it. There's no point in putting in the time and typing effort to demonstrate anything to people who are willfully ignorant. Is it really necessary to be so arrogant? I don't doubt the raw power that the full magic-using class can wield. The theoretical debate tends to go to a wizard, since he has more flexibility. That enables us to envision a strategy that trumps the others most of the time. However, I sincerely question the creativity of a DM who cannot occasionally -- and without really manipulating too much -- get a fighter character to threaten a spellcaster. Immense raw damage vs. a finite amount of power? Very doable. Way more important to me, anyway is the utility of the fighter vs. the magic user in the adventuring party. Even at 20th level, it's very easy to design adventures wherein the fighter is an extraordinarily useful component and featured just as often. The wizard would be foolish to utilize resources without being careful in a high-level dungeon and is usually more effective utilizing his party. In any case, let's see some examples of the 20th level core wizard vs. the 20th level core fighter on this thread. I'm curious. |
| Grovel_hits_it_yes04-08-08, 11:57 AM | In any case, let's see some examples of the 20th level core wizard vs. the 20th level core fighter on this thread. I'm curious. You'll never see it. All you will see are insane real life character flaws, as if you are actually insulting some of these posters because you don't agree with them. In either case I'm done here, I no longer give a ****. Feel free to talk trash about me now that I'm gone so that you can be added to my ignore list. |
| Shaggy_Shaggs04-08-08, 11:57 AM | It's not arrogance, it's weariness. Any claim that starts with the idea "Well, if the fighter catches the wizard with his pants down" is a null point. When you can use any number of core divination spells to scout areas you know you're going to ahead of time, and keep Foresight running all day if you need to go into an area you didn't have time to scout, and on the off chance your spell selection isn't adequate to deal with an encounter you can just Plane Shift out to a plane with rapid time and come back one round later with exactly what you need and prebuffed all to hell, you don't get caught with your pants down. Folks can say "Sure, but that's high level, what about at low levels?" At low levels the fighter isn't pimped out with magic items (which the magic users made, btw, they aren't fighter features) to protect his ass, and a direct save-or-suck spell even without heavy optimization takes him right out of the fight. Then it goes back to "Well, if the fighter has X and Y and Z that cost the feats and gold of a very high level character, the wizard doesn't stand a chance" but then that ignores what the high level wizard can do. It goes in circles and never ends. Yes, your 20th level fighter with a 25th level character's gold spent on buying portable help from a wizard can defeat a 1st level wizard. No that doesn't make melee better than spellcasting. And it gets very old bringing up information for folks that steadfastly ignore it because it kills their side of the argument entirely. It's especially wearying to me because I happen to like fighter types - Barbarian is my favourite base class - and it's irritating going over the points again and again about why my favourite kind of character isn't very good, for people that don't know what they're talking about and would rather ignore what they don't like than learn from it. |
| kriskey04-08-08, 12:39 PM | It's not arrogance, it's weariness. Any claim that starts with the idea "Well, if the fighter catches the wizard with his pants down" is a null point. When you can use any number of core divination spells to scout areas you know you're going to ahead of time, and keep Foresight running all day if you need to go into an area you didn't have time to scout, and on the off chance your spell selection isn't adequate to deal with an encounter you can just Plane Shift out to a plane with rapid time and come back one round later with exactly what you need and prebuffed all to hell, you don't get caught with your pants down. Hmm... I'm not convinced that's the greatest example. That would require 7 9th level spells to pull off just the foresight part. You only get a handful and even if you extended (requiring a metamagic device of some kind) that would be basically all or most of your 9th level spells -- a huge drain of your most powerful tools. I find it highly doubtful a core wizard travels around foresighted all the time. If you were to plane shift, you would certainly not be able to arrive in the same spot a round later. And I would hope you don't do that plan as a wizard. You would want to buff up somewhere on the other plane before turning back around. Also, foresight does not grant you knowledge of who your attacker is and it does not win you initiative. .. In any case, I'm absolutely certain the properly designed and optimized wizard can beat a fighter. I'm not really of the belief that a wizard isn't better than a fighter. I just think the point's being exaggerated. Under adventuring circumstances, I think the fighter doesn't become useless at all at high levels. The original point -- that a fighter is better than a wizard -- is obviously untrue. I was just chiming in because some of the replies seemed a tad over-the-top. I think every rule in these expansion books needs to be carefully considered before addition to your game. I'm always amazed that builds here get free reign over everything ever published. |
| Sunic_Flames04-08-08, 01:41 PM | Fighters do become useless at higher levels, because most of their tactics share a common weakness. Size. Size means reach, and reach advantages + better full attacks counter the straightforward approach. Size also means resistance or immunity to the various special maneuvers that are the few things he can do that do not involve power attacking for x. Size, on average scales with level. Combined with design flaws regarding feats as a whole + feats are all they have... |
| PrinceOfTheVoid04-08-08, 01:51 PM | What I've always found interesting is that, once you get into extremely high-epic, i.e. 50-100, (keep in mind I only allow the published epic spells in my games) their roles become reversed again and fighters suddenly become the class to be when all your enemies are immune to every form of attack except for physical assault, and when you start stacking epic feats 20+ times fighters suddenly become useful, and the highest contributing member of the party. |
| GuyrtheadamantineOne04-08-08, 02:00 PM | What I've always found interesting is that, once you get into extremely high-epic, i.e. 50-100, (keep in mind I only allow the published epic spells in my games) their roles become reversed again and fighters suddenly become the class to be when all your enemies are immune to every form of attack except for physical assault, and when you start stacking epic feats 20+ times fighters suddenly become useful, and the highest contributing member of the party. You can honestly claim you played high 50-100 levels? Yeah right.:rolleyes: |
| PhaedrusXY04-08-08, 02:05 PM | In any case, let's see some examples of the 20th level core wizard vs. the 20th level core fighter on this thread. I'm curious.I posted a link to an example of a core wizard totally and utterly kicking the dog crap out of a splat-book fighter on page 3. Here is the link again (http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=10582589) for those who missed it. |
| PrinceOfTheVoid04-08-08, 02:06 PM | I've run several 1-shot adventures at that level, of course they involved a lot of house rules. But from my experience, the melee classes were superior to the casters since 90% of a spellcasters arsenal was totally redundant and useless by that point. (Magic Missile was one of the few attack spells that had a chance of affecting anything, except things immune to force obviously. And that little bugger can do some damage when you apply enough metamagic) |
| Sunic_Flames04-08-08, 02:06 PM | ...And long before that point, the epic mage cleaned out the pantheon and has DvR 21. Poor Fighter... |
| Eldritch_Lord04-08-08, 02:07 PM | Hmm... I'm not convinced that's the greatest example. That would require 7 9th level spells to pull off just the foresight part. You only get a handful and even if you extended (requiring a metamagic device of some kind) that would be basically all or most of your 9th level spells -- a huge drain of your most powerful tools. I find it highly doubtful a core wizard travels around foresighted all the time. There are plenty of metamagic reducers that would let you get off a persistent foresight for a single slot that lasts all day. If you were to plane shift, you would certainly not be able to arrive in the same spot a round later. And I would hope you don't do that plan as a wizard. You would want to buff up somewhere on the other plane before turning back around. Plane shift + teleport will get you there. Also, foresight does not grant you knowledge of who your attacker is and it does not win you initiative. It says you are aware of what's coming, which could be interpreted to get you initiative and would definitely let you know who your attacker is, just not all that far in advance. The SRD isn't loading right now, but I can get exact wording later. In any case, I'm absolutely certain the properly designed and optimized wizard can beat a fighter. I'm not really of the belief that a wizard isn't better than a fighter. I just think the point's being exaggerated. Under adventuring circumstances, I think the fighter doesn't become useless at all at high levels. The original point -- that a fighter is better than a wizard -- is obviously untrue. I was just chiming in because some of the replies seemed a tad over-the-top. I think every rule in these expansion books needs to be carefully considered before addition to your game. I'm always amazed that builds here get free reign over everything ever published. I let every book and almost everything in them into my games; only material that is broken by default is banned, such as the Dweomerkeeper's unlimited wishes thing--but not the rest of the class. Builds here get free reign because (A) if it's published there's no reason not to use it, (B) most over a certain power level won't be used in an actual game, and (C) each individually usually uses only 5-6 books and so is fairly realistic resource-wise. |
| GuyrtheadamantineOne04-08-08, 02:11 PM | I've run several 1-shot adventures at that level, of course they involved a lot of house rules. But from my experience, the melee classes were superior to the casters since 90% of a spellcasters arsenal was totally redundant and useless by that point. (Magic Missile was one of the few attack spells that had a chance of affecting anything, except things immune to force obviously. And that little bugger can do some damage when you apply enough metamagic) Then I give you the benefit of doubt good sir.;) |
| DaidojiTaidoru04-08-08, 02:14 PM | Hmm... I'm not convinced that's the greatest example. That would require 7 9th level spells to pull off just the foresight part. You only get a handful and even if you extended (requiring a metamagic device of some kind) that would be basically all or most of your 9th level spells -- a huge drain of your most powerful tools. I find it highly doubtful a core wizard travels around foresighted all the time. A high level core wizard, if being played optimally, leaves his unassailible planar fortress for no more then 30 minutes at a time. Because that's all the time he needs to kill and loot anything. But assuming you don't want to live in a massive magically supplied you have Forsight up when you expect a fight, and a Contingency/["I leave spell"] set up for if you are ever ambushed. Because theres no reason to fight guys who jump you in the streets. You might lose. You leave and come back with their true name and some summoned friends. If you were to plane shift, you would certainly not be able to arrive in the same spot a round later. And I would hope you don't do that plan as a wizard. You would want to buff up somewhere on the other plane before turning back around. 1 round Material Plane time. Or 1 year wizard time because you go to a Plane with alternate time. Yes the Wizard took a nap, went on an adventure to get some bonus XP, researched a spell, crafted a scroll, THEN buffed out and ported back. All before you finished trying to charge. Also, foresight does not grant you knowledge of who your attacker is and it does not win you initiative. Correct. Celerity and nerveskitter win you inititive. In absence of those Forsight is pretty eh. Contingency (someone CR 10+ rolls inititive -> Plane Shift out) is much better for avoiding guys trying to surprise you when your out buying groceries. If your looking for a fight you know who the other guy is and are bringing some friends. Then it's figuring out what contingencies to have up to stop his contingencies, and how to handle the summmons/wards that will go off. Or killing the poor fool while he sleeps if he's a non caster. Yes high level wizards are that insane. Once you know the tricks the question isn't "How do I Op this?" It's "How do I nerf myself to keep it fun while still making sure I win?" |
| Mereille04-08-08, 02:33 PM | I'm sorry, but I need to ask this question... ...what in the past 5 pages has actually addressed the original poster's problem? Actually helpful posts seem to be few and far between (and there have been a few, mostly ignored...but they are there). The real issue is not 'are casters or melee more powerful'. It is not 'this is how a mage wins'. It is not about who wins a duel. These things really don't matter. The OP is not being allowed to play the character class he wants to. (From Tome of Battle, if I'm not mistaken). The real issue is 'my DM won't let me play this class, what can I do?'. I still have not seen a real answer to the question: Why does the DM think that ToB classes are overpowered? What about them unbalances his game? When something like this happens, it is important to approach the problem by being honest, helpful and mature...NOT argue...NOT try to prove the other wrong. All that that will do is cause hard feelings on both sides, and probably back the DM into a corner where he basically says 'this is how it is, if you don't like it then leave', and then both sides lose. IMO, the player and DM need to sit down and calmly talk about it. What is the level range of the campaign? What specifically makes the character concept not work for the GM's campaign? What specifically does the player like about the concept? How does this affect the other players at the table? How does the character relate power-wise with the other players' characters? Maybe the GM will reconsider, and allow the class. Maybe the player can be convinced to select a different class and still keep his character concept. Possibly both need to compromise a bit. For instance the DM allows the class, but not a particular build. I believe that D&D is a collaborative game at it's core. So everyone involved should work toward increasing the fun for everyone (players and GM alike). |
| MetZen04-08-08, 02:57 PM | :eek: I also agree that some of these posts are a bit over the top... the best is the 1 page long rant about how to kill a psion. I had a laugh with that as it was, in my opinion at least one of the most useless ways to spend a days worth of spells. As for the ancient debate of who rules DnD, casters or melee...well i would not go insulting the meat shield that sits between you and a high lvl creature if I were you. And yes there are ways to keep a wizard locked in place long enough to put him out of his missery, or make his divinations or even teleportations work badly (as for Plane Shift, that's all too risky on it's own, consider that only as a last resort and not as a general means of escape). By the way what kind of DM will let you actually create your own plane as a wizard? - I'm still having trouble making my DM accept the 3.5 version of Deflect Arrows.:rolleyes: Granted Celerity and other things that give you a chace to act, remember these spells are there because a wizard is still mostly a one hit kill even al 20+. And finally, what's the point of this thread anyway (i think it's just about showing off on PVP skills and uber builds) ? DND is not supposed to be about dules, if you want that there is always WOW or a horde of other clones that are all about PVP. As for who's better... well I'll tell you the same thing a friend of mine said when i first started playing: "The guys who made this game are called Wizards of the Coast, not Barbarians or Psions;)" Peace out, |
| TwistedPuppy04-08-08, 03:05 PM | Correct. Celerity and nerveskitter win you inititive. In absence of those Forsight is pretty eh. Contingency (someone CR 10+ rolls inititive -> Plane Shift out) is much better for avoiding guys trying to surprise you when your out buying groceries. Daidoji, I just quoted you because yours was the most recent example, don't mean to single you out. Here's where I really annoy some people, but no DM I know worthy of the title would allow a spellcaster to cast Contingency with a trigger involving "initiative roll" or a "CR 10+". That's metagaming on a grand scale. Or I suppose you could be really mean, and neglect to tell the player that his Contingency won't go off until the character is at the FLGS playing the "Payrolls and Paychecks" RPG (for those of us who remember the 1st Edition DMG) and a CR10 tax auditor rolls intiative... |
| PhaedrusXY04-08-08, 03:16 PM | Also, foresight does not grant you knowledge of who your attacker is and it does not win you initiative. Foresight = Never flatfooted. (There are also other ways to get this constantly, such as a Legacy item with the Cunning ability, a Dragonmark, etc.) Greater Celerity = I can take an entire round's worth of actions as an immediate action (i.e. when it is someone else's turn, even if I interrupt their actions before they're finished). Those two together = Win. Of course, Greater Celerity isn't in core, but Contingency is. And you don't have to say anything about "initiative rolls" in the trigger. You can say something like "anytime anyone takes a hostile action within my perception, I Teleport to my stronghold". Then you scry on the enemy, do some divinations/gather info to figure out how best to kill them, sleep, reprepare spells, and go kill them whenever you feel like it. Or just Gate in a Pit Fiend (or some 40 HD epic monster or dragon) and tell it to go do your dirty work, while you hang out with the Succubus you called via Lesser Planar Binding. Also, at this level there is really almost no reason to not be going around as an Astral Projection 24/7, anyway. You don't use charges on your magic items permanently (that staff of Gate and Wish with 2 charges left will come in pretty handy), and if someone actually manages to "kill" you, it just means you have to recast the spell. There is absolutely no doubt which is more powerful at the upper levels of the game between a fighter and a wizard. There is also no doubt that a well built and well prepared wizard can kill any fighter in a 1 vs. 1 duel, unless the person playing the fighter is a much better strategist and optimizer than the one playing the wizard. |
| DaidojiTaidoru04-08-08, 03:18 PM | Daidoji, I just quoted you because yours was the most recent example, don't mean to single you out. Here's where I really annoy some people, but no DM I know worthy of the title would allow a spellcaster to cast Contingency with a trigger involving "initiative roll" or a "CR 10+". That's metagaming on a grand scale. I'm sorry but spells HAVE to use metagame concepts as triggers/limitations. If my casue fear doesn't work on creatures with 5 or more HD, Gate limits me to HDx2 in creatures summoned, symbol of Death effects exactly 150 HP, and powerword kill takes out a creaure with less then 100 HP, then I have to assume HD, HP and other similar intangibles can be detected and acted upon by a spell. (Barring of course spells that specifically forbid such things, like symbol triggers) |
| TwistedPuppy04-08-08, 03:42 PM | The difference is that none of those conditions are set by the character. Do away with metagaming, and all the character knows in each of the cases you mentioned is that the spell worked or failed. He may surmise that some creatures are sufficiently powerful that the spell does not have an effect. Again, HP and HD are metagame concepts that your character doesn't know about. As a DM I'd require something that was not a blatant metagame concept. |
| DaidojiTaidoru04-08-08, 03:54 PM | The difference is that none of those conditions are set by the character. Do away with metagaming, and all the character knows in each of the cases you mentioned is that the spell worked or failed. He may surmise that some creatures are sufficiently powerful that the spell does not have an effect. Again, HP and HD are metagame concepts that your character doesn't know about. As a DM I'd require something that was not a blatant metagame concept. *Sigh* I see. Then my wizard is an idiot incapable of basic experimentation. Whatever. "Whenever something that could be effected by a legend lore spell initiates a hostile action." should suffice. That's CR 11+. |
| The_Wild_King04-08-08, 04:00 PM | I'm sorry, but I need to ask this question... ...what in the past 5 pages has actually addressed the original poster's problem? Actually helpful posts seem to be few and far between (and there have been a few, mostly ignored...but they are there). The real issue is not 'are casters or melee more powerful'. It is not 'this is how a mage wins'. It is not about who wins a duel. These things really don't matter. The OP is not being allowed to play the character class he wants to. (From Tome of Battle, if I'm not mistaken). The real issue is 'my DM won't let me play this class, what can I do?'. I still have not seen a real answer to the question: Why does the DM think that ToB classes are overpowered? What about them unbalances his game? When something like this happens, it is important to approach the problem by being honest, helpful and mature...NOT argue...NOT try to prove the other wrong. All that that will do is cause hard feelings on both sides, and probably back the DM into a corner where he basically says 'this is how it is, if you don't like it then leave', and then both sides lose. IMO, the player and DM need to sit down and calmly talk about it. What is the level range of the campaign? What specifically makes the character concept not work for the GM's campaign? What specifically does the player like about the concept? How does this affect the other players at the table? How does the character relate power-wise with the other players' characters? Maybe the GM will reconsider, and allow the class. Maybe the player can be convinced to select a different class and still keep his character concept. Possibly both need to compromise a bit. For instance the DM allows the class, but not a particular build. I believe that D&D is a collaborative game at it's core. So everyone involved should work toward increasing the fun for everyone (players and GM alike). I appreciate the concern, but the first few pages were all the answers I needed. This is someone else's battleground now :P p.s.- I figured I'd play a wizard if he rules crusader out. Not to be vindictive or anything, just to show him the power of messing with the battlefield and enemies while not dealing a single point of HP damage (grease, color spray, ray of enfeeblement) |
| calronmoonflower04-08-08, 04:04 PM | Here's where I really annoy some people, but no DM I know worthy of the title would allow a spellcaster to cast Contingency with a trigger involving "initiative roll" or a "CR 10+". That's metagaming on a grand scale. Well in that case it would be. However it can be done in such a way that it isn't. A contingency item (not the spell) can be set up with a simple spell like Benign Transposition (it's a first level spell) can switch you with the the "big dumb fighter" when you are engaged in melee. A second Contingency could be set up to be engaged in melee combat without a fighter. A spell that grants an extra action and you would be able to choose from several prepared spells and give you a wide array of options to deal with the situation. Also a mage with a lick of sense will try to make sure that they always have someone there to help them. The lone wizard argument makes little sense. Most classes work in teams with others. This allows the weak spots of classes to be covered by others. This includes fighters covering mages so the mage isn't killed and the mage then is able to obliterate the opposition. |
| Zherog04-08-08, 04:23 PM | (as for Plane Shift, that's all too risky on it's own, consider that only as a last resort and not as a general means of escape). Alright - I'll ask. What's so risky about plane shift? |
| Lurk3r04-08-08, 04:36 PM | I think he's referring to the bit about "precise accuracy as to a particular location on the intended plane is nigh impossible". Meaning, a DM is entitled to "randomly" have your character arrive at the bottom of the ocean, or some other similarly problematic location. Granted, chances of it being a situation you couldn't subsequently get out of via teleport are slim. However, it is still technically possible to get yourself massively screwed by a planeshift spell. EDIT: This actually still is a non-issue, since you can also select a plane that is only, say, a few hundred feet across, making miss chances somewhat irrelevant. Or, you could do one better and create your own demi-plane via the Genesis spell, then shape it into the perfect fortress without any problem locations to be randomly dropped in. |
| MetZen04-09-08, 07:45 PM | Plane Shift isn't the most reliable means of escape as you have no way to pin-point where you will end up. This just gives a DM the chance of messing with a character. Now i see the point of being well prepared as a wizard, i mostly play wizards, and Abjurers is my favorite spec. but the celerity/foresight/ contingecy tactic has 2 major flaws: As a house rule my group and I consider any duel lost if one of the two combatants leaves a designated area (ex: cage, cave, plain ) just to save our selves the headacke of having to deal with teleports or plane shifts to recover spells or hp. And this is a rule most other groups I know use. Second, I'm still having trouble believing a DM would allow wizards to employ such tactics... mind you most of the material used is non-core and not all DMs might allow it, even the rules that allow a PC to make his onw plane ( prestiege class, spells) are from other material. Also why bother at all? I might be mistaken but i think you can make contingecy permanent and a sensible trigger ( not like "when initiative is rolled", which is an abstract term that characters cannot relate to in-game) maybe something in the lines of "when attacked" can save your flimsy wizard a great deal of pain;) |
| Shaggy_Shaggs04-09-08, 07:48 PM | Plane Shift isn't the most reliable means of escape as you have no way to pin-point where you will end up. This just gives a DM the chance of messing with a character. Now i see the point of being well prepared as a wizard, i mostly play wizards, and Abjurers is my favorite spec. but the celerity/foresight/ contingecy tactic has 2 major flaws: As a house rule my group and I consider any duel lost if one of the two combatants leaves a designated area (ex: cage, cave, plain ) just to save our selves the headacke of having to deal with teleports or plane shifts to recover spells or hp. And this is a rule most other groups I know use. Second, I'm still having trouble believing a DM would allow wizards to employ such tactics... mind you most of the material used is non-core and not all DMs might allow it, even the rules that allow a PC to make his onw plane ( prestiege class, spells) are from other material. Also why bother at all? I might be mistaken but i think you can make contingecy permanent and a sensible trigger ( not like "when initiative is rolled", which is an abstract term that characters cannot relate to in-game) maybe something in the lines of "when attacked" can save your flimsy wizard a great deal of pain;) So, basically, since you can houserule the problem away, there's no problem? ....I'm not going to say it, it's too Overused. |
| MetZen04-09-08, 08:26 PM | Now back on topic. Yes casters are more powerfull at higer levels. No melee are not useless ( barbarians and paladins are very hard to kill at high lvl's, and both pack quite a puch+ all the non-core melee classes) Rememeber D&D is not a stand alone game or skirmish you need a party to survive;) |
| pmurray@bigpond.com04-09-08, 11:14 PM | In a duel-type situation, caster wins. The brake on a casters power in spells-per-day, having to be prepared for a variety of unknown challenges, and - vary, vary important - expensive material components. Forcecage is game-breaking, unless you make the wizard pay for and carry ruby dust. DMs - make your wizards buy and keep track of expensive material components. For added fun - you just cannot get 100gp pearls in the mountains. They are not to be had for any price. That's the whole and entire reason that certain spells are expensive to cast. Why yes Mordankainen II, of course you may buff the fighters with a Stoneskin before every fight! But it will cost you 500 per fighter each time you do it. |
| Sunic_Flames04-10-08, 09:20 AM | Now back on topic. Yes casters are more powerfull at higer levels. No melee are not useless ( barbarians and paladins are very hard to kill at high lvl's, and both pack quite a puch+ all the non-core melee classes) Rememeber D&D is not a stand alone game or skirmish you need a party to survive;) Not that hard to kill. Let's pick a random creature worth its CR as a baseline. We'll say a young adult blue dragon, and he's up against a level 11 party. Now let's say he full attacks the fighter. With no feats, spells, or abilities whatsoever, his attack sequence looks like this: +23 2d6+6 +18 1d8+6 * 2 +18 1d6+3 * 2 +18 1d8+9 Of course the dragon has 7 feats to play with. Making one Multiattack and one Power Attack would be a good idea. If the dragon can only draw from core, that means same for the party. Ok, so now the secondary attacks are +21. All those attacks have a very high chance to hit. Average total damage there is 60.5. Now let's look at the fighter of the group. His HP are 65 + con mod * 11. Which means 87 or 98. The 'tank' of the group cannot survive two consecutive rounds against an equal CR opponent. Which means he is quite easy to kill. Without Power Attack. With it it might do more. Meanwhile the dragon has AC 26, which isn't that hard to hit, but is a little harder than the dragon hitting him. It also gets in the way of Power Attacking which is the only way he can do meaningful damage. As we can see, this fight is going to come down to the casters. And that's assuming it actually lands and full attacks, instead of breath weapon strafing with its high speed like it should be doing in which case he's even more screwed. We still haven't picked the dragon's other 5 feats. Going outside of core helps the fighter melee better as it gives him worthwhile bonus feats. But it helps the dragon melee better a bit more. Say it with me folks. Wraithstrike. |
| Clawhound04-10-08, 12:01 PM | Is a wraithstriking dragon three levels above the party an example of a typical encounter that the party will face, or is it a demo of how the system can be cranked to kill any character that you want? I suspect that it is an example of the latter. Has the same dragon also cranked up its Spell Resistance to nerf the casters? I doubt it. |
| Sunic_Flames04-10-08, 12:12 PM | Not that hard to kill. Let's pick a random creature worth its CR as a baseline. We'll say a young adult blue dragon, and he's up against a level 11 party. Your post fails to counterpoint on the grounds you failed to read mine properly before replying. An adult would be Huge anyways, which gives an attack sequence like so: +27 2d8+8 +25 2d6+4 * 2 +25 1d8+4 * 2 +25 2d6+12 He has seven feat slots open still. 75 damage there, without any tricks whatsoever. Really, he should have improved multiattack if going the melee route. But as has already been stated the dragon is better off breath weapon strafing. |
| MetZen04-10-08, 01:24 PM | Ok you described a npc fighter( i say npc because of hp) against a adult blue dragon? Isn't that a bit much? And your point is? That melee is easy to kill? What if that same dragon just uses his breath weapon on the entire party, what would happen to the resident caster? Better yet, what if he used part of his full atack maybe tail and bite on the unarmored guy with the staff ( there is also grapple, maybe crush) ? |
| Lurk3r04-10-08, 01:39 PM | Also...about the spell resistance thing, its very difficult to 'crank up' SR since it overlaps and does not stack. In order to get it much higher you would have to put a lot more effort in; you're almost certainly going to have to invest more then a feat or two, as the previous poster did in their example versus a fighter. So, essentially, the existing 19 SR is the best that Young Blue is going to get. Since its a dragon, you have the option of Awaken Spell Resistance, which increases it by 2. so, investing a feat or 2, you get 23. At level 11, the casters will be able to punch their spells through 40% of the time, more if they took spell penetration. It's still pretty much moot either way given the volume of spells that do not allow SR. A reasonably intelligent caster can easily be expected have at least a couple of these on hand. To be fair though, a dragon is hardly a good example. Apparently somewhere in the Draconomicon it flat out states Dragon's have under-stated CRs in order to make for harder encounters, or so my DM tells me. Also, its pretty well-known that single opponents don't make for very good encounters, which makes the actual CR of this example rather blurry. EDIT: Also, another note, I don't think this example was to demonstrate anything about casters at all. It seemed more directed at the comment about melees being difficult to kill. As for casters, there's any number of defensive spells they could use in the situation, many of these examples have already been listed. |
| Zherog04-10-08, 02:05 PM | Ok you described a npc fighter( i say npc because of hp) against a adult blue dragon? Isn't that a bit much? :confused: Please explain why you think the hit points used by SF relegates this fighter to NPC status... |
| Clawhound04-10-08, 02:09 PM | There's also any number of things that melee can do, with the caveat that a physical attacks which bypasses AC is a very rare power. Where these attack do exist, damage is always fairly poor. That makes this a poor example. In contrast, in most games my players toss a few well chosen spells onto the melee and watch her go. Usually melee just needs a specific boost here or boost there to account for an encounter, if any boost at all. They run into just enough encounters that the spellcasters did not foresee that melee is the great "oh crap, hit it with a stick" fallback plan. |
| Sunic_Flames04-10-08, 03:01 PM | Ok you described a npc fighter( i say npc because of hp) against a adult blue dragon? Isn't that a bit much? And your point is? That melee is easy to kill? What if that same dragon just uses his breath weapon on the entire party, what would happen to the resident caster? Better yet, what if he used part of his full atack maybe tail and bite on the unarmored guy with the staff ( there is also grapple, maybe crush) ? 10 + 5.5 * 10 = 65, average HP for a level 11 Fighter. Then add 11 per point of Con modifier. I assumed 14-16. At this point a +2 item to a secondary stat is feasible, +4 isn't though. And of course 14 starting. How is this NPC level? My point is exactly that they are easy to kill, as someone said they were hard to kill. In fact my example clearly demonstrates unless someone is casting healing spells on the Fighter every single round, and that completely negates the incoming damage, he cannot sustain this. Moreover, what healing spell is being cast? Cure Critical Wounds is 4d8+11 at this point, only averages 29 which is about half the incoming damage. It might stall one extra round. Still a losing battle. Heal works, but how many times can you cast it at level 11? And note in both cases, it means the cleric is right beside the fighter and is therefore a valid target as well. If the dragon uses its breath weapon on the entire party, and they're stupid enough to be lined up for it... the whole party takes some lightning damage. Caster probably takes less, as he has buffs for his saves, and energy resistance. If the dragon attacks the caster, it's quite possible the caster has higher AC. Even if he does not, a simple, second level Mirror Image ensures at least an 80% miss chance. 1d4+3 images = minimum 4 = 5 possible targets. Alternately the dragon could attack with his eyes closed, be effectively blinded, but only have a 50% miss chance due to blindsight. The catch though is that this doesn't pop an image, and won't work if the caster spreads out his images. With that said I think dragons make a great example as along with outsiders, and a small handful of others they are the only core monsters actually worth their CR at this point. Alternately I could have grabbed something from the MM3, but hey. |
| Clawhound04-10-08, 03:42 PM | A fighter has an AC in the AC 28 range, easy, at Level 11. Maybe 30. That means that secondary attacks miss far more often. That greatly reduces his damage input. If the melee is using Combat Expertise, his AC is now AC 33-35. If he is fighting defensively, it is now 35-37. That was without trying. There are folks out there who put together melee with crazy AC's. I do mean crazy. Quite simply, if you are going to trot out crazy-effective dragon examples, there are enough crazy-effective AC examples out there to show that there are lots of weapons in that race. Put that together with stoneskin, and your fighter is now sitting pretty. Put a shield other on the fighter, and now he's not going down. Put a displacement over that. Protection from Energy goes on top of that. That would account for a normal dragon very well. That would even account for a wraithstrike. Most of those are pre-buff spells, so you really only need the displacement at the last minute. The normal party has a huge number of tools to solve this problem. Even a non-optimized fighter would survive. So yes, the fighter is going down if the person playing the fighter is an idiot and his allies are not supporting him. The reason that these fights are so nasty is because the game assumes that the players are throwing all these spells on their fighters. |
| Shaggy_Shaggs04-10-08, 03:48 PM | So, basically what you're saying is, if the entire party spends multiple rounds making the fighter a delivery system for their own class features, so that he's a bit of rough terrain to deal with a fairly thoughtlessly built, weak to average dragon, the dragon blows the fighter away with his breath instead of his jaws and claws, or takes slightly longer doing it with his jaws and claws, or just ignores him, therefore fighters aren't weak? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over. :confused: |
| Zherog04-10-08, 03:53 PM | A fighter has an AC in the AC 28 range, easy, at Level 11. Maybe 30. That means that secondary attacks miss far more often. That greatly reduces his damage input. If the melee is using Combat Expertise, his AC is now AC 33-35. If he is fighting defensively, it is now 35-37. And, of course, if he's doing these things to pump his AC up, then he's doing less damage because he's hitting the dragon less often. On top of what Shagster mentioned. |
| CrimsonDeath04-10-08, 03:57 PM | Your post fails to counterpoint on the grounds you failed to read mine properly before replying. Actually, his post points out that a young adult blue dragon can't know Wraithstrike. It only has level 1 spells. And, of course, if he's doing these things to pump his AC up, then he's doing less damage because he's hitting the dragon less often. On top of what Shagster mentioned. Plus the fact that the Dragon can simply walk past a Fighter who's taking a -9 on attack rolls just to boost his AC, and deal with someone who's actually posing a threat. |
| Nathreet04-10-08, 04:10 PM | 1. Who cares? Why do you need to prove it out of game? 2. Your DM probably hasn't been exposed to the popular opinion of the boards like you have, which is why his opinion seems normal to him and outrageous to you. In a lot of new player or maybe even anti-tweaker games, his opinion is very true. Just make a caster if you want to prove him wrong. If you can't pull it off, then it means you should play melee first until you get more experience. I'm tired of inexperienced players posting here and wondering why their party or character of anything-except-melee seems to die so easily. They often get builds that are worse than both melee and casters. Often it's a non-melee or partial-melee class/multiclass <cough> bardmonkrogueranger</cough> attempting to focus on melee only (though some make a wonderful second melee when focused). Their party's only saving grace is the 1 caster it has. |
| themocaw04-10-08, 04:21 PM | Plus the fact that the Dragon can simply walk past a Fighter who's taking a -9 on attack rolls just to boost his AC, and deal with someone who's actually posing a threat. The one time I saw a full defense action being taken, a character basically had the paladin mark 4.0 ability and could designate a single enemy and force them to fight him one on one. He called out his challenge, turtled up, and waited for the rest of us to get into position. |
| Clawhound04-10-08, 05:02 PM | Using Displacement, Shield Other, Protection From Energy, and Stoneskin, melee gets lots of protection and can full-threat. Simple. What aren't you getting? You said that fighters were easy to kill. Here's how a party makes them not-easy to kill. You may not like how I do it, just like I don't like wraithstrike, but it still works. |
| Zherog04-10-08, 05:11 PM | 1) So, the fighter can rely on spells from the wizard and/or cleric in order to become viable in combat? Including one that costs 500 gp to cast? 2) "Full-threat?" Are we playing an MMO now, where the baddie has to attack the fighter, even when it's not the smartest thing for him/her/it to do? |
| Sunic_Flames04-10-08, 05:46 PM | First off, to Shaggy and Zherog: :bow: Second, if you really wanted it to have Wraithstrike, and there wasn't some means of advancing its spellcasting ability one level... It could use a 10 charge wand (standard item as per the MIC, 900 GP) with UMD, which cannot fail. It's a dragon, it's smart enough to be aware of such things and rich enough to afford them for problematic types. It will lose out on one claw attack (the one holding it) but the fact he can now PA better with the others makes up for it. Not that it matters, as I was deliberately doing a crappy job designing and playing the dragon as others have commented on. Third, if you buff up the Fighter to be a tank, he ceases to be a tank as the dragon decides to go after someone he can both actually hurt, and can actually hurt him. Therefore he is no longer drawing fire and all that prep is wasted. Unless you buff everyone up that way, which is well beyond the scope of level 11. Or, make the fighter a monster damage wise so he can't afford to be ignored. Using Displacement, Shield Other, Protection From Energy, and Stoneskin, melee gets lots of protection and can full-threat. Simple. What aren't you getting? You said that fighters were easy to kill. Here's how a party makes them not-easy to kill. You may not like how I do it, just like I don't like wraithstrike, but it still works. Now let's analyze this part. Displacement: 3rd level wizard spell. Shield Other: 2nd level cleric spell, must link cleric and fighter and therefore, the guy keeping everyone alive is constantly being hurt as well. Protection from Energy: 3rd level cleric or wizard spell, actually fairly good in that it should absorb 3 breaths. Of course after the first it's likely to just aim the lightning elsewhere... Stoneskin: 4th level wizard spell. Expensive material component (250 gp). And this is where it falls apart because generally, using expensive spells on routine (equal CR) opponents is not a good tactic. Ok, Mr. Fighter is needing a 2nd level spell, 2 3rd level spells, and a 4th level spell along with 250 gp in consumables just to function in a normal difficulty fight. And what happens if they don't know what sort of dragon they're going after, or it gets the drop on them before such spells are cast? Really, all it proves is he can ride the coattails of others. :rolleyes: |
| TheFlyingAsian04-10-08, 05:55 PM | Just a thought: When I DM, casters are far from invunerable - 4 hiding half-dragon ettins with invisibility and greatswords will take a nice chunk out of a mage. And even with buffs, the mage is still a decently vulnerable target. Plus, buffs don't last forever... However, when the mage is fully prepared he/she/it becomes God. The trick is to surprise them. |
| The_Wild_King04-10-08, 05:58 PM | 1. Who cares? Why do you need to prove it out of game? 2. Your DM probably hasn't been exposed to the popular opinion of the boards like you have, which is why his opinion seems normal to him and outrageous to you. In a lot of new player or maybe even anti-tweaker games, his opinion is very true. Just make a caster if you want to prove him wrong. If you can't pull it off, then it means you should play melee first until you get more experience. I'm tired of inexperienced players posting here and wondering why their party or character of anything-except-melee seems to die so easily. They often get builds that are worse than both melee and casters. Often it's a non-melee or partial-melee class/multiclass <cough> bardmonkrogueranger</cough> attempting to focus on melee only (though some make a wonderful second melee when focused). Their party's only saving grace is the 1 caster it has. 1. Because he is threatening to ban my class for it 2. You're correct with that for the most part I'm not really sure what you were saying with that last paragraph, but I've had caster experience, and I prefer melee. As I've said before though, if he bans my class, I'll make a wizard just to show him HP damage =/= all important |
| Zherog04-10-08, 06:02 PM | Play a druid and get the best of spellcasting and melee all in one convenient travel-sized package. :) |
| The_Wild_King04-10-08, 06:23 PM | Play a druid and get the best of spellcasting and melee all in one convenient travel-sized package. :) Hah, thats a last resort |
| Jo_Pistachio04-10-08, 06:29 PM | When I DM, casters are far from invunerable Only persist abusing wu jen jade phoenix mages are casters that can do that. - 4 hiding half-dragon ettins with invisibility and greatswords will take a nice chunk out of a mage... ...'s simalacrum, mirror image or other fake guise. And even with buffs, the mage is still a decently vulnerable target... ...to some Gods. Plus, buffs don't last forever... ...unless you abuse abnormal time planes. However, when the mage is fully prepared he/she/it becomes God. The trick is to surprise them. Which doesn't happen. Man that fill in the blank game was fun. :D |
| Hsien04-10-08, 06:51 PM | Pretty much the only things that kill casters effectively (from what I've actually seen, not theory) at higher levels are other casters or themselves by being careless or overconfident. Not to say that melee/ranged type characters can't take a caster out, pre-Foresight (for example) it's fairly easy with the right build...well in comparison to post-Foresight anyway. |
| MetZen04-10-08, 06:56 PM | So you are telling me that wizards usually walk around buffed with x ( insert number here) spells Now let me explain, if my players would squander spells like that to get their wizards safe and sound in a cocoon they would be out of any magical abilities half-way into a dungeon . Now why whould a caster have higer ac?( saw this in a previous post) And why would this matter for a breath weapon? What's the point anyway? You have a meat shield, use it. That hp is actually quite NPC lvl, just check the DM guide if you don't believe me, they have a table for that, just to answer a previous post. I'm not going to waste my time explaining builds that would get a melee to 160 hp at lvl 11 ( but i am going to give a core example...babarian +5con +rage...how much hp would he have?;p) As for usefull builds for high levels, I can't think of one that would kick caster ass but i do know some that would kick monster ass: Disciple of Dispater + great falchion, Vassal of Bahamut, Fighter +tempest+ good template for strenght bonus, Cavalier+paladin+mount. How easy are these guys to kill by your average monster? And remember they still have the rest of the party behind to nuke the big bad Monster:P. What more can i say? Eat steel blue dragon;) Ok as for Tome of Battle, in my opinion it's a bit over the top, and might unbalance the game in some ways. If your DM doesn't like it i totaly agree. Remember it's his game and his rules, he will give you a set of classes and races, and rule books that fit into his setting. |
| Zherog04-10-08, 07:48 PM | ( but i am going to give a core example...babarian +5con +rage...how much hp would he have?;p) I'll assume the +5 Con is after rage, since it's pretty well impossible to have a 20 Con (secondary stat) at 11th level - unless you're busting wealth-per-level, of course. So, 11th level barbarian is 12+(6.5 X 10) = 12+65=77 base hit points. Add Con mod *11 (55) for a whopping total of 132. His AC is worse than the fighter's, so he gets hit more often by the dragon. Alternatively, the dragon can dump even more into Power Attack, increasing damage that way. |
| Lord_Varos04-10-08, 09:26 PM | I'll assume the +5 Con is after rage, since it's pretty well impossible to have a 20 Con (secondary stat) at 11th level - unless you're busting wealth-per-level, of course. Zherog, I've agreed with everything you've said up to this. Saying "pretty well impossible" is ludicrous. A Dwarf (+2 Con) with a +2 stat-boosting item (almost a necessity) gets a 20 without even buying or rolling higher than a 16 for Constitution. And I don't know if I'd call the stat that controls nearly all of a melee combatant's survivability at level 8+ "secondary." |
| Cuindless04-10-08, 10:45 PM | So you are telling me that wizards usually walk around buffed with x ( insert number here) spells Now let me explain, if my players would squander spells like that to get their wizards safe and sound in a cocoon they would be out of any magical abilities half-way into a dungeon . Now why whould a caster have higer ac?( saw this in a previous post) And why would this matter for a breath weapon? No, as has been said several times, high level casters walk around with a contingency or a crafted contingency utilizing such CORE spells as foresight or time stop. Getting outside of CORE allows for even more intersting spells to enter the equation, such as greater celerity. The point is, with the amazing power of frickin' magic there's very little that a high level caster can't do. A 20th level optimized caster can walk around with absolutely no spells cast on him except a foresight on contingency and become God instantaneously. After that, it's just a matter of how you want to defeat your opponent and what non-CORE books the DM allows. |
| DaidojiTaidoru04-11-08, 12:11 AM | So you are telling me that wizards usually walk around buffed with x ( insert number here) spells Now let me explain, if my players would squander spells like that to get their wizards safe and sound in a cocoon they would be out of any magical abilities half-way into a dungeon . Now why whould a caster have higer ac?( saw this in a previous post) And why would this matter for a breath weapon? I'd like to state something that has stuck with me from 2nd ED. From a wise old optimiser that I was too young and stupid to listen to at the time. "If your wizard isn't sprinkling Diamond Dust on his Cheerios you've made a mistake." When your battle plan is "scry on target, teleport in and murder everyone with a mass of offensive spells preprepared in advance" most of your dailies CAN go to defensive buffs. Amusingly in 3rd ED a caster with a party has to spend MORE spells per day on defense. Anyone who can't Mindblank themselves is eating one of your level 8s, because mind control is the super lose. And Everyone seems to want you to drop a Magic Vestment and Greater Magic Weapon on them.... |
| Zherog04-11-08, 12:43 AM | Zherog, I've agreed with everything you've said up to this. Saying "pretty well impossible" is ludicrous. A Dwarf (+2 Con) with a +2 stat-boosting item (almost a necessity) gets a 20 without even buying or rolling higher than a 16 for Constitution. And I don't know if I'd call the stat that controls nearly all of a melee combatant's survivability at level 8+ "secondary." "Pretty well impossible" was most definitely the wrong choice of words. For a barbarian, Strength is likely the "primary" stat. In a 28 point buy, a 16 base costs 10 points. So you can certainly get both Str and Con to 16 at the start - but you'll only have 8 total points for everything else. You almost certainly want a positive modifier in both Dex and Wis (AC, Init, Reflex saves; Will saves, Listen and Spot checks), and I very rarely want an Int penalty, so that would require 2 points to get it up to a 10. Charisma, I think we can all agree, can be flushed down the drain for a barbarian - dwarf or otherwise. So even if I only go +1 in both Dex and Wis, I don't have enough points. Something's gotta give - and if I were making the dwarf barbarian, I'd stop Con at 14 and rely on my racial mod to get me to 16; then I would indeed have a +2 item, for a total of 18. Different styles, I guess. And in the end, most of it doesn't really matter - because the unoptimized dragon is still gonna own in a fight. |
| Shaggy_Shaggs04-11-08, 12:51 AM | Personally I'd dump Wis entirely, boost Con and pick up Endurance and Steadfast Determination. Dropping two feats stings, but using Con for Will saves is sweet, as is no 5% chance of failing a Fort save (such as vs massive damage) on a natural 1 when you could otherwise easily make it. If I was going to prestige out anyway and not need the higher-tier rages, I might also dump Int and use a 3 level ranger dip to pick up free Endurance and make up for lost skill points. |
| MetZen04-11-08, 02:38 AM | As a barb you only need stats str and con, everything else should just be above a penalty just to keep you safe. Why would you need dex anyway? Your ac is not your best asset, and when ranging it drops evel lower, that's why barbs have dr and high hp. Starting with 17 str, 17 con if you get lucky, gives you a 20 con at lvl 11 without a sweat+ rage (lvl11= greater rage) = more or les 160 hp, as i said previously. As for contingecy+ time stop, people I love that spell too but we are talking about lvl 11 here. Maybe if you have as a contingecy something in the lines of: " If i get attacked i search my pockets for that Time Stop scroll I've been saving, make the caster check, and the Time Stop" But that wouldn't work as a contingecy, would it? Best of all Contingecy+ Teleport ...say you are in a zone of Forbiddance ( assuming you have comtingecy+ foresight+ teleport and time stop, the bad guys might have forbiddance), or have been anchored. Congrats, you've just wasted a spell. And if someone goes to all the trouble of making sure no one pops up in his lair, what makes you think you can scry inside? Scrying is a DM tool mostly, to keep players i check, most DM's won't allowe you to cry all the time and in all the places, because it ruins most of their well crafted " surprise", and they have a ton of ways to make your scrying backfire. Better yet, how can you Scry for random encouters? Foresight gives you a last minute warning so you don't get caught with your pants down, but it's like putting your ear on the track when the train si comming. |
| Shaggy_Shaggs04-11-08, 03:04 AM | A few things... "If you get lucky" doesn't fly too well when talking about the way things are. It's not meaningful. If you're sufficiently lucky, magic doesn't bother you much because you always roll natural 20s against spells that allow saves, and spells that require attack rolls always go natural 1 and miss you. Obviously that's ridiculous. We tend to talk about average results which are what you can reasonably expect, and there are a lot of folks which have spent a lot of time and effort crunching numbers rather than just pulling numbers out of their a thin air. Scrying (and divination in general) is not a DM tool mostly, it is a staple and essential tool of all magic users that are worth their place in the party. Furthermore a DM using Rule 0 to neuter a character or their actions doesn't have any bearing at all in a discussion of the relative strengths and weaknesses of that character type in general. "It's not broken because you can use Rule 0 to fix it" is just plain absurd, self-contradictory. You don't scry for random encounters, because unless you're working in a very haphazard and thoughtless way you don't have random encounters. You scry your landing point ahead of time if you're going to be going somewhere instantaneously -- if you're moving overland, you use a spell like Prying Eyes to establish a sensory perimeter that lets you know something is coming well before it ever gets there, and then you prepare to meet it or you avoid it depending on what you feel like doing. |
| MetZen04-11-08, 08:55 AM | It's all about luck, last time I cheked it was a dice game, believe me when i say that its 60% luck, the rest strategy. You can have a bulletproof build and still loose due to a dice role. |
| Shaggy_Shaggs04-11-08, 10:53 AM | Yeah, okay, we're just gonna go with MetZen hasn't ever actually seen a bulletproof build, doesn't understand probability, and pulls numbers out of thin air. It must be nice to be able to be that naive. I don't really remember what it was like to believe that melees normally worked (because the DM starved casters for information and neutered any attempts they made at functioning), but I must've been happy then. That, or I've always been a masochist. There must have been something that made me like melee characters, even if I can no longer remember what it was... The preceeding Shaggy has not had coffee nor a cigarette and may not match the picture on the front of the box. |
| Sunic_Flames04-11-08, 11:16 AM | PCs are assumed to have average HP. I'm ignoring the rest of that as no actual builds are included, some 3.0 stuff is mentioned, and I'm not sure you're even on the right track there. As for ToB being over the top... as I've said in another thread, unless the DM is banning all full casters, half of core, and almost everything else average is not over the top. By the way, a decently optimized dragon will slaughter the non casting members of the party on round 1. The casters will likely be saved by some contingency and escape. Underlying assumptions: Half HP after first level, as is the norm. Standard assumed party. Fighter/rogue/cleric/wizard. 16s in primary stats (slightly favors players, default is 15). Both level up points go into the primary stat. Everyone has a +4 item for their primary stat, and a +2 item for a secondary stat. Everyone has a +2 resistance bonus to saves from a cloak. First, the dragon opens with a quickened breath weapon. This is stated to be a free action in the Draconomicon. Not a swift action. This is important. Now, our dragon is looking at an average damage of 45 with his breath weapon, DC 23 reflex half. If he has ability focus this can be higher. He has used 1 feat so far, out of 7. I'll run it with and without ability focus. Heighten could also be included, up to 4 points more. If a line won't do, he shapes it into a cone to ensure everyone is hit. Note that this will stop him from breathing again for a while, but this doesn't matter as if it doesn't work he can just fly or tunnel away to wait a minute, then attack again at his convenience. And what the hell, clinging too. 3 feats. Now, reflex modifiers by the above assumptions: Cleric: 3 base (bad save), 1 dex (full plate), 2 resistance = +6. Fighter: 3 base (bad save), 1 dex (full plate), 2 resistance = +6. Rogue: 7 base (good save), 6 dex (prime stat), 2 resistance = +15. Wizard: 3 base (bad save), 2 dex (secondary stat), 2 resistance = +7. The cleric has 16 con (secondary stat, boosted) and therefore has 11 + 7.5 * 10 = 86 HP. The fighter has 16 con (secondary stat, boosted) and therefore has 13 + 8.5 * 10 = 98 HP. The rogue has 16 con (secondary stat, boosted) and therefore has 9 + 6.5 * 10 = 74 HP. The wizard has 16 con (secondary stat, boosted) and therefore has 7 + 5.5 * 10 = 62 HP. Now, the cleric needs a 17 to save. 20% success rate, in which case he takes half damage. The other 80% of the time, full damage. So his weighted average is 90% damage which means he takes 40.5, leaving him with 45.5/86 HP. Nearly half dead. The fighter has exactly the same sort of odds, and takes the same damage leaving him with 57.5/98 HP. About 40% dead. The rogue needs an 8, and therefore has a 65% chance of success (no damage with evasion) and 35% chance of failure (full damage). His weighted average is 35%, so he takes 15.75, leaving him with 58.25/74 HP. Around 20% dead. The wizard needs a 16, which is 25% success rate for half damage. His weighted average is 87.5%, so he takes 39.375 damage, leaving him with 22.625/62 HP. About 60% dead. Of course this assumes no contingency or anything, for say... protection from energy, or even energy resistance. In any case this is the part where that get the hell out of here contingency comes in. Without it, improved multi attack power attack wraithstrike (3 more feats, 1 left) kicks in. The dragon is attacking touch and possibly flat footed AC, so he can PA for 10 and still hit 95% of the time. Suffice it to say, the non casters stuck there get mauled. With ability focus or heighten, the breath does slightly higher weighted damage. Doesn't matter too much as the main threat is a full attack sequence auto hitting touch AC 15 or less (that is to say, 95% accuracy) doing 23/17.5/16.5/16.5/23.5 average damage. That's 97 total by the way, and knocking off 5% makes it a weighted 92. Only the rogue likely has higher than this, especially given the possibility of flat footed for everyone else. If anyone survives, and is still there a round of regular attacks should do. So what's all this meant to prove? It's meant to show how dragons manage to exceed their CR for contrast to those that would say they are naturally above it, as opposed to everything else not a dragon or outsider in the MM1 not being worth its CR with few exceptions. And it's meant to show what happens when you get caught with your pants down, something that casters are far better at avoiding and thus far less susceptible to. It's also meant to illustrate just how much havoc a 900 GP item can wrack on the party. Oh and if they try to counterattack, the dragon used its spellcasting ability for mage armor and shield, giving it AC 34. Fighter is useless as usual. |
| Sunic_Flames04-11-08, 11:26 AM | Yeah, okay, we're just gonna go with MetZen hasn't ever actually seen a bulletproof build, doesn't understand probability, and pulls numbers out of thin air. It must be nice to be able to be that naive. I don't really remember what it was like to believe that melees normally worked (because the DM starved casters for information and neutered any attempts they made at functioning), but I must've been happy then. That, or I've always been a masochist. There must have been something that made me like melee characters, even if I can no longer remember what it was... The preceeding Shaggy has not had coffee nor a cigarette and may not match the picture on the front of the box. Heh... I'm not sure exactly what a bulletproof build entails, but I can guess. I do know it is possible for a caster (and not a melee) to essentially only be hit on a 20, (including touch attacks in most cases) only fail to hit on a 1, only fail saves on a 1 (which could easily be only on two consecutive ones), have miss chances on top of all that, and then all day do hundreds of damage a round every round. Did I mention immunity to critical hits (includes sneak attack), immunity to auto hit measures, anti elemental measures... About the only thing that managed to beat him was an AMF grappler designed specifically to take him out, and that was only because I messed up several times. After which I got a staff and hit him with a double orb for 180 damage. Alternately, I could have started using pounce, and attacked from at least 15' away. It'd be even better if I were to abuse AMF + ESA. Or 9th level spells. Or Celerity. Did I mention this is at level 8-13, going up against anywhere from highly optimized opponents of roughly equal level, to killing 4-5 equal level opponents at once in a 'handicap' match who never had a chance to jumping a higher level caster who didn't optimize as well, but abused the best spells, items, and so forth? That last one was a loss, but it was a coin toss as we both basically launched the killing move at the same time. Damn immediate actions. So what's this prove? Casters are gods. Martial guys, cool as they are just don't compare. Some flat out suck without massive optimization just to bring them up to par. (core ones) Some work and can contribute out of the box (ToB) but are not gods. They cannot become gods either. |
| Zherog04-11-08, 03:15 PM | I'm not gonna speak for Shaggy or Sunic or anybody else here. Just me.... I'm not arguing melee classes are "useless" or "unfun" or anything like that. My favorite classes (rogue, barbarian) fall into the category, and my favorite 3e character was a monk/paladin. I generally find melee to be more fun - probably because I'm too lazy to go "dumpster diving" through books for spells, and then maintaining the list. And I think I certainly did a good enough job with character builds to be useful in each case, even if I wasn't the "best" character in the group. But that doesn't change the fact that spellcasters, across the board, are more powerful than melee. |
| MetZen04-12-08, 04:51 AM | Yeah, okay, we're just gonna go with MetZen hasn't ever actually seen a bulletproof build, doesn't understand probability, and pulls numbers out of thin air. What math theacher ever told you that an average is the best way to solve a probability problem? Statisticaly you can't even average a x amount of dice rolls to a 10 ( it's not representative for either high or low rolls). Again I ask you dont post before reading the original post you're answering. I was simply stating that getting an above average roll on the 4d6 for character isn't that hard. Chances are you will get more than one, because you have 3 rolls. This again doesn't count with players that have been using PB all of their gaming lives, or that have asked for average hp at lvl up. I personally try to stay away from that, as the odds make the game alot more fun. I also mentioned some 3.0 material because, personally I think the original work in BVD and FF is far superior to most new material, having read all of it. But I won't get into any more detail as this is not what the thread is about . Also most of the replies here are redundant, I've read through the thread again and everybody agrees that casters kick melee as, with my only point being that some optimized melee classes are a good adition to any party, and really hard to kill at high lvl's( not by the casters, but by whatever the DM throws at them)- High AC, saves, hp are a life saver (plz don't give me any " a x creature can kill the x melee in one round, because I won't answer any more, this is beside the point as the same creature can kill almost any other member of the party just as fast) |
| Lurk3r04-12-08, 02:56 PM | You know MetZen, I agree with you, for the most part. Yes, melee can be fun to play, yes they are probably weaker then casters, yes they can contribute to the party(albeit with some optimization). But I take issue with this bit: really hard to kill at high lvl's( not by the casters, but by whatever the DM throws at them)- High AC, saves, hp are a life saver Lets go one by one. High AC - For a ton of cash a melee could get a "high" AC, except the druid could probably do better for cheaper. Oh yeah, and the Cleric can do the same thing since he has heavy armor proficiency too. All of the above probably still have crappy touch AC anyway, making the matter very moot against nasties that use touch attacks. Saves - Uh, yeah, ok...most melees only have good fort. Wis and Dex also both tend to be secondary stats, meaning their will and reflex are going to be sub-par most of the time. HP - I think its long been established that HP is about the last priority at high levels. Killing someone through straight HP damage is usually the least efficient way to do things. This last bit, incidently, also highlights a key weakness of melee in the melee vs. casters debate. Melees are usually forced to take on the sole task of dishing out huge amounts of HP damage. Which is, lets face it, straight up inefficient and probably won't work against stuff like Dragons etc. Casters on the other hand, usually can also do lots of hp damage, but can't sustain it as melees can. But this detail becomes completely irrelevant when you instead focus on the other stuff casters do: battlefield control, debuffing, etc. If you look over on charop, you might notice half the wizard guides focus on these sorts of tricks. It is also significant to note most of the 'powerful' general melee builds involve battlefield control, further re-inforcing the point. This also explains why ToB classes are seen as "overpowered": through the various manuvers they can often achieve some of the utility that has been denied core melees. So, going back to the previous example of everyone getting killed on the first round against a Dragon...part of the point of casters is to use spells to keep said Dragon from ever getting off a full attack in the first place. Which is something the plain old fighter types will almost never get to do. |
| Sunic_Flames04-12-08, 03:53 PM | Lets go one by one. High AC - For a ton of cash a melee could get a "high" AC, except the druid could probably do better for cheaper. Oh yeah, and the Cleric can do the same thing since he has heavy armor proficiency too. All of the above probably still have crappy touch AC anyway, making the matter very moot against nasties that use touch attacks. Saves - Uh, yeah, ok...most melees only have good fort. Wis and Dex also both tend to be secondary stats, meaning their will and reflex are going to be sub-par most of the time. HP - I think its long been established that HP is about the last priority at high levels. Killing someone through straight HP damage is usually the least efficient way to do things. This last bit, incidently, also highlights a key weakness of melee in the melee vs. casters debate. Melees are usually forced to take on the sole task of dishing out huge amounts of HP damage. Which is, lets face it, straight up inefficient and probably won't work against stuff like Dragons etc. Casters on the other hand, usually can also do lots of hp damage, but can't sustain it as melees can. But this detail becomes completely irrelevant when you instead focus on the other stuff casters do: battlefield control, debuffing, etc. If you look over on charop, you might notice half the wizard guides focus on these sorts of tricks. It is also significant to note most of the 'powerful' general melee builds involve battlefield control, further re-inforcing the point. This also explains why ToB classes are seen as "overpowered": through the various manuvers they can often achieve some of the utility that has been denied core melees. So, going back to the previous example of everyone getting killed on the first round against a Dragon...part of the point of casters is to use spells to keep said Dragon from ever getting off a full attack in the first place. Which is something the plain old fighter types will almost never get to do. Exactly. Though I presented that only to show an optimized dragon so that people wouldn't automatically dismiss the dragon with none of his spells active, no skill points spent, and not all of his feats used much less used well as being an above average example. That, and to show that he cannot take hits for the party, even if he convinces the dragon somehow to kill him first instead of last. The dragon example also illustrates that the casters could survive such an ambush, but the melees could not. |
| MetZen04-13-08, 03:01 AM | Paladins have ridiculosly high saves and a very limited spell selection, but which makes them very effective, barbs also get really high saves. Both lack in Ac though. Fighters have high ac thorugh Combat Exp, also having a shield and armor, whey give up damage entirely though and saves for the most part, although the shield attack feats in Complete Warrior are sweet. I only envision melee classes at high levels as a big meaty thing between monsters and casters. If If I play melee it would be stupid of me to charge into battle without waiting for the caster to do his thing. A Hold person gives me a chance to Coup. How sweet is that. Caster dish out a lot of damage too but most of it is energy type dependant, that makes them extremely unreliable, melee on the other hand always does the same thing " beat at it with a stick" with fairly good results, it's much easier to bypass than immunties, so casters are best at croud control " to use a MMORPG term". In my opinion all clasess are fairly weak if taken alone againt equal cr mobs, because monters are made having a party in mind. Also I have always seen arcane caters (the D4 ones) as fairly flimsy, I know if I'm caught with my pants down, it is probably game over. 'll try to make my point by using an ingame example, this happened a few moths ago: Two of my friends were playing a Sorc and a Barb, both were full hp and lvl 10 when they met a Minotaur ( the basic one from MM1), the barbarian was really sick of the sorc and was trying to get rid of him for some time now. So the barbarian won initiative, and made a five foot step sideways, needless to say the minotaur charged the Sorc who was still FF, it was a one hit kill for the minotaur. And I have countless more examples of this kind of one hit kills, mind you these guys are really experienced players, it just that sometimes you can't predict everything. Just to be fair the examples go for both caster and melee classes. |
| Jo_Pistachio04-13-08, 04:49 AM | Hmm. Minotuar deals 16.5 average on a hit. In this case, the sorc has a minimum of 26.5 HP, unless you have a con penalty, and either way, more than enough hit points to not die to a maxed out hit dealing 24. More realistically, you have a +2-3 con bonus, and so have 46.5 hit points, along with 15.5 temporary from false life. On a typical critical, the minotuar deals 49.5, which would still fail to kill the more likely sorcerer on average, though lucky rolls would. However, that's a one in tenty chance for the critical. Even without con (which is the mark of either a daredevil player or a poor optimizer) I would think that a lucky *3 crit would be unhealthy to say the least for a lot of your parties characters, though I wouldn't say that this is A: informative, because that caster wasn't doing much to stop charges, and B: I don't see how it's going to happen as advertized very often, and C: something is being left out, otherwise the sorcerer would have survived that attack. I'm assuming the sorcerer was already severely weakened. |
| Cuindless04-13-08, 04:59 AM | Paladins have ridiculosly high saves and a very limited spell selection, but which makes them very effective, barbs also get really high saves. Both lack in Ac though. Fighters have high ac thorugh Combat Exp, also having a shield and armor, whey give up damage entirely though and saves for the most part, although the shield attack feats in Complete Warrior are sweet. I only envision melee classes at high levels as a big meaty thing between monsters and casters. If If I play melee it would be stupid of me to charge into battle without waiting for the caster to do his thing. A Hold person gives me a chance to Coup. How sweet is that. This illustrates the point exactly. At high levels, a fighter needs a caster to be effective, while a caster doesn't need a fighter to be the same. He can become one with buffs, or he can summon one with spells. A Druid already has one (animal companion), can become one (wild shape), AND summon one. Complete win. No fighter needed. A lone fighter at 20th level is called a corpse. Caster dish out a lot of damage too but most of it is energy type dependant, that makes them extremely unreliable, melee on the other hand always does the same thing " beat at it with a stick" with fairly good results, it's much easier to bypass than immunties, so casters are best at croud control " to use a MMORPG term". It's well established that direct damage is an inefficient way for a caster to deal with threats when "save or die", "save or lose", "save or suck" and "no save, just die/lose/suck" spells exist in such number. Also, "beat it with a stick" is extremely easy to overcome... moreso than a caster's direct damage, in fact. In my opinion all clasess are fairly weak if taken alone againt equal cr mobs, because monters are made having a party in mind. Also I have always seen arcane caters (the D4 ones) as fairly flimsy, I know if I'm caught with my pants down, it is probably game over. A well-prepared caster will never be caught with his pants down, though. I'll try to make my point by using an ingame example, this happened a few moths ago: Two of my friends were playing a Sorc and a Barb, both were full hp and lvl 10 when they met a Minotaur ( the basic one from MM1), the barbarian was really sick of the sorc and was trying to get rid of him for some time now. So the barbarian won initiative, and made a five foot step sideways, needless to say the minotaur charged the Sorc who was still FF, it was a one hit kill for the minotaur. And I have countless more examples of this kind of one hit kills, mind you these guys are really experienced players, it just that sometimes you can't predict everything. Just to be fair the examples go for both caster and melee classes. Important part is bolded. Casters are not powerful when mistakes are made. Well optimized and using good tactics, high level casters are unstoppable forces. Casters are only balanced until around level 12, and that's being generous. Once 7th level spells are gained, they become gods. Arguably, they become gods much sooner. |
| Timlagor04-13-08, 06:13 AM | Contingency deals with a lot of the vulnerability and arcanists shouldn't be losing initiative anyway |
| Half_Dragon_Infernal04-13-08, 10:04 AM | Those so called "Experienced Players" you play with? IF they think fireball is a good spell, they need to make their knowledge (PHB [Spells]) check, because fireball is a fairly weak spell because it is direct damage. It's good near when you get it, but it sucks past about level 8 or 9. Then you get access to 5th level spells, which are really nice. |
| Meyer_William04-13-08, 11:12 AM | Are you talking about the "Overpowered Spellcasters" thread from a couple of months back? First, it was solo adventures, not "actual" adventures. Spellcasters work best in a party. (Of course, almost any character works best in a party, but the difference is generally more noticeable with spellcasters.) Second, the characters were level 5 (at least, that's where they started, and that's where they were when I stopped paying attention). That's about when solo spellcasters and solo meleers are roughly even; it's not until around level 7 that the spellcasters clearly start pulling ahead. Third, they were up against a string of five CR 5 encounters, which a normal group of four level 5 characters would have trouble with. Finally, not only did several spellcasters complete the level 5 gauntlet, but I believe at least one of them managed it without getting hit (a feat not duplicated by any of the melee characters). Let me jump in here a minute. There was one caster build that relied heavily on going nova (spending about 3000-4000+ of consumables before entering the cave) ... as well as needing an incantrix to help them cast their spells. Compare that to my noncaster who used a potion of flight at level 5, and maybe a potion of enlarge. Then, there was the effigy crafting guy ... whom I duplicated with a commoner. that was the caster who made it through unscratched. My commoner made it through equally unscratched. |
| Zherog04-13-08, 12:00 PM | Paladins have ridiculosly high saves and a very limited spell selection, but which makes them very effective, barbs also get really high saves. Please explain to me how a barbarian has really high saves? His Fort save should be sufficiently high that he drinks poison with his bacon and eggs at breakfast, but Reflex and Will are both bad saves with low stats. Yeah, the barb gets a +2 to Will when raging -- and it's still ridiculously low after that. Paladins do have nice saves (assuming you pump up Charisma, of course). But I can't really see how a barbarian does. I only envision melee classes at high levels as a big meaty thing between monsters and casters. If If I play melee it would be stupid of me to charge into battle without waiting for the caster to do his thing. A Hold person gives me a chance to Coup. How sweet is that. This is a decent example of teamwork, yes. It's why the game is played with a party of adventurers, rather than solo (with a few exceptions). You're still relying on the caster to improve your melee guy (as Cuindless pointed out), but that's OK in this instance, I think. Again, because it's ultimately about working together as a team. If the wizard is willing to use his spells in this manner, it's a great thing because the wizard still maintains a high power level and the other members of the party get to contribute as well. Just remember that the wizard could opt to load up on save or die spells, and kill the target rather than setting you up for the easy kill. |
| MetZen04-13-08, 12:14 PM | Did I mention anything about any fireball? No respective player is mostly fond of casters, no he doesn't use Fireball, no not even Scorching ray, I shouldn't have even answered that. Ok, so from what I've seen so far wizards and druids are invincible and a fighter is dead weight al high levels. No point in arguing. My group have stoped arguing about this theme a while ago, if any build seems so invincible feel free to do what we do. Make a lvl 20 char and use it to fight an equivalent CR dragon, balor , the CR 18 undead from MM1 works 2(or anyother monster that is at least challanging and let me know the results) Just use this basic rules: 1. Use a reliable DM to manage the fight. 2. Leave the DM to select the moster from a list, also the location. 3. Use the standard charater wealth, but don't use more than 30% of it on consumables or hirelings ( also try not to use the rules for hiring based on HD from the Draconomicon, they in my opinion are broken) If you are willing and live near or in Bucharest, i'm more than happy to stage such a fight or even a gauntlet tournament. This in my in my opinion is the best way to solve the OP's problem, simply ask your DM to make the best melee he can, you do the same for wizards ( decide on a level-ECL, wealth, PB or rolls) this is the best way to make sure for yourselves, this thread could go on forever. |
| Jo_Pistachio04-13-08, 03:05 PM | If I do something that doesn't require rolls, or any other such random chance, would that be acceptable without a DM? Frankly, I don't really want to have to deal with the chance of failing. |
| Cuindless04-13-08, 04:59 PM | Did I mention anything about any fireball? No respective player is mostly fond of casters, no he doesn't use Fireball, no not even Scorching ray, I shouldn't have even answered that. No, you didn't mention fireball or scorching ray, but you did say direct damage, which is a sub-optimal way for casters to take down their enemies. Ok, so from what I've seen so far wizards and druids are invincible and a fighter is dead weight al high levels. No point in arguing. That's not what I said at all. At low levels (1-6 or so) a fighter can easily be made mechanically superior to a caster because at those levels direct damage and high hit points are very important. Between levels 7 and 12, your average caster and average melee build (we're talking mid-optimal here) start to even out. Around level 13, though, casters pull ahead FAST. This doesn't mean that melee characters are dead weight, though. A well-optimized melee character is a boon to a high level caster if only because he saves a casting slot used for summoning. On one level you're right, most casters need a meat shield of some kind. What makes these two classes unequal is that a caster has hundreds of options that allow him to effectively adopt or replace the melee characters role, while the melee character can never emulate the caster. My group have stoped arguing about this theme a while ago, if any build seems so invincible feel free to do what we do. Make a lvl 20 char and use it to fight an equivalent CR dragon, balor , the CR 18 undead from MM1 works 2(or anyother monster that is at least challanging and let me know the results) Just use this basic rules: 1. Use a reliable DM to manage the fight. 2. Leave the DM to select the moster from a list, also the location. 3. Use the standard charater wealth, but don't use more than 30% of it on consumables or hirelings ( also try not to use the rules for hiring based on HD from the Draconomicon, they in my opinion are broken) If you are willing and live near or in Bucharest, i'm more than happy to stage such a fight or even a gauntlet tournament. This in my in my opinion is the best way to solve the OP's problem, simply ask your DM to make the best melee he can, you do the same for wizards ( decide on a level-ECL, wealth, PB or rolls) this is the best way to make sure for yourselves, this thread could go on forever. Duels prove very little, actually, because they're a small test sample. Raw data and evidence as provided from the books is a much better way to determine efficacy. It comes down to this: Can a caster ever wield a sword as effectively as a melee character? The answer is yes. Can a melee character ever cast a spell as effectively as a caster? The answer is no. End of argument. |
| Sunic_Flames04-13-08, 05:23 PM | If I do something that doesn't require rolls, or any other such random chance, would that be acceptable without a DM? Frankly, I don't really want to have to deal with the chance of failing. I'd recommend you use average results anyways, if for no other reason than to eliminate the melee (rolling all 20s) > caster (rolling all 1s) nonsense. Well maybe not that extreme but you get the idea. |
| Jo_Pistachio04-13-08, 05:32 PM | I'd recommend you use average results anyways, if for no other reason than to eliminate the melee (rolling all 20s) > caster (rolling all 1s) nonsense. Well maybe not that extreme but you get the idea. If you'd like, I could do it with all 1s vs. all 20s. I'd still win it. |
| Cuindless04-13-08, 05:42 PM | If you'd like, I could do it with all 1s vs. all 20s. I'd still win it. Not three feet apart with no spells prepared and no equipment. See... melee is better than casters. Duh! [/SARCASM] |
| Jo_Pistachio04-13-08, 06:05 PM | Hey, if I have a few choice spells previously cast, I can pull that one off. ;) Edit: Also, melee would get trashed there too. :P |
| Sunic_Flames04-13-08, 06:18 PM | Hey, if I have a few choice spells previously cast, I can pull that one off. ;) Well I'd start with proving average conditions = no chance. Then rub it in by illustrating even with a massive handicap the caster still wins. Oh and even at low levels, casters have Color Spray, Sleep, and Glitterdust. |
| toryn04-13-08, 06:28 PM | If I had a Dm like that, and I have had several through the years who tried to single out a chraracter type or concept, or was vindictive, or even bash me for playing by the rules, I would make a character that blurred the lines and really turn his viewpoint upside down. For example, make a gish like Wizard 5/Swordsage2/Jade Phoenix Mage 1 and tear up the town so to speak. |
| Cuindless04-13-08, 06:29 PM | Oh and even at low levels, casters have Color Spray, Sleep, and Glitterdust. True, and while those are powerful they're not the "insta-win" spells that the God/Casters have at higher levels. At very low levels, a melee class has a lot of cool options and versatility. I mean, a level 1 human fighter starts out with 3 feats, high hit points, a really good attack bonus and some fairly respectable damage, all at a time when these things really matter. At this level, a caster's low hit points, limited selection and poor AC are serious drawbacks... unless said caster is a Druid. Or CoDzilla... You know what... never mind. |
| calronmoonflower04-13-08, 06:40 PM | Then, there was the effigy crafting guy ... whom I duplicated with a commoner. that was the caster who made it through unscratched. My commoner made it through equally unscratched. He did however depend on a caster level to do that though. |
| Sunic_Flames04-13-08, 07:09 PM | True, and while those are powerful they're not the "insta-win" spells that the God/Casters have at higher levels. At very low levels, a melee class has a lot of cool options and versatility. I mean, a level 1 human fighter starts out with 3 feats, high hit points, a really good attack bonus and some fairly respectable damage, all at a time when these things really matter. At this level, a caster's low hit points, limited selection and poor AC are serious drawbacks... unless said caster is a Druid. Or CoDzilla... You know what... never mind. Those examples are instant wins. Anyone affected by them is out of the fight for at least a few rounds. If everyone is, fight over. If not, the rest can be knocked off and then the disabled creatures easily dispatched with no effort. Color Spray = unconscious and/or stunned = CdG. Or just hit them. Sleep = helpless = CdG. Glitterdust = blind = easily maul. |
| Cuindless04-13-08, 10:29 PM | I know what they do, but they're a little limited in size and efficacy. In the games I run/play in those are not insta-wins... not like so many others of the 5th level and up. Even using those spells a caster is going to need someone to help him finish the job... though a few summoned creatures would probably work. |
| MetZen04-14-08, 06:45 AM | We also consider, Dominate an insta-win ( and any other spell that grants you control of the victim) The best way to prove a point is by actually proving it ingame, this is my opinion at least. As I've said before anverage just doesn't cut it is not a correct form of assesment statisticaly ( nor is it a good way to simulate probaility as someone mentioned earlier) Also taking out te dice, makes the game a lot less fun, sorry to all the Wow fans out there but the d20 system is built around dice rolling. Also you still need a DM ( a fairly impartial one) in any duel, and to give a reason why you need one I'll quote a earlier post. Someone mentioned that any wizard could planeshift in a plane with a diferent time span so days would be just seconds in the material plane, a DM is needed so as to say what you can on cannot do. As I have said earlier, you need guidlines, you can't just say anything works. Draw out a set of guidlines, time limit, a certain confined area for the duel to take place. If you really are that good work with the tools at your disposal, any form of competition has rules. Just make sure that said rules dont favor any of the competitors. |
| Shaggy_Shaggs04-14-08, 07:29 AM | Uh, maybe this didn't occur to you, but intentionally nerfing the abilities of one class (such as arbitrarily deciding using Plane Shift to take go to another plane doesn't work when it would be advantageous to do so) isn't making sure that "said rules dont favor any of the competitors". Just so you know, favouring one of the competitors isn't going to give you anything like a real assessment of their capabilities either. |
| Half_Dragon_Infernal04-14-08, 09:55 AM | Course, what if a DM says there are no planes with altered time? You can't make one with genesis remember. |
| Sunic_Flames04-14-08, 10:17 AM | Really now, you're just arguing semantics here. Time abuses or no time abuses, caster wins. No contest. Therefore, the bit about melee > casters? http://ui29.gamespot.com/156/mythwalrus_2.jpg |
| MetZen04-14-08, 10:22 AM | My point exactly, not anything is allowed, I'm not talking about nerfing any ability. But assuming that a plane with a diferent time span exists is making the world run in your favor, that is why a DM is needed to make impartial judgements about the world and the laws that guvern it (no writen material makes such a plane a must in any setting, at least to my knowledge), he's not interfering with a character in any way. Yes we have gone off track here, indeed to think melee>casters, well is a bit off. Best way is to ask your DM why he believes that? Oh well, maybe in an alternate reality melee>casters.:P |
| Nathreet04-14-08, 10:24 AM | Ugh, this. First people say the fighter will die, then people say that a fighter with defense won't hit anything. Does anyone ever think for a nanosecond that someone might build a fighter that balances the two? Then he's 80% as strong as a focused damage dealer and 80% as defensive as a focused tank. Then what? Wait, lemme guess. The monsters ignore the "turtle" and the fighter dies easily. The monsters also take no damage, b/c said fighter forgot how to move and attack. Did I get it right? At low levels wizards have a lot of things. So does everyone. But they're still behind and definitely need martial support. You sleeped 3/4 of the kobolds. Awesome, everyone is bowing at your might which greatly outclassed them for this encounter. But good thing you have a party to finish the last kobold off, or you'd have to nova everything you've got to beat him. Okay, next up there's gelatinous cube. Um... better chill in the back with a crossbow. Now 5 zombies... what's that, if you prepped grease and not something else you'd be all over 2 of them? Oh well, you can't prep every spell. Don't worry, next are some orcs and you'll pwn most of them. As for the original issue, see my previous post. |
| Sunic_Flames04-14-08, 10:50 AM | Combat Expertise - turtle up and miss a lot. |
| Clawhound04-14-08, 11:12 AM | Yes, fighters do OK in the sweet spot. There are caveats to this. - In a high-powered game where characters must be able to nova for big CR+3 or harder fights, melee becomes a drag due to its inability to nova. - In fights where the DM optimizes the opponent in such a way as melee become irrelevant, melee becomes irrelevant. - In games where the fights follow CR, and the DM keeps the approximate difficulty within that CR, melee works well. |
| Shaggy_Shaggs04-14-08, 11:36 AM | - In games where the fights follow CR, and the DM keeps the approximate difficulty within that CR, melee works well.I'm not sure where you got this idea, but it's not true, it's been shown many times in many threads including this one not to be true, and no matter how hard you cling to it, it still won't be true. |
| Clawhound04-14-08, 12:17 PM | I'm not sure where you got this idea, but it's not true, it's been shown many times in many threads including this one not to be true, and no matter how hard you cling to it, it still won't be true. I've seen many of those thread. They are full of BS. 1) They assume that the player running the melee character is an idiot. 2) They don't actually know how to make a melee character. 3) Nobody actually playtested the melee. I've actually taken a well built fighter level 11 into an overpowered game as a test case just to see what happend. He was a 25 point buy where everyone else had 32 point buys. This guy also had less wealth than anyone in the party. I even limited him to MIC items of his level or lower. Guess what? This guy was a rock in the storm. Some of the folks even thought that he was a little overpowered. Here's what I discovered. When a fighter is slow and goes last, that is to his advantage. Yes, you heard me right. If the creature goes first, the creature runs up to the party and attacks. At that point, the fighter gets to five-foot step and full-attack. In most dungeons, you have narrow corridors. Movement is highly limited. Those large creatures add up. They rarely mesh perfectly. The fighter almost always had a five-foot gap that he could move into amid the summoned creatures. In fact, it worked better as the summoned creatures had reach, so they fit nicely behind the fighter. He was useful on round #1. Rarely was an opponent more than a single move away. He could solo any attack made by four or eight creatures. The party quickly learned to send the fighter in first. He was terrific at surviving those first few critical rounds. The fighter hit far harder and more reliably than summoned creatures. If he couldn't move fast enough, he just full-attacked with a sheaf of javelins. If the fighter got swallowed, he actually took less damage on the inside of the creature than if he were fighting it. It only took him two rounds to carve his way out anway. Nothing his wand of CLW couldn't fix. (He did have to ask someone else to use the wand for him.) Healing is cheap compared to top-level spells. Summoned creatures require high level spell slots. Fighters only require low-level heals after the combat. When the fighter got grappled, the monster stopped attacking everyone else and concentrated on the fighter. This was always a bad tactic for the monster. When the fighter lost his dex bonus, it didn't matter. His armor always worked. All in all, the party really enjoyed having the fighter along. |
| Shaggy_Shaggs04-14-08, 12:26 PM | So, you had a fighter-perfect all-bottlenecks situation where being a patch of rough terrain was something useful to do... and fail to see that a few bags of caltrops could do a similar job much more inexpensively and without taking a cut of XP. |
| CrimsonDeath04-14-08, 12:45 PM | Now imagine what that Fighter could've done with a few buffs. |
| Zherog04-14-08, 12:53 PM | Sweet - we're using personal anecdotes to make arguments now? Awesome! True Story(tm). I once DMed a game that had a mid-level fighter among the players (level 8 or 9, roughly). The group was built with an array of 18, 16, 14, 12, 12, 10 and had items worth a bit under their level, but they were close. The group also consisted of a halfling rogue/wizard, halfling cleric of Olidammara, and a dwarf ranger. I regularly had to pull my punches against the fighter to avoid killing him every week. The others had few problems surviving (except for the one time the cleric died due to a bizarre series of dice rolls that went completely against her). Yay for personal anecdotes! |
| Clawhound04-14-08, 12:55 PM | So, you had a fighter-perfect all-bottlenecks situation where being a patch of rough terrain was something useful to do... and fail to see that a few bags of caltrops could do a similar job much more inexpensively and without taking a cut of XP. A bag of caltrops requires an action to deploy. As the casters are busy summoning or casting more important opening spells, caltrops are sub-optimal. In an actual game, I have never seen caltrops deployed. Thus, I call BS on that objection. Most modules and encounters occur underground, in buildings, or around buildings. Very few battles happen in the open, and even fewer occur as running battles. Only one out of the six dungeon tiles sets has open terrain features. Five sets are dedicated to ... you got it ... bottleneck situations. For some reason, Wizards just LOVES publishing adventures set in dungeons. This is why I emphasize playtesting. |
| Jo_Pistachio04-14-08, 01:00 PM | A lot of players don't play modules, because frankly once you've cleared out a few dungeons, you've cleared them all. Most games I've played in mix it up a little. |
| Clawhound04-14-08, 01:01 PM | Sweet - we're using personal anecdotes to make arguments now? Awesome! True Story(tm). I once DMed a game that had a mid-level fighter among the players (level 8 or 9, roughly). The group was built with an array of 18, 16, 14, 12, 12, 10 and had items worth a bit under their level, but they were close. The group also consisted of a halfling rogue/wizard, halfling cleric of Olidammara, and a dwarf ranger. I regularly had to pull my punches against the fighter to avoid killing him every week. The others had few problems surviving (except for the one time the cleric died due to a bizarre series of dice rolls that went completely against her). Yay for personal anecdotes! That's what most caster favorers use. :P The above report was a playtest to see how a well-built fighter behaved in a commercial module under actual play conditions rather than hypothetical condition. I wanted to see how my theories actually played out. If you can figure a better way to actually test assertions, I would like to know what that is. |
| Shaggy_Shaggs04-14-08, 01:36 PM | You've never even seen caltrops used in play, you play mostly dungeon crawl modules, and you think doing a lot of hp damage is impressive. Wow. No wonder you have no sweet clue what you're talking about, your range of experience is limited and it was apparently with rather dull players. See if you can talk one or more of your local DMs into running a high seas pirate adventure, or a full-scale land war, or a hike over a desolate mountain range or running battles through choked wilderness or something. Maybe that'll scrub some of the rust off you and yours. |
| Clawhound04-14-08, 02:10 PM | You generalize too much. We do many of those other things. No, my players are not dull. I never said that doing lots of damage was impressive. However, doing lots of damage fast is a well known and very respected tactic for killing monsters fast. If a fighter is effective in my game, it does not mean that something else in my game must be defective. The problem with melee is that a correct build is not obvious. In fact, those effective builds are often counterintuitive. It takes a great deal of experience in the game system to know how to build out melee, what gear to take, and how to respond correctly to the threats that do appear. Most spellcaster proponents have simply not spent the time necessary to master these aspects of melee. |
| Jo_Pistachio04-14-08, 02:15 PM | I never said that doing lots of damage was impressive. However, doing lots of damage fast is a well known and very respected tactic for killing monsters fast. No it's not. Not many people respect that method at all. |
| Sunic_Flames04-14-08, 04:09 PM | I'm not sure where you got this idea, but it's not true, it's been shown many times in many threads including this one not to be true, and no matter how hard you cling to it, it still won't be true. And to further elaborate, CR makes three assumptions. The last is that your players (not characters) are of below average intelligence, and therefore waste time doing stupid things like attempting an overrun against something bigger and stronger than them, without the Improved Overrun feat and spend a round literally sitting on their ass. Not to mention the AoO on the way in, and the AoO on the way up. Even if the first two (25 PB core only single classed) assumptions are true, the third is most likely not. The fact melees fall behind CR when CR is such a lax standard as it is to not even account for basic tactical sense... it's telling, to say the least. |
| Lurk3r04-14-08, 11:21 PM | Another quick note...yes, it is true that melees are hard to optimize correctly. But you would also be amazed at how difficult it is to do likewise for a caster. For instance, there is a guy in our playgroup who has been playing for just over a year now, and has played wizards the whole way through. Yet, he is just barely beginning to grasp concepts like battlefield control, the inefficiency of HP damage, etc. Not dealing direct HP damage, but instead doing more subtle techniques like control are also counter-intuitive when compared to direct HP damage. So caster do suffer the same complexity of melees. Further, as far as researching stuff, try finding an optimal spell list, you'll probably end up using twice as many books as that optimized fighter build. However, when you then compare the high optimized end of each the difference is draustic: A well-made fighter deals lots of damage, a well-made caster is God. |
| Cuindless04-14-08, 11:58 PM | Another quick note...yes, it is true that melees are hard to optimize correctly. But you would also be amazed at how difficult it is to do likewise for a caster. For instance, there is a guy in our playgroup who has been playing for just over a year now, and has played wizards the whole way through. Yet, he is just barely beginning to grasp concepts like battlefield control, the inefficiency of HP damage, etc. Not dealing direct HP damage, but instead doing more subtle techniques like control are also counter-intuitive when compared to direct HP damage. So caster do suffer the same complexity of melees. Further, as far as researching stuff, try finding an optimal spell list, you'll probably end up using twice as many books as that optimized fighter build. However, when you then compare the high optimized end of each the difference is draustic: A well-made fighter deals lots of damage, a well-made caster is God. As a personal note, I find it difficult to play a caster correctly. Thanks to my time on the CO boards, I can optimize the hell out of a wizard, but playing that same wizard in the game is more difficult. I find it tough to do the mix of buff/debuff/battlefield control that makes the caster an effective member of the team. That's just due to my blindness, though. On paper, my wizard is a badass. |
| Lurk3r04-15-08, 01:26 AM | Your distinction between playing and optimizing brings up another possible saving grace of the melees: most of them are absurdedly easy to play out once built, at least in comparison to caster types. Its as easy as "whack the big scary guy with your <insert melee weapon of choice>", you rarely can go wrong with that. Melees are never going to have to pick from as wide a variety as a caster in game, and thus are a great deal simpler to work with. This further demonstrates the strength of the ToB: it gives melees options. That allows for versatility, and ergo, gives melees more power. On the flipside, they take more thought then "smash nearest bad guy". No matter how you cut it, a more powerful class is probably going to be more difficult to play, because more power usually = more options which = more opportunities to shoot yourself in the foot. |
| Jo_Pistachio04-15-08, 01:47 AM | I may just over complicate things, but in general, playing a fighter type, even well built requires a lot to avoid shooting oneself in the foot. Casters are less restricted by enemies wisely using their move actions, so in general, with martial characters, I have to think a few turns ahead, to see where they would most likely be next round. I find a full attack or a charge is crucial for damage, and using lines to the enemy is crucial here. So much so that I don't believe playing a caster is really much harder. A fighter type might be more forgiving if you do make a mistake, but I felt I had to keep on my toes just to avoid dying, and to be in that nice zone of adjacency. |
| Cuindless04-15-08, 02:28 AM | I may just over complicate things, but in general, playing a fighter type, even well built requires a lot to avoid shooting oneself in the foot. Casters are less restricted by enemies wisely using their move actions, so in general, with martial characters, I have to think a few turns ahead, to see where they would most likely be next round. I find a full attack or a charge is crucial for damage, and using lines to the enemy is crucial here. So much so that I don't believe playing a caster is really much harder. A fighter type might be more forgiving if you do make a mistake, but I felt I had to keep on my toes just to avoid dying, and to be in that nice zone of adjacency. See, I find that stuff easy. Maybe it's because of my background in Chess, but lines to combat and thinking ahead always comes naturally to me. The best way to utilize area affect spells or what buffs/debuffs are appropriate to the current combat situation are a little sketchier. |
| Clawhound04-15-08, 11:30 AM | I happen to LIKE playing in that zone where the fighter might die. For me, that is a feature. If I am playing a character that can't die, then what's my challenge? Bore me to tears, people. If I wanted to be a god, I'd be playing the SIMS. On the boards, its easy to find fantastic builds. For me, that's too easy. I far more enjoy turning common wisdom on its head and seeing what I can make of it. Often enough, the common wisdom turns out half-right/half-wrong, or correct five years ago, but no longer correct now. A great example of changes is the PHB2 and the MIC. |
| Sunic_Flames04-15-08, 01:11 PM | This is somewhat relevant. In a game I'm playing in, the group currently consists of 5 members. Actually 6, but one is dead at the moment. The group is level 15. The melee guy (Crusader, so made of tough stuff) is being attacked by an orc warrior who is likely high level if his HP are any indication, 2 CR 9 creatures, and 1 CR 8 creature from MM1. Despite Crusaders being as tough as they are, he's being reduced from full HP, to around 20% or so in 1 round. The only reason he's staying alive is because the invisible druid is casting Heal on him repeatedly. And the creatures who in some cases are right next to him aren't swinging blindly at him. Note that he would be taking more damage if he were not completely immune to fire. Also note the game uses a house rule that gives everyone (PCs and NPCs) 75% HP on average instead of 50%. Therefore he has 28 more points than he otherwise would have. The margin for error on that healing? 30 HP. If RAW were being used for HP instead, it's very likely he'd go from full power to dead in one exchange of blows. And most of the damage is coming from the low CR creatures. Now you gotta ask yourself, if a character who is above average by melee standards is barely staying alive (by comparison, the CR 9 summons have taken several rounds of abuse and are at half HP) then how do you expect them to even be merely useful without massive effort? You don't. Simple as that. Oh and the other caster (me) was busy slaughtering the half dozen mid level druids surrounding us, distracting and occupying them so they couldn't just summon another elemental, or otherwise apply a bit more pressure that would have been the breaking point. The fourth character was my cohort. He was going after an enemy archer, followed by the aforementioned orc warrior. He's slightly tougher than the Crusader despite being lower level, mostly because he has better equipment and a better Constitution. Main thing is, he wasn't attacked. The last character was busy doing hit and run attacks on the outskirts, because if he got cornered he was basically dead. |
| Clawhound04-15-08, 02:04 PM | A Level 15 crusader should have (using the MIC level system): Full Plate +4 (+8) Heavy Shield +4 (+2) Ring of Deflection +4 Amulet of Natural Armor +4 Dodge +2 (Dex 13 + Dex enhancement +2) = AC 38 Meanwhile, a CR 15 humanoid should have a +24 to hit. A CR 15 creature should have a +26 to hit. A CR 9 creature should have a +16 to hit. Something does not add up correctly in your example. A properly equipped crusader should not be hit so often. Either the crusader is under-equipped for his level, or his opponent is of higher level, which puts the crusader soloing against a lethal threat, in which case he ought to be losing all those hit points. My bet is that your DM likes extremely lethal fights. That's not a fault of the crusader. That is a decision by your DM to run extremely lethal fights. You will notice in your description that the entire party is getting hammered on this one. |
| Jo_Pistachio04-15-08, 02:19 PM | People don't use shields. It reduces their fighting ability too much, until you can get an animated one. That and the amulet slot usually goes to a + con item. Reduce the AC by 10, and it's not as far fetched as you think it is. Certainly more likely than spending everything on being a turtle. |
| Clawhound04-15-08, 02:29 PM | Then put the Natural AC on a shirt. Those are natural armor slots too. People use shields. They exist in the rules. My last character used a shield, proving that people really do use them. OPTIMIZERS don't use shields. When being a turtle means living or dying because you must face creatures that will tear you apart, then you layer up the AC so that you survive. That's your job as a fighter. What else is a fighter going to spend his money on? He doesn't need wands, staves, scrolls, and such. Heck, that fighter's wealth above didn't even spend all his money. |
| Sunic_Flames04-15-08, 03:18 PM | A Level 15 crusader should have (using the MIC level system): Full Plate +4 (+8) Heavy Shield +4 (+2) Ring of Deflection +4 Amulet of Natural Armor +4 Dodge +2 (Dex 13 + Dex enhancement +2) = AC 38 Meanwhile, a CR 15 humanoid should have a +24 to hit. A CR 15 creature should have a +26 to hit. A CR 9 creature should have a +16 to hit. Something does not add up correctly in your example. A properly equipped crusader should not be hit so often. Either the crusader is under-equipped for his level, or his opponent is of higher level, which puts the crusader soloing against a lethal threat, in which case he ought to be losing all those hit points. My bet is that your DM likes extremely lethal fights. That's not a fault of the crusader. That is a decision by your DM to run extremely lethal fights. You will notice in your description that the entire party is getting hammered on this one. I'm not sure why you assume a strong character would waste a feat on Dodge. With that said, he didn't think to pack an Animated Shield which by the way is what optimizers use. *looks meaningfully at Clawhound* Instead, he had the Shield spell (dragonmark) which does the same thing. I think his AC is 34. He has 4 natural armor from a spell. With that said, greater fire elementals (CR 9) have 2 slams at +22 doing 2d8+5 (and 2d8 fire, but immune). A dire tiger (CR 8) has 2 claws at +20 doing 2d4+8 and a bite at +14 doing 2d6+4. The orc has either Karmic Strike or Robilar's to counterattack. I'm not sure which. And he does around 20-30 damage a hit, after the Crusader's DR. As for liking extremely lethal fights, not really. First fight was a complete massacre. I think they got in two hits the entire time, for minor damage. Second fight was mildly annoying, because the enemy got off 2 AoE spells. The druid wasn't thinking very well, so he got near killed once by concentrated attacks, but Healed himself to safety. Other than that, not much of note about them. Third fight was a bit more dangerous due to cramped quarters + reach, AoE, and spells. Most dangerous thing the enemy did here is set the lightning rail car we were fighting in on fire, which burned everyone a bit. Still, not that bad. Except for the druid, who still didn't quite know what he was doing (and kept failing reflex saves) and needed a Heal. Fourth fight probably would have been dangerous, except I hit the main threat with an anti magic ray and then he got OHKOed basically by a 107 damage attack or so. The minions there were trivial and so were mopped up easily. There was also a few other fights I don't count either because it was something like us vs warrior 2s, or hit them once and they run away type deals. And then this one. Overall the fights have been easy or moderate, this is the first hard one and mostly hard because we messed up. |
| Zombie_Babies04-15-08, 03:26 PM | I just finished playing a Crusader from 1 to 20. I used a shield the entire time (and a battleaxe! ohs nos!). Why? Because I finally could. My maneuvers actually allowed me to do damage (and effects) while having a higher AC. It's a nice little bit about the ToB. You can do things that would be considered "sub-optimal" by any other martial class while suffering far less for it. Playable variety FTW. |
| MetZen04-15-08, 03:27 PM | Shields are bad ass, with Complete Warrior and a couple of feats (3, not too many for your fighter) you get a bonus trip and stun atack from shield bashes;) . And a triped oponent gets AOE-ed (with an AC penalty) figure that. So what makes having a GS better?- the extra damage, for a barb probably but a fighter doesn't need it. In my experince there are two tipes of melee: 1 The one who relies on multiple attacks ( aka: Whirlwind, Combat Reflexes+ feats from complete warrior, Two weapon) 2 And the one that relies on heavy damage from a single atack (aka power attack, leap attack) I think that many people that argue so strongly against melee have been playing cater for too long, or are not able to make a good melee character. Give it a try folks, start with the core material. You want to see croud control, check a Frenzied Berserker out. :P In my experinece the most massive damage is always delt by melee characters ( damage dealing spells suck, and a caster is better of using control spells) and most mosters only relly on Dr, which is very easy to overcome. Summoning is a way to help your melee, leave a summon on it's own and it will probably be a delay, but not a threat to anyone, mind you that any summoning takes a round to cast;). |
| Sunic_Flames04-15-08, 03:59 PM | I also don't know why people are assuming a strong character would use a greatsword. Reach = win, though at ECL 15 it's simply necessary. Also, summoned elementals are pretty tough. In any case the point was to illustrate how an above average melee was barely able to hold on, whereas a below average caster did fine (mostly because he got lectured IC about tactics, and so didn't make the massive screw ups again). Therefore, melee < casters. It's also worth noting despite the fact my caster is only average, due to screwing up heavily on purpose so that high level Artificer doesn't mean instant I win and relying on an extremely crappy tactic (DD) in that fight, I still did it well enough to be somewhat worthwhile. Punched through resistance, saves, and just about cleared the field in 2 rounds. Enemy HP ranged from 60ish to 234. Had I been packing a staff, I could have done far worse than 140 damage (average) to each of a half dozen opponents or so, but that should go without saying. Like say... Chain Power Word Kill. Or even Chain Orb of Fire (for the dazing everyone more than the damage). Remember, heavily self nerfed caster using weakest trick available = still dominates. Melee < casters. |
| Cuindless04-15-08, 04:55 PM | People use shields. They exist in the rules. My last character used a shield, proving that people really do use them. OPTIMIZERS don't use shields. Actually, some optimizers use shields as well. You can't pigeon-hole all of us into a single category. A trip to the CO boards will reveal just how much optimizers disagree. The reason you don't see shields get a whole lot of love on the CO boards is because most primary melee builds are charger builds or TWF builds. I've seen some very respectable tank builds using shields all the way up until they get an animated one. |
| Sunic_Flames04-15-08, 05:04 PM | Um... if there's a TWFer on the CO boards, he's doing pouncing skirmish charges or something. Still though, not many bother holding one and Animated is made of win and awesome. |
| Zherog04-15-08, 06:15 PM | And a triped oponent gets AOE-ed (with an AC penalty) figure that. I think you mean AoO'ed. "AoE" is Area of Effect. :) |
| CrimsonDeath04-15-08, 07:13 PM | Optimized psions use shields as soon as they can afford a heavy Darkwood shield. In general, it's better than wasting a standard action on Force Screen. |
| aelryinth04-15-08, 09:24 PM | Um... if there's a TWFer on the CO boards, he's doing pouncing skirmish charges or something. Still though, not many bother holding one and Animated is made of win and awesome. Animated is, like Polymorph, one of the things in game that WoTC regrets putting in. It completely obviates (along with Improved Buckler Defense) the logic of a sword and board build. Most WoTC DM's don't allow them, simply because of the cheese factor. In fact, I heard they were supposed to kicked to +4 and for some reason it never happened. Ah well. I never use Animated in a build, I leave that for cheese, nor do I generally use Improved Buckler Defense except against another Optimizer. ===Aelryinth |
| Lurk3r04-16-08, 02:49 AM | In my experinece the most massive damage is always delt by melee characters ( damage dealing spells suck, and a caster is better of using control spells) and most mosters only relly on Dr, which is very easy to overcome. *sigh* Yes, this is most certainly very true. And if you refer to one of my previous posts, you will see this massive damage is inefficient at best, irrelevant at worst. Also, the sad thing is, massive physical damage dealing is really the only thing most fighter types can ever really get good at. Melees get pidgeon-holed into this narrow role, since its the only role in which they can be really great. Sadly, as stated before, its the weakest route available. You are quite right, most caster types don't deal out massive damage, because the more experienced ones know it to be a waste of their time and ever so precious spell slots. Debuffing tends to go much further then straight damage. This is also why summoned critters can fill a melees role despite being inherently weaker - the massive damage dealt by the fighter isn't really entirely needed when played alongside a caster. I will once again cite Treantmonk's wiz guide a say, if a caster is doing their job, 1 of 3 things will happen: 1. The enemy is so debuffed that all you need is someone to CDG him/it repeatedly - something a summoned critter could do just as well as a fighter. 2. The enemy is so bogged down due to battlefield control spells that all you need is someone to plink em with a crossbow or some simple hit and run tactics - something a something a summoned critter could do just as well as a fighter. Admittedly, in this case you'd have to be a lil careful in choosing your critter. 3. There's so many buffs to go around that anyone could tank, since the buffing has made your tank of choice godly - something a something a summoned critter could do just as well as a fighter. Replace summoned critter with CoD, or animal companion, etc, and you get the picture. This once again confirms the playability of the ToB, as it lets the melees not be pidgeon-holed into a position of irrelevancy. |
| MergedLoki04-16-08, 03:06 AM | People don't use shields. It reduces their fighting ability too much, until you can get an animated one. That and the amulet slot usually goes to a + con item. Reduce the AC by 10, and it's not as far fetched as you think it is. Certainly more likely than spending everything on being a turtle. A sheild only reduces fighting ability if the player wants to either use a weapon 2 handed or go the route of 2 weapon fighting. I've had plenty of pc's in my group(s) over the years go with the traditional, sword + shield melee build. Toss in some shield specialization and it's not that bad. I personally prefer 2 weapon fighting, as ranger is my fav. class. |
| Jo_Pistachio04-16-08, 03:14 AM | A sheild only reduces fighting ability if the player wants to either use a weapon 2 handed or go the route of 2 weapon fighting. ... This is painful, honestly. The only other option is einhander, and since that does nothing, two handed weapon, two hand weapons and sword and board are really the only options. I've had plenty of pc's in my group(s) over the years go with the traditional, sword + shield melee build. Toss in some shield specialization and it's not that bad. I personally prefer 2 weapon fighting, as ranger is my fav. class. Not many can manage both that, a high damage output, versatility and protection for other players using that, however. It simply makes your character harder to kill by a bit, and only when they use damage. |
| CrimsonDeath04-16-08, 03:37 AM | You know what I haven't seen many of? Shield bash builds. Uberchargers use two-handed weapons and get most of their damage from Power Attack, and you can wield a heavy shield two-handed. On the other hand, two-weapon fighters pile on lots of bonus damage, and a light shield is a light weapon. In both cases, the base weapon damage is almost irrelevant. Meanwhile, Improved Buckler Defense inflicts a -1 penalty on attack rolls involving your shield hand, while Improved Shield Bash does not. Now, I've seen a lot of builds using two shields, but I'm not counting those because they're ridiculous. But sword-and-board is a time-honored (if not especially optimal) fighting style, and Improved Shield Bash is a Core feat that I feel has been grossly overlooked and underestimated. |
| Clawhound04-16-08, 10:58 AM | WotC was too slow in providing shield feats to fighters. When they did provide those feats, these feats turned a shield into a second weapon. That helped, but did not scratch at the true usefulness of the shield. Fortunately, 4e is actually turning shields into effective defensive items. I think lots of melee builds were not explored because they get written off as "useless" and everyone believed that. That meant that few people were actually going in and working up effective builds. Everyone wound up too busy falling in love with godlike casters. Once casters got too easy to crank out, the folks who liked challenges turned their heads towards melee. The builds that they produced may not be as god-like, but they are effective. Fortunately, you don't need a god-like character to succeed in an adventure. |
| Cuindless04-16-08, 01:24 PM | Animated is, like Polymorph, one of the things in game that WoTC regrets putting in. It completely obviates (along with Improved Buckler Defense) the logic of a sword and board build. Most WoTC DM's don't allow them, simply because of the cheese factor. In fact, I heard they were supposed to kicked to +4 and for some reason it never happened. Ah well. I never use Animated in a build, I leave that for cheese, nor do I generally use Improved Buckler Defense except against another Optimizer. Hmm... I've never had a problem with animated shields in the games I've run. By the time most adventurers in my games get one, they're encountering opponents that don't care much about AC anymore. |
| Sunic_Flames04-16-08, 01:51 PM | Hmm... I've never had a problem with animated shields in the games I've run. By the time most adventurers in my games get one, they're encountering opponents that don't care much about AC anymore. This. I dunno if anyone else noticed this, but aelryinth both advocates sword and board as the best combat style, and employs multiple house rules in his games so that he's right. Otherwise THF (with or without an animated shield) is strictly superior. |