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nefele
2010-01-14, 09:57 PM
Inspired by a thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138121)which assumes that, in real games, DMs need to nerf the wizards so as not to ruin the game/spoil everyone's fun etc.

"The Rogue cries" is a favourite expression of CharOp Boards. Sometimes it's the Fighter who cries, sometimes anyone except Tier 1 classes. And all those hapless people cry and bawl, because that awful man, the Wizard, ended the entire encounter with a single spell, or cast a utility spell which rendered useless the whole purpose of their chosen class. So they cry. According to the boards, when the Wizard casts Knock, the Rogue cries.

And I ask all you people, in good faith:
Does this actually happen in your games? Ever?
(Not the Rogue actually crying, of course :smalltongue:, but the Rogue's player feeling unhappy - and not because the Rogue can't do something, but because the Wizard can also do it.) - EDITED FOR CLARITY

According to my personal experience, it most certainly doesn't happen. Here's what happens in games I play:

The Wizard casts Knock and the Rogue doesn't cry. The Rogue says "yay! the door's open! good work, mate!" and goes about his business searching for valuables or sneaking in another aisle.
The Wizard consistently casts Knock whenever it's needed and the Rogue doesn't cry. The Rogue says "yay! now I'll have more skill points to spend on Sleight of Hand and Spot and a million other skills!"
The Wizard casts a successful Save-Or-Die and the Fighter doesn't cry. The Fighter says "yay! these baddies are down, two left! thanks, pal!" and goes about his business attacking the survivors.
The Wizard ends the encounter with a Save-Or-Die and the Fighter doesn't cry. The Fighter says "woo! we won! way to go!", just like the rest of the team.


In short, doesn't it make sense to be happy when you have someone very very effective on your team? Or am I living in an alternate universe?

"Oh, but the Rogue becomes useless!" say the Boards. No. No, he doesn't (in my experience, always). The Rogue has a million things to do, in and out of combat, solo or with company, with tons of magic items or completely naked, and he gets to do something the Wizard almost never does: he gets to be a daredevil.

To put it bluntly, the Rogue's player gets to roleplay a character he finds cool, and no Knock-casting Wizard who ends encounters with a spell and rewrites history with a nod can ever change that. Similarly, the Fighter's player gets to roleplay a character he finds cool, etc. Who gives a dingo's kidney what the Wizard does in the meantime? (He obviously gets to roleplay a character he finds cool, too, well good for him!)

But maybe my groups are unusual, so I'm gathering opinions. The consensus in the boards seems to be that, when Wizards do all that powerful stuff, the other players feel worthless and go green with envy. Is that really always the case? Does it depend on the group or perhaps the game? Or is it a myth altogether? What happens in your games?

Foryn Gilnith
2010-01-14, 10:00 PM
The consensus in the boards seems to be that,

I suspect a psychological bias here. I can think of rather few things that "the board" actually has a consensus on.

On-topic, people will whine about anything. It's more about the way something is done than what is actually done. Doing SoD spam with grace is better than straight blasting like an arrogant git.

PS: Rogues are good for a lot more than lockpicking, as you observed. It's gotten to the point where I rarely put Open Lock points on my rogue.

jokey665
2010-01-14, 10:03 PM
I've never had a player play a rogue and be overly effective in combat. Fighters et al seem to do much better. /shrug

Swordgleam
2010-01-14, 10:03 PM
I think any problem of that kind is less about power and more about niche protection. If you're amazingly good at something no one else can do, everyone will be happy. If you're amazingly good at something that's another character's key strength, that player is unhappy.

Most people figure this out, and don't play a wizard (or any other class) who overshadows another PC in their key ability. So it doesn't matter how overpowered the wizard is, since he's not stepping on someone else's toes.

taltamir
2010-01-14, 10:03 PM
Inspired by a thread which assumes that, in real games, DMs need to nerf the wizards so as not to ruin the game/spoil everyone's fun etc.
Yay, I inspire people :)

I should note that the point above is not my point or the intent of that thread. DMs only need to ban a few crazy things (pun pun, chain gate, etc). but they often end up banning so so so much more.
My complaint was that overzealous DMs ban way too much because it is somehow "wrong" for the wizard to actually ever be good at something. because if he is, then the rogue cries.

To be fair, I agree with you op, I don't think a rogue should be crying... so a wizard used a spell per day to instantly open that one lock... good thing you are opening locks all day, but that one had to be opened now (in 6 seconds), not in a few minutes.
same for all the rest.

Dusk Eclipse
2010-01-14, 10:07 PM
Well, when I play rogues I do feel unhapy, not because of the party wizard, but because my DM loves to throw us Undead and/or constructs.

taltamir
2010-01-14, 10:08 PM
Well, when I play rogues I do feel unhapy, not because of the party wizard, but because my DM loves to throw us Undead and/or constructs.

that i agree with... the rogue cries because in combat he sacrifices a whole lot of sneak attack, and as you progress in level, EVERYTHING becomes immune to it...

I would say that everything that has "sneak attack immunity" should instead be "take half damage from sneak attack dice". then rogues will no longer cry.

Kaldrin
2010-01-14, 10:11 PM
If I'm playing a wizard and there's a rogue in the group I've got far better things to memorize than Knock. Let him do the work. At that player's request I might do it, but they owe me a lot of gold as payment.

Runestar
2010-01-14, 10:12 PM
The Wizard casts a successful Save-Or-Die and the Fighter doesn't cry. The Fighter says "yay! these baddies are down, two left! thanks, pal!" and goes about his business attacking the survivors.

From experience, SoDs really shine only when the party faces multiple foes of roughly equal power each. So yes, in such an encounter, the wizard would be able to make effective use of SoDs without making the fighters feel useless.

If they were faced with a solo foe, then SoDs suck, since the wizard either kills it outright, leaving nothing for the fighter, or the monster makes its save and the wizard has just wasted a slot. People play a fighter exactly because they want to be able to hit things, not twiddle their thumbs and watch as the wizard takes them down from 100ft away.

RebelRogue
2010-01-14, 10:12 PM
My first 3.5 char was a rogue (my username is named after him) and I cried way more in the Construct and Undead arcs of the campaign respectively...! Then again, I don't think these things happened too often. Neither the general "locked door" scenario or the easy "knock solution".

unre9istered
2010-01-14, 10:13 PM
Wait, a wizard with a rogue in his party bothers to memorize knock? Can't he find something better to put in that slot?

nefele
2010-01-14, 10:17 PM
Damn, I thought it was... poetic to use the crying Rogue as an example, but it seems that my point got lost. :smalltongue: The point isn't how good the Rogue class is. (Or the Fighter...)

Allow me rephrase the question:

In your games, when one player plays effectively a powerful wizard, do the other players feel disappointed and worthless and envious?

Not hypothetically, but in reality from your own experience. In games you have played, with real people - your friends - around the table. Do you or your friends whine about it? Or are you all having a good time regardless?

taltamir
2010-01-14, 10:19 PM
If I'm playing a wizard and there's a rogue in the group I've got far better things to memorize than Knock. Let him do the work. At that player's request I might do it, but they owe me a lot of gold as payment.

you don't want to memorize knock anyways, you want it on a scroll... for emergencies... if your rogue is bound and gagged and you release him by burning your knock scroll (which cost money btw) then he will be grateful,


Damn, I thought it was... poetic to use the crying Rogue as an example, but it seems that my point got lost. :smalltongue: The point isn't how good the Rogue class is. (Or the Fighter...)

it was poetic, you were just correct in your assertion that the rogue doesn't cry, neither does the fighter, (at least they shouldn't)... and that the whole thing is a load of hype.

Deth Muncher
2010-01-14, 10:20 PM
Damn, I thought it was... poetic to use the crying Rogue as an example, but it seems that my point got lost. :smalltongue: The point isn't how good the Rogue class is. (Or the Fighter...)

Allow me rephrase the question:

In your games, when one player plays effectively a powerful wizard, do the other players feel disappointed and worthless and envious?

Not hypothetically, but in reality from your own experience. In games you have played, with real people - your friends - around the table. Do you or your friends whine about it? Or are you all having a good time regardless?

I think it more has to do with who the party leader is.

For example, if the party leader is Bob the Fighter, and all the group is in accordance with it, it's generally because he's the most tactical minded/can do supah-damage/both. So what does the party do? The help him out. Rogue moves to flank, Cleric buffs, Paladin tanks and Wizard debuffs so that Bob can DPS (or, deal damage for you non WoW-ers) without getting hurt.

Likewise, if Jim the Wizard is the party leader, the roles might shift a little. Pally still tanks and Cleric still buffs and rogue still flanks, but now Fighter helps tank and makes sure nothing hits the caster as he throws around the SoDs.

Dimers
2010-01-14, 10:36 PM
I think it more has to do with who the party leader is.

Good insight, Deth Muncher.

@OP: I've certainly seen characters cry (metaphorically) when it becomes clear they've invested in something worthless. But it's been surpassingly rare that another PC causes the worthlessness, in games I've played -- usually it's a GM's ruling on questionable wording, or poor choice of feats, or stopping the campaign before the character reaches the level where they'd really shine, or an errata nerf, or the right circumstances rarely coming into play in a specific adventure (e.g. rogue versus undead).

Foryn Gilnith
2010-01-14, 10:39 PM
If I'm playing a wizard and there's a rogue in the group I've got far better things to memorize than Knock. Let him do the work. At that player's request I might do it, but they owe me a lot of gold as payment.

If I'm playing a rogue and there's a wizard in the group I've got far better things to put skill points into than Open Lock. Let him do the work.

If he's disagreeable, diplomance or bluff him.

Aldizog
2010-01-14, 10:40 PM
[SIZE="2"]But maybe my groups are unusual, so I'm gathering opinions. The consensus in the boards seems to be that, when Wizards do all that powerful stuff, the other players feel worthless and go green with envy. Is that really always the case? Does it depend on the group or perhaps the game? Or is it a myth altogether? What happens in your games?
I think you are largely right, partly because players like having the assistance of an effective caster, and partly because casters aren't actively trying to overshadow everybody else.

In my games, casters have been considerate to the other PCs. Playing a druid, I'd use Summons to give the rogue flanking buddies. The rogue was a monster when he got a full attack, did far more damage than anybody else against single targets. (Can a Core druid do 250+ per round against a single target? I certainly never did, though I was trying to avoid cheese.) I'd use Air Walk on the bard-barian, so he could use Leap Attack. I'd use Quickened Cure Light to stabilize any downed party members, and Greater Dispel against various enemy caster tricks.

Sometimes I've seen casters be too considerate; in the game I ran, the arcane trickster spent the first 3 rounds of every fight buffing the party and the barbarian. Haste, Enlarge, Bull's Strength; I gave the barbarian a Belt of Giant Strength just so the trickster could have more fun doing other things. That group of players probably left convinced that casters were generally weak.

taltamir
2010-01-14, 10:43 PM
If I'm playing a rogue and there's a wizard in the group I've got far better things to put skill points into than Open Lock. Let him do the work.

now that i think about it... isn't there a crowbar item? and can't the fighter just smash any lock you can't pass? if it is a suitably strong door then chaching, the wizard uses shrink item and you take it back to town to sell. (copper doors, steel doors, adamantium doors, etc... all worth quite a lot... adamantium door is 200k i think)

so really, the wizard shouldn't use knock except for an usual emergency and the rogue shouldn't bother with open lock...

of course, in a CRPG you run across thousands of "crates" and "chests" and "barrels" who are often locked with random loot.

Snails
2010-01-14, 10:45 PM
I think any problem of that kind is less about power and more about niche protection. If you're amazingly good at something no one else can do, everyone will be happy. If you're amazingly good at something that's another character's key strength, that player is unhappy.

Most people figure this out, and don't play a wizard (or any other class) who overshadows another PC in their key ability. So it doesn't matter how overpowered the wizard is, since he's not stepping on someone else's toes.

Let's ask one of my characters, cowardly Mr. Smartpants. What do you say Mr. Smartpants (named changed to protect the guilty).



<Mr. Smartypants speakng>

If there is an obvious Save vs. Utter Defeat spell, yeah, I will throw that down. But usually there is not, at least not early in the combat.

Even if there is, if this spell fails, I will attraction attention. Eek!

So then my tactician mind starts working on how to conserve my resources while minimizing risk to my own precious skin. Well, gee, the surest way to keep myself safe is to put someone else in the spotlight as the most obvious threat. Why not distract the enemy with all the meatshields? That will keep myself and dear friend Mr. Healing out of harm's way.

So right on round 1, I put my diabolical plan into action: I cast Haste on all my team members.

So now those silly meatshields are running around the battlefield spilling blood everywhere. It is almost as if those fools want to be targetted by the enemy!

I drop a Fireball or two, and shout insincere encouragement. Really I am not doing much more damage than the Fighter, if you tally it up. Don't want to grab too much attention! And I am holding back on some of my best spells, to protect myself if things go badly. Maybe I throw down a Glitterdust and make some enemies helpless like kittens in front of the Rogue.

Three rounds down, and there is often just clean up work left. If not, I have a good idea where to put down the real hurt, near the end of combat, when few enemies will be left to target me.

All this time, the enemy has been throwing down hell on the Fighter and Rogue. Not a scratch on me. Mr. Healing, fix them up for more.

The funny thing is: those two are smiling! Suckers.

I have my evil more evil plan for the next combat: if I have the chance, cast Bull's Strength on them before combat. That will make them even bigger distractions.

As my favorite prof in wizard school once said: A happy meatshield is a BRAVE meatshield.

Hee hee hee...

Thank you, Mr. Smartpants.

The point is that IME the most reliable and resource efficient means that a wizard can protect his own skin is by helping his friends win the combat.

So maybe the wizard IS too powerful? If he is spending most resources making his buddies more powerful, that is the exact OPPOSITE of a balance problem.

Mike_G
2010-01-14, 10:46 PM
that i agree with... the rogue cries because in combat he sacrifices a whole lot of sneak attack, and as you progress in level, EVERYTHING becomes immune to it...

I would say that everything that has "sneak attack immunity" should instead be "take half damage from sneak attack dice". then rogues will no longer cry.

We instituted that as a house rule, for things with a structure, at least. Corporeal undead and constructs may not care if you stab them in the kidney, but they have joints, sensory apparatus, etc that will inconvenience them more if targeted.

If you could Sneak Attack a machine, you could pick a part to hit that would be more likely to disable the thing, or you could cut the spinal column of a skeleton rather than crack a few ribs.

Oozes, ghosts, etc, sure, immune, but anything with a form and structure should be somewhat vulnerable to Sneak Attack.

taltamir
2010-01-14, 10:52 PM
Oozes, ghosts, etc, sure, immune, but anything with a form and structure should be somewhat vulnerable to Sneak Attack.

oozes i agree with (although you could say they have some sort of tiny floating "stuff" in them)

ghosts though? you strike them in the "core of their evil soul" or "their still beating spectral heart"... there is plenty of fantasy reasoning for this... sure they are incorporeal but they are still human shaped and striking a vital organ can be "symbolic"... hence, half sneak attack damage.

Aldizog
2010-01-14, 10:57 PM
We instituted that as a house rule, for things with a structure, at least. Corporeal undead and constructs may not care if you stab them in the kidney, but they have joints, sensory apparatus, etc that will inconvenience them more if targeted.

If you could Sneak Attack a machine, you could pick a part to hit that would be more likely to disable the thing, or you could cut the spinal column of a skeleton rather than crack a few ribs.

Oozes, ghosts, etc, sure, immune, but anything with a form and structure should be somewhat vulnerable to Sneak Attack.
True. Everybody knows that zombies have a vital area (the brain). It's in all most of the movies.

2xMachina
2010-01-14, 11:14 PM
Always buy the MIC's construct/undead greater crystal. Plug into a +3 to sneak attack them.

Ghosts... if you can touch them, they ought to have vitals too. They are kind of normal, except just ethereal right? So, if you go on the ethereal plane, they're pretty much normal.

Crow
2010-01-14, 11:19 PM
Bear in mind OP, that there have a been a recent rash of unhelpful new threads on this board touting the broken awesomeness of wizards, that have no basis in actual game experiences.

Most people don't ever experience the types of situations that people bring up constantly in these threads.

Doc Roc
2010-01-14, 11:37 PM
Hmm. Well..... Hmmm. This is an interesting thing.

I agree with you, at least in spirit. Particularly since Rogue has UMD.

:smallredface:

Lappy9000
2010-01-14, 11:39 PM
Who gives a dingo's kidney what the Wizard does in the meantime?I like you :smallbiggrin:

In my experience, the rogue sneak attacks while two-weapon fighting on the BBEG and makes the DM cry. And then rocks fall (or a horde of Aberration/Construct/Elemental/Plant/Undead led by enemies with Fortification armor)

nefele
2010-01-14, 11:43 PM
Bear in mind OP, that there have a been a recent rash of unhelpful new threads on this board touting the broken awesomeness of wizards, that have no basis in actual game experiences.
This is my impression too, but I don't believe it's a "recent rash". I believe it's a trend that goes years back, when people first started quoting CharOp conclusions and assuming they apply to real games too.


Yes, optimisation-wise, the rogue can't hold a candle to the wizard and neither can most classes.
And no, when you actually play D&D, this fact doesn't spoil anyone's fun.


If the thread doesn't get buried and I get enough answers by tomorrow (so far no one has mentioned real players being annoyed or real games being ruined...), I'll proudly announce:
MYTH: BUSTED


...Which would force us to admit that all the attempts to rebalance the base classes on the basis of "lack of balance ruins the game and spoils the fun" are, in fact, solutions for a problem that doesn't exist. :smalltongue:

Sinfire Titan
2010-01-14, 11:52 PM
In your games, when one player plays effectively a powerful wizard, do the other players feel disappointed and worthless and envious?

Not hypothetically, but in reality from your own experience. In games you have played, with real people - your friends - around the table. Do you or your friends whine about it?


Only Midge, so no one cares.

GAThraawn
2010-01-15, 12:08 AM
Wait, a wizard with a rogue in his party bothers to memorize knock? Can't he find something better to put in that slot?


If I'm playing a rogue and there's a wizard in the group I've got far better things to put skill points into than Open Lock. Let him do the work.

I sense a potential problem here...

Sinfire Titan
2010-01-15, 12:13 AM
I sense a potential problem here...

The answer is a wand.

Crow
2010-01-15, 12:14 AM
I sense a potential problem here...

I can just see the party sitting outside the safe right now...

Wizard: "Waddya mean, 'open it'!?"
Rogue: "What do YOU mean, 'open it'!?"

Kelb_Panthera
2010-01-15, 01:03 AM
I can just see the party sitting outside the safe right now...

Wizard: "Waddya mean, 'open it'!?"
Rogue: "What do YOU mean, 'open it'!?"

and then the fighter w/ his adamantine sword says, "you're both morons for not discussing this sooner. I'll open it." Most situations can be handled in several ways by several classes, it's just a question of how much finesse you want involved.

PS. the solution *is* either a wand or a couple of scrolls of knock.

Grifthin
2010-01-15, 01:07 AM
Reminds me of the Scene in the one book where Sir Sparhawk's friend is using Elene "magic" to open the Door. It took surprisingly few kicks.

Crow
2010-01-15, 01:11 AM
and then the fighter w/ his adamantine sword says, "you're both morons for not discussing this sooner. I'll open it."

But the warlock has already used shatter on the lock... :smallwink:

Fishy
2010-01-15, 01:13 AM
I played a fighter in a real-life game, and the wizard made me cry.

I was new to D&D at the time, and we were on a pre-made adventure with premade characters, never learned the name. My character was a Fighter, with a pretty awesome magic sword, and that was about it.

The adventure begins at the foot of a gigantic ice cliff. The Wizard spends pretty much half an hour of real time debating the most resource-efficient way to get the party to the top, out of the dozen ways he has available. I've got some mundane climbing gear- about fifteen minutes in, I just say "Screw it, I start climbing." The wizard picks me up halfway to the top, having eventually decided on Spider Walk and a system of ropes.

At the top, there's an ambush of some sort of draconic lizardfolk things, pelting us with arrows. We run through their little cliff-gauntlet, I draw my sword, and the Wizard casts Fireball, ending the encounter.

The Wizard, who has a Ring of Regeneration, spends another ten minutes discussing with the Cleric what the most resource-efficient way to heal the 15 damage we collectively took.

"Hey, that's all the time we have for this session, wanna come back and do this again next week?"

No. No I didn't.

Studoku
2010-01-15, 01:14 AM
I sense a potential problem here...

fighter smash lock!

See, fighters are the most useful.

Dienekes
2010-01-15, 01:34 AM
Once but it involved a high optimizer (or at the least what passes for high optimization in my party. It would probably make the big optimizers here cry if they saw it) playing a druid and a fresh noob playing a fighter. It occurred when the animal companion beat the fighter in a straight fight and the druid commented that it was almost like the fighter wasn't even necessary.

ShneekeyTheLost
2010-01-15, 01:43 AM
Just because the wizard can make the Rogue useless, doesn't mean he will. I mean... blowing 2nd level spells on knock? Seriously, why? Especially when you've got a perfectly good rogue in the party. I'd rather use Alter Self and self-buff myself into near-invincibility.

I mean, it's not like the Rogue can't use a Wand of Knock all on his own.

I've only seen one situation where that happened. Had a 'do everything' wizard not only showing everyone up but rubbing it in their faces. And yea, it caused a lot of friction between players. So much so that when they went up against the dragon, the rest of the party went "All yours, dog..." and left. Since it was a white dragon, and immune to Shivering Touch, it ate the wizard. The player got pissed and left. The game got much better after that.

JonestheSpy
2010-01-15, 01:47 AM
In your games, when one player plays effectively a powerful wizard, do the other players feel disappointed and worthless and envious?



Nope. As others have said, in my experience the wizard-who-can-do-what-everyone-else-does-better is largely an internet myth. I've never played a game as either character or DM with one, anyway.

2xMachina
2010-01-15, 01:59 AM
I played a fighter in a real-life game, and the wizard made me cry.

I was new to D&D at the time, and we were on a pre-made adventure with premade characters, never learned the name. My character was a Fighter, with a pretty awesome magic sword, and that was about it.

The adventure begins at the foot of a gigantic ice cliff. The Wizard spends pretty much half an hour of real time debating the most resource-efficient way to get the party to the top, out of the dozen ways he has available. I've got some mundane climbing gear- about fifteen minutes in, I just say "Screw it, I start climbing." The wizard picks me up halfway to the top, having eventually decided on Spider Walk and a system of ropes.

At the top, there's an ambush of some sort of draconic lizardfolk things, pelting us with arrows. We run through their little cliff-gauntlet, I draw my sword, and the Wizard casts Fireball, ending the encounter.

The Wizard, who has a Ring of Regeneration, spends another ten minutes discussing with the Cleric what the most resource-efficient way to heal the 15 damage we collectively took.

"Hey, that's all the time we have for this session, wanna come back and do this again next week?"

No. No I didn't.

The problem is they took too long to discuss. Should just fire the spell, rather than wasting time.

I'd be bored/pissed too if the fighter keeps debating on which mook to kill first to 'optimize' damage.

Runestar
2010-01-15, 02:05 AM
Wizards can do anything, they just cannot do everything at once due to limited slots.

And everyone knows that GOD wizards are the rage these days, which involve disabling the foes while enabling the fighters. :smalltongue:

oxybe
2010-01-15, 02:21 AM
until the fighter realizes that all he's doing is playing cleanup crew for the wizard.

like ours did.

"hooray. i beat the helpless enemy.:smallannoyed:"

our wizard isn't trying to break the game but every so often he just makes what should be a challenge into... nothing. heck even my character's confident posturing is kinda due to him knowing he's got a high level cleric+wizard combo behind him he can point in a direction and lie through his teeth so they 'splode/smash the problem away.

thankfully we have about a month or two left worth of module then we're re-rolling level 1s and starting a new campaign.

averagejoe
2010-01-15, 02:52 AM
I can just see the party sitting outside the safe right now...

Wizard: "Waddya mean, 'open it'!?"
Rogue: "What do YOU mean, 'open it'!?"

Of course, if the players are really dedicated to annoying their GM, they'll just conclude that it's a challenge they can't overcome and decide to go home. :smallbiggrin:

Kaiyanwang
2010-01-15, 03:06 AM
Nope. As others have said, in my experience the wizard-who-can-do-what-everyone-else-does-better is largely an internet myth. I've never played a game as either character or DM with one, anyway.

This is my experience too - but should be pointed out that the is TRUE that melee swear a lot more to accomplish a lot of tasks and magic should be IMO more dangerous or difficult for the user.

Said this, in my experience if someone is totaly overshadowed is more player-related than class-related.

Soranar
2010-01-15, 03:23 AM
I find the most annoying things is when a pet (say a druid's companion) outshines a fighter

now that's just sad

icefractal
2010-01-15, 03:38 AM
That's true, at least for a non-optimized Fighter. Spells can be rationed out as needed, doom combos can be held in reserve, but the pet is always there. And given it's purpose is mostly fighting, there's not really a good way to "hold back" with it - either you use it (and it's stronger), or you don't use it (and it's obvious why you're doing so).

However, this isn't a problem if the melee types are fairly optimized - a pet isn't going to overshadow a competent charger/tripper/dungeoncrasher without significant buff spells, which can legitimately be held in reserve until needed.

taltamir
2010-01-15, 03:54 AM
This is how the fighter opens the lock:
http://bookwyrms.comicgenesis.com/d/20020911.html

averagejoe
2010-01-15, 03:56 AM
That's true, at least for a non-optimized Fighter. Spells can be rationed out as needed, doom combos can be held in reserve, but the pet is always there. And given it's purpose is mostly fighting, there's not really a good way to "hold back" with it - either you use it (and it's stronger), or you don't use it (and it's obvious why you're doing so).

However, this isn't a problem if the melee types are fairly optimized - a pet isn't going to overshadow a competent charger/tripper/dungeoncrasher without significant buff spells, which can legitimately be held in reserve until needed.

I think that's the problem with the fighter, though; there are many more traps for it than for other classes, and they're much harder to fix. If I'm Mr. Joe Noob and I'm playing a wizard that I notice is sucking compared to everyone else, I can study other spells, or better yet, go onto the internets and ask, "What spells are awesome?" and probably get a useful reply. Then it's just a matter of studying new spells. For divine casters it's even easier. Even so, the wizard's worst options still tend to be useful. (Plus, say what you like about blasters, ending a low level encounter with a fireball is really cool.) The good spells aren't always obviously good to the uninitiated, but the bad spells tend to be obviously bad. Fireball isn't the best choice, but it still does useful things.

Fighters, on the other hand, have really sucky options that tend to look awesome at first glance. Great cleave and whirlwind attack stick out, but even weapon specialization can be deceptive since it's restricted to fighters, and so (one figures) it must be slightly stronger than your average feat. And then, later, after the noob becomes less noobish and discovers that great cleave never actually comes up and such, he has no avenue to get rid of it other than DM fiat. Granted, this is something most DM's will probably be reasonable about, but it remains that there are a lot of traps for fighters, and fixing mistakes isn't something that's built into the system.

Killer Angel
2010-01-15, 03:57 AM
"The Rogue cries" is a favourite expression of CharOp Boards. Sometimes it's the Fighter who cries, sometimes anyone except Tier 1 classes. And all those hapless people cry and bawl, because that awful man, the Wizard, ended the entire encounter with a single spell, or cast a utility spell which rendered useless the whole purpose of their chosen class. So they cry. According to the boards, when the Wizard casts Knock, the Rogue cries.

And I ask all you people, in good faith:
Does this actually happen in your games? Ever?


In our games: the rogue usually never cry... wiz don't use / study knock.
Anyway, there's no real overshadowing from wizard's part... but certainly, fighters and other classes have a hard time facing a lot of challenges, while the wiz. don't even sweat.
And the most annoying thing, is that usually the wizard escape easily from bat situations, while other characters die more easily.
In the end, there is a tangible difference, but the gap isn't so big, and everyone has his part of fun.

taltamir
2010-01-15, 03:57 AM
I played a fighter in a real-life game, and the wizard made me cry.

I was new to D&D at the time, and we were on a pre-made adventure with premade characters, never learned the name. My character was a Fighter, with a pretty awesome magic sword, and that was about it.

The adventure begins at the foot of a gigantic ice cliff. The Wizard spends pretty much half an hour of real time debating the most resource-efficient way to get the party to the top, out of the dozen ways he has available. I've got some mundane climbing gear- about fifteen minutes in, I just say "Screw it, I start climbing." The wizard picks me up halfway to the top, having eventually decided on Spider Walk and a system of ropes.

At the top, there's an ambush of some sort of draconic lizardfolk things, pelting us with arrows. We run through their little cliff-gauntlet, I draw my sword, and the Wizard casts Fireball, ending the encounter.

The Wizard, who has a Ring of Regeneration, spends another ten minutes discussing with the Cleric what the most resource-efficient way to heal the 15 damage we collectively took.

"Hey, that's all the time we have for this session, wanna come back and do this again next week?"

No. No I didn't.

I feel your sorrow... but is it just the wizard then? the wizard debated with "someone" for half an hour, and then the 15 minutes talking to the cleric... sounds like the most grief was that everyone was talking talking talking and not fighting... and when it finally came the time to solve something:
1. You came up with the solution, so did the wizard eventually, he caught up and helped you. You could have kept climbing and both reached the top...
2. The encounter was ended by a single fireball? then its not a "real" encounter...
Fireball is a terrible spell, wouldn't bother any appropriate enemy, this was the wizard wasting his spells on something trivial that you could have wiped the floor with while he sipped tea. its was basically some low level mooks.

taltamir
2010-01-15, 04:10 AM
Fighters, on the other hand, have really sucky options that tend to look awesome at first glance. Great cleave and whirlwind attack stick out, but even weapon specialization can be deceptive since it's restricted to fighters, and so (one figures) it must be slightly stronger than your average feat. And then, later, after the noob becomes less noobish and discovers that great cleave never actually comes up and such, he has no avenue to get rid of it other than DM fiat. Granted, this is something most DM's will probably be reasonable about, but it remains that there are a lot of traps for fighters, and fixing mistakes isn't something that's built into the system.

this applies to every class except wizards and clerics and erudite (maybe a few more I am not aware of)...

if a sorcerer chooses sucky spells he is just as screwed... I have seen sorcerers with nothing but divination spells and the DM wouldn't let them do any REAL divining... they were basically crossbowmen with crap AC and BAB and saves and HD, who occasionally cast message or detect magic or identify. It was just sad. being tier 2 doesn't mean you can't suck...

Hatchet
2010-01-15, 04:14 AM
The wizard outshining the others isn't a problem if he isn't a jerk about it. When I play a wizard, my motto is "Never cast a spell you don't need to cast." Considering that I'm in an Evil party, chances are I would be murdered in my sleep really fast if I started to flaunt my power.

taltamir
2010-01-15, 04:19 AM
The wizard outshining the others isn't a problem if he isn't a jerk about it. When I play a wizard, my motto is "Never cast a spell you don't need to cast." Considering that I'm in an Evil party, chances are I would be murdered in my sleep really fast if I started to flaunt my power.

1. would the fighter be murdered in his sleep for "flaunting"? the druid? cleric?

2. rope trick.

Hatchet
2010-01-15, 04:24 AM
1. would the fighter be murdered in his sleep for "flaunting"? the druid? cleric?

2. rope trick.

1. Yes. We are Evil. Sometimes there is considerable debate to murder someone in his sleep just for fun.

2. We are also very resourceful. Don't you think I thought of that before? :smallsmile: My collegues would find me no matter where I hid.

Dienekes
2010-01-15, 04:28 AM
this applies to every class except wizards and clerics and erudite (maybe a few more I am not aware of)...

if a sorcerer chooses sucky spells he is just as screwed... I have seen sorcerers with nothing but divination spells and the DM wouldn't let them do any REAL divining... they were basically crossbowmen with crap AC and BAB and saves and HD, who occasionally cast message or detect magic or identify. It was just sad. being tier 2 doesn't mean you can't suck...

Of course the tiers are simply guide lines.

However I don't think many classes have it as bad as a Fighter.
Barbarian you waste a feat ok you still have all your class abilities, same goes for Rogue, ect. Even Sorcerers you made a mistake with your spell list, that sucks but next level you can pick a few more.
For a fighter if you pick a bad feat, congrats you just wasted 2 levels worth of class abilities for +1 to your AC when you call out against someone, I truly pity you.

Killer Angel
2010-01-15, 04:32 AM
1. Yes. We are Evil. Sometimes there is considerable debate to murder someone in his sleep just for fun.


This falls in the category "stupid evil". Which usually brings nasty consequences for the group.


2. We are also very resourceful. Don't you think I thought of that before? :smallsmile: My collegues would find me no matter where I hid.

:smallconfused:
Please elaborate how your teammates can find your wizard, if you don't want.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but I'm curious.

Hatchet
2010-01-15, 04:39 AM
This falls in the category "stupid evil". Which usually brings nasty consequences for the group.



:smallconfused:
Please elaborate how your teammates can find your wizard, if you don't want.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but I'm curious.

The whole party bears a striking resemblance to 8-bit Theater, really. We're not very serious about our game. As for finding the others: we have magic items for that. Finds you even if you hide in a Bag of Holding. Also, I think Discern Location could find me as well.

Jerthanis
2010-01-15, 04:50 AM
In your games, when one player plays effectively a powerful wizard, do the other players feel disappointed and worthless and envious?


No, but it can cause a person to step lightly. In our group we make characters who hold goals close to heart and a DM who facilitates conflicts between these goals. Sometimes this leads to messy situations. When your character's goals conflict with the Wizard's goals, it's hard not to start to realize that he's holding the bigger stick.

Twice this has come up to my recollection. Once, the fighter was an evil bastard, and had done such atrocities as blow up an entire train with dynamite, killing everyone aboard for no discernible reason, convince a lich villain to send his undead armies to the elven lands "because the elves are still recovering from their last war and will be easy targets", and so forth. There were increasingly contrived reasons why the party still needed him, but when it finally broke down, the Wizard pretty much roasted him in one turn. Ouch.

Another time, my character was a Ranger who was searching for his lost love who had been kidnapped by some Psionic otherworldly horrors that were not Mindflayers for some reason. Anyway, she turns up eventually as the brainwashed queen of evil, talking about how she had seen her destiny and it was to bring about the end of light and allow the endless nightmare to consume everything. That old chestnut. My character says she can be saved, everyone else is ready to kill her to save the world. Initiative is rolled and suddenly I'm running away for the next *rolls* 6 rounds.

Now, this level of violent conflict between PCs is rare, but if it has even the slightest potential for happening, you have to step lightly and make sure you know which way the wizard is going to jump before he does.

Totally Guy
2010-01-15, 04:59 AM
In our most recent game we'd killed the oppressive regime's soldiers but now they would be on the lookout for us...

"Fortunately," said my Suel Arcanamach, "I happen to be a master of disguise! We'll start by dressing as the soldiers we killed and adopt a new identity. I know a blacksmith who will shelter us and the presence of 4 soldiers there would not be conspicuous."

"Or... I could just cast my disguise spell on all of us and we wouldn't have to do any of that" said the wizard.

Eventually my guy started talking about "magical shimmer" where, if detected, only someone with a magical disguise would 100% be someone that needed to be dealt with. Bit of lying on my part but it meant I got to do my disguise plan.

Anyone ever see Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit?

Superglucose
2010-01-15, 05:04 AM
Lol that reminds me of the campaign where the two Monks in the party were crowing about how great their characters were.

I didn't have the heart to point out that any character is good when their opponent is blind, on their butt, unconscious, and drained of their strength for every fight.

All they saw was that they were hitting and doing all the damage. At the end of the campaign (it was an assassins campaign) I pointed out that I had killed exactly 0 people the entire time.

Zen Master
2010-01-15, 05:19 AM
A typical combat in my group:

The GM has made a whole bunch of different monk/other class specialists - an archer, a longspear fighter, a hook-sword fighter. They are made using the Eberron rules, btw. And I understand he only cheated slightly with the archer.

They are, btw, possesed by the Inspired. Tough bunch, in other words.

There is a psion, a ranger, a necromancer specialist wizard. And me - barbarian/warmind.

This is all level 8.

Round 1: Psion casts defensive buffs, necromancer casts defensive buffs, ranger fires arrows - then the enemy acts, hitting me among other things with 5 poisoned arrows, all of which I save against. I act last, because initiative is my enemy. I drop the archer.

Round 2: Psion moves into position, summons construct, necromancer casts spectral hand, ranger firees arrows, and his pet flanks with the construct. The enemy batters me for more damage. I act, carving a sizeable chunk out of the hooksword guy.

Round 3: Psion takes a good look at the ailing barbarian (I have upwards of 100 points of damage), and heals me. Necromancer casts something horrible, which the longspear guy saves vs. Ranger fires arrows, pets gnaw at enemies. Longspear lays into me - hooksword retreats, and pours a potion into archer, after which they both retreat to range. I act, dropping longsword guy.

Round 4: Psion takes a good look at the even more ailing barbarian, and heals me. Necromancer debuffs hooksword with something - slow perhaps. Ranger fires arrows, and pets pursue. Archer does the poison arrow thing again - I fail the first save, making the rest much harder. I drop.

Round 5: Psion cleanses me of poison. Necromancer does something awful, as I recall Vampiric Touch on Hooksword. Pets harass the monks, who drink healing potions.

Round 6: Psion casts energy missile. Necromancer casts something evil, as I recall dropping hookswords strength. Through a storm of arrows from the archer I charge the nigh-helpless hooksword, dropping him.

Archer ends her action stepping off the platform (this is in Sharn). Combat ends.

This isn't really the entire fight - just the parts I remember reasonably well. I squared off against the monks alone while the others came rushing, for instance.

Now, who had reason to cry in the above?

Well - you may have noticed how the rogue is never mentioned. He was there. But having built his character and his tactics poorly, he never got into flanking position, and therefore never contributed to the fight. We've helped him since, and he performs well now.

What I've failed to mention are the various shouts of 'KI-AAIII' and monky poses - the longspear guy in particular was great, standing the spear upright, then balancing on the spear.

Killer Angel
2010-01-15, 05:43 AM
The whole party bears a striking resemblance to 8-bit Theater, really. We're not very serious about our game. As for finding the others: we have magic items for that. Finds you even if you hide in a Bag of Holding.

Ah, a certain attitude and some house rulez, that explains a lot... thanks. :smallwink:

onthetown
2010-01-15, 07:21 AM
The Rogue and Fighter don't cry unless you steal the whole battle.

Like when I had no idea that my Sleep spell would affect all four goblins, so all they got to do was stab them in their sleep.

Oops.

Gnaeus
2010-01-15, 08:50 AM
I agree with a couple of previous posters that in my experience, the wizard is less likely to cause tears than the druid.

In a very low optimization party, the wizard has to know which spells to pick, and in the case of Save or Dies, he needs to optimize his DC to really be broken.
All the druid has to do is look at a short list and say "Cool. I want a pet bear." The druid doesn't even need natural spell, not that it takes a super high level of optimization to realize that that feat is awesome.

If your players are attempting to fight to the best of their abilities without stepping on other people's toes, it is easy for the wizard to pick spells that make the fighter look good, like Enlarge Person or Haste, and stay out of the damage dealing game, while still playing his character to the best of his abilities. The druid, on the other hand, is pretty much always going to be sending his pet into battle.

Yes, a well built fighter beats an unbuffed pet. BUT:
1. Since a druid never walks around unbuffed, neither does his pet
and
2. We didn't have a well built fighter, we had a swashbuckler (without daring outlaw) and a CW Samurai/duskblade. Neither one of them could beat the pet 1 on 1 on their best day. Are these builds really sub par? Sure. But not much worse than say a TWF Ranger or a Monk, either one of which could make an appearance in a low optimization party in core.

The only good reasons a druid wouldn't send his pet into battle are if:
1. the pet is sure to die, in which case things look really bad for the melee PCs.
2. Instead of a melee pet the druid picks a flying mount like a dire bat, which is its own kind of broken awesome at low level.

Saph
2010-01-15, 09:43 AM
Having a wizard in the party does not cause the Rogue to cry.

Sending nothing but constructs, undead, plants, and oozes against the party is what causes the Rogue to cry.

This is speaking from experience here. I played in a group with a fighter/rogue and two wizards. We got captured by orcs and escaped. The Rogue was happy. We fought our way out of the orc citadel, encountering orcs, drakes, ogres, and winter wolves. The Rogue was happy. We met some werewolves and had a lengthy social encounter in the town. The Rogue was happy.

Then we went into the Dungeon of Cold-Subtype Oozes, Golems, Undead, More Undead, Giant Plants, And Constructs, Oh, And The BBEG Is A Dracolich.

The Rogue was not happy.

ex cathedra
2010-01-15, 10:01 AM
The druid doesn't even need natural spell, not that it takes a super high level of optimization to realize that that feat is awesome.

Sean K. Reynolds disagrees. (http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/misc/featpointsystem.html)

Grumman
2010-01-15, 10:31 AM
Sean K. Reynolds disagrees. (http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/misc/featpointsystem.html)
Sean K. Reynolds is wrong. He made the mistake of assigning all his benchmark feats the same score, when few people take things like Skill Focus unless forced.

Gnaeus
2010-01-15, 10:38 AM
Sean K. Reynolds disagrees. (http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/misc/featpointsystem.html)

Thank you so much. I hadn't seen that, and it is the funniest thing I have seen this week.

nefele
2010-01-15, 10:42 AM
I agree with a couple of previous posters that in my experience, the wizard is less likely to cause tears than the druid.
But does the druid cause tears? I understand your point that a druid can easily overshadow the fighter, but the question is:

When this happens in your games, does the fighter's player feel unhappy? Does he stop having fun?

Because when I play a Druid, the players with Fighter or Rogue levels are having loads of fun. They say "yay! a flanking buddy!" and merrily go on slaughtering the enemy. They don't care if the druid's animal companion is better than them at melee.

In fact, no one ever bothers with "overshadowing", simply because no one perceives the caster's effectiveness as such. "Overshadowing", in real games that I know of, is what happens when someone takes the spotlight for far too long, and this has absolutely nothing to do with class and optimised builds and combat. It has to do with being a jerk to your fellow-players, and even the Samurai's player can do that...

Kurald Galain
2010-01-15, 10:55 AM
Sean K. Reynolds disagrees. (http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/misc/featpointsystem.html)

...whoa, is that for real? How can he find so few things that are better than his benchmarks of ten? Why are all metamagic feats considered so much worse than crafting feats? Why is power attack considered on par with weapon focus? It moggles the bind!

Gnaeus
2010-01-15, 10:57 AM
But does the druid cause tears? I understand your point that a druid can easily overshadow the fighter, but the question is:

When this happens in your games, does the fighter's player feel unhappy? Does he stop having fun?

No, no one actually cried. Yes, the swashbuckler was pretty POed at how pathetic she was in combat. (The Samurai was borderline Chaotic Crazy, so he didn't care as much as long as he could bust out with weird stuff every so often.)

In that game, we had a lot of encounters with pairs of enemies at CR or CR+1. The party would usually fight 1, while the druid with his pet would solo the other. Often the druid would kill the enemy before the entire rest of the party could handle theirs. He virtually always took less damage, because his monster would be grappled the entire fight. Sometimes the monster would break the grapple, but then it would just eat a full attack by the pet and wind up in a grapple again before it got to act.

Fortunately for the melees, the swashbuckler was the DMs girlfriend, so there were a series of character rewrites through the course of the game. At the end, the Samurai/Duskblade rerolled a glaivelock, and the swashbuckler was rebuilt using tome of battle, so it all came out well. The druid was still way better than any other PC, but not as good as the entire rest of the party.

Oslecamo
2010-01-15, 11:02 AM
But does the druid cause tears? I understand your point that a druid can easily overshadow the fighter, but the question is:

When this happens in your games, does the fighter's player feel unhappy? Does he stop having fun?

Because when I play a Druid, the players with Fighter or Rogue levels are having loads of fun. They say "yay! a flanking buddy!" and merrily go on slaughtering the enemy. They don't care if the druid's animal companion is better than them at melee.

In fact, no one ever bothers with "overshadowing", simply because no one perceives the caster's effectiveness as such. "Overshadowing", in real games that I know of, is what happens when someone takes the spotlight for far too long, and this has absolutely nothing to do with class and optimised builds and combat. It has to do with being a jerk to your fellow-players, and even the Samurai's player can do that...

Thank you for restoring my faith in gamingkind.

Rules don't breack the fun. People breack the fun.

Kaiyanwang
2010-01-15, 11:10 AM
Sean K. Reynolds disagrees. (http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/misc/featpointsystem.html)

I feel like when I discovered that Andy Collins wrote the Crescent Knife.

:smalleek:

Aldizog
2010-01-15, 11:19 AM
"Overshadowing", in real games that I know of, is what happens when someone takes the spotlight for far too long, and this has absolutely nothing to do with class and optimised builds and combat. It has to do with being a jerk to your fellow-players, and even the Samurai's player can do that...
While I generally agree with your points in this thread, I have found that druids also hog spotlight time because of the enormous number of actions they control. Having played one from 1-20, here was my experience:
Lacking a true cleric, and often facing LARGE fights with total EL well above our APL, the party needed me to summon stuff so they wouldn't take as much damage. That meant on my turn I might be resolving actions for multiple summoned creatures (each of which could have multiple attacks and often grapple), as well as the animal companion (when I had one; eventually Awakened and freed it), as well as my own attacks. I felt like I was taking more than my share of table time, which was the biggest down-side to that class. And that was with me as a well-prepared player who had every single summons and wildshape form statted out and with me.

When I tried to avoid summoning and rely on quick-to-resolve options like Finger of Death or Flame Strike, that proved to be nowhere near as effective, with a few exceptions. Everybody else knew how effective summoning was and didn't discourage me from doing it, but I couldn't help regretting how much of the time I felt like I was taking.

UglyPanda
2010-01-15, 11:38 AM
Sean K. Reynolds disagrees. (http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/misc/featpointsystem.html)Oh dear god. A quick bit of research shows this guy used to work for WotC and got fired in 2002, about when 3.5 was being made. And he worked on Savage Species, frequently considered to be highly unbalanced.

I got a little off-track there. Anyway, that article is crap. Scribe Scroll shouldn't be compared to anything that isn't another crafting feat. You need to spend time and money to craft items, Metamagic takes up no extra time (Unless you're a spontaneous caster). He compares Natural Spell to three feats put together and assigns them a value equal to the average? He said Leadership, one of the best feats in core, is not as good as a +2 to a save!?

Another_Poet
2010-01-15, 11:44 AM
I have never seen a wizard PC cast Knock in my gaming group. We normally start at low levels and work our way up. Every spell known is a valuable commodity and we don't take "something the Rogue can already do" when we could take "something no one but me can do."

If we find it on a scroll or someone feels whimsical they might learn it, but never prepare it unless we are planning some special raid/stealth job and have a specific application for it.

As far as save-or-die spells, I am just now showing my group the true awesomeness of these spells with a high-stat Wiz with save-DC-boosting feats. Previously my group's idea of an awesome spell was Magic Missile because it never misses. *shrug*

Dienekes
2010-01-15, 12:59 PM
But does the druid cause tears? I understand your point that a druid can easily overshadow the fighter, but the question is:

When this happens in your games, does the fighter's player feel unhappy? Does he stop having fun?

In my example, yes.

He didn't really complain about it, but after 3 more sessions of realizing that a pet was doing better than you he asked to change his character to something more useful in his words.

Part of it was my fault I will admit since I really should have helped him more in creating his first character, and I did with his next and he played a decently powerful Sorcerer.

I still play with the guy, I don't think he ever touched melee again. Take that as you will.

Doc Roc
2010-01-15, 01:18 PM
I feel like when I discovered that Andy Collins wrote the Crescent Knife.

:smalleek:

Welcome. Home.

Toric
2010-01-15, 02:21 PM
As Glug referenced, the Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw) sketch is the perfect analogy of when this happens. Now I was going to analyze it and type up a detailed account of how bad it can be when a completely overpowered caster overshadows a perhaps subpar fighter, but there's just one problem.


I have never felt overshadowed by another player no matter the class combination.

If the wizard takes the big bad of the adventure down in one hit as soon as he's finished his "You'll never defeat me" monologue, generally everybody at the table (except maybe the DM) applauds the curb-stomping player. Few people I've played with approached actual gameplay as a competition of ability, and those that I have come across I didn't know for long. It's a team game. We combine our abilities whatever they are to meet goals, and generally everybody gets their chance to shine from the rogue who bluffs an army into leaving town to the druid that impales a vampire with a shard of ice to the fighter that knocks an enemy off a speeding carriage.

In my experience, the rogue has never cried.

*.*.*.*
2010-01-15, 02:29 PM
My cleric made the paladin switch to a fighter, then after owning up hard on a lich and his undead minions, to a monk.

taltamir
2010-01-15, 02:32 PM
Of course the tiers are simply guide lines.

However I don't think many classes have it as bad as a Fighter.
Barbarian you waste a feat ok you still have all your class abilities, same goes for Rogue, ect. Even Sorcerers you made a mistake with your spell list, that sucks but next level you can pick a few more.
For a fighter if you pick a bad feat, congrats you just wasted 2 levels worth of class abilities for +1 to your AC when you call out against someone, I truly pity you.

A sorcerer cannot simply replace all his spells in one level. A sorcerer is limited to 1 spell replaced every 4 levels.

most of the fighter's "class abilities" are the good BAB and HD, and their weapon and armor... A level 20 fighter who has made bad choices just buys new gear, they might not have feats but they have items that replicate them and get 5 attacks per round and have the same high HP.
The sorcerer is... well, nothing.

Of course it is an extremely unlikely scenario for the sorcerer to choose absolutely nothing usable... You will practically have to intentionally try to build the most useless sorcerer possible.
The fighter choosing "dodge" is less screwed than a sorcerer who chooses "identify"

And unlike the wizard, erudite, and cleric who can simply use one of their thousands of spells that replicate feats. Spontanous casters are dependent on their feats and are in the same boat as a fighter...
A sorcerer who chose: still, silence, and eschew materials
vs a sorc who cose: empower, extend, and persist


My cleric made the paladin switch to a fighter, then after owning up hard on a lich and his undead minions, to a monk.

wait... what? why did he keep downgrading his character?

*.*.*.*
2010-01-15, 02:46 PM
wait... what? why did he keep downgrading his character?

Because he's a freakin' idiot. My point is that my cleric has been the powerhouse of our group. Supplying everyone with extremely useful buffs, persistent lesser vigor, and bringing the melee in. I even outclassed the druid

randomhero00
2010-01-15, 02:49 PM
OP no it doesn't really happen in my games. Why cast knock or even memorize if we have a rogue who can do it without using a valuable spell? Basically we don't step on each others toes. We're friends. Nor do we let obvious cheese spells ruin the adventure.

Deth Muncher
2010-01-15, 02:56 PM
On the Knock v Rogue door-opening argument:

Am I misremembering, or does Knock not really mention traps at all? I mean, sure, Knock'll open the door, but if it happens to set off the fireball trap...

JaronK
2010-01-15, 03:10 PM
[SIZE="2"]And I ask all you people, in good faith:
Does this actually happen in your games? Ever?
(Not the Rogue actually crying, of course :smalltongue:, but the Rogue's player feeling unhappy.)

Yes. I've seen it a bunch of times (and no the players didn't cry in any of these, but the players did switch to playing Beguilers and such).

Case 1) Rogue is trying to sneak into the room of someone we're investigating. Door is arcane locked. Rogue, despite really high Open Lock, can't do anything. Rogue is REALLY annoyed, as there was no Wizard go fetch to open it, and the Rogue thought he was playing an infiltration class.

Case 2) DM sends a (small) army of skeletons at the party. Rogue goes and hides and waits for the battle to end, due to the fact that he's a two weapon fighting dagger Halfling Rogue who does 1d3-1 damage per hit and thus can't contribute. DM, not understanding why the Rogue is doing this, has a skeleton automatically find him. DM evidently thought Rogues in D&D were like Rogues in Everquest. Rogue now sits there smacking skeleton for 1 damage while the Skeleton nearly kills him (meanwhile the rest of the party is hacking their way through, but is nowhere near). Skeleton suddenly randomly dies from the third point of damage because the Rogue is about to die and the DM realizes this. Both DM and Rogue player are obviously annoyed by the situation and how worthless the Rogue is about to be (the DM has set up an all undead adventure without knowing what Rogues did).

Case 3) Rogue is set up to be really stealthy. Everything sees him every time he goes stealthy. This was before Darkstalker came out. Blindsense sucks. So does Tremorsense and Scent.

Case 4) There was a recent thread here where a Rogue got a +10 item of hide and the DM asked what to do about it (since he'd only accidentally given it to him). Most of the suggests were how to steal the +10 item back, because the idea of a Rogue actually able to hide from stuff reliably was overpowered. I don't know that player, but I'd be pissed!

"The Rogue Cries" thing is an expression talking about the fact that very often Rogues can't do much. Too many things just negate them, and too often another class does their thing better. It happens more for Fighters (pretty much any time combat isn't a solution to the problem). It's fine if sometimes the Wizard busts out with something awesome, but when you start to feel like dead weight in a party that stinks. People want to play in a party of Conan, Gandalf, and Catwoman... not a party of Conan, Superman with a Green Lantern Ring while possessed by Batman, and the second coming of Thor. Why? Because we're not here to play as a red shirt (unless, you know, it's an all redshirt game. I'm doing that one right now).

Now, in a game where everybody is allowed to shine, it's fine. Maybe the Wizard Glitterdusts an encounter and ends it, but in a later encounter the enemies have Blindsight and the Fighter lands a bunch of killing blows, and another time the Rogue manages to sneak around and sneak attack kill the enemy Sorcerer in the surprise round. Cool, fine. And maybe the Wizard Knocks a door open one time, and the Rogue disarms some important traps, and the Fighter, I dunno, bashes open a door. Whatever.

But if a DM, being less experienced, doesn't learn to play to everyone's strengths, certain classes end up dead weight. If the DM sends a whole lot of undead, constructs, elementals, plants, and other enemies that are immune to sneak attack, and it's a combat heavy game, the Rogue player starts getting frustrated that he's dead weight. If the DM sends a bunch of enemies that the Fighter has trouble with (ranged fliers when the Fighter is a melee Fighter without flight, for example) or just has a bunch of non combat stuff, the Fighter feels like dead weight. Also, some DMs really do like to make the PCs lose, and it's far worse in those cases. Meanwhile, Wizards and other adaptable classes just change up their spell list and they're good to go. And you can rapidly have players feeling like they're just dead weight in the party.

And yes, BMX Bandit and Angel Summoner is a hilarious example of what this can turn into.

JaronK

taltamir
2010-01-15, 03:17 PM
On the Knock v Rogue door-opening argument:

Am I misremembering, or does Knock not really mention traps at all? I mean, sure, Knock'll open the door, but if it happens to set off the fireball trap...

knock will UNLOCK the door... "open/close" will open the door.

Dienekes
2010-01-15, 03:18 PM
A sorcerer cannot simply replace all his spells in one level. A sorcerer is limited to 1 spell replaced every 4 levels.

most of the fighter's "class abilities" are the good BAB and HD, and their weapon and armor... A level 20 fighter who has made bad choices just buys new gear, they might not have feats but they have items that replicate them and get 5 attacks per round and have the same high HP.
The sorcerer is... well, nothing.

Of course it is an extremely unlikely scenario for the sorcerer to choose absolutely nothing usable... You will practically have to intentionally try to build the most useless sorcerer possible.
The fighter choosing "dodge" is less screwed than a sorcerer who chooses "identify"

And unlike the wizard, erudite, and cleric who can simply use one of their thousands of spells that replicate feats. Spontanous casters are dependent on their feats and are in the same boat as a fighter...
A sorcerer who chose: still, silence, and eschew materials
vs a sorc who cose: empower, extend, and persist

My original point was not that sorcerors can replace spells but that the next level they gain 1, 2 or 3 more that have absolutely nothing to do with what you last picked. I'm not saying that wizards, erudites, clerics, ect. don't have it a lot easier, they do. Simply that the Fighter must make a choice every 2 levels on what to improve if they choose poorly they really take a hit. But now we're getting into trivialities. Any character if played poorly can be completely ineffectual.

Crow
2010-01-15, 03:19 PM
1. Since a druid never walks around unbuffed, neither does his pet

Remember that the Druid can't just share buffs with his pet. If he ever wants it to stray more than 5 feet away, he needs to prepare extra buffs to cover both himself and the pet. In most cases, those buffs would have been better spent on the fighter.

Gnaeus
2010-01-15, 03:22 PM
Unless he has Companion Spellbond. In that case, it's pretty easy to stay within 30 feet of your pet.

CasESenSITItiVE
2010-01-15, 03:25 PM
at first glance, it looks like most of people are agreeing with the OP, but i'm not sure they are. most people are saying things like "my wizard isn't a jerk, so no he just doesn't step on their toes" or something similar, but the OPs point is that when he does, the rest of the party are happy that he does, because their team is winning.

JaronK
2010-01-15, 03:40 PM
Which is only true if the other members of the team get to do something too some other time. The problem isn't one person shining sometimes, it's one person never shining (or very rarely shining) and mostly feeling worthless. It's the Rogue in a campaign full of undead and constructs and plants who mostly just hides in combat because he can't hurt anything. It's the Fighter who gets left behind when the party goes into a hostile town to stealthily find out information and acquire supplies because fighting isn't an option and they need to stay hidden/make their bluff checks. It's the Monk who thought he was a great warrior and caster killer and who can't hit most enemies with his attacks anyway, while the Druid's pet is doing just fine.

One incident does not make the Rogue (or anyone) cry. But a chain of them will.

JaronK

incubus5075
2010-01-15, 04:39 PM
hera is my tale. This is 4th ed so the classes are a little more balanced (my opinion). I am the Dm and my players are lvl 14. We have a wizard, an artificer, and a defensive swordmage. You may have noticed that there is no striker but i changed all the monsters a bit. They do more damage (to counteract the swordmage from taking away ALL the damage) but have less HP so a striker is not missed as much.

Anyway it is the end of a long chapter in this story and the Heroes face a huge amount of enemy lurkers and Faerun's most famus assassin. (all defenses are good except will, but I haven't seen the wizard cast a vs will spell in a long time so I thought it would be a very challenging encounter, maybe a few actual deaths) Everyone rolls initiative, wizard goes first, he casts sleep. You cast what I ask? Sleep is a lvl 1 spell I really did not see that even coming! All but a couple fail their two saves in a row...that sucked...

....DM cryed....

ex cathedra
2010-01-15, 04:53 PM
Oh dear god. A quick bit of research shows this guy used to work for WotC and got fired in 2002, about when 3.5 was being made. And he worked on Savage Species, frequently considered to be highly unbalanced.

I got a little off-track there. Anyway, that article is crap. Scribe Scroll shouldn't be compared to anything that isn't another crafting feat. You need to spend time and money to craft items, Metamagic takes up no extra time (Unless you're a spontaneous caster). He compares Natural Spell to three feats put together and assigns them a value equal to the average? He said Leadership, one of the best feats in core, is not as good as a +2 to a save!?

Yup. He also worked on Ghostwalk (Say hello to LA+0 Ghost, Leech Ghost Skill, and Skull Marbles), Unapproachable East (Battle Jump, Craft Contingent Spell, Valorous weapons), Fiend Folio (Feathered Wings), several monster manuals, Lords of Darkness, Champions of Valor, The Silver Marches... quite a repertoire. The sort of people who design these books are now obviously the sort of people who think that Spring Attack is as good as Leadership.

JaronK
2010-01-15, 04:59 PM
God, that's like Skip's whole "Fighters are leaders because they go in the front of the party." Urk.

JaronK

Jerthanis
2010-01-15, 05:06 PM
One of the big problems I find with Wizards is that at around 11th to 13th level, they get to start being a PC deus ex machina. The impact their abilities will have on the story are tremendous. A player of a wizard once had a plan to divert a river into a city where we knew a vampire was living, to trap him amongst all the running water and be able to take him out easiliy... that's the kind of thing high level wizards find trivial.

Once planning around the character's abilities is measured in which forces of nature they are superior to, the guy who can swing a pointy stick 300% better than he could before sometimes has trouble finding a vital role for himself to play in these plans.

Sir Giacomo
2010-01-15, 05:38 PM
Yes. I've seen it a bunch of times (and no the players didn't cry in any of these, but the players did switch to playing Beguilers and such).

Case 1) Rogue is trying to sneak into the room of someone we're investigating. Door is arcane locked. Rogue, despite really high Open Lock, can't do anything. Rogue is REALLY annoyed, as there was no Wizard go fetch to open it, and the Rogue thought he was playing an infiltration class.

I dunno - but a rogue of mine once had a wand of knock for exactly those situations. UMD is a class skill for rogues, after all ...:smallsmile:


Case 2) DM sends a (small) army of skeletons at the party. Rogue goes and hides and waits for the battle to end, due to the fact that he's a two weapon fighting dagger Halfling Rogue who does 1d3-1 damage per hit and thus can't contribute. DM, not understanding why the Rogue is doing this, has a skeleton automatically find him. DM evidently thought Rogues in D&D were like Rogues in Everquest. Rogue now sits there smacking skeleton for 1 damage while the Skeleton nearly kills him (meanwhile the rest of the party is hacking their way through, but is nowhere near). Skeleton suddenly randomly dies from the third point of damage because the Rogue is about to die and the DM realizes this. Both DM and Rogue player are obviously annoyed by the situation and how worthless the Rogue is about to be (the DM has set up an all undead adventure without knowing what Rogues did).

That is truly a pity. Again, a wand of gravestrike may work wonders (non-core). And to be more powerful against the undead, a rogue could try to get a holy weapon, or a disruption weapon, or simpy evade them with his superior stealth skills.


Case 3) Rogue is set up to be really stealthy. Everything sees him every time he goes stealthy. This was before Darkstalker came out. Blindsense sucks. So does Tremorsense and Scent.

Tremorsense is nasty but rare. Using scent makes the rogue's opponent slower. And the hide skill is vastly superior to the invisibility spell, anyhow. So there should not be a doubt that rogues are best at stealth in the game.


Case 4) There was a recent thread here where a Rogue got a +10 item of hide and the DM asked what to do about it (since he'd only accidentally given it to him). Most of the suggests were how to steal the +10 item back, because the idea of a Rogue actually able to hide from stuff reliably was overpowered. I don't know that player, but I'd be pissed!

Well, since there are armour enhancements in core that provide hide+10, I do not think that is that overpowered. Depends on the situation and campaign. I am playing in a (high-level) campaign where a fellow player is using some combo to get hide in excess of +50 and snipes away everything vulnerable to criticals and sneaks.


But if a DM, being less experienced, doesn't learn to play to everyone's strengths, certain classes end up dead weight. If the DM sends a whole lot of undead, constructs, elementals, plants, and other enemies that are immune to sneak attack, and it's a combat heavy game, the Rogue player starts getting frustrated that he's dead weight. If the DM sends a bunch of enemies that the Fighter has trouble with (ranged fliers when the Fighter is a melee Fighter without flight, for example) or just has a bunch of non combat stuff, the Fighter feels like dead weight. Also, some DMs really do like to make the PCs lose, and it's far worse in those cases. Meanwhile, Wizards and other adaptable classes just change up their spell list and they're good to go. And you can rapidly have players feeling like they're just dead weight in the party.


The problem with this experience imo is that a DM can easily spoil the day for wizards, too (opponents stealing his spellbook, preventing him to regain spells with a night's rest, having some protective spells that thwart many of his - like true seeing when the pc wizard is an illusionist etc).
But for some reason, most DMs shy away from doing that - and rather frustrate the rogue or fighter player with the stuff you described.

Odd.

- Giacomo

Deth Muncher
2010-01-15, 05:46 PM
And the hide skill is vastly superior to the invisibility spell is aided greatly by the Invisibility spell, anyhow.


Fixed it, under this little nitpick:

Invisibility grants +20 to Hide, as I recall. So it's actually pretty great when used with Hide.

In my opinion, at least.

Samb
2010-01-15, 07:27 PM
True conversation during my last table session:
rogue (me): I almost got hit by another poison needle trap on a lock. Could you (wizard) please memorize a knock or two next time?

Wizard: screw you, you're the freaking rogue, do you know how precious my spell slots are?

Rogue: grrrrr

knock is nice and all but few wizards will take it unless the rogue didn't bother skilling it. I honestly wished I had more back up sometimes and I always play a skillmonkey.

Samb
2010-01-15, 07:43 PM
Gee JaronK you make it sound like a DM playing to the stregth of a PC is a BAD thing. That sounds like good DMing to me.

My rogue is the reason my party didn't get ambushed, the reason they haven't died to the grisly traps littering the caves etc.

Most wizards don't try to "out niche" others even though they could. They see a role filled and they focus on others. Quite frankly I've never had a wizard take knock, since I had that on a wand.

A DM should be working his encounters around the PCs. A party of tier ones would make a DM's life easier, but no one ever said DMing was easy. Don't take the job if all you are going to do complain about how tough it is.

JaronK
2010-01-15, 08:17 PM
I dunno - but a rogue of mine once had a wand of knock for exactly those situations. UMD is a class skill for rogues, after all ...:smallsmile:

Yeah, the DM didn't give us magic marts, so that wasn't an option. Also, at level 5 UMDing a wand is by no means a gaurentee.


That is truly a pity. Again, a wand of gravestrike may work wonders (non-core). And to be more powerful against the undead, a rogue could try to get a holy weapon, or a disruption weapon, or simpy evade them with his superior stealth skills.

Gravestrike Wands don't work. First off, they require reliably hitting a pretty high UMD check, which is hard at low levels. Second, you have to be able to buy them (I rarely have ye olde magic mart around the corner when I see undead, and don't want to waste the funds on them just in case. What if I hit constructs and plants and elementals instead?). Third, they take up a hand. Fourth, by the DMG it takes a standard action to use them (Rules Compendium might change this or might not depending on your interpretation of what they wrote, but most people I know don't have the RC anyway). A Truedeath Crystal would handle it against undead, but that requires a LOT of money, especially if you dare use two weapons.

Holy Weapons and Disruption weapons are cute and all, but they don't exactly play to the Rogue's strength and they're pretty situational for a noticable cost at lower leves (Holy is better in this respect of course). In the end, switching to Factotum got the job done a lot better (Iajuitsu Focus works on everyone, and instead of paying the huge cash for Truedeaths and such you can just get a Rod of Defiance and a Lyre of the Restful Soul, and instant kill all undead in the area).


Tremorsense is nasty but rare. Using scent makes the rogue's opponent slower. And the hide skill is vastly superior to the invisibility spell, anyhow. So there should not be a doubt that rogues are best at stealth in the game.

Um, Factotums are just plain better at stealth than Rogues by a long shot (they get Int to hide and move silently, can cast invisibility and silence if they need, etc). Beguilers are generally better too since they can supliment hide with spells too. Rogues are by no means the king of hiding... all they get is hide as a class skill on a dex based class and eventually skill mastery.

And scent doesn't slow anyone down, it alarms them to the fact that you're there. Guards with dogs are enough to send alarms up everywhere and then call in someone who can do some real detection (like psions with touchsight or mindbenders with mindsight... god I hate touchsight!).


Well, since there are armour enhancements in core that provide hide+10, I do not think that is that overpowered. Depends on the situation and campaign. I am playing in a (high-level) campaign where a fellow player is using some combo to get hide in excess of +50 and snipes away everything vulnerable to criticals and sneaks.

It's definitely not overpowered to have +10 to hide, but I've seen MANY DMs freak out about the idea of a Rogue being hidden. I dunno why, and it sucks. There's a thread on this very forum quite recently about how to screw over a Rogue by taking away said item. Some DMs just do that, and according to that thread most people here would do it too.


The problem with this experience imo is that a DM can easily spoil the day for wizards, too (opponents stealing his spellbook, preventing him to regain spells with a night's rest, having some protective spells that thwart many of his - like true seeing when the pc wizard is an illusionist etc).
But for some reason, most DMs shy away from doing that - and rather frustrate the rogue or fighter player with the stuff you described.

Okay seriously, steal his spellbook? How? Mine stays in and enveloping pit where it's nice and safe (and hardened, trapped, permanently invisible, and guarded by Dread Warriors with nice detection abilities, along with dummy books full of explosive runes, all behind Arcane Locked and Hardnened Doors with screaming skulls for warning). I don't even take the darn thing out, I just go in and read it inside my mini extradimensional fortress. Anyone who could steal my book could kill me. And preventing sleep? Has Rope Trick suddenly vanished? The reason DMs don't do that sort of thing is because Wizards have so many defenses that it requires fiat (or at least NPCs having WAY more knowledge than they should about his defenses). Screwing a Rogue just requires not giving him a store full of every tool he might need and then sending him into a scenario with one of the myriad enemies he's weak against (undead, elementals, plants, constructs, barbarians, etc). And heck, in core there aren't even any tools to deal with any of those. Even a basic Arcane Lock stops a rogue cold in a lot of cases.

JaronK

taltamir
2010-01-15, 08:21 PM
And scent doesn't slow anyone down, it alarms them to the fact that you're there. Guards with dogs are enough to send alarms up everywhere and then call in someone who can do some real detection (like psions with touchsight or mindbenders with mindsight... god I hate touchsight!).

but unless you are taking the pathfinder "roll them together" approach of "stealth", then "hide" is purely hiding from sight... it makes sense for, say, a guard dog to smell you.

JaronK
2010-01-15, 08:21 PM
Gee JaronK you make it sound like a DM playing to the stregth of a PC is a BAD thing. That sounds like good DMing to me.

...I said the problems occur when DMs don't play to all the PCs strengths. See when I said "The problem isn't one person shining sometimes, it's one person never shining (or very rarely shining) and mostly feeling worthless." That means the problem is when one person doesn't get to play to their strengths.

So, you seem to have it completely backwards.


Most wizards don't try to "out niche" others even though they could. They see a role filled and they focus on others. Quite frankly I've never had a wizard take knock, since I had that on a wand.

It's not about Wizards "out niching" anyone. It's about a door having Arcane Lock on it and the Rogue being unable to get through, so he has to ask the Wizard to deal with the lock. And then the flying dragon comes in and the chain trip Fighter can't trip him and thus can't do much, so the Wizard Shivering Touches the dragon.

The problem is when the specialists can't do their thing so the Wizard has to.


A DM should be working his encounters around the PCs. A party of tier ones would make a DM's life easier, but no one ever said DMing was easy. Don't take the job if all you are going to do complain about how tough it is.

Actually, a party of T1s makes the DMs job a lot harder. It's far easier to play to one person's strengths than it is to challenge a bunch of demigods. Of course, the hardest still is two T1s and two T5s in the same party (Druid Wizard Ninja Fighter... oh god the pain).

JaronK

JaronK
2010-01-15, 08:22 PM
but unless you are taking the pathfinder "roll them together" approach of "stealth", then "hide" is purely hiding from sight... it makes sense for, say, a guard dog to smell you.

Right. But it also sucks, since there's no way to sneak past that in core. Thank goodness for Darkstalker!

JaronK

taltamir
2010-01-15, 08:45 PM
Right. But it also sucks, since there's no way to sneak past that in core. Thank goodness for Darkstalker!

JaronK

true, that is a problem... hiding your scent is standard fare for hunters. (although, with a few exceptions it is typically based upon staying downwind from the animal, and crossing a river when being chased by dogs; the ability to actually mask it is sometimes found in stories, but rarely... and I am not sure how realistic it is... regardless, DnD does not need to be realistic.)

woodenbandman
2010-01-15, 08:50 PM
I learned a while ago to play spellcasters nicelike.

I played a druid as one of my first characters, and I rapidly discovered that I could destroy the whole party with a wave of my right hand, and with my left create a brave new world for my animals to dwell in.

And they did cry. Oh how they cried.

I was stronger than the psychic warrior, had higher AC than the dedicated tank paladin, I had better AoE than the Dragonfire Adept, better spellcasting than the psion, better action economy than the player with leadership, etc.

Spellcasters ARE better, so if you play them as a character that doesn't directly affect the performance abilities of everyone else, not only will everyone else fall behind, but you will shine on.

Buffer wizards are much better than god wizards. They make nice with everyone else.

Samb
2010-01-15, 08:56 PM
...I said the problems occur when DMs don't play to all the PCs strengths. See when I said "The problem isn't one person shining sometimes, it's one person never shining (or very rarely shining) and mostly feeling worthless." That means the problem is when one person doesn't get to play to their strengths.

So, you seem to have it completely backwards.
Maybe I did misunderstand you but the way I see it, a DM should only rarely put a specialist in that position. If they get put in the position where they are constantly asking batman for support, then you fail as a DM.




It's not about Wizards "out niching" anyone. It's about a door having Arcane Lock on it and the Rogue being unable to get through, so he has to ask the Wizard to deal with the lock. And then the flying dragon comes in and the chain trip Fighter can't trip him and thus can't do much, so the Wizard Shivering Touches the dragon.

The problem is when the specialists can't do their thing so the Wizard has to.
A DM never HAS to do anything. Maybe the situations are there so the wizards can do something to remind them that "hey a wizard can do that afterall". If you have a rogue in the party (that somehow didn't have a wand of knock) then why are you putting a bunch of them against the party in the first place? Maybe I just have a fundamental difference of option when it comes to what a DM is supposed to do than you.



Actually, a party of T1s makes the DMs job a lot harder. It's far easier to play to one person's strengths than it is to challenge a bunch of demigods. Of course, the hardest still is two T1s and two T5s in the same party (Druid Wizard Ninja Fighter... oh god the pain).

JaronK

I guess that is up to you. A versitile party means I can make the encounter how I want without worrying about "steeping on any toes". I mean I could do all the same things the PCs do and more. So I again I guess it really is up to how skilled of a DM you are.

taltamir
2010-01-15, 08:59 PM
if the fighter's niche is to kill / trip things. The rogues to sneak / unlock things, etc... and if the wizard does any of those things he is muscling in on their territory and making them useless...

what is exactly the niche of the wizard?

Crow
2010-01-15, 09:03 PM
and crossing a river when being chased by dogs;

As someone who has this as a part of their job, it depends on what kind of dog is after you (how they were trained, not breed). Most dogs trained to track can find you even if you walk right smack down the center of that river for a while. Depending on the type of dog you're dealing with, your best bet may be to find a large concentration of people and hope you can confuse it. But then, they train them to get around that too, now. Moving from tree to tree? Nope, still find you.

It's not easy. I have no idea how good medieval tracking dogs were, but modern day, it's harder than you could believe. You pretty much have to know what kind of dog is after you.

Sir Giacomo
2010-01-15, 09:31 PM
:smallsmile:
if the fighter's niche is to kill / trip things. The rogues to sneak / unlock things, etc... and if the wizard does any of those things he is muscling in on their territory and making them useless...

what is exactly the niche of the wizard?

Knowledge and a lot of highly useful magical tricks and tactical options. Which non-casters could also try to focus on, but it simply wouldn't be a good idea to do so - just like a wizard trying to fill the fighter's or rogue's niches.


Yeah, the DM didn't give us magic marts, so that wasn't an option. Also, at level 5 UMDing a wand is by no means a gaurentee.

Too bad. So when a DM puts up a door only to be opened by magic without the means to do so there is bound to be trouble.:smallsmile:
Anyhow, at level 5, a rogue can have a UMD of +10 with masterwork item and max ranks (not counting CHR or other bonuses). Since you can try as often as you like (until you roll a "1") you can be fairly certain to activate a wand of knock at DC 20. And a wand of knock is certainly affordable for a 5th level rogue. Better still when they could not only sell partially charged wands but also buy them ... :smallamused:


Gravestrike Wands don't work. First off, they require reliably hitting a pretty high UMD check, which is hard at low levels.

See above.


Second, you have to be able to buy them (I rarely have ye olde magic mart around the corner when I see undead, and don't want to waste the funds on them just in case. What if I hit constructs and plants and elementals instead?).

Does your DM also think wizards able to buy/procure their magical components odd? Probably not. Maybe ythen buying a 750gp item may not be thaaat unlikely for 5th level characters ...:smallwink:


Third, they take up a hand.

Which should not be such a problem for rogues.


Fourth, by the DMG it takes a standard action to use them (Rules Compendium might change this or might not depending on your interpretation of what they wrote, but most people I know don't have the RC anyway). A Truedeath Crystal would handle it against undead, but that requires a LOT of money, especially if you dare use two weapons.

So better use the wand instead. And a standard action is not such a big deal, in particular when you are a rogue and can use stealth to your advantage AND also likely have high initiative.


Holy Weapons and Disruption weapons are cute and all, but they don't exactly play to the Rogue's strength and they're pretty situational for a noticable cost at lower leves (Holy is better in this respect of course). In the end, switching to Factotum got the job done a lot better (Iajuitsu Focus works on everyone, and instead of paying the huge cash for Truedeaths and such you can just get a Rod of Defiance and a Lyre of the Restful Soul, and instant kill all undead in the area).

Factotum is a very odd class and not entirely necessary for what I suggested.
There are many ways to kill undead apart from gravestrike'd sneaks, and a rogue can get a lot of them.


Um, Factotums are just plain better at stealth than Rogues by a long shot (they get Int to hide and move silently, can cast invisibility and silence if they need, etc). Beguilers are generally better too since they can supliment hide with spells too. Rogues are by no means the king of hiding... all they get is hide as a class skill on a dex based class and eventually skill mastery.

I do not think that supplementing stealth with spells is that reliable - especially the higher the level. See invisibility, dispels, arcane sight, true seeing etc. all are a drawback for using magical means to remain stealthy.
The rogue with his 8 skill points/level has an advantage here imo. And they get easy access to the stealthy prestige classes.


And scent doesn't slow anyone down, it alarms them to the fact that you're there. Guards with dogs are enough to send alarms up everywhere and then call in someone who can do some real detection (like psions with touchsight or mindbenders with mindsight... god I hate touchsight!).

To use scent, you need to expend a move action- and even that only shows the direction (not the ability to pinpoint). That slows you down. Calling someone else slows you down even more. And when that someone finally uses his or her ability (usually a standard action) then you are normally really in trouble (or the opponent has long since gone).


It's definitely not overpowered to have +10 to hide, but I've seen MANY DMs freak out about the idea of a Rogue being hidden. I dunno why, and it sucks. There's a thread on this very forum quite recently about how to screw over a Rogue by taking away said item. Some DMs just do that, and according to that thread most people here would do it too.

The reason why DMs are quite weary of high hide skill is that it can only be countered by the spot skill. Everything else, even magic, fails. But you are correct- DMs should not disallow it. After all, there are also spells that are quite powerful and which should not be banned.


Okay seriously, steal his spellbook? How? Mine stays in and enveloping pit where it's nice and safe (and hardened, trapped, permanently invisible, and guarded by Dread Warriors with nice detection abilities, along with dummy books full of explosive runes, all behind Arcane Locked and Hardnened Doors with screaming skulls for warning).

That sounds like a lot of cost taken from your wbl. Also it means you need another spellbook for your daily use. Again taken from your wbl.
Good ideas altogether, but they only can take you so far.
Also, note the many lower-level wizards not yet able to afford such defenses who get their spellbooks stolen. It's a stony road to become Merlin...


I don't even take the darn thing out, I just go in and read it inside my mini extradimensional fortress.

More money spent.


Anyone who could steal my book could kill me. And preventing sleep? Has Rope Trick suddenly vanished?

A simple see invisbility (incidently the same level) and dispel magic and/or ambush is enough vs the rope trick and the wizard has a huge problem.


The reason DMs don't do that sort of thing is because Wizards have so many defenses that it requires fiat (or at least NPCs having WAY more knowledge than they should about his defenses).

No, DMs do not do that because they either do not know about this - AND/OR they are wary of the typical binary threat to wizards: either you do something against them and they die right away or you do nothing and they think they are gods. Sigh.


Screwing a Rogue just requires not giving him a store full of every tool he might need and then sending him into a scenario with one of the myriad enemies he's weak against (undead, elementals, plants, constructs, barbarians, etc). And heck, in core there aren't even any tools to deal with any of those. Even a basic Arcane Lock stops a rogue cold in a lot of cases.

JaronK

But a rogue can (usually) climb, diplomacy/bluff himself out of trouble, disguise himself to be the fellow undead over there etc. It is a rogue. Not some kind of wizard. That is the whole trick.
All of those opponents immune to his sneak damage could wander all over the place and never find him while he takes their treasure. It is a ROGUE.
:smallsmile:

- Giacomo

nefele
2010-01-15, 09:52 PM
@JaronK:
You are arguing that all the Rogue's abilities can be very easily negated, and when people point out that this is sadly true but there are ways around that, you bring up unreliable UMD checks at low levels, lacks of funds at low levels, lack of Magic Marts, etc. (By the way, Penetrating Strike is an alternate class feature which doesn't require any of the above, and makes most of the Rogue's problems disappear.)

And then, when they tell you that the Wizard's abilities can be easily negated too, you say "how on earth will the DM steal my spellbook or prevent me from resting?", and proceed with listing a bunch of high level spells (you can't use Rope Trick to rest without a high caster level...) which require a whole lot of spell slots.

It seems to me that you are using different measures here. :smallsmile:

A 5th level wizard can be royally screwed if he runs out of spells, if he's captured and thrown naked in a cell, if he can't rest - and all these things can happen at 5th level. (In fact, they can happen at any level, considering it's the DM who makes the rules, and designs the campaign.)

Now, if a player finds that his character is ineffective for a few encounters during an adventure, or even for a lot of them during a large scale campaign, that's part of the game. It's cool even, helps you think out of the box. It's challenging, at the very least in terms of roleplaying.

"OK, I've cornered myself and there's really nothing I can do to advance my goals for now. What does my character do? What does he think? Is he pissed off? Is he patient? Does he change goals?"

But if a player finds that his character is ineffective all the freaking time, I'm sorry, but that's the DM's fault, he designed the campaign badly, whether due to inexperience or due to laziness or indifference or spite or whatever. And this is what most (not all, I admit) posters describe when they mention crying rogues in this thread.

The lack of balance in core classes, the "overshadowing" of rogues and fighters by casters, the wizard taking over the rogue's niche... these are almost never relevant.


P.S. By the way, not all DMs who make your character worthless are bad. Sometimes ineffectiveness is the purpose of the game, or at least a significant part of it. Humble origins, grim and gritty, non-heroic fantasy, all these are wonderful ideas - I'm just talking about more conventional games here. :)

taltamir
2010-01-15, 10:10 PM
The reason why DMs are quite weary of high hide skill is that it can only be countered by the spot skill. Everything else, even magic, fails. But you are correct- DMs should not disallow it. After all, there are also spells that are quite powerful and which should not be banned.

other way around... hide only counters spot, everything else detects you without problem.
light (if you do not have hide in plain sight)
scent
tremorsense
blindsense
detect thought
detect magic (if you have magic)
listen
etc...
hide counters spot and only spot. invisibility acts as a +20 to hide (+40 when standing still).

Tyndmyr
2010-01-16, 02:00 AM
@JaronK:
You are arguing that all the Rogue's abilities can be very easily negated, and when people point out that this is sadly true but there are ways around that, you bring up unreliable UMD checks at low levels, lacks of funds at low levels, lack of Magic Marts, etc. (By the way, Penetrating Strike is an alternate class feature which doesn't require any of the above, and makes most of the Rogue's problems disappear.)

And then, when they tell you that the Wizard's abilities can be easily negated too, you say "how on earth will the DM steal my spellbook or prevent me from resting?", and proceed with listing a bunch of high level spells (you can't use Rope Trick to rest without a high caster level...) which require a whole lot of spell slots.

Uh....you can, in core, rest in a rope trick from level 4 onward. Earlier, if you're an elf, have a bedroll, etc.

So, it's quite easy to rest safely, and/or keep your spellbook safe.


It seems to me that you are using different measures here. :smallsmile:

A 5th level wizard can be royally screwed if he runs out of spells, if he's captured and thrown naked in a cell, if he can't rest - and all these things can happen at 5th level. (In fact, they can happen at any level, considering it's the DM who makes the rules, and designs the campaign.)

They are not likely to happen without fiat, however.

At fifth level, if he runs dry on spells, he should retreat. Generally right before doing so, tbh. Dimension Door is easily available within core then, and if being captured is a significant risk, it's an easy way out. Alternative ways out include spider climb, fly, and expeditious retreat. He doesn't need all of them, any one will do, and all are core.

The biggest reason not to cast knock is "The rogue can do it". Why would I prepare spells to do something the rogue can do instead of prepping spells to cover things nobody else can? Nobody else is making that rope trick, now are they? You don't steal their niche because doing so is inefficient.

ondonaflash
2010-01-16, 06:46 AM
You know, I've never had a problem with a party member overshadowing another, mostly because we all like each other. We have a funny group dynamic though: The abrasive tiefling rogue, who only has loyalty for the party leader, the someone mad Extremist Cleric, whose god is... tough. The hippy monk, soon to be replaced by a Psionic Warrior, or something. I mean, we boost each other up. Our DM is fun, he throws challenges that play to our individual strengths, and our individual weaknesses. The problem is, if any of your players decide to break Wheaton's Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wil_Wheaton) you get friction (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/8/19/).

In our group such a player is excised, as one would excise a malignant melanoma: With gloves, long coats, and a scalpel.

taltamir
2010-01-16, 11:20 AM
The biggest reason not to cast knock is "The rogue can do it". Why would I prepare spells to do something the rogue can do instead of prepping spells to cover things nobody else can? Nobody else is making that rope trick, now are they? You don't steal their niche because doing so is inefficient.

actually the biggest reason not to cast knock is the FIGHTER can do it. Why waste skillpoints on unlocking when you can just break the lock...
There is even a steel crowbar item... guess what it does?

So, the wizard should not waste a slot on knock, the rogue should not waste skillpoints on open lock... And both should have a scroll of knock for emergencies (which the rogue can use thanks to putting those skill points in UMD)

Mike_G
2010-01-16, 12:55 PM
Being overshadowed is not an issue.

Being made to feel irrelevant is.

This happened to us more or less accidentally, when our first 3e characters got to higher levels. Even then, not so much in the routine encounters (the Wizard couldn't be bothered hogging all the door opening or autowinning everything) but in the big, climactic fights, the Wizard pulled out all the stops preparing. He did buff the party, but once he had Planar Binding, Gate and Shapechange (which, though Shared Spell ability covered his damn familiar as well) he pretty much took two hours of real time to prepare, then almost soloed the encounter.

It's partly number of actions, as well as effectiveness of actions.

Fighter: I charge that guy. <Roll attack and damge>

Wizard: My summoned Hydra takes his ten attacks, then I Shapechange into a Red Dragon as free action and make five attacks, then my familiar Fluffy Shapechanges into a different Hideous Beast that flies and takes his six attacks. Oh, and all the bad guys in thsi area take the DOT from my spells last round.

DM: The enemy....lets see, roll save, roll Massive Damage Save, ok, minus 130 hp is...

The enemy start to decompose.

***
And that's if the Fighter goes first.

Our wizard never tried to sideline anybody. We had played AD&D with this guy for years and it was never an issue. It wasn't an issue in 3e at low levels. It's just that once he got 8th and 9th level spells, we did al feel redundant, since he could summon stuff better than us, and Shapeshift into stuff better than us.


It can feel like the Snipers in Jarhead. These guys trained hard to be snipers, they deployed to the desert, suffered fear, dehydration, the hell that is burning out latrines, and then the airstrikes blew the enemy all to hell and all they got to do was march in the sand, the smae round in their rifle for the whole campaign.

A Fighter can feel robbed of his one moment to shine.

JaronK
2010-01-18, 07:12 PM
Too bad. So when a DM puts up a door only to be opened by magic without the means to do so there is bound to be trouble.:smallsmile:

Yes, and any Wizard can make his door immune to Open Lock.


Anyhow, at level 5, a rogue can have a UMD of +10 with masterwork item and max ranks (not counting CHR or other bonuses). Since you can try as often as you like (until you roll a "1") you can be fairly certain to activate a wand of knock at DC 20. And a wand of knock is certainly affordable for a 5th level rogue. Better still when they could not only sell partially charged wands but also buy them ... :smallamused:

Again, you don't always have a magic mart. I know you play in games where every magic item you want (within price limits) is always available, but I don't tend to. In this case, we were on a ship, and there was no magic mart on the ship.


See above.

In the "above" you claimed that because a Rogue could get a +10 UMD bonus making a DC 20 check was fine because you had plenty of time if you failed. This does not apply to mid combat usage of Grave Strike.


Does your DM also think wizards able to buy/procure their magical components odd? Probably not. Maybe ythen buying a 750gp item may not be thaaat unlikely for 5th level characters ...:smallwink:

Hmm, a 5gp non magic item that you can buy one of at the start of the game and be set with for life and that powers all your abilities, or a 750gp item that you're expecting to have at low levels, despite the fact that you only know if you need it after the game starts a lot of the time? There's a difference. Wink all you want, but I don't blow massive portions of my wealth by level on items that might be used. After all, you seem to expect I'd just carry around a Wand of Gravestrike and a Wand of Knock. Shall I also have a Wand of Razing Strike in case of golems? And if I don't run into Arcane Locked doors, undead, and constructs, but instead run into plants and elementals, what then? I've blown a princely sum for a low level character on stuff I can't use and I'm still ineffective.


Which should not be such a problem for rogues.

Taking up a hand in combat is indeed a problem for Rogues, as the traditional way to deal damage as a Rogue in melee is TWF. That doesn't work if you have a wand in one hand. You've just halved your damage in that case. You'd have been far better off with penetrating strike, but again, your damage now stinks.


So better use the wand instead. And a standard action is not such a big deal, in particular when you are a rogue and can use stealth to your advantage AND also likely have high initiative.

Look carefully at the description of Gravestrike. Now consider what would happen if that spell took a standard action. You'd have only a move action left and thus be unable to attack. It makes the wand entirely worthless. Gravestrike MUST be a swift action or it does nothing (a Belt of Battle would help with this, but only once per day). If the DM uses the DMG rules for wand usage, a Wand of Gravestrike is completely worthless.


There are many ways to kill undead apart from gravestrike'd sneaks, and a rogue can get a lot of them.

For the most part, they suck. Penetrating Strike is the best because it costs you little and works on all the monsters that are immune to you, but it also drops your damage to horrific levels. Truedeath Crystals cost quite a bit, especially if you're a two weapon rogue, and they can only go on +3 or better weapons... I think I once calculated that you need the WBL of a 12th level Rogue just to afford two +3 weapons with crystals on them reliably. Plus they only work on undead, so they don't help with elementals, plants, constructs, and all those other immune guys. When you have to pay that much money just to make your abilities work at all on some monsters, there's a problem. Wands of Gravestrike as I showed above are a terrible solution that in most games isn't viable at all.


I do not think that supplementing stealth with spells is that reliable - especially the higher the level. See invisibility, dispels, arcane sight, true seeing etc. all are a drawback for using magical means to remain stealthy.
The rogue with his 8 skill points/level has an advantage here imo. And they get easy access to the stealthy prestige classes.

Arcane Sight and True Seeing are rarely always up. Those are usually spells cast AFTER you believe something strange is happening. Arcane Sight can be made permanent, but few monsters actually have that. Most of what kills invisibility also kills hide (unless Darkstalker is available)... stuff like Blindsense and Blindsight. And I'm not sure what stealthy prestige classes you're refering to here, so I can't comment on that.


To use scent, you need to expend a move action- and even that only shows the direction (not the ability to pinpoint). That slows you down. Calling someone else slows you down even more. And when that someone finally uses his or her ability (usually a standard action) then you are normally really in trouble (or the opponent has long since gone).

Once the alarm is up, then people can start casting spells like True Sight and all that. Or just locking doors (with Arcane Lock). Heck, a guard with a guard dog next to a locked door (via Arcane Lock) that only he can open will stop most Rogues dead in their tracks (and send reenforcements).


The reason why DMs are quite weary of high hide skill is that it can only be countered by the spot skill. Everything else, even magic, fails.

Except for Touchsight. And Blindsight. And Blindsense. And Mindsight. And Scent. Should I keep going?


That sounds like a lot of cost taken from your wbl.

Nope, it's actually not. The Enveloping pit is dirt cheap. Hardening the book just takes a spell cast once (the effect is instantaneous). Permanent Invisibility requires some Exp and a casting of Permanency and Invisibility. Dread Warriors take a exp too, but are generally very useful (I make mine craft stuff while they guard, so they actually save money). Magic traps like Ghoul Glyph simply take one casting of the appropriate spell, while mundane traps require Fabricate + Wall of Stone + Magecraft. Arcane Locks are of course free as well. Dummy books full of runes are super cheap (it's just an empty book that I cast Explosive Runes into). And Screaming Skulls are also just a spell cast on a skull (most adventurers find plenty of those).

So actually, no, that took NOTHING from my WBL because the cost of the pit is made up by the benefits of having endless crafters working in my portable tower. Wizards: they can do that.


Also it means you need another spellbook for your daily use. Again taken from your wbl.

No, I go into my pit to memorize spells. No sense doing that out in the open... that way when I'm in my pit and memorizing spells, I'm protected by my guards and such.


Good ideas altogether, but they only can take you so far.
Also, note the many lower-level wizards not yet able to afford such defenses who get their spellbooks stolen. It's a stony road to become Merlin...

At lower levels it's more of an issue, but the pit is actually super cheap and a good idea anyway. Besides, taking the spellbook is harder than killing the Wizard anyway.


A simple see invisbility (incidently the same level) and dispel magic and/or ambush is enough vs the rope trick and the wizard has a huge problem.

And how exactly do you know where to cast the see invisibility?


But a rogue can (usually) climb, diplomacy/bluff himself out of trouble, disguise himself to be the fellow undead over there etc. It is a rogue. Not some kind of wizard. That is the whole trick.
All of those opponents immune to his sneak damage could wander all over the place and never find him while he takes their treasure. It is a ROGUE.
:smallsmile:

Unless one of them had a riding dog. Seriously, what builder of a fortress makes such a fortress without trying to secure it against theives just a little?

JaronK

JaronK
2010-01-18, 07:20 PM
@JaronK:
You are arguing that all the Rogue's abilities can be very easily negated, and when people point out that this is sadly true but there are ways around that, you bring up unreliable UMD checks at low levels, lacks of funds at low levels, lack of Magic Marts, etc. (By the way, Penetrating Strike is an alternate class feature which doesn't require any of the above, and makes most of the Rogue's problems disappear.)

I bring it up because this is stuff that happened to me. And I agree that Penetrating Strike is nice, but half damage ain't much. 5d6 sneak attack is worthless at level 20. 2d6 sneak attack at level 10 isn't impressive either. It certainly doesn't make most of the problems disappear. Also note that the ways a Rogue deals with his problems all cost him quite a lot (funds, generally). Wizard fixes are free, because they're built into the class (spells just solve them).


And then, when they tell you that the Wizard's abilities can be easily negated too, you say "how on earth will the DM steal my spellbook or prevent me from resting?", and proceed with listing a bunch of high level spells (you can't use Rope Trick to rest without a high caster level...) which require a whole lot of spell slots.

You consider level 5 to be a high level caster? A Rod of Extend spell is cheap, and unlike a wand of gravestrike it's not situational. It's pretty much always useful. That's the thing... when a Rogue spends a whole bunch of money to remove one situational weakness (and they have a TON of those) it hurts him every time that weakness isn't the one that comes up. Wizards can remove their weaknesses in ways that don't cost them when that weakness isn't coming up. A Wizard with a Metamagic Rod of Extend who doesn't have to worry about sleeping tonight for some reason can instead extend Haste or something.


A 5th level wizard can be royally screwed if he runs out of spells, if he's captured and thrown naked in a cell, if he can't rest - and all these things can happen at 5th level. (In fact, they can happen at any level, considering it's the DM who makes the rules, and designs the campaign.)

Everybody's screwed if they're captured and thrown naked in a cell (okay, except Factotums, that came up for my group a little while back. We were supposed to rescue him but he just escaped instead). Running out of spells however? Rope trick at level 5, extended to 10 hours. Good to go.


But if a player finds that his character is ineffective all the freaking time, I'm sorry, but that's the DM's fault, he designed the campaign badly, whether due to inexperience or due to laziness or indifference or spite or whatever. And this is what most (not all, I admit) posters describe when they mention crying rogues in this thread.

Yes. And the problem for Rogues is that they often require that DM support to stop this from happening. Can a DM fix them? Absolutely. Does the fact that the DM needs to set things up better so that they don't feel useless indicate a problem? Absolutely.


The lack of balance in core classes, the "overshadowing" of rogues and fighters by casters, the wizard taking over the rogue's niche... these are almost never relevant.

Man, they've come up for me a lot.


P.S. By the way, not all DMs who make your character worthless are bad. Sometimes ineffectiveness is the purpose of the game, or at least a significant part of it. Humble origins, grim and gritty, non-heroic fantasy, all these are wonderful ideas - I'm just talking about more conventional games here. :)

Sure, and I love A|State (you might too if you like that sort of play). I'm even running a game right now where everyone started as commoners (it's been a huge success). The biggest problems arise when one player is ineffective, gritty, and humble while the other is the second coming of Thor. When everyone's together, the DM can easily create a world that works with everyone. When one person is a god and the other is a red shirt, there's a big problem... that second person starts asking why he's here. The best illustration I can give for this is "Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit." It's on Youtube. Check it out, it's hilarious anyway.

JaronK

Aquillion
2010-01-18, 08:29 PM
One of the big problems I find with Wizards is that at around 11th to 13th level, they get to start being a PC deus ex machina. The impact their abilities will have on the story are tremendous. A player of a wizard once had a plan to divert a river into a city where we knew a vampire was living, to trap him amongst all the running water and be able to take him out easiliy... that's the kind of thing high level wizards find trivial.

Once planning around the character's abilities is measured in which forces of nature they are superior to, the guy who can swing a pointy stick 300% better than he could before sometimes has trouble finding a vital role for himself to play in these plans.I see that as a problem with fighters, not a problem with wizards; I'd much rather play a game where everyone is like the wizard in your first paragraph, rather than like the fighter in your second.

I mean, basically, increasing your pointy stick by 300% and increasing the monster's HP by 300% is boring, you know?

But yeah, that's the basic problem summed up there, either way. At higher levels, wizards (and tier-1 casters in general) are playing an entirely different game from the fighters. Wizards play a game where your options increase exponentially as you go up in levels, while a fighter barely gets any more options from his class at level 20 than he had at level 1.

Kelb_Panthera
2010-01-18, 09:46 PM
On the note of the Druid's animal companion outshining the fighter, my group had an interesting solution to that once. The fighter and druid, in a moment of mind-boggling cooperation respec'd their characters just a little. The druid changed his animal companion too a riding dog, and the fighter changed his character from a human, to a strong-heart halfling. He was already statted out to be a mounted combat type and said something to the effect of "cool, now I don't have to buy a mount or worry about how to keep its power up!" and promptly used the difference in his wealth to buy a rider's shield that he was going to get after their first adventure anyway :smalltongue:

Boci
2010-01-18, 10:08 PM
You are arguing that all the Rogue's abilities can be very easily negated, and when people point out that this is sadly true but there are ways around that, you bring up unreliable UMD checks at low levels, lacks of funds at low levels, lack of Magic Marts, etc. (By the way, Penetrating Strike is an alternate class feature which doesn't require any of the above, and makes most of the Rogue's problems disappear.)

You still have to be flanking the monster to get SA most of the time. With d6 hit points. On the other side of the monster to where the fighter stands. And unless that fighter is a crusader, the monster has no insentative to attack it over you.


And then, when they tell you that the Wizard's abilities can be easily negated too, you say "how on earth will the DM steal my spellbook or prevent me from resting?", and proceed with listing a bunch of high level spells (you can't use Rope Trick to rest without a high caster level...) which require a whole lot of spell slots.

There is quite a big difference between "This encounter involves one of the countless monsters rogue have a hard time facing" and "I'm going out of my way to target you wizard and make you ineffective"

Tyndmyr
2010-01-19, 10:49 AM
Gravestrike Wands don't work. First off, they require reliably hitting a pretty high UMD check, which is hard at low levels. Second, you have to be able to buy them (I rarely have ye olde magic mart around the corner when I see undead, and don't want to waste the funds on them just in case. What if I hit constructs and plants and elementals instead?). Third, they take up a hand. Fourth, by the DMG it takes a standard action to use them (Rules Compendium might change this or might not depending on your interpretation of what they wrote, but most people I know don't have the RC anyway). A Truedeath Crystal would handle it against undead, but that requires a LOT of money, especially if you dare use two weapons.

High UMD check? It's a static DC 20. UMD is a class skill for rogues. By the time you can afford a wand of gravestrike, you'll be hitting this most of the time.

Buying them. Wands are just in case items. That's pretty much what they do. If you dont want the full fifty charges, ask if any partially charged wands are available. If none is available at the time, ask a wizard to make one for you.

Third. Hands. See also wand slots, aka, duct taping a wand to a weapon.

Fourth. Actions. RC trumps Phb, and thus, a wand takes the same type of action as the spell it uses. Swift actions didn't exist when the phb was written, that's the only reason the wording doesn't play well with them.

Tinydwarfman
2010-01-19, 11:19 AM
Well, nobody cries per say... (except for the DM when we completely bypass his masterfully crafted dungeon.) but when when the PC's are to save a besieged town, and our fighter and TWF ranger are ready to charge in, they admit it would probably be better to let the sorcerer just cast fly on some of us and go above the invading force(we had to deposit a princess inside). When everyone is ready to charge out and destroy the siege engines the hobgoblins are building, they admit it would be better to let the wizard go invisible and nuke the enemy from 720 feet away. When an emissary of three people are needed to negotiate with some barbarians, they admit it would be better to let the wizard bodyguard the noble, because he can cast resilient sphere, wind wall, fly, solid fog, and bunch of other things. Even in a straight up random encounter, the wizard wins inish, and casts glitterdust. Then he casts deep slumber. Wow, that was quick. Now, the wizard was not stealing the rogue's thunder, but when he turned into a pretty optimized pathfinder monk, nobody blinked an eye because the wizard could cast summon monster 1, and had a wand of shatter. These all happened, and the first 3 in one session. The fighter, TWF ranger, and rogue never did anything that session. Now, nobody cried, but our DM has realized that something must change.

tl;dr : "the rogue cries" doesn't happen when the wizard occasionally solves everyone's problems, but people certainly do cry when all they end up doing that session is coup-de-grace'ing the helpless enemies, or hiding inside the fort while the wizzy goes out and deals with the big bad hob-goblin army.

taltamir
2010-01-19, 02:30 PM
something DMs always hit with the entire nerf tree is the magic mart TM. And, ridiculously enough, they often think that somehow nerfs casters because "wizards can't just buy any scroll they wish".

You know why a druid animal companion is never a match for a fighter? because the animal companion doesn't have nearly as many slots for magical gear, there isn't nearly as many items specialized for its use, and as a secondary character it is not going to be equipped with much magic gear in the first place.

But in your typical "no magic mart TM" world, the fighter is suddenly even weaker than your animal companions because the poor fighter has to work only with his base class abilities, and not the WBL around which the game was balanced in the first place. (not that the original balance was perfect mind you).

JaronK
2010-01-19, 02:41 PM
High UMD check? It's a static DC 20. UMD is a class skill for rogues. By the time you can afford a wand of gravestrike, you'll be hitting this most of the time.

Even most of the time sucks in combat when you have to use up a hand just to try. By the way, the most common levels to play at (at least according to the unscientific poles I saw) were in order of low to high... 1-5 were thus most common. Gravestrike wands are still a bit costly at 5, and even at that level hitting the DC 20 is a bit much. 8 ranks, no charisma bonus (you're a class that needs Int, Dex, and Con anyway, as well as some Str if you plan to carry things), maybe a masterwork item... you're looking at failing that check half the time and having an effective critical failure occasionally too. I think I'd rather have Penetrating Strike and have the same half damage but not have wasted my money when it turns out I've got a construct to deal with or a plant.


Buying them. Wands are just in case items. That's pretty much what they do. If you dont want the full fifty charges, ask if any partially charged wands are available. If none is available at the time, ask a wizard to make one for you.

Again, that assumes a magic mart or the services of a Wizard. And yes, having a Wizard there to fix your problems works, just like it works on all classes. Eventually even the Commoner can be PaO'd into something awesome.


Third. Hands. See also wand slots, aka, duct taping a wand to a weapon.

I'm glad Duct Tape is now RAW. Surely all characters can now use it regardless of books allowed.


Fourth. Actions. RC trumps Phb, and thus, a wand takes the same type of action as the spell it uses. Swift actions didn't exist when the phb was written, that's the only reason the wording doesn't play well with them.

Free Actions did exist though. And the RC doesn't even clearly change the DMG rules. The DMG lists two rules for items and spells... it says a spell takes as long to cast via a wand as the original spell took to cast normally, and that it takes a standard action if the original took less. RC restates the first part and not the second, without actually stating that the second is no longer valid. The RC is thus sadly incomplete, and it's enough that I've seen numerous DMs rule that the wands took a standard action anyway.

Gnaeus
2010-01-19, 02:59 PM
something DMs always hit with the entire nerf tree is the magic mart TM. And, ridiculously enough, they often think that somehow nerfs casters because "wizards can't just buy any scroll they wish".

True.



You know why a druid animal companion is never a match for a fighter? because the animal companion doesn't have nearly as many slots for magical gear, there isn't nearly as many items specialized for its use, and as a secondary character it is not going to be equipped with much magic gear in the first place.

Hehehe. Very false. The AC shares its buffs with the Druid, which by high level can be very significant indeed. RAW most gear will resize to fit anything remotely capable of wearing it, so will help most ACs. The Druid can easily drop a single third level feat for craft wondrous items (which he might need to do anyway, depending on Wildling Clasp availability) and then there's a pretty darn good chance that the Bear has anklets, bracers, neck slot, belt, torso, maybe even eye/face slot. The only limit I have seen on animal companions is their inability to activate command word type items.

Gnaeus
2010-01-19, 03:03 PM
E
I'm glad Duct Tape is now RAW. Surely all characters can now use it regardless of books allowed.


I dunno about the tape. I'll ask my DM. Wand Chambers seem easy enough.

taltamir
2010-01-19, 03:04 PM
sovereign glue...its better than duck tape :)

JaronK
2010-01-19, 03:06 PM
And yet, there's not actually a rule that lets you use wands along with weapons via sovereign glue. Wand Chambers may be available, or not. It's a whole lot of in the air factors that mean that in any given game, the chances of a Wand of Gravestrike actually being useful become extremely low.

JaronK

taltamir
2010-01-19, 03:08 PM
then you should have said you are glad the RAW doesn't allow you to use wands in such ways... not that there is no duct tape. Duct tape has no bearing on the discussion.

JaronK
2010-01-19, 03:19 PM
I was being sarcastic. The point is, by RAW most of the time the hand thing is going to be a serious problem, which when combined with UMD failures means using a Wand of Gravestrike could easily quarter your sneak attack damage (at which point we really wonder why you're bothering).

JaronK

Indon
2010-01-19, 03:21 PM
Well, I'll use a fairly recent example from my last 4E game.

In my last 4E game, I was a battlerager Fighter using a Brutal 2-hander. The group also had a Barbarian using the exact same weapon.

Long story short, I did more damage than he did (marginally), and I was more durable at the same time (substantially). He never cried. Or, in fact, seemed to notice. He simply wasn't at all keeping track of party contribution.

Gnaeus
2010-01-19, 03:23 PM
I was being sarcastic. The point is, by RAW most of the time the hand thing is going to be a serious problem, which when combined with UMD failures means using a Wand of Gravestrike could easily quarter your sneak attack damage (at which point we really wonder why you're bothering).

JaronK

No. By RAW you are going to get Wand Chambers. If we were core, we wouldn't be talking about a wand of gravestrike.

Gnaeus
2010-01-19, 03:31 PM
Well, I'll use a fairly recent example from my last 4E game.

In my last 4E game, I was a battlerager Fighter using a Brutal 2-hander. The group also had a Barbarian using the exact same weapon.

Long story short, I did more damage than he did (marginally), and I was more durable at the same time (substantially). He never cried. Or, in fact, seemed to notice. He simply wasn't at all keeping track of party contribution.

That isn't very relevant. The fact that one melee build will outperform another melee build is pretty much accepted, even in 4.0 where all men are created equal (sarcasm).

If you could fly around all day, blast enemies with laser beams from your eyes and bolts of lightning from your @$$, walk through walls, disguise yourself as an animal, summon monsters that could also outfight him, and, whenever you chose, do more damage than your barbarian friend in melee, it might make him wonder why he was there, or at least why he was playing a barbarian. Druids, Clerics, and high level wizards can do all of those things in 3.5.

Indon
2010-01-19, 03:34 PM
That isn't very relevant. The fact that one melee build will outperform another melee build is pretty much accepted, even in 4.0 where all men are created equal (sarcasm).
Actually, no, not really.

I was playing the Defender - what should have been the lower-damage tanking class. I simply wasn't lower damage; I had used my significantly superior understanding of 4E character building to create a Defender that dealt Striker damage, and he simply wasn't a very powerful Striker.

taltamir
2010-01-19, 03:47 PM
That isn't very relevant. The fact that one melee build will outperform another melee build is pretty much accepted, even in 4.0 where all men are created equal (sarcasm).

If you could fly around all day, blast enemies with laser beams from your eyes and bolts of lightning from your @$$, walk through walls, disguise yourself as an animal, summon monsters that could also outfight him, and, whenever you chose, do more damage than your barbarian friend in melee, it might make him wonder why he was there, or at least why he was playing a barbarian. Druids, Clerics, and high level wizards can do all of those things in 3.5.

this gave me an awesome idea for a spell thematics... bodily functions and orifices...
fire lightening from your arse, fart a stinking cloud, shoot beams from your eyes, burp/yell shatter, etc...

JaronK
2010-01-19, 03:52 PM
No. By RAW you are going to get Wand Chambers. If we were core, we wouldn't be talking about a wand of gravestrike.

You assume that Core Only and All Books Allowed are the only options. They're not. The point is how many variables have to go your way for the wands to be viable. You need Dungeonscape (for Wand Chambers), Spell Compendium (Gravestrike), and Rules Compendium (for even a chance of them working). Next you need the DM to rule that the RC rule is overwriting the DMG rule, and not just restating part of it. Next you need to know in advance that the wand will be needed (and that you don't, for example, need a wand of Razing Strike). Then you need to decide whether it's better to purchase said wand or instead to purchase something else with that money. Now you need to be able to run over and purchase said wand (or of course have said wand just appear in random loot). You also need enough UMD to reliably hit the necessary DC 20, as any failure leaves you useless in combat (or nearly so) that round.

That's a huge number of places where this whole thing could go wrong, and all of it just gets you to the point of most of the time being able to do your basic combat shtick against one sort of opponent.

JaronK

Gnaeus
2010-01-19, 03:56 PM
You assume that Core Only and All Books Allowed are the only options.
JaronK

No I don't. I just take issue with the statement that it is difficult by RAW. RAW it is easy and legal. Your point that DMs have weird interpretations and don't allow all books is fair, but not to be mistaken with RAW.

JaronK
2010-01-19, 03:58 PM
No I don't. I just take issue with the statement that it is difficult by RAW. RAW it is easy and legal. Your point that DMs have weird interpretations and don't allow all books is fair, but not to be mistaken with RAW.

RAW is up in the air with regards to the RC interpretation (one reason I don't like the RC, it's got ambiguous stuff!). And RAW does not state that you have to have all books or that magic marts will always be available (they are in big cities, but not in the middle of a dungeon).

The point is, as written in the rules, there are too many variables, and failing in any one point makes the wands useless. Sure, the DM could just hand you such a wand, but it's not something I'd want to count on.

JaronK

Flickerdart
2010-01-19, 04:04 PM
The point is, as written in the rules, there are too many variables, and failing in any one point makes the wands useless. Sure, the DM could just hand you such a wand, but it's not something I'd want to count on.
And who's throwing Undead and Golems and Plants at you, again? It's not the will of the heavens, you know. A DM that tosses waves of undead at Rogues without giving them a fighting chance is not a DM I'd care to play under. Not saying that DM handouts fix anything, but there's a certain bit of reciprocity that can be expected.
In general, the Rogue needs the DM to work with them, since their strength as skillmonkeys isn't suited to the overwhelming amount of combat that D&D typically has.

Sir Giacomo
2010-01-19, 04:06 PM
Again, you don't always have a magic mart. I know you play in games where every magic item you want (within price limits) is always available, but I don't tend to. In this case, we were on a ship, and there was no magic mart on the ship.

Maybe I should try to clarify something:
I have played in a variety of games with various deviations from wbl
- magic poor campaigns where characters were awed to get a longsword +2
- Lankhmarish-Fantasy campaigns where you could get in certain bazars magic items but not necessarily those you were looking for
- campaigns with an abundance of magic items
- campaigns roughly following the wbl but items only selected by players at the beginning of the career and the DM taking it from there
- etc. etc.

I only refer to the availability of magic items as per DMG rules whenever I discuss the balance of things.

You see, the moment you deviate from the wbl standards (which is entirely feasible to do and will likely happen most often), there are consequences.

As such, casters will tend to gain more power,
- the moment you allow them to create items that allow them twice what their wbl allows
- the moment magic items are harder available while spellcasters can still choose their magic freely (via their spell selection even just the 2 spells/level are a great boon then), as well as find their components everywhere.
- the moment you combine both of the above
- etc.

Then, this should not be a problem at all
- if the DM either counterbalances (for instance with no magic items available to buy, wizards should have the same difficulty getting their spells, in particular the optional non-core spells, as well as their components)
- or if everyone is happy with this feel of the campaign.

In no way imo, though, it should constitue an argument to say "casters are generally great" and "non-casters lose" - i.e. the whole "Rogue cries" argument brought up by the OP.
When you bring up that a wizard should have access to plenty of non-core spells and items that you described to protect his book, but at the same time would not like to have non-casters like a rogue buy their items as they wish to overcome their vulnerabilities, then it is probably OK for the campaign you play in and leads to wizards being very powerful, not having to fear any thief/rogue every being able to steal something from them or do them harm.
But it is not a yardstick for the original balance of the game.

On the more specific issues you raised:

Alleged rogue crying factor 1: helpless vs undead/no realistic gravestrike access to overcome this
- As already pointed out, there can be swift action wands. Additionally, you could just create a swift action activation gravestrike item (3/day or some such). I mean, gravestrike is already deep into non-core optional game territory. Why not go all the way?
- a rogue could get a UMD skill necessary for automatic success for the DC 20 check by level 5 or so (8 ranks, +2 from a feat like magical apitutde, +2 from CHR, +5 competence bonus item, +2 Masterwork item). Before that undead should not pose such a big threat to him. Or he just evades them - again, it's a rogue!
- TWF may be lost when wielding a wand, but a rogue could quickdraw it, swift action the gravestrike, let the wand drop, draw his weapons and destroy the undead. A bit daring, but hey -it's a rogue!
- also, I do not think a 750gp wand is such a massive drain on the wealth of a character (it definitely is not a "princely sum":smallamused:). And when he plans a huge burglary in a castle known to be full of constructs, why not just buy a golemstrike wand and sell it again afterwards with the remaining charges? Even in campaigns with DMs averse to magic marts, low-level items that are used up like potions, scrolls and wands should not be that difficult to get.
- as for plants (I think there is also a buff to sneak those) and elementals, as well as critical immunity via items and concealment: so what? There must be balancing factors or the sneak ability would be too good.

Alleged rogue crying factor 2: Hide can be countered as easily as invisibility, and thus invisbility, a 2nd level spell, makes a rogue useless.
- you mentioned several divination spells. Arcane sight: will help neither against invisibility nor hide (you need line of sight to see magical auras). True seeing: Will help against invisbility, but not against hide.
- blindsense and blindsight help against both invisbility and hide - but they are very, very rare among monsters and opponents.
- similarly touchsight and mindsight are rare abilities -and if they are not rare in the campaign being played, then the rogue will simply be built differently. As for scent, I already mentioned above that a rogue can easily outmanouvre a slowed scenting creature (which needs a move action and needs to be in the vicinity and can be countered by strong odors).
- and, in the post I linked above you also wondered how someone would know when to cast see invisbility to detect a wizard inside a rope trick. Easy. Either the wizard (with no spot/listen class skill of his own) got observed and people can figure out where he hides and will have to eventually come back. Or they can see invisible, anyhow (quite a few monsters can do that, and a permanencie'd see invisbility is likewise not that rare on npcs).

Alleged rogue crying factor 3: the arcane locked door making open locks useless.
- an arcane lock costs 25gp per casting. I somehow doubt that ALL accesses to treasure (doors, windows, chests, drawers) will be locked for 25gp each in this manner, in particular since it is so simple to avoid them for higher-level rogues with access to, say, a ring of blinking.
- and if arcane locks are common in that particular campaign, then the skill "open locks" simply will not exist (because it is useless). Then a lower-level rogue will just get UMD and get a knock wand. Or break the door/barrier with other means.
- a guard with a guard dog next to a locked door will possibly be bluffed by the rogue into believing he is actually in the employ of the owner of the house, getting all support that the guard would give to a person he is friendly with. Also, once the rogue has passed somehow by the door, the guard and his dog will not be able to catch the rogue once the alarm is sounded - since the door is arcane locked...:smallbiggrin:

I guess that's about it.

- Giacomo

taltamir
2010-01-19, 04:06 PM
the problem is, as you level up the CR choices that are NOT immune to criticals become very slim... the DM needs to identify that is a problem and consciously take that into account by making sure most opponents are not crit immune.


- if the DM either counterbalances (for instance with no magic items available to buy, wizards should have the same difficulty getting their spells, in particular the optional non-core spells, as well as their components)
1. they explicitly should not
2. a lot of spells have no components
3. divine spells never have components (arcane and divine spells only have components if cast by arcane casters)
4. eschew materials.

nefele
2010-01-19, 05:15 PM
In no way imo, though, it should constitue an argument to say "casters are generally great" and "non-casters lose" - i.e. the whole "Rogue cries" argument brought up by the OP.
High, I'm the OP, and I wanted to say that this was not my argument. :smalltongue:

I didn't say that rogues can be as good as casters. I didn't say that they don't have weaknesses or that they don't often corner themselves into situations where they have nothing to contribute in combat. I didn't say that their weakness is a myth. I didn't say that the casters can't outperform them 99% of the time.

But I said: SO WHAT if the caster outperforms them?

When I'm the Rogue (and mind you, I've played more rogues/roguish types than everything else combined), all I need to be happy is to have something to do. It doesn't need to be as awesome as the caster's million options. And when the caster "outperforms" me, I don't even conceive it like that. I don't bother to make comparisons. I don't feel less of a man (or woman, as the case may be).

Even if the wizard next to me is a god, and even if we're in the Dungeon of Cold-Subtype Oozes, Golems, Undead, More Undead, Giant Plants, And Constructs, Oh, And The BBEG Is A Dracolich (TM by Saph)... I am not a red shirt.

Why? Because I'm a PC. The freaking story revolves around me! My decisions affect the story just as much the caster's. He may dominate combat, but we all choose the path together. Heck, I could be playing a 1st level Commoner next to an 12th level Wizard, and still it would be OUR story.

In the above Dungeon (and yes, I've been there, or at least a very similar one), I did find things to do. Humble things, like scouting or trapfinding, and little more than aiding in direct combat. I didn't mind, dammit. I was totally immersed in the role, I was participating in every major decision (should we go down there? or up the stairs?), I helped make a plan for each encounter where there was time to actually make one, I solved a riddle... Ooh, and I tripped a Huge skeleton (Confound the Big Folk, yay!) and it died by AoO trying to get up. Would the wizard have wiped out that thing with a nod if he wasn't preoccupied at the time? Oh yes. Did I mind? No! I had a great time! Did I full-sneak attack anything? Only a dire rat, I think. :smalltongue: Did I mind? No! Were the casters 1000 times more valuable than me in that Dungeon? Oh yes. Did I mind? No! I was busy roleplaying.

...Does that make sense?

AllisterH
2010-01-19, 05:27 PM
The answer is a wand.

Thank you.

I think a lot of the issue is how much the wizard player (ab)uses the magic item creation system from 3.5

Tyndmyr
2010-01-19, 05:29 PM
Even most of the time sucks in combat when you have to use up a hand just to try. By the way, the most common levels to play at (at least according to the unscientific poles I saw) were in order of low to high... 1-5 were thus most common. Gravestrike wands are still a bit costly at 5, and even at that level hitting the DC 20 is a bit much. 8 ranks, no charisma bonus (you're a class that needs Int, Dex, and Con anyway, as well as some Str if you plan to carry things), maybe a masterwork item... you're looking at failing that check half the time and having an effective critical failure occasionally too. I think I'd rather have Penetrating Strike and have the same half damage but not have wasted my money when it turns out I've got a construct to deal with or a plant.

Int and str on rogues? Surely you jest. Rogues almost invariably rely on weapon finesse(or a ranged weapon) and sneak attack for combat damage. Also, they have a bucketload of skill points from their class. Nobody seriously pumps strength just for carrying capacity if they don't wear plate. Sure, str and int are nice, but a rogue having cha isn't unusual, given all those party face skills.

If you have 8 ranks(and every rogue should), absolutely no cha, and a mw item, then you have a +10. You pass on a 10+, or 55% of the time. It only gets better from there.


Again, that assumes a magic mart or the services of a Wizard. And yes, having a Wizard there to fix your problems works, just like it works on all classes. Eventually even the Commoner can be PaO'd into something awesome.

The existence of a wizard who will, upon request and payment, make you noob level items is not a magic mart. That's just a wizard who wants to make a few gold. If you have magic at all in your campaign, the existence of at least one of these is quite reasonable.


I'm glad Duct Tape is now RAW. Surely all characters can now use it regardless of books allowed.

A bit of rope or glue, perhaps. However you choose to justify the wand socket item. The item is RAW, refluffing it is easy if the fluff is a problem for anyone.


Free Actions did exist though. And the RC doesn't even clearly change the DMG rules. The DMG lists two rules for items and spells... it says a spell takes as long to cast via a wand as the original spell took to cast normally, and that it takes a standard action if the original took less. RC restates the first part and not the second, without actually stating that the second is no longer valid. The RC is thus sadly incomplete, and it's enough that I've seen numerous DMs rule that the wands took a standard action anyway.

And a free action is not a swift or immediate action. RC does not have to state that the second part is no longer valid. The wording of the rule overrules the first one. There is no indicator that it is incomplete save for your assumption that it somehow must contain something more.

Yes...A DM absolutely can royally screw over rogues if he wants to...or anyone else. But if he's arbitrarily house ruling stuff and denying things via fiat to do so, then it's not really the systems fault. It's the fault of the jackass DM.

JaronK
2010-01-19, 06:23 PM
Int and str on rogues? Surely you jest. Rogues almost invariably rely on weapon finesse(or a ranged weapon) and sneak attack for combat damage.

I believe what I said was "you're a class that needs Int, Dex, and Con anyway, as well as some Str if you plan to carry things." I'm not sure how you got that I was implying Str was needed for damage... it's just hard to dump completely (if you put an 8 in Str for a halfling, that end result of 6 means you actually can easily end up at a medium load just from wearing light armor, worn gear, and holding a weapon).


Also, they have a bucketload of skill points from their class. Nobody seriously pumps strength just for carrying capacity if they don't wear plate. Sure, str and int are nice, but a rogue having cha isn't unusual, given all those party face skills.

I didn't say seriously pump strength, just that you can't dump it completely. I said you need "some." Meanwhile, pumping Charisma just leads to horrible MAD. Meanwhile, perhaps you play Rogues differently than I do, but I find there are far more than 8 good skills to have. Even just the basic scouting and trapmonkey duties require Spot, Hide, Move Silently, Disable Device, Open Lock, and Search. That's 6 right there. Face duty? Gonna need Bluff and Diplomacy. Everyone keeps talking about UMD, so we'll need to max that too. That's 9 skills, and we still lack Listen. Yeah, we're gonna need some Int.


If you have 8 ranks(and every rogue should), absolutely no cha, and a mw item, then you have a +10. You pass on a 10+, or 55% of the time. It only gets better from there.

Failing to do anything useful on half your attacks (before even rolling to hit) is NOT good.


The existence of a wizard who will, upon request and payment, make you noob level items is not a magic mart. That's just a wizard who wants to make a few gold. If you have magic at all in your campaign, the existence of at least one of these is quite reasonable.

And the existance of a Wizard who will just cast PAO on you, costing him nothing at all, is theoretically reasonable too. Heck, all Wizards of sufficient level can do that, while only some of any level have Craft Wand. Say what you will, but I've rarely found a chance to just walk up to a Wizard and get custom items out of him.


A bit of rope or glue, perhaps. However you choose to justify the wand socket item. The item is RAW, refluffing it is easy if the fluff is a problem for anyone.

The item is RAW if the books are available, which is another issue entirely.


And a free action is not a swift or immediate action. RC does not have to state that the second part is no longer valid. The wording of the rule overrules the first one. There is no indicator that it is incomplete save for your assumption that it somehow must contain something more.

Restating part of a rule does not invalidate the rest, not automatically, especially since RC is a book that just restates (theoretically clarifying) a bunch of rules. Again, you're assuming a huge amount of books in play at this point (do you really think all Rogue have Dungeonscape and RC available to them?).


Yes...A DM absolutely can royally screw over rogues if he wants to...or anyone else. But if he's arbitrarily house ruling stuff and denying things via fiat to do so, then it's not really the systems fault. It's the fault of the jackass DM.

I disagree. For example, our group doesn't generally use the Rules Compendium. That's not because we hate Rogues... just no one found the book worth more than a quick read through.

Again, the point was there are many variables with Wands of Gravestrike, and if even a single one is off, the wand is useless. If you don't play with the Rules Compendium, it's worthless (as it takes a standard action). If the DM doesn't interpret RC the way you want, it's worthless (same reason). If you don't play with Dungeonscape, you need to use up a hand, thus halving your damage (and making Penetrating Strike a far superior option). If you don't have magic marts or a friendly Wizard with Craft Wand who will give you what you need, you can't have one at all. If you don't have sufficient UMD skill, it's far too unreliable. If you didn't know you'd be fighting undead in advance, it's a poor idea to purchase it on the off chance, since it's more likely you'd do better with something that is always useful (such as a Wand of Lesser Vigor if you have no cleric, or perhaps the materials to craft your own weapon out of a special material). If you thought you'd be fighting undead but were wrong, it's a waste of money. Even when you're right and there's some undead, but also some other stuff, you'd probably have been better off getting something useful against everything.

All of this to fix only part of the problem? It doesn't seem worthwhile.

JaronK

Argo
2010-01-20, 10:17 PM
A lot of you guys seem to have forgotten the Rogue's biggest advantage: Ingenuity. Anything you can think of, a rogue has a way of pulling it off. Even moreso than a Wizard. With a Wiz, it's "what spell can I cast?", but with a Rogue, it's "what can I do?"

I only play Rogues, I've never had access to Gravestrike OR Penetrating Strike, and I've never had too much trouble from undead.
Leading them into choke points. Holy water. Flaming flasks of oil. These are just a few of the myriad ways a rogue can easily defeat any number of crit-immune foes.

If you're fighting more conventional enemies, max your UMD and sneak attack with a wand of Ray of Enfeeblement. Multiple d6s of Str damage = more missed attacks from less effective foes.

Also, as far as Rogue-important stats: Dex, Cha, Int, Str, Con, Wis

As a Rogue, always be willing to get rid of hit points in favor of adaptability. Hit points don't matter. Because if you can hit me, I'm doing something wrong. Adaptability is your friend.

cupkeyk
2010-01-20, 10:23 PM
I play the wiz a lot, and if i knew there was a rogue, why would i memorize knock? That's a waste of a spell slot. Even without a rogue, I don't memorize it, I keep a scroll; let the fighter/barb bash it down. Even with a rogue, I still bring a scroll

Boci
2010-01-20, 10:24 PM
I only play Rogues, I've never had access to Gravestrike OR Penetrating Strike, and I've never had too much trouble from undead.
Leading them into choke points. Holy water. Flaming flasks of oil. These are just a few of the myriad ways a rogue can easily defeat any number of crit-immune foes.

How long does it take to finish undead during 2d6 damage per round?


If you're fighting more conventional enemies, max your UMD and sneak attack with a wand of Ray of Enfeeblement. Multiple d6s of Str damage = more missed attacks from less effective foes.

How are you getting multiple d6s?


As a Rogue, always be willing to get rid of hit points in favor of adaptability. Hit points don't matter. Because if you can hit me, I'm doing something wrong. Adaptability is your friend.

Huh?

Foryn Gilnith
2010-01-20, 10:41 PM
1) That's not how Ray of Enfeeblement works.
2) Any class can use ingenuity.

Flickerdart
2010-01-20, 10:46 PM
I think Argo is thinking of Spellthieves, or Beguilers, or Arcane Tricksters, or Unseen Seers.

Boci
2010-01-20, 11:01 PM
I think Argo is thinking of Spellthieves, or Beguilers, or Arcane Tricksters, or Unseen Seers.

Or factotum. Their inspiration points allow them to do random s*** and have a chance at suceeding.

Argo
2010-01-20, 11:37 PM
Unearthed Arcana. If you deal damage with a Ray spell on a sneak attack, the sneak attack damage is of the same type as the base damage.

Why would I be thinking of a bunch of classes I've never played?

Boci
2010-01-20, 11:40 PM
Unearthed Arcana. If you deal damage with a Ray spell on a sneak attack, the sneak attack damage is of the same type as the base damage.

No. Just no. Maybe by abusive interpretations of RAW, but no sane DM would allow that. Besides, ray of enfeeblement imposes a pentalty, doesn't do damage.


Why would I be thinking of a bunch of classes I've never played?

Because they fit the play style you described much better?

Kelb_Panthera
2010-01-20, 11:43 PM
@ the back and forth over the wand of gravestrike: a couple things. One, a greater truedeath crystal completely nullifies the necessity of this item without having to jump through any hoops, though it is significantly more expensive. Two, if you never face more than 50 undead in the entire campaign, then yes that's 750 gold completely wasted, but frankly I'd consider it a worthwhile expense for peace of mind right up until the DM told me the campaign was over. Three, while at level 5 it may only be a 50/50 shot to activate, does the 3d6 really make that big a difference? Most undead at CR 5 don't have that many hp to begin with.

tyckspoon
2010-01-20, 11:46 PM
Unearthed Arcana. If you deal damage with a Ray spell on a sneak attack, the sneak attack damage is of the same type as the base damage.

Why would I be thinking of a bunch of classes I've never played?

Complete.. Arcane, I think, in its section on Weapon-like Spells, further clarifies that if the spell does ability damage then the Sneak Attack damage is negative energy damage like what the Inflict X Wounds spells do, not more ability damage. And I'm pretty sure Boci is correct and you cannot do Sneak Attack damage with a spell that doesn't actually damage things.

taltamir
2010-01-21, 12:44 AM
A lot of you guys seem to have forgotten the Rogue's biggest advantage: Ingenuity. Anything you can think of, a rogue has a way of pulling it off. Even moreso than a Wizard. With a Wiz, it's "what spell can I cast?", but with a Rogue, it's "what can I do?"

This confuses me... are you saying the rogue is smarter? because the wizard has more int and the cleric more wisdom... are you saying that a rogue has more options? because a wizard can do anything a rogue can AND cast spells; is casting a spell to solve the problem not "doing" things?. unless you mean that the rogue does those things "better" because the rogue has many class skills and some class features?
all those class skills and features are duplicated by spells, although having the right spell prepared at all time is a problem.
The best I can fathom you are saying that you as a player are more creative then some wizard players, thus rogues are better...

JaronK
2010-01-21, 04:00 AM
@ the back and forth over the wand of gravestrike: a couple things. One, a greater truedeath crystal completely nullifies the necessity of this item without having to jump through any hoops, though it is significantly more expensive.

Yes, part of the point is that there are better solutions (though I think Penetrating Strike is best... Truedeath Crystals cost WAY too much when you factor in the need for +3 weapons).


Two, if you never face more than 50 undead in the entire campaign, then yes that's 750 gold completely wasted, but frankly I'd consider it a worthwhile expense for peace of mind right up until the DM told me the campaign was over.

Most people play lower level campaigns, as far as I can tell. 1-5 is the most common, then 6-10. 750gp is pretty significant in that first bracket, at least... it's nearly all of your WBL at level 2, and only at level 5 is the cost insignificant. Think of all the other wonderful stuff you could buy or craft with that money (Muffling Shadowsilk Leather Armor, if you can craft it, for example). Stuff that's definitely useful all the time.


Three, while at level 5 it may only be a 50/50 shot to activate, does the 3d6 really make that big a difference? Most undead at CR 5 don't have that many hp to begin with.

But since Rogues are often something like a halfling with a pair of Kukris and a strength of 8 or so (remember how many people in this thread have insisted that Rogues don't need strength?), sneak attack is the difference between being a meaningful contributer to the fight and being totally worthless (yay 1 damage). Remember, we're talking about a d6 HD light armored class that wants to be on the opposite side of the monster from the tank. Rogues are very vulnerable in combat, one of the least durable classes in existence. They're really a liability unless they're really contributing something significant. If they're doing just 1 or 2 damage a round on average, they shouldn't even be in the fight at all.

And yes, throwing Rogues don't flank, I know, I'm sure someone was going to raise that objection. But remember, throwing rogues in the low levels have a LOT of trouble landing sneak attack. It's not like Rings of Blinking are something you can afford in the low levels (plus, the extra 20% miss chance on your already moderate BAB sucks). And I think it's safe to say that the majority of Rogues use flanking as a primary combat tactic.

And yes, you can sneak attack with ray spells, but sneak attack only does hp damage. It cannot do strength damage, nor can you sneak attack heal someone for extra healing.

JaronK

Aquillion
2010-01-21, 09:42 AM
A lot of you guys seem to have forgotten the Rogue's biggest advantage: Ingenuity. Anything you can think of, a rogue has a way of pulling it off. Even moreso than a Wizard. With a Wiz, it's "what spell can I cast?", but with a Rogue, it's "what can I do?"
Everybody can be ingenious. That's a player thing, not a class thing.

But casters offer more opportunity to apply your ingenuity. Rogues have a very limited number of skill points and a tiny array of class features. Spellcasters have a huge number of spells to choose from, with many of them capable of radically altering the situation with a single cast. Nothing a rogue can do can really compete with the impact that a timely mass fly or wall of X can have, or compete with the wild-imagination versatility of polymorph or shapechange. Greater teleport almost literally places the entire world at your fingertips -- in six seconds you can be anywhere in the setting. That allows you to do all sorts of ingenious things that nobody could ever manage without such magic.

I'm not saying Rogues are useless; they do have a lot more options than, say, fighters. But "ingenuity" is not a class feature specific to them, and in terms of potential to apply creative solutions they can't compete with full casters.

(There is one exception to the above: Rogues can use UMD to emulate a caster, though that costs a lot of gold. But if you're doing that a lot, you might as well just play a caster and not burn your gold.)

Tinydwarfman
2010-01-21, 02:29 PM
Even if the wizard next to me is a god, and even if we're in the Dungeon of Cold-Subtype Oozes, Golems, Undead, More Undead, Giant Plants, And Constructs, Oh, And The BBEG Is A Dracolich (TM by Saph)... I am not a red shirt.

Why? Because I'm a PC. The freaking story revolves around me! My decisions affect the story just as much the caster's. He may dominate combat, but we all choose the path together. Heck, I could be playing a 1st level Commoner next to an 12th level Wizard, and still it would be OUR story.

In the above Dungeon (and yes, I've been there, or at least a very similar one), I did find things to do. Humble things, like scouting or trapfinding, and little more than aiding in direct combat. I didn't mind, dammit. I was totally immersed in the role, I was participating in every major decision (should we go down there? or up the stairs?), I helped make a plan for each encounter where there was time to actually make one, I solved a riddle... Ooh, and I tripped a Huge skeleton (Confound the Big Folk, yay!) and it died by AoO trying to get up. Would the wizard have wiped out that thing with a nod if he wasn't preoccupied at the time? Oh yes. Did I mind? No! I had a great time! Did I full-sneak attack anything? Only a dire rat, I think. :smalltongue: Did I mind? No! Were the casters 1000 times more valuable than me in that Dungeon? Oh yes. Did I mind? No! I was busy roleplaying.

...Does that make sense?

I understand your argument, but not everyone is just happy roleplaying. Especially when they have to roleplay being worthless! It doesn't happen very often, but there are times when the only people who can do anything are the casters. In the session I was talking about before, our fighter was relegated to being a bouncer at a betrothal!(don't ask, long story) Sure he discussed tactics with us, but he couldn't do anything else! I think the title should be renamed "the Tier 5 classes cry", because as people have pointed out, the rouge can still do a bunch of stuff in party of wiz, druid, and cleric. A sword and board fighter though, will be bored out of his mind as the DM designs encounters for the much more powerful casters.

Boci
2010-01-21, 02:49 PM
I understand your argument, but not everyone is just happy roleplaying. Especially when they have to roleplay being worthless!

Especially when you could just play a factotum for the same flavour and be able to contribute more.

Sir Giacomo
2010-01-21, 03:01 PM
High, I'm the OP, and I wanted to say that this was not my argument. :smalltongue:

I didn't say that rogues can be as good as casters. I didn't say that they don't have weaknesses or that they don't often corner themselves into situations where they have nothing to contribute in combat. I didn't say that their weakness is a myth. I didn't say that the casters can't outperform them 99% of the time.

But I said: SO WHAT if the caster outperforms them?

Sorry for my misinterpretation!


When I'm the Rogue (and mind you, I've played more rogues/roguish types than everything else combined), all I need to be happy is to have something to do. It doesn't need to be as awesome as the caster's million options. And when the caster "outperforms" me, I don't even conceive it like that. I don't bother to make comparisons. I don't feel less of a man (or woman, as the case may be).

Even if the wizard next to me is a god, and even if we're in the Dungeon of Cold-Subtype Oozes, Golems, Undead, More Undead, Giant Plants, And Constructs, Oh, And The BBEG Is A Dracolich (TM by Saph)... I am not a red shirt.

Why? Because I'm a PC. The freaking story revolves around me! My decisions affect the story just as much the caster's. He may dominate combat, but we all choose the path together. Heck, I could be playing a 1st level Commoner next to an 12th level Wizard, and still it would be OUR story.

In the above Dungeon (and yes, I've been there, or at least a very similar one), I did find things to do. Humble things, like scouting or trapfinding, and little more than aiding in direct combat. I didn't mind, dammit. I was totally immersed in the role, I was participating in every major decision (should we go down there? or up the stairs?), I helped make a plan for each encounter where there was time to actually make one, I solved a riddle... Ooh, and I tripped a Huge skeleton (Confound the Big Folk, yay!) and it died by AoO trying to get up. Would the wizard have wiped out that thing with a nod if he wasn't preoccupied at the time? Oh yes. Did I mind? No! I had a great time! Did I full-sneak attack anything? Only a dire rat, I think. :smalltongue: Did I mind? No! Were the casters 1000 times more valuable than me in that Dungeon? Oh yes. Did I mind? No! I was busy roleplaying.

...Does that make sense?

Yes, that makes entirely sense.
I used to play in a group where half were near-epic level and the other half adventuring beginners (very LOTR style...). It was one of the greatest groups I have played in.

I guess a problem only comes up when they all intend to, with different "party roles" contribute EVENLY to the party's success.
The core rules when applied fully can provide this - but it is difficult to do and creates a campaign flavour which is mostly not what people want to have.

But in both cases you need a good DM to
- preserve the game balance in terms of story contribution (in the first case)
- and/or preserve the game balance in terms of technical contribution.

As such, it is even possible that you have a group with an extremely powerful caster and a low-level rogue, where all the great story elements and opportunities to shine are only given to the rogue. In spite of all his technical might, the caster would be disadvantaged.

- Giacomo

Tinydwarfman
2010-01-21, 03:18 PM
Sorry for my misinterpretation!



Yes, that makes entirely sense.
I used to play in a group where half were near-epic level and the other half adventuring beginners (very LOTR style...). It was one of the greatest groups I have played in.

I guess a problem only comes up when they all intend to, with different "party roles" contribute EVENLY to the party's success.
The core rules when applied fully can provide this - but it is difficult to do and creates a campaign flavour which is mostly not what people want to have.

But in both cases you need a good DM to
- preserve the game balance in terms of story contribution (in the first case)
- and/or preserve the game balance in terms of technical contribution.

As such, it is even possible that you have a group with an extremely powerful caster and a low-level rogue, where all the great story elements and opportunities to shine are only given to the rogue. In spite of all his technical might, the caster would be disadvantaged.

- Giacomo

I understand this, but it is very to do, especially with the circumstances you are talking about. When the DM starts giving all the plot to the lower tier characters, that just leaves the casters players doing nothing, or at the very least feeling like all of their are being shoved aside. I think a pretty good analogy is the wizard's spellbook. Sure you can sunder it, but it's not very good practice to do so (unless there is a good story reason). You sir, must have a great dm to balance a few player being 10 levels higher than the others. Did any of the players actually volunteer to be the newbies? Even in LotR, the characters were not that different in skill, and the higher level ones were separated from the lower levels quite early.

Also:
Especially when you could just play a factotum for the same flavour and be able to contribute more.

+1! this is why you should play non-core!

Jayabalard
2010-01-21, 03:32 PM
If you're amazingly good at something that's another character's key strength, that player is unhappy.Sorry, but I really disagree; that will certainly make some people unhappy, but not everyone.

In MMORPGs, there are people get caught up on measuring their DPS, as if it's some sort of electronic phallus. In pen and paper games you get people with the same mentality, and they get caught up on someone muscling in on their niche.

Ashiel
2010-01-21, 05:52 PM
And the existence of a Wizard who will just cast PAO on you, costing him nothing at all, is theoretically reasonable too. Heck, all Wizards of sufficient level can do that, while only some of any level have Craft Wand. Say what you will, but I've rarely found a chance to just walk up to a Wizard and get custom items out of him.

The default assumption of the game, as described on Pg. 137 of the 3.5 DMG, is that population centers (thorps, hamlets, villages, and larger) have a gold piece limit on their economies. You are allowed to purchase anything within the gold piece limit of the community readily; as well as how much you can sell in that community, and how much ready cash the community may have in the case of A) ability to pay adventures, or B) sacking the poor town.

The gold piece limit for a thorp is 40gp, and 100gp for a hamlet. If you've been paying attention, this means you could find a 1st level scroll for purchase in the hamlet, but not a potion of cure light wounds for 50gp, nor could you find a 100gp chain shirt for sale either.

If you wanted to sell items within a thorp, the most you can convert to currency would be 160gp. This means if you brought 500gp worth of goods into this thorp from an adventure, and tried to sell it at half price, the best they can do is 160gp, instead of 250gp. You can either sell some here and wait for some new gold to come in (unspecified but likely no more than 4 weeks), or find a new town to sell your goods.

The reverse is true for those who cry over "Ye Ol' Magic Shoppe". If you wished to walk into the thorp and purchase a lot of 1st level scrolls, there will be a maximum of 160gp worth of scrolls you can purchase at most. To be more precise the largest population thorp would only be able to sell you 6 scrolls of sleep. The average thorp would only be able to half that amount; and don't even dream of buying a 2nd level scroll or a masterwork item.

You may be wondering, What's Your Point?
My point is, if you're not following the rules and guidelines then YOU are inviting problems, and inventing problems that don't exist. For example:

A) Someone decides they don't want someone to just be able to walk into a town and buy "any magic item ever". Instead of realizing they can't, they shut down magic item purchases entirely, and create unneeded problems for those who don't have immediate access to magic items - such as fighters and rogues.

Bonus Fact: The smallest community you could buy a fully charged 1st level magic wand (750gp for 5/day or 50 charges) is a small town, which has an 800gp limit. The most expensive magic item readily available without crafting it is 100,000gp in a Metropolis. For those paying attention, that's only half the price of a +10 magic weapon.

B) Someone decides that sure magic items can be available within the guidelines, but only the magic items they say. Such as "well you can buy a scroll of magic missile, but not colorspray because it's just not here". Again, you're breaking the rules and abusing your DMing privileges (and it is a privilege).

Bonus Fact: If you don't want a spell to be available, then you should make clear ahead of time that the spell just isn't available (such as if a particular core or supplement spell is banned, or what supplemental books you're not using in your game). If you go this route, do not ban a spell then later make use of it as a DM. That's a slap in the face, and you should be hit repeatedly with a wiffleball-bat with extreme zeal.

C) Someone decides to ignore the limits within the rules and makes magic items freely available to anyone who has the money; then proceed to complain because their 3rd level party pooled their money together and now have some sort of doomsday magic item in triplicate. Once again, this is your fault for not following the rules and then complaining the rules don't work!

----
You CAN allow for variation on a case by case basis. Expanding the gold piece limit for a single magic item that you either wish your party to have, or as part of an adventure is fine. If you wish to make a single type of item available for purchase, maybe just once, from the town because of unusual circumstances, that's fine. If there happens to be a wandering wizard passing through the town for one week, but leaving afterwords, then you might want to try and get him to cast that one spell you need while he's in town.

However, there are already rules for this junk, and it seems that many people who are complaining about things aren't following them to begin with.

Just sayin'. :smallconfused:

jiriku
2010-01-21, 06:12 PM
[QUOTE=nefele;7695324]
In your games, when one player plays effectively a powerful wizard, do the other players feel disappointed and worthless and envious?

Yup. I play powerful wizards. And I've gotten comments from other players like:

"Why'd you do that? Now I don't get to do anything."
"Damn, I feel useless."
"You basically won that encounter for us."

Comments like these are the reason that my necromancer wizard basically gave up casting necromancy spells and switched to haste, polymorph, fly, mass snake's swiftness, and other buff spells.

Aquillion
2010-01-21, 08:50 PM
As such, it is even possible that you have a group with an extremely powerful caster and a low-level rogue, where all the great story elements and opportunities to shine are only given to the rogue. In spite of all his technical might, the caster would be disadvantaged.Eh. If the caster is a sort that prepares spells, they can usually prepare something that will help. It's very hard to make bread-and-butter spells like Invisibility, Teleport, Fly, Haste, Solid Fog, Glitterdust, Grease and so forth totally useless short of putting your setting in a giant AMF or something. Maybe you could make one or two of them useless by using very carefully-chosen challenges, but it's not uncommon for a typical Wizard to memorize most or all of them, and they can focus on the ones that deal with whatever you're throwing at the party, if you're favoring one specific sort of challenge in an effort to make one class more useful.

But it's very easy for the DM to accidentally leave a less flexible class with nothing to do, so it is important for them to be mindful of this.

Argo
2010-01-22, 12:49 AM
My point was that Wizards are made of glass and run out of spells really easily.

I've never seen a Rogue get caught up with no options, but I've witnessed multiple Wizards get utterly shellacked by running out of spells.

Maybe it's just the games I play in, but my Rogue always seems to outperform the casters. Once the spells are gone, they're worthless. Although it seems that nobody on here starts a game before level ten, I pretty much only play from lvl 1 - 10, so that may explain the difference in opinion.

Side note: Some of you guys seem to be getting really upset that some people don't agree with you. Relax. We're all here to have fun.

Bosh
2010-01-22, 01:58 AM
I think that this video is instructive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw

Kelb_Panthera
2010-01-22, 03:08 AM
My point was that Wizards are made of glass and run out of spells really easily.

I've never seen a Rogue get caught up with no options, but I've witnessed multiple Wizards get utterly shellacked by running out of spells.

Maybe it's just the games I play in, but my Rogue always seems to outperform the casters. Once the spells are gone, they're worthless. Although it seems that nobody on here starts a game before level ten, I pretty much only play from lvl 1 - 10, so that may explain the difference in opinion.

Side note: Some of you guys seem to be getting really upset that some people don't agree with you. Relax. We're all here to have fun.

Two questions: 1) regarding wizards running out of spells: did you really just open that can of worms?:smalleek: 2) How can you tell that people are getting upset? I haven't seen a lot of smileys to portray emotion in this discussion.:smallsmile:

JaronK
2010-01-22, 07:57 AM
I've never seen a Rogue get caught up with no options, but I've witnessed multiple Wizards get utterly shellacked by running out of spells.

The first I've seen repeatedly (usually in combat situations where the enemy for one reason or another can't be sneak attacked, and thus Rogue damage is too low to matter but the danger to the Rogue is combat is quite great. I've seen the Arcane Lock thing happen too, as well as a number of situations where sneaking became worthless). The second I've only seen with poorly played Wizards, and even then only at low levels. There are SO many solid Wizard spells, and then eventually there's Rope Trick, though in a fast paced campaign (you have 48 hours to stop X!) you can't just stop adventuring to get more spells.


Maybe it's just the games I play in, but my Rogue always seems to outperform the casters. Once the spells are gone, they're worthless. Although it seems that nobody on here starts a game before level ten, I pretty much only play from lvl 1 - 10, so that may explain the difference in opinion.

Actually a lot of my concerns about Gravestrike Wands were centered on the fact that they're unlikely to work before level 6 or so (due to low UMD scores and cost issues). At level 1 you're right... Wizards can dominate encounters with Colorspray, but once that's out they're worthless. That problem has always started to disappear by about level 5 from what I've seen though, and by level 7 they can have an army of the dead following them around so that when they run out of spells they really don't worry so much.

Oh, and from what I've seen the majority of games are from level 1-5, the second most from 6-10, and so on.

JaronK

Boci
2010-01-22, 12:58 PM
My point was that Wizards are made of glass and run out of spells really easily.

Reserve feats.


I've never seen a Rogue get caught up with no options

I do not really consider doing 1d6 damage per attack to undead with a limited resource an option so much as a desperate last resort.


Maybe it's just the games I play in, but my Rogue always seems to outperform the casters.

How do you mean outperform? I wizard at level 1 can end an encounter with a spell. The rogue will do better in subsequent encounters, but in order for that to happen there needs to be a 1st encounter.


Once the spells are gone, they're worthless. Although it seems that nobody on here starts a game before level ten, I pretty much only play from lvl 1 - 10, so that may explain the difference in opinion.

A wizard can still contribute. Even without reserve feats, they should have ranks in knowledge, they could take knowledge devotion. Or they could also throw holy water or alchemic fire at the enemies as well.


Side note: Some of you guys seem to be getting really upset that some people don't agree with you. Relax. We're all here to have fun.

I wasn't upset so much as I found your evidence lacking. Did you consider double checking the rule you thought allowed you to deal 3d6 strength damage with a 3rd level rogue and a wand?

Foryn Gilnith
2010-01-22, 02:04 PM
Although it seems that nobody on here starts a game before level ten.

What?
I have no idea how you got that impression.


Side note: Some of you guys seem to be getting really upset that some people don't agree with you.

And not much of an idea how you got this impression.


Complete Scoundrel has a whole chapter detailing how various classes can use ingenuity (or, as they call it, be scoundrels). Naturally, it's rather incomplete; but the point is made that all classes can use ingenuity. Rogues are slightly better suited to it, but IMO "lots of ingenuity" is not notably better than "a decent bit of ingenuity plus encounter-ending brute force". Comparable, which is why the rogue doesn't cry, but not better by any means.

Aquillion
2010-01-22, 02:45 PM
Honestly, I find that the limitations on spells make the wizard require more ingenuity, not less.

A rogue or fighter can keep doing the same thing most of the time. A wizard can't -- they have to use their spells intelligently and resolve situations with a minimum of resources. I'll bet anything the wizards Argo played with were pure nearly 24-7 blasters or some similar very stupid strategy; he thinks wizards don't use ingenuity because he's not used to seeing wizards bother to try and apply any ingenuity.

But a wizard who uses their spells intelligently and with ingenuity shouldn't be in any danger of running out before the rest of the party is running out of HP and other resources anyway.

Tyndmyr
2010-01-22, 02:56 PM
Although it seems that nobody on here starts a game before level ten, I pretty much only play from lvl 1 - 10, so that may explain the difference in opinion.

Nobody here plays before level 10? Half the discussion was about that level range. I think most of us consider the entire range from 1-20 important.

Personally, my campaigns almost invariably start at level 1...but I like long campaigns. Some have lasted years. High levels come eventually.

Alejandro
2010-01-22, 03:21 PM
Well, when I play rogues I do feel unhapy, not because of the party wizard, but because my DM loves to throw us Undead and/or constructs.

Get Death's Ruin, and the weapon augmentation crystal that lets you sneak attack constructs.

nefele
2010-01-22, 03:58 PM
A wizard can still contribute. Even without reserve feats, they should have ranks in knowledge, they could take knowledge devotion. Or they could also throw holy water or alchemic fire at the enemies as well.
Boci, do you know what it is you are describing just now? :smallsmile:

You are describing a character who, for some reason or another, is Worthless (sic)* during his turn, and yet he doesn't stand there twiddling his thumbs, neither does he feel worthless, but finds things to do and the player is having a good time regardless.

When you argue so passionately about how a wizard without spells CAN contribute, do you know what I read? I read:
"I like Wizards! I like Wizards so much, that even when the only strength of my class is unavailable, I'll make the best of it, and not complain, and have fun!"

And I'm with you, 100%. And if you can do that with a Wizard with no spells left, then I certainly can do it with a Rogue Vs undead.

Oh, I know that a wizard running out of spells is extraordinary (at least for most games/DMs - not all of them :smallwink:), while a rogue bumping into an undead army is pretty much standard procedure. But the principle is exactly the same.

Do you now understand a bit better my point about having fun with Rogues? :smallsmile:


*If a rogue is Worthless (sic) when he TWFs a crit-immune target, then I venture to assume that a low BAB wizard with Knowledge devotion, a flask of Holy Water and no spells is hardly any better.

JaronK
2010-01-22, 04:34 PM
Well I for one fully agree that a Wizard without spells (and who for some reason forgot to get a reserve feat) is pretty darn worthless, unless of course he was using Persistant spells anyway and thus has all kinds of buffs up. Let's face it, a Wizard with Persistant Shapechange, Wraithstrike, and Swift Haste is hardly suffering when he runs out of spells. But really, why is this Wizard running out of spells past about level 5?

JaronK

Foryn Gilnith
2010-01-22, 05:23 PM
I'll bet anything the wizards Argo played with were pure nearly 24-7 blasters or some similar very stupid strategy; he thinks wizards don't use ingenuity because he's not used to seeing wizards bother to try and apply any ingenuity.


Side note: Some of you guys seem to be getting really upset that some people don't agree with you.

And not much of an idea how you got this impression.

Actually, scratch that; I can see where Argo got that impression.


Do you now understand a bit better my point about having fun with Rogues?

Indeed; I'm not sure anybody here fails to understand your point. You put forth a good argument, but the thread moved away from it.

Boci
2010-01-22, 06:31 PM
Boci, do you know what it is you are describing just now? :smallsmile:

You are describing a character who, for some reason or another, is Worthless (sic)* during his turn, and yet he doesn't stand there twiddling his thumbs, neither does he feel worthless, but finds things to do and the player is having a good time regardless.

When you argue so passionately about how a wizard without spells CAN contribute, do you know what I read? I read:
"I like Wizards! I like Wizards so much, that even when the only strength of my class is unavailable, I'll make the best of it, and not complain, and have fun!"

And I'm with you, 100%. And if you can do that with a Wizard with no spells left, then I certainly can do it with a Rogue Vs undead.

Oh, I know that a wizard running out of spells is extraordinary (at least for most games/DMs - not all of them :smallwink:), while a rogue bumping into an undead army is pretty much standard procedure. But the principle is exactly the same.

Do you now understand a bit better my point about having fun with Rogues? :smallsmile:


*If a rogue is Worthless (sic) when he TWFs a crit-immune target, then I venture to assume that a low BAB wizard with Knowledge devotion, a flask of Holy Water and no spells is hardly any better.

I was really just countering Argo's point that a rogue never runs out of options because they can always throw flask on the enemy. Just like every other class can. My main point is that, whilst a wizard without spells is useless, whilst if it still had spells is could end encopunters with but one. Even when the rogue fights at full efficiency, it has no such luxury.

Aquillion
2010-01-22, 06:33 PM
Actually, scratch that; I can see where Argo got that impression.Mmm? It's the logical conclusion. I'm not even talking about Argo himself, just the wizards he's been playing with. He says he's used to seeing wizards as unimaginative and lacking inspiration. I'm saying that this is probably more a commentary on the people he's used to playing with than on the Wizard class. "Uninspired" isn't a feature of the class; it's a feature of the players.

What other conclusion is there to draw?