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GoatToucher
2009-05-28, 04:07 PM
This stems from the Pathfinder thread a little ways down:

Alot of folks talk about how broken (too tough) casters are and how broken (too weak) fighters and other warrior classes are. What would you do to change this. Would it involve making fighters more formidable, or making casters less formidable?

shadzar
2009-05-28, 04:17 PM
Sorry haven't read the pathfinder thread, but I would give the same advice to anyone for any game or edition.

Teach the players the game isn't about competition and if they are interested in outdoing the other players, they may be approaching it the wrong way.

Sure you could optimize something for best performance to show off to others, but with Pathfinder, like D&D; you should be working with the party.

Talk with the other players and make sure your group works as a group. Does all your fighters think the wizards are broken and too powerful?

Why does it matter to the fighter players?

Do they think their characters are too weak?

Again why do they care?

What is bringing people to this conclusion since the game isn't just played by the numbers?

Are the players working together, and the DM/GM doing his job of making the game work for everyone?

Sorry, this may not address anything specific in the game rules for fixing, but would be the first thing I looked at before trying to figure out a way for fixing a rule. I would need to know the root of the problem my players are having.

Shpadoinkle
2009-05-28, 04:18 PM
With this. (http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Dungeons-Dragons-Fantasy-Roleplaying/dp/0786939222/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243545562&sr=8-1)

Frosty
2009-05-28, 04:19 PM
My first fix is to make full-round actions meaningful for casters.

For full casters (people who get 9th level spells like Wizards, Clerics, even Ur-Priests, but not Duskblades, Bards, Rangers, etc), if a spell is normally a standard action to cast, you must instead spend a full-round action to cast the spell if the spell slot is your highest level slot or your second highest level slot. This only applies to 4th level spells or higher.

So an example: If an 11th level Wizard wishes to cast Disintegrate, a 6th level spell, he must spend a full-round action. However, once he reaches level 15, 6th level slots are no longer within his top 2 spell levels, so he can cast Disintegrate as a standard action.

What does this do exactly? It basically means that casters now have their equivalent of the "full-attack" and will allow others to more easily disrupt them with the likes Mageslayer. You can't tumble away and then cast your highest spells anymore cuz you won't have a full-round action left.

The second fix is to look at the spell list and trim them way down and cut out all the broken spells like Celerity, Shivering Touch, Foresight, etc.

Third is to improve Fighters by giving them MEANINGFUL standard actions and swift actions. Give them stuff to do with their standard actions that are almost, but not quite as good, as their full-attacks. Their swift actions can give them small boosts to their abilities for the round or something.

Sinfire Titan
2009-05-28, 04:19 PM
Pathfinder's Fighter Fix is little more than additional numbers and nerfed combat options, so it's actually weaker than the unmodified fighter.

Edit: I do have a Fighter fix that improves some of the weaker combat options, but it is largely incomplete. When I've finished it, I'll link it here.

Tengu_temp
2009-05-28, 04:29 PM
Tome of Battle or 4e.

Yuki Akuma
2009-05-28, 04:30 PM
Take the Fighter.

Throw him away.

Now take the Warblade.

Done.

Faulty
2009-05-28, 04:33 PM
Fighters need to be able to use their iterative attacks without having to use full round actions, thus making mobility hamper their damage dealing ability INSANELY. They need more options other than attack, full attack and the special options (charge, disarm, sunder, etc.). Especially given that half the time you can't full attack, and a lot of enemies can't be disarmed, tripped, etc. Fighters need to be able to control and debuff enemies the way casters can; they need to be able to cause ability damage, slow people, stun people, force them to roll save-or-dies, etc. They need flexibility comparable to casters.

So, yeah. ToB.

Nero24200
2009-05-28, 04:35 PM
Sorry, but I honestly feel theres no point in asking on this forum. Too many people will say "Just use TOB".

Even if you specifically said "somthing other than TOB" they would still say it.

Personally, I would scrap the bonus feats and give them abilities that actually make them unique (though still able to fill the "generic warrior" role).

Flickerdart
2009-05-28, 04:40 PM
Yes, Fighters need class features, since they don't have any.

They also need out-of-combat utility, since they can't do any of that either.

Satyr
2009-05-28, 04:43 PM
I never felt that fixing the fighter is the main issue; fighter, monk and other supposedly weak classes are basically very true to what they should represent, and more than a little power-up pretty much destroys the plausibility of these classes. The fighter doesn't need nearly as much fixing as the spellcasting classes, and for those, the best approach is to take a large nerf hammer and hit them in the kidneys until they piss blood.

mistformsquirrl
2009-05-28, 04:48 PM
I like fighters as they are honestly. One of my favorite classes.

I don't personally care of party members are stronger than me - it's not a competition between me and them; and I trust my groupmates and DM to be reasonable.

Fighter, to me, is a great class specifically because it is such a "Blank Slate" - You're essentially given free reign to be whatever kind of fighter you wish to be.

That said; I don't give a wit about optimization - my focus is on roleplay and the like; so even if I'm relatively weak rules-wise, as long as I get to play the character I'm envisioning, that's all I really care about.

GoatToucher
2009-05-28, 04:48 PM
The fighter doesn't need nearly as much fixing as the spellcasting classes, and for those, the best approach is to take a large nerf hammer and hit them in the kidneys until they piss blood.


How, specifically, would you do that?

I don't mean for you to make me a write up, but could you give a few examples?

GoatToucher
2009-05-28, 04:50 PM
Oh, and for the record, I am not asking in relationship to any specific problem with my game. I just saw alot of people talking about the classes being unbalanced, and wondered how people solved what they perceive to be a problem.

Flickerdart
2009-05-28, 04:52 PM
If you nerf casting classes, then you also have to run monsters like idiots. Then the 3.5 playtest conditions will be reached and everything will be fine. If you actually want exciting combat, make the things that suck better and leave the things that work alone. Big 5 might need some nerfing though, the rest are fine.

Satyr
2009-05-28, 04:59 PM
How, specifically, would you do that?

I don't mean for you to make me a write up, but could you give a few examples?

I already made a fix (http://wiki.faxcelestis.net/index.php?title=Serpents_and_Sewers). Especially for you.

To put it in a nutshell:
Dead levels are generally a bad idea, and every class should learn something new and exiting on every level. Therefore, every class in Serpents an Sewers get something shiny on every level. New spells are considered shiny for this purpose.

There is no better way to debuff somebody than put physical pain on him, break his bones, squish his organs and make them suffer. You don't need a spell to victimise a foe. So, injuring someone should lead to status effects.

Magic is supposed to be great power, but why in hell should it be easy to use? According to standard D20 rules, it is easier to learn how to manipulate supernatural forces than to learn how to effectively hit somebody with a stick, a task most baboons can manage with ease. Magic should be hard and difficult to use, and have steep requirements from its users. The S&S solution for this is, that spellcasting takes its time, and requires a Concentration check to be made successfully. In its final effects, it is equally powerful, but it is more likely to fail and takes a lot more time.


If you nerf casting classes, then you also have to run monsters like idiots. Then the 3.5 playtest conditions will be reached and everything will be fine.

I don't see any necessary automatism there. You can still have smart and cunning foes for the players, the players are only forced to be smart and cunning as well without relying on having the right spell to solve every situation.

Sinfire Titan
2009-05-28, 04:59 PM
I never felt that fixing the fighter is the main issue; fighter, monk and other supposedly weak classes are basically very true to what they should represent, and more than a little power-up pretty much destroys the plausibility of these classes. The fighter doesn't need nearly as much fixing as the spellcasting classes, and for those, the best approach is to take a large nerf hammer and hit them in the kidneys until they piss blood.

And the Wizard is an accurate representation of their real-life counterpart. Oh wait...


See how quickly that line of thinking falls on it's face? This game isn't meant to represent real life, it's meant to be an escape from the real world. It's supposed to enable us to ignore the restraints that makes our world normal, and give us a chance to do something we wouldn't normally be able to do because of the real world's restrictions.


The Fighter needs fixing because the Psychic Warrior is better than him in virtually every way, thanks to the Fighter being a Tier 5 class. It's a sad day when a class meant to emulate the greatest warriors in history is outshined by a class with Cleric BAB.

Edit

Magic is supposed to be great power, but why in hell should it be easy to use? According to standard D20 rules, it is easier to learn how to manipulate supernatural forces than to learn how to effectively hit somebody with a stick, a task most baboons can manage with ease. Magic should be hard and difficult to use, and have steep requirements from its users. The S&S solution for this is, that spellcasting takes its time, and requires a Concentration check to be made successfully. In its final effects, it is equally powerful, but it is more likely to fail and takes a lot more time.

Oh? You think this balances full casters? Got news for you: Concentration checks are piss easy to boost. Psionic Focus can be expended to "Take 15" whenever you need to make one, and you can easily raise your Concentration check modifier through magic items/feats.

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-05-28, 05:10 PM
Go ToB. It really makes everything better. And, from a balance perspective, at least, eliminate the Big 5. If everyone is tier 2-4, then the game is balanced.
Sorry, but I honestly feel theres no point in asking on this forum. Too many people will say "Just use TOB".

Personally, I would scrap the bonus feats and give them abilities that actually make them unique (though still able to fill the "generic warrior" role). What's the problem? It's a fix that works. Your solution would just create the Warblade. Why re-invent the wheel?

Satyr
2009-05-28, 05:14 PM
And the Wizard is an accurate representation of their real-life counterpart. Oh wait...

As a completely fictional archetype, with a very broad range of different inspritations, the wizard is pretty much everything you want it to be.



Oh? You think this balances full casters? Got news for you: Concentration checks are piss easy to boost. Psionic Focus can be expended to "Take 15" whenever you need to make one, and you can easily raise your Concentration check modifier through magic items/feats.

That depends greatly on the DC of the Concentration check's DC. I use a DC of 10+ (Spell level x5), and yes, that pretty much solves the issue. On the other hand, I also use a spell point system, so that spellcasters can actually decide if they want to focus on quick and reliable low level spells, or use high power spells that will take much longer to cast and carry the risk of failing.

Flickerdart
2009-05-28, 05:15 PM
I don't see any necessary automatism there. You can still have smart and cunning foes for the players, the players are only forced to be smart and cunning as well without relying on having the right spell to solve every situation.
Dragon. Fly-By attack. If it never lands, and Fly-Bys and breathes fire, the PCs can pretty much never win without a bevy of spells. Any monster with mobility that fights intelligently cannot be beaten without spells, since archery is useless. Or, say, incorporeal Undead, can't get those without spells or expensive items.
Nerf magic and you have to rebuild half the game. Just use ToB.

Satyr
2009-05-28, 05:21 PM
If dragons were easy prey, they were particular bad representations of high end monsters. A Dragon should be an extremely dangerous foe, and it should only be beatable with a clever and original plan, or not at all.

Collin152
2009-05-28, 05:24 PM
As a completely fictional archetype,

I challenge (http://www.witchcraft.com.au) that statement.

Ninetail
2009-05-28, 05:24 PM
This stems from the Pathfinder thread a little ways down:

Alot of folks talk about how broken (too tough) casters are and how broken (too weak) fighters and other warrior classes are. What would you do to change this. Would it involve making fighters more formidable, or making casters less formidable?

It would involve both.

The reason non-casters are so weak is that they do only one or two things. They get progressively better at these one or two things with higher level, but they do the same things at level 20 as they do at level 1.

The reason casters are so strong is that, after a certain point (between 5th level and 9th level, depending on the build and the party composition), they can do lots of things. They can, in fact, do anything that a non-caster can do, and they can do it better. In addition, they can break the "rules" of the game, which non-casters cannot do. They can, just as one example, completely circumvent hit points.

In order to fix things, you need to allow non-casters to break the rules of the game, too. And you need to force casters not to overlap on non-casters' turf. You need to make sure both casters and non-casters can do roughly the same number of things. Not necessarily the same things, but the fighter must have more options than just "swing my sword" and "use the 6-feat tree I invested in to trip/sunder/TWF/whatever." The wizard must have fewer options than "Do I cast charm, polymorph, paralyze, energy drain, petrify, dominate, disintegrate, death ray, imprisonment, or just wish him away?" (And that's a very abbreviated list.)

In short, you need a system that does many of the things 4e does.

You can start by mercilessly pruning the spell lists. Remove most save-or-lose spells. Ensure that wizards can't crank save DCs to incredible heights on others. Remove most metamagic, or at least remove anything that allows cheaper metamagic (and especially Divine Metamagic). Remove most divinations and some summoning spells (like Planar Binding and Gate). Remove all-day-long-duration defensive spells and movement spells like Overland Flight (and remove Greater Teleport too while you're at it). Remove Wish. Remove anything that steps on another class's territory, like Tenser's Transformation. Remove Polymorph Self and, should you get to high levels, Shapechange -- or just rule that the caster's statistics don't change (that would also handle druids' wild shape). Etc.

Once you've done that, figure out some way of providing monks, fighters, rogues, and so forth more options, comparable to what casters still have.

Good luck.

Flickerdart
2009-05-28, 05:25 PM
If dragons were easy prey, they were particular bad representations of high end monsters. A Dragon should be an extremely dangerous foe, and it should only be beatable with a clever and original plan, or not at all.
A dragon is just an example. Anything else that flies, or climbs, or burrows or is incorporeal would trounce the PCs just as handily.

Dixieboy
2009-05-28, 05:25 PM
Warblade.

I realize that was very cheap.

No, i would up them a bit. but only a bit, as monsters are already too easy to kill.

The thing is that most combat situations devolve into "Big monster, kill"
DM's often fail to take the INT scores of the things in consideration. (tuckers kobold only had average INT, dragons have 30+)

But that's sort of offtopic.

I think a little of both may be neccasary actually, to fix the caster/stick-wielder gap serious rebalancing would be needed, we are talking reinventing the game here...

I'm fine with how it is now though.

Dark_Scary
2009-05-28, 05:38 PM
If dragons were easy prey, they were particular bad representations of high end monsters. A Dragon should be an extremely dangerous foe, and it should only be beatable with a clever and original plan, or not at all.

See, that's just wrong.

There is this thing called CR. It measures challenge. If you have a CR 10 Dragon, and you level 10 party can't beat it at all, then that's not CR ten.

If you instead respond that anything with flying adds +5 CR, and anything with a ranged attack adds +2, and anything with defenses against ranged is +4, then you tore the game apart.

Dragons of CR 10 should be beatable four times a day by a level 10 party. Not 'impossible without a clever plan.'

My only regret is that I can't put scare quotes around the word clever.

Deepblue706
2009-05-28, 05:43 PM
Dragons of CR 10 should be beatable four times a day by a level 10 party. Not 'impossible without a clever plan.'


Wait, I thought it was 3.4 a day.

Dark_Scary
2009-05-28, 07:14 PM
Wait, I thought it was 3.4 a day.

Actually, the consume 20% of your resources. So you should beat four of them. And then kill the fifth one but have the entire party die too.

But of course, that's all very silly, and it's probability measurements not absolute. Not to mention Dragons having the awesome subtype.

All the same, if you take a level 10 party against a CR 10 Dragon, they should have a 100% chance of winning. Not a 0-20% chance unless they 'have a clever plan.'

Eldariel
2009-05-28, 07:37 PM
All the same, if you take a level 10 party against a CR 10 Dragon, they should have a 100% chance of winning. Not a 0-20% chance unless they 'have a clever plan.'

They should be 50/50 against a CR 14 Dragon. That's how the CR system is written anyways.

Jayabalard
2009-05-28, 07:44 PM
What would you do to change this. Generally I wouldn't. Ones of the things that I like about D&D is that magic using characters grow to be far more powerful than non-magic using characters.

I personally don't dig over the top powerful non-magic users who rely on the power of Awesome to fuel their abilities, so If I had to pick one or the other, I'd tone everyone down to the weak side.

lesser_minion
2009-05-28, 08:12 PM
See, that's just wrong.

There is this thing called CR. It measures challenge. If you have a CR 10 Dragon, and your level 10 party can't beat it at all, then that's not CR ten.

If you instead respond that anything with flying adds +5 CR, and anything with a ranged attack adds +2, and anything with defenses against ranged is +4, then you tore the game apart.

Dragons of CR 10 should be beatable four times a day by a level 10 party. Not 'impossible without a clever plan.'

My only regret is that I can't put scare quotes around the word clever.

A theoretical party of roughly the power and versatility assumed by the core rulebooks has the means to defeat any enemy of an EL equal to their mean level in a fight that costs the party roughly 20% of their 'daily' resources. That is the basis for CR.

The fact that a real party may find itself unable to defeat the same enemy does not mean that the enemy is over-levelled, poorly designed or anything of the sort.

The DMG explicitly spells out the fact that that the actual difficulty of an encounter can vary wildly from the EL that the normal guidelines suggest depending on the exact circumstances under which the encounter takes place, and explains that you may need to adjust the experience awards and ELs of encounters because of this.

There is no 'perfect' guideline that actually works with every party and every situation, then determining what creatures it can overcome. CR was never meant to be an exception to this rule.

EDIT: A 50/50 encounter will often be higher EL than the theoretical party - they should only be able to handle one such encounter without serious rest.

In response to the OP's question:

I wouldn't use 'maneuvers' or 'exploits' to increase the range of combat options - many of them should be built into the system
There are quite a few feats which are poorly designed, and should either be cut, made into class features, or made standard.
I would also look into changing wizards so that they lack the means to make themselves invulnerable, and also to make teamwork a little more relevant.
Martial classes would still see a boost or two in comparison to other classes.


I'm not particularly averse to re-writing large portions of the game in the name of balance.

Dark_Scary
2009-05-28, 08:25 PM
They should be 50/50 against a CR 14 Dragon. That's how the CR system is written anyways.

I am well aware of that. I am using a 100% success rate encounter to show the folly of nerfing every good class into the ground so that they equal the bad classes, then declaring that CR 10 enemies should always destroy a level 10 party.


The fact that a real party may find itself unable to defeat the same enemy does not mean that the enemy is over-levelled, poorly designed or anything of the sort.

No, but if you nerf all the good classes in the game such that no possible level 10 party could ever actually defeat a CR 10 encounter even once a day without excessive preparation and more than a little DM fiat. Then you are nerfing the classes too much.

Your goal in "rebalancing" the game should be to make all classes equally capable of dealing with appropriate CR encounters, not to make no classes at all capable of dealing with them.

lesser_minion
2009-05-28, 08:41 PM
Your goal in "rebalancing" the game should be to make all classes equally capable of dealing with appropriate CR encounters, not to make no classes at all capable of dealing with them.

Players should have to work together in order to defeat level-appropriate encounters - a party where everyone uses a particular build should be doomed.

This means that no one character should have every capability that the party could need - if this means casters have to be beaten so hard with the Almighty Nerfhammer Of Great Justice that they collapse into miniature black holes then so be it.

It also means that everyone should have a capability that is of use to the party in a range of situations. This means that mundane attacks will have to be made stronger in comparison to magic.

There are differences between this and 'equally capable of dealing with CR-appropriate opponents' - the idea is to make everyone equally useful, rather than giving them all essentially the same capabilities.

Dark_Scary
2009-05-28, 09:41 PM
Equally capable of dealing with CR encounters is an abstract. It means that a Wizard and a Fighter are both capable of contributing equally to the defeat of any given CR challenge. They can still do so in different ways.

And no. It's not okay if you nerf Wizards down until they are useless. It's okay to nerf them down to the level of appropriate CR contribution. Which is actually were straight Core Wizards are for the vast majority of levels.

It is not okay to nerf them below that point. Because if you do so, then your parties fail to meet the level of balance they should meet.

There is an objective standard of balance. It is the CR system. If the best made party under your rebalancing cannot deal with CR appropriate encounters, then your rebalancing fails to meet the objective.

lesser_minion
2009-05-29, 12:09 AM
No, because the baseline for CR balance is not the best made party.

The comment about hitting casters with a nerfhammer until they are compressed into black holes was hyperbole. The bit before it "no one class should have every capability the party could need" was a little more important. My point was that casters will be nerfed as far as necessary.

From a gamist perspective, character class/option design can only serve to give players the tools they need to overcome a challenge.

By the same token, monster/hazard design merely gives DMs the tools they need to give players a chance to overcome the same challenges.

In the end it will always be up to the group to make the most of whatever a games designer gives them, however - the DM has to take some responsibility for the design of the challenges he uses.

At the same time, the DM must also take responsibility for texture, immersion, drama and pacing. At best, all the game designers can do is help with this.

tyckspoon
2009-05-29, 12:15 AM
Players should have to work together in order to defeat level-appropriate encounters - a party where everyone uses a particular build should be doomed.


Depends on what you think 'level-appropriate' means. CR=party level is supposed to be pretty easy; a full party should be able to go through at least two of those before they even need to think much about stopping. Four or five before they actually do have to stop. At that mark, it's about right for just one party member to be able to face down a challenge of CR=his own level. He just shouldn't be able to do it all the time. At that metric, most spellcasters are a little over the mark depending on degree of optimization (they have a 70+% success rate over a variety of challenges) while optimized meleers are still under (they can win the damage race in straight-up fights, but there are still a lot of challenges where 'hit it harder' is not a successful solution.)

On the other hand, if you think level-appropriate encounters should mostly mean stuff of CR > party level, possibly significantly so, then no, no single party member should be able to handle that alone. So spellcasters are pretty wildly overpowered in that view, since they can do that.. but if you nerf them down to the level of the melee dudes, then you just completely kill the party with a high CR encounter, because it's mostly due to those 'overpowered' capacities of the spellcasters that a party can deal with a high-lethality monster/impassible wall/whatever in the first place.

lesser_minion
2009-05-29, 12:35 AM
Despite the XP guidelines for NPC opponents, the general rule seems to be that you shouldn't be able to solo an equal CR monster. A party of four adventurers should be able to take it down, and probably handle at least three such encounters without rest, but they don't have the equivalent of a 5:1 advantage - probably more an 8:5 advantage.

The relationship between the cost of an encounter and its overall power is non-linear.

There are monsters which probably need some form of support, however - succubi, nymphs and so on.

This is the point where I start to consider just re-writing the monster manual. And then remember that I am not yet insane.

Frosty
2009-05-29, 12:38 AM
Perhaps a better endeavor is to re-write the CR system and how it works?

lesser_minion
2009-05-29, 12:45 AM
Perhaps a better endeavor is to re-write the CR system and how it works?

Probably. I think no matter what happens I will probably end up re-writing at least a few monsters (mainly to clarify what abilities you can get by turning into them).

Zeful
2009-05-29, 01:07 AM
How would I fix the caster/non-caster disparity? I've got some ideas, but they pretty much revolve around removing potential abuse of casters, like not using the prestige class variant -or at least write my own to use instead- redefining spell schools and their contents (conjuration losing every spell that deals damage and isn't an AoE, for example). Making wildshape either the focus of it's own class (the Skinwalker, because I like the word) or a racial feature of a race. And then rewriting the Cleric so only War domain clerics can have the Self-only buffs, heavy armor proficiency and 3/4 BAB. I'm not too sure what I'd do for the non-casters though.

DragoonWraith
2009-05-29, 01:38 AM
Magic is supposed to be great power, but why in hell should it be easy to use? According to standard D20 rules, it is easier to learn how to manipulate supernatural forces than to learn how to effectively hit somebody with a stick, a task most baboons can manage with ease. Magic should be hard and difficult to use, and have steep requirements from its users. The S&S solution for this is, that spellcasting takes its time, and requires a Concentration check to be made successfully. In its final effects, it is equally powerful, but it is more likely to fail and takes a lot more time.
The Concentration check makes sense, but relegating magic characters to spending several rounds going "...I continue concentrating on my spell..." seems like a great way to make them horribly boring to play. Not that it isn't a great balance idea, because I'm kind of thinking it would work well, giving enemies a chance to interrupt them, but it would just be boring for the player even when everything went well. And if they found that every other spell was being ruined or lost or miscast, the game would get old real fast. Standing around watching your character do nothing is not fun.

Satyr
2009-05-29, 02:20 AM
A dragon is just an example. Anything else that flies, or climbs, or burrows or is incorporeal would trounce the PCs just as handily.

There is a difference between a limitiation to cross the gap between mundane characters and spellcasters nd removing the latter from the game altogether. When magic becomes more difficult and less reliable and not as ridiculously powerful as before it doesn't mean that there is no magic after all. There are still player wizards, and they still contribute to the game. Contribute, not dominate.


See, that's just wrong.

There is this thing called CR. It measures challenge. If you have a CR 10 Dragon, and you level 10 party can't beat it at all, then that's not CR ten.

I think you err here. The CR is only a mechanical figure, and sometimes it appears to be very arbitrary. It is only a mechanical feature and therefore, far less important than moot, dramaturgy and atmosphere. I don't use the CR for much more than a rough guideline of how many XP an encounter was worth, nothing more. And I feel obligated to modify this based on how smart or stupid the PC's fought.
And: Every Gamemaster who fails to represent a dragon or a similar iconic, majestic and just huge creature without creating awe and panic in the player characters, is a failure. I don't put Dragons or similar creatures into the game so that the players can defeat them. I put them into the game to create a memorable and intense experience.


The Concentration check makes sense, but relegating magic characters to spending several rounds going "...I continue concentrating on my spell..." seems like a great way to make them horribly boring to play. Not that it isn't a great balance idea, because I'm kind of thinking it would work well, giving enemies a chance to interrupt them, but it would just be boring for the player even when everything went well. And if they found that every other spell was being ruined or lost or miscast, the game would get old real fast. Standing around watching your character do nothing is not fun.


A sensible argument, but I disagree nonetheless.
Now, the way the system works, spellcasters can decide between fast, small spells and slow, powerful ones. So if Mr. Wizard stands around, do nothing and channels his spell he does so because he chose to do it. He could likewise spam low level spells in the same time.
Standing around and doing practically nothing is the traditional fate of melee fighters in high level games, and through the changes I propagate, this ends, and the importance of fighters, paladins etc. greatly improves.
So, why should it be okay for the guy with the big sword - who usually has a much smaller range of options to begin with - stand around without being able to contribute at all, while it is at the same time condemnable if a spellcaster has to wait because of his very own tactical decisions?

Sir Homeslice
2009-05-29, 02:24 AM
And: Every Gamemaster who fails to represent a dragon or a similar iconic, majestic and just huge creature without creating awe and panic in the player characters, is a failure.

Apparently I missed the memo saying 'Satyr is the ultimate authority when it comes to being a GM.' Because I really doubt you're the ultimate authority when it comes to being a GM.

Just saying.

elliott20
2009-05-29, 02:27 AM
actually, Satyr also suggested one more very crucial thing, that by applying enough brute force or mundane tricks, you SHOULD be able to take away whatever buff that said creature has. Really, this statement could be expanded to "any movement / tactical advantage".

for example, there is currently a rule that says if you deal enough damage to something that flies, it will fall out of the sky. I think similar rules should exist like, invisibility. if you were to say, throw sand or something that sticks to the invisible creature, you SHOULD be able to nullify that portion of his power and make him more visible. If you hit a wall of force hard enough, you should be able to break right through the wall. Things of that nature would work. the problem is that a lot of these status buffs that you see are absolute. A wall of force cannot be destroyed except with equal or more powerful magic. Tasha's hideous laughter is not a matter of grades of being charmed into laughing. You HAVE to be absolutely incapacitated for x-number of rounds.

Satyr
2009-05-29, 02:34 AM
Apparently I missed the memo saying 'Satyr is the ultimate authority when it comes to being a GM.' Because I really doubt you're the ultimate authority when it comes to being a GM.

That's not me being arrogant. I can show you how I am when I am arrogant. Stating that creatures like dragons (and especially dragons themselves, as the whole game is named after them) should be treated as something awe-inspiring and formidable is just plain common sense and narrative necessesity. Dragons are also probably the most easy to use tool for this, as they radiate a certain beauty, fear and respect by default. Not being able to implement this in the game is a very obvious sign for a bad GM.

Dark_Scary
2009-05-29, 02:36 AM
I think you err here. The CR is only a mechanical figure, and sometimes it appears to be very arbitrary. It is only a mechanical feature and therefore, far less important than moot, dramaturgy and atmosphere. I don't use the CR for much more than a rough guideline of how many XP an encounter was worth, nothing more. And I feel obligated to modify this based on how smart or stupid the PC's fought.

I think you err here. The CR is a mechanical figure that tells you how different characters should treat the creature.

If it is a CR 10 Dragon, and the party is level 15. They should treat it like their bitch, because that's what it is. They should freely bully it into giving them whatever information the want, or demand that it eat only livestock of the neighboring village and not eat people, or otherwise treat it as their lesser. Because it is.


And: Every Gamemaster who fails to represent a dragon or a similar iconic, majestic and just huge creature without creating awe and panic in the player characters, is a failure. I don't put Dragons or similar creatures into the game so that the players can defeat them. I put them into the game to create a memorable and intense experience.

1) Yes, how dare those players have characters who don't feel awe or panic when facing dire straights. Goddam Paladins and their steadfast determination and confidence!

2) Every Gamemaster who thinks that Dragons are awe inspiring to powerful adventurers is a failure.

SilverSheriff
2009-05-29, 02:37 AM
This stems from the Pathfinder thread a little ways down:

Alot of folks talk about how broken (too tough) casters are and how broken (too weak) fighters and other warrior classes are. What would you do to change this. Would it involve making fighters more formidable, or making casters less formidable?

Double the amount of feats you get? :smalltongue:

seriously: Fighters aren't that bad: Get over it.

Satyr
2009-05-29, 02:57 AM
I think you err here. The CR is a mechanical figure that tells you how different characters should treat the creature.

And like every single mechanical feature, it solely exists to support the plot and the dramaturgy. If any mechanical feature doesn't, it is better left to be ignored.


If it is a CR 10 Dragon, and the party is level 15. They should treat it like their bitch, because that's what it is. They should freely bully it into giving them whatever information the want, or demand that it eat only livestock of the neighboring village and not eat people, or otherwise treat it as their lesser. Because it is.

You are right. Which is why such a confrontation would probably extremely dull and is better left off avoided.


Yes, how dare those players have characters who don't feel awe or panic when facing dire straights. Goddam Paladins and their steadfast determination and confidence!

Courage is not the lack of fear; it is facing and overcoming the fear and its source. If the opposition is not a threat, overcoming it is not a triumph and therefore basically worthless.

mikej
2009-05-29, 04:36 AM
Shamefull snip taken from the WoTC forum. One of the best Fighter fixes I'am aware of.


Pokemon Evolution [Fighter]

Prerequisites: Fighter level 5. No other class levels but fighter.

Benefit: You turn into a Warblade. All your Fighter levels become Warblade levels. You will reassign your feats, skills and you will re-roll all your hitpoints, even this feat. You will acquire a new personality, and you can only say "Warblade", albeit in varying degrees of annoying cuteness.

Special: A Fighter may take this feat for free anytime he hits level 5.

Cheesegear
2009-05-29, 04:53 AM
Fighters don't need fixing. Granted, they're totally useless past...Level 6 or so (Level 8 if you're feeling generous). But, these days, Fighters are only used for a truckload of low-level feats which enable the use of just about any PrCs for a fighting-style that you could want.

Fighter is by no means 'useless', but you should definately multi-out once you get the chance.

Nero24200
2009-05-29, 05:41 AM
It's a fix that works. Your solution would just create the Warblade. Why re-invent the wheel?

Not everyone wants TOB, though it seems to be a hard-to-swallow pill on this forum. I don't like TOB, I don't intend to use it, and theres plenty of other ways fighters can be "fixed".

Aquillion
2009-05-29, 05:45 AM
Not everyone wants TOB, though it seems to be a hard-to-swallow pill on this forum. I don't like TOB, I don't intend to use it, and theres plenty of other ways fighters can be "fixed".
What's your objections? What are the other ways you'd use?

Farlion
2009-05-29, 06:06 AM
I've stopped reading the thread once it started getting into the CR debate and the "how much awe and fear does a dragon induce". I will try to answer the question in the Thread titel.

I used one small fix to casting and fighting which really helped alot. Instead of having a fix DC of 15 on your defensive casting check, the DC is calculated as follows:

DC = 10 + highest BaB of any threatening foe

As of this, once the fighter is close, casting gets really hard. This leads to some interesting changes in teamplay (at least in my group), since the wizard and the cleric in my group both said some really unnice things to the other group members who let the orc barbarian charge through to them.

Another point I'd like to raise is that not every class has to be exactly balanced. Magic is powerful and if the wizard decides to take out the group fighter, then he will be able to. That's fine with me, since the whole point of building a party is finding people who can make up for your own weaknesses. On the other hand, if the group fighter decides to decapitate the sleeping wizard, he will also succeed.

I don't assume one on one arena matches as the thing balancing should be about.


As a matter of fact, I enjoy playing fighters alot. No fuss with spells, a large solid two handed weapon and the simple joy of blood spraying all around you as you hack your way through your life.

Who would envy the wizard who needs 8 hours of rest each day to be effective? He can't drink all he wants at a feast and get up 6 hours later, still drunk to beat up the guy who just puked all over you.

Sorry, I got carried away. I don't think fighters need to be fixed, people just need to see, that theres other things in the game than measuring how much damage one can make to the BBEG or how many goblins one can wipe out within one round.

Cheers,
Farlion

elliott20
2009-05-29, 06:23 AM
Balance is not the reduction of differentiation, it is based on two components, viability and fairness. at least, these are terms you use in most competitive gaming. In fact, for argument's sake, let's borrow David Sirlin's definition for these terms. (Sirlin is game designer who writes extensively about game balance design)

Viable Options: Lots of meaningful choices presented to the player. For depth’s sake, they are presented within a context that allows the player to use strategy to make those choices.

Fairness: Players of equal skill have an equal chance at winning even though they might start the game with different sets of options / moves / characters / resources / etc.

now, D&D not being a competitive but a coop game, fairness definition needs to be amended slightly. "winning" in this case being "able to achieve an objective or overcome a challenge" about makes sense.

Keep note, it doesn't mean that all things to be balanced at all times against each other. i.e. a bard SHOULD be better at social situations than a fighter in most cases.

But when you start applying this model of thinking, that's when you realize how poorly balanced the game is. If you're looking for power, you are almost ALWAYS gunning straight for the casters. (if not shooting for the cheese)

While other things like aesthetics and sentiment will keep other classes alive, you strip that away and there is pretty much no reason to EVER play anything but a wizard. And then having a lot of "junk" classes where their only edge is easily replicable in game by other core classes? that makes a class not viable.

errr.... I think I'm going off tangent here.

Khatoblepas
2009-05-29, 06:32 AM
Fighters don't need fixing. Granted, they're totally useless past...Level 6 or so (Level 8 if you're feeling generous)....

Psst, 20 level classes are supposed to be viable for 20 levels. Just in case you missed the memo :3.

I feel that in order to balance casters and noncasters, you can't just patch them up. In my games, though it seems some people on here would kill me for it, I scrap most of the classes and enforce:
Warblade, Swordsage, Crusader
Binder, Recharge Magic Shadowcaster (for the Vancian casting lovers)
Reflavored-to-be-Magic Psion, Psychic Warrior, Erudite, Ardent (Hi, Cleric!)
Factotum (for canny rogues), Bard (with Psychic Warrior level Manifesting, Psion style), Mystic Shapechanger [wildshape ACF] Ranger (with sub-Psychic Warrior level Manifesting, Ardent Style)

As my selection of classes. Covers most, if not all, of the major bases. Any other abilities are emulatable through feats, of which you get one every two levels. To balance monsters, I instead make them into classes of their own with maximum levels of 2-10, depending on the strength of the monster, and then they have to take regular classes. Prestige Classes are as normal. Ban Metamorphosis, Greater Metamorphosis. Psicrystals are replacable. Vow of Poverty stat bonuses + attack bonuses instead of stat items and +1 swords, leaving items to be the domain of special things that give extra options, not things to remain competitive. This reduces gear-dependancy on noncasters, making them feel even more awesome and making sure that they can be awesome in whatever situation. If you're wondering where the ranger, barbarian, paladin, or monk went, they're still there. In your character's backstory and personality. I tried to pick classes with a variety of mechanics so that we're not just playing wizards.


And as an aside:
I don't get the animosity towards Tome of Battle, though. Their abilities can be used out of battle, and they still have more skills so that they can do things. And the manuevers aren't even that complicated, we use maneuver cards at our game, and if you forget the text, you just look at the card. Flip it over to show that it's expended, and there you go. Fighters get nice things too! And it's not a case of power, if we wanted power we'd just give fighters hefty bonuses to damage. Tome of Battle is about fighting with a variety of moves, and having options.

And 3.5 Psionics is awesome!

derfenrirwolv
2009-05-29, 07:24 AM
re tomb of battle: 1) it doesn't fix the fighter, it replaces him

2) its a new SYSTEM of combat for everyone. It changes the game, not the class.

Matthew
2009-05-29, 07:25 AM
This stems from the Pathfinder thread a little ways down:

Alot of folks talk about how broken (too tough) casters are and how broken (too weak) fighters and other warrior classes are. What would you do to change this. Would it involve making fighters more formidable, or making casters less formidable?

De powering spellcasters:

1) Almost all spells become full round actions
2) Concentration checks are removed as a method of avoiding spell disruption
3) Meta magic feats are discarded

Powering up fighters:

1) Turn him into a warblade (Joking) :smallbiggrin:
1) A feat every level (as Pathfinder)
2) Dump iterative attacks (in favour of a second full BAB attack at level 11)
3) Better saving throws
4) A bunch of other minor changes that I forget now.

kamikasei
2009-05-29, 07:35 AM
re tomb of battle: 1) it doesn't fix the fighter, it replaces him

How would you avoid that? If the changes you're making to the class are sweeping enough - and they either have to be that sweeping, or they don't, depending on how bad the problem is - it doesn't really matter whether you have this separately-published "Warblade" class or a class set out as "Bob's Modified Fighter", which is no less different from the core fighter anyway.

Say I put together (as others have elsewhere on the boards) a "fighter fix" which gave them maneuver progression. Would you call that a fix, or a replacement?


2) its a new SYSTEM of combat for everyone. It changes the game, not the class.

Well that's obviously false. It's still a system of d20s and modifiers, weapons and to-hit bonuses and AC and hitpoints... Combat doesn't work differently for everyone, some (or most) people just have different things they can do during it (all still expressed via the same combat mechanics).

The basic problem has been well-described. Pure melee characters outside ToB have too little to do, meaning their ability to contribute to higher-level encounters is limited - not because their numbers in this or that stat are too low, but because they lack entire kinds of abilities they would need. This limits the enjoyment of players, not because they can't beat up their caster teammates, but because they're less able to join in the fun and be a useful ally. Conversely, top-tier casters have too many options and can run rings around encounters. It's a pain to nerf casters (seriously, it's hard to do, and it's always harder to get players to accept a reduction than an increase in power), so the best solution is to give melee characters a small increase in power and a large increase in versatility. That's what ToB does and it does it well. Incarnum, from what I know of it, takes a similar approach via different mechanics (and more explicitly supernatural flavour).

Matthew
2009-05-29, 07:40 AM
The basic problem has been well-described. Pure melee characters outside ToB have too little to do, meaning their ability to contribute to higher-level encounters is limited - not because their numbers in this or that stat are too low, but because they lack entire kinds of abilities they would need. This limits the enjoyment of players, not because they can't beat up their caster teammates, but because they're less able to join in the fun and be a useful ally. Conversely, top-tier casters have too many options and can run rings around encounters. It's a pain to nerf casters (seriously, it's hard to do, and it's always harder to get players to accept a reduction than an increase in power), so the best solution is to give melee characters a small increase in power and a large increase in versatility. That's what ToB does and it does it well. Incarnum, from what I know of it, takes a similar approach via different mechanics (and more explicitly supernatural flavour).
At the risk of turning this into another Tome of Battle debate thread, this is only true if the game master is not allowing the fighter character to do the kinds of things that a Tome of Battle character does (as regards interesting things to do). One of the notable things about ToB is that it codified a lot of actions that could probably have previously been handled in an ad hoc manner.

That said, ToB also turns up the power progression of non casting classes, so really the solution is probably more along the lines of, "give the fighter access to a bunch of manoeuvres" (for free).

kamikasei
2009-05-29, 07:50 AM
At the risk of turning this into another Tome of Battle debate thread, this is only true if the game master is not allowing the fighter character to do the kinds of things that a Tome of Battle character does (as regards interesting things to do). One of the notable things about ToB is that it codified a lot of actions that could probably have previously been handled in an ad hoc manner.

Hmmm - what sort of actions are you thinking of? I have a hard time seeing how, say, the swordsage's air walk ability (can't remember what it's called), or greater insightful strike, or the concentration-save-substitute maneuvers would emerge from a player trying something creative and a DM ad-hocing mechanics to allow it, rather than from a DM homebrewing a laundry list of abilities that fighters had simply lacked but he thought they should have.

Of course the swordsage's explicitly supernatural abilities are presumably not part of what anyone's discussing as a fighter fix, but still, things like being able to replace your damage or saves with a skill check or attack multiple enemies at once with a standard action aren't really natural "yeah, sure, why not" candidates even with a lenient DM.

Matthew
2009-05-29, 08:05 AM
Hmmm - what sort of actions are you thinking of? I have a hard time seeing how, say, the swordsage's air walk ability (can't remember what it's called), or greater insightful strike, or the concentration-save-substitute maneuvers would emerge from a player trying something creative and a DM ad-hocing mechanics to allow it, rather than from a DM homebrewing a laundry list of abilities that fighters had simply lacked but he thought they should have.

Of course the swordsage's explicitly supernatural abilities are presumably not part of what anyone's discussing as a fighter fix, but still, things like being able to replace your damage or saves with a skill check or attack multiple enemies at once with a standard action aren't really natural "yeah, sure, why not" candidates even with a lenient DM.

I was thinking more along the lines of the "interesting things" part, rather than duplicating the actual manoeuvres, but stuff like "Shield Block" and "Punishing Stance" ("I deliver an overhead blow to the orc!") could be fairly easily duplicated. A quick attribute check would be used to determine success or not. Do not confuse ad hoc with "laundry list of abilities"; they are not the same thing, and the former is allowed by the RAW (DMG, p. 25, the ubiquitous "swing on a chandelier example and "actions not covered"...).

A "lenient" game master is not required, just a good one. :smallwink:

Tequila Sunrise
2009-05-29, 08:06 AM
Alot of folks talk about how broken (too tough) casters are and how broken (too weak) fighters and other warrior classes are. What would you do to change this. Would it involve making fighters more formidable, or making casters less formidable?
A little of both.

Casters:
--I believe that casters themselves are basically balanced, but some of their spells are not. Those problem spells need to be edited or simply removed. Examples include: Rope Trick & Other Bypass-the-Logistical-Assumption-On-Which-Casters-Are-Balanced Spells, Divine Power, Polymorph & Other Take-Away-The-Fighter's-Shtick Spells and Forcecage & Other Circumstantial Auto-Win Spells.
--Change durations of all combat spells to one of these: instantaneous, 5 minutes (encounter) or 24 hours. Most spells should be instant or 5 minutes, so casters can do awesome stuff but not all day every day.
--Oh, and use the Shapeshift druid variant from PHBII. Better than Wild Shape on just about every level.

Fighters:
--No cross-class skills (for any class): Now your character is more of a character, not just a rigid archetype [or a non-archetype punished for being so]. Now fighters can do stuff outside of combat other than climb, jump and swim.
--For extra skill juice, raise the skill point basement to 4 + Int per level.
--Turn class abilities into feats. Honestly, Uncanny Dodge and Evasion are no more worthy of specialization or restriction than Cleave or Improved Initiative.
--De-frontload fighter classes. Give fighters a feat per level. Start rage at +2/+2 and stagger their bonus speed. (Seriously, wtf's the deal with barbs getting +30 at 1st level but monks have to wait until 5th for +10?!)
--Drop BS rules like barb illiteracy and Weapon Finesse's prereq.
--Weapon Aptitude (from the Warblade class): Make this standard for everybody. Seriously, if I find a cool ultra-powerful sword, I'm going to drop my old axe like yesterday's news and learn to use the sword real quick.
--For bonus points, tweak the TWF mechanics to work for classes other than the ranger and rogue. Just because the dual-wielding heavy-duty warrior is an awesome archetype, but is totally boned by 3e rules.
--Remove alignment and multiclassing restrictions. For all classes. This one doesn't make fighters better, it's just good sense. :smallwink:

kamikasei
2009-05-29, 08:10 AM
I was thinking more along the lines of the "interesting things" part, rather than duplicating the actual manoeuvres, but stuff like "Shield Block" and "Punishing Stance" ("I deliver an overhead blow to the orc!"). A quick attribute check would be used to determine success or not.

Ah yes, that makes more sense. I was thinking mostly of Diamond Mind and Iron Heart, because they're what my own warblade character focused in.


Do not confuse ad hoc with "laundry list of abilities"; they are not the same thing, and the former is allowed by the RAW.

The difference between them was rather my point. However, a lot of the boost attributed to ToB is in making standard-action attacks useful and therefore boosting melee mobility; would you say any ad-hoc rulings you can think of would achieve a similar effect?

Matthew
2009-05-29, 08:14 AM
The difference between them was rather my point. However, a lot of the boost attributed to ToB is in making standard-action attacks useful and therefore boosting melee mobility; would you say any ad-hoc rulings you can think of would achieve a similar effect?

As I noted, ToB raised the bar for the power level of the non spell casting class, and so I do not think ad hoc actions are a solution to the actual power disparity, only the "interesting things" part (e.g. "I attack the orc" syndrome). I agree that making a fighter more powerful past level six or so would require something more along the lines of ToB or, indeed, 4e (I personally favour depowering casters, but that is somewhat by the by).

kamikasei
2009-05-29, 08:19 AM
As I noted, ToB raised the bar for the power level of the non spell casting class, and so I do not think ad hoc actions are a solution to the actual power disparity, only the "interesting things" part (e.g. "I attack the orc" syndrome). I agree that making a fighter more powerful past level six or so would require something more along the lines of ToB or, indeed, 4e (I personally favour depowering casters, but that is somewhat by the by).

Makes sense. I would normally say that the boost to standard actions is required to allow interesting options, as otherwise you're locked into charge-full-attack type single-trick tactics, but I suppose you can turn that around and say that if you don't need to deal as much damage to keep up then that necessity is gone anyway.

Tehnar
2009-05-29, 08:21 AM
I would go (and did go) from another angle, and hit the casters where it hurts.

1) Take the PHB. Go through all spells that seem troublesome and either edit or remove them. For spells which you could rule in various ways, explicitly state how you will rule them. (ex. I changed glitterdust that you could use a move action each round to get another save, and stated out which triggers would and would not work for contingency).

2) Remove ways to get easy metamagic. That is divine metamagic/nightstick stacking, metamagic rods, incantrix, etc. Cheesy metamagic combos are one of the principal things that make casters broken.

3) Restrict spells to spells from the PHB (after you edited/removed some of them). Add spells from other sources as rewards (after you checked them).

4) Magic is powerful, and magic is dangerous. Make sure the monsters know about this, and thus make monsters who know that casters are primary targets and/or have access to antimagic resources (dispel, antimagic field, etc).

Maerok
2009-05-29, 08:26 AM
I'm in for depowering casters.
Maybe not allowing them to cast while threatened
Removing a lot of the more over the top spells (allow for more subtle spells, kind of like LotR)
No metamagic
Mystic backlash - casting more spells in a given time period builds up a chance for wild magic to start happening (roll a d% against the total number of spell levels cast in an area over 24 hours)

Having random magic effects would be interesting. But many players prefer to have absolutely no negative consequences or surprises when messing around the fabric of reality ("wimps").

But fighters are also pretty bland as is, and could use some goodies. More skills, etc. Maybe some kind of fighting styles or kits like they did in 3rd (or whatever Baldur's Gate used, back in the day).

derfenrirwolv
2009-05-29, 08:29 AM
Say I put together (as others have elsewhere on the boards) a "fighter fix" which gave them maneuver progression. Would you call that a fix, or a replacement?

Ok, first let me say two things. One is that you asked why ToB is hated. I'm just answering, not saying that I agree with them.

Secondly, I haven't read the book thoroughly. I don't own it. With that said it seemed to me that the maneuver system was more of a change in the combat system than a change in the way the fighter operated.




so the best solution is to give melee characters a small increase in power and a large increase in versatility. That's what ToB does and it does it well. Incarnum, from what I know of it, takes a similar approach via different mechanics (and more explicitly supernatural flavour)

Versatility should be magics power. I would go the other way and give the fighter more power, not let them be as or more versatile than mages.

The fighters problem is that their damage output is linear. The iterative attack "Scaling" is broken because, lets face it.. the iterative attacks don't happen half the time. Fighting types should be able to take iterative attacks after moving.

Feats should scale with level, and have trees that grow up as well as out. An 13th level fighter can't get a feat appropriate to a 13 level character.. they're probably looking at taking a feat available to 1st level characters. Scale weapon focus and weapon specialization quadratically, +1, +2, +4, +8
and +2, +4, +8,+16.

Offer feats that let fighters reduce the advantage of large opponents (stackable feats that let trip warriors bring very big creatures down to large or huge for example... ala luke skywalker and the At ats)

Make whirlwind an attack action for crying out loud.

Maerok
2009-05-29, 08:34 AM
Ok, first let me say two things. One is that you asked why ToB is hated. I'm just answering, not saying that I agree with them.

Secondly, I haven't read the book thoroughly. I don't own it. With that said it seemed to me that the maneuver system was more of a change in the combat system than a change in the way the fighter operated.


Because any request for a decent melee build starts with "Warblade" or "Swordsage" and then a number and then a slash... And a lot of it has seemed rather Eastern for a Medieval-style game.

AmberVael
2009-05-29, 08:38 AM
Versatility should be magics power. I would go the other way and give the fighter more power, not let them be as or more versatile than mages.

Unfortunately, whether you give fighters a linear or exponential progression in their fighting prowess, and no matter how much you ramp up their power, as long as they are not versatile they will continue to be outclassed by the magic wielders.

This is because versatility is true power. What is the point in dealing thousands of damage when you can't fly to attack your enemy, or when you attack an enemy that is incorporeal, or when the enemy is invisible, or any myriad of obstacles that get in the way of a fighter simple swinging his sword?

That doesn't even take into account all of the out of combat situations, which fighters are also completely worthless at. This is the problem with fighters- not only do they need a bit of a power boost, but all classes need at least near equal versatility to truly be able to compete with one another.

A fighter that deals 10 damage and a fighter that deals 1,000,000 damage both fail the same amount against that force cage. Giving fighters a boost in damage dealing and fighting power will still leave them as one trick ponies- they'll be brilliant in one situation, and then completely useless in the next. That has more unbalance to it than many classes.

kamikasei
2009-05-29, 08:40 AM
Ok, first let me say two things. One is that you asked why ToB is hated. I'm just answering, not saying that I agree with them.

Uh, I don't recall asking that.


Versatility should be magics power. I would go the other way and give the fighter more power, not let them be as or more versatile than mages.

I agree that magic should be capable of a wider range of options than physical combat, but that doesn't preclude giving fighters a bunch of different things they can do in combat, or giving them options outside of it (skills, or utility abilities).


The fighters problem is that their damage output is linear. The iterative attack "Scaling" is broken because, lets face it.. the iterative attacks don't happen half the time. Fighting types should be able to take iterative attacks after moving.

Feats should scale with level, and have trees that grow up as well as out. An 13th level fighter can't get a feat appropriate to a 13 level character.. they're probably looking at taking a feat available to 1st level characters. Scale weapon focus and weapon specialization quadratically, +1, +2, +4, +8
and +2, +4, +8,+16.

Offer feats that let fighters reduce the advantage of large opponents (stackable feats that let trip warriors bring very big creatures down to large or huge for example... ala luke skywalker and the At ats)

Make whirlwind an attack action for crying out loud.

I generally agree with all of these. They largely boil down to making individual options for fighters more powerful so that they can take more such options while still being able to make use of them all in level-appropriate encounters. In other words, they boost the fighter's versatility.

If every feat slot a fighter had could buy him an entire new way of fighting and the feat would keep pace with his level, fighters would be a lot more attractive. (You might have to look at improving some of those options, too, of course, but it's a start.)

However, to my ears that's not too much different from a warblade's limited number of maneuvers which can be gained every second level and upgraded every alternate one.

Dark_Scary
2009-05-29, 08:55 AM
You are right. Which is why such a confrontation would probably extremely dull and is better left off avoided.

I'm sorry, what? So roleplaying powerful characters dealing with a Dragon they could fight but don't want to is boring.

Look, you may hate the idea of the characters being powerful and epic, but some (most) people actually like that, and so the ability to have characters deal with these situations is an advantage to using CR as is with decent classes instead of nerfing everything into the ground so that CR 10 Dragons can defeat level 15 parties.


Courage is not the lack of fear; it is facing and overcoming the fear and its source. If the opposition is not a threat, overcoming it is not a triumph and therefore basically worthless.

Who said anything about courage? I'm talking about people who aren't afraid. I'm talking about characters who don't feel awe at a giant dragon flying in, for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that being huge doesn't impress them.

Telonius
2009-05-29, 08:57 AM
How I fix it:
A. Mechanically
1. Fix the most egregious caster stuff in core. Druids are all Wildshape Variants, Divine Power is domain-only, Polymorph & co. (and other assorted Wizard spells that duplicate entire classes) are nerfed or stricken from the game.
2. Disallow magic items that make things totally ridiculous. No, there are no Wilding Clasps, only one Nightstick functions at a time, and I will look very sternly before allowing a Belt of Battle.
3. Bump up the weaker melee classes to make them worthwhile. (I'm looking at you, Monk).
4. Disallow certain out-of-core things like Contingent Spells.
B. Socially.
1. Nicely ask the players not to break my game.
2. Add Pun-Pun as the in-game Overgod. He will not allow certain things to exist.
3. Enforce setting. Ye Olde Magick Shoppe does not exist unless you are in a city run by the Wizards' College. (All items are attainable, given enough hunting; but not every place will have a +5 twilight mithral chain shirt).
4. Work to keep things challenging for ALL characters and players.

Learnedguy
2009-05-29, 09:03 AM
Make them stack their full level (as opposed to half of their level) when deciding which maneuvers they can learn with the Martial Study feat. Suddenly you get a very, very customizable and versatile fighter that frees you up to move in the direction you want to go.

Farlion
2009-05-29, 09:10 AM
Who said anything about courage? I'm talking about people who aren't afraid. I'm talking about characters who don't feel awe at a giant dragon flying in, for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that being huge doesn't impress them.

Not being afraid of a dragon who can swallow you whole (even if you know that you can defeat him and have done so before) is bound to get you killed. Fear is the number one reason why any living being survives. This does not mean, that you cannot overcome your fear and face the challenge, but there is no way a character (no matter how epic and experienced) will not feel some sort uf unease in the sight of a huge dragon flying in.
But then on the other hand, if you don't prefer to roleplay, than fear does not concern you other than the spell and a dragon is no different encounter than any other monster.


Back on topic:

Why do you need to balance casters and fighters?
The world is not fair, humans are born with different abilities and are not at all equal. There are people who are stronger/more powerful than you and still, you somehow manage to get by. Why should this be different in the D&D setting?

The thrill is taking a fighter and making a hero out of it!

Ah and by the way, there is one way to hinder casters from being strong: Slay any low level caster you see and the world will soon be rid of them! :smallbiggrin:

Cheers,
Farlion

Learnedguy
2009-05-29, 09:11 AM
The thrill is taking a fighter and making a hero out of it!

Amen. That's why I'm planning on being a normal fighter next time I get to play:smallbiggrin:

(I tend to gravitate towards Batman and skillmonkeys. It's time to mix it up a bit. Although I think my Fighter will be pretty skill intense and versatile)

Dark_Scary
2009-05-29, 09:23 AM
Not being afraid of a dragon who can swallow you whole (even if you know that you can defeat him and have done so before) is bound to get you killed. Fear is the number one reason why any living being survives. This does not mean, that you cannot overcome your fear and face the challenge, but there is no way a character (no matter how epic and experienced) will not feel some sort uf unease in the sight of a huge dragon flying in.
But then on the other hand, if you don't prefer to roleplay, than fear does not concern you other than the spell and a dragon is no different encounter than any other monster.

Thanks for the insult but no. See, I'm not afraid of Lions when I have a gun. And no, it's not good roleplaying to be afraid of something that poses no threat to you.

Farlion
2009-05-29, 09:26 AM
See, I'm not afraid of Lions when I have a gun.

Ah, so you ALWAYS have a one shot kill and there is absolutely NO way that the lion can harm you? I think not.



And no, it's not good roleplaying to be afraid of something that poses no threat to you.

A dragon never poses no threat to you. Every hit of is claw hurts and pain is always something any living creature is afraid of.

Cheers,
Farlion

The Glyphstone
2009-05-29, 09:39 AM
Unless you're a wizard, who can feasibly one-shot most dragons in a variety of ways.:smallannoyed: Which brings us back to the original problem - fighters, even ToB meleers, cannot one-shot dragons of their appropriate CR. No one should be able to one-shot dragons of anything except far below their CR, and that should get the attention of one far above their CR (egg-killing monsters....).

Khatoblepas
2009-05-29, 09:50 AM
Why do you need to balance casters and fighters?
The world is not fair, humans are born with different abilities and are not at all equal. There are people who are stronger/more powerful than you and still, you somehow manage to get by. Why should this be different in the D&D setting?

Because this isn't 2e, where Fighters level up faster than Mages because they have less nice things. It's also a game. You have to be fair to all the players - in 2e the game's reward system rewarded the weaker classes with more levels, and the stronger classes with stronger stuff per level. In 3e, the unified experience table means that every level is worth the exact same amount of training.

The world is not fair, but the game should be. You shouldn't be punished for wanting to play Beowulf instead of Merlin.

Farlion
2009-05-29, 10:16 AM
You shouldn't be punished for wanting to play Beowulf instead of Merlin.

I disagree there, but again, thats just my point of view.
If you chose to play Beowulf, you chose to play a fighter. You might be inferiour to a Merlin when it comes to effectivity, but you will be rewarded by playing something you like to play and not to play something that is more effective. I personally don't have any problem with casters being superior to fighters, it gives me the thrill to play something inferior and enjoy it. If my fighters smacks up a caster, the joy of the defeat is much greater if I'm inferiour, than it would be if all would be balanced.

Cheers,
Farlion

Eldariel
2009-05-29, 10:20 AM
I disagree there, but again, thats just my point of view.
If you chose to play Beowulf, you chose to play a fighter. You might be inferiour to a Merlin when it comes to effectivity, but you will be rewarded by playing something you like to play and not to play something that is more effective. I personally don't have any problem with casters being superior to fighters, it gives me the thrill to play something inferior and enjoy it. If my fighters smacks up a caster, the joy of the defeat is much greater if I'm inferiour, than it would be if all would be balanced.

If you wanna be inferior, be of a lower level. The game design pretty much requires characters of equal levels to be equal simply for the CR system and all that to work. Who says Fighter 10 needs to present the same degree of skill as Wizard 10 though?

Fighter learns his craft faster so while a Wizard Of Ultimate Power™ should be mightier that Fighter Of Ultimate Power™, the Fighter should be so far ahead in power growth on equivalent level that they are balanced for any given level by the growth curve.

Hunter Noventa
2009-05-29, 10:27 AM
I've been playing a pure dual wield fighter in a Pathfinder game for the better part of a year now, and I have to say that I've had none of the power disparity issues brought up here. Of course, there are many reasons for this, like that my fighter is more optimized than our casters. (in fact, everyone else int he party at this point is some kind of caster or half-caster) And that a couple of our casters are slightly incompetent, at least until recently.

It's not 100% about the rules, nor 100% about the players. You really have to find yourselves a happy medium that lets everybody have fun, since that is what the game is about after all, having fun. A wizard who dominates every encounter and doesn't let the meleers do anything is just as anti-fun as the wizard who doesn't get to do anything because they have to roll concentration checks to cast detect magic.

I'll definitely agree that fighter-types need some boosts in some areas. For example, in the current campaign, we gave fighters more skill points, and my DM let me have some custom feats. Due to this my fighter gets to surprise everyone by being extremely diplomatic when not axing people questions, and is the scariest 16-year old girl on the continent, most likely. It works, it's fun.

I guess the point I'm trying to get across is that sure, there are things that need to be fixed, but no one solution is going to work for every group. No one can be right or wrong in every circumstance about how classes should be powered up or down, because in the end it's all about having fun. If you're not having fun, work it out, buff what needs to be buffed, nerf what needs to be nerfed, and adjust and adapt to playing styles accordingly.

Khatoblepas
2009-05-29, 10:34 AM
If you wanna be inferior, be of a lower level. The game design pretty much requires characters of equal levels to be equal simply for the CR system and all that to work. Who says Fighter 10 needs to present the same degree of skill as Wizard 10 though?

Fighter learns his craft faster so while a Wizard Of Ultimate Power™ should be mightier that Fighter Of Ultimate Power™, the Fighter should be so far ahead in power growth on equivalent level that they are balanced for any given level by the growth curve.

Yes! This is what I'm talkin' bout. Fighters are generally only weaker than mages in stories because mages have had YEARS of experience. We're talking about someone who's artificially lengthened their lifespan so they can read more dusty tomes and ancient texts vs. a fresh faced young hero. Old men have experience, so they are higher level. The ultimate fighter (someone like a mortal Thor or Beowulf, or Hercules! (divinity not withstanding)) needs to be able to kick ass, too. And he's not kicking ass when the system is telling him "No, you can't be totally awesome. You must be the worst at everything. Even fighting, but your weaknesses will be even worse". Same goes with the other classes like Paladin, Ranger, etc. They just don't get to be awesome like mages do. If regular fighting has to be roleplayed out, why can't we ditch the vancian casting mechanism and roleplay all the spells mages cast, then? ;)

JaxGaret
2009-05-29, 10:38 AM
Not sure if it was mentioned yet, but Frank and K have a complete rewrite of the classes in D&D that fixes a lot of balance issues:

Frank and K's D&D Material (http://middendorfproject.googlepages.com/frankpdf)

Funkyodor
2009-05-29, 11:05 AM
How about adding a Break DC to all magical barrier spells, so "mundanes" and monsters have a chance to break out/through based on the level of the caster & spell. So the Caster class doesn't have to waste dispels, the melee class can try to smash through.

We added a multiplier system to melee attacks in an attempt to represent weapon accuracy. For every 8 points the resulting attack roll is over the monsters AC, the damage is multiplied by 2 (additive multipliers). This multiplies both the weapon damage dice and modifier (stat, magic, specialization, etc...), but not precision damage. If the character was lucky to get a 16 over on an attack, then we had some random critical stuff; 24 over was death to a medium sized creature. Multipliers also removed extra things like additional stone skin charges, but that was back in second edition.

You might try increasing Weapon Specialization to 1/2 Fighter levels. A +10 to weapon damage at lvl 20 'aint half bad, heh, heh.

A time limit for actions is a good idea, it's much easier to accept an over powered caster type if the player knows what he's doing and is quick to decide what the caster will use and keep track of what hes got left. It's the ones who thumb through the handbooks and take forever that frustrate me.

One Batch Of Spells Per 24 Hours Rule! Stop The Narcolepsy!

We had a rule that when a character with spells memorized lost conciousness involuntarily, they lost all the spells they had memorized. But that was Second Edition.

You could toy around with a TWF, THF, S&S fighter option where they get benefits every non feat level. Like a swift action for move distance, extra AC, or extra attacks; etc...

I agree with modifying certain spells. Remove the free feather fall effect from Fly type spells, if the spell caster doesn't want to crash, they can cast it themselves. Celerity is downright broken. Put a fly height limitation of 10' on Overland Flight, change name to Overland Hover. Spell caster DC's shouldn't skyrocket so high. Concentration checks shouldn't be so easy to make. Metamagic Feats were a great idea in theory, but the rules covering mixing are very relaxed. I like the whole wild magic idea and think metamagic mixing should incorporate some random effects.

I think it is funny that fighters need more than 2+ skill points a level, but Wizards never complain... Oh wait... Now I get it. Wizards should only get bonus points. They probably still wont complain...

Dark_Scary
2009-05-29, 11:47 AM
Ah, so you ALWAYS have a one shot kill and there is absolutely NO way that the lion can harm you? I think not.

As things currently stand, I have always killed the Lion before it touched me, yes. But no, it is possible that the Lion might kill me. Just as it is possible that someone will crash a car through the wall and kill me where I sit. I'm also not afraid of that. Because I'm only afraid of things that are likely to be a problem. And I'm not even afraid of most of them.


A dragon never poses no threat to you. Every hit of is claw hurts and pain is always something any living creature is afraid of.

1) No, not all people try to avoid pain.

2) Every hit doesn't matter if he never hits. If I can kill him long before he even closes with my Blinking Greater Mirror Imaged self why do I care? If I can use Flyby attack and Earthglide to pop out and hit him with invulnerability (because I'm immune to his breath weapon and I know where he is) why do I care?

3) Every time I go running I hurt a little bit. I choose to do so anyway. Probably because, oh right, the rewards are worth it. Running does not pose a threat to me, because the pain is worth the cost. If the Dragon is going to cause pain, but the reward is worth the cost, he is not a threat to you.

DragoonWraith
2009-05-29, 03:11 PM
A sensible argument, but I disagree nonetheless.
Now, the way the system works, spellcasters can decide between fast, small spells and slow, powerful ones. So if Mr. Wizard stands around, do nothing and channels his spell he does so because he chose to do it. He could likewise spam low level spells in the same time.
OK, that part I did not realize; I don't believe you mentioned that but I may have missed it. Were I to play in such a system, I'd probably want some options for expending extra power to bring more spells to bear quicker (at a cost), but I think it's a fairly good idea.

Considering that I very strongly favor "high magic" settings, it's something. Everyone who wants Wizards to be like Gandalf, only using spells very rarely and subtly, I couldn't play with. It would bore and frustrate me, at least assuming I was playing a magic character (which I often do, though not in D&D since I'm a huge newb at that)


Standing around and doing practically nothing is the traditional fate of melee fighters in high level games, and through the changes I propagate, this ends, and the importance of fighters, paladins etc. greatly improves.

So, why should it be okay for the guy with the big sword - who usually has a much smaller range of options to begin with - stand around without being able to contribute at all, while it is at the same time condemnable if a spellcaster has to wait because of his very own tactical decisions?
Oh, I never said that was good. Would I even be in this thread if I was OK with that? I agree that the problem exists and that currently it favors casters far more than it should. I tend to agree with the "buff martial classes, rather than nerf casters" crowd (which should be unsurprising), but I think that it may be difficult to do that properly. Casters do have too much power and options. So something like working on the particularly bad spells in the lists (Polymorph et al., Shivering Touch, Gate, etc.) and implementing a system that allows mundane classes a chance to ruin casters' spells seems like a good idea. But I also don't want my caster reduced to spending all fight preparing a spell or to just shooting brightly colored arrows without a bow.

Oh, by the way, OP: "et" is not an abbreviation, and doesn't get a period after it. It's simply the Latin word for "and". "al." is an abbreviation for "alia" ("others"), and should have the period.

Roderick_BR
2009-05-29, 03:16 PM
Generally I wouldn't. Ones of the things that I like about D&D is that magic using characters grow to be far more powerful than non-magic using characters.

I personally don't dig over the top powerful non-magic users who rely on the power of Awesome to fuel their abilities, so If I had to pick one or the other, I'd tone everyone down to the weak side.
I disagree. I'm fine with casters being more powerful. It's magic after all. BUT. Using magic is just too easy to learn and use in D&D. The wizard guy that (easily) defeated the same challenges that the guy with the pointy stick (barely) did, still gain way more stuff as he levels up. From a gaming standpoint (and mithological one too), wizards gain far too much stuff, far too fast in 3.5


@shadzar: It was already said, the issue here is not players trying to powergame in detriment of roleplaying. It's about the core mechanics being wrong to begin with. Sure, you can be a nice guy and not pick some options that'll make you more powerful than your friends. But when only part of the classes have access to these over powered options, something is wrong. When everyone can have a chance of being powerful, then your party can discuss if they should powergame or not.

Player 1: I'll play a wizard.
DM: Ok, but play a blaster, ok? No batmen, or god wizards here.
Player 1: ok...

Player 2: I'll play a cleric.
DM: Ok, but don't get all the good self-boofs, save spells and actions to help your allies.
Player 2: Oh man...

Player 3: I'll be a fighter.
DM: Ok.
Player 3: ...that's it?
DM: What else you want me to say?
Player 3: Hmm... can I be an ubercharger?
DM: Sure, you can save some money and get some batlecharge boots if you want.
Player 3: And can I make a lock trip build?
DM: Hmm... lemme see... ok, but no spiked chain.
Player 3: (((Yay, I got a nerf... I feel respected now... sniff)))
DM: No, wait, only low level non-wizard humanoids that doesn't fly will care for it. You can have a spiked chain if you want.
Player 3: ...

@Frosty: I agree. Wizards have high level spells that they can cast as default actions without somatic or material components, from far distances. WTF?! And warriors depends on full attacks to be remotely useful AND get close in combat. In AD&D, you sometimes needed several rounds to cast the most powerful spells. In 3.x, spells are just too easy to use.

@Satyr: I've been taking looks at your S&S, and I already like what I see. I'll take my time to read it fully.

TheThan
2009-05-29, 03:36 PM
Well first off you have to take the armored panels off the fighter to get to the guts of the Fusel thrust engines. I suggest a type 9 hyperspanner for that, those bolts can stick good so you may need a powered spanner if their on too tight, try not to strip them out though. Next you need to… oh wait, you mean dnd fighters… sorry bout that.

Tsotha-lanti
2009-05-29, 03:49 PM
Well first off you have to take the armored panels off the fighter to get to the guts of the Fusel thrust engines. I suggest a type 9 hyperspanner for that, those bolts can stick good so you may need a powered spanner if their on too tight, try not to strip them out though. Next you need to… oh wait, you mean dnd fighters… sorry bout that.

Yo dawg I heard you like rockin' so we put a warblade in yo' fighter so you can rock while you fight!

Jayabalard
2009-05-29, 03:57 PM
The world is not fair, but the game should be. You shouldn't be punished for wanting to play Beowulf instead of Merlin.As long as you are aware of the fact that wizards are more powerful than warriors, there is absolutely nothing unfair about the situation for the player. The player has the option to pick either one; you should be allowed to intentionally pick the weaker option if that's what you want to do.

Eldariel
2009-05-29, 04:49 PM
As long as you are aware of the fact that wizards are more powerful than warriors, there is absolutely nothing unfair about the situation for the player. The player has the option to pick either one; you should be allowed to intentionally pick the weaker option if that's what you want to do.

But if one guy wants to be a warrior and the other wizard, and both do that because one guys likes swords and the other guy likes magic rather than because one wants to be weaker than the other (I'd imagine this is usually the case), the warrior-guy shouldn't be penalized for his choice. Again, if you want to be weaker, just stay a level behind.

It's that simple; it's easy enough to enable being weaker if you so choose, but the basic class options should be equal on (broadly) equal level. That's the whole point of the "level"-system, after all. Differences are fine and they're really what makes the whole multi-class system alluring; that's one of the big 4e failures, really cutting down on the individuality of each class and subsystem. But the differences shouldn't be such that one class just does everything better than others. That's not "fair" and the whole level-based system is built upon the assumption that levels are fairly equal.

J.Gellert
2009-05-29, 05:01 PM
I don't know what you are all talking about... In my time of gaming (2nd/3rd/3,5 editions, not 4th) I've never seen a wizard 'routinely' outclass a fighter.

Instead, in 90% of the fights, the fighters are indeed laying the smackdown and stealing the spotlight. It has always been that way.*

Maybe I am crazy or missing something. Or it's just that we usually begin our campaigns at around level 4-5 and finish them by level 10 - from what I gather, spellcasters are worthless unless they can chain-gate or somesuch, right?

If you want to fix something, fix the rogues. No one wants to play the rogue anymore because they stink in every single way (What, they disarm traps? Whoop-de-doo. Nine out of ten times the fighters can simply step on the traps with impunity. Maybe we have kind DMs.).

*Except for one campaign where a mounted-combat Divine-powered elf Cleric outfought everyone. Turns out you don't even have to take divine metamagic to do alright with the designated 'Badass' class.

sonofzeal
2009-05-29, 05:05 PM
As long as you are aware of the fact that wizards are more powerful than warriors, there is absolutely nothing unfair about the situation for the player. The player has the option to pick either one; you should be allowed to intentionally pick the weaker option if that's what you want to do.
Ugh. I really can't understand this attitude. For one, the game DOESN'T make you aware of that fact; the implication in the actual documents is that they're balanced. For another, it's not fun. Seriously. Either everyone's playing the same characters (yay for forced homogeny -.- ) or half the party gets to stink up the joint and be useless. When does either of those start being fun? This is a fantasy RPG, I expect it to support fantasy archetypes and at least be playably decent with all of them. If I boot up Diablo 2 and choose "Barbarian", I expect to be able to play through the whole game with him, not get halfway and then start sucking beyond redemption no matter how well I've chosen my skills. If the game makes it impossible to do well as a Paladin, that's a problem with the game, not a problem with paladins inherently being "the weaker option".

Eldariel
2009-05-29, 05:13 PM
Maybe I am crazy or missing something. Or it's just that we usually begin our campaigns at around level 4-5 and finish them by level 10 - from what I gather, spellcasters are worthless unless they can chain-gate or somesuch, right?

Spellcasters are never worthless. Level 1 spellcaster is squishy, but has the power to end 4 encounters per day with 1 spell. Level 3 and 5 just step up off this (level 5 especially sees stuff such as Haste, Fly, Displacement, Sleet Storm, Stinking Cloud, etc. Level 3 = Glitterdust, Web, etc.), and it gets better from there (this is for Wizards). Basically, you can disable just about anything with a spell targeting its worst save (or Touch AC: see Ray of Enfeeblement, Ray of Exhaustion, etc.) and you have the Knowledges to often hit their worst save. Now, Clerics are badass in melee and Druids get Wildshape on 5 and can use it all day on level 6 while having a badass Animal Companion. So yeah.

Gate-chains are just examples of completely ridiculous feats extremely high level Wizards can do (destroying the world, etc.). Wizard really starts kicking ass around level 5 and has the power to end encounters from level 1. Of course, this relies on the Wizard knowing which spells to choose. A Wizard casting Magic Missile for all his level 1 slots, Scorching Ray on level 2 and Fireball on level 3 specifically isn't going to be very impressive in any way.


If you want to fix something, fix the rogues. No one wants to play the rogue anymore because they stink in every single way (What, they disarm traps? Whoop-de-doo. Nine out of ten times the fighters can simply step on the traps with impunity. Maybe we have kind DMs.).

Uh, I'm assuming the said Rogues aren't maxing out Use Magic Device? 'cause Rogues are definitely the best balanced class in Core. They get an insane number of skills (and with heavy use of Hide, Move Silently, Sleight of Hand, Bluff, Use Magic Device, etc. they can do all sorts of awesome stuff) and very decent melee damage (get flanking, two-weapon fight, profit - also, Use Magic Device/Alchemist's Fire/whatever allows for ranged touch attacks to Sneak Attack with, and hit opponent's weakness).

The one drawback is fighting opponents you can't Sneak Attack, but Dungeonscape offers the "Penetrating Strike" ACF and Spell Compendium has a number of spells (get Wands) that allow Sneak Attacking immune types. Really, a Rogue can dish out damage comparable to a decently built Fighter and does everything else too. They are low on HP so they should use magical means of self-protection (Mirror Image, Displacement, etc.) and Hide/Move Silently actively, but they can definitely keep themselves alive, and a full two-weapon fighting attack can be very brutal. Also, ranged touch attack SAs and such kick ass.

J.Gellert
2009-05-29, 05:31 PM
Rogues get UMD but what will they use it with? The DM has to give them items. You don't just leaf through the items list and pick and choose what you want, they are all in the Dungeon Master's Guide. How are you going to dish out that full two-weapon fighting attack if you are more squishy than the party's wizard? (Who has the abilities to spare to get a high Con, so ends up with more HPs than you).

As for Wizards, sure, Sleep/Glitterdust/whatever is a good spell, but it works about half of the time. While the party fighter can Power Attack with his falchion all day long - and he actually doesn't need your buffs/debuffs because he's so good at killing things.

People may say that Wizards outclass fighters but under what circumstances? Are you sure that's your average game you are playing? A typical D&D game doesn't necessarily include Celerity/Timestop and a Necropolitan Tainted Scholar character. At level 5, I just don't see a wizard/sorcerer doing anything that a fighter can't handle (or a divine caster, for that matter).

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-05-29, 05:38 PM
Rogues get UMD but what will they use it with? The DM has to give them items. You don't just leaf through the items list and pick and choose what you want, they are all in the Dungeon Master's Guide. How are you going to dish out that full two-weapon fighting attack if you are more squishy than the party's wizard? (Who has the abilities to spare to get a high Con, so ends up with more HPs than you).Without UMD, the Rogue is on the same level as the Fighter in-combat(Does one or 2 things, does them well, sucks if he can't), but significantly better outside of combat(aforementioned skills, including Hide, Search[secret doors are far harder to ignore than traps], Disable Device for when you don't want the trap going off, social skills, etc). What does the Fighter do out of combat, again?
As for Wizards, sure, Sleep/Glitterdust/whatever is a good spell, but it works about half of the time. While the party fighter can Power Attack with his falchion all day long - and he actually doesn't need your buffs/debuffs because he's so good at killing things.DC 25 saves at level 10. How many monsters make those, again? 30% or worse is average for targetting a weak save.

Yes, there are things a Fighter can do that a Wizard can't, which is why I blame balance problems much more on CoDzilla. What can a Fighter do that 3-5 angry bears can't?

AgentPaper
2009-05-29, 05:39 PM
1) Remove/modify extreme examples of broken spells
2) Increase the action cost of each spell by 1. For example, a standard action becomes full-round, full-round becomes 2 rounds, and so on. Exceptions for some spells on a case-by case, either not modifying or modifying by more.
3) Require a spellcraft check based on spell level to cast a spell, failing by 5 or less wastes the action but not the spell slot, succeeding by 10 or more casts the spell without loosing the slot. (A 1 is not always automatic failure, but does always consume the slot)
4) Remove all ways of increasing the spellcraft and concentration skills except for ranks and ability modifiers. Feel free to add new ways. (especially as class features and feats)
5) Remove iterative attacks. Instead, characters that would have iterative attacks can make a single attack as an immediate action (or whatever an action you can take at any time, even during an opponent's turn is called) once per encounter, as many times as they would have iterative attacks. (So a level 6 fighter would have 1, which they might use to try and interrupt a wizard casting forcecage, for example)

There you go. Spellcasters are now powerful, but not all-powerful, and non-magical opponents have a chance of beating them. Just introducing tome of battle is also a good option, but I think 4E caters to this style of play better.

For flavor, you might make dexterity add to your BaB for the purposes of getting more immediate actions, (so with a dex of 18, you have one from level 1, for example) and have int add to the concentration check's DC.

Edit: Forgot to mention, casting defensively is out, or at the very least requires a (hard to get) feat and scales by spell level. (so no auto-success on higher level spells)

Flickerdart
2009-05-29, 05:39 PM
As for Wizards, sure, Sleep/Glitterdust/whatever is a good spell, but it works about half of the time. While the party fighter can Power Attack with his falchion all day long - and he actually doesn't need your buffs/debuffs because he's so good at killing things.
Quite the double standard here, along with some factual inaccuracies. At the level you get Glitterdust, your DC will be about 16, whereas enemies have Will save bonuses at +2-+4, meaning it's at worst 60%. You shouldn't be targeting strong saves, either. At later levels, with more opportunities to increase DCs of spells, this becomes even more of a sure thing.
Fighters, on the other hand, will be missing their attacks if they PA: AC goes up faster than saves, is harder to hit and Fighters can't choose to hit something else, only AC. And while they're swing-and-a-missing, their HP is going down south. And even if they do land a hit, so what? Enemy's still as dangerous as they were before. It'll take 2-3 hits before they fall, but only one Sleep spell.

Epinephrine
2009-05-29, 05:40 PM
Some fixes I'm using:

Readied action to disrupt spells has 3 parts:
a)If caster stays, you swing at him
b)If caster 5' steps, and you haven't yet, you can 5' step to match him
c)If caster moves away, you can move up to you move to follow, though you provoke attacks of opportunity from others

This makes it a bit tougher for mage-types.

Tumble DC is increased for avoiding AoO. Originally we were using 15+the opponent's Ref save, but now we use 10+BAB, with a +2 for each subsequent foe. Now the mages can't tumble away as easily (nobody can - you have to actually take a risk to tumble by people unless you are really into tumbling).

Concentration check to cast defensively is 10+spell level+opponent's BAB. 11th level caster facing 11th level warrior, trying to cast a 6th level spell? DC 27 concentration check, instead of DC 21. Foes that are better at fighting are harder to avoid.

So, getting in a caster's face is much more effective, and giving up your full attack to instead ready to disrupt them is suddenly an effective way to deal with casters.

lesser_minion
2009-05-29, 06:11 PM
Rogues get UMD but what will they use it with? The DM has to give them items. You don't just leaf through the items list and pick and choose what you want, they are all in the Dungeon Master's Guide. How are you going to dish out that full two-weapon fighting attack if you are more squishy than the party's wizard? (Who has the abilities to spare to get a high Con, so ends up with more HPs than you).

As for Wizards, sure, Sleep/Glitterdust/whatever is a good spell, but it works about half of the time. While the party fighter can Power Attack with his falchion all day long - and he actually doesn't need your buffs/debuffs because he's so good at killing things.

People may say that Wizards outclass fighters but under what circumstances?

1st edition Magic Users were fail. You could do something vaguely useful once per day, and you could barely survive exposure to oxygen, let alone a gentle breeze. You were absolutely guaranteed to be outclassed by everything else.

Damage-dealing was also the most effective strategy in older editions - by the time you were slinging around SoDs, enemies had a better-than-even chance to save against them. They also had far fewer hitpoints, so the damage spells started to sound very tempting.

In 3rd edition, Save-or-Lose spells are much more useful - there are more of them, they can be much harder to resist because it's no longer a flat chance to save, and they are no less effective when they work than they were in editions where they usually didn't.

Flickerdart
2009-05-29, 06:14 PM
Some fixes I'm using:

Readied action to disrupt spells has 3 parts:
a)If caster stays, you swing at him
b)If caster 5' steps, and you haven't yet, you can 5' step to match him
c)If caster moves away, you can move up to you move to follow, though you provoke attacks of opportunity from others

This makes it a bit tougher for mage-types.

Tumble DC is increased for avoiding AoO. Originally we were using 15+the opponent's Ref save, but now we use 10+BAB, with a +2 for each subsequent foe. Now the mages can't tumble away as easily (nobody can - you have to actually take a risk to tumble by people unless you are really into tumbling).

Concentration check to cast defensively is 10+spell level+opponent's BAB. 11th level caster facing 11th level warrior, trying to cast a 6th level spell? DC 27 concentration check, instead of DC 21. Foes that are better at fighting are harder to avoid.

So, getting in a caster's face is much more effective, and giving up your full attack to instead ready to disrupt them is suddenly an effective way to deal with casters.
So, how do you deal with Overland Flight/Abrupt Jaunt/etc? Even if you give free Move actions to follow them, casters have ways of going places.

Eldariel
2009-05-29, 06:21 PM
Rogues get UMD but what will they use it with? The DM has to give them items. You don't just leaf through the items list and pick and choose what you want, they are all in the Dungeon Master's Guide. How are you going to dish out that full two-weapon fighting attack if you are more squishy than the party's wizard? (Who has the abilities to spare to get a high Con, so ends up with more HPs than you).

Low-level Wands should be in abundant supply. That's all you need. If not, beg, cry, bribe, threaten, etc. (you're good at all of those) your party casters to crafting some for you. And the Wizard has Scribe Scroll anyways so you should be able to have him craft some for you as long as you pay. And most settings do have magic items for purchase. That's not a matter of DM giving you crap but you paying money to people in the world to get crap. DM can decide what they have, but honestly, why would he want to glorify casters and screw fighters even more by not giving out magic items?

And Rogue can afford 14 Con easily, and a melee Rogue can afford 16 Con which is more than your average Fighter; a Rogue with 16 Con matches every Ranger in HP and is only 1 point/level behind an average Fighter. Because Rogue deals damage with SA not static bonuses, you can afford high Dex and Con dumping Str to a degree, along with Wis & Cha as necessary.


As for Wizards, sure, Sleep/Glitterdust/whatever is a good spell, but it works about half of the time. While the party fighter can Power Attack with his falchion all day long - and he actually doesn't need your buffs/debuffs because he's so good at killing things.

People may say that Wizards outclass fighters but under what circumstances? Are you sure that's your average game you are playing? A typical D&D game doesn't necessarily include Celerity/Timestop and a Necropolitan Tainted Scholar character. At level 5, I just don't see a wizard/sorcerer doing anything that a fighter can't handle (or a divine caster, for that matter).

So a Human Wizard with 18 Int. How out there is that really? And that's quite "optimized". Also, try to have your level 5 Fighter kill a Frost Giant or two. That's just not happening. But a Wizard can easily screw them with a Web and have a 50% chance at blinding with each casting of Glitterdust (for example). This forces 'em to use their ranged attacks (which have rather poor chances of hitting) and once they're blind, a couple of summons can mop 'em up.

Hell, try Fighter 9 vs. Purple Worm. Then try Wizard in the same match. Just guess who has the better chance (FYI: Hold Monster is a level 5 spell; Purple Worm needs a 18 to hit the DC of 22 [Int 18+2 levels+4 item = +7; DC 10+7+5] and that's without Spell Focus or the like). Basically, if you want to take out brutes, call the Wizard (or casters for that matter; Wizard is much better at targeting the Fort-save and piercing Illusions than Fighter). If you want the mop up, call the Fighter.

Jayabalard
2009-05-29, 06:55 PM
But if one guy wants to be a warrior and the other wizardIrrelevant. I'm only talking about fairness. If the warrior guy knows that the choice gives less power than the other, and makes that choice anyway, there is no unfairness involved.


For one, the game DOESN'T make you aware of that factI prefaced my statement with "As long as you are aware". If you're not aware then obviously the rest of my statements don't apply.

But I find the idea that people don't know that magic trumps non magic fairly laughable in D&D. It's obvious to anyone who takes even a cursory look at the mechanics involved.


For another, it's not fun.This isn't universially true. You find it to be not fun; I know plenty of people who don't agree. I'm one of them.

sonofzeal
2009-05-29, 06:59 PM
Irrelevant. I'm only talking about fairness. If the warrior guy knows that the choice gives less power than the other, and makes that choice anyway, there is no unfairness involved.
It's not "unfair", but it's still bad game design. Remember how this is a game, and games are supposed to be fun?

Jayabalard
2009-05-29, 07:01 PM
It's not "unfair", but it's still bad game design. Remember how this is a game, and games are supposed to be fun?If you'll look back, you'll note that I didn't make any claims about whether it's good or bad design. Just that it's not unfair.

And like I said above, I don't agree with your evaluation of the fun (or lack thereof) of having power disparity. But since that's a totally individual issue, it's not really relevant to the discussion whether you or I think it's fun.


What does the Fighter do out of combat, again?Roleplay.

Deepblue706
2009-05-29, 07:08 PM
Hell, try Fighter 9 vs. Purple Worm. Then try Wizard in the same match. Just guess who has the better chance (FYI: Hold Monster is a level 5 spell; Purple Worm needs a 18 to hit the DC of 22 [Int 18+2 levels+4 item = +7; DC 10+7+5] and that's without Spell Focus or the like). Basically, if you want to take out brutes, call the Wizard (or casters for that matter; Wizard is much better at targeting the Fort-save and piercing Illusions than Fighter). If you want the mop up, call the Fighter.

What if we compare them against 20 Huge Fiendish Monstrous Centipedes. I think a level 9 Fighter with the proper feats has a better chance than a Wizard.

Of course, colonies of these guys are usually never greater than 5, but humour me. You're in an underground ruin and 20 friggin centipedes are coming at you, compliments of the Verminator, the arch-villain of the current campaign. Ceilings are 10ft high. You are completely surrounded (okay, fine you've got 30ft between you and the swarm encircling you). Apart from teleporting away, or hiding, what can the Wizard do?

AgentPaper
2009-05-29, 07:23 PM
What if we compare them against 20 Huge Fiendish Monstrous Centipedes. I think a level 9 Fighter with the proper feats has a better chance than a Wizard.

Of course, colonies of these guys are usually never greater than 5, but humour me. You're in an underground ruin and 20 friggin centipedes are coming at you, compliments of the Verminator, the arch-villain of the current campaign. Ceilings are 10ft high. You are completely surrounded (okay, fine you've got 30ft between you and the swarm encircling you). Apart from teleporting away, or hiding, what can the Wizard do?

Teleporting away is more than the fighter can do, for starters...:smallwink:

Eldariel
2009-05-29, 07:27 PM
What if we compare them against 20 Huge Fiendish Monstrous Centipedes. I think a level 9 Fighter with the proper feats has a better chance than a Wizard.

Of course, colonies of these guys are usually never greater than 5, but humour me. You're in an underground ruin and 20 friggin centipedes are coming at you, compliments of the Verminator, the arch-villain of the current campaign. Ceilings are 10ft high. You are completely surrounded (okay, fine you've got 30ft between you and the swarm encircling you). Apart from teleporting away, or hiding, what can the Wizard do?

*shrug* Depends on what's allowed. Easy answer? Quicken Mirror Image (use your Circlet of Rapid Casting or w/e) shared with your familiar, Polymorph shared with your familiar into an 8-Headed Hydra, go to town.

Without Polymorph? If you happen to have a Scroll or a prepared slot of Summon Monster V, you could summon a Hound Archon, Bearded Devil or w/e to clean up (they're outsiders so the natural poison doesn't affect them, and they've got so much DR that those Centipedes aren't doing anything). Might need other spells to help them due to the duration of Summon Monster-spells though.

Otherwise, teleport to a position where they're all to your one side, Cloudkill (Fort or they all die) or drop Evard's Black Tentacles on a bunch or whatever, using Solid Fog & co. to limit their options. Seeing they're vermins and thus not very smart, chances are they wouldn't avoid bunching up when approaching you thus meaning few applications of mass kill spells would do it.


Also, on these levels you've got access to Lesser Planar Binding. Chances are you could have a tough-enough bodyguard in your servitude that you wouldn't need to lift a finger other than to protect yourself (encase yourself in a Wall of Stone or something if you must).

Deepblue706
2009-05-29, 07:30 PM
Teleporting away is more than the fighter can do, for starters...:smallwink:

No, a Fighter can fight them. Maybe even win.

Regardless, it's a CR 12 encounter, a "Very Difficult" encounter for even four level 9 PCs. Just because we can demonstrate where Wizards can absolutely kick something's ass when the encounter is supposed to be overpowering (in the case of a Purple Worm, and he has Hold Monster and powerful enough Summon Monster spells to deliver enough Coup de Graces in time before it animates and swallows him whole), it doesn't mean that Fighters suck that bad. They're weak, sure; but the DM designs the encounters. The DM determines the use of everyone's abilities. If you want to fix a Fighter, the easiest way to do it is to fix your DM.

J.Gellert
2009-05-29, 07:40 PM
No, a Fighter can fight them. Maybe even win.

Regardless, it's a CR 12 encounter, a "Very Difficult" encounter for even four level 9 PCs. Just because we can demonstrate where Wizards can absolutely kick something's ass when the encounter is supposed to be overpowering (in the case of a Purple Worm, and he has Hold Monster and powerful enough Summon Monster spells to deliver enough Coup de Graces in time before it animates and swallows him whole), it doesn't mean that Fighters suck that bad. They're weak, sure; but the DM designs the encounters. The DM determines the use of everyone's abilities. If you want to fix a Fighter, the easiest way to do it is to fix your DM.

Exactly. It comes down to playing style. As I said, it is the Fighters that have always been stealing the spotlight in our campaigns.

Unless what you are really intersted in is in-party fighting and how your party's fighter can kill your party's mage (Free tip: in his sleep.).

Eldariel
2009-05-29, 07:41 PM
The DM determines the use of everyone's abilities. If you want to fix a Fighter, the easiest way to do it is to fix your DM.

What, so DM can't make Dragon encounters and has to play monsters dumb just so the Fighter can not-suck? While at it, let's have all the Int 26 Devils close in (to 5' range) and focus all their attacks (and not use their infinite spell-likes) on that Dwarven Defender in defensive stance 'cause he's a party member and thus needs to be useful, verisimilitude be damned!

Seriously, a DM can fudge a thing here and another there but building the encounters around specifically which PCs exist in the party and what they can do, hitting their strong points over and over again? Not the kind of game I'd find enjoyable for sure.


What's wrong with "use ToB"? Fixes most of the problems handily. Now DM doesn't need to worry about party members feeling useless and he can design encounters that fit the damn campaign instead of having to worry about the Fighter sucking.

When building world and the creatures that dwell some places and encounter tables, you shouldn't have to start thinking "oh, but there's a Monk in the party, I can't use enemies with damage reduction..." or "oh, the party doesn't have flying so even though they're passing through this land of the dragons I can't have them face any..." That just detracts from the immersion and the feel of the game all for the sakes of mechanical equality. To me, the former are more important, but I'd rather take both given the option.

Flickerdart
2009-05-29, 07:43 PM
Unless what you are really intersted in is in-party fighting and how your party's fighter can kill your party's mage (Free tip: in his sleep.).
And how is he getting inside the Rope Trick, or Magnificent Mansion, or past the "if my brain-dead ally gets any stupid ideas one night" Contingency, or any number of other things? The Wizard's Familiar on the lookout, even. A Raven's eyesight is better than a Fighter's Hide.

Deepblue706
2009-05-29, 08:17 PM
*shrug* Depends on what's allowed. Easy answer? Quicken Mirror Image (use your Circlet of Rapid Casting or w/e) shared with your familiar, Polymorph shared with your familiar into an 8-Headed Hydra, go to town.

Not familiar with Circlet of Rapid Casting, but okay. Two Hydras is pretty good. Although, you have to win initiative against 20 checks before you can do this, each of theirs is at +2. Edit: And these guys have a +15 grapple coming at you.

A Fighter who invests in Combat Focus feats, has Improved Grapple and Close-Quarters Fighting (This is something I often do with Fighters, so please don't take this as "Yeah there are feats hiding out there, somewhere...so it's possible!") will be able to avoid grapples before his turn comes around (as his first few checks will be somewhere in the 40s, then later in the 30s). They will be very hard pressed to get at him, even if he's flat-footed. On his turn, he can make use of magic items of his own, or just start hacking away.



Without Polymorph? If you happen to have a Scroll or a prepared slot of Summon Monster V, you could summon a Hound Archon, Bearded Devil or w/e to clean up (they're outsiders so the natural poison doesn't affect them, and they've got so much DR that those Centipedes aren't doing anything). Might need other spells to help them due to the duration of Summon Monster-spells though.

A few centipedes could grapple them, and the rest could still be heading for you.



Otherwise, teleport to a position where they're all to your one side, Cloudkill (Fort or they all die) or drop Evard's Black Tentacles on a bunch or whatever, using Solid Fog & co. to limit their options. Seeing they're vermins and thus not very smart, chances are they wouldn't avoid bunching up when approaching you thus meaning few applications of mass kill spells would do it.


Cloud Kill won't be effective enough, because it's a 20ft radius. These guys have a 15ft space.

Teleport won't work if you happen to be fighting in close-quarters, although since I omitted that I can't hold it against you. Still these suckers have a 80ft charge distance; it won't be easy for you.

Black Tentacles won't be very effective, as its your +17 vs their +15. Might get a few, and make it difficult for a few to come at you, but at best you're delaying death.

Solid Fog sounds like a really good idea, but it's just a 20ft radius. They'll be close, so you'll need to act very quickly.



Also, on these levels you've got access to Lesser Planar Binding. Chances are you could have a tough-enough bodyguard in your servitude that you wouldn't need to lift a finger other than to protect yourself (encase yourself in a Wall of Stone or something if you must).

Lesser Planar Binding is HD 6 or less. Mind providing an example of what's particularly good?

Wall of Stone is an effective way to hide; but not to be a ninny, I did ask for methods of dealing with the problem that don't include just hiding until it goes away.

Deepblue706
2009-05-29, 08:36 PM
What, so DM can't make Dragon encounters and has to play monsters dumb just so the Fighter can not-suck? While at it, let's have all the Int 26 Devils close in (to 5' range) and focus all their attacks (and not use their infinite spell-likes) on that Dwarven Defender in defensive stance 'cause he's a party member and thus needs to be useful, verisimilitude be damned!

I think you're misunderstanding my point. I was trying to demonstrate there are points where a Wizard might suck, and a Fighter could do a better job. It doesn't mean you HAVE to only make all of your encounters all hordes of really dumb, low CR monsters.

I think a variety of enemies is appropriate for a group; not just monster types, but a variety of numbers, and a variety of tactics. It's easy to say Wizards are awesome if they're always given the same kinds of enemies to deal with; after all, much of their power comes from knowing what to do, prior to the fight.

So yeah, have Dragons, where the Wizard can kick its ass, and the Fighter looks like a chump. (Editted for Grammar:) But, I think more DMs need to make fewer encounters where 1 damn spell ends the whole thing, if this is really such a problem. Part of challenging players is not just templates to monsters, but putting the PCs in many different situations, so that they have to learn to depend on each other's strengths, rather than just let the Wizard determine mathematically what wins more fights for everyone.



Seriously, a DM can fudge a thing here and another there but building the encounters around specifically which PCs exist in the party and what they can do, hitting their strong points over and over again? Not the kind of game I'd find enjoyable for sure.


Then I guess you wouldn't enjoy many Purple Worms against your Wizards? I never said use my example as a repeated encounter. Things like this are just one kind.



What's wrong with "use ToB"? Fixes most of the problems handily. Now DM doesn't need to worry about party members feeling useless and he can design encounters that fit the damn campaign instead of having to worry about the Fighter sucking.

"Fitting the campaign" is a poor excuse for a DM who can't make a balanced encounter, in my opinion. DMs should be determining what goes into their games based on what's fun for his or her players, first and foremost. And really, you can get anything to fit into a campaign, unless it's very genre-specific, in which case you can't really make comments regarding the effectiveness of a class, because by favoring specific encounters you've already altered things such that whatever power it was originally designed to have had is no longer constant.



When building world and the creatures that dwell some places and encounter tables, you shouldn't have to start thinking "oh, but there's a Monk in the party, I can't use enemies with damage reduction..." or "oh, the party doesn't have flying so even though they're passing through this land of the dragons I can't have them face any..." That just detracts from the immersion and the feel of the game all for the sakes of mechanical equality. To me, the former are more important, but I'd rather take both given the option.

You don't HAVE to ruin immersion by making encounters that fit a party. You can just use some monsters less often. Besides, the MMs are *packed* with a variety of monsters, each found in such vague terrains as "Warm Mountains". You don't have to contradict any rules to make some players feel appreciated. You just can't say "Well half of these monsters are stupid, so I'm just going to absolutely ignore them despite any ramifications this might have on how my game operates".

Dark_Scary
2009-05-29, 09:12 PM
Deepblue. Your solution is to have the Wizard completely surrounded inside a room with a lower ceiling then the height of the monsters surrounding him, and for him to not have seen this coming for even a single round, despite -a crap ton hide checks.

No, not likely.

How about, the Wizard with even a single round of preparation can make himself largely invulnerable to the centipedes, and then proceed to deal with them.

Cloudkill well place hits 3-4 minimum, since you don't need to encase them, merely affect a single square they are in. Then just move it around in circles under your Mirror Image effect to kill them.

Alternatively, teleport so they are all on one side (this is not hard at all. In fact, you cannot actually create a situation in which this cannot be done without the centipedes teleporting from thin air, in which case, welcome to anticipate teleport), from there, solid fog in front of him would slow all of them.

My personal solution? Silent Image. Yes, First level spells beat NI vermin.

Eldariel
2009-05-29, 09:25 PM
Not familiar with Circlet of Rapid Casting, but okay. Two Hydras is pretty good. Although, you have to win initiative against 20 checks before you can do this, each of theirs is at +2. Edit: And these guys have a +15 grapple coming at you.

Meh, a Wizard is like to have them beat in terms of Initiative, but as it's not reliable enough due to the sheer volume of rolls, he might indeed be in trouble; although this much comes down to how he ended up getting surrounded by 20 Huge Centipedes without any defensive buffs or awareness of them on. But yeah, if you get Grappled, Dimension Door the hell out of there and come back with spells on (the risk of getting grappled when under mirror image & displacement is much smaller...).

Circlet of Rapid Casting is from Magic Item Compendium; 10k or something and has 3 daily charges to quicken level 2 spells with 1 charge, level 3 spells with 2 charges or a level 4 spell with 3 charges.


A Fighter who invests in Combat Focus feats, has Improved Grapple and Close-Quarters Fighting (This is something I often do with Fighters, so please don't take this as "Yeah there are feats hiding out there, somewhere...so it's possible!") will be able to avoid grapples before his turn comes around (as his first few checks will be somewhere in the 40s, then later in the 30s). They will be very hard pressed to get at him, even if he's flat-footed. On his turn, he can make use of magic items of his own, or just start hacking away.

I'd imagine the Fighter would be in danger trouble due to their Dex-poison. With 20 of them, there'll be hits if you engage them head-on and each hit is a DC 14 Fort-save; not bad in and of itself but if you have to roll 10 or 20 of them, things get much worse. And the fight is like to be long enough to warrant secondary saves too; 1d6 means if the Fighter is Dex-dumped, he'll be out cold with two-three unlucky saves, and even if he has 14 Dex, it'll be ~4-5 rolls (4*d6 averages at 14).


A few centipedes could grapple them, and the rest could still be heading for you.

Centipedes don't have Improved Grab nor Improved Grapple so them succeeding in the Grab-attempts is going to be a problem with their relatively poor AC, especially if the summon is Bearded Devil (in Battle Frenzy, it has +11 so it needs a mere 5 to hit on the AoO). Also, Bearded Devil has a decent chance at winning the opposed Grapple-checks being 5 points behind the Centipedes, and even when grabbed, it has a decent chance at getting there with the Claws.

Also, Bearded Devil has Greater Teleport At Will so it can get out of Grapple whenever it wants to. Admittedly it won't be enough to deal with them all alone (summons have limited duration), but it can get their attention and cut down a couple (especially since all the ones it has struck with its glaive die to Infernal Wound eventually).

Hound Archon fares slightly less impressively, but it has, among others, the option of Change Shaping into Dire Wolf, which gives him decent Grapple-score (due to Large size) along with the Trip-attack.


Cloud Kill won't be effective enough, because it's a 20ft radius. These guys have a 15ft space.

This still means you can hit 4 of them with one and it'll persist; seeing they aren't very intelligent, they might not have the brains to avoid it. You'll have to burn a few spells on this, but a Cloudkill is definitely a good starting point, especially if you've managed to pipe them somehow.


Teleport won't work if you happen to be fighting in close-quarters, although since I omitted that I can't hold it against you. Still these suckers have a 80ft charge distance; it won't be easy for you.

Certainly you came in there somehow; going ~100ft away in that direction gives you time.


Black Tentacles won't be very effective, as its your +17 vs their +15. Might get a few, and make it difficult for a few to come at you, but at best you're delaying death.

*shrug* It's definitely not the best option here, but it does something.


Solid Fog sounds like a really good idea, but it's just a 20ft radius. They'll be close, so you'll need to act very quickly.

Well, if you really just need to buy time, you can always use Wall of Stone in a sphere-shape; stops them for quite the while. Chances are actually good you'll have one prepared.


Lesser Planar Binding is HD 6 or less. Mind providing an example of what's particularly good?

Well, Bearded Devil and Succubus are both fair choices; although in this case you'd probably hope you picked the Devil - thanks to its DR and teleportation abilities it's eventually going to kill them.


Wall of Stone is an effective way to hide; but not to be a ninny, I did ask for methods of dealing with the problem that don't include just hiding until it goes away.

My point was that it buys you prep rounds to summon stuff or put your buffs up or whatever. Of course, you can also use it to split the group up; two bunches of 10 Centipedes is much easier than one group of 20.


Please note that I'm sticking to Core-options here; out-of-Core, the Wizard of course gets Nerveskitter to really skew the Initiative-check in his favor, along with Ray of Stupidity (I just realized they're Fiendish which makes them not-immune to mind-affecting stuff 'cause they now have an Int-score) and good stuff.

My point really is that the generic Wizardly spell suite might just be sufficient to kill them. If not, it's at the very least enough to escape. The Fighter might have a chance too, but I'd rather bet on the Wizard whose plan involved much less "get nailed". Overall, in these solo challenges, I prefer Wizard simply because he gives opponents much less rolling than a Fighter; that is, Wizard can use much of his powers to avoid having to roll crap in the first place.


EDIT: The Concentration DC for casting Dimension Door in the combat is 24. By level 9, you'll have 12 ranks and probably +3 Constitution (+2 to start with, +1 more from item); this means +15 or 60% chance. Now, if he's got any +5 Concentration-items, he'll be making the check 85% of the time. So again, it's more likely than not that he'll make it. As Dimension Door only has Verbal components, it's impossible for the Centipedes to stop him the first round as they'd need a second round to Pin.

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-05-29, 11:16 PM
Honestly, I am a Wizard supporter. I view them as one of the most overpowered classes, with far too many options, covering far too many roles. However:They are NOT FIGHTERS! If you want to talk about the Melee/Caster disparity, compare a Cleric, Druid, PsyWar, or Wu Jen to a Fighter, Barbarian, or similar. Compare a party without an arcanist to a party without a meatshield. That says a lot more. Wizards are Battlefield Control, Utility, Debuffing, Buffing, Save-or-X(mass) and single-target Save-or-Die. Not 'killing things'. The point of playing a God-Wizard, though, is that the party is more effective because of you. You turn encounters that would be TPKs into a cakewalk, and do it in such a way that the Fighter and Rogue walk out felling like they did all the work, while all you did was toss Haste, Solid Fog, and a few other 'minor' spells. Operating alone is not their forte. Compare the Big Stupid Fighter to Big Stupid Casters, leave God to play God.

Heck, there is currently a Test of Might going on on these boards. Look at the parties submitted, and see how well they do. That will say a lot more than this debate about where balance lies.

Deepblue706
2009-05-30, 12:38 AM
Deepblue. Your solution is to have the Wizard completely surrounded inside a room with a lower ceiling then the height of the monsters surrounding him, and for him to not have seen this coming for even a single round, despite -a crap ton hide checks.

No, not likely.


The Verminator installed massive secret passageways, which aren't readily visible because it's underground and dark.

Whatever I need to say to appease you. This is purely hypothetical anyway.



How about, the Wizard with even a single round of preparation can make himself largely invulnerable to the centipedes, and then proceed to deal with them.

Okay, what spell?



Cloudkill well place hits 3-4 minimum, since you don't need to encase them, merely affect a single square they are in. Then just move it around in circles under your Mirror Image effect to kill them.


Mirror Image will get you 1d4+3 duplicates. Let's say you grab 6; This is a very good start, but it hardly means you've nothing to worry about.

Cloudkill will move away from you 10ft per round. And it continues to move 10ft from the origin each round. You don't actually control it. You'll certainly catch a few, but if even just one gets you, that's all it takes (they have DR 5/magic; if you can't get through that with your AoO, they're grappling you and you've got very few ways out of that).



Alternatively, teleport so they are all on one side (this is not hard at all. In fact, you cannot actually create a situation in which this cannot be done without the centipedes teleporting from thin air, in which case, welcome to anticipate teleport), from there, solid fog in front of him would slow all of them.

Trap doors!

And sure, Solid Fog would slow them. But then you still have to kill them.



My personal solution? Silent Image. Yes, First level spells beat NI vermin.

Sure, that's a pretty good spell to use here. Vermin are still vulnerable to chasing Figments. Although, unless you're hidden, yourself, there's nothing to stop them from coming after you, yourself, as well.


Meh, a Wizard is like to have them beat in terms of Initiative, but as it's not reliable enough due to the sheer volume of rolls, he might indeed be in trouble; although this much comes down to how he ended up getting surrounded by 20 Huge Centipedes without any defensive buffs or awareness of them on. But yeah, if you get Grappled, Dimension Door the hell out of there and come back with spells on (the risk of getting grappled when under mirror image & displacement is much smaller...).

Well, I'd assume regular buffs like Mage Armor would be there. But, you're right, getting out of there and getting oneself defenses superior to AC boosts is going to give the Wizard much better chances.

As for getting surrounded, I know it's absurd. The whole premise was meant to be, from the beginning (I mean, 20 HUGE FIENDISH MONSTROUS CENTIPEDES?!). But, I was curious to see what kind of gymnastics a wizard would have to go through to fight back, since I felt a single monster inherently favors casters, due to them having a huge power boost, so that they can do something in every combat. If they didn't have that power, then nobody would want to play a class that can only use its techniques X times/day while Fighters can hypothetically just smack things all day long.



Circlet of Rapid Casting is from Magic Item Compendium; 10k or something and has 3 daily charges to quicken level 2 spells with 1 charge, level 3 spells with 2 charges or a level 4 spell with 3 charges.


Neat.



I'd imagine the Fighter would be in danger trouble due to their Dex-poison. With 20 of them, there'll be hits if you engage them head-on and each hit is a DC 14 Fort-save; not bad in and of itself but if you have to roll 10 or 20 of them, things get much worse. And the fight is like to be long enough to warrant secondary saves too; 1d6 means if the Fighter is Dex-dumped, he'll be out cold with two-three unlucky saves, and even if he has 14 Dex, it'll be ~4-5 rolls (4*d6 averages at 14).


These guys have a +5 to attack, mind you. Unless the Fighter has completely neglected his AC, these guys will only hit the Fighter on a 20 (he can afford to use Combat Expertise for a point or two, since these guys only have an AC of 16). They also need to crowd around him, and they're just too big for them to all get at him at once.

If you think it's reasonable for a Wizard to have a min/level spell-or-two up, then I'll go with that. I'd say there's also no reason why the Fighter couldn't have earlier had a potion of Heroism, which is a +2 to saves. This, paired with a Cloak of Resistance +1, give your average 14 CON Fighter a 75% to avoid poison. Although, if he's really worried about Poison, he could have a potion of Delay Poison as well (which'll last what, three hours?).



Centipedes don't have Improved Grab nor Improved Grapple so them succeeding in the Grab-attempts is going to be a problem with their relatively poor AC, especially if the summon is Bearded Devil (in Battle Frenzy, it has +11 so it needs a mere 5 to hit on the AoO). Also, Bearded Devil has a decent chance at winning the opposed Grapple-checks being 5 points behind the Centipedes, and even when grabbed, it has a decent chance at getting there with the Claws.


Since the Bearded Devil doesn't have Combat Reflexes, he can only make 1 AoO a round. He's not going to be able to do much to keep them from coming at you. He probably won't get killed, but if he's pinned he'll be useless until...



Also, Bearded Devil has Greater Teleport At Will so it can get out of Grapple whenever it wants to. Admittedly it won't be enough to deal with them all alone (summons have limited duration), but it can get their attention and cut down a couple (especially since all the ones it has struck with its glaive die to Infernal Wound eventually).

Sure, he'll hurt a few of them; but since they're fiendish they have DR 5/magic. He's not going to do all that much with a regular glaive. At best, he delays some of them.



Hound Archon fares slightly less impressively, but it has, among others, the option of Change Shaping into Dire Wolf, which gives him decent Grapple-score (due to Large size) along with the Trip-attack.


To be honest, I think this'd be better than the Bearded Devil, based on the Dire Worf form alone.



This still means you can hit 4 of them with one and it'll persist; seeing they aren't very intelligent, they might not have the brains to avoid it. You'll have to burn a few spells on this, but a Cloudkill is definitely a good starting point, especially if you've managed to pipe them somehow.


Honestly, I'd probably just have them take the fastest route to you; but since they're so big, they'll probably be blocking each other, to some degree, from the cloud. You'll still have some coming after you. But, of course it's a great start.



Certainly you came in there somehow; going ~100ft away in that direction gives you time.


Definitely. Although unless you've got a lot of the right spells prepared, it's still going to be a challenge clearing them out; although if you change the environment in which the battle happens and get a significant terrain advantage, then this will also affect CR.



*shrug* It's definitely not the best option here, but it does something.


I think your other ideas were better.



Well, if you really just need to buy time, you can always use Wall of Stone in a sphere-shape; stops them for quite the while. Chances are actually good you'll have one prepared.


Not bad. That'll give you 9 rounds. Although, I'm pretty sure you can't do anything this way; you'll need to hope your summons take care of the fight, or hopefully you've got something good cookin' in there.



Well, Bearded Devil and Succubus are both fair choices; although in this case you'd probably hope you picked the Devil - thanks to its DR and teleportation abilities it's eventually going to kill them.


As I noted, the Centipedes have DR of their own. His glaive will on-average deal 3 damage, and most claw attacks will fail to do a thing. Their average damage on him with be 6 (after DR), so after 8 hits he'll be down for the count. It'll be a lengthy fight, but my money is on the horde of centipedes.



My point was that it buys you prep rounds to summon stuff or put your buffs up or whatever. Of course, you can also use it to split the group up; two bunches of 10 Centipedes is much easier than one group of 20.


Of course.



Please note that I'm sticking to Core-options here; out-of-Core, the Wizard of course gets Nerveskitter to really skew the Initiative-check in his favor, along with Ray of Stupidity (I just realized they're Fiendish which makes them not-immune to mind-affecting stuff 'cause they now have an Int-score) and good stuff.

I forget Nerveskitter's effects; although if we're going to use more non-core stuff, I'll need to find more monster manuals to keep up, no doubt.

But, moving along...****. I thought they were still Vermin. So much for that.

Dropping Fiendish makes them lose their DR, giving the Bearded Devil better chances; although then they're vermin again. Well, the Encounter Calculator says 27 normal ones match the same CR, although really at this point it should be scrapped now because it'd be wrong to continue the argument when we don't have things on a consistent basis.



My point really is that the generic Wizardly spell suite might just be sufficient to kill them. If not, it's at the very least enough to escape. The Fighter might have a chance too, but I'd rather bet on the Wizard whose plan involved much less "get nailed". Overall, in these solo challenges, I prefer Wizard simply because he gives opponents much less rolling than a Fighter; that is, Wizard can use much of his powers to avoid having to roll crap in the first place.

Yeah, it might be. I hadn't actually presented this in a way to say Wizards would always lose. But, I think this kind of encounter would at least help him appreciate having a Fighter around, since their abilities are usually reliable in circumstances where a Wizard isn't fully prepared to handle something different.



EDIT: The Concentration DC for casting Dimension Door in the combat is 24. By level 9, you'll have 12 ranks and probably +3 Constitution (+2 to start with, +1 more from item); this means +15 or 60% chance. Now, if he's got any +5 Concentration-items, he'll be making the check 85% of the time. So again, it's more likely than not that he'll make it. As Dimension Door only has Verbal components, it's impossible for the Centipedes to stop him the first round as they'd need a second round to Pin.

Sure. But, he's got to be ready to launch his next spell, because they'll be at him if he's still in sight.

Deepblue706
2009-05-30, 12:48 AM
Honestly, I am a Wizard supporter. I view them as one of the most overpowered classes, with far too many options, covering far too many roles. However:They are NOT FIGHTERS! If you want to talk about the Melee/Caster disparity, compare a Cleric, Druid, PsyWar, or Wu Jen to a Fighter, Barbarian, or similar. Compare a party without an arcanist to a party without a meatshield. That says a lot more. Wizards are Battlefield Control, Utility, Debuffing, Buffing, Save-or-X(mass) and single-target Save-or-Die. Not 'killing things'. The point of playing a God-Wizard, though, is that the party is more effective because of you. You turn encounters that would be TPKs into a cakewalk, and do it in such a way that the Fighter and Rogue walk out felling like they did all the work, while all you did was toss Haste, Solid Fog, and a few other 'minor' spells. Operating alone is not their forte. Compare the Big Stupid Fighter to Big Stupid Casters, leave God to play God.

Heck, there is currently a Test of Might going on on these boards. Look at the parties submitted, and see how well they do. That will say a lot more than this debate about where balance lies.

I agree the Wizard is invaluable. And overpowered, sure. But I thought someone ought to try to show that not all examples of Wizard superiority are completely fair; these sort of things appear to lead to many misconceptions and even looks as if it unrightly alienates those who have the audacity to play classes like the Fighter or Monk.

But anyway, I'll have to check out Test of Might. I agree, watching things play out will probably show us much more than throwing about hypotheticals that lack the context of an actual game.

J.Gellert
2009-05-30, 04:33 AM
And how is he getting inside the Rope Trick, or Magnificent Mansion, or past the "if my brain-dead ally gets any stupid ideas one night" Contingency, or any number of other things? The Wizard's Familiar on the lookout, even. A Raven's eyesight is better than a Fighter's Hide.

Buy the wizard a prostitute at the best tavern in town... See if he doesn't use the Mansion that night. :smallsmile: Remember, he doesn't have a familiar, he traded it for Abrupt Jaunt.

Eldariel
2009-05-30, 04:36 AM
Buy the wizard a prostitute at the best tavern in town... See if he doesn't use the Mansion that night. :smallsmile: Remember, he doesn't have a familiar, he traded it for Abrupt Jaunt.

Obtain Familiar... Really, every Wizard has a familiar unless he's a Gish. And probably even then.

Dark_Scary
2009-05-30, 04:57 AM
The Verminator installed massive secret passageways, which aren't readily visible because it's underground and dark.

Whatever I need to say to appease you. This is purely hypothetical anyway.

Why stop there? Let's just have the Vermamancer use his magic to start the centipedes already grappling the Wizard?

Nothing you say is going to appease me that 20 centipedes are going to simultaneously climb out of 20 shafts without the Wizard having made any of his elevendy billion checks to see this coming in a very specific room that people don't walk into without ****ing thinking for maybe eight seconds.

Also, underground passages are the most likely to be found, and it is definitionally not dark to the Wizard if he is there, because he has darkvision/blindsight/or a ****ing light source.


Okay, what spell?

Greater Mirror Image + Displacement + AC already not likely to be hit = Not getting hit.

Silent Image = 100% chance of not getting hit.

Stoneskin/swift action expending Heart of Earth for Stoneskin.

Invisibility

Blacklight


Cloudkill will move away from you 10ft per round. And it continues to move 10ft from the origin each round. You don't actually control it.

Yes, and by changing your location, you then can direct away from you to be whatever direction you want.


You'll certainly catch a few, but if even just one gets you, that's all it takes (they have DR 5/magic; if you can't get through that with your AoO, they're grappling you and you've got very few ways out of that).

See that whole, having defenses thing above.


Trap doors!

Which has nothing to do with the fact that you can still teleport to the other side of trap doors.


Sure, that's a pretty good spell to use here. Vermin are still vulnerable to chasing Figments. Although, unless you're hidden, yourself, there's nothing to stop them from coming after you, yourself, as well.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
X_____________X
X_____________X
X_____________X
X______me_____X
X_____________X
X_____________X
X_____________X
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

X=NI centipedes.
__=Illusion of wall.

me=100% protection from centipedes.

To add to all this, you bring out all this crazy crap to anti-Wizard with the centipedes, and then just say, "Oh yeah, fighter doesn't get hit except on a 20."

Guess what, Centipedes can actually just touch attack grapple him, And in fact, because they can actually hit his touch AC, what with it being lower then the Wizards, and no buffs to cancel it, and no way of escaping save brute Str (which isn't much, since he's got maybe a +17 at most, an more likely a +15).

Hey look, the Centipedes can after starting a grapple all go for the pin, and in fact can all 20 attack at once, thanks to the grappling rules. So more likely, the Fighter gets pinned by 15 or so centipedes and can't break out as fast as they can reapply the pin, and ends up taking grapple damage till he dies.

If only he had Silent Image or Greater Mirror Image or the ability to teleport.

lesser_minion
2009-05-30, 04:58 AM
Buy the wizard a prostitute at the best tavern in town... See if he doesn't use the Mansion that night. :smallsmile: Remember, he doesn't have a familiar, he traded it for Abrupt Jaunt.

He takes said individual back to his mansion? I doubt his response would be any different to how he would respond if he had managed to pull on his own - minus the "how do you pull with charisma 6?!?"

ghost_warlock
2009-05-30, 05:19 AM
These are the changes I'm kicking around for my homebrew 3rd edition games, called 3G:

At 1st level, a fighter may choose two additional skills to add to his or her list of class skills, representing non-combat training and experience. Also at 1st level, a fighter chooses to be either a Guardian or a Weapon Master. Each choice confers a different set of abilities, detailed below. Furthermore, at 10th-level, all fighters become able to charge as a move-action (rather than as a full-round action), but may only move his or her speed when doing so (rather than up to twice his or her speed). A fighter can use his or her standard action either before or after charging in this way.

Guardian fighters
Add Sense Motive to the character’s list of class skills and gain a +2 bonus to that skill.
At 3rd level, Guardian fighters learn Helpful Hints, allowing them to make an Aid Another action at a range of 60 feet, providing a +2 bonus to an ally's attack roll or Armor Class against a specific opponent. The fighter must use a standard action and succeed on an attack roll against AC 10 to use this ability.
At 6th level, Guardian fighters learn Cover, allowing them to transfer the Armor Class bonus provided by their shield to an adjacent ally as a move action.
At 9th level, Guardian fighters learn Durability, granting DR 2/- whenever the character is wearing medium or heavy armor.

Weapon Master fighters
Add Bluff to the character’s list of class skills and gain a +2 bonus to that skill.
At 3rd level, Weapon Master fighters learn Dirty Tricks, providing a +2 bonus on disarm, sunder, and trip attacks as well as a +2 bonus on Bluff checks made to feint.
At 6th level, Weapon Master fighters learn Rain of Blows, allowing the character to make an additional attack with a main-hand weapon at a -3 penalty when making a full attack.
At 9th level, Weapon Master fighters learn Storm of Blows, which expands Rain of Blows to allow the character to make another additional attack with a main-hand weapon at a -6 penalty when making a full attack.


Incidentally, this is what I'm thinking about doing for monks:

Gain the Decisive Strike feature from Player’s Handbook II in addition to flurry of blows. Monks can decide which (if either) of these abilities to use on a round-by-round basis. Additionally, monks may use their Wisdom modifier in place of their Strength modifier for attack and damage rolls with unarmed strikes and with monk weapons. Monks gain 6 + Intelligence mod skill points per level.

mostlyharmful
2009-05-30, 05:27 AM
The Verminator installed massive secret passageways, which aren't readily visible because it's underground and dark.

Whatever I need to say to appease you. This is purely hypothetical anyway.

Yes, it would need to be for a wizard to walk into a confinded space without any buff spells, divination prepwork or allies and then both the wizard and the familiar fluff twenty plus spot and listen rolls for them to get this ambush going.:smallconfused:



Okay, what spell?

Well improved mirror image to start with (Immediate action casting) but I think he was getting at the stuff with long duration effects or item of the same, ring of Invis, Mage armour (greater for +6), overland flight or Phantom Steed, Contingency, Heart of X line, Greater Blink, Planar Binding minions with god knows what to add in, etc......

Once you've got a free round or two on you can start layering on Greater Invis, Blurr or whatever floats your boat, this is a huge CR for one guy to fight alone so you may as well nova.



Mirror Image will get you 1d4+3 duplicates. Let's say you grab 6; This is a very good start, but it hardly means you've nothing to worry about.

Much, much less to worry about given only a few at a time can target him and he only needs a few rounds to buff, summon, Battlefield control, transform his familiar, escape, whatever...


Cloudkill will move away from you 10ft per round. And it continues to move 10ft from the origin each round. You don't actually control it. You'll certainly catch a few, but if even just one gets you, that's all it takes (they have DR 5/magic; if you can't get through that with your AoO, they're grappling you and you've got very few ways out of that).

You catch a few in this and in a confinded space such as our idiot mage has just wandered into with such huge thingies in it I reckon we'll catch more than a few, also a few is enough to be going on with since we can withdraw and fight another day if we want with adequate prep buffs and divinations this time. I kon't get what DR or AoO have to do with them suffering a Cloudkill?



Trap doors!

And sure, Solid Fog would slow them. But then you still have to kill them.

Solid Fog slows some of them, leaving you less to deal with at once, this is battlefield control at it's fineist. one on five is easier than one on twenty (although how all twenty get to threaten him at the same time with grapples and initiative rolls I'm not sure given how big they are).



Sure, that's a pretty good spell to use here. Vermin are still vulnerable to chasing Figments. Although, unless you're hidden, yourself, there's nothing to stop them from coming after you, yourself, as well.

Ring of Invis, decent Hide check, the Figment of a big rock that you hide inside, whatever....



Well, I'd assume regular buffs like Mage Armor would be there. But, you're right, getting out of there and getting oneself defenses superior to AC boosts is going to give the Wizard much better chances.

greater mage armour, shield, protection from evil, better dex score, cat's grace or item of dex, ring of protection, about a bajillion other things if he cares about AC rather than miss chance or just being unfindable..... a wizard can have an AC that the Fighter can't come close to on top of layered defenses he can't match.


As for getting surrounded, I know it's absurd. The whole premise was meant to be, from the beginning (I mean, 20 HUGE FIENDISH MONSTROUS CENTIPEDES?!). But, I was curious to see what kind of gymnastics a wizard would have to go through to fight back, since I felt a single monster inherently favors casters, due to them having a huge power boost, so that they can do something in every combat. If they didn't have that power, then nobody would want to play a class that can only use its techniques X times/day while Fighters can hypothetically just smack things all day long.

No they can't. Fighters have an expended resource in hp, so long as they are trading blows with whatever they're burning through it. refuelling needs either a helpful caster or items made by one, which means any fighter that wants to be an energizer bunny needs caster support in one form or another.



Neat.

great item, combined with the rules on adding +int for no extra cost beyond the basic item price... wooo.



These guys have a +5 to attack, mind you. Unless the Fighter has completely neglected his AC, these guys will only hit the Fighter on a 20 (he can afford to use Combat Expertise for a point or two, since these guys only have an AC of 16). They also need to crowd around him, and they're just too big for them to all get at him at once.

See notes on Mage ac and defense above, also I see the fighter doesn't have to take them all on at once:smallconfused:


If you think it's reasonable for a Wizard to have a min/level spell-or-two up, then I'll go with that. I'd say there's also no reason why the Fighter couldn't have earlier had a potion of Heroism, which is a +2 to saves. This, paired with a Cloak of Resistance +1, give your average 14 CON Fighter a 75% to avoid poison. Although, if he's really worried about Poison, he could have a potion of Delay Poison as well (which'll last what, three hours?).

Which are all available to a mage as well. And no, it's not reasonable for a wizard to have a min/level spell-or-two up when they're walking into a trap laced, monster infested hole in the ground, they'll have dozens above and beyound the basic suite of hours/level and 24 hour buffs they should have on. Oh, and they should have dived the crap out of the place long before going into it and brought along minions that don't cost XP (bound, paid, mindganked, summoned, raised, created, whatever).



Since the Bearded Devil doesn't have Combat Reflexes, he can only make 1 AoO a round. He's not going to be able to do much to keep them from coming at you. He probably won't get killed, but if he's pinned he'll be useless until...


His job isn't to stop them coming at the mage, it's to inflict punishment. The mage is more than capable of looking after himself.


Sure, he'll hurt a few of them; but since they're fiendish they have DR 5/magic. He's not going to do all that much with a regular glaive. At best, he delays some of them.

He only needs to do six points of damage to kill the thing, five to beat DR and one to start the cursed wound on it. It'll take a while but who cares?



To be honest, I think this'd be better than the Bearded Devil, based on the Dire Worf form alone.

Meh, both work, both cost nothing, both leave the mage safe, whatever.



Honestly, I'd probably just have them take the fastest route to you; but since they're so big, they'll probably be blocking each other, to some degree, from the cloud. You'll still have some coming after you. But, of course it's a great start.

yep, them clambering over and under each other in a confined space, suck cloud spells!



Definitely. Although unless you've got a lot of the right spells prepared, it's still going to be a challenge clearing them out; although if you change the environment in which the battle happens and get a significant terrain advantage, then this will also affect CR.


No, it wont. If you change the environment then that's part of you defeating the challenge. That's like saying if you break the fight down into bits with battlefield control and kick a few at a times ass then it wasn't a real fight against 20+ scorpions. Yes it was, the wizard just used his Int to make it easier which is what he does, he used his class features to defeat the problem end of story.


I think your other ideas were better.

Black Tentacles are one part of a whole, sling half a dozen effects at them and they'll fail one or two of them. A mage can layer a battlefield in crap like this.



Not bad. That'll give you 9 rounds. Although, I'm pretty sure you can't do anything this way; you'll need to hope your summons take care of the fight, or hopefully you've got something good cookin' in there.

yep, mage. Nine rounds is golden. Incidentally, why are they continuing to smash through the rock around the mage on an Int of just Three? This is barely above dog level and the mage is out of sight, out of mind especially after 5+ rounds of no mage.



As I noted, the Centipedes have DR of their own. His glaive will on-average deal 3 damage, and most claw attacks will fail to do a thing. Their average damage on him with be 6 (after DR), so after 8 hits he'll be down for the count. It'll be a lengthy fight, but my money is on the horde of centipedes.

yep, he's not long for this world (although if I was a mage with one of these I'd be playing with the light levels, a darkness effect would be great for him). Who cares? He hits a few and they eventually die, that's his purpose, if he distracts them too then bully for him, also he may get a few healing potions if the mage wants him around to continue the dungeon crawl, maybe even some armour? or a magic bauble or two?



Of course.

yep.



I forget Nerveskitter's effects; although if we're going to use more non-core stuff, I'll need to find more monster manuals to keep up, no doubt.

But, moving along...****. I thought they were still Vermin. So much for that.

Dropping Fiendish makes them lose their DR, giving the Bearded Devil better chances; although then they're vermin again. Well, the Encounter Calculator says 27 normal ones match the same CR, although really at this point it should be scrapped now because it'd be wrong to continue the argument when we don't have things on a consistent basis.

Nerveskitter is a +5 on initiative that you can hold for hours/level and burn on one roll.



Yeah, it might be. I hadn't actually presented this in a way to say Wizards would always lose. But, I think this kind of encounter would at least help him appreciate having a Fighter around, since their abilities are usually reliable in circumstances where a Wizard isn't fully prepared to handle something different.

No, the fighter would lose, the wizard would win. With no prep time, buffs up, unusual spells preped or anything like that. This scenario leaves a dead meatshield riddled with stingers and a leveled up mage.


Sure. But, he's got to be ready to launch his next spell, because they'll be at him if he's still in sight.

which he wont be. Invis or Blink or hide or a huge Phaton Steed move or whatever.... if he chooses to escape he's gone and there's nothing a bunch of scorpians can do about it.

Epinephrine
2009-05-30, 07:13 AM
So, how do you deal with Overland Flight/Abrupt Jaunt/etc? Even if you give free Move actions to follow them, casters have ways of going places.

Magic items? There are lots of ways to fly.

It doesn't fix everything, but it means that spellcasters really do need to defend themselves sensibly, not just make a trivially easy concentration check, or 5' step.

DeathQuaker
2009-05-30, 07:59 AM
I'm one of those rare animals who likes the fighter. And I'm fine if at high levels his contribution changes from dealing damage to taking damage, flanking, and protecting the glass cannons putting out the firepower.

I do agree with some that the Fighter can get boring by level 20, but I'm also fine with the fighter as a Dip class. Multiclassing is fun, and fighter (or rogue) has often been one half of a multiclass (or dual class when that was an option) even in other editions.

That being said, I do also understand the opinion that the fighter feels bland at times. The only change I'd really make if I wanted to is to add some more "combat styles" -- let the fighter excel at building a fighting style as part of his class, not necessarily just from taking the right feat trees. Don't make it anything complex, but let, say, TWF, small weapons, THF, sword and board, each have some extra perks to a fighter.

Pathfinder started to go in the right direction with the Fighter's weapon and armor mastery, but it is still a little generic. I haven't checked the latest preview of the final version of PF, but I got the sense they were going to tweak that from what it's like in the beta, so yay. (And as far as taking myriad feats goes, the Fighter has some good options in Pathfinder. Purely for fun, I like the Dazzling Display tree, which uses Intimidate and weapon mastery to weaken foes.... a neat thing for a fighter to take that isn't just about hitting something with a sword in a different way.)

Also talking of Pathfinder, many complaints about spellcaster power has been due to spell abuse rather than the class build itself. Pathfinder has addressed this by altering and eliminating certain spells (something that got further development during Beta feedback) (and in turn, put more of the power of the classes in actual class abilities, which is why they appear "buffed" to those who are not careful readers). Of course the Pathfinder haters then claim that they changed the spells wrong. :smallsigh: Some of the spells from the beta do indeed still need work, but the beta makes a good step in that direction at least (polymorph was fixed beautifully; I don't like quite how they handled Flight, but their attempt to mitigate it via the Fly skill is understandable at least). Hopefully there will be further improvement in final.

Zeful
2009-05-30, 11:45 AM
Obtain Familiar... Really, every Wizard has a familiar unless he's a Gish. And probably even then.

Trading a feat for a familiar? With the increasingly value of feats? That's unlikely.

Deepblue706
2009-05-30, 12:06 PM
Yes, it would need to be for a wizard to walk into a confinded space without any buff spells, divination prepwork or allies and then both the wizard and the familiar fluff twenty plus spot and listen rolls for them to get this ambush going.:smallconfused:

If you look back to the original discussion, I said there's no reason why the mage couldn't have a few spells up. Although the lack of divination is due to the fact that this is supposed to be an encounter where the Wizard doesn't know everything about his enemies prior to the start. If you look to where I was discussing a Wizard's power, I said it's generally due to them having this knowledge. If you put people in scenarios where they simply don't know what's ahead, the Wizard's survivability drops because his powers are specific and limited to a number per/day.




Well improved mirror image to start with (Immediate action casting) but I think he was getting at the stuff with long duration effects or item of the same, ring of Invis, Mage armour (greater for +6), overland flight or Phantom Steed, Contingency, Heart of X line, Greater Blink, Planar Binding minions with god knows what to add in, etc......

Contingency is a 6th level spell.

Non-core spells are going to call for a non-core encounter.

Fight doesn't work when they still reach you (you're underground).



Once you've got a free round or two on you can start layering on Greater Invis, Blurr or whatever floats your boat, this is a huge CR for one guy to fight alone so you may as well nova.


I think it's a far better encounter than 1 Purple Worm (which is of same CR, yet a wizard can absolutely crush it).



Much, much less to worry about given only a few at a time can target him and he only needs a few rounds to buff, summon, Battlefield control, transform his familiar, escape, whatever...


Please, this discussion is about fighting through it, with no running away. Retreating about the room is fine, but not leaving.



You catch a few in this and in a confinded space such as our idiot mage has just wandered into with such huge thingies in it I reckon we'll catch more than a few, also a few is enough to be going on with since we can withdraw and fight another day if we want with adequate prep buffs and divinations this time. I kon't get what DR or AoO have to do with them suffering a Cloudkill?


They have a space of 15ft. Cloudkill has a radius of 20ft. Please read back if you fail to see what's going on, here.

DR was in context of a grapple. If they get a chance to grapple our wizard, he gets a single AoO. If he deals damage, the AoO fails. With DR it means pretty much one centipede is all it takes, unless the wizard has enough buffs.



Solid Fog slows some of them, leaving you less to deal with at once, this is battlefield control at it's fineist. one on five is easier than one on twenty (although how all twenty get to threaten him at the same time with grapples and initiative rolls I'm not sure given how big they are).


15ft space. Solid Fog is 20ft radius, I believe. Not all of them will be able to threaten him or grapple him, but he'll have to continuously rolling against their shenanigans.



Ring of Invis, decent Hide check, the Figment of a big rock that you hide inside, whatever....


I was trying to find ways where a wizard could deal without hiding or teleporting away from the encounter entirely.



greater mage armour, shield, protection from evil, better dex score, cat's grace or item of dex, ring of protection, about a bajillion other things if he cares about AC rather than miss chance or just being unfindable..... a wizard can have an AC that the Fighter can't come close to on top of layered defenses he can't match.


Right...if the Wizard has an opportunity to cast all of those, and still has them up at the time, he'll be okay. This isn't a discussion about the best-prepared wizard fighting a stupid encounter. This is about suddenly being dealt something absurd without being fully prepared for the encounter.



No they can't. Fighters have an expended resource in hp, so long as they are trading blows with whatever they're burning through it. refuelling needs either a helpful caster or items made by one, which means any fighter that wants to be an energizer bunny needs caster support in one form or another.


You must have missed the word "hypothetically", just like the wizard "hypothetically" knows all of the right spells, has them all ready, and always knows the encounter beforehand.



See notes on Mage ac and defense above, also I see the fighter doesn't have to take them all on at once:smallconfused:


No, neither does, because these things are Huge-sized. But, both have to beat twenty intiative checks; and the fastest among them will always be on top of you.



Which are all available to a mage as well. And no, it's not reasonable for a wizard to have a min/level spell-or-two up when they're walking into a trap laced, monster infested hole in the ground, they'll have dozens above and beyound the basic suite of hours/level and 24 hour buffs they should have on. Oh, and they should have dived the crap out of the place long before going into it and brought along minions that don't cost XP (bound, paid, mindganked, summoned, raised, created, whatever).


Why would you have every single buff up? Nobody clued you in that it was absolutely infested with monsters; these are servants of a BBEG, not native beasts. And I was trying to put a wizard specifically in a situation where he doesn't have knowledge of the encounter, because I'm trying to say that knowing every last aspect of an encounter is definitely going to change that encounter. In fact, that should make it lower CR and therefore no longer even comparable to what we were saying about the Purple Worm.




His job isn't to stop them coming at the mage, it's to inflict punishment. The mage is more than capable of looking after himself.


They're not actually that good at it.



He only needs to do six points of damage to kill the thing, five to beat DR and one to start the cursed wound on it. It'll take a while but who cares?


Well if he hits one, then gets pinned, he's got to teleport away to start fighting again. I think you could do better with your spell slots.



Meh, both work, both cost nothing, both leave the mage safe, whatever.


No, both provide enough distraction for maybe two or three. That's hardly safe.



yep, them clambering over and under each other in a confined space, suck cloud spells!


They're still 15ftx15ft.




No, it wont. If you change the environment then that's part of you defeating the challenge. That's like saying if you break the fight down into bits with battlefield control and kick a few at a times ass then it wasn't a real fight against 20+ scorpions. Yes it was, the wizard just used his Int to make it easier which is what he does, he used his class features to defeat the problem end of story.


Chaning the environment is part of defeating the challenge? No, running away ends the encounter.

Having a new encounter with say, a bottleneck, makes it no longer as much a fight. Why would you get XP for doing something effortless? If you teleported back in time to kill the BBEG in his infancy, do you still get the XP for killing his future form? Change the fight, and change the reward.



Black Tentacles are one part of a whole, sling half a dozen effects at them and they'll fail one or two of them. A mage can layer a battlefield in crap like this.

He has to take turns to do this.



yep, mage. Nine rounds is golden. Incidentally, why are they continuing to smash through the rock around the mage on an Int of just Three? This is barely above dog level and the mage is out of sight, out of mind especially after 5+ rounds of no mage.


Actually, nine rounds is the duration of the spell. But, with Int 3 they have humanlike intelligence and can do that. It's not dog intelligence; a human can have it and still operate in an adventuring party, well enough to know who his friends are, and who to kill.



yep, he's not long for this world (although if I was a mage with one of these I'd be playing with the light levels, a darkness effect would be great for him). Who cares? He hits a few and they eventually die, that's his purpose, if he distracts them too then bully for him, also he may get a few healing potions if the mage wants him around to continue the dungeon crawl, maybe even some armour? or a magic bauble or two?

Healing potions, armor and magic goods? Did you summon him while giving yourself the appropriate buffs for fighting 20 centipedes you knew nothing about yet still prepared for because you're awesome?



Nerveskitter is a +5 on initiative that you can hold for hours/level and burn on one roll.


That's pretty good, but again, if you want to play that way, I have to use different source material.



No, the fighter would lose, the wizard would win. With no prep time, buffs up, unusual spells preped or anything like that. This scenario leaves a dead meatshield riddled with stingers and a leveled up mage.


But, everything you've mentioned seems to include the mage with lots of buffs. And the Fighter with the crap I mentioned doesn't really have anything to worry about. Hell, if he happens to have Combat Vigor as one of his other two Combat Form feats, he might walk out completely unscathed.



which he wont be. Invis or Blink or hide or a huge Phaton Steed move or whatever.... if he chooses to escape he's gone and there's nothing a bunch of scorpians can do about it.

Steed will only benefit him if the terrain grants him the ability to move 180ft in a single direction and still be in the area, or if he runs away. And these are centipedes; giant bugs. Not scorpions.


Why stop there? Let's just have the Vermamancer use his magic to start the centipedes already grappling the Wizard?

Nothing you say is going to appease me that 20 centipedes are going to simultaneously climb out of 20 shafts without the Wizard having made any of his elevendy billion checks to see this coming in a very specific room that people don't walk into without ****ing thinking for maybe eight seconds.

Also, underground passages are the most likely to be found, and it is definitionally not dark to the Wizard if he is there, because he has darkvision/blindsight/or a ****ing light source.

Gee, I didn't think it'd offend you that much.



Greater Mirror Image + Displacement + AC already not likely to be hit = Not getting hit.

If we're going to be using non-core spells, maybe I ought to use non-core monsters. Also, on what turns are these cast? Unless you've got some way of quickening, you have one of these. You said one turn.



Silent Image = 100% chance of not getting hit.


If you're hiding. I said no hiding or teleporting away.



Stoneskin/swift action expending Heart of Earth for Stoneskin.


Sorry, not familiar with Heart of Earth.



Invisibility


Hiding.



Blacklight


Sorry, not familiar. Obviously to challenge your wizard I'll need to view more books.



Yes, and by changing your location, you then can direct away from you to be whatever direction you want.


By regular movement? That won't get you very far to make much of a dent in them. You'd have to teleport or dimension door. At level 9, you're not going to be able to do that very often.



Which has nothing to do with the fact that you can still teleport to the other side of trap doors.


I said no teleporting away from the fight. Additionally, that's a magic-dead zone.



XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
X_____________X
X_____________X
X_____________X
X______me_____X
X_____________X
X_____________X
X_____________X
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

X=NI centipedes.
__=Illusion of wall.

me=100% protection from centipedes.


You're hiding.



To add to all this, you bring out all this crazy crap to anti-Wizard with the centipedes, and then just say, "Oh yeah, fighter doesn't get hit except on a 20."

Guess what, Centipedes can actually just touch attack grapple him, And in fact, because they can actually hit his touch AC, what with it being lower then the Wizards, and no buffs to cancel it, and no way of escaping save brute Str (which isn't much, since he's got maybe a +17 at most, an more likely a +15).

You didn't pay attention to the feats I mentioned. Three Combat Form feats, one of which being Combat Stability. He's going to have +8 from Stability, probably +5 or +6 from STR, +9 from BAB, +4 from having Improved Grapple. More if he can afford to have a buff like Enlarge Person (which personally I'd allow to be bought as a continuous effect, using the rules for item creation). I presented a fighter with specific feats, not run-of-the-mill fighter. And you're not presenting a run-of-the-mill Wizard; you're presenting a Batman, or a God, or whatever the new phrase-of-the-week is.



Hey look, the Centipedes can after starting a grapple all go for the pin, and in fact can all 20 attack at once, thanks to the grappling rules. So more likely, the Fighter gets pinned by 15 or so centipedes and can't break out as fast as they can reapply the pin, and ends up taking grapple damage till he dies.

If only he had Silent Image or Greater Mirror Image or the ability to teleport.

No, 15 can't pin him, because they have a space of 15ft. Their reach is only 10. They're going to be clumped up, and he's got enough bonuses to shrug them off.

Anyway, I spent way too much time trying to answer these counterarguments. We may need to have a new thread for this kind of discussion, or perhaps we can stop here and observe Test of Might as suggested, instead.

tyckspoon
2009-05-30, 12:52 PM
15ft space. Solid Fog is 20ft radius, I believe. Not all of them will be able to threaten him or grapple him, but he'll have to continuously rolling against their shenanigans.

No, no, you don't cast it at the Centipedes. In this situation, you cast it centered on yourself. That creates a 20-foot safe radius of nearly impassible terrain, grants total concealment to you, and doesn't significantly hinder the wizard's options, since he'll be using AoE spells and/or summons to deal with the situation anyway.


Healing potions, armor and magic goods? Did you summon him while giving yourself the appropriate buffs for fighting 20 centipedes you knew nothing about yet still prepared for because you're awesome?

If you're referring to a Planar Bound ally/bodyguard here, it's a long term spell. The devil/elemental/whatever can be contracted for the general task of 'help me clear this den of evil' and provided goods to help with that task before the wizard gets anywhere near the Improbable Deathtrap of 20 Centipedes.


If we're going to be using non-core spells, maybe I ought to use non-core monsters. Also, on what turns are these cast? Unless you've got some way of quickening, you have one of these. You said one turn.

Greater Mirror Image is an Immediate spell; it casts like a Quickened effect. Displacement would be the standard action cast. AC improvement would be from magic items and long-term buffs, no actions needed to acquire. Although the Immediate/Swift action for that first turn was probably spent on Nerveskitter anyway.



No, 15 can't pin him, because they have a space of 15ft. Their reach is only 10. They're going to be clumped up, and he's got enough bonuses to shrug them off.


Wait, so, 20 Huge Centipedes can squeeze in to use force of numbers to grapple a Wizard to the ground, but the same space doesn't accomodate 20 Huge Centipedes trying to do the same to a Fighter?

lesser_minion
2009-05-30, 01:10 PM
You've actually just used a whole pile of non-core stuff for your fighter, and there is no reason why the wizard can't hide. Hide for a couple of rounds, grab a couple of buffs and rock & roll.

Also, a group of 20 identical monsters takes one initiative check and all act on the same count, while taking an utterly ridiculous penalty on their hide check (of which only one is taken). Wizard wins initiative, and sees them well before they can attack.

Then it's just a matter of turning invisible, layering a couple of buffs, and then slaughtering the centipedes.

As for grapples: Freedom of Movement. Auto-win all grapple checks. And yes, he will have that spell to hand, because grapples are a big threat to him.

The fighter, on the other hand, will be pinned in short order, as at least eight centipedes can attempt to grapple him every round.

I agree that this would be better placed elsewhere, however.

Dark_Scary
2009-05-30, 03:24 PM
If we're going to be using non-core spells, maybe I ought to use non-core monsters. Also, on what turns are these cast? Unless you've got some way of quickening, you have one of these. You said one turn.

1) Greater Mirror Image is an immediate action spell.

2) You already did use non core:


Three Combat Form feats, one of which being Combat Stability.

Hell, you are even using houserules for the Fighter.

So you admit that a Core Fighter has a 0% chance of beating this core encounter but a core Wizard has both a greater then 0% chance and a 100% chance of survival?


If you're hiding. I said no hiding or teleporting away.

Not Hiding. I can think of 4 ways of continuing to cast spells after you cast Silent Image, one of them is Core. You can also cast a spell that will continue to fight, and then a Silent Image quickened if need be.

Examples, Cloudkill/summons/Defenstrating Sphere (Or a crappier Sphere like Flaming or Stone).


Hiding.

RAWGR! DARK ANGRY!

Are you being purposefully obtuse because you are so thoroughly wrong? Cast any spell that continues to kill without you attacking, then invisibility. Use Greater Invisibility. Cast invis, then Summon. We've already established that a single Bearded Devil wins this entire encounter. Invisibility followed by Bearded Devil is an auto win.


By regular movement? That won't get you very far to make much of a dent in them. You'd have to teleport or dimension door. At level 9, you're not going to be able to do that very often.

1) You have all day to do this while protected.
2) You can also use spells like Baneful Transposition or Translocation Trick (which can actually be your first round way of protecting youself and getting to the outside of the pack. It also may serve to defeat the entire encounter on it's own) or Dimension Step.


I said no teleporting away from the fight. Additionally, that's a magic-dead zone.

RAWRG! DARK MORE ANGRY!

I'm not teleporting away, I am moving so they are all on one side. If I walked through a dead magic zone to get to where I am (HINT-I didn't because if I walk into one, I ****ing turn around) then why didn't the centipede wave attack me as I was walking through this zone?


You're hiding.

Except for the part where I can still cast spells? Or the part where I already cast Summon Bearded Devil?


You didn't pay attention to the feats I mentioned. Three Combat Form feats, one of which being Combat Stability. He's going to have +8 from Stability, probably +5 or +6 from STR, +9 from BAB, +4 from having Improved Grapple. More if he can afford to have a buff like Enlarge Person (which personally I'd allow to be bought as a continuous effect, using the rules for item creation). I presented a fighter with specific feats, not run-of-the-mill fighter. And you're not presenting a run-of-the-mill Wizard; you're presenting a Batman, or a God, or whatever the new phrase-of-the-week is.

So one very specific non core fighter that almost no one plays can defeat this encounter. But most die. On the other hand, I have presented a series of spells from five different schools, including three of the least banned (Transmutation/Conjuration/Illusion) and demonstrated that using maybe one or two of these the Wizard becomes completely invulnerable, but still capable of attacking back.

I'm not talking about a "God Wizard" I'm talking about using spells. Those things that any Wizard can have an infinite number of. I'm also talking about using good spells. But whatever.

EDIT: And thanks Lesser Minion, I forgot.

Swift expend Heart of Water for FoM. Continue not getting grappled while you own up on Centipedes.

Also, I'd like to add another option for beating this encounter:

Wizard casts Wall of Stone such that there is a single 5ft wide tunnel entrance to his lair for the centipedes. He then fights them one at a time, while they are squeezing, and uses some X Blade spell to kill them.

Also, I can point to the encounter rules, where there must be some reason why you can't run away, like some goal you need to accomplish, otherwise, running away gives you XP.

And I am hard pressed to see any goal not served by invisiblity and walking past. So it turns out, hiding grants XP/Loot/and accomplishes your goal.

Deepblue706
2009-05-30, 04:17 PM
No, no, you don't cast it at the Centipedes. In this situation, you cast it centered on yourself. That creates a 20-foot safe radius of nearly impassible terrain, grants total concealment to you, and doesn't significantly hinder the wizard's options, since he'll be using AoE spells and/or summons to deal with the situation anyway.

Of course you cast at on yourself. But that guy phrased it such to suggest otherwise.



If you're referring to a Planar Bound ally/bodyguard here, it's a long term spell. The devil/elemental/whatever can be contracted for the general task of 'help me clear this den of evil' and provided goods to help with that task before the wizard gets anywhere near the Improbable Deathtrap of 20 Centipedes.


How do you know it's a den of evil? It's supposed to be an unexpected encounter. If perhaps you're going somewhere believed to be completely devoid of anything living or undead, how would you know?



Greater Mirror Image is an Immediate spell; it casts like a Quickened effect. Displacement would be the standard action cast. AC improvement would be from magic items and long-term buffs, no actions needed to acquire. Although the Immediate/Swift action for that first turn was probably spent on Nerveskitter anyway.


Kay.



Wait, so, 20 Huge Centipedes can squeeze in to use force of numbers to grapple a Wizard to the ground, but the same space doesn't accomodate 20 Huge Centipedes trying to do the same to a Fighter?

I didn't say that. For instance, if only 10 can get at you at a time, the Wizard still has to worry about 20 initiative checks, because the high rollers will still get there.


You've actually just used a whole pile of non-core stuff for your fighter, and there is no reason why the wizard can't hide. Hide for a couple of rounds, grab a couple of buffs and rock & roll.



1) Greater Mirror Image is an immediate action spell.

2) You already did use non core:





Hell, you are even using houserules for the Fighter.


"A whole pile", as in three feats from the PHB2? Feats are not houserules. That's choosing feats. If you're referring to custom items, that's not a houserule either. You can just get them. It's a tool for DMs to give fun loot to players without having to buy a "Magic Item Expansion Pack", which was an idea WotC liked until they realized that was going to be their next marketing plan.

He doesn't even apply the one Complete Warrior feat I earlier mentioned because that only comes into play against Improved Grab.

In any case, if I don't know what spells the Wizard has, I can't design my encounters to provide an appropriate challenge. For this Fighter, this isn't as tough an encounter as the CR suggests. For a Wizard, a lone Purple Worm isn't as tough an encounter as THAT CR suggests (incidentally, it's the same). This may not be all that tough for the Wizard if he has the right spells, sure. But my job as a DM is to provide encounters where a Wizard can't just destroy everything alone, and to do that I have to make sure the encounter is not expected.

No, there is no readily-cited mechanical reason why a wizard can't hide. But, I was looking to see if maybe it could be done without hiding or fleeing the fight entirely. Which is the reason why I asked for methods that excluded either.



Also, a group of 20 identical monsters takes one initiative check and all act on the same count, while taking an utterly ridiculous penalty on their hide check (of which only one is taken). Wizard wins initiative, and sees them well before they can attack.

No, each combatant makes an initiative check. You might use that kind of method to speed things up, but I don't think I've ever heard of that being the default.

And I just said, they all used trap-doors. Weren't there to be hiding. Now they are.



Then it's just a matter of turning invisible, layering a couple of buffs, and then slaughtering the centipedes.


Slaughtering them with what?



As for grapples: Freedom of Movement. Auto-win all grapple checks. And yes, he will have that spell to hand, because grapples are a big threat to him.


Freedom of Movement isn't on the Wizard spell list. You can't have it on a potion, either. He'll need a standard action to activate a magical item that has it, and its necessity would only become known after the start of a fight.



The fighter, on the other hand, will be pinned in short order, as at least eight centipedes can attempt to grapple him every round.


With Combat Reflexes, a basic Fighter taking the very basic Combat Focus tree will be in very good shape. A natural dex of 14 means three AoOs. Some might have 16 at this level, which means four. If eight can try to grapple him, only four will be able to try, which could very easily be as high as +31 (Improved Grapple +4, STR 18 +4, Enlarged +5, STR item +1, BAB +9, Combat Stability and two other Combat Form feats +8).




So you admit that a Core Fighter has a 0% chance of beating this core encounter but a core Wizard has both a greater then 0% chance and a 100% chance of survival?


A purely Core Fighter? Yeah, he'd be very owned. I wasn't trying to make an encounter for a Core Fighter. I'm making an encounter that takes into account One Fighter.



Not Hiding. I can think of 4 ways of continuing to cast spells after you cast Silent Image, one of them is Core. You can also cast a spell that will continue to fight, and then a Silent Image quickened if need be.

Examples, Cloudkill/summons/Defenstrating Sphere (Or a crappier Sphere like Flaming or Stone).

Okay, these are all good, but I'm not saying this is the ultimate challenge for Wizards. This is an encounter the Wizard is not prepared for, and he's gotta fight through it.


Are you being purposefully obtuse because you are so thoroughly wrong? Cast any spell that continues to kill without you attacking, then invisibility. Use Greater Invisibility. Cast invis, then Summon. We've already established that a single Bearded Devil wins this entire encounter. Invisibility followed by Bearded Devil is an auto win.


Are you being so wrongy-wrong because you're a wrongmeister?

The point is not to pull out all of the supplements that include spells to fight this encounter; the point is to present that there are instances where a Fighter can do well and some Wizards might not.


RAWRG! DARK MORE ANGRY!

If you think I'm angry, you're imagining things.



I'm not teleporting away, I am moving so they are all on one side. If I walked through a dead magic zone to get to where I am (HINT-I didn't because if I walk into one, I ****ing turn around) then why didn't the centipede wave attack me as I was walking through this zone?


I didn't say you went through a dead magic zone to get where you are. I said there are dead magic zones on the other sides of the trap doors. They don't, because this is completely arbitrary, because the challenge also says you can't run or hide. Whatever happens, I can find an in-character reason for whatever I want to do, so I'm unconcerned with purely ideal mechanical reasons.



Except for the part where I can still cast spells? Or the part where I already cast Summon Bearded Devil?


Okay. But the Bearded Devil kinda sucks. He'll be pinned and killed pretty quickly.



So one very specific non core fighter that almost no one plays can defeat this encounter. But most die. On the other hand, I have presented a series of spells from five different schools, including three of the least banned (Transmutation/Conjuration/Illusion) and demonstrated that using maybe one or two of these the Wizard becomes completely invulnerable, but still capable of attacking back.


Sure. Because in a campaign, I'll have one specific Fighter to worry about. And by providing this challenge, he can feel great about his character.

On the other hand, unless the Wizard knows every last bit about the encounter beforehand, he's not going to totally steal the show. Now both players can have a good time when they face this fight together.



I'm not talking about a "God Wizard" I'm talking about using spells. Those things that any Wizard can have an infinite number of. I'm also talking about using good spells. But whatever.

Yes, a Wizard has many good spells. But infinite number? A DM's job is to prevent there from being too many encounters where a Wizard can actually do that, so as that the rest of the players don't feel useless. The Wizard is only so strong because his power is supposed to be limited. Give him every opportunity to do whatever the hell he wants ruins the game for everyone else.



Wizard casts Wall of Stone such that there is a single 5ft wide tunnel entrance to his lair for the centipedes. He then fights them one at a time, while they are squeezing, and uses some X Blade spell to kill them.

Doesn't that last level/round? I can't access the SRD at the moment to confirm. Sure, it'll help you a good deal; but it doesn't end the encounter.



Also, I can point to the encounter rules, where there must be some reason why you can't run away, like some goal you need to accomplish, otherwise, running away gives you XP.


Sure. But I was leaving that to your imagination, because I'm not your DM.



And I am hard pressed to see any goal not served by invisiblity and walking past. So it turns out, hiding grants XP/Loot/and accomplishes your goal.

Okay, fine.

The Verminator turns out to have Divine Ranks, and as you enter the area, his voice booms, "Fight, Mortal, and do so courageously; for if you do not, I shall smite thee into Oblivion...and then Morrowind too. That was a better game anyway. Also; why have the worlds been getting progressively smaller since Daggerfall? What a disappointment. Uh, anyway, Roll Initiative!"

Eldariel
2009-05-30, 04:52 PM
How do you know it's a den of evil? It's supposed to be an unexpected encounter. If perhaps you're going somewhere believed to be completely devoid of anything living or undead, how would you know?

The more beneficial form of Planar Binding is to contract the creature to serve you. Also, Bearded Devils are plenty capable; the scythe, if it deals even 1 point of damage, causes Infernal Wound which means the damaged target is dying soon enough and there's nothing they can do about it.

So all he needs to do is to smack a bunch of the Centipedes (in this encounter), Teleport whenever he gets Pinned and repeat until they all bleed to death; thanks to the DR he's pretty immune to whatever they do. Of course, since this is a longterm servitude, he might've actually recieved Greater Magic Weapon from the Wizard in the morning (Chained among with the rest of the party) which means he'd pierce the DR.

I seem to recall some rules passage that natural weapons with alignment subtypes are automatically treated as magical for the purposes of penetrating DR, although I might be imagining things, which would of course make Grapple much worse for them. Be that as it may, I'd definitely bet on the Bearded Devil simply on the back of Infernal Wound, DR and Greater Teleport at Will.


That said, posts are too long and this discussion has already lost all purpose so I suggest we drop it. I think we can agree that a Wizard is like to have decent tools to deal with most surprises, but of course he's still more of a party animal.

The reason I brought up Purple Worm is that in a party without an arcanist, the difficulty of that kind of an encounter is much harder than for the party without, while a similar shift doesn't really happen for a party without a Fighter-type.

Dark_Scary
2009-05-30, 05:28 PM
In any case, if I don't know what spells the Wizard has, I can't design my encounters to provide an appropriate challenge. For this Fighter, this isn't as tough an encounter as the CR suggests. For a Wizard, a lone Purple Worm isn't as tough an encounter as THAT CR suggests (incidentally, it's the same). This may not be all that tough for the Wizard if he has the right spells, sure. But my job as a DM is to provide encounters where a Wizard can't just destroy everything alone, and to do that I have to make sure the encounter is not expected.

If you don't know what spells exist in the game, that's a personal problem. If you expect to know the Wizard's prepared spells when you design encounters, you are a terrible DM.

The point is not that Wizards completely destroy every possible encounter, it's that every possible encounter is quite beatable for them, but Fighters deal with about 70% of fights they suck at, and 30% that they are as good as the Wizard.

No one has ever claimed that the Wizard always destroys everything alone.


No, there is no readily-cited mechanical reason why a wizard can't hide. But, I was looking to see if maybe it could be done without hiding or fleeing the fight entirely. Which is the reason why I asked for methods that excluded either.

Good thing only about 15 or so have been provided. Fully half of which you called running or hiding.


A purely Core Fighter? Yeah, he'd be very owned. I wasn't trying to make an encounter for a Core Fighter. I'm making an encounter that takes into account One Fighter.

So if you are designing it for a specific non-core fighter, why is the Wizard not allowed to use the Spell Compendium such that you complain every time someone names a spell, and then you say, "Well of course a core encounter is no challenge for a non-Core PC. If I wanted to challenge a non-core PC I'd use a more powerful encounter (Except if he's a Fighter I want to challenge, because then the Fighter would get owned, completely destroying my point)."


Okay, these are all good, but I'm not saying this is the ultimate challenge for Wizards. This is an encounter the Wizard is not prepared for, and he's gotta fight through it.

Except that he is prepared for it (in the sense that he has the spells needed to beat it) and he doesn't have to fight any more then the Fighter. He wins it just like he does the Purple Worm. By casting some of his spells.


The point is not to pull out all of the supplements that include spells to fight this encounter; the point is to present that there are instances where a Fighter can do well and some Wizards might not.

The point is that to say that a non-core fighter can beat an encounter designed specifically to allow him to beat it, while a Core Wizard can also beat that same encounter (designed specifically to be difficult for him), but a Non-Core Wizard can beat it better, is silly. Yes, if you are a stupid Wizard or you let your DM look at your spell list before designing encounters (That's a stupid person, not character) you might be rendered useless and forced to flee.

Wizards with Int 9 also regularly lose to most encounters too.

That doesn't prove anything, because if you raise the Fighter to a specific level, then it should be understood that the Wizard will at least be competent Core, and will in fact have other sources.

Saying a level 10 Fighter can beat encounters a level 1 Wizard can't means just as much.


If you think I'm angry, you're imagining things.

Can you read at all? My name is Dark. I am talking about me. I am angry at your continued claims that make no sense. Such as that I am surrounded be a dead magic zone but didn't walk through one to get to my present location.


I didn't say you went through a dead magic zone to get where you are. I said there are dead magic zones on the other sides of the trap doors. They don't, because this is completely arbitrary, because the challenge also says you can't run or hide. Whatever happens, I can find an in-character reason for whatever I want to do, so I'm unconcerned with purely ideal mechanical reasons.

1) If I didn't go through a dead magic zone, then I can teleport back the way I came and be on the other side of the centipede mass, allowing me to use spells that will then affect most/all of them.

2) No, you clearly can't find an in character reason for all this arbitrary bull**** you keep pulling out. You already have the Wizard and Familiar failing 40 straight listen checks, giving the Centipedes the Surprise round they need to climb out of the Trap Doors without the Wizard getting a round of prep. You are clearly just adding deeper and deeper layers of DM fiat until you can finally make this encounter have a possibility of the Wizard losing. Which you haven't reached yet.


Okay. But the Bearded Devil kinda sucks. He'll be pinned and killed pretty quickly.

See "(sp) Greater Teleport at will"


Sure. Because in a campaign, I'll have one specific Fighter to worry about. And by providing this challenge, he can feel great about his character.

And every fighter feels good when they face 500 Kobolds with no ranged weapons. But you are now claiming that I can't have a specific Wizard, I can only use spells that every Wizard ever in the history of the universe has prepared.


On the other hand, unless the Wizard knows every last bit about the encounter beforehand, he's not going to totally steal the show. Now both players can have a good time when they face this fight together.

The Wizard also steals the show when he doesn't know what's coming. The difference is that the Wizard is always good, and the Fighter sucks except when you specifically design encounters to make him "feel great about his character."


Yes, a Wizard has many good spells. But infinite number? A DM's job is to prevent there from being too many encounters where a Wizard can actually do that, so as that the rest of the players don't feel useless. The Wizard is only so strong because his power is supposed to be limited. Give him every opportunity to do whatever the hell he wants ruins the game for everyone else.

No, you still don't get it. The Wizard will have all the good spells he needs. He will then be very good (at or above the level expected by the CR mechanics) for every single fight no matter what you throw at him.

On the other hand, the Fighter will be at that level about 30% of the time, and below it the other 70%.


Doesn't that last level/round? I can't access the SRD at the moment to confirm. Sure, it'll help you a good deal; but it doesn't end the encounter.

Do you mean Wall of Stone? No, it's Instantaneous. Do you mean Blade of X? That depends. That's why I put X. Persistent Blade, a level 1 spell has a duration of 1 round/level, so you might have to use multiple level 1 spells to defeat the entire encounter.

However, you can turn your blade into a touch attack that does much more damage for a much longer duration. It really depends on the stats of the Wizard. Of course, this is low on the list, since these spells are rarely prepared, and a Defenstrating Sphere or Cloudkill is far more likely.


The Verminator turns out to have Divine Ranks, and as you enter the area, his voice booms, "Fight, Mortal, and do so courageously; for if you do not, I shall smite thee into Oblivion...and then Morrowind too. That was a better game anyway. Also; why have the worlds been getting progressively smaller since Daggerfall? What a disappointment. Uh, anyway, Roll Initiative!"

So in other words, you can't think of a plausible reason that a Wizard couldn't do whatever he wants to do without fighting either. As long as we are clear on that.

afroakuma
2009-05-30, 05:51 PM
Guys, it's admirable that you've tried to explain it to him. However, he's not in the mood to listen, he's in the mood to be right, and you let him stand on the platform where he can wait until you present a good argument and then change the rules to invalidate it.

See also Giamonk.

Seriously? That's where this is getting close to.

Remember boys and girls, this (http://xkcd.com/386/) is not in fact the end of the world.

Let it drop.

Sinfire Titan
2009-05-30, 06:38 PM
@ Deepblue: The Wizard does indeed have Freedom of Movement access. It happened when Complete Mage printed Heart of Water. HoW is a 1 hour/level spell that can be expended to give you FoM for 1 round/level. Heart of Stone is similar, but it's Stoneskin with no material component if you expend it (same duration for both effects).

Stoneskin>Centipedes. Freedom of Movement>Centipedes. Heart of Stone and Water>>Centipedes.


Totemist>Centipedes>Fighter.

Mike_G
2009-05-30, 06:45 PM
Leaving aside whether a score of giant fiendish dire centipedes can mess up a Wizard's day, our group made a few quick fighter fixes:

Now, ToB is a quick and easy way to boost the martial classes, but for those who don't like it, consider this:

The Fighter's job is to fight. The problem is, his ability to do that doesn't really scale. The only thing that does is BAB and HP. He gets lots of Feats, but those generally don't scale. Casters' spells scale, even the low level ones, with increased caster level.

Now, getting better at fighting should mean getting better at dodging and parrying, as well as knowing how to deliver a more telling blow. Therefore, we decided to give Fighters a competence bonus to AC of ½ level. This cuts down on the magic item reliance a bit, and means they won't just be meat to a touch attack, like they are now in their magic Plate. The damage bonus measn they aren't quite so reliant on Power Attack, which has its cost in accuracy or lost AC.

Making feats like Weapon Focus and Specialization scale is a good idea too. Basically, any time they'd get an additional attack, the bonus from focus/specialization increases.

Allowing them to use feats to access the Rogue special sneak attack abilities such as Crippling Strike, etc, is a good idea as well. If a Rogue can learn where to hit you and slow your movement, the guy who trained his whole life to hit you should be able to. Reduce the damage by what the average Sneak Attack reduction would be (3.5 per die) to inflict the status effect.

We also ruled that you can make a half move and still get a full attack, and a full move will only lose one of your iterative attacks, rather than all of them.

This doesn't make the fighter able to do everything the wizard can, but it makes him better at fighting, which is his job.

Woot Spitum
2009-05-30, 08:04 PM
Doesn't that last level/round? I can't access the SRD at the moment to confirm. Sure, it'll help you a good deal; but it doesn't end the encounter.Duration for wall of stone is instantaneous, so it doesn't wear off.

TheArchmage
2009-05-30, 08:35 PM
Just a suggestion: If you don't like being compared to the wizard, use IH.

Mike_G
2009-05-30, 09:28 PM
Just a suggestion: If you don't like being compared to the wizard, use IH.


I don't think that's the issue, or the solution.

People want to play in a high fantasy world, with lots of magic and so on, with Wizards and Fighters both as integral parts of the whole.

That's not unreasonable. Both are common fantasy archetypes and there is no reason they shouldn't coexist.

Nor is balance between those who use magic and those who swing a sword unreasonable. Magic is as powerful as the setting and rules decide. In this world, magicians can bend spoons and make rabbits disappear while highly trained fighters can snipe you from 1000 yards. Magic is only more powerful than three feet of steel because the spell list is written that way.

3.5 doesn't work too badly at low level. The party more or less needs all its members, and while casters can do awesome stuff a few times a day, fighters and rogues can do solid stuff many more times a day. Everyone has a role, and in a balanced adventure, everyone can contribute.

The wheels come off somewhere in the mid levels. Even without trying, the Wizards and Clerics just get much more powerful and unless they consciously
hold back, they dominate encounters and the Fighter tends to feel marginalized.

The problem isn't even the Save or Die that ends an encounter. That's part of the Wizard's metier, and is fine unless it's every encounter. The problem is when the Wizard or Cleric out melees the Fighter. This happens, easily for the Cleric, due to the self only buffs, but also for the wizard who Shares Spells and Polymorphs with his familiar and becomes two things that fight better than the Fighter, in addition to summoning or gating even more stuff that fights better than the Fighter.

Knocking down the casters' melee abilities and bumping up the Fighters at least gives each an area of strength and of weakness. Fighters shouldn't necessarily be able to do what Wizards can, but they should Fight better than anybody else, and sadly, they just don't.

Moose Fisher
2009-05-30, 09:35 PM
Tome of Battle if you don't want to homebrew anything for 3.5, or play 4e.

Now, you could homebrew similar abilities from 4e fighter powers and give them to fighters as something to gain at odd levels. A lot of 4e fighter powers knock targets prone, push them around, daze them, attack additional foes, etc. Pick up the 4e PHB or Martial power book and take a look.

Zeful
2009-05-31, 12:02 AM
Tome of Battle if you don't want to homebrew anything for 3.5, or play 4e.

Now, you could homebrew similar abilities from 4e fighter powers and give them to fighters as something to gain at odd levels. A lot of 4e fighter powers knock targets prone, push them around, daze them, attack additional foes, etc. Pick up the 4e PHB or Martial power book and take a look.

Most people don't like the ToB or 4e, and I don't blame them, both require learning something new and buying material that people really don't want to do or can't for financial reasons (don't have the money to buy every splatbook evar, so I only get the ones that interest me).

I find much of the problem to be in the differing styles the classes lean themselves to. A high level fighter isn't really doing anything different at higher levels than lower level ones, while a high level wizard is using widely different abilities than the ones he started with, and far more powerful than pretty much any option of the fighter (doubly so inside of core). Further in a world where it's possible to become so insanely skilled at what you do that you can become a God, it seems odd that a high-level fighter gets no abilities that act as an intermediary between "mundane existance" and "ascention".

Xondoure
2009-05-31, 12:09 AM
I always thought it would be cool if fighters eventually got spells that were based off of there dex/str/con scores. Basically, they have become so insane at physical combat that they are now able to break the laws of this world with his fist. That would let you gain new, powerful abilities without having to homebrew everything. I would probably use the cleric war domain, and maybe some other spells to build the list.

Zeful
2009-05-31, 12:20 AM
I always thought it would be cool if fighters eventually got spells that were based off of there dex/str/con scores. Basically, they have become so insane at physical combat that they are now able to break the laws of this world with his fist. That would let you gain new, powerful abilities without having to homebrew everything. I would probably use the cleric war domain, and maybe some other spells to build the list.

That's effectivally how ToB works, you get "spells" that you "cast", have very ridged rules to their duration and activation, but come back every encounter.

mostlyharmful
2009-05-31, 03:32 AM
If you look back to the original discussion, I said there's no reason why the mage couldn't have a few spells up. Although the lack of divination is due to the fact that this is supposed to be an encounter where the Wizard doesn't know everything about his enemies prior to the start. If you look to where I was discussing a Wizard's power, I said it's generally due to them having this knowledge. If you put people in scenarios where they simply don't know what's ahead, the Wizard's survivability drops because his powers are specific and limited to a number per/day.

Yes, if the universe is against them and they get dropped into bizarre and unexpectable encounters they'll find it harder. A few spells is all he needs but not all he would have. foreknowledge helps the wizard but all the spells we've used so far have been broad and multiapplicable.



Contingency is a 6th level spell.

Yup, so get someone to make a scroll of it before you go down the deep dark hole on your own. Or have someone use the cheesey Craft contingent spell on you.


Non-core spells are going to call for a non-core encounter.

the vast majority of stuff being used is core, non-core has been used on both sides. If the number of splats increase then that only increases the wizards versatility.


Fight doesn't work when they still reach you (you're underground).

Ghostform. Now we don't care. or else have flight and a ring of invis and just go around them. They don't take up all of the tunnel do they?


I think it's a far better encounter than 1 Purple Worm (which is of same CR, yet a wizard can absolutely crush it).

yes, but far less likely to happen. The purple worm can burst out of the ground and you've fluffed one listen check. These guys all jump out instantly from nowhere with the mage trapped and unbuffed. hmmmmm.


Please, this discussion is about fighting through it, with no running away. Retreating about the room is fine, but not leaving.

Why not? Strategic withdrawal is a perfectly reasonable response for the wizard, it doesn't mean he's finished with it just that he's using his brain. Is there a time constraint we don't know about? Why does the wizard have to use the fighters tactics?


They have a space of 15ft. Cloudkill has a radius of 20ft. Please read back if you fail to see what's going on, here.

I don't fail to see what is going on, the mage uses Cloudkill on the packed ranks of gribblies, this doesn't provoke AoO because he's invisible while doing it. If he just stood there and took it without buffing he'd be dead in a round, well done. but he uses his Int to look at the situation and think 'oh, maybe I'd better make myself a little more secure before I try to take them on...' and casts Greater Invis or Wall of Stone or Silent Image or whatever. Cloudkill (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/cloudkill.htm) doesn't need to be slapped down right next to you, go reread the spell, he can happily be inside a stone sphere or a figment rock and beat the hell out of them from hiding.


DR was in context of a grapple. If they get a chance to grapple our wizard, he gets a single AoO. If he deals damage, the AoO fails. With DR it means pretty much one centipede is all it takes, unless the wizard has enough buffs.

Oooooor.... he could be a wizard and use any one of about a bajillion transport spells or features to just leave, I like anklets of translocation for cheap grapple avoidance.


15ft space. Solid Fog is 20ft radius, I believe. Not all of them will be able to threaten him or grapple him, but he'll have to continuously rolling against their shenanigans.

No, he wont. Invisible, mirror imaged, inside a rock, whatever. They're being slowed and he gets to pick them off piecemeal. just like with the black tentacles before, this is just one thing that he lobs at them, doesn't have to stop them all.


I was trying to find ways where a wizard could deal without hiding or teleporting away from the encounter entirely.

and without divining it beforehand, and without having any buffs up and without rolling spot or listen and without any decent spells allowed and with dead magic zones and and and and and and and.

So does the Fighter start with his armour and sword in his backpack and no magic items on? It'd be about the same level. And the mage still manages just fine on basic spells.


Right...if the Wizard has an opportunity to cast all of those, and still has them up at the time, he'll be okay. This isn't a discussion about the best-prepared wizard fighting a stupid encounter. This is about suddenly being dealt something absurd without being fully prepared for the encounter.

Yes he would have the oppertunity to cast those on himself and then rest, refill his slots and then take on this hole in the ground, it's what a lone mage would do were he adventurering. After Diving the crap out of everything in it so he has a damn good idea what he's facing. This encounter is about the DM trying to gank the mage and failing.


You must have missed the word "hypothetically", just like the wizard "hypothetically" knows all of the right spells, has them all ready, and always knows the encounter beforehand.

What spells do you think he prepares, nothing but Fireball and Acid Arrow? When he's wandering into danger blindly on his own?

That being said the vast majority of the spells mentioned so far are core, obviously useful in a range of situations and arent the broken stupidity of the Poly line or chain bound Efreeti or anything else over the top this mage could pull.

Yes, I think a guy with a massive Int score, a basic grasp of tactics and some form of selfpreservation would avoid having subpar stuff clogging up his spell slots, if you want a mage to act like the game testers played them go talk to them about what got written into arcane magic but don't expect a PC to commit suicide just because you dont like non-blastamancers.


No, neither does, because these things are Huge-sized. But, both have to beat twenty intiative checks; and the fastest among them will always be on top of you.

So really we need to work out how many beat my initiative check. Then the very very very few who do go before the mage, try to grapple, he gets away (he does get away) and now there's a whacking great big roadblock on the next few right in frount of the mage. If any beat him. If this is a place too small for the mage to just be flying invisibily out of reach (still dont see why it is but meh) then they can't all charge him in round one, they've got to manoveur to get a few close by which time he's buffed and killing them.


Why would you have every single buff up?

It's a mage walking into a dark hole in the ground on his own. Why wouldn't he have everything up? Actually, scratch that, it's a mage and leave it at that.


Nobody clued you in that it was absolutely infested with monsters

Luckily I had this class feature for finding out infomation even if there's nobody to tell me it. And being a non-suicidal genius yes, I'll be doing that before wandering into somewhere dangerous.


these are servants of a BBEG,

So I'm tracking a BBEG, someone who has organized an ambush for me, sounds like an adventurer that pisses powerful people off and so has to habitually have buffs up and div areas they wander into alone.


not native beasts.

Ah, so your saying only casters would have a chance at being forewarned since skill use (Gather Info) would come up with it being an empty set of caves while Div shows you exactly what is down there.


And I was trying to put a wizard specifically in a situation where he doesn't have knowledge of the encounter,

And through DM fiat you have, and he's still beating it with his standerd set of spells, not the anti-vermin list.


because I'm trying to say that knowing every last aspect of an encounter is definitely going to change that encounter.

Yep, but not the CR. That's what magic is.


In fact, that should make it lower CR

Doesn't work that way. You can apply plusses or minusses to the CR for extreme situational advantages or disadvantages, the mage using his class features isn't either it's just him using what he's got to best effect. If the fighter charged in with nothing but a wooden spoon would you give him more xp? would you if you blindfolded himself before hand? He's doing it to himself knowingly and it shouldn't affect the encounter which is the same no matter how he chooses to prepare himself.


and therefore no longer even comparable to what we were saying about the Purple Worm.

nope, the purple worm goes down in one spell if the mage can be bothered to fight it's ground bound ass. big woop. (fighter gets the fight of his life but nevermind).



They're not actually that good at it.

If he stands there like a lemming and lets them come and then behaves like a braindead commoner like you're suggesting then no he isn't. If he's played like a mage with spells and a positive Int score then yes, he is. See previous two pages for clarification.


Well if he hits one, then gets pinned, he's got to teleport away to start fighting again. I think you could do better with your spell slots.

do you? Well thank you. I think so too. see anklets of transportation, Heart of Water, Abrupt Jaunt and any one of a number of other things. Oh, and since he has lots of slots by this point you can have a backup DimDoor no problem.


No, both provide enough distraction for maybe two or three. That's hardly safe.

In the first round it is. Then you cast wall of stone and/or any number of other things. This is the first in a series that trys to claw back the buff routine any decent mage should have gone through long before this.


They're still 15ftx15ft.

good for them. better hope the mage has got a whole lot of spells to deal with them then. oh, right, mage.



Chaning the environment is part of defeating the challenge? No, running away ends the encounter.

Having a new encounter with say, a bottleneck, makes it no longer as much a fight. Why would you get XP for doing something effortless? If you teleported back in time to kill the BBEG in his infancy, do you still get the XP for killing his future form? Change the fight, and change the reward.

You just dont get how wizards fight do you? It's with their brains first and foremost, your total aversion to strategic withdrawal might work for fighters but it arbitrarily cuts down the options of a mage, tactical and strategic movement are part of their strengths and thus far you haven't given any reason why they cant except... 'nuh-uh they aren't allowed to cause I say so, you've got to stand there like a lemon until you is ded!'

It only ends the encounter if the wizard stops interacting with them, if he starts using his crystal ball to scry them, grabs a few appropriate scrolls from his hideout, goes through a proper buff routine and ports back in to kick ass then I'd say it's still part of the same encounter but that's just me.

If it isn't part of the same encounter then you have to broaden your idea of 'fight these randon gribblies' to include the idea that maybe the class that works best with preptime will create that preptime and come back focussed on the encounter. oh, look, more xp for the mage, one encounter survived, one beaten. cool.


He has to take turns to do this.

And I'm sure his flying, invisible teleporting, mirror imaged, blurred, blinked, Ghostformed, hiding, whatevered self honestly cares. :smallamused: That is unless he's inside a wall of stone having a cup of tea while he pulls this out of the hat.



Actually, nine rounds is the duration of the spell. But, with Int 3 they have humanlike intelligence and can do that. It's not dog intelligence; a human can have it and still operate in an adventuring party, well enough to know who his friends are, and who to kill.


The spell in question was wall of stone which is instantaneous. It's pretty close to dog, a dog knows who his friends are and who trys to hurt them but if you pretend you're throwing the ball he'll run after it even if you still have it in your hand. That's about the level. Think the psychology of a toddler, he puts his hands over his eyes to hide from you.


Healing potions, armor and magic goods? Did you summon him while giving yourself the appropriate buffs for fighting 20 centipedes you knew nothing about yet still prepared for because you're awesome?

No, I planar bound him three days ago. I prepared because I'm a mage on my own with a BBEG apparently likely to sick dozens of ninja demonic vermin on me and I'm not an idiot.


That's pretty good, but again, if you want to play that way, I have to use different source material.

Go for it, this is the tame stuff. Incidentally, I don't remember anyone else saying they were limiting themselves to core-only, something you yourself haven't done, so why should the mage be?


But, everything you've mentioned seems to include the mage with lots of buffs. And the Fighter with the crap I mentioned doesn't really have anything to worry about. Hell, if he happens to have Combat Vigor as one of his other two Combat Form feats, he might walk out completely unscathed.

Yes, the mage is not an idiot. he has buffs and will use them.

The fighter on the other hand may or may not be an idiot, he may well get to the point where he'll never hide, run or prepare himself. meh, who cares. If he's using stuff that will get him out of this good for him, have a pat on the head. I don't think it will get him out unscathed but sure, go for it and see. This thread wasn't suppossed to be a mages strengths vs Fighters strengths it's suppossed to be about what needs fixing.


Steed will only benefit him if the terrain grants him the ability to move 180ft in a single direction and still be in the area, or if he runs away. And these are centipedes; giant bugs. Not scorpions.

If it doesn't grant him that then great, he gets lots of corners to hide around and snipe from, the steed does his moving for him so he can concentrate on other things. And I don't really care what they are, they're close enough to not change the mages tactics and there's nothing interesting enough to mindgank and keep as a pet.


If we're going to be using non-core spells, maybe I ought to use non-core monsters.

Ah, maybe you'll give the mage a cool pet after all.


Also, on what turns are these cast? Unless you've got some way of quickening, you have one of these. You said one turn.

rod of quicken, circlet of casting, rounds provided by wall of stone or ring of invis, teleport away and come back in five minutes after getting yourself ready like a proper mage. whatever.


If you're hiding. I said no hiding or teleporting away.

and apparently no using your class features, no tactics, no strategy, no prepwork, no skill checks, no anything that will win. You've got to behave as though you are a fighter in order to prove that fighters would win and mages would lose. Well yes, and if the fighter was forced to stand there in his underwear and wave his hands about he'd get ganked too, so what? Running or hiding doesn't prevent a mage from fighting the encounter, it does a fighter but not someone who can summon, bind, reappear and sling molten death at a moments notice, whatever.



Sorry, not familiar with Heart of Earth.

then get so, if you want to talk about mages try to know about them first.


Hiding.

yep, and still able to fight. Mage see, Mage kill. Fighter see, fighter have to actually go one on one with. Who's better in the long run?


Sorry, not familiar. Obviously to challenge your wizard I'll need to view more books.

yep.


By regular movement? That won't get you very far to make much of a dent in them. You'd have to teleport or dimension door. At level 9, you're not going to be able to do that very often.

You need to read some of the transportation abilities available through magic.


I said no teleporting away from the fight. Additionally, that's a magic-dead zone.

Yes, i'm sure there is. And someones stolen his book, and the gods are angry and the universe is turning against him, what a surprise.


You're hiding.

sigh.


You didn't pay attention to the feats I mentioned. Three Combat Form feats, one of which being Combat Stability. He's going to have +8 from Stability, probably +5 or +6 from STR, +9 from BAB, +4 from having Improved Grapple. More if he can afford to have a buff like Enlarge Person (which personally I'd allow to be bought as a continuous effect, using the rules for item creation). I presented a fighter with specific feats, not run-of-the-mill fighter. And you're not presenting a run-of-the-mill Wizard; you're presenting a Batman, or a God, or whatever the new phrase-of-the-week is.


yes, this is a run of the mill wizard played to a vague int score and with a standerd spell list, God or Batman would be far, far, far harder and faster with this one.

Deepblue706
2009-06-01, 02:41 AM
@ Deepblue: The Wizard does indeed have Freedom of Movement access. It happened when Complete Mage printed Heart of Water. HoW is a 1 hour/level spell that can be expended to give you FoM for 1 round/level. Heart of Stone is similar, but it's Stoneskin with no material component if you expend it (same duration for both effects).

Stoneskin>Centipedes. Freedom of Movement>Centipedes. Heart of Stone and Water>>Centipedes.


Totemist>Centipedes>Fighter.

Neat!


Things

Somebody is being a Rude-McRuderstein.


If you don't know what spells exist in the game, that's a personal problem. If you expect to know the Wizard's prepared spells when you design encounters, you are a terrible DM.

If I don't know what spells exist in a game, they shouldn't be in the game while I'm DMing it. I can't provide an appropriate challenge against something I know nothing about.

If you expect to know none of the Wizard's known spells when you design encounters, you're a terrible DM.



The point is not that Wizards completely destroy every possible encounter, it's that every possible encounter is quite beatable for them, but Fighters deal with about 70% of fights they suck at, and 30% that they are as good as the Wizard.

I'm pretty sure the philosophy behind the design was that if Wizard could not apply such great strength to a problem, then nobody would find his class too appealing, considering how his powers are per/day.



No one has ever claimed that the Wizard always destroys everything alone.


But they have claimed he can do so much so often that now that people constantly cite his dominance without any considerations of what a DM will add to a game, and we continue to approve of tier systems and other such devices that alienate players who don't make characters to some Minimum Optimization Standard without what considerations this has on the general attitude towards the game and how it all plays out. People who are perfectly able to play a regular game of D&D begin to feel the pressure of having to maintain a level of power, rather than have a "Game first, sheet second" attitude; which is something I think D&D can not only fully support, but even works more smoothly under due to the fact you don't have to worry about competition between players, but the DM can relax and just try to make fun encounters. This is a different approach to the same problem that people claim is solved by simple use of ToB; I differ from that opinion because I feel dismissing a player's ideal class for sake of "balance issue" is just lazy DMing. An ideal class may be substituted through the abilities of another class, but who am I to insist my players choose a class solely on the basis of "This is a more mechanically sound option" when they knew they had the option yet gravitated towards the weaker selection, anyway? I believe in cultivating whatever ideas a player has first, and then design my encounters to allow such a character to be relevent...all while still maintaining CR. As a DM I'm not present to judge, I'm there to give everyone a good time.



Good thing only about 15 or so have been provided. Fully half of which you called running or hiding.


Fully Half? Do you mean of the odd-numbered 15?

And yes, they are running and hiding. They're very effective tactics, you know; but that doesn't change what they are. I was hoping you'd just be able to satisfy my curiosity; because knowledge of what a Wizard must rely on to operate tells me of ways that he can be challenged.



So if you are designing it for a specific non-core fighter, why is the Wizard not allowed to use the Spell Compendium such that you complain every time someone names a spell, and then you say, "Well of course a core encounter is no challenge for a non-Core PC. If I wanted to challenge a non-core PC I'd use a more powerful encounter (Except if he's a Fighter I want to challenge, because then the Fighter would get owned, completely destroying my point)."


I didn't say he couldn't. I said I didn't know the spell. How can I prepare an encounter for a PC I know nothing about? You've missed the point by a long shot.



The point is that to say that a non-core fighter can beat an encounter designed specifically to allow him to beat it, while a Core Wizard can also beat that same encounter (designed specifically to be difficult for him), but a Non-Core Wizard can beat it better, is silly. Yes, if you are a stupid Wizard or you let your DM look at your spell list before designing encounters (That's a stupid person, not character) you might be rendered useless and forced to flee.

Actually, the encounter was not designed specifically to be difficult for him. It was supposed to be "more" difficult. A single low-Will monster is inherently in the favor of a Wizard and is therefore pointless to discuss.



Wizards with Int 9 also regularly lose to most encounters too.


Kay.



That doesn't prove anything, because if you raise the Fighter to a specific level, then it should be understood that the Wizard will at least be competent Core, and will in fact have other sources.


This was never really a discussion of a Wizard's competence.



Can you read at all? My name is Dark. I am talking about me. I am angry at your continued claims that make no sense. Such as that I am surrounded be a dead magic zone but didn't walk through one to get to my present location.


You've been mislead; the magic zone is a bunch of line segments that form wherever I want, which excludes the entrance and the main fighting area.



1) If I didn't go through a dead magic zone, then I can teleport back the way I came and be on the other side of the centipede mass, allowing me to use spells that will then affect most/all of them.


Other side? That implies you were at one side to begin with. Your position would be the center of a circle, formed in a very big room. The only "Other side" is the other side of the wall where the things came through to begin with.



2) No, you clearly can't find an in character reason for all this arbitrary bull**** you keep pulling out. You already have the Wizard and Familiar failing 40 straight listen checks, giving the Centipedes the Surprise round they need to climb out of the Trap Doors without the Wizard getting a round of prep. You are clearly just adding deeper and deeper layers of DM fiat until you can finally make this encounter have a possibility of the Wizard losing. Which you haven't reached yet.


I can't come up with an in-character reason? If you hadn't realized, I'm not trying. Because it's pointless, because we're not actually in a game right now.

And it's not like the Centipedes necessarily have a surprise round. They could have all coincidentally all arrived at the same time.



See "(sp) Greater Teleport at will"


Okay, they get out of grapples. That's nice. I read that already. My point was that he'll die if you don't continue to involve yourself in the fight, and if you're going to continue to involve yourself in the fight yet wanted a diversion, a Summon Monster V to get multiple animals would have probably served you better. You have better options.



And every fighter feels good when they face 500 Kobolds with no ranged weapons. But you are now claiming that I can't have a specific Wizard, I can only use spells that every Wizard ever in the history of the universe has prepared.

I didn't say you can't have a specific wizard, but I have to know what a character is capable of if I'm going to provide a real challenge.



The Wizard also steals the show when he doesn't know what's coming. The difference is that the Wizard is always good, and the Fighter sucks except when you specifically design encounters to make him "feel great about his character."

Yes, because the Wizard was designed to be awesome no matter where he is. The more spellcasting you have, the more applicable you are to any situation. Therefore a DM should take into account what players lack spellcasting sooner than those who have it, because then they're not going to have a good time.



No, you still don't get it. The Wizard will have all the good spells he needs. He will then be very good (at or above the level expected by the CR mechanics) for every single fight no matter what you throw at him.


Sure, he'll be very good. I'm not concerned with him being very good. I'm concerned with finding situations where not all Wizards will automatically defeat an encounter with Hold Monster and repeated Coup De Graces with a Scythe.



On the other hand, the Fighter will be at that level about 30% of the time, and below it the other 70%.


Who cares?



Do you mean Wall of Stone...


Disinterested.



So in other words, you can't think of a plausible reason that a Wizard couldn't do whatever he wants to do without fighting either. As long as we are clear on that.

So you mean to say in a game with Magic and Dragons, that a God might not take interest in a PC? Even if it's a badass wizard who can totally take on 20 Huge Fiendish Monstrous Centipedes, and it'd be fun to watch?

If you want better reasons, we'd have to actually play together.


Yes, if the universe is against them and they get dropped into bizarre and unexpectable encounters they'll find it harder. A few spells is all he needs but not all he would have. foreknowledge helps the wizard but all the spells we've used so far have been broad and multiapplicable.

I don't think anybody is denying that!




Yup, so get someone to make a scroll of it before you go down the deep dark hole on your own. Or have someone use the cheesey Craft contingent spell on you.

I'm not looking for a range of solutions. I was presenting a case where a wizard is not inherently prepared. Although there are certainly a great number of more instances where a Fighter will be off, the point is that both can be caught with their pants down. This is information a DM needs to consider when determining what to do with a party, not so much "how often" because a DM will control how often that aspect comes into play. Any failing to get beyond this is a failure of a DM. Players should feel no such failure, ever.



the vast majority of stuff being used is core, non-core has been used on both sides. If the number of splats increase then that only increases the wizards versatility.

My point is that if you're going to state something that isn't freely found on the web, provide a source or state why it works. A DM cannot prepare an encounter for a PC he knows nothing about.



Ghostform. Now we don't care. or else have flight and a ring of invis and just go around them. They don't take up all of the tunnel do they?


No, the tunnel is 2ft wide.



yes, but far less likely to happen. The purple worm can burst out of the ground and you've fluffed one listen check. These guys all jump out instantly from nowhere with the mage trapped and unbuffed. hmmmmm.


Leave what's likely to the DM, and what you roleplay in-character. A Wizard certainly has a right to be absolutely confused; but if a DM can find any mechanicaly justification for anything, they can do it. For instance, all of those Centipedes? They were absolutely still; therefore no need to make a Move Silently roll. And they were actually resting in little tiny cells on the other side of those trap doors; where food is magically transported via their Verminator Master/Deific Ruler/Guy with a really high bluff and an artifact that controls dumb monsters (I haven't decided which, yet).



Why not? Strategic withdrawal is a perfectly reasonable response for the wizard, it doesn't mean he's finished with it just that he's using his brain. Is there a time constraint we don't know about? Why does the wizard have to use the fighters tactics?


Of course it's perfectly reasonable. I didn't say it's dumb or wrong. I wanted to see what could be accomplished without falling back to that. I was just trying to get people to satisfy my curiosity.



I don't fail to see what is going on, the mage uses Cloudkill on the packed ranks of gribblies, this doesn't provoke AoO because he's invisible while doing it. If he just stood there and took it without buffing he'd be dead in a round, well done. but he uses his Int to look at the situation and think 'oh, maybe I'd better make myself a little more secure before I try to take them on...' and casts Greater Invis or Wall of Stone or Silent Image or whatever. Cloudkill (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/cloudkill.htm) doesn't need to be slapped down right next to you, go reread the spell, he can happily be inside a stone sphere or a figment rock and beat the hell out of them from hiding.


I never said Cloudkill needed to slapped down beside anyone. You're making assumptions. And when you make assumptions, you make an "ass" out of "u" and "mptions".

And sure, he can do that.



Oooooor.... he could be a wizard and use any one of about a bajillion transport spells or features to just leave, I like anklets of translocation for cheap grapple avoidance.


Anklets of Translocation, eh? Are you going to assume I know those too, because they're "in" this summer?



No, he wont. Invisible, mirror imaged, inside a rock, whatever. They're being slowed and he gets to pick them off piecemeal. just like with the black tentacles before, this is just one thing that he lobs at them, doesn't have to stop them all.


Sure, they'll be slowed; but they have a reach of 10ft and a move of 40ft. At 20ft a move (you've got a 20ft radius on the spell), you're not doing much. It's significant, yes; but not as significant as it is against humanoids who lack reach and have a worse speed. My point is that you'll need more tricks up your sleeves, is all; such as Invisibility or Mirror Image; however, Invisibility will probably serve you better, as six will probably be able to attack you at a time; and you've got at best 7 copies with a non-empowered Mirror Image, if I recall correctly. So, Invisibility should get you more bang for your buck. Inside A Rock is good, but my preference is to hide my position rather than fortify.



and without divining it beforehand, and without having any buffs up and without rolling spot or listen and without any decent spells allowed and with dead magic zones and and and and and and and.


Divination should not be considered a given.

Not all buffs can be considered a given. If you look back, I didn't express concern over lengthy spells.

Listen can't be a given if there's nothing to listen for. You apply it to things like "hearing something moving over there". If a bunch of things just suddenly burst in, you wouldn't have been able to roll Listen until there was movement. Which is at the point you're rolling initiative.

I didn't say anything against decent spells. I just said to tell me what you can do without running or hiding.

And Dead Magic Zones don't come into play unless you try to teleport beyond the trap doors that are outside of the encounter anyway. If you just fight, hide or flee the area entirely, there's no problem with them whatsoever.



So does the Fighter start with his armour and sword in his backpack and no magic items on? It'd be about the same level. And the mage still manages just fine on basic spells.


The Fighter can have anything constant that he enjoys having around. Okay, maybe not a sword; he bent over to tie his shoe when he gets attacked. So, it's in his scabbard.



Yes he would have the oppertunity to cast those on himself and then rest, refill his slots and then take on this hole in the ground, it's what a lone mage would do were he adventurering. After Diving the crap out of everything in it so he has a damn good idea what he's facing. This encounter is about the DM trying to gank the mage and failing.


What? Gank the mage?

As a DM I don't try to gank anyone. That's just stupid.

Casting then resting? With a CL of 9, you'll...have accomplished nothing with any spells that have an hour/level duration or less. You need eight hours of rest and one hour for the process of preparing spells. So, sure, I guess you have a free Endure Elements?



What spells do you think he prepares, nothing but Fireball and Acid Arrow? When he's wandering into danger blindly on his own?


Whatever he wants, I don't really care. Although, I think automatically assuming he's going to meet the absolute limit of his abilities each day would be either metagaming or complete paranoia. If he's legitimately paranoid, he'd probably lose a lot of sleep, which in fact has mechanical ramifications (he'll need additional rest before preparing spells, for starters). If he prepares all of his super-awesome spells each day, I could also just say he doesn't have any encounters sometimes; maybe he'll just have to occasionally deal with mundane matters that require less spells of doom and ultimate invulernability. I wouldn't exactly cheap-shot him, but since I would design encounters that include his groupmates, I would consider it as a possible means to share the spotlight. Sure, the Wizard could, after a battle, still yell at the Fighter, "I could have totally killed everything you did, in one-eighth the time and without getting hurt", but the Fighter could say, "Sure, but we really needed you to divine that the Duke's Wife is being held in Fire-Town, and ward us with magics that protect Fire-Town's Fire...so aren't you glad you still have another PC with Levels at your side, who will be contributing regardless of what Class he is, because we're in a game centered around Roleplaying and not Doing Basic Math To Determine The Best Character Build, because no matter which way it goes, the DM had to make sure the encounter was appropriate anyway and it's really not all that much work to give everyone a chance to have a good time based on what They Think Is Cool, and not What Numerically-Superior Things Came In The Last Supplement?



That being said the vast majority of the spells mentioned so far are core, obviously useful in a range of situations and arent the broken stupidity of the Poly line or chain bound Efreeti or anything else over the top this mage could pull.

Of course. And, I'm glad nobody has been saying anything stupid.



Yes, I think a guy with a massive Int score, a basic grasp of tactics and some form of selfpreservation would avoid having subpar stuff clogging up his spell slots, if you want a mage to act like the game testers played them go talk to them about what got written into arcane magic but don't expect a PC to commit suicide just because you dont like non-blastamancers.


You're making assumptions again.



So really we need to work out how many beat my initiative check. Then the very very very few who do go before the mage, try to grapple, he gets away (he does get away) and now there's a whacking great big roadblock on the next few right in frount of the mage. If any beat him. If this is a place too small for the mage to just be flying invisibily out of reach (still dont see why it is but meh) then they can't all charge him in round one, they've got to manoveur to get a few close by which time he's buffed and killing them.


To determine the iniative check, I have to know what the Wizard has. I said these guys only have a +2. A Wizard could easily have a +7 without turning many heads; which means a couple have a shot at him. If you're going to put more work into boosting it, I have to put more work in designing new encounters because obviously if you have a 100% chance of going first, can always run away or hide indefinitely, then it's not really exciting, is it. Not to say this was specifically designed, anyway. I could have just as easily said Five Million Cats; this is the first thing that I stumbled across.



It's a mage walking into a dark hole in the ground on his own. Why wouldn't he have everything up? Actually, scratch that, it's a mage and leave it at that.

Maybe because he fell for a trick by an NPC who bluffed, "There's no way anything harmful could ever possibly be in that cave, it's a sanctuary".



Luckily I had this class feature for finding out infomation even if there's nobody to tell me it. And being a non-suicidal genius yes, I'll be doing that before wandering into somewhere dangerous.


Wait, I think I know this 'class feature'. Is it called "Peeking at the DM's notes"?

There is nothing absolute about any PC's power. While a wizard has significantly more than a fighter, both are finite.



So I'm tracking a BBEG, someone who has organized an ambush for me, sounds like an adventurer that pisses powerful people off and so has to habitually have buffs up and div areas they wander into alone.


Not necessarily tracking. He could just be there, for whatever reason.



Ah, so your saying only casters would have a chance at being forewarned since skill use (Gather Info) would come up with it being an empty set of caves while Div shows you exactly what is down there.


Div shows exactly what is down there? Prying Eyes is normal vision. Contact Other Plane gets you four single-word answers to whatever questions you have, which could be lies, I-dunnos, completely random answers, or your contact might just be blocked for any reason. Also, you have a chance of getting INT 8 for a number of weeks.

Arcane Eye will serve you well, unless this cave is really, really big.

You can't just scry on a cave.

Did you have a different Divination in mind? Or do you just always prepare Arcane Eye?



And through DM fiat you have, and he's still beating it with his standerd set of spells, not the anti-vermin list.


Although you should recognize it's not always through DM fiat that this'll happen. Or alternatively, you could say everything a party encounters, ever, is DM fiat. In any case, what I've said is for ease-of-use and is completely irrelevent to the point that when considering something's power, it will always be relative to the situation one is placed into; and conditions that inherently favor a class by nature of the encounter being a single low will-save monster does not make for a meaningful statement. I believe exploring concepts that operate outside the normal mode of thinking is much more worthwhile.



Yep, but not the CR. That's what magic is.


Knowing every aspect of an encounter? Every last one? You must have lots of very nice divinations. Care to share what spells are going to give you information about everything, ever?



Doesn't work that way. You can apply plusses or minusses to the CR for extreme situational advantages or disadvantages, the mage using his class features isn't either it's just him using what he's got to best effect. If the fighter charged in with nothing but a wooden spoon would you give him more xp? would you if you blindfolded himself before hand? He's doing it to himself knowingly and it shouldn't affect the encounter which is the same no matter how he chooses to prepare himself.


Wait, are you saying that knowing every aspect of an encounter is not an extreme situational advantage? I don't know what divinations you're talking about, that would accomplish knowing every aspect of an encounter all that often.



nope, the purple worm goes down in one spell if the mage can be bothered to fight it's ground bound ass. big woop. (fighter gets the fight of his life but nevermind).


Kay.



If he stands there like a lemming and lets them come and then behaves like a braindead commoner like you're suggesting then no he isn't. If he's played like a mage with spells and a positive Int score then yes, he is. See previous two pages for clarification.


Bearded Devils don't behave like a "mage with spells". They can do a summon 1/day with a 50% chance, and Teleporting.



do you? Well thank you. I think so too. see anklets of transportation, Heart of Water, Abrupt Jaunt and any one of a number of other things. Oh, and since he has lots of slots by this point you can have a backup DimDoor no problem.

If you really have that much a need to name even MORE spells, I think you've missed the point.



In the first round it is. Then you cast wall of stone and/or any number of other things. This is the first in a series that trys to claw back the buff routine any decent mage should have gone through long before this.


Kay. Sure. Although you still need to have that guy ready at your side prior to the encounter, or else you have a spend in-combat doing it. Which I don't mean to say is unreasonable.



good for them. better hope the mage has got a whole lot of spells to deal with them then. oh, right, mage.


That doesn't actually add anything to the discussion at hand.



You just dont get how wizards fight do you? It's with their brains first and foremost, your total aversion to strategic withdrawal might work for fighters but it arbitrarily cuts down the options of a mage, tactical and strategic movement are part of their strengths and thus far you haven't given any reason why they cant except... 'nuh-uh they aren't allowed to cause I say so, you've got to stand there like a lemon until you is ded!'


Strategic Withdrawl? No, this is purely tactical.

And I don't have any aversion. I just wanted to see who was up to the challenge. It's okay, you don't have to if it upsets you that much.

Really though, I do enjoy how you've gotten so upset as to begin designating me as someone who can't speak properly. Says lots about the argument at hand; oh wait, I meant that other word. You know the one. Oh, right. "Nothing".

It's pretty funny.

[qupte]
It only ends the encounter if the wizard stops interacting with them, if he starts using his crystal ball to scry them, grabs a few appropriate scrolls from his hideout, goes through a proper buff routine and ports back in to kick ass then I'd say it's still part of the same encounter but that's just me.
[/quote]

Scry on them? You have to have a connection with them to begin scrying, even if you know nothing about them. So therefore you'd already have to know it's there. In which case you've already spent other divinations or you used "Peek at DM Notes". And to use the proper divinations, you'd have to know something was down there, to begin with. Or alternatively, you'd have to have spent slots or scrolls casting as many different divinations to do a thorough sweep of the area before entering, which means this will disrupt any other activities if you had planned doing that day.

If you're suggesting he goes in, leaves, continues to scry and pick up goods, then it's certainly not the same encounter because you fled that original encounter.



If it isn't part of the same encounter then you have to broaden your idea of 'fight these randon gribblies' to include the idea that maybe the class that works best with preptime will create that preptime and come back focussed on the encounter. oh, look, more xp for the mage, one encounter survived, one beaten. cool.


Create that preptime? Sure, he can take steps to benefit himself. But to assume he can always do whatever he wants is just plain stupid. If there is such a lack of urgency in a campaign, you can hardly call it a campaign anymore, as much as "days Mr. Wizard decides to leave his house".

Focused on the encounter? Conditions change over time, especially if you've been there and fled. It cannot be the same encounter if you know every last detail of how it boils down. Not only is it even less of a challenge, but it'll be boring for everyone involved.



And I'm sure his flying, invisible teleporting, mirror imaged, blurred, blinked, Ghostformed, hiding, whatevered self honestly cares. :smallamused: That is unless he's inside a wall of stone having a cup of tea while he pulls this out of the hat.


Ha. You made a little face. I like that.



The spell in question was wall of stone which is instantaneous. It's pretty close to dog, a dog knows who his friends are and who trys to hurt them but if you pretend you're throwing the ball he'll run after it even if you still have it in your hand. That's about the level. Think the psychology of a toddler, he puts his hands over his eyes to hide from you.


Wall of Stone; kay.

Dog? No, the INT scale is not linear. 3 is Humanlike intelligence, not slightly-better-than-dog intelligence. Sure, it's low. I wouldn't say these things could exactly discuss Tolstoy over tea and crumpits; but it means they can think. Instinct will probably serve it better, but it can think.

If you would believe those folks who love to assign themselves D&D attributes, they'd say 1 in 216 have this much intelligence. So, according to at least one source, you could presumably go down to your local convenience store and count the people who play instant lottery tickets.



No, I planar bound him three days ago. I prepared because I'm a mage on my own with a BBEG apparently likely to sick dozens of ninja demonic vermin on me and I'm not an idiot.


Three days ago? With what task? "Protect me in case I encounter Vermin"? What if you walk over to the beach, and see a crab?



Go for it, this is the tame stuff. Incidentally, I don't remember anyone else saying they were limiting themselves to core-only, something you yourself haven't done, so why should the mage be?


I wasn't actually offering. I'm not your DM.

The core-point was to say that you ought to stop assuming I know so much about your wizard when there is no legal free web-source for these spells. A player can't just bring things into a game without a DM knowing all of the details, after all. But, seeing as I'm not actually your DM, whatever.



Yes, the mage is not an idiot. he has buffs and will use them.


The main word of interest there was "lots", as in you're-stretching-my-ability-to-appreciate-your-argument-because-you-want-me-to-believe-he-was-ready-to-fight-an-army.



The fighter on the other hand may or may not be an idiot, he may well get to the point where he'll never hide, run or prepare himself. meh, who cares. If he's using stuff that will get him out of this good for him, have a pat on the head. I don't think it will get him out unscathed but sure, go for it and see.


No, I don't think it would. I mentioned it being a possibility; albeit I recognize it's a small one.



This thread wasn't suppossed to be a mages strengths vs Fighters strengths it's suppossed to be about what needs fixing.


And all this time, I've been saying "you don't have to bother with that crap, because any DM worth the title will be taking steps to ensure that you have fun anyway". And the reason I make that argument is because if your DM is unworthy, then you probably shouldn't be playing with him regardless of any "Fighter Fix" because that would undoubtedly fall short anyway.



If it doesn't grant him that then great, he gets lots of corners to hide around and snipe from, the steed does his moving for him so he can concentrate on other things. And I don't really care what they are, they're close enough to not change the mages tactics and there's nothing interesting enough to mindgank and keep as a pet.


Unless the quarters are so small that they'd catch up with him anyway; in which case the steed did nothing. So, to reiterate; It's a great spell, except for when it's not.


rod of quicken, circlet of casting, rounds provided by wall of stone or ring of invis, teleport away and come back in five minutes after getting yourself ready like a proper mage. whatever.


Yeah, a lesser rod of quicken is only 35,000gp...certainly not a problem at level 9. Invisibility? A steal at 20k.

This is rather pricey. I'd be much more pleased if you found additional cheap items to help your examples. Wall of Stone is good, though. But I was primarily interested in "not hiding" because I was just curious to see if anyone had the guts to try.



and apparently no using your class features, no tactics, no strategy, no prepwork, no skill checks, no anything that will win. You've got to behave as though you are a fighter in order to prove that fighters would win and mages would lose. Well yes, and if the fighter was forced to stand there in his underwear and wave his hands about he'd get ganked too, so what? Running or hiding doesn't prevent a mage from fighting the encounter, it does a fighter but not someone who can summon, bind, reappear and sling molten death at a moments notice, whatever.


You mean, not using "Peek at DM Notes" and not relying on "Running from the Encounter and then Coming Back to Where That Encounter Was and Expecting No Changes and Still Demanding the Same XP". I discussed skills earlier (so I'll omit for redundancy). And there's no strategy here; really, if your argument was strong enough you wouldn't have to try so hard to apply MORE words that you probably percieve to mean the same thing, which would also mean you're making an extra-redundant argument. You may as well come out say, "If you were less Wrong, Incorrect and Not-Right, you'd have everything absolutely Fine."



then get so, if you want to talk about mages try to know about them first.


Howabout give me information regarding things you want, because if you want a thing in a campaign you're supposed to get it approved by your DM. And not making logical fallacies would help.



yep, and still able to fight. Mage see, Mage kill. Fighter see, fighter have to actually go one on one with. Who's better in the long run?


Better was never the argument.



You need to read some of the transportation abilities available through magic.


You need to provide your argument with more details.



sigh.


Double-sigh. In your face.



yes, this is a run of the mill wizard played to a vague int score and with a standerd spell list, God or Batman would be far, far, far harder and faster with this one.

Batman's whole thing is plans. He makes plans based on things he knows. Apparently, your wizards know everything about every encounter. So, that sounds like a Batman Wizard to me.

Lycar
2009-06-01, 06:52 AM
While we are discussung Schrödinger Wizards (and we do, because obviously all mages always get all spells ever conceived shoved up their @sses), how do you guys handle WBL and spells?

Now please coorect me if I am wrong here, but besides his initial set of spells, a Wizard is, by RAW, entitled to öearn 2 more spells every time he levels up, correct?

So that would work out to, say, 11 non-cantrip spells for a 5th level Wizard.

2 of which can be 3rd level.

Everything else has to come from elsewhere.

Therefore: If said Wizard would, say, happen to have 5 3rd level spells listed in his spellbook, 3 of those would effectivly be 'extra gear'.

Now would this not cut into his WBL? 3 scrolls to learn those 3 extra spell at 375 gp each, plus the 300 gp of materials it takes to scribe a spell into your spellbook? Just a bit more then 2000 gp. Note that most Wizards who get discusses on these boards have about half the SC copied into their spellbooks.

Just for the heck of it, let us assume a 5th level Wizard, freshly created for a PbP game. He has all the cantrips for free (which by now ough to require a spellbook at by themselves, but meh...) plus 12 lv. 1 spells (5 of which are free), 10 lv 2 spells (4 of which are free) and 6 3rd level spells (2 of which are free).

That would be
7 x 25 gp (175), + 7 x 150 gp (1050), + 4 x 375 gp (1500) + 3300 gp for the materials it requires to scribe 33 pages of spellbook.

That is a total of 5.500 gp out of 9.000 a freshly created 5th level character gets to toy around with.

In other words: Only 3.500 left to buy such nifty things as, say Anklets of Translocation. Or wands of whatever for that matter.

Doesn't leave much gold to buy shoes, now does it... :smallamused:

So, how do YOU handle this anyway?

Lycar

Jayabalard
2009-06-01, 07:14 AM
So... is anyone actually reading those giant walls of text?

Sebastian
2009-06-01, 07:21 AM
This stems from the Pathfinder thread a little ways down:

Alot of folks talk about how broken (too tough) casters are and how broken (too weak) fighters and other warrior classes are. What would you do to change this. Would it involve making fighters more formidable, or making casters less formidable?

For my personal tastes the problem lies with casters, not fighters. with the passage from 2e to 3e wotc designer went out of their way to make the wizard even more powerful while removing any of the weakness they could find, even the few limitations they left was either ignored by GM (when was the last time you seen a wizard pick spell mastery?) or trumped by new sourcebooks (spells that ignore magic resistance, new way to cast more spells per turn).
So, I'm not sure exactly what I'd do but it iwolud involve fixing the casters more than the fighters. Certainly I'd remove defensive casting maybe add a 'Concentration check=1/2 damage took in that round', to cast a spell, maybe add the 2e rule that you need 15 minute for spell level to recover a spell rather than 8 hours for all of them. I'm not sure about the rest, tho.

elliott20
2009-06-01, 07:52 AM
my personal contention has always been with fighters (though caster could use some powering down too) weakness.

that is, things like archery and normal weaponry just aren't that deadly unless you invest a LOT skills into it via level and feats, basically at the exclusion of any other strengths. As such, character concepts like the weapon master, who is good at every weapon, just doesn't happen. Sure, a high level fighter can pick up any weapon and probably hit something with it. But he's gonna be dealing with a measly 1d8+STR damage if he hadn't invested in some highly specialized training that is relevant to it.

In THAT sense, fighters are underpowered. Now, if fighters could do other things like say, disrupt a spell (with a high level of success, mind you) with an arrow, hit through magical force fields with a strong enough hit, etc, THEN you got something going there. But as is, fighters (and by proxy most mundane warriors) because of the insistence of keeping them mundane, they will always remain essentially useless without the support of their other magic wielding allies.

Dark_Scary
2009-06-01, 10:32 AM
If I don't know what spells exist in a game, they shouldn't be in the game while I'm DMing it. I can't provide an appropriate challenge against something I know nothing about.

Like I said. Not my problem. You apparently don't even know core spells. So it's not like you can provide a challenge for anyone.


I'm pretty sure the philosophy behind the design was that if Wizard could not apply such great strength to a problem, then nobody would find his class too appealing, considering how his powers are per/day.

I'm absolutely sure that the philosophy behind the design was that if 'such great Str' is 2-3 spells per encounter, most not of highest level, that Wizard's would absolutely be able to apply this strength to every encounter.

For example, the given EL of the encounter is EL 12, and the Wizard is fighting it on his own at level 9, he is actually supposed to use all his spells and have a slightly greater then 50% chance of victory. So if he uses only a few spells, well, that's just a testament to how awesome he is.


And yes, they are running and hiding. They're very effective tactics, you know; but that doesn't change what they are. I was hoping you'd just be able to satisfy my curiosity; because knowledge of what a Wizard must rely on to operate tells me of ways that he can be challenged.

If being invisible while you kill something or moving to one side of them so your spells affect more counts as hiding, then having an AC higher then 10 or moving adjacent to them should also count as hiding.


I didn't say he couldn't. I said I didn't know the spell. How can I prepare an encounter for a PC I know nothing about? You've missed the point by a long shot.

Actually, you did say that. You said that of course a core encounter can't challenge a non-core PC (except for Fighters, who can still be challenged core, even when non-core). Of course, you actually aren't even trying to challenge the fighter, since you designed this encounter specifically to not challenge him.


This was never really a discussion of a Wizard's competence.

Except the part where you claimed that the Wizard would have more trouble than the fighter with the encounter, which isn't even remotely true if the Wizard is competent.


You've been mislead; the magic zone is a bunch of line segments that form wherever I want, which excludes the entrance and the main fighting area.

Yes, I know you are making this up as you go along. My point is that if you didn't walk through one of these line segments, then you can teleport to the entrance side of the centipedes, and have them all on one side.


Other side? That implies you were at one side to begin with. Your position would be the center of a circle, formed in a very big room. The only "Other side" is the other side of the wall where the things came through to begin with.

Remember how we talked about when you are wrong you pretend to be stupid so you can avoid admitting that you are wrong. Implied in that was that you should stop doing it.

XXXXXXXXXXX
X__________X
X__________X
X____me____X
X__________X
X__________X
XXXXXXXXXXX

This is where I am!
__________XXXXXXXXXXXX
__________X___________X
__________X___________X
me________X___________X
__________X___________X
__________X___________X
__________XXXXXXXXXXXX

This is where I end. This let's me use spells on the whole group. Yay!


And it's not like the Centipedes necessarily have a surprise round. They could have all coincidentally all arrived at the same time.

Which would mean that the Wizard gets a buff round as they are arriving, IE casts one of the 8 different ways that have been proposed to make him totally invulnerable but still capable of killing the centipedes.


Okay, they get out of grapples. That's nice. I read that already. My point was that he'll die if you don't continue to involve yourself in the fight, and if you're going to continue to involve yourself in the fight yet wanted a diversion, a Summon Monster V to get multiple animals would have probably served you better. You have better options.

And my point is that you are wrong, because we already established that the Bearded Devil doesn't die, at all. And in fact, kills a bunch of Centipedes.


I didn't say you can't have a specific wizard, but I have to know what a character is capable of if I'm going to provide a real challenge.

He is capable of casting Wizard spells. Therefore, you should probably know what the good Wizard spells do, since he is likely to prepare them.


Disinterested.

So now you are disinterested every time you are wrong instead of purposefully obtuse? That might be an improvement.


So you mean to say in a game with Magic and Dragons, that a God might not take interest in a PC? Even if it's a badass wizard who can totally take on 20 Huge Fiendish Monstrous Centipedes, and it'd be fun to watch?

1) It wouldn't be any more fun to watch then any other fight.
2) Every Wizard of that level can take on 20 Huge Fiendish Centipedes.
3) No, a God cannot directly intervene to zap a PC dead for not fighting, because see, Boccob would stop him. There are literally an infinite number of Gods who want to kill ever character you've ever made. And they all knew exactly where your character was, and were powerful enough to kill him. Why are any characters alive at all? Because Gods can't just go around killing people for not doing what they want.

The Vermin Lord demanding that the Wizard fight Vermin and killing him if he doesn't makes exactly as much sense as Lolth demanding all non-Drow elves kill themselves immediately and killing them if they don't. Gods don't get to demand actions of those who don't follow them.


I'm not looking for a range of solutions. I was presenting a case where a wizard is not inherently prepared. Although there are certainly a great number of more instances where a Fighter will be off, the point is that both can be caught with their pants down. This is information a DM needs to consider when determining what to do with a party, not so much "how often" because a DM will control how often that aspect comes into play. Any failing to get beyond this is a failure of a DM. Players should feel no such failure, ever.

And the point I keep trying to make that you keep ignoring because it doesn't suit you is that the Wizard is not caught with his pants down.

There is an actual measurement for caught with pants down, it's called a surprise round, we are clearly not talking about that, because it's not that important.

There is also an actual measurement for level of contribution, it's called level of contribution. And in this fight, the Wizard contributes as much as the fighter. So the Wizard is not caught with his pants down and you are still wrong.

My point is that if you're going to state something that isn't freely found on the web, provide a source or state why it works. A DM cannot prepare an encounter for a PC he knows nothing about.

Note @Lycar:

No, you are wrong. Grossly Wrong.

The point presented is that any one of the 10 different spell combinations presented here could win the encounter.

It's not that Silent Image and Blacklight and Greater Mirror Image and Invisibility and Greater invisibility and Wall of Stone and Translocation Trick and Stoneskin and Heart of Earth are needed to make the Wizard invulnerable.

It's that Blacklight or Silent Image or Greater Mirror Image or Invisibility or Greater Invisibility or Wall of Stone or Transolcation Trick or Stoneskin or Heart of Stone makes the Wizard invulnerable.

So point to a Wizard that has any one of these many spells, and you are pointing to a Wizard that beats the encounter.

See how making the list longer actually makes it more likely that Wizards are going to have the spells they need to win.

Kalirren
2009-06-01, 12:05 PM
A little awkward to do this in the middle of a raging firestorm, but I'm going to move that we return to the original point of the thread.

I've played a lot of low-level games, and I think most people can agree that while casters are still strong at low level (1st-4th), they're not far stronger than most fighters are, especially fighters with good ranged options. Asymmetrical advancement must therefore be the problem.

Four issues immediately jump out to me:

Feats: A fighter needs to spend a good four feats to establish a viable attack option, and that doesn't even count things like weapon focus, weapon specialization. In contrast, each spell is a distinct attack option, and one can reliably get access to at least one or two viable spells just from leveling up, without having to spend any feats.

System language asymmetry: There are all sorts ofexamples of this. Martial characters deal HP damage. Casters can deal all sorts of other effects that often make HP damage far less relevant to the battle situation. Casters have many more swift and immediate actions available to them than do martial characters. This effect naturally gets worse and worse as party level goes up.

Item dependency: At low levels, there are few magic items around, and the benefits they grant are often small. Even when a magical item is destroyed or lost, it's not game-wrecking. At mid-high levels, however, this stops being the case. A caster can produce most of the necessary magical effects with spells, whereas a martial character dependent upon their items for those effects can be dealt with by (chain) dispel, (chain) shatter, 'nuff said.

BAB advancement: Everyone gets at least .5 BAB per level, but no one is guaranteed .5 caster levels / level. Before you guffaw, try hitting the ranged touch attack for (say) Disintegrate against touch AC of 19 (reasonable at 9th level for a halfling rogue, could be 23 with cover) with only your Dex bonus. Then you'll understand how much that .5 BAB/level actually does for you.

To sum up:

To fix feats:

Move to a power-points system, and make it cost feats to pursue higher spell levels. There are many ways to do this: the no-brainer way is to say that a wizard starts with 1st-level spells and has to spend a feat to advance one spell level. A slightly more interesting way would be to have a system of feats based upon the schools: for example, Evocation I would grant access to all evocation spells of 2nd through 4th level, Evocation II would grant 5th-7th level.

To fix system language asymmetry:

Eliminate 8th and 9th level spells.

Reorder the rest of the spells by spell level so that healing/dealing direct damage comes at the lower spell levels and dealing effects to enemies or terrain comes at the upper spell levels. Make sure that most lower-level spells can be augmented to take advantage of higher caster level. Ensure that martial characters also have ways of dealing effects at high levels.

Give martial characters more swift and immediate actions.

To fix item dependency:

Get rid of most magical items of the form "+X bonus to blah" like +X weapons, amulets of natural armor, cloaks of resistance, etc. and replace them with supernatural bonuses dependent upon level. Entirely eliminate miscellaneous wondrous items such as candles of invocation, beads of karma, ioun stones, metamagic rods, etc. that give random bonuses to caster level or free metamagic feats. This solves the problem of item destruction and reduces emphasis on gold.

To fix BAB asymmetry:
Full casters get no BAB advancement. Half-casters get half. Only half-casters can use Divine Power.

-or-

Full BAB classes get .5 caster level/level advancement (unless they take a flaw that kills it.) 3/4 BAB classes get 3/4 caster level / level advancement. Caster levels from arbitrary casting classes stack.

And after we've done all of that, -then- we can talk about balancing melee fighters against casters and ranged fighters, which should be closer to being on par with each other.

Dark_Scary
2009-06-01, 12:22 PM
A little awkward to do this in the middle of a raging firestorm, but I'm going to move that we return to the original point of the thread.

But the raging firestorm is a natural precursor to the problem.

Fighters and Wizards are on different power levels. The question is, who is the right power level?

You proposed many 'fixes' that almost universally make casters weaker, dropping their BAB completely, removing 8th and 9th level spells, and reducing the number of feats they have by 5. Yet you didn't buff non-casters at all.

So here's my contention.

Create a Party. Use a Cleric/Wizard with no BAB, no 8th and 9th level spells, and 5 fewer feats then normal. Use any PrC other than Incantatrix and DweomerKeeper. Make your Fighter as normal. Make your Rogue as normal.

I will TPK this entire party with a stock MM Balor.

PCs are supposed to be able to deal with appropriate CR opposition. Fighters don't. Wizards do.

The solution is not to make it so that no one deals with appropriate CR opposition. It is to make it so that everyone does.

Lycar
2009-06-01, 12:59 PM
Create a Party. Use a Cleric/Wizard with no BAB, no 8th and 9th level spells, and 5 fewer feats then normal. Use any PrC other than Incantatrix and DweomerKeeper. Make your Fighter as normal. Make your Rogue as normal.

I will TPK this entire party with a stock MM Balor.

A party of which level?

And well duh to the TPK. Obviously, under the changed circumstances the Balor poses a much higher threat to that party and thus has a much higher CR. Which means, it is no longer an appropriate challenge for that party.

Given different styles of play and optimisation, any given encounter can be a pushover or a life-threatening challenge.

It is the job of the DM to figure out what a given party can and can not handle and design his encounters accordingly.

In the above scenario, the best idea would to edit the Balor, so that he is again manageable by that party - if your intention is to retain the Balor as a viable means of designing an encounter for your party.

If you do not want to do that... well, there are hundreds of monsters which are not Balors. There should be a thing or two among those to fit the bill.

Lycar

Jayabalard
2009-06-01, 01:07 PM
I will TPK this entire party with a stock MM Balor.Is that supposed to be suprising to anyone ... if you drastically change the power level of the characters the CR system is no longer applicable. So the as written CR from the MM is no longer directly applicable.

Dark_Scary
2009-06-01, 01:21 PM
We are talking about redesigning the game so that fighters and Wizards are on the same level. Which of these makes more sense:

1) Nerf all casters, then go through and either a) redesign the entire CR system from scratch or b) redesign every monster to fit it's new CR.

2) Boost Fighters so that they play at the appropriate CR. Not redesign the other half of the PHB or the entire MM.

We have a standard for balance. It is the CR system. If some people work with the CR system, and others don't, why are we trying to redesign the people who do so that they also don't?

Level 20 party facing:

Core (SRD) CR 20 monsters: Wyrm Black Dragon (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/dragonTrue.htm#blackDragon), Ancient Brass Dragon (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/dragonTrue.htm#brassDragon), Very old Bronze Dragon (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/dragonTrue.htm#bronzeDragon), Very old Copper Dragon (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/dragonTrue.htm#copperDragon), Balor (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/demon.htm#balor), Pit Fiend (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/devil.htm#pitFiend), Old Red Dragon (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/dragonTrue.htm#redDragon), Old Silver Dragon (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/dragonTrue.htm#silverDragon), Tarrasque (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/tarrasque.htm)

Which of those can the nerfed party defeat? None of them. So why on earth are we trying to rebalance the game so that a party which by definition should beat four of those a day can't even beat one?

If you don't like D&D and just want to co-opt it's rules system to play some other game, that's fine. But if you are seriously contending that they way to rebalance D&D is to first make it so that no party can deal with appropriate threats, and then nerf every single monster in every single monster manual, or completely redesign CR so that everything CR 12+ is epic.

That's seriously not the same thing.

lesser_minion
2009-06-01, 01:33 PM
OK, let's avoid creating false dilemmas for a start.

In reality, there is no reason not to take option c) nerf casters, and rework fighters et al. to be as powerful as the nerfed casters.

Reducing the power of casters will not automatically lead to a situation where all monsters must be retooled to fit the new balance system.

Dark_Scary
2009-06-01, 01:48 PM
OK, let's avoid creating false dilemmas for a start.

In reality, there is no reason not to take option c) nerf casters, and rework fighters et al. to be as powerful as the nerfed casters.

Reducing the power of casters will not automatically lead to a situation where all monsters must be retooled to fit the new balance system.

Well since my argument is that Wizards are at the power level of monsters, and fighters are below. Yes, bringing Wizards down to some level lower then they are and raisin fighters to that level would in fact mean that all characters would be weaker then CR expected.

Deepblue706
2009-06-01, 01:55 PM
Like I said. Not my problem. You apparently don't even know core spells. So it's not like you can provide a challenge for anyone.

Gee, that's not a logical fallacy, or anything. And it totally helps your argument to focus on me and not what I have to say.



I'm absolutely sure that the philosophy behind the design was that if 'such great Str' is 2-3 spells per encounter, most not of highest level, that Wizard's would absolutely be able to apply this strength to every encounter.

For example, the given EL of the encounter is EL 12, and the Wizard is fighting it on his own at level 9, he is actually supposed to use all his spells and have a slightly greater then 50% chance of victory. So if he uses only a few spells, well, that's just a testament to how awesome he is.


But that's irrelevent because this is a game with a challenge system focused around parties, where everyone is applying something. So while that's true, it doesn't mean you have to fix a fighter because if he's with a variety of other party members, (edit: grammatical) there is nothing inherent about the CR system that will render any PC too weak to contribute.



If being invisible while you kill something or moving to one side of them so your spells affect more counts as hiding, then having an AC higher then 10 or moving adjacent to them should also count as hiding.


I didn't say moving to the side is hiding. Teleporting out of the encounter is running away.

And being invisible means you cannot even target the subject unless you can see beyond the magic. Having high AC does not render you untargettable; it just means you are less likely to be hit.

Moving adjacent is what constitutes retreating-about-the-battlefield, which is something discussed earlier; and I had absolutely no problem with that.



Actually, you did say that. You said that of course a core encounter can't challenge a non-core PC (except for Fighters, who can still be challenged core, even when non-core). Of course, you actually aren't even trying to challenge the fighter, since you designed this encounter specifically to not challenge him.

No, I didn't say "of course a core encounter can't challenge a non-core PC". I said if you want to use non-core spells, I'm going to need to find non-core monsters. A wizard's strength grows exponentially not just with levels, but with each supplement that adds a wave of new spells. Fighters just get their feats, so that takes a different approach to balance.

I didn't design this encounter specifically not to challenge him; I picked a monster at random, then looked at their capabilities. Then I looked at some feats and realized, "Hey, there's a Fighter who has a chance at fighting this".



Except the part where you claimed that the Wizard would have more trouble than the fighter with the encounter, which isn't even remotely true if the Wizard is competent.


I said a Wizard might. Under the conditions that he doesn't know all of the details, and isn't fully prepared. These conditions worsen in the case that he cannot readily flee or hide. In an actual game context, I can make that happen. But I'm not writing a full campaign for the purposes of impressing someone who I haven't agreed to DM for.



Yes, I know you are making this up as you go along. My point is that if you didn't walk through one of these line segments, then you can teleport to the entrance side of the centipedes, and have them all on one side.


And earlier in this discussion I recognized that as perfectly fine.



Remember how we talked about when you are wrong you pretend to be stupid so you can avoid admitting that you are wrong. Implied in that was that you should stop doing it.

XXXXXXXXXXX
X__________X
X__________X
X____me____X
X__________X
X__________X
XXXXXXXXXXX

This is where I am!
__________XXXXXXXXXXXX
__________X___________X
__________X___________X
me________X___________X
__________X___________X
__________X___________X
__________XXXXXXXXXXXX

This is where I end. This let's me use spells on the whole group. Yay!


Yeah, this was discussed before you were even involved in the conversation. It was recognized as perfectly valid, but there's the problem of actually affecting the whole group, due to sheer numbers and size. I'm pretty sure I even said it was a good first step.



Which would mean that the Wizard gets a buff round as they are arriving, IE casts one of the 8 different ways that have been proposed to make him totally invulnerable but still capable of killing the centipedes.


Buff Round? No, they go from Not There to There. This pretty much goes straight to initiative.



And my point is that you are wrong, because we already established that the Bearded Devil doesn't die, at all. And in fact, kills a bunch of Centipedes.


Established? Sure. Explained? Not at all. "He has items" and "He can get out of grapples because he teleports" doesn't say anything about his low HP and AC. "Infernal Wound" means very little because it's 2 extra damage a round and they have over 30hp. It can, hypothetically, clear the room. It can also just die because he's got to deal with a lot of attack rolls.

You're making an argument and letting me fill in the blanks, which means you're not actually making an argument as much as implying there are things that can be done to subvert the encounter; and that's already a well known fact in both his case and the Wizard's. But it's not inherently true in all cases, which is my whole point; because if there exist points where this is not true, that means it can be used against a Wizard to ensure he is not 100% unkillable, meaning he will have to depend on teammates, regardless of who they are, which means everyone can have an opportunity to shine. It is a DM's responsibility to spread the wealth as best he can, and to do so he must be aware of all ways he can challenge his PCs.



He is capable of casting Wizard spells. Therefore, you should probably know what the good Wizard spells do, since he is likely to prepare them.


That is extremely vague because "good" is highly subjective and is going to vary by the player. Unless I have a character sheet that lists spells known, why would I bother to look them up, unless he says he wants to get a scroll of something not there? Where a spell doesn't come into play, I have no reason to be wasting time reading it over.

In other words, I'm not benefitting from your answer. Had you gone and made a full character sheet for me, then I could reply. But I'm not in the mood for DMing right now, and I doubt you're in the mood to play a game of mine, anyway.



So now you are disinterested every time you are wrong instead of purposefully obtuse? That might be an improvement.


My argument had nothing to do with that. It's completely right, but I don't care. You're getting stuck on the wrong points.



1) It wouldn't be any more fun to watch then any other fight.
2) Every Wizard of that level can take on 20 Huge Fiendish Centipedes.
3) No, a God cannot directly intervene to zap a PC dead for not fighting, because see, Boccob would stop him. There are literally an infinite number of Gods who want to kill ever character you've ever made. And they all knew exactly where your character was, and were powerful enough to kill him. Why are any characters alive at all? Because Gods can't just go around killing people for not doing what they want.

1) I was talking about from the point of view of the Gods. That was a statement made for in-character purposes.

2) Every Wizard? Howabout the ones that ban Illusion and Abjuration, and Specialize in Evocation? I had a player do that once. Incidentally, that character never died, but he never fought this encounter.

3) Actually, I didn't say he would actually Zap Him Dead. He threatened to do it, but that doesn't mean he would.



The Vermin Lord demanding that the Wizard fight Vermin and killing him if he doesn't makes exactly as much sense as Lolth demanding all non-Drow elves kill themselves immediately and killing them if they don't. Gods don't get to demand actions of those who don't follow them.


First of all, it's Verminator.

Second of all, gods do whatever the hell they want, because they're gods.

Thirdly, they don't have to actually keep their promises of smiting anyone.

Fourth, they don't just start talking about video games in settings where they don't exist.

Fifth, the Verminator could have just implied he was a god; He could just as well be a Commoner with a Megaphone of +15 Bluff, and the artifact known as the Scepter of Absurd Encounters.



And the point I keep trying to make that you keep ignoring because it doesn't suit you is that the Wizard is not caught with his pants down.


Why, because it's absolutely impossible? Or because we don't like challenging Wizards?



There is an actual measurement for caught with pants down, it's called a surprise round, we are clearly not talking about that, because it's not that important.


No, a Surprise Round where Centipedes DEX-poison him to 0 would be pointless to discuss, and a Wizard getting himself invulnerable before they act is also pointless.



There is also an actual measurement for level of contribution, it's called level of contribution. And in this fight, the Wizard contributes as much as the fighter. So the Wizard is not caught with his pants down and you are still wrong.

That depends on the Wizard, and the Fighter. There is nothing inherent about a Wizard that grants him the ability to win, as their spells can vary. You cannot contest that point; only the idea of likeliness that it will happen such a way. But since a DM controls all likeliness, that's pointless to discuss as well, because only in the cases where a Wizard is metagaming or the DM is predictable should a player truly know the likeliness of encounters. They can certainly be granted clues via skills and divinations, but unless a DM hands over his notes, there are some things you simply can't prepare for, in the context of some individual games. Therefore, it is in a DM's power to determine everyone's worth, and if your DM can't challenge some PCs, or fails to provide moments of greatness for others, he is probably not trying hard enough. If this isn't a challenge for you, then okay; I spent 4 seconds to dream up the encounter, so big surprise.

The New Bruceski
2009-06-01, 01:57 PM
Well since my argument is that Wizards are at the power level of monsters, and fighters are below. Yes, bringing Wizards down to some level lower then they are and raisin fighters to that level would in fact mean that all characters would be weaker then CR expected.

But if Wizards are at the power level of monsters, and 3rd edition is based around the "Party versus one monster" CR system, wouldn't 4-5 people at the level of monsters mean that CR was too high?

CR is based around balancing to the party. If you make party members weaker, CR goes up. If you make party members stronger, CR goes down. You can't expect CRs to be constant while changing classes.

Jayabalard
2009-06-01, 02:11 PM
Well since my argument is that Wizards are at the power level of monsters, and fighters are below. Yes, bringing Wizards down to some level lower then they are and raisin fighters to that level would in fact mean that all characters would be weaker then CR expected.Fighters are also at the power level of monsters. It's just the wizards and fighters of the same level are at the power level of very different monsters. In neither case is the CR really a good guide of the power.

"all characters would be weaker then CR expected" is meaningless. CR is just a guideline so that you know how strong monsters are in relation to the party. It's up to the GM to apply that guideline.

Raising Fighters to the wizard level is going to have exactly the same problem, just applied in the opposite direction.

Dark_Scary
2009-06-01, 02:43 PM
I didn't say moving to the side is hiding. Teleporting out of the encounter is running away.

You explicitly said that teleporting to one side of the circle constitutes running away.


And being invisible means you cannot even target the subject unless you can see beyond the magic. Having high AC does not render you untargettable; it just means you are less likely to be hit.

Technically, it just means they have to make a listen check, or they can guess squares. It is merely reducing the probability of being hit, not removing it. It's just reducing it below the level that the fighter could ever hope to reach with his pathetic AC.


I didn't design this encounter specifically not to challenge him; I picked a monster at random, then looked at their capabilities. Then I looked at some feats and realized, "Hey, there's a Fighter who has a chance at fighting this".

So you designed the entire fighter even selecting all his feats (including the non-core ones) after you knew what he was facing, but demand the Wizard come in with a core only spell list prepared in general without specific knowledge. So what. You heavily bias the encounter for one party.


Buff Round? No, they go from Not There to There. This pretty much goes straight to initiative.

Which requires them using an action, since they would be spotted from not there range of hundreds of feet, becoming there at a range greater then the radius of the present circle.


Established? Sure. Explained? Not at all. "He has items" and "He can get out of grapples because he teleports" doesn't say anything about his low HP and AC. "Infernal Wound" means very little because it's 2 extra damage a round and they have over 30hp. It can, hypothetically, clear the room. It can also just die because he's got to deal with a lot of attack rolls.

Centipedes do an average damage of 11 damage on a hit with a to hit of +5. Bearded Devils have DR 5 with AC 19.

That comes out to 2 damage per attack, so he can easily handle 23 attacks, which will take many many rounds to accomplish. In that time, he can easily strike 6-7 Fiendish Centipedes, killing them.

The duration of the spell will almost certainly exceed the rounds it takes to kill him, if on the other hand he is a planar bound ally, he can freely take advantage of Teleport to bounce around killing them slowly without subjecting himself to 4+ attacks per round.


and I doubt you're in the mood to play a game of mine, anyway.

You vastly underestimate my DD drought.


2) Every Wizard? Howabout the ones that ban Illusion and Abjuration, and Specialize in Evocation? I had a player do that once. Incidentally, that character never died, but he never fought this encounter.

Well yes, of course they could beat the creatures. They would still have access to wall of stone, blacklight, heart of stone, of the previously listed spells. And of course, their familiar could still UMD a wand of invisibility or Silent image or Mirror Image.


Why, because it's absolutely impossible? Or because we don't like challenging Wizards? Because in any situation ever, the list of prepared spell the wizard will have will constitute not having pants around ankles, and being able to live up to CR.


No, a Surprise Round where Centipedes DEX-poison him to 0 would be pointless to discuss, and a Wizard getting himself invulnerable before they act is also pointless.

No, a surprise round is where something that has a way to obtain a surprise round while being within line of sight makes attacks. Things without that capability, such as Centipedes, use their surprise round to make a move action such that at the beginning of their actual turn they may perform some combat action.

Also, it's DC freaking 14, poison, they have to hit an AC they only hit on maybe a 12 if they are flanking and charging, and only four of them can hit the Wizard at best at a time.

So no, no Dex to zero, even if you give them a surprise round, the Wizard still wins.

Dark_Scary
2009-06-01, 02:53 PM
Fighters are also at the power level of monsters. It's just the wizards and fighters of the same level are at the power level of very different monsters. In neither case is the CR really a good guide of the power.

"all characters would be weaker then CR expected" is meaningless. CR is just a guideline so that you know how strong monsters are in relation to the party. It's up to the GM to apply that guideline.

You are wrong and you are crazy. CR does not say, "Some party should be able to beat this encounter expending 20% of it's resources."

It says, "A party of level X should be able to beat this encounter epending 20% of it's resources."

CR and level have a correlation. If you have a party of level X, CR guidelines tell you exactly what it should be able to face. If your party cannot face that, you are not meeting CR expectations differently, you are failing to meet CR expectations.


But if Wizards are at the power level of monsters, and 3rd edition is based around the "Party versus one monster" CR system, wouldn't 4-5 people at the level of monsters mean that CR was too high?

CR is based around balancing to the party. If you make party members weaker, CR goes up. If you make party members stronger, CR goes down. You can't expect CRs to be constant while changing classes.

As things currently stand, Fighter are weaker then CR, Wizards and Clerics therefore expend a greater percentage of resources per encounter trying to make up for the weaker fighter and rogue, and therefore everyone gets mad at the Wizard for the "15 minute adventuring day" and blowing spells too quickly.

What we notice when we use the CR guidelines is that generally speaking, Wizards use just as many spells to beat an encounter CR=level (Which by the rules for halving number of party members applied twice equates to them facing a CR=party level +4 encounter) alone as they do facing it with a party.

The only difference is that alone, they are meeting CR guidelines, and in the group, they appear to be using too many resources.

CR works well with casters. It does not work well with Fighters, who underperform.

Jayabalard
2009-06-01, 03:00 PM
You are wrong and you are crazy. Not at all. CR is nothing but a guideline for GMs. If you change the power level of the classes, either by powering up some, or powering down others, the CR no longer applies to the same level characters as written.


CR and level have a correlation. If you have a party of level X, CR guidelines tell you exactly what it should be able to face. If your party cannot face that, you are not meeting CR expectations differently, you are failing to meet CR expectations.It seems like you're treating the CR Guidelines as if they're carved on stone tablets. They're not.

Dark_Scary
2009-06-01, 03:31 PM
Not at all. CR is nothing but a guideline for GMs. If you change the power level of the classes, either by powering up some, or powering down others, the CR no longer applies to the same level characters as written.

It seems like you're treating the CR Guidelines as if they're carved on stone tablets. They're not.

I am claiming that the CR guidelines say something at all.

You are claiming that if you choose not to follow the CR guidelines, then you somehow change what they say and are therefore still meeting them. You aren't. You are failing to meet them.

Jayabalard
2009-06-01, 04:14 PM
You are claiming that if you choose not to follow the CR guidelines, then you somehow change what they say and are therefore still meeting them. Nothing of the sort. I claimed that if you change the power level of the classes, then the CR is not a valid guideline as written; this is the case whether you increase the power of some classes or decrease the power of some classes. You'll need to make adjustments to the written CR, based on what sort of power increases or nerfs you've used.

Dark_Scary
2009-06-01, 04:21 PM
Nothing of the sort. I claimed that if you change the power level of the classes, then the CR is not a valid guideline as written; this is the case whether you increase the power of some classes or decrease the power of some classes. You'll need to make adjustments to the written CR, based on what sort of power increases or nerfs you've used.

And you are wrong. The CR guidelines accurately reflect Wizard power. They do not accurately reflect Fighter power.

Therefore, on the whole a party of Fighter/Rogue/Cleric/Wizard, cannot deal with appropriate CR encounters. Whereas a Druid/Rogue/Cleric/Wizard can.

As things currently stand, a party with a fighter fails to meet the CR expectations. If you increase the power of the fighter class, you do not need to rewrite CR. Because the party now meets CR expectations.

lesser_minion
2009-06-01, 04:25 PM
I am claiming that the CR guidelines say something at all.

You are claiming that if you choose not to follow the CR guidelines, then you somehow change what they say and are therefore still meeting them. You aren't. You are failing to meet them.

Remember the comment about EL being based on theoretical parties?

That would be the theoretical party of Fighter, Blaster Wizard, Healbot Cleric and Rogue.

All characters should have a worse than even chance of soloing an encounter of their level. As a whole, a four-man the party should generally win in a reasonably hard fight which expends around 20% of their resources.

If a wizard has an even chance of soloing an opponent of CR equal to his level, then that wizard is overpowered by the assumptions of the CR system (because one guy facing four equally powerful guys will actually be curb-stomped while inflicting basically no damage back).

Bear in mind that encounter difficulty is calculated as a combination of CR and ad-hoc modifiers reflecting the situation (which may include a manoeuvrability advantage that the party for some reason lacks the resources to counter).

tyckspoon
2009-06-01, 04:35 PM
But they have claimed he can do so much so often that now that people constantly cite his dominance without any considerations of what a DM will add to a game, and we continue to approve of tier systems and other such devices that alienate players who don't make characters to some Minimum Optimization Standard without what considerations this has on the general attitude towards the game and how it all plays out. People who are perfectly able to play a regular game of D&D begin to feel the pressure of having to maintain a level of power, rather than have a "Game first, sheet second" attitude; which is something I think D&D can not only fully support, but even works more smoothly under due to the fact you don't have to worry about competition between players, but the DM can relax and just try to make fun encounters. This is a different approach to the same problem that people claim is solved by simple use of ToB; I differ from that opinion because I feel dismissing a player's ideal class for sake of "balance issue" is just lazy DMing. An ideal class may be substituted through the abilities of another class, but who am I to insist my players choose a class solely on the basis of "This is a more mechanically sound option" when they knew they had the option yet gravitated towards the weaker selection, anyway? I believe in cultivating whatever ideas a player has first, and then design my encounters to allow such a character to be relevent...all while still maintaining CR. As a DM I'm not present to judge, I'm there to give everyone a good time.


The tiers and other ranking tools aren't meant to alienate people who want to play weaker characters. They're designed to help enable the kind of at-the-table entertainment balancing you're talking about. If you have a tier 2 and a tier 5 character in the same party, that lets you know you probably need to throw some extra goodies in for the tier 5 dude, ask the tier 2 guy to moderate his play, or find a more powerful class that also fits the tier 5's concept (or all of the above.) They're also meant to help DMs get a better grip on the games' real mechanics, so as to help reduce the occurrences of things like DMs who give Wizards more free spells while nerfing Monks because ZOMG 5 attacks at 2d10!


Well yes, of course they could beat the creatures. They would still have access to wall of stone, blacklight, heart of stone, of the previously listed spells. And of course, their familiar could still UMD a wand of invisibility or Silent image or Mirror Image.

And, incidentally, this is exactly the kind of situation where an Evocation specialist should clean up pretty quickly. These particular centipedes have just 33 hp. A couple of fireballs (although Scintillating Sphere or Vitriolic Sphere would be better, due to fire resistance [Electric Fireball and Acid Fireball, basically) would clear them all out.

Jayabalard
2009-06-01, 04:38 PM
And you are wrong. The CR guidelines accurately reflect Wizard power. They do not accurately reflect Fighter power.Not true; they don't reflect wizard power very well at all. I'd say that they are no better when applied to wizards than when it's applied to fighters (it's just wrong in the opposite direction).

Dhavaer
2009-06-01, 04:43 PM
the swordsage's air walk ability (can't remember what it's called)

Balance on the Sky.

Deepblue706
2009-06-01, 04:48 PM
You explicitly said that teleporting to one side of the circle constitutes running away.

And then I went to clarify that I was under the impression that you were talking about the other side of the trap doors. If you missed that, then you must not be heavily invested in what's being discussed.



Technically, it just means they have to make a listen check, or they can guess squares. It is merely reducing the probability of being hit, not removing it. It's just reducing it below the level that the fighter could ever hope to reach with his pathetic AC.


The ends do not justify the means. Just because they both involve probability it is not the same thing.



So you designed the entire fighter even selecting all his feats (including the non-core ones) after you knew what he was facing, but demand the Wizard come in with a core only spell list prepared in general without specific knowledge. So what. You heavily bias the encounter for one party.


No, he needs 5 feats; for a Human Fighter, that's half. And, they're all very standard feats for somebody just flipping through the PHBs.

Which is not to say that the Wizard's spells must be non-standard either; but the point is to design an encounter with more than just the Wizard in mind. In fact, the Wizard should be getting the least of my attention, because he has abilities that can be applied to any situation, regardless of what it is; it's the power they gain at the cost of it being limited to a number of uses per day.



Which requires them using an action, since they would be spotted from not there range of hundreds of feet, becoming there at a range greater then the radius of the present circle.


Unless the circle is formed exactly outside of the trap doors.



Centipedes do an average damage of 11 damage on a hit with a to hit of +5. Bearded Devils have DR 5 with AC 19.


And Centipedes can charge and have a +7 to attack. Less than 50% of attacks will hit; but they'll still hit. They could alternatively have 1 grapple while the rest just plain attack before the Devil has a turn where he can use Greater Teleport.

Additionally, there's no reason why the centipedes can't use a disarm action to ruin the chances of the Devil dealing much damage. He'd have to spend time picking it up; in which case he's vulernable. Without it, he'll be doing 1 or 2 points of damage, not including that dealt from infernal wound. These guys can generally hit him once out of every three tries; meaning they'll be doing damage faster than he. Which is 6 per hit, after DR.

A single Bearded Devil has +9/+4 attack; or +8/+8 with claws (presumably he will only resort to those when disarmed). So, he has a good chance of dishing out numerable hits; but unless he teleports away or you save him, he's going to die.



That comes out to 2 damage per attack, so he can easily handle 23 attacks, which will take many many rounds to accomplish. In that time, he can easily strike 6-7 Fiendish Centipedes, killing them.


Except for in the case where one or more can possibly charge; then they'll have a higher damage output onto the Devil. He'll definitely go down fighting, but it's no question that he'd go down unless he avoids the fight.



The duration of the spell will almost certainly exceed the rounds it takes to kill him, if on the other hand he is a planar bound ally, he can freely take advantage of Teleport to bounce around killing them slowly without subjecting himself to 4+ attacks per round.


If he teleports, he used his standard action. If he leaves their range of attack, he's not doing anything.



You vastly underestimate my DD drought.


In any case, I don't have any parties open.



Well yes, of course they could beat the creatures. They would still have access to wall of stone, blacklight, heart of stone, of the previously listed spells. And of course, their familiar could still UMD a wand of invisibility or Silent image or Mirror Image.


Wall of Stone won't be useful for buffing-up; just becoming temporarily invulnerable.

I don't think you ever defined Blacklight.

Heart of Stone; yeah, okay.

As for their Familiar UMDing a wand...Monks can UMD wands. Of course this is another possible solution; but unless we define this as something that the Wizard will inherently be exploiting, it means there exists a point where a DM can account for it not happening. The definition of what is inherent is the only question when determining the power of a class in the context of a real game; the DM otherwise adjusts his game's challenges to play alongside the strengths and weaknesses inherent in the PCs. Moreso the weaknesses of classes who can apply their abilities in few ways (Fighter), and the strengths of classes who apply their abilities in many (Wizard).



Because in any situation ever, the list of prepared spell the wizard will have will constitute not having pants around ankles, and being able to live up to CR.

Howabout all of his prepared spells are these:
0: Prestidigitation (3), Light (1)
1: Endure Elements (1), Comprehend Languages (1), Ray of Enfeeblement (1), Mage Armor (1), Reduce Person (1), Burning Hands (1)
2: Daze Monster (1), Acid Arrow (1), Blindness/Deafness (1), See Invisibility (1), Gust of Wind (1)
3: Lightning Bolt (1), Halt Undead (1), Wind Wall (1), Ray of Exhaustion (1)
4: Black Tentacles (1), Shout (1), Enervation (1)
5: Cloudkill (1), Interposing Hand (1)

He can probably operate well within the bounds of a party, but alone he may have trouble.



No, a surprise round is where something that has a way to obtain a surprise round while being within line of sight makes attacks. Things without that capability, such as Centipedes, use their surprise round to make a move action such that at the beginning of their actual turn they may perform some combat action.

And the Wizard is aware as soon as they come into line of sight. They make no combat actions prior to that moment.

Their move action doesn't count as their standard action because they're not even aware the Wizard is there, either. They arrive and see a Wizard. A Wizard simultaneously Centipedes.



Also, it's DC freaking 14, poison, they have to hit an AC they only hit on maybe a 12 if they are flanking and charging, and only four of them can hit the Wizard at best at a time.


If we have say, 12 CON, that means the Wizard has a +5 to his Fort save if we give him a Cloak of Resistance +1. He has a fair chance of getting poisoned; and if he does, his AC drops and he will rely much more upon miss-chances.



So no, no Dex to zero, even if you give them a surprise round, the Wizard still wins.

Unless he's not ready and he doesn't.

Dark_Scary
2009-06-01, 04:52 PM
Remember the comment about EL being based on theoretical parties?

That would be the theoretical party of Fighter, Blaster Wizard, Healbot Cleric and Rogue.

And yet, that is wrong, because most monsters if played intelligently would destroy said party.

After removing stupidity on both the players and Monsters parts, you are presented with a situation in which some classes keep up, and others do not.


All characters should have a worse than even chance of soloing an encounter of their level. As a whole, a four-man the party should generally win in a reasonably hard fight which expends around 20% of their resources.

If a wizard has an even chance of soloing an opponent of CR equal to his level, then that wizard is overpowered by the assumptions of the CR system (because one guy facing four equally powerful guys will actually be curb-stomped while inflicting basically no damage back).

This is just flatly wrong. The DMG explicitly states the rule for halving party members, and these rules give you the exact math that a CR=party level for a party of one should result in a Very Difficult verging on Overpowering encounter (50% chance of winning v losing, according to the 3.0 DMG)

As a matter of fact, a level 10 Wizard is a CR 10 encounter. So to claim that any level 10 PC Wizard has an even chance of defeating himself is overpowered is downright laughable.

Jayabalard
2009-06-01, 05:17 PM
And yet, that is wrong, because most monsters if played intelligently would destroy said party.That's really just not universally true; in some cases the party would be destroyed, and in some cases they wouldn't, depending on the specific monsters involved.

Nor is "played intelligently" necessarily a good criteria to judge by, since it's not appropriate to play some monsters intelligently (eg, mindless creatures).



This is just flatly wrong. The DMG explicitly states the rule for halving party members, and these rules give you the exact math that a CR=party level for a party of one should result in a Very Difficult verging on Overpowering encounter (50% chance of winning v losing, according to the 3.0 DMG)CR is a guideline, not written in stone. Exact math is not really any more useful than approximate math.

Dark_Scary
2009-06-01, 05:19 PM
The ends do not justify the means. Just because they both involve probability it is not the same thing.

Ends do justify means, and the fact is that it is not hiding to kill your foe without retribution being possible. It is not an apt description to claim that Superman hides from someone by using his laser vision from behind a wall to kill them.


Unless the circle is formed exactly outside of the trap doors.

In which case they would have to move in order to get from the place where they cannot attack, to the place where they can. And in the process of doing so, would use an action, during which the Wizard would be aware of them.


And Centipedes can charge and have a +7 to attack. Less than 50% of attacks will hit; but they'll still hit. They could alternatively have 1 grapple while the rest just plain attack before the Devil has a turn where he can use Greater Teleport.

Additionally, there's no reason why the centipedes can't use a disarm action to ruin the chances of the Devil dealing much damage. He'd have to spend time picking it up; in which case he's vulernable. Without it, he'll be doing 1 or 2 points of damage, not including that dealt from infernal wound. These guys can generally hit him once out of every three tries; meaning they'll be doing damage faster than he. Which is 6 per hit, after DR.

You greatly misunderstood. In establishing 2 damage per average attack, I included the assumption that they are both charging and flanking. If they are doing only one or neither of these things, then they do in fact significantly less damage per attack.

Secondly, if the Devil teleports outside of their combat range, he is then well in position to attack the following round. You'll also note that when it comes to grapples or disarms that they in fact provoke AoOs from him, giving him an extra target, and that his goal is merely to strike as many as possible before his spell duration runs out, or, if he is planar bound, to strike a single foe, teleport to a safe location, wait until it dies, and return again, outside of immediate attack range to strike another foe.


Wall of Stone won't be useful for buffing-up; just becoming temporarily invulnerable.

It is also useful for funnelling the enemies into a situation where they can only attack one at a time, and you are effectively fighting a single Huge centipede with 20x the HP and -4 to attack rolls and AC, even better if you can area attack them as they bunch.


I don't think you ever defined Blacklight.

It is an evocation spell which creates a very large (either 60ft or 120ft radius) area of complete darkness that cannot be penetrated by anything except a devil's sight like ability. It of course does not apply to the caster.

It is effectively invisibility for the caster in the area, since they cannot see where he is, and suffer concealment if they guess the right square. As an added bonus, they move half speed, from the moving in darkness rules.


And the Wizard is aware as soon as they come into line of sight. They make no combat actions prior to that moment.

Except the action of moving into line of sight is a combat action, because if they just moved, the Wizard would also have a concurrent move, IE casting a spell. See, moving requires making opposed MS/Listen checks in order for you to claim the Wizard didn't hear them when they started moving, thus gaining a full turn. And the Wizard + Familiar is not going to fail 40 straight checks.


If we have say, 12 CON, that means the Wizard has a +5 to his Fort save if we give him a Cloak of Resistance +1. He has a fair chance of getting poisoned; and if he does, his AC drops and he will rely much more upon miss-chances.

You still missed the part where they have to roll a 15 to even hit him didn't you.


Unless he's not ready and he doesn't.

If he's not ready, they still fail to hit his AC more than half the time, fail to poison him more than half the time, and only get at most four attacks, leaving him with no more then 1d6 con damage, decidedly not 0.

Dark_Scary
2009-06-01, 05:23 PM
CR is a guideline, not written in stone. Exact math is not really any more useful than approximate math.

CR is a guideline written in words on a page that have the exact malleability as those carved in stone. You can choose to ignore the guidelines if you wish, but they do not say, "Some parties of one should sometimes be treated as a party of level -4." They say, "A party of one is equal to a party of level -4."

You can choose to ignore the CR guidelines, but ignoring them does not make them say something they do not say. They say something is true, absolutely true. You cannot weasel out of what they say.

Jayabalard
2009-06-01, 05:34 PM
And you are wrong. The CR guidelines accurately reflect Wizard power. They do not accurately reflect Fighter power.Not at all; there have been dozens of threads on this forum showing how Wizards can destroy encounters that are far beyond an appropriate CR. The power of individual wizards varies greatly and depends on a great number of factors. CR does not accurately reflect the power level of wizards.


Therefore, on the whole a party of Fighter/Rogue/Cleric/Wizard, cannot deal with appropriate CR encounters.I've seen plenty of Iconic parties deal with CR appropriate encounters, so this statement is not true.

lesser_minion
2009-06-01, 05:35 PM
And yet, that is wrong, because most monsters if played intelligently would destroy said party.

After removing stupidity on both the players and Monsters parts, you are presented with a situation in which some classes keep up, and others do not.

Yet that is the basis of CR.

Which means that the CR system is based on entirely flawed premises anyway.


This is just flatly wrong. The DMG explicitly states the rule for halving party members, and these rules give you the exact math that a CR=party level for a party of one should result in a Very Difficult verging on Overpowering encounter (50% chance of winning v losing, according to the 3.0 DMG)

As a matter of fact, a level 10 Wizard is a CR 10 encounter. So to claim that any level 10 PC Wizard has an even chance of defeating himself is overpowered is downright laughable.

A party might be able to handle one or two Very Difficult encounters before being forced to rest. That is actually quite different to having an even chance of winning. For a start, there is actually the assumption that the party will win, which can arise from:

A well played opponent. That means that the DM has to actually roleplay. Not everyone takes rational decisions all the time. In fact, a wizard with a wisdom dump stat? Takes rational decisions very little of the time (so Int 26 is not a justification for always using optimal spells and tactics) Good tactics on the part of the players - remember that they have a lot more time to think, plan and react than the DM does.


In order to expend about 20% of their resorces fighting an opponent of EL equal to APL, the party cannot effectively outnumber their opponents 4:1, because that would be a curb-stomp battle.

An NPC, created using slightly different guidelines to PCs of the same level, is assumed to be an encounter of CR equal to his level. In fact, he should be underpowered. That is why NPC encounters feature so much more treasure (the NPC is expected to use the treasure to defend himself) than normal.

A PC wizard is overpowered if he has an even chance of defeating a monster of CR equal to his level.

And, yet again, CR is not set in stone, parties are not obliged to actually fit into the system as it stands.

It may as well just be erased, to avoid DMs making the mistake of assuming that any CR 14 monsters is an appropriate encounter for any APL 14 party. It isn't actually the case and the 3e system provides no way to ensure that it will be the case.

A kind of common thread to all this:

There is actually no problem whatsoever with having to mess around with the CR system.

So there is no problem hitting wizards with the Almighty Nerfhammer of Great Justice until they condense into miniature black holes.

Jayabalard
2009-06-01, 05:41 PM
CR is a guideline written in words on a page that have the exact malleability as those carved in stone.Seriously? :smallconfused:


You can choose to ignore the guidelines if you wish, but they do not say, "Some parties of one should sometimes be treated as a party of level -4." They say, "A party of one is equal to a party of level -4."CR is a guideline only; actual encounters should be planned based on the actual abilities of the character(s) involved. It's not some sort of magic number brought down the mountain. Depending on the party of 1, you should treat it as anywhere between CR - 10, and CR + 10; DMs get better at judging this sort of thing with experienced.

Even then it's only partially accurate, since not all encounters of the sSame CR are equally hard to some classes... a character might curb stomp a CR-4 encounter and then get curb stomped by some other CR-5 encounter.

tyckspoon
2009-06-01, 06:11 PM
In order to expend about 20% of their resorces fighting an opponent of EL equal to APL, the party cannot effectively outnumber their opponents 4:1, because that would be a curb-stomp battle.

An NPC, created using slightly different guidelines to PCs of the same level, is assumed to be an encounter of CR equal to his level. In fact, he should be underpowered. That is why NPC encounters feature so much more treasure (the NPC is expected to use the treasure to defend himself) than normal.

A PC wizard is overpowered if he has an even chance of defeating a monster of CR equal to his level.


The CR dudes don't seem to have realized that the most valuable resource in a D&D fight is amount of actions available. Fights made of multiple opponents tend to fit the CR system much better than single enemies.

As for the second bit, I have to disagree. An even-CR encounter should require about 20-25% of a party's resources, right? Well, in an ideal world, each member of a 4-man party represents 25% of their resources. So you match up that 25% against the 20-25% the encounter should require, and you find that the single party member will often manage to win but be sorely depleted, and almost as often he'll get overcome and die. The CR system assumes every party member has an even chance of defeating an equal CR enemy; in fact, having 50/50 odds of overcoming a wide variety of challenges is as close as the system gets to defining what it is to be balanced in 3rd Edition.

The problem, as we hopefully all realize by now, is that a fighter and a wizard simply do not represent equal shares of a party's resources. They may start off fairly even at the lowest levels, but the nature of spell progression ensures that the wizard's spell slots quickly become a far larger portion of the party's overall resources than the fighter's HP and attacks.

lesser_minion
2009-06-01, 06:19 PM
The problem with the PC CR = monster CR theory is simply that the amount of 'combat effectiveness' scales nonlinearly with the number of equivalent units.

Imagine a red tank fighting a green tank. An even battle? Maybe. One tank would be destroyed, the other crippled.

Now imagine a blue tank fighting two orange tanks. Not only is the blue tank being hit twice as hard, but he also has to wipe out twice as many opponents to win the fight. The blue tank will be wiped out twice as fast as a single tank could have killed it, so we can assume that it does enough damage on average to 'half kill' one opponent.

Now imagine a gold tank fighting three silver tanks. See how much harder it is? It now kills only one-ninth of an opponent before it cops it.

And now, imagine a yellow tank fighting four purple tanks. Curb stomp. It kills no more than 1/16th of an opponent on average. That's a far cry from the opponent expending 20% of their resources.

So a four man party only needs to be slightly more powerful than two monster-class enemies of CR equal to their APL (2.236067977 times to be more precise), and the real EL of four PCs is actually less than APL + 3.

This is why most monsters are stronger in melee than a fighter of level equal to their CR, and often have almost the spellcasting of an unoptimised caster of level equal to their CR as well (the power of martial characters appears to have been overestimated).

This works even better when you assume that some synergies have been built into the characters as well (something the purple tanks didn't have).

Well-played opponents take into account morale much more than the PCs have to account for the morale of the Four Destined Heroes. This also tips the scales in favour of the PCs.

Deepblue706
2009-06-01, 09:53 PM
Ends do justify means, and the fact is that it is not hiding to kill your foe without retribution being possible. It is not an apt description to claim that Superman hides from someone by using his laser vision from behind a wall to kill them.

No, I mean your argument is illogical. You might as well be saying Killing Your Opponent is the same as super-high AC, because a dead thing won't ever get a successful attack on you. "Ends do not justify the means" is not just a morality statement, although "High-Minded" principles (such as the aforementioned statement) are pretty much known as such because they are derivative of the rules of logic.





You greatly misunderstood. In establishing 2 damage per average attack, I included the assumption that they are both charging and flanking. If they are doing only one or neither of these things, then they do in fact significantly less damage per attack.

No, because they have a 35% chance on a normal attack (+5 vs AC 19); that excludes flanking and charging. One third of 6 damage is 2. More than that means more damage.



Secondly, if the Devil teleports outside of their combat range, he is then well in position to attack the following round. You'll also note that when it comes to grapples or disarms that they in fact provoke AoOs from him, giving him an extra target, and that his goal is merely to strike as many as possible before his spell duration runs out, or, if he is planar bound, to strike a single foe, teleport to a safe location, wait until it dies, and return again, outside of immediate attack range to strike another foe.


The next round he has to move at the centipedes, meaning they could have moved at him anyway, because they have a superior speed.

Also, Devils have 1 AoO a turn, because they lack Combat Reflexes. They can prevent one grapple, or one disarm, nothing more.



It is also useful for funnelling the enemies into a situation where they can only attack one at a time, and you are effectively fighting a single Huge centipede with 20x the HP and -4 to attack rolls and AC, even better if you can area attack them as they bunch.


Unless you're making an entirely enclosed space, they can get around it. They have a climb speed. Alternatively, they eventually punch through it.



It is an evocation spell which creates a very large (either 60ft or 120ft radius) area of complete darkness that cannot be penetrated by anything except a devil's sight like ability. It of course does not apply to the caster.

It is effectively invisibility for the caster in the area, since they cannot see where he is, and suffer concealment if they guess the right square. As an added bonus, they move half speed, from the moving in darkness rules.


It'd also be beneficial to know a duration. The whole descriptive text, actually, would be required if you're presenting this for a game.




In which case they would have to move in order to get from the place where they cannot attack, to the place where they can. And in the process of doing so, would use an action, during which the Wizard would be aware of them.



Except the action of moving into line of sight is a combat action, because if they just moved, the Wizard would also have a concurrent move, IE casting a spell. See, moving requires making opposed MS/Listen checks in order for you to claim the Wizard didn't hear them when they started moving, thus gaining a full turn. And the Wizard + Familiar is not going to fail 40 straight checks.


Okay, I'll yield that.

Although I can rectify the situation and say that the doors open and then initiative is rolled before anything else happens, because they're spotted immediately, and they spot the Wizard equally. They have an 80ft charge, so it's not like I really need them to be so close.

So, forget surprise rounds, because they never moved; the doors did. It's just straight to initiative.



You still missed the part where they have to roll a 15 to even hit him didn't you.


No, you said one in four at best could hit him at a time. That doesn't imply having to roll a 15 any more than it implies that you've misconceptions regarding spatial issues.

And "at best" all of the attacks on him would hit. You should have used the phrase "on average". That's much clearer. Not that you actually said enough to make those numbers necessarily mean anything.



If he's not ready, they still fail to hit his AC more than half the time, fail to poison him more than half the time, and only get at most four attacks, leaving him with no more then 1d6 con damage, decidedly not 0.

No, it's not CON damage but DEX damage. Although it's just as good because he won't be able to do anything under those circumstances anyway.

And, actually six can surround him. If any square they occupy is within 10ft of the Wizard, they can strike at him. Provided they all charge, they'll have a +7 to attack; those that get flanking will have +9. At most, three will fail to get any flanking bonus, but at least the first will regardless.

I'd ask for information regarding the Wizard, but it's so divergent from my point that I don't actually care. We can argue basic rules all you want, but I've already made the points I care to; those of which that are not directly tied to rules, but rather how a DM can employs the system of CR to provide a variety of encounters to challenge his or her PCs to help keep a Fighter able to do something during a fight, which will make a "Fighter Fix" unnecessary. No matter what your answer regarding the number of AC is, it does nothing for that argument.

Deepblue706
2009-06-01, 10:23 PM
Sorry for a delayed reply.


The tiers and other ranking tools aren't meant to alienate people who want to play weaker characters. They're designed to help enable the kind of at-the-table entertainment balancing you're talking about. If you have a tier 2 and a tier 5 character in the same party, that lets you know you probably need to throw some extra goodies in for the tier 5 dude, ask the tier 2 guy to moderate his play, or find a more powerful class that also fits the tier 5's concept (or all of the above.) They're also meant to help DMs get a better grip on the games' real mechanics, so as to help reduce the occurrences of things like DMs who give Wizards more free spells while nerfing Monks because ZOMG 5 attacks at 2d10!

Well, tiers have their uses; but they can also lead to DMs outright refusing a player to choose a specific class from the get-go because it's deemed "too weak". Which has happened to me on at least two occasions, with citations to original topic for justification. I suppose to solve a problem regarding a lack of attention for weaker classes cannot be universally remedied without any such discussion, but I can't help but feel it also adds to the stigma of those who just give it a cursory glance, or those who are unwilling to take steps to give non-ToB-non-caster classes a break by occasionally making it plausible to Bull Rush something off of a cliff, Sunder a support that sends a tapestry down to entangle a group of thugs, or make use of Mounted Combat tactics, or perhaps just have a variety of monsters so that the Wizard doesn't just have to remember to prepare a Hold spell each day to stop the obligatory Lone Low-Will Monster that the DMs love so much.

For the tactical reasons I recommend a lot of Fighters take Quick Reconnoiter from Complete Adventurer, which gives a free listen/spot check each round ("I look around for [advantage waiting to be exploited]"). Even if a DM doesn't normally consider these things, he could still make sudden judgment on the plausability of a thing that might come into play (a chandelier hovering just above some goons...) and allow the Fighter to try whatever he planned; and making constant checks is a clear message that he's interested.



And, incidentally, this is exactly the kind of situation where an Evocation specialist should clean up pretty quickly. These particular centipedes have just 33 hp. A couple of fireballs (although Scintillating Sphere or Vitriolic Sphere would be better, due to fire resistance [Electric Fireball and Acid Fireball, basically) would clear them all out.

That depends. He may or may not have the spells. And if he lacks Abjurations and Illusions (I say so only for consistency of our discussion regarding Evocation), his defenses will really suffer; so while there's an excellent chance he can torch them all in just a few rounds, it's still plausible they get at him, too. Which is not to say that I want the Wizard dead; but moreso to make him appreciate the other characters present in the situation, which would hopefully help even the lowly Fighter feel important.

Berserk Monk
2009-06-01, 10:26 PM
You know, you could make an argument about how to fix any class in D&D for any edition and a percentage of the people on the forums would agree that the class needed fixing. In my opinion, it's not what class you play, it's how you play it. Fighters get some good stuff at the beginning, but eventually you have to either multiclass or take a prestige class (the same can be said about any class really) to still be effective.