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View Full Version : Why SoDs are a waste of time.



Tyndmyr
2010-08-31, 10:11 AM
Aright, our example here will be finger of death, an iconic, easily available SoD. It also has the advantage of being less failure prone than say, phantasmal killer, and having a bit of damage on success. Our example mage will be reasonable, starting 18 int, all upgrades into int, a +6 int enchantment bonus, but no other bonuses to the DC. In short, a relatively average level 15 wizard selecting a level 7 spell to cast.

The DC of FoD will be 25. Failure means death, success means 3d6+15.

In the other corner, we have direct damage. We'll assume a generic d6/caster level spell, with no other effects. Say, an orb of whatever, with no special optimization. Force, lets say, to avoid having to calculate the value of the bonus effects the others have. A 15d6 touch attack. Average value, 52 damge

The CR 15 encounter possibilities are as follows:
Brass Dragon, Mature +18 fort, 253 hp
Bronze Dragon, Adult +17 fort, 241 hp
Inevitable, Marut -Immune to SoDs, orb clearly wins.
Mummy Lord -Immune to SoDs, orb clearly wins.
Red Dragon, Adult +18 fort, 253 hp
Silver Dragon, Adult +18 fort, 253 hp
White Dragon, Old +19 fort, 276

Thus, we can calculate on +18 fort, 253 hp as pretty clearly average for the non-immune. With a 70% pass rating, this gives the SoD 25 damage 70% of the time, and 253 damage 30% of the time, for an average damage per cast of 93.4.

Our generic terrible blaster hits on a 2+, for an average of 49.4 damage. Seems like an easy win, right?

Well, no...not really.

First off, it's easier to pump caster level than save DCs, resulting in far more optimization possible for the blaster.

Secondly, saves outstrip save DC increases. This means that the tougher the fight, the more useless SoDs are. By level 18, your DC will have likely risen by only 1, but your typical targets are up to a +23 fort save, dropping your odds of success dramatically.

Thirdly, damage works on nearly everything. Remember those two immune types? Thats a pretty normal proportion of immune opponents, and it only gets harder as you level. As you approach CR 20, anything describable as a significant challenge is likely to be immune.

Fourthly, you probably have a party. They probably do normal damage. If you do normal damage, your efforts stack with theirs. SoDs do not. If your teammates poured in 120 damage before an SoD works, well, using the SoD was a waste of time, as using a damage spell would acheive the same result, and be much, much more reliable. Thus, late battle SoDs are ineffective.

Fiftly, DMs cheat. As shown in another popular recent thread, a good chunk of them will fudge a roll to avoid bosses going down too early. This makes an early SoD entirely pointless, as you have no chance whatsoever to succeed. Coupled with point 4, these alone entirely invalidate the style of spell.

Sixth, SoDs are good at killing mooks. Lower CR mobs are much more likely to fail saves. However, at any level where you have SoDs, you have a variety of aoes. These are vastly, vastly better at killing mooks.

Therefore, you should never prepare SoDs.

Kylarra
2010-08-31, 10:14 AM
SoDs are the epitome of rocket tag anyway, so I generally try to avoid them.

liquid150
2010-08-31, 10:30 AM
A level 15 caster has spells that just say "I win, no save" so why should he bother with either of these routes? It's fairly common knowledge that fortitude saves are the worst to target, and that damage is weak.

Cyclocone
2010-08-31, 10:31 AM
Polymorph any Object, Glass Strike, etc.

Marut Inevitable, Fort +7, auto win.
Mummy Lord, Fort +13, auto win.

Ernir
2010-08-31, 10:49 AM
Well, SoDs work rather well if you acted like a good Schrödinger-Wizard. That is, you used your divinations to find out what you are facing, your maxed knowledge skills to figure out its weak spots, and your limitless library of spells to have the perfect SoD/SoL for just that opponent.

But yes, if you prefer just spamming your favourite spell at everything you encounter (A.K.A. you're most blast-in-the-door Sorcerers), making that spell a SoD might be a bad idea...

Oslecamo
2010-08-31, 10:59 AM
A level 15 caster has spells that just say "I win, no save" so why should he bother with either of these routes?

Because most of them aren't so "I delay them 1 turn, no save" when you use them on monsters with SLAs of their own.

Forcecage, solid fog and the like can easily be bypassed by any monster with greater teleport/dimensional door SLA. And there's a lot of such monsters at higher level.

Malakar
2010-08-31, 11:06 AM
Yeah... Fort saves are monsters strongest saves. Finger of Death comes in at level 13 anyway. And... You declared save DCs less optimizable than CL... but also didn't optimize DCs. Nevermind that Orb of Force has a CL cap, so Orb of Forcing does... Exactly the same damage at CL 15 as it does at CL 200.

I'll also note that you choose a Core save or die, and one of the widely hailed Power creepy damage spells.

People who are most likely to cast Finger of Death are Necromancers DC specialists.

So they do the following thing:

Int 20 at level 1 +3 from levels +6 item = +9 Int bonus. +7 spell, +2 from feats. So that's already a 28, and that's a boring character.

Now find someone who just casts save or lose spells, (and no save just lose spells) but targets different saves, and that makes things even easier, because you can just use their weakest save.

Eldariel
2010-08-31, 11:18 AM
Why the heck are you attacking monsters with good Fort saves with save-or-dies? Dragons in general have good saves; you shouldn't really bother hitting those at all without huge investment. The whole point of SoDs is to hit the weak saves... Yeah, Fort-saves tend to be quite good in general, but what about the NPC caster? Y'know, the particularly dangerous opponent - those tend to have worse Fort-saves. CR 15 NPC Sorc from DMG (since we're using by-the-books foes right now) has Fort-save +5.

And DM fudging...well, if DM fudges rolls, he's gonna fudge HP too so the fight doesn't end a second before he wants it to so it doesn't matter what you do. I'm not gonna plan on my DM cheating since I trust he's put enough thought into the fight that he doesn't have to (especially with all the "Finger of Death dropped the Red Dragon in 3 secs!"-stories; we've had one and it's still the most legendary story in our playgroup).


Let's not forget how common energy resistances are (especially once magic comes into play) and the fact that averages are irrelevant 'cause you always target monsters' weaknesses.

Tyndmyr
2010-08-31, 11:25 AM
Yeah... Fort saves are monsters strongest saves. Finger of Death comes in at level 13 anyway. And... You declared save DCs less optimizable than CL... but also didn't optimize DCs. Nevermind that Orb of Force has a CL cap, so Orb of Forcing does... Exactly the same damage at CL 15 as it does at CL 200.

Finding d6/level blasting spells is...ridiculously easy. You either swap out spells, or find a way to uncap the damage. Either way, problem solved. Damage caps on blasting spells are not a big setback for casters.

I didn't optimize DCs OR CLs. Fair is fair. I did give the caster pretty solid starting DCs, though.


I'll also note that you choose a Core save or die, and one of the widely hailed Power creepy damage spells.

Any d6/level touch attack would have worked out the same. The traditional power orb is fire, due to the daze and the SR:No. Those factors were not part of my analysis, so which d6/level touch attack you use is irrelevant to the equation.

Edit: Targetting weaknesses is a valid strategy, but the fact remains, SoDs are overwhelmingly fort saves, and fort saves are generally high. Those are ALL the monster manual CR15 encounters. Yes, your DM might build an NPC via class levels. Odds are pretty solid that he is a class with good fort saves too. Roughly even, at any rate. There is also a chance that he'll be flat out immune to death via death ward from casting, racial immunity, or equipment.

liquid150
2010-08-31, 11:25 AM
Because most of them aren't so "I delay them 1 turn, no save" when you use them on monsters with SLAs of their own.

Forcecage, solid fog and the like can easily be bypassed by any monster with greater teleport/dimensional door SLA. And there's a lot of such monsters at higher level.

You're doing it wrong.

bokodasu
2010-08-31, 11:28 AM
Yeah... you're not always attacking monsters. Or I guess at least I'm not, maybe you are, I don't know, but that doesn't mean it's useless for every situation.

Just this morning I was thinking how useful it will be when we're both at level 20 and I can hit the rogue (+6 Fort save, 120ish HP) with Finger of Death.

Tyndmyr
2010-08-31, 11:31 AM
If you're level 20, and he's only got 120 hp, you have a lot of options to kill him. Why prepare something that's only good against him when you can prepare something good against other targets as well?

Rad
2010-08-31, 11:50 AM
A main part of using SoDs well is choosing which save to target. Your example used fort against dragons... not exactly expected to work. Weak save DC progressions progress slower than DCs and are usually only helped by the fact that many monsters will ahve much higher HD than their CR.

That said, if you really optimize damage with a few splatbooks you can get a LOT of direct damage from spells.

Draz74
2010-08-31, 11:56 AM
Sixth, SoDs are good at killing mooks. Lower CR mobs are much more likely to fail saves. However, at any level where you have SoDs, you have a variety of aoes. These are vastly, vastly better at killing mooks.

At higher levels, AOE SoDs are also an option. Weird might be just as good as Meteor Swarm at killing off large numbers of mooks. (Not a perfect example, since both of these are weak L9 spells, and Maw of Chaos pwns them both ... but you get the idea. Cloudkill is a decent spell ...)

Kyeudo
2010-08-31, 12:08 PM
The OP is doing it wrong.

First, you don't just prepare one SoD over and over again. You prepare several types of SoD or SoL (Save or Lose) so you can target all three save types. All those creatures up there have low Reflex saves, so you hit them with a Reflex save debuff of your choice and cripple their ability to move and attack. I'd have to do a little digging to find which particular spell would be the most appropriate at that level, but its out there. There are that many splat books.

Second, who cares if your party half-killed the monster before you use your Save or Die? The monster is just as dead and probably sooner than trying to grind through its hit points.

Third, whether a GM cheats or not varies from table to table. I let my players one-shot bosses if they can, since I tend to optimize my boss creatures (Hexblade 3/Paladin of Tyranny 3/Rogue 2 can survive alot). The GM's leanings always need to be factored in in your own playstyle, but that doesn't apply to discussions of the rules system as a whole.

Malakar
2010-08-31, 12:09 PM
Edit: Targetting weaknesses is a valid strategy, but the fact remains, SoDs are overwhelmingly fort saves, and fort saves are generally high. Those are ALL the monster manual CR15 encounters. Yes, your DM might build an NPC via class levels. Odds are pretty solid that he is a class with good fort saves too. Roughly even, at any rate. There is also a chance that he'll be flat out immune to death via death ward from casting, racial immunity, or equipment.

The fact that there are 200 Fort save or dies, only 100 Will save or dies, and only 10 Reflex save or dies has nothing to do with if you prepare the Reflex and will ones.

And why are you harping on Death immunity. Most of the best ones are not death anyway. Flesh to Stone, Baleful Polymorph core, Endless Slumber, Slipsand, Moonbolt, Call Avalanche, Magic Jar, Fleshshiver, Smoky Confinment, Illusory Pit, Final Rebuke.

Not a lot of death tags there.

EDIT: As regards mooks. You get AoE save or dies for mooks too. See Entomb.

Thrice Dead Cat
2010-08-31, 12:12 PM
Sadly, Tyndmyr's info is old news. There's also the consideration that in a party of four, if the wizard pops a SoD and succeeds, then no one else does anything, decreasing the potential fun. If her fails, he wasted a round. This is part of the logic used in treantmonk's guide to being GOD in that you want to help your peons party out rather than just annihilating everything.

bokodasu
2010-08-31, 12:14 PM
If you're level 20, and he's only got 120 hp, you have a lot of options to kill him. Why prepare something that's only good against him when you can prepare something good against other targets as well?

In this particular instance, because he's taken a bunch of feats that make him hard to damage in other ways. Anything with a reflex save is right out, for example, which seems to be most of my fun spells. He's also diminutive and invisible, so while anything based on landing an attack is still possible with some helper spells, it's going to be a lot more complicated than pointing at him and having him keel over.

Ok, so most people aren't trying to kill their party's rogue in the most entertaining way possible, but it works for a lot of other human-based targets for the same reasons.

Saph
2010-08-31, 12:16 PM
Fourthly, you probably have a party. They probably do normal damage. If you do normal damage, your efforts stack with theirs. SoDs do not. If your teammates poured in 120 damage before an SoD works, well, using the SoD was a waste of time, as using a damage spell would acheive the same result, and be much, much more reliable. Thus, late battle SoDs are ineffective.

This is the biggest reason why I don't bother with SoDs on my wizard's spell list. Instakilling an enemy is great if you're on your own and you're not trying to do damage any other way, because it takes the enemy's HP from 100% to 0%. But the closer the enemy's HP drops to 0%, the more wasteful a SoD becomes.

It's generally a better idea to pick spells that complement what the rest of your party is doing, rather than trying to win the battle on your own. This is why I find buffs, and debuffs more effective than SoDs (and direct damage works pretty well too if you've got four other party members pounding on the enemy target at the same time).

nightwyrm
2010-08-31, 01:09 PM
Sadly, Tyndmyr's info is old news. There's also the consideration that in a party of four, if the wizard pops a SoD and succeeds, then no one else does anything, decreasing the potential fun. If her fails, he wasted a round. This is part of the logic used in treantmonk's guide to being GOD in that you want to help your peons party out rather than just annihilating everything.

Unfortunately, people keep misunderstanding what god/batman wizard means. They keep thinking it stands for "wizard kills everything by himself".

ericgrau
2010-08-31, 01:28 PM
A level 15 caster has spells that just say "I win, no save" so why should he bother with either of these routes? It's fairly common knowledge that fortitude saves are the worst to target, and that damage is weak.

Average monster will saves are the same as fortitude saves. Reflex is the common low save, and there are a low number of SoD's there.


The OP is doing it wrong.

First, you don't just prepare one SoD over and over again. You prepare several types of SoD or SoL (Save or Lose) so you can target all three save types. All those creatures up there have low Reflex saves, so you hit them with a Reflex save debuff of your choice and cripple their ability to move and attack. I'd have to do a little digging to find which particular spell would be the most appropriate at that level, but its out there. There are that many splat books.
The typical analyses assumes the low save is targetted, and SoD/SoL still suck as they are failure prone. In reality you don't always know the low save, nor the monster's immunities to half the SoDs so in practice SoDs are even worse than theory (which is already bad). And if you didn't prepare the same SoD repeatedly, or you did but you prepared the wrong one, it sucks more b/c the first casting probably failed and now you have a bunch of spells you can't use.


Second, who cares if your party half-killed the monster before you use your Save or Die? The monster is just as dead and probably sooner than trying to grind through its hit points.
B/c now the sucky SoD sucks even more when it fails to kill that monster when you could have killed it with damage more reliably. It's not that the (already bad) SoD got worse, it didn't, it's that in a party your other option just got better.

A lot of SoL's are decent because they are aoe and against enough targets might succeed on a couple mooks. But I'd never bother with a single target SoD. Or single target SoL, but there are less of those.

liquid150
2010-08-31, 01:32 PM
Average monster will saves are the same as fortitude saves. Reflex is the common low save, and there are a low number of SoD's there.

It's been a while since I looked at the table, but at least in the MMI I thought that will saves were at least a few points lower than fortitude saves on average. Yes, reflex was the lowest, but will is generally lower than fortitude.

Kyeudo
2010-08-31, 01:36 PM
Unfortunately, people keep misunderstanding what god/batman wizard means. They keep thinking it stands for "wizard kills everything by himself".

It's "Wizard cripples encounter to the point where all that remains is mop-up", which some people consider the same thing.

Still, God Wizards are more party friendly than Batman Wizards, since God style play relies on buffs and no-save debuffs along with battlefield control to make the rest of the party steamroll the encounter. It looks like the Wizard isn't doing as much as the Fighter, until you remember that the Fighter is only Hasted, Stoneskined, and Magic Weaponed because the Wizard said so.

Eldariel
2010-08-31, 01:39 PM
This image may be helpful:
http://img482.imageshack.us/img482/4003/savessriu4.jpg
However, you should remember that ultimately averages are again irrelevant since basically every CR has high- and low-save creatures for each save, with some particularly high saves in some type which inflates the average. That does not make the poor-save creatures any less suspectible to said spells though. That and this only applies to straight-out-of-MM monsters.

EDIT: Here's an SRD-only excel sheet - the above information consists of...basically everything that exists for 3.5. http://rapidshare.com/files/416296833/SRD_Averages.xls

ericgrau
2010-08-31, 01:40 PM
EDIT: ninja'd.

Milskidasith
2010-08-31, 01:48 PM
Tynd's posts ignores some key points: namely, optimizing saves at all, that you get higher saves due to higher level spells at higher levels, and that, while targeting the weak save may not be an autowin, it is certainly a massive increase.

Let's take a theoretical monster with 200 HP that has a chance of failing a will save 15% more often than a fort save, and it's fort/will save are not so high/low that the 15% increase isn't fully utilized.

.15*200 = 30 extra damage on average, or a little over eight extra caster levels on blast spells.

While that isn't a huge amount, obviously, and optimized blasting is a lot better than unoptimized blasting... it's still more than enough to make SoDs valid again, though due to all the assumptions made in the OP, I don't see any evidence they were ever close to being invalid. "If you cast underelevelled, underoptimized fort SoD spells against creatures with high fort saves, it may deal less damage than if you cast one of the better blasting spells in the game and ignore the touch attack and possible energy resistance" is not a strong premise.

ericgrau
2010-08-31, 01:55 PM
Before people start inventing numbers to make false conclusions, here's a link to average monster stats:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7035533&postcount=5
Or use Eldariel's graph.

It works even better if you pick real monsters and real spells, b/c then we get the amusement of saying "Uh, it's immune to all of those" b/c your options are in fact highly limited, etc. and "Ya, that's against its low save, and it still usually passes".

If you optimize using non-core splatbooks tricks then:
a) The DM should likewise make monsters stronger or nothing will be hard
b) There are cheesy ways to meta-magic damage through the roof too, and allowing one without allowing another really doesn't show anything except that maybe splat-books aren't the greatest baseline.

Tyndmyr
2010-08-31, 02:03 PM
The OP is doing it wrong.

First, you don't just prepare one SoD over and over again. You prepare several types of SoD or SoL (Save or Lose) so you can target all three save types. All those creatures up there have low Reflex saves, so you hit them with a Reflex save debuff of your choice and cripple their ability to move and attack. I'd have to do a little digging to find which particular spell would be the most appropriate at that level, but its out there. There are that many splat books.

Debuffs are great, but they don't disprove the issue regarding SoDs. Reflex SoDs are extremely rare(I can't think of one off the top of my head), but there certainly are plenty of good debuffs out there. Battlefield control/debuffing and SoDs are different.


Second, who cares if your party half-killed the monster before you use your Save or Die? The monster is just as dead and probably sooner than trying to grind through its hit points.

The point is, the effective value is less. Killing a half dead monster is less valuable that killing an unharmed one. Running out of hitpoints kills things too, it doesn't matter HOW you kill it, only that it's dead. Hitpoint death is no less dead, and it's a very universal method of killing things.


Third, whether a GM cheats or not varies from table to table. I let my players one-shot bosses if they can, since I tend to optimize my boss creatures (Hexblade 3/Paladin of Tyranny 3/Rogue 2 can survive alot). The GM's leanings always need to be factored in in your own playstyle, but that doesn't apply to discussions of the rules system as a whole.

Common attributes shared across many GMs can be. For instance, drowning to heal, while rules legal, is unlikely to ever be seen in practical play, and thus, need not be factored into a practical discussion. Cheating is apparently fairly common, and while yes, if you have a DM that doesn't, it helps make certain tactics more viable, it's something worthy of consideration.

For those who are uncertain, tracking the effectiveness of surprise round SoDs against known mobs is a good way to detect cheating.

Aran Banks
2010-08-31, 02:07 PM
. . . optimizing contest time? Level 20 SoL v. Arcane thesis B.S. damage spammer?

Tyndmyr
2010-08-31, 02:10 PM
Well, we already have Cindy as a hyper-reliable damage spammer. I believe it was guaranteed *enough damage to kill any printed mob*, unless four attack rolls came up 1's in a given round. Details like SR and antimagic fields were irrelevant.

Given that SoDs still autofail on a 20, I think the ultra-optimized approach is a clear win for straight damage at any point pre-epic.

In epic, all bets are off, because the system goes wonky. However, finding epic challenges that are not immune to SoDs is itself quite challenging. Off the top of my head, I believe every singe diety and elder evil is immune.

ericgrau
2010-08-31, 02:12 PM
. . . optimizing contest time? Level 20 SoL v. Arcane thesis B.S. damage spammer?

Sounds good but I'd make it against monsters as they tend to have better saves and SR. Also addresses only 1-2 of 6+ issues, though I think SoD is still worse. Also need clarification on how much splatbookage is allowed. I mean one method of bypassing/over-pumping saves or metamagic level reduction cheese could throw the contest either way. Wait... isn't that what arcane thesis is, and doesn't "SoL" instead of "SoD" already veer off topic. Ya, that's what I mean.

liquid150
2010-08-31, 02:12 PM
Before people start inventing numbers to make false conclusions, here's a link to average monster stats:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7035533&postcount=5
Or use Eldariel's graph.

It works even better if you pick real monsters and real spells, b/c then we get the amusement of saying "Uh, it's immune to all of those" b/c your options are in fact highly limited, etc. and "Ya, that's against its low save, and it still usually passes".

If you optimize using non-core splatbooks tricks then:
a) The DM should likewise make monsters stronger or nothing will be hard
b) There are cheesy ways to meta-magic damage through the roof too, and allowing one without allowing another really doesn't show anything except that maybe splat-books aren't the greatest baseline.

Thanks for posting that. I think I was looking more at the lower level stuff than the high teens + stuff the last time I looked at it.

Oslecamo
2010-08-31, 02:32 PM
You're doing it wrong.

By all means, point me to those no-save no damage no nothing spells that can disable an oponent with magic tricks of his own.

Tyndmyr
2010-08-31, 02:59 PM
By all means, point me to those no-save no damage no nothing spells that can disable an oponent with magic tricks of his own.

Those are awesome. Streamers, PW: Pain, maw of chaos, etc.

They're strictly superior to SoDs in most cases. There's not a TON of them available, but they tend to be very good. Bypassing saves is pretty huge.

In addition, touch attacks that ignore SR and saves are popular. They do still have a chance to fail, but it's a small one.

Gnaeus
2010-08-31, 03:28 PM
Fourthly, you probably have a party. They probably do normal damage. If you do normal damage, your efforts stack with theirs. SoDs do not. If your teammates poured in 120 damage before an SoD works, well, using the SoD was a waste of time, as using a damage spell would acheive the same result, and be much, much more reliable. Thus, late battle SoDs are ineffective.

This is often, but not always true. In a group that my friends and I are currently building, we have a Witch (with 1 SoD, 2 SoL's and 2 save reliant debuffs as per encounter powers), a poison using Alchemist, and a sorcerer packing save or loses which debuff on successful saves. If the witch hits with a misfortune (so target gets to roll all his saves twice and take the worse result), then the sorcerer tosses a fear SoL effect, which gets saved against, but leaves the target Shaken, then a poison based con attack assisted by the debuffs and finally a fort-based save or lose, we are "stacking damage" just like the HP damage party. The only difference is that a monster is fully, 100% effective with the attacks he makes when he is at 1 HP, but with our group he degrades while we fight. All your argument shows is that it is more effective to have a party strategy against big bosses.

Admittedly, that is a Pathfinder party, but you could easily make a 3.5 party with a similar strategy.

Yuki Akuma
2010-08-31, 03:30 PM
By all means, point me to those no-save no damage no nothing spells that can disable an oponent with magic tricks of his own.

Time Stop > Forcecage > Dimensional Anchor.

(Or for that matter, Forcecage + Quickened Dimensional Anchor.)

Frosty
2010-08-31, 03:46 PM
My beguiler has had pretty good success so far. Sometimes there are strong mooks or lieutenants that accompany the BBEG, and I can single-handedly take care of those 2 nuisances while the rest of the party deals with the BBEG. Good mixtures of Solid Fog, Deep Slumber, Heroism, Haste, and Glitterdust etc really helps out the team.

And many times a well timed Save or Lose like Hesitate has saved our team's bacon. Hold Monster is still decent agains big bruisers that don't have awesome will saves. I'm not saying that SoL is the end all be all, but it is a part of my arsenal that I would definitely like to have.

Of course, as a Beguiler, I also have access to all of my spells whenever I want them, so it's not like I need to pick and choose what to prepare :smallamused:

Oslecamo
2010-08-31, 04:09 PM
Time Stop > Forcecage > Dimensional Anchor.

(Or for that matter, Forcecage + Quickened Dimensional Anchor.)

Assuming you can actualy affect other monsters on a time stop, Monster simply chuckles and uses greater dispel magic SLA on himself to get rid of the anchor. You burned 5000 GP to delay it for a couple of turns.

Wings of Peace
2010-08-31, 04:10 PM
What if I'm a Tainted Scholar? :smallsmile:

Yuki Akuma
2010-08-31, 04:11 PM
Forcecage doesn't affect creatures (although as it turns out Dimensional Anchor does - I'm sure there's an area spell that does the same, though).

(And by the time you can cast Time Stop, the material component for Forcecage is trivially easy to acquire. Even without infinite money tricks.)

Keld Denar
2010-08-31, 04:17 PM
(although as it turns out Dimensional Anchor does - I'm sure there's an area spell that does the same, though).


Dim Lock. Same book. Level 8 spell.

Malakar
2010-08-31, 04:19 PM
It works even better if you pick real monsters and real spells, b/c then we get the amusement of saying "Uh, it's immune to all of those" b/c your options are in fact highly limited, etc. and "Ya, that's against its low save, and it still usually passes".

Not seeing a lot of things immune to Solipsism, Glass Strike, Flesh to Salt, Stun Ray and Fleshshiver.

I mean, I suppose Golems with spell immunity...


If you optimize using non-core splatbooks tricks then:
a) The DM should likewise make monsters stronger or nothing will be hard
b) There are cheesy ways to meta-magic damage through the roof too, and allowing one without allowing another really doesn't show anything except that maybe splat-books aren't the greatest baseline.

Alternatively, it might be that one thing benefits more than the other from a medium degree of optimization between "Game is broken" and "Core Only, No Items, Final Destination."

For example, certainly you can make a Wizard with Magic of Faerun for Incantatrix, Dragon Magazine for easy spell, PHB 2 for Arcane Thesis, Lords of Madness, Cityscape, Sandstorm, and three other books for metamagic feats, and SPC for Orb of Fire, then do enough damage to kill things with Orbs of Fire that ignore Fire immunity at level 15.

Or...

You could be a Wizard 15 with SpC and you can cast Stun Ray, Fleshshiver, Glass Strike, Flesh to Salt, Solipsism, and Final Rebuke.

One of those requires a lot less work (and money) than the other.

Yuki Akuma
2010-08-31, 04:21 PM
Dim Lock. Same book. Level 8 spell.

You know, I actually said that spell, before thinking "wait, no, isn't it Anchor?".

GoodbyeSoberDay
2010-08-31, 04:32 PM
Not seeing a lot of things immune to Solipsism, Glass Strike, Flesh to Salt, Stun Ray and Fleshshiver.

I mean, I suppose Golems with spell immunity...



Alternatively, it might be that one thing benefits more than the other from a medium degree of optimization between "Game is broken" and "Core Only, No Items, Final Destination."

For example, certainly you can make a Wizard with Magic of Faerun for Incantatrix, Dragon Magazine for easy spell, PHB 2 for Arcane Thesis, Lords of Madness, Cityscape, Sandstorm, and three other books for metamagic feats, and SPC for Orb of Fire, then do enough damage to kill things with Orbs of Fire that ignore Fire immunity at level 15.

Or...

You could be a Wizard 15 with SpC and you can cast Stun Ray, Fleshshiver, Glass Strike, Flesh to Salt, Solipsism, and Final Rebuke.

One of those requires a lot less work (and money) than the other.To be fair, a mailman sorcerer can get up and running by level 8 or earlier, and while its damage potential increases with additional splats, it really only needs Player's Guide to Faerun and Spell Compendium.

A prepared Save or Die/Save or Lose is really just another tool in your kit. Sometimes it will be useful, and sometimes it won't. An optimized wizard should have enough slots to devote a few spells to the case where an important foe is most easily defeated through a saving throw.

Ranielle
2010-08-31, 04:39 PM
completely right sentiment for the completely wrong reasons =]

Saph
2010-08-31, 04:51 PM
My beguiler has had pretty good success so far. Sometimes there are strong mooks or lieutenants that accompany the BBEG, and I can single-handedly take care of those 2 nuisances while the rest of the party deals with the BBEG. Good mixtures of Solid Fog, Deep Slumber, Heroism, Haste, and Glitterdust etc really helps out the team.

Solid Fog - delay/BC/debuff.
Deep Slumber - SoL, assuming no enemies in position to wake up the sleeper.
Heroism - Buff.
Haste - Mass buff.
Glitterdust - Anti-invis/debuff.

These are all examples of good core spells that work really well in a party. And it's not a coincidence that none of them are Save-or-Dies. :smalltongue:

Frosty
2010-08-31, 04:54 PM
I consider SoL almost equal to SoDs. I mean, once HOld Monster lands, you're as good as dead most of the time.

Optimator
2010-08-31, 04:58 PM
I consider SoL almost equal to SoDs. I mean, once HOld Monster lands, you're as good as dead most of the time.

I feel the same way. For a monster/NPC they are quite equivalent.

Saph
2010-08-31, 05:05 PM
I consider SoL almost equal to SoDs. I mean, once HOld Monster lands, you're as good as dead most of the time.

There are some major differences. Effects like Hold Monster or Deep Slumber have ways to be broken, so initiative order placement and location becomes very important. If something breaks the effect before the target can be CdGed, you're out of luck.

SoDs, on the other hand, don't care about whether there's anyone in place waiting to CdG or not - if you fail the save, you're dead, full stop. Which is why they're typically a few levels higher.

Frosty
2010-08-31, 05:11 PM
I guess we can also call them save-or-sucks. Being blinded by glitterdust sucks if you rely on sight. You can't hit stuff or target stuff with spells. And Solid Fog is no save just suck

But yeah, I guess SoD is just that. You're dead. At least with SoS you have to be tactical about it and use teamwork to finish off the opponent. I tend to like those more.

Saph
2010-08-31, 05:15 PM
But yeah, I guess SoD is just that. You're dead. At least with SoS you have to be tactical about it and use teamwork to finish off the opponent. I tend to like those more.

Which I think was what Tyndmyr was getting at - he was saying that you shouldn't be using SoDs. My experience is similar to yours - I find buffs and debuffs more effective because you're working with the rest of the party rather than trying to win the fight on your own.

GoodbyeSoberDay
2010-08-31, 05:19 PM
I've encountered situations where most of the party is either preoccupied with other enemies or for some reason can't affect an annoying but otherwise-vulnerable harasser and/or support caster. A Baleful Polymorph can end matters rather quickly without necessarily stealing the spotlight.

Malakar
2010-08-31, 05:48 PM
Which I think was what Tyndmyr was getting at - he was saying that you shouldn't be using SoDs. My experience is similar to yours - I find buffs and debuffs more effective because you're working with the rest of the party rather than trying to win the fight on your own.

No, I'm pretty sure what she said was "You should use damage because saving throws are too high, and damage contributes in the same manner as your teammates, and DMs cheat when a saving throw wins, and CLs scale faster than saving throws, and they might be immune to the effect, but no one is immune to damage!"

All of which, to the extent they apply to save or dies, also apply to save or loses.

Also, I think it's pretty darn disingenuous to call something like Deep Slumber not a save or die, since helpless for one round==dead.

Yes, people can use Magic Circle to counteract Domination, or can use Heightened Heal to cure Heartfreeze, or Dispel Magic on Wrathful Castigation. But that doesn't make them any less Dies, and nor does the ability to wake people up make Endless Slumber and Deep Slumber and Sleep less of save or dies.

Frosty
2010-08-31, 05:55 PM
If I must use a SoL, I always try to use it on something the party isn't focused on.

Keld Denar
2010-08-31, 06:10 PM
One way to improve the effectiveness of your Save vs Lose spells is to have an ally focused on debuffing. If you are focused on SoL spells, you need someone to mop up for you. If he's mopping up for you, he can focus on giving you a better chance to affect foes. I'm talking about a fear-stacking Hexblade/PallyofTyranny/Binder with multiple abilities and auras that stack up to reduce your foes chance of making a save. Dreadful Wrath adds 2 to yoru wizard's DC straight away from level 1, Hex has a chance to add 2 more, and at level 4, Dark Companion adds 2 more. Thats up to +6 on your DC by level 4, which makes for some REALLY scary Glitterdusts.

You support him by lowering foes saves and cleaning up his mess, he supports you by keeping foes from doing horrible, nasty, uncomfortable things to you. Symbiosis and synergy.

Saph
2010-08-31, 06:11 PM
Also, I think it's pretty darn disingenuous to call something like Deep Slumber not a save or die, since helpless for one round==dead.

*sigh* Right. I'm being 'disingenous' to say that inflicting the 'asleep' condition is different from inflicting the 'dead' condition. Look, you know how you sometimes fight more than one enemy at a time, right? And you know that it's possible to wake up a sleeper, right? And you . . .

. . . oh, I give up. You'd think I'd have learnt better by now. The Forcecage/Cloudkill, thing, for instance - I wrote a whole guidebook on why that combo was a weak one, yet it still keeps being cited.

Frosty
2010-08-31, 06:15 PM
*sigh* Right. I'm being 'disingenous' to say that inflicting the 'asleep' condition is different from inflicting the 'dead' condition. Look, you know how you sometimes fight more than one enemy at a time, right? And you know that it's possible to wake up a sleeper, right? And you . . .

. . . oh, I give up. You'd think I'd have learnt better by now. The Forcecage/Cloudkill, thing, for instance - I wrote a whole guidebook on why that combo was a weak one, yet it still keeps being cited.
I don't think you're disingenous Saph :smallfrown: I disagree that blasting should always be preferred to Save or Sucks/Lose though.

Also, can you link me to the guides you wrote?

Saph
2010-08-31, 06:29 PM
I don't think you're disingenous Saph :smallfrown: I disagree that blasting should always be preferred to Save or Sucks/Lose though.

Also, can you link me to the guides you wrote?

The long version of the guide is here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61295). The short version is that by the time you're level 17+ and can cast Time Stop/Forcecage/Cloudkill, anything that's remotely a threat to you will be immune to it anyway. I've actually killed opponents in duels because they spent their turns trying things like Forcecage/Cloudkill instead of something dangerous.

And yeah, I agree that save-or-sucks are very good. My favourite order if I'm playing an arcane caster is something like 1. buffs 2. debuffs 3. direct damage - boost the party early on with something like haste, debuff enemies once you can see which ones are dangerous, and then switch to direct damage once the remaining enemies are low enough on HP that a damage spell has a decent chance of taking them out in one shot.

Malakar
2010-08-31, 06:35 PM
*sigh* Right. I'm being 'disingenous' to say that inflicting the 'asleep' condition is different from inflicting the 'dead' condition. Look, you know how you sometimes fight more than one enemy at a time, right? And you know that it's possible to wake up a sleeper, right? And you . . .

You know how you can coup de grace people right? And you know how you or "the fighter" (or your Planar Bound Demon, or your Animal Companion) can delay so that you go right before it right...

Yes, implying that people who are helpless are not as good as dead is disingenuous. Dead people can be Revivified as easily as most Save-or-Dies that don't actually kill people that action can be reversed.


. . . oh, I give up. You'd think I'd have learnt better by now. The Forcecage/Cloudkill, thing, for instance - I wrote a whole guidebook on why that combo was a weak one, yet it still keeps being cited.

You'd think that after someone calls you on being disingenuous you wouldn't imply that they are arguing something that you've previously refuted, and then present as an example something that has nothing to do with what they are talking about.

Frosty
2010-08-31, 06:42 PM
My beguiler tends to skip to debuffs a lot because he only has a few good buff spells. Haste is usully good, but then all he has left are single stuff like Displacement and Heroism. Single target buffs needf to be REALLY good ofr me to want to consider them instead of a mass debuff like Glitterdust.

Saph, you should keep that guide and your Horizon Tripper in your sig or something.

GoodbyeSoberDay
2010-08-31, 06:44 PM
You know how you can coup de grace people right? And you know how you or "the fighter" (or your Planar Bound Demon, or your Animal Companion) can delay so that you go right before it right...So (as far as the sleep line is concerned) in the middle ground case where the opponent can be woken up, but Protagonist Team has the opportunity to CdG him beforehand, and the CdG is a guaranteed kill, you're still using two of your team's actions to kill someone instead of one. That's a bit of a difference, no?

Saph
2010-08-31, 06:47 PM
My beguiler tends to skip to debuffs a lot because he only has a few good buff spells. Haste is usully good, but then all he has left are single stuff like Displacement and Heroism. Single target buffs needf to be REALLY good ofr me to want to consider them instead of a mass debuff like Glitterdust.

Saph, you should keep that guide and your Horizon Tripper in your sig or something.

Heh. Maybe I will! The Seven Kingdoms journal has been finished for a while anyway.

Heroism's more of a dungeon-length buff, yeah - it's a bit of a waste to cast that in combat. I found that the only single-target buff my enchanter wizard used much at higher levels was Greater Heroism (though annoyingly, beguilers don't get it unless you spend an Advanced Learning on it).

Frosty
2010-08-31, 06:51 PM
Heh. Maybe I will! The Seven Kingdoms journal has been finished for a while anyway.

Heroism's more of a dungeon-length buff, yeah - it's a bit of a waste to cast that in combat. I found that the only single-target buff my enchanter wizard used much at higher levels was Greater Heroism (though annoyingly, beguilers don't get it unless you spend an Advanced Learning on it).
Yep. I had to spend one of my advanced learnings to learn Heroism in the first place.

Are there better choices than Greater Heroism for that level of Advanced learning do you think?

Milskidasith
2010-08-31, 07:18 PM
So (as far as the sleep line is concerned) in the middle ground case where the opponent can be woken up, but Protagonist Team has the opportunity to CdG him beforehand, and the CdG is a guaranteed kill, you're still using two of your team's actions to kill someone instead of one. That's a bit of a difference, no?

Generally the melee character's action is irrelevant anyway (sans ToB guys), and unless a blasting spell could one shot the enemy, that's still just as efficient as a blast spell.

Anyway, SoDs seem perfectly usable, and Tynd hasn't really given an actual reason why they're not; the argument boils down to "using spells long past the level you get them without optimizing the DC and hitting the enemies strongest save is weaker than efficient blasting" which is, while a reasonable premise, not really something anybody doubted.

Yes, cheesed out mailmen builds can easily one shot stuff as well, but it's not really too relevant either way because cheesed out SoD builds can kill everything as well.

Malakar
2010-08-31, 07:28 PM
So (as far as the sleep line is concerned) in the middle ground case where the opponent can be woken up, but Protagonist Team has the opportunity to CdG him beforehand, and the CdG is a guaranteed kill, you're still using two of your team's actions to kill someone instead of one. That's a bit of a difference, no?

No, because a Planar Bound Demon (except Right at level 11, when he's actually stronger than you) or AC doesn't count as a real person. If your free Cohort that didn't cost anything spends an action mopping up, that's just fine.

And frankly, Most fights are either going to be against a bunch of people, the majority of whom fail the save, or one single creature that if it fails the save, is now done.

I mean, if you are a Wizard 15 facing 4 encounters today with your party, then those encounters could be a single Marut, a Single Mummy Lord, or a Single Dragon (No really, CR 15 has slim pickings SRD, 14 and 16 have the outsiders).

And while the Dragon saves have a pretty good chance against your DC 26 with save ranging from high of +19 to a low of +15. (Will and Fort only, since Reflex doesn't have any good dies for Wizards, only Druids.) The Marut and Mummy Lord just die if you prepared Glass Strike.

But that's a single enemy for the whole party, so you have a roughly 40% chance of winning the fight on your own in the first round (to say nothing of using Final Rebuke or Wrathful Castigation, which still wins the fight even if they make the save).

Or you can be facing 4 Dragons who's saves are 13-15, or four Elder Elementals with Will saves of +10, or four Demons with will saves of +9.

So if you have an AoE, you can just lay that on at DC 26, and watch them flounder, keeping in mind that if you take even one of them out for good, you have contributed your fourth to the encounter, and if three fails their saves and one doesn't, and brings another one back into it, and then two are coup de graced the next round, that single spell contributed more to the fight than anyone else is even capable of (since you more than half one the battle right away, and took away actions from the other two still alive).

So for example, Deep Slumber has a DC of 18 at level 5, and affects 10HD.

You could be facing one single Greater Barghest, Archarai, Cloaker, Djinni, or Bearded Devil, with will saves of +5 to +10 (aka 10/7/7/7/5) and have a 50% chance of winning the entire fight yourself in the first round, or you could be facing 4 Trogs, Lizardfolk, Grimlocks, Gnoll, or Darkmantles with saves of +0, or in one case +2.

And if you are facing four of those, you stand a very good chance of just dropping the whole lot in one go. And if you don't, and only drop 3? Then the next round, you kill 2 or three before they ever act, and mop up the leftovers.

Jack_Simth
2010-08-31, 07:38 PM
. . . oh, I give up. You'd think I'd have learnt better by now. The Forcecage/Cloudkill, thing, for instance - I wrote a whole guidebook on why that combo was a weak one, yet it still keeps being cited.It's not a strong combo. It's a minimal, weak combo, that is the minimum a class needs to be able to neutralize to have even a chance at taking down a reasonably prepared Wizard at those levels. Time Stop, Dimension Lock, Cloud Kill, Forcecage; if you can't halt it (destroy the force cage, sufficient SR to teleport out, dispel either the cloud kill or dimension lock and then Teleport out) you're going to have a rather difficult time contributing at that level in an ongoing campaign; that's also why it's a Core combination - it's a simple example. The Wizard can pull it off without rolling any meaningful dice, and it's doom for anyone who can't break at least one component. There's - what, a dozen? - ways to break it Core, many of which are accessible to melee classes due to items. It's fairly basic stuff - by 2nd, you need a way to become invisible (even if it's just the occasional potion of Invisibility). By 5th, you need a way to be able to fly (even if it's just the occasional potion of Fly). By 8th, you need a way to be able to teleport (even if it's just short distances, such as Anklets of Translocation). By 11th, you need a way to break out of a Forcecage. How you do these things is immaterial, but unless you want to have other party members needing to take the time and initiative to save your bacon, you will occasionally need these abilities for when the DM misjudges an encounter, or the dice roll poorly.

Ashiel
2010-08-31, 10:00 PM
Here's something I thought I'd bring to the table. I've played a very, very effective SoD based wizard (actually she was primarily a summoning malconvoker, but due to the fact SoD spells aren't based so much on caster level, she preferred these to blasting spells).

Likewise, my younger brother has played a SoD based wizard (a transmutation specced kobold wizard to be precise). He was likewise, very, very effective.

There are a lot of nice ways to boost the DC on your spells.

The Spellcasting Prodigy feat from the FRCS boosts your effective ability score by +2 for the purposes of determining save DCs and bonus spells.
A race with a +2 intelligence or +2 charisma bonus (depending on your class). Aasimar and Tieflings are great for this, but gray elves and gnomes work great without level adjustments.
If you're going to use SoD spells, get the feats. Spell Focus (Transmuation) or Spell Focus (Necromancy) tend to the best in these lines. I'm rather partial too transmutation myself because it has the most fun SoD spells (but necromancy has some awesome general debuffs).
Inherent modifiers. As early as level 13, a wizard or sorcerer can gain a +5 inherent bonus to their ability scores (and the ability scores of their party members).
Ability enhancement items (+5 or +6 headband of intellect or charisma is good).
Heighten Spell (for keeping low-level SoDs high level).


So assuming you're starting with a 15 in your key ability (the average high score according to the PHB/DMG) by 20th level you should have a 30 in your key casting stat (15 + 5 from level + 5 inherent +5 magic item +2 racial), which is a +11 modifier (obviously it can go as much as +13 without cheese).

Now we added it together. Base DC 21 + 1 (Spellcasting Prodigy) + 2 (Spell Focus & Greater Spell Focus) + spell level (likely between 4-9 for a SoD). So you end up with a save DC between 24-33, assuming you began with a starting score of 15 (kick it up to about 35 if you started higher).

Even targeting a Balor's strong save (Fort) you have anywhere from a 50-70% chance to take him our instantly (as he will have to roll anywhere from a 10-13 or higher depending on your starting ability score); allowing you to 1-shot him with relative ease.

But the secret to playing a great SoD caster is using it as the coffin nail. You see, SoD play actually encourages team playing. You gotta "set up the ball" so to speak. You want your target primed and ready to eat this SoD hard, so you get your allies in on it. A successful Intimidate check, fear spell, or similar can add the Shaken condition (-2 to all saves) to the target. A life-drinker weapon (core) inflicts 2 negative levels per hit (-1 to all saves per negative level) and can be used by warforged, undead, or anyone with death ward active. Paladins of Tyranny (SRD) or Blackguards (Core) gain Aura of Despair (-2 to all saves).

The idea is to tag team them. Slam them with the Shaken Condition, Negative Levels, or anything else to shrivel their saving throws, spell resistance and the like, and BLAM. Let's go back to the Balor for a moment.

As we noted, the Balor will save on a roll of 11+ (or 13+ if you had an 18 starting score. Now the Balor is hit with an Intimidate or a Fear spell, inflicting the shaken condition. Now he has to roll a 13-15. He is hit twice with a life-drinker axe from the party's fighter; now he has to roll a 19-21 to succeed (assuming the fighter only landed two hits). If he is suffering from an Aura of Despair or similar effect now he only succeeds on a 23-25. That means he cannot save at all unless he rolls a natural 20 or has at least a +6 bonus to the saving throw from buffs. The balor could be wearing a +5 cloak of resistance and still be unable to save against you without a natural 20 - targeting his highest save.

'Dem's good odds. :smallcool:

Now you can have some fun with this too. Much of the above are area of effect debuffs, for example. If you have access to Splat-books, the Chain Spell metamagic allows you to chain fun stuff like Flesh to Stone (great for a metamagic rod), which while reducing the save DC by 4 makes it affect a lot of creatures and can turn a 15+ save vs 1 target into a 11+ save vs 20.

Some of my favorite Save or Die spells are:
- Flesh to Stone (the likeness is uncanny).
- Baleful Polymorph (aw, ain't he cute).
- Disintegrate (not really a save or die but it benefits from your Spell Focus and deals obscene damage so it's a good finisher).
- Polymorph Any Object (these are not the lampshades you're looking for).
- Finger of Death (not bad but it gets hosed by immunities pretty easily).
- Wail of the Banshee (like finger of death but it's AoE so that's pretty fun).

So I love SoD spells because they use the entire party to make them super-effective. Unlike blasty spells which are just "I shoot for more damage", SoDs really require teamwork to optimize hardcore; but when you do - little can stand up to them.

Tyndmyr
2010-08-31, 11:36 PM
If the witch hits with a misfortune (so target gets to roll all his saves twice and take the worse result), then the sorcerer tosses a fear SoL effect, which gets saved against, but leaves the target Shaken, then a poison based con attack assisted by the debuffs and finally a fort-based save or lose, we are "stacking damage" just like the HP damage party.

Have you faced much in the way of constructs or undead yet?

Tyndmyr
2010-08-31, 11:44 PM
No, I'm pretty sure what she said was "You should use damage because saving throws are too high, and damage contributes in the same manner as your teammates, and DMs cheat when a saving throw wins, and CLs scale faster than saving throws, and they might be immune to the effect, but no one is immune to damage!"

No, the subject is why SoDs are bad. Battlefield control, as I've already mentioned, is quite effective. I mostly ignored this in the comparison because it's already been covered at great length elsewhere. We know BC > damage, so if damage > SoDs, then it follows that BC is obviously better than SoDs.


All of which, to the extent they apply to save or dies, also apply to save or loses.

Also, I think it's pretty darn disingenuous to call something like Deep Slumber not a save or die, since helpless for one round==dead.

Not really. It can definitely contribute to being dead, but SoD is a unique effect, requiring no additional actions to complete. You have cases like baleful polymorph which can be either a SoD or a SoL. Note that the target receives a save boost when it's used as a SoD.

Yup, both lead you to the same goal, but the designers valued SoDs higher.


Yes, people can use Magic Circle to counteract Domination, or can use Heightened Heal to cure Heartfreeze, or Dispel Magic on Wrathful Castigation. But that doesn't make them any less Dies, and nor does the ability to wake people up make Endless Slumber and Deep Slumber and Sleep less of save or dies.

Er, if I can wake up, and thus, not die, that's a remarkable difference.

Being a good way to kill something doesn't make something a SoD.

Frosty
2010-09-01, 12:07 AM
Being a good way to kill something doesn't make something a SoD.True enough, or else a Greatsword at level 1 is a save-or-die.

Malakar
2010-09-01, 12:18 AM
True enough, or else a Greatsword at level 1 is a save-or-die.

Doesn't feature a save, so it would be an "attack role to die."

Likewise, Color Spray at level 1 is a save or die, because your opponent is now effectively dead.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-01, 12:20 AM
Likewise, Color Spray at level 1 is a save or die, because your opponent is now effectively dead.

No. Just...no.

It's good, and can certainly be used to bring about deaths, but just because it has a save and you can kill people with it does not make it a SoD. By that standard, fireball is a SoD. Thats not a terribly useful or common definition.

Aran Banks
2010-09-01, 12:44 AM
No. Just...no.

It's good, and can certainly be used to bring about deaths, but just because it has a save and you can kill people with it does not make it a SoD. By that standard, fireball is a SoD. Thats not a terribly useful or common definition.

NO! NO NO NO NO NO

SoD = SoL = SoS.

It means "you fail the save = you're screwed". Color spray does that, whic his why it's an SoD. A monster that has been blinded and paralyzed is dead because literally anybody can walk up and stab it in the face with a rusty sword to kill it.

THAT is why it's an SoD. Fireball is not an SoD because fireball doesn't mean "you fail the save = you're screwed". It means "you fail the save = you take full damage, and if you're a level-appropriate monster, you get pissed off and fight back".

Ashiel
2010-09-01, 12:50 AM
No. Just...no.

It's good, and can certainly be used to bring about deaths, but just because it has a save and you can kill people with it does not make it a SoD. By that standard, fireball is a SoD. Thats not a terribly useful or common definition.

The difference is it's a save or be rendered ineffectual which then becomes death. Otherwise there are very, very few save or die effects in the game to begin with. Baleful Polymorph, Flesh to Stone, and similar effects don't kill you; but they are considered save or die effects by the majority of people because if you don't save you are effectively dead. You are at at the mercy of your opponents as if you were at negative hit points. You cannot fight back, you cannot pass go, you cannot collect $200; you loose.

Sleep is a Save or Die effect with a chance for someone to save you; just like Flesh to Stone is a Save or Die effect with a chance for someone to save you. Colorspray is a Save or Die effect which becomes a Save or Suck effect.

Save or Suck effects don't instantly take you out of the fight or situation but horribly screw with your chances of winning. Save or Suck effects are things like slow, grease, entangle, colorspray (if you're a high enough level to not be knocked unconscious), and glitterdust. Some spells are Save and Suck a Little, such as Waves of Exhaustion which will hit you with at least Fatigued.

Some Save or Dies are Save or Suck or Save or Suck a Little, depending on the spell.

Kyeudo
2010-09-01, 01:46 AM
No. Just...no.

It's good, and can certainly be used to bring about deaths, but just because it has a save and you can kill people with it does not make it a SoD. By that standard, fireball is a SoD. Thats not a terribly useful or common definition.

I'd like to tell you that in practice, Color Spray is a Save or Die. It doesn't matter if its a Strength 6 Gnome Wizard that delivers the Coup De Grace that actually is what kills you. It's the fact that a Strength 6 Gnome Wizard is good enough to ensure you die once you are incapacitated.

If you want to dispute the claim, the Arena Tournament has 94 rounds of evidence availible on how well different ways to kill people work. We're about to see just how effective siege weaponry is in personal scale combat (yes, someone was that crazy).

Frosty
2010-09-01, 01:54 AM
Waves of Exhaustion has no save, so it's not a save-or-suck it just a "suck it!"

Emmerask
2010-09-01, 04:37 AM
NO! NO NO NO NO NO

SoD = SoL = SoS.

It means "you fail the save = you're screwed". Color spray does that, whic his why it's an SoD. A monster that has been blinded and paralyzed is dead because literally anybody can walk up and stab it in the face with a rusty sword to kill it.



That is not the definition of SoD, because the plan to stab it could still go wrong, a defensive screen of monsters for example or other monsters could just tpk the party right after the wiz used color spray or a thousand other situations. The monster after a few rounds will be completely NOT dead.

I get your point that the monster will most likely be out of the fight/ canīt do anything useful but that is the definition of SoS spells (suck meaning anything from taking penalties to not being able to do anything for x rounds).

Anyway I agree with tyndmyr SoD spells are a giant waste of time. There are a lot of ways monster will be immune later in the game which makes it pretty much useless to create a high level build with extreme DCs even DD casters (which are considered to be mediocre at best) have the upper hand there with a ton of metamagic to enhance their damage or add secondary effects or reduce immunities.

In the early game if you cast SoDs you either rob your group of a good encounter with a lucky hit or you did pretty much nothing at all, its a lose lose situation :smallwink:
Yes some SoS spell can do pretty much the same BUT it is perceived entirely differently by your group, they can still use their swords and pummel it to dust.



If you want to dispute the claim, the Arena Tournament has 94 rounds of evidence availible on how well different ways to kill people work. We're about to see just how effective siege weaponry is in personal scale combat (yes, someone was that crazy).

A 1vs1 match is not really evidence for anything except that in a 1vs1 match x is effective :smallwink:

Tyndmyr
2010-09-01, 07:17 AM
The difference is it's a save or be rendered ineffectual which then becomes death. Otherwise there are very, very few save or die effects in the game to begin with. Baleful Polymorph, Flesh to Stone, and similar effects don't kill you; but they are considered save or die effects by the majority of people because if you don't save you are effectively dead. You are at at the mercy of your opponents as if you were at negative hit points. You cannot fight back, you cannot pass go, you cannot collect $200; you loose.

Er, baleful polymorph explicitly can kill you. It says so in the spell. Changing someone to an animal that cant survive in the environment. Note that they get a bonus to their save when you do so. When used in that matter, it IS a SoD, since it actually kills the person. When not, it's a SoL. It still takes someone out of the combat, but not in deadly fashion.

Using "die" to mean conditions other than death is kind of silly. Especially things like sleep.

This leads to interesting metaphysical repercussions with regard to your nightly slumbers. Is that also death, because someone could CdG you?

Amphetryon
2010-09-01, 08:14 AM
Entirely anecdotal response follows. Take it for what it's worth:

5 person party consisted of Hit-n-Heal style Crusader, Rogue/Warlock, Blaster Druid, Snowflake Wardance Bard without DFI, and my SOD-Wizard. Perhaps because of the inclusion of the Tome of Battle and the Diamond Mind save-boosters, it was consistently the case that even with high Knowledge checks to target the supposedly weak Saves, enemies were routinely beating the DCs on my spells, while everyone else's damage-dealing capabilities were the thing that actually mattered. At best, we'd end up in situations where the blaster would whittle enemy A down in 3 - 4 rounds, while it took 3 - 4 rounds for me to take out enemy B with SoDs, just because they kept making the saves. The rest of the party commented several times on how many actions my Wizard 'wasted' because I'd cast a spell to do nothing, compared to a tangible result from the other characters.

Gnaeus
2010-09-01, 08:39 AM
Have you faced much in the way of constructs or undead yet?

2 of the will based hex debuffs are non mind effecting, as is Retribution, the will based save or suck hex. SU abilities (Hexes) aren't hurt by SR or construct immunity. After hexing each enemy into uselessness, the witch has to resort to her actual spells, or scrolls or wands.

The sorcerer switches to reflex based save or loses, like pit spells and walls. Which are SR: No. I call it a save or lose, because a golem at the bottom of a 100 foot pit isn't getting out until the spell ends.

The alchemist moves to force bombs (reflex save or prone, + damage). SU abilities (Bombs) aren't hurt by SR or construct immunity. Or he buffs himself and tanks.

So in answer to your question, no we haven't, but we aren't worried about it. And of course, we are all tier 1-3 casters, so we have other stuff we can do besides save effects. We just usually don't.



Using "die" to mean conditions other than death is kind of silly. Especially things like sleep.

This leads to interesting metaphysical repercussions with regard to your nightly slumbers. Is that also death, because someone could CdG you?

If my character entered his nightly slumber in the middle of combat, yes that is death. From a practical perspective, there is no difference between save or die, save or lose (like a sleep spell, or a pit that traps an enemy for an entire combat) or save or suck so hard the enemy is no longer effective (like an animal with a multiple attack sequence that is Slowed, Unlucked, and sporting assorted penalties). It really doesn't matter what the exact condition reads when the DM looks at the map, shrugs, and says "O.K. this fight is over".

Malakar
2010-09-01, 08:49 AM
Er, baleful polymorph explicitly can kill you. It says so in the spell. Changing someone to an animal that cant survive in the environment. Note that they get a bonus to their save when you do so. When used in that matter, it IS a SoD, since it actually kills the person. When not, it's a SoL. It still takes someone out of the combat, but not in deadly fashion.

Using "die" to mean conditions other than death is kind of silly. Especially things like sleep.

This leads to interesting metaphysical repercussions with regard to your nightly slumbers. Is that also death, because someone could CdG you?

So what is the in game definition of lose or suck? I don't see a specific in game condition for suck. So why don't you whine that it's not accurate to say, "save or suck" because there is no suck condition?

Bottom line, when someone says "Save or die" that's not an in game term. You will not find an SRD line saying Finger of Death [save-or-die]. It's a term made up by gamers to represent what happens when you fail the save. And since what happens when you fail the save is "You die" it's a save or die.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-01, 08:56 AM
If failing the save doesn't make you die, it's not a SoD.

Failing a save for a dehabilitating debuff, while annoying and highly effective, is not the same as failing a save vs death.

Imagine that you, as a PC, are targetted by a spell. Does it matter to you if the spell merely makes you helpless or if it kills you outright?

Gnaeus
2010-09-01, 09:07 AM
If failing the save doesn't make you die, it's not a SoD.

Failing a save for a dehabilitating debuff, while annoying and highly effective, is not the same as failing a save vs death.

Imagine that you, as a PC, are targetted by a spell. Does it matter to you if the spell merely makes you helpless or if it kills you outright?

A PC is not a monster. The PC measures his effectiveness over the course of his life. The typical monster measures his effectiveness over the course of a battle. Any spell that drops an enemy's effectiveness to 0 and prevents him from escaping is a death spell. If it only drops the effectiveness to near 0, it is only a SoSuck, but there isn't any practical difference in most combats. If you want to argue that the only SoD's are ones that actually kill the opponent, then your argument has become such a tiny fraction of play as to be irrelevant. It is like arguing that a barbarian TWFing with undersized daggers is ineffective. Maybe true, but who cares, because no one does that. Many characters, like the beguiler, are SoD masters, but don't actually use ANY SoDs under your definition.

Kyeudo
2010-09-01, 09:21 AM
If failing the save doesn't make you die, it's not a SoD.

Failing a save for a dehabilitating debuff, while annoying and highly effective, is not the same as failing a save vs death.

Imagine that you, as a PC, are targetted by a spell. Does it matter to you if the spell merely makes you helpless or if it kills you outright?

For the duration of one combat? No, it doesn't. You have been removed from the fight, meaning they are a man down. If they don't win the fight, you are just as dead as if the monster one-shotted you.

Further, as has been mentioned, most Save or Dies aren't actually Save or Die. Baleful Polymorph and Domination don't kill you, but no one can argue that you are still in the fight once you fail your save. Well, still in the fight on the same side as your allies.

Now, afterwards, yes, there is a difference. One only takes Dispel Magic to fix, the other takes 5000 gp of diamond dust.


A 1vs1 match is not really evidence for anything except that in a 1vs1 match x is effective :smallwink:

We've done 2v2, Free-For-All, and even 4v4 matches. Interestingly, tactics don't change that much with group size, at least at low levels.

Tehnar
2010-09-01, 09:26 AM
Since dispel can be used in combat, and from level 5+ there are a lot of creatures that have access to dispel (be it via spell like abilities, cash or spellcasting) there is (or should be) a difference between a SoL and a SoD.

Malakar
2010-09-01, 09:44 AM
Since dispel can be used in combat, and from level 5+ there are a lot of creatures that have access to dispel (be it via spell like abilities, cash or spellcasting) there is (or should be) a difference between a SoL and a SoD.

The problem with that is they can't dispel themselves. So you have to be facing more than one monster, which, as shown earlier, drops saving throws considerably, increasing the chance of you just taking them all out anyway.

Also, if there are multiples, then they are lower level, which lowers the chance that their dispel will be able to dispel your effect, going from 45% chance at equal CL down to 25% chance against you if there are four of them. And even if they succeed, it's still a standard action, so you taking away two enemies rounds for your spell even in the very best case scenario for your enemies.

Gnaeus
2010-09-01, 09:45 AM
So if an effect takes you out of the combat, and it is a spell, it is a SoL, but if it is an Ex or a Su, which can't be dispelled, it is a SoD? Given that there are spells to revive a slain ally who recently died with no level loss, some death spells are LESS permanent than some lose condition spells, which may require specific high level counters. Being turned to stone, for example, is often harder to remove than death at certain levels. If you asked me whether I would prefer to be killed or turned to stone, I couldn't answer without a lot more information about the environment.

Malakar
2010-09-01, 09:56 AM
So if an effect takes you out of the combat, and it is a spell, it is a SoL, but if it is an Ex or a Su, which can't be dispelled, it is a SoD? Given that there are spells to revive a slain ally who recently died with no level loss, some death spells are LESS permanent than some lose condition spells, which may require specific high level counters. Being turned to stone, for example, is often harder to remove than death at certain levels.

Actually, at any level past 9, being Dead is easier to cure in combat than being dazed for X time, because you have a 100% success rate of Revivfying your person, but a much more limited chance of dispelling a long term daze.

Gnaeus
2010-09-01, 10:41 AM
Actually, at any level past 9, being Dead is easier to cure in combat than being dazed for X time, because you have a 100% success rate of Revivfying your person, but a much more limited chance of dispelling a long term daze.

I would say less than 100%, as it requires that you have a divine caster who either knows or memorized Revivify and who can reach you in a round. But that is what I was referring to, yes. Either way, you are more likely to have a cleric with revivify in memory or in a scroll than to have a handy Stone to Flesh, just because death is more common than petrify.

Even without revivify, there is a very high chance that your cleric will be able to raise you the next morning, and while you do lose a level, that may be better than laboring under a suck condition that could keep you out of play for one or more encounters. For another example, feeblemind is available before Heal. I would often rather have my Sor/Wiz be dead than feebleminded.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-01, 10:55 AM
So if an effect takes you out of the combat, and it is a spell, it is a SoL, but if it is an Ex or a Su, which can't be dispelled, it is a SoD? Given that there are spells to revive a slain ally who recently died with no level loss, some death spells are LESS permanent than some lose condition spells, which may require specific high level counters. Being turned to stone, for example, is often harder to remove than death at certain levels. If you asked me whether I would prefer to be killed or turned to stone, I couldn't answer without a lot more information about the environment.

Well, death is death. SoS doesn't stand for save or stone.

SoD is a term for a type of spell. And it does not translate to "the good spells".

Gnaeus
2010-09-01, 11:07 AM
Well, death is death. SoS doesn't stand for save or stone.

SoD is a term for a type of spell. And it does not translate to "the good spells".

It translates to spells that take enemies out of the fight if they fail a save. Any other definition is pointless. Maybe correct from a grammar standpoint, but utterly useless in describing play. A feebleminded wizard sitting in the corner chewing on the houseplants with the intelligence of a cow is dead. An opponent who is helpless in combat for multiple rounds is dead. A golem at the bottom of a pit that he can never escape from is dead.

So the question is, Tyndmyr, are you talking about characters who use saving throw based effects to win combats, or are you trying to win the internets by setting up a fake dilemma and defining yourself to victory? If the first, you need to present more arguments. If the second, you are still wrong, because there are corner cases when those spells are useful, but the argument itself is so constrained as to not be worthwhile.

Skorj
2010-09-01, 11:32 AM
Well, death is death. SoS doesn't stand for save or stone.

SoD is a term for a type of spell. And it does not translate to "the good spells".

I think that's the key point, really.

The most powerful spells for a battle are those which reduce the difficulty of the encounter significantly in one round with no save. Classic example: Wall of Stone - it doesn't need to kill anything, but defeating your enemy in detail is the heart of strategy.

Save-or-die spells have two real drawbacks: the "save" part, and the "die" part. Better spells have no save, and spells that kill an opponent outright must, for the sake of balance, be less effective in some other area than debuff or battlefield control spells: shorter range, or smaller area, or something.

By extension, save-or-lose spells, such as sleep or baleful polymorph are more powerful than a death spell, since it gives you the choice of death or capture. To the limited extent that the D&D spell system is balanced, these will be even less useful in a fight. (Strictly speaking, SoD spells are a subset of SoL spells, of course, and I think Tynd's reasoning applies to both).

Even if you're fighting a single opponent, where battlefield control spells might be less useful, which would you prefer against an opponent with 160 hp?

A spell that has a 25% chance, after defenses, of killing the opponent outright?
A spell that does an average of 40 hp damage, after defenses?

Both will kill the opponent in an average of 4 rounds, but as Tyndmyr rightly points out: one of these stacks with what the rest of the party is doing.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-01, 11:35 AM
So the question is, Tyndmyr, are you talking about characters who use saving throw based effects to win combats, or are you trying to win the internets by setting up a fake dilemma and defining yourself to victory? If the first, you need to present more arguments. If the second, you are still wrong, because there are corner cases when those spells are useful, but the argument itself is so constrained as to not be worthwhile.

Neither.

Your insistance on lumping ALL saving throw based effects into a single category makes discussion of the relative merits of different types pointless.

Tehnar
2010-09-01, 11:35 AM
Actually you can't use Revivify on a creature that got killed by a death spell. So short of a Wish or Miracle spell, no getting away from it, at least not in combat.

SoL, or SoS, while stronger, you can still do something about (even if it means sometimes using a rare spell). However dispelling can be effective against 90% of these spells.

Gnaeus
2010-09-01, 11:38 AM
Neither.

Your insistance on lumping ALL saving throw based effects into a single category makes discussion of the relative merits of different types pointless.

Fine. You win. +1 internets. That handful of wizards who constrain themselves to a tiny and arbitrarily defined subcategory of save spells, shouldn't. If you ever meet one, be sure to tell him so.

Frosty
2010-09-01, 11:41 AM
Fine. You win. +1 internets. That handful of wizards who constrain themselves to a tiny and arbitrarily defined subcategory of save spells, shouldn't. If you ever meet one, be sure to tell him so.
Wouldn't those wizards have died to level-appropriate encounters first?

true_shinken
2010-09-01, 11:42 AM
For another example, feeblemind is available before Heal. I would often rather have my Sor/Wiz be dead than feebleminded.

Really? Because raising is not as easy as you suggest. While feebleminded, at least you are playing in a way or the other. You could even end up in fun roleplaying stuations while at it - a powerful character, suddenly devoid of his powers is a very common cliche of adventure-based storytelling anyway.
If you die? You do nothing. You could he ressurrected after the combat, yeah. If the party cleric has Raise Dead prepared, if he has a diamond, if he has the time to stop and raise you, if no enemy took your body ('Look at those shiny rings!'), if no enemy ate you, if you were not disintegrated, etc etc.
Now don't tell me 'I'd just make another character with the same stats', that's ridiculous.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-01, 11:44 AM
Fine. You win. +1 internets. That handful of wizards who constrain themselves to a tiny and arbitrarily defined subcategory of save spells, shouldn't. If you ever meet one, be sure to tell him so.

It's not about the number of spells you use. That was never discussed. In fact, this appears to be a deliberate parody of an argument, instead of anything you could have gotten from the thread.

It's about comparing this group of spells to other spells, and demonstrating why they are generally sub-par.

Gnaeus
2010-09-01, 11:51 AM
Really? Because raising is not as easy as you suggest. While feebleminded, at least you are playing in a way or the other. You could even end up in fun roleplaying stuations while at it - a powerful character, suddenly devoid of his powers is a very common cliche of adventure-based storytelling anyway.

You aren't "suddenly devoid of your powers", you have an intelligence of 1. You are as smart as a very stupid animal. Your Druid could teach you tricks with Handle Animal to make you attack or run away at appropriate times, but you aren't likely to be doing much roleplaying, with possible exceptions like grooming yourself or flinging poo. Heck, the poo flinging monkey has twice as much intelligence as you do.


It's not about the number of spells you use. That was never discussed. In fact, this appears to be a deliberate parody of an argument, instead of anything you could have gotten from the thread.

It's about comparing this group of spells to other spells, and demonstrating why they are generally sub-par.

Every argument you originally raised in the OP applied (to the degree that it was correct) to save or lose spells in general. If anyone has derailed this thread into a parody, it is you.

Tehnar
2010-09-01, 11:55 AM
You can still protect yourself and your allies.

Sure it sucks if you are a wizard, but as a fighter you are still 75% effective.

Zore
2010-09-01, 11:59 AM
You can still protect yourself and your allies.

Sure it sucks if you are a wizard, but as a fighter you are still 75% effective.

Except, technically, you can't act. You can be taught certain tricks and an ally can take a standard action in battle to direct you, but outside of that you are an unplayable NPC. Worse than an animal companion in every way.

Tehnar
2010-09-01, 12:05 PM
Feeblemind
Enchantment (Compulsion) [Mind-Affecting]
Level: Sor/Wiz 5
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level)
Target: One creature
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Will negates; see text
Spell Resistance: Yes

If the target creature fails a Will saving throw, its Intelligence and Charisma scores each drop to 1. The affected creature is unable to use Intelligence- or Charisma-based skills, cast spells, understand language, or communicate coherently. Still, it knows who its friends are and can follow them and even protect them. The subject remains in this state until a heal, limited wish, miracle, or wish spell is used to cancel the effect of the feeblemind. A creature that can cast arcane spells, such as a sorcerer or a wizard, takes a -4 penalty on its saving throw.
Material Component

A handful of clay, crystal, glass, or mineral spheres.



I guess its up to every DM to define what that means, but I think hitting things with a pointy stick is not too far out of his league.

Milskidasith
2010-09-01, 12:44 PM
Really? Because raising is not as easy as you suggest. While feebleminded, at least you are playing in a way or the other. You could even end up in fun roleplaying stuations while at it - a powerful character, suddenly devoid of his powers is a very common cliche of adventure-based storytelling anyway.
If you die? You do nothing. You could he ressurrected after the combat, yeah. If the party cleric has Raise Dead prepared, if he has a diamond, if he has the time to stop and raise you, if no enemy took your body ('Look at those shiny rings!'), if no enemy ate you, if you were not disintegrated, etc etc.
Now don't tell me 'I'd just make another character with the same stats', that's ridiculous.

Like being disjuncted, being feebleminded before you can be fixed, especially in a campaign that takes a long time to level, essentially means that it's better to reroll than keep playing. If you're dead, you don't sit around waiting to heal, you roll up somebody new. Granted, disjunction is a far worse offender, but it's still a similar case; either way you are mechanically useless with no way to heal, while death at least offers revival or rerolling.

EDIT: And no, when your character is effectively useless in every way, rolling up a character with equal stats is not ridiculous at all. Especially with feebleminded, because your sudden lack of mental capacity means all the roleplaying you put into the character is for nought and he's mechanically useless; rolling up a new character, whether identical or different, is a totally valid tactic when such situations arise.

Gnaeus
2010-09-01, 12:52 PM
I guess its up to every DM to define what that means, but I think hitting things with a pointy stick is not too far out of his league.

Personally, I think of tool use like breaking open nuts with a rock or eating ants with a stick as being on the upper end of Monkey intelligence, and Int 1 is stupider than a monkey, so very debatable. The fighter could get between the monster and the wizard and scream loudly, but in some games that is all the fighter can do anyway.:smallwink:

In any event, I will agree that under certain conditions, a melee with a 1 int would be an asset. Which is why I specified Sor/Wiz.



Both will kill the opponent in an average of 4 rounds, but as Tyndmyr rightly points out: one of these stacks with what the rest of the party is doing.

And as I pointed out earlier, it is just as possible (although admittedly not as common) to stack non-damage effects which conclude in death-by-saving throw. I concede that it is better in general to have a strategy which works in conjunction with the other players, whatever they might be.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-01, 01:56 PM
Every argument you originally raised in the OP applied (to the degree that it was correct) to save or lose spells in general. If anyone has derailed this thread into a parody, it is you.

Because SoL spells are all fort saves??? Er, no. There's also the obvious availability issue. SoL spells are widely available much earlier than SoDs. There are also classic no save battlefield control spells. Grease, forcecage, etc. Very effective.

SoL/SoS is a much wider field than SoD. Yes, some of them are terrible, but some are quite nice, especially at the level you get them.

Malakar
2010-09-01, 02:05 PM
Even if you're fighting a single opponent, where battlefield control spells might be less useful, which would you prefer against an opponent with 160 hp?

A spell that has a 25% chance, after defenses, of killing the opponent outright?
A spell that does an average of 40 hp damage, after defenses?

Both will kill the opponent in an average of 4 rounds, but as Tyndmyr rightly points out: one of these stacks with what the rest of the party is doing.

The point being, that Save or dies have much better than 25% chance of beating opponents. More like 50% chance when there is only one.

And damage spells, when you are facing enemies with 160hp usually do about 50 damage.

So would you rather kill the enemy in 1.75 rounds, or in 6 rounds.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-01, 02:29 PM
The point being, that Save or dies have much better than 25% chance of beating opponents. More like 50% chance when there is only one.

And damage spells, when you are facing enemies with 160hp usually do about 50 damage.

So would you rather kill the enemy in 1.75 rounds, or in 6 rounds.

I picked the single most advantageous point for fort saves in progression, and still, they failed only about 30% of the time. When there is only a single opponent, he is generally at or above your CR level(or it's a trivial fight). These are the cases when SoDs perform poorly, as saves scale rapidly with level. This is ignoring the chance of immunity, too, which is significant.

If you're facing an enemy with 160 hp, and your 4man party deals an average of 50 damage per round each, you can kill him in a single round, because you are working with the party.

Otherwise, with an SoD, you have a very large chance of failure, and due to your lack of contribution, he's still alive for another round.


I have no idea where you got six rounds from. That doesn't fit any math you described at all.

Frosty
2010-09-01, 02:35 PM
You're assuming everybody in the party can do damage. The bard who specc'ed out for support or the Marhsal who...well...just any Marshal really...might only have pitiful damage and instead want to to help in other ways.

Milskidasith
2010-09-01, 02:46 PM
You're also assuming that your DCs aren't optimized and that your damage dealing, relatively speaking, is (solo mobs with 150 HP when you are dealing 50 a round as a blaster means you're either far more optimized at that than dealing SoDs, or your enemy has no resistances or defenses and has 150 HP at level, being generous, 12 with a +3 caster level).

Tyndmyr
2010-09-01, 02:54 PM
Possible. But either way, your efforts stack with those of the party that do damage...and most D&D characters can do at least some hp damage. There's the occasional really crappy one, but in that case the problem likely isn't you, it's them.

Say one party member sucks horribly, and does so little damage he can be safely ignored. Now there are three of you, dealing 50 damage per turn. You easily kill the target early in the second turn. With luck on damage rolls, you might down him in one.

Alternatively, you have one SoDer, and 2 hp damage dealers. You have roughly a 30% chance to down him on round one, and he'll die to hp damage late in round 2. A SoD success in round two isn't any better than just nuking for hp, and while an SoD success in round one is helpful, the more likely failure means another party member spending resources to finish him.

More extreme, lets consider 2 SoDers and 1 hp damage dealer. 50% for a round one kill, 25% chance of round two kill, 12.5% chance of a round 3 kill, and the remaining 12.5% of the time, he dies in round 4. This is even worse. It's very unreliable, and 1/8 times, one character is actually soloing the enemy.

Note that the above is really a best case scenario for SoDs. Immunities are not factored in, and we're assuming the damage dealers aren't particularily optimized. And a small effective party. The larger the party, the more important it is to work together.

Malakar
2010-09-01, 02:56 PM
I miss typed. It's 30 damage. Monsters of CR 8-9 have HPs around 140-180, so for 160, you are doing between 8d6 and 9d6 damage, assuming you are using some kind of ray.

Frosty
2010-09-01, 02:57 PM
Well let's use everyone's favorite: Orb of Fire. At CL 15, it does 15d6, which averages to about 52 damage. You're probably level 13. Got an Orange Ioun stone for +1 CL, and maybe took a level of Archmage to get another CL increase. Your tough fights will likly be against CR15 to CR16 critters. Just glancing at them, they do seem around 150hp or somewhat above, with the Stone Golen, Greater having lots more at 270. Of course, the Horned Devil is plain immune to fire, and while it can be bypassed with Searing spell, that reduced the damage by 1/2.

So using a great blasting spell you can do 50 damage in a round. Who esle in the party can? Can all three of your allies do so reliably? If you and your party spent the same amount of effort in debuffs (aka optimizing), you might be able to lnd that SoD reliably too.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-01, 03:00 PM
You're also assuming that your DCs aren't optimized and that your damage dealing, relatively speaking, is (solo mobs with 150 HP when you are dealing 50 a round as a blaster means you're either far more optimized at that than dealing SoDs, or your enemy has no resistances or defenses and has 150 HP at level, being generous, 12 with a +3 caster level).

My original post used dead average damage for a caster firing a single target nuke for d6/cl damage with no extra cls.

A crappier blaster is hard to imagine.

50 hps a round is not spectacular damage for an hp damage dealer at any level above, ooh, ten. Tops.

Meschaelene
2010-09-01, 03:10 PM
Neither.

Your insistance on lumping ALL saving throw based effects into a single category makes discussion of the relative merits of different types pointless.

They are all in the same category -- call it the "Save or Lose" category if you like. You lose if you die, or are rendered helpless or unconscious or turned to stone or otherwise no longer pose an effective threat.

The discussion about optimization of save DCs or damage, while interesting from a theoretical point of view, most casters who are run by competent people (well, people who are competent enough to optimize effectively) are focusing on optimizing their CC or buffing or debuffing or something else. Trying to optimize on damage or otherwise killing puts that caster in direct competition with other classes -- and leaves a role unfilled.

If the archer and the wizard can both be built effectively to do damage, but only the wizard can be built to do crowd control, the competitive advantage is for the wizard to focus on the crowd control -- with only one or two feats to spare for something to boost damage. You have already stated that you understand this. However, the practical implication is that, during a fight involving the entire party, the caster is doing their job of CC, buff and debuff. The only time they would be casting save DC or damage spells is when their primary job is done (in which case they are shooting fish in a barrel -- this is one of the few times I would use a wand for anything) or when they are alone (in which case, as casters are squishy, having a 25% chance to kill or incapacitate is worth a whole lot more than removing 25% of the hit points of a creature that can kill you in 2 rounds).

So, there are situations where a damage spell might be more appropriate than a save or lose (or die) spell, I believe that, in most of those situations, the caster would be throwing a buff/debuff/CC spell. Offhand, I cannot think of a non-trivial situation where I'd rather throw a damage spell than either a save or lose spell or a buff/debuff/CC. I can think of rare situations where a save or lose spell is the best option.

Keld Denar
2010-09-01, 03:16 PM
Lawl...since people seem to have definition differences, lets look to the primary source, AKA, The Logic Ninja's Guide to Wizards: Being Batman (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=104002).



--Save-or-Die: These make people do what it says. This is good because that's what you're trying to get people to do, a lot of the time. Example: Finger of Death
--Save-or-Lose: These don't kill people, but they might as well. If they succeed, the fight is effectively won; all that remains is clean-up. Example: Fear.
--Save-or-Suck: These don't make them lose by default, but they certainly make it a lot more likely. "Debuff" spells that hamper foes like Glitterdust, Slow, et cetera all fall in this category. The line between these and Save-or-Lose spells is pretty blurry.

As you can see, Save or Die is a subset of Save or Lose that simply eliminates the middleman. Save or Suck is a lesser catagory than Save or Lose, with the ability to at least take part in the combat, albeit at a severely diminished capacity.

Now, stop squabbling. :smallcool:

Tyndmyr
2010-09-01, 03:55 PM
Well let's use everyone's favorite: Orb of Fire. At CL 15, it does 15d6, which averages to about 52 damage. You're probably level 13. Got an Orange Ioun stone for +1 CL, and maybe took a level of Archmage to get another CL increase. Your tough fights will likly be against CR15 to CR16 critters. Just glancing at them, they do seem around 150hp or somewhat above, with the Stone Golen, Greater having lots more at 270. Of course, the Horned Devil is plain immune to fire, and while it can be bypassed with Searing spell, that reduced the damage by 1/2.

So using a great blasting spell you can do 50 damage in a round. Who esle in the party can? Can all three of your allies do so reliably? If you and your party spent the same amount of effort in debuffs (aka optimizing), you might be able to lnd that SoD reliably too.

The point of orb of fire is that it also gets a daze effect. That's why it's considered the best orb. It's a SoS in addition to a decent hp remover. That's why the original matchup used orb of force. Less popular, but still decent. No effect to confuse things.

Orb of force/fire is also a level 4 spell, which you're comparing against a level 7 spell. If you want to compare to Orb of Fire, lets compare to Orb of fire.

The level 4 SoD is phantasmal killer. It has numerous problems. First off, it's fear based. It's also mind effecting, AND illusionary. This means a wild variety of things either are flat out immune, or have bonuses to saves. All Phb races get a bonus vs this except human and half-orc. Lastly, it allows a fort AND a will save. This makes it extremely unlikely to ever work. Assuming you boosted int like a good wizard, and took spell focus and gsf, you have a whopping +10 to your DCs. So, DC 24. Average spell resistance at the level is 26, so you pass that, what...40% of the time? Lets be kind and assume that SR doesn't exist. Average target passes the fort on a 10+, and will on an 11+. We'll also ignore all those nasty racial modifiers. Just to be generous. 22.5% success rate.

The level 4 orb of fire, with mild optimization(arcane thesis, but no metamagic cheese, spell thematics, Craft Magic Tattoo. Note that both use two feats.) You hit on a 2+. So, 95% hit chance. Since you specified level 13, you do 17d6 fire damage, for an average of 59.5 damage. Flat out ignores SR. Then comes the will save to not be dazed. 35% chance of being dazed.

Yeah. It's pretty obvious who wins that competition.

Math_Mage
2010-09-01, 04:22 PM
Entirely anecdotal response follows. Take it for what it's worth:

5 person party consisted of Hit-n-Heal style Crusader, Rogue/Warlock, Blaster Druid, Snowflake Wardance Bard without DFI, and my SOD-Wizard. Perhaps because of the inclusion of the Tome of Battle and the Diamond Mind save-boosters, it was consistently the case that even with high Knowledge checks to target the supposedly weak Saves, enemies were routinely beating the DCs on my spells, while everyone else's damage-dealing capabilities were the thing that actually mattered. At best, we'd end up in situations where the blaster would whittle enemy A down in 3 - 4 rounds, while it took 3 - 4 rounds for me to take out enemy B with SoDs, just because they kept making the saves. The rest of the party commented several times on how many actions my Wizard 'wasted' because I'd cast a spell to do nothing, compared to a tangible result from the other characters.

That's because the primary party strategy was HP damage. A party that stacks Suck on Suck and makes the enemy an easy target for SoL/SoD spells would have a great time with your Wizard.


Possible. But either way, your efforts stack with those of the party that do damage...and most D&D characters can do at least some hp damage. There's the occasional really crappy one, but in that case the problem likely isn't you, it's them.

Say one party member sucks horribly, and does so little damage he can be safely ignored. Now there are three of you, dealing 50 damage per turn. You easily kill the target early in the second turn. With luck on damage rolls, you might down him in one.

Alternatively, you have one SoDer, and 2 hp damage dealers. You have roughly a 30% chance to down him on round one, and he'll die to hp damage late in round 2. A SoD success in round two isn't any better than just nuking for hp, and while an SoD success in round one is helpful, the more likely failure means another party member spending resources to finish him.

More extreme, lets consider 2 SoDers and 1 hp damage dealer. 50% for a round one kill, 25% chance of round two kill, 12.5% chance of a round 3 kill, and the remaining 12.5% of the time, he dies in round 4. This is even worse. It's very unreliable, and 1/8 times, one character is actually soloing the enemy.

Note that the above is really a best case scenario for SoDs. Immunities are not factored in, and we're assuming the damage dealers aren't particularily optimized. And a small effective party. The larger the party, the more important it is to work together.

As above, you are not comparing a party focused on reducing HP to a party focused on targeting saves. You are comparing a party focused on reducing HP to some people who cast SoDs and some people who hit for damage. It's no wonder the latter is ineffective. So no, this isn't a best case scenario for SoDs, because a best case scenario assumes intelligent party strategy.

Also, re: your last post, while Resilient Sphere and Fear are not SoD, they can be effectively equivalent for the purpose of winning a combat, and they are spells that a 7th or 8th level Wizard might prepare alongside Phantasmal Killer if he was targeting saves. Obviously they don't work all the time; RS is useless on a spellcaster or Huge creature, Fear is Mind-Affecting. But it's something you might want to factor into your comparison.

Jayabalard
2010-09-01, 05:36 PM
Except, technically, you can't act. You can be taught certain tricks and an ally can take a standard action in battle to direct you, but outside of that you are an unplayable NPC. Worse than an animal companion in every way.Not at all. "Still, it knows who its friends are and can follow them and even protect them. "

You can follow your friends and protect them; it seems fairly clear to me that you can attack those that you see as enemies, since you have the same intellect as a monitor lizard (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lizardMonitor.htm), and they can act of their own free will, attacking "prey or enemies".

Skeletons are mindless and can use weapons that they are holding, and with with an int of 1 you are certainly more intelligent than they are, so I see no reason why you couldn't use whatever weapons you're holding.

so a feebleminded fighter would still be reasonably effective.

Zore
2010-09-01, 05:56 PM
Not at all. "Still, it knows who its friends are and can follow them and even protect them. "

You can follow your friends and protect them; it seems fairly clear to me that you can attack those that you see as enemies, since you have the same intellect as a monitor lizard (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lizardMonitor.htm), and they can act of their own free will, attacking "prey or enemies".

Skeletons are mindless and can use weapons that they are holding, and with with an int of 1 you are certainly more intelligent than they are, so I see no reason why you couldn't use whatever weapons you're holding.

so a feebleminded fighter would still be reasonably effective.

True, but they cannot use tactics or do anything save blindly attacking the closest enemy without prodding by a party member. At that point they are functionally equivalent to a skeleton, a bit better in combat perhaps, but being unable to do anything but blindly attack a nearby foe sounds like one of the most boring things I can imagine.

WinWin
2010-09-01, 05:58 PM
Why the focus on a level 15 character? SoD's enter the game far earlier than that. Additionally, it is not just the wizard that has access to them. Druids and Clerics have some decent SoD's as well. A SGT of a level 7 damage dealer and a level 7 SoDer would be more indicative of the effect of SoD's in an average game.

Synergy between debuffs and SoD's has already been noted a couple of times. This can be a major influence on the outcome of a battle. Divination/scouting combinations like Scry and Rope Trick can help in preparinging the right spell for a number of encounters in an adventure.

Obviously SoD's are not going to be 100% effective all of the time against every opponent. Neither is conventional damage though. Both have their uses and I reject some of the conclusions that have been drawn in this thread. The last lvl 15 wizard I played used SoD's to great effect. Chained Magic Jar mass suicides for example.

Worira
2010-09-01, 06:08 PM
Why narrowly defined effects irrelevant to any real, or even theoretical, play session are a waste of time.

Cool topic, bro.

Malakar
2010-09-01, 06:18 PM
Orb of force/fire is also a level 4 spell, which you're comparing against a level 7 spell. If you want to compare to Orb of Fire, lets compare to Orb of fire.

The level 4 SoD is phantasmal killer. It has numerous problems. First off, it's fear based. It's also mind effecting, AND illusionary. This means a wild variety of things either are flat out immune, or have bonuses to saves. All Phb races get a bonus vs this except human and half-orc. Lastly, it allows a fort AND a will save. This makes it extremely unlikely to ever work. Assuming you boosted int like a good wizard, and took spell focus and gsf, you have a whopping +10 to your DCs. So, DC 24. Average spell resistance at the level is 26, so you pass that, what...40% of the time? Lets be kind and assume that SR doesn't exist. Average target passes the fort on a 10+, and will on an 11+. We'll also ignore all those nasty racial modifiers. Just to be generous. 22.5% success rate.

The level 4 orb of fire, with mild optimization(arcane thesis, but no metamagic cheese, spell thematics, Craft Magic Tattoo. Note that both use two feats.) You hit on a 2+. So, 95% hit chance. Since you specified level 13, you do 17d6 fire damage, for an average of 59.5 damage. Flat out ignores SR. Then comes the will save to not be dazed. 35% chance of being dazed.

Yeah. It's pretty obvious who wins that competition.

Yeah, it's pretty obvious that competition is bunk. Seriously, you just went Create Magic Tattoo which doesn't even increase CL until CL 13, Spell Thematics from Dragon Magazine, The "best" damage spell in the game, and oh yeah, the most broken feat in the game, Arcane Thesis.

Against... The worst save or die in the game.

Or, since we are talking about level 4 spells, we can talk about a level 7 character with Orb of Fire doing 7d6 damage vs a Snowcasting Rimefrost Armor Draconic Aura Wizard casting Crushing Grip or Melf's Slumber Arrows or Corporeal Instability.

Or, you can be fair about it, and compare Orb of Fire to Crushing Grip or Greater Rebuke on actual monsters with the same level of optimization.

Math_Mage
2010-09-01, 07:09 PM
Yeah, it's pretty obvious that competition is bunk. Seriously, you just went Create Magic Tattoo which doesn't even increase CL until CL 13, Spell Thematics from Dragon Magazine, The "best" damage spell in the game, and oh yeah, the most broken feat in the game, Arcane Thesis.

Nitpick: Leadership.

Gnaeus
2010-09-01, 07:11 PM
Because SoL spells are all fort saves??? Er, no. There's also the obvious availability issue. SoL spells are widely available much earlier than SoDs. There are also classic no save battlefield control spells. Grease, forcecage, etc. Very effective.

SoL/SoS is a much wider field than SoD. Yes, some of them are terrible, but some are quite nice, especially at the level you get them.

:smallsigh:
1. In common use, SoD and SoL are interchangeable. If you look at the first page, or even this page, you will see that most posters use SoD when you would use SoL. This is because....

2. In play, the 2 are COMPLETELY inseperable. No character uses only SoDs with the Death descriptor. Even the kinds of characters who might use what you call SoDs heavily (like a Dread Necro, or Focused Specialist Necromancer) are also characters who use other save based effects. The same exact optimization that makes a SoD (Death) useful (maximized casting stat, DC boosts for necromancy) also make their SoL (Fear) and their SoL (Undead specific) work. It is like saying that your Sword and Board build doesn't work because you didn't want to buy a shield. They go together.

liquid150
2010-09-01, 07:33 PM
This thread has devolved into silliness, in my honest opinion. I agree with the side that says SoD and SoS are basically the same, personally, but it's pretty clear that neither side is going to convince the other.

I also say that a monster hit with a SoS in the first round loses in the first round. It's like a game of chess where one player tells the other "Checkmate in 3 moves" (like many chess computers do). The game is over, no matter what the other player tries to do. In the same line of reasoning for a monster, the encounter is over, and they are effectively dead.

Wizard casts spell, enemy sucks, lesser mortals get close to enemy and slit their throats. They may not have been dead, but they were close enough that there isn't much of a difference.

I'm not going to try to change anybody else's opinion on the matter, because what you call a spell isn't important anyway.


Cool topic, bro.

In my world, we say "Cool story bro."

Or even better:
Hi Welcome

Frosty
2010-09-01, 09:20 PM
Small point: Orb spells (except Force) cap out at 15d6 no matter what without epic metamagic.

Aran Banks
2010-09-01, 10:32 PM
Or even better:
Hi Welcome

AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! Well-played.

Endarire
2010-09-02, 03:54 AM
My terminology for a "checkmate in X moves" fight is "contained."

This can work against the PCs as well, meaning they're dead short of a miracle.

Peregrine
2010-09-02, 07:03 AM
Sorry to call back to the first page and all, but unless I failed my Search check, nobody's raised this point yet...


Those are ALL the monster manual CR15 encounters.

Not true. Those are all the Monster Manual CR 15 solo encounters. Two CR 13s are going to be more vulnerable to save-or-die spells, and less vulnerable to many, many tactics that are indeed superior against a single opponent. (And two enemies at party level minus 2 are not "mooks".)

Runestar
2010-09-02, 07:14 AM
I believe you are expected to do your fair share of work if you want SoDs to work properly, such as using limited wish to impose a -7 save penalty to your foe's next save, taking feats such as spell focus etc.

So in the end, you may not end up saving much in terms of resources. :smallsmile:

Malakar
2010-09-02, 08:06 AM
Sorry to call back to the first page and all, but unless I failed my Search check, nobody's raised this point yet...



Not true. Those are all the Monster Manual CR 15 solo encounters. Two CR 13s are going to be more vulnerable to save-or-die spells, and less vulnerable to many, many tactics that are indeed superior against a single opponent. (And two enemies at party level minus 2 are not "mooks".)

Actually, I sort of did. But everyone is just living in Schroedinger land where you are facing multiple enemies whenever you cast Endless Slumber, but those multiple enemies have the save modifiers of a single monster encounter when it comes time to do math on chance of KO.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-02, 08:18 AM
Yeah, it's pretty obvious that competition is bunk. Seriously, you just went Create Magic Tattoo which doesn't even increase CL until CL 13, Spell Thematics from Dragon Magazine, The "best" damage spell in the game, and oh yeah, the most broken feat in the game, Arcane Thesis.

It doesn't increase CL until CL 13, true. The poster I was responding to specified level 13. I'm confused as to how you see this as a problem.

Spell Thematics is from Players Guide to Faerun. Or Magic of Faerun, if you prefer. Whichever.

Arcane thesis is broken because of metamagic shenanigans. I did not use such. I assure you, a metamagic abusing orb wizard would do vastly higher damage. However, I wished to use equivalent numbers of feats optimizing both the orbwizard and a SoD wizard, in order to get an equal comparison.


Against... The worst save or die in the game.

I did go to great pains to point out just how bad of a spell phantasmal killer is. Did you miss that? The point of this is that he wanted to compare SoDs to orb of fire. Fair enough. It's hardly my fault that SoDs at low levels are extremely limited.


Or, since we are talking about level 4 spells, we can talk about a level 7 character with Orb of Fire doing 7d6 damage vs a Snowcasting Rimefrost Armor Draconic Aura Wizard casting Crushing Grip or Melf's Slumber Arrows or Corporeal Instability.

See, you're not even pretending to make a fair comparison here. You're optimizing the SoD wizard, but putting no equal effort into the orb wizard.


Or, you can be fair about it, and compare Orb of Fire to Crushing Grip or Greater Rebuke on actual monsters with the same level of optimization.

Or someone else can compare whatever SoD they wish. I'm not going to do individual breakdowns for every level, with every new spell someone comes up with, vs every actual monster. That would be silly.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-02, 08:22 AM
That's because the primary party strategy was HP damage. A party that stacks Suck on Suck and makes the enemy an easy target for SoL/SoD spells would have a great time with your Wizard.

Or better yet, once they fail their SoS, you could let melee clean them up. Problem solved without wasting more resources.

You CAN use debuffs(limited wish, as mentioned earlier, is quite effective at this) to make them fail their SoD save much easier. However, by doing so, you are spending more actions on your SoD. This ends up still being a fairly expensive way to kill something.

Emmerask
2010-09-02, 08:55 AM
Small point: Orb spells (except Force) cap out at 15d6 no matter what without epic metamagic.

Seeing that you can uncap the damage... this is not true :smallwink:

true_shinken
2010-09-02, 09:16 AM
Not true. Those are all the Monster Manual CR 15 solo encounters. Two CR 13s are going to be more vulnerable to save-or-die spells, and less vulnerable to many, many tactics that are indeed superior against a single opponent. (And two enemies at party level minus 2 are not "mooks".)
There is no such thing as a 'CR X encounter'. CR is just used for monsters.
Encounters are rated by Encounter Level, as surprising as that may be.
Two CR 13 monsters are a encounter of level 15. But they are still two CR 13 monsters.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-02, 09:19 AM
True. And while SoDs are more effective on lower leveled mobs....so are everything else. Killing enemies several levels below you is generally relatively quick and easy.

It's more important to prepare for the hard opponents than the easy ones.

true_shinken
2010-09-02, 09:24 AM
True. And while SoDs are more effective on lower leveled mobs....so are everything else. Killing enemies several levels below you is generally relatively quick and easy.

It's more important to prepare for the hard opponents than the easy ones.
Also, a hard opponent will be a few points ABOVE your level in CR. Boss encounters are supposed to be average party CR+4, for crying out loud.
...and if you CAN get a SoD to work in those fights, chances are it'll feel very sucky. Like the time when my players finally faced off against the ghost of the demon summoner... to have him roll a 1 on his save against disruption. On the first round. Disappointing.
I generally agree with you, Tyndmyr. Nevermind all the people complaining about how SoS are better, it has nothing to do with the subject.
SoD is bad game design. That much is a fact.

Math_Mage
2010-09-02, 10:11 AM
Or better yet, once they fail their SoS, you could let melee clean them up. Problem solved without wasting more resources.

You CAN use debuffs(limited wish, as mentioned earlier, is quite effective at this) to make them fail their SoD save much easier. However, by doing so, you are spending more actions on your SoD. This ends up still being a fairly expensive way to kill something.

Ask Ashiel. He made some fairly cogent points about the effectiveness of this strategy in an earlier post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9266568&postcount=67). Gnaeus' PF party (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9263750&postcount=35) is another example. When I talk about party strategy, I'm not talking about casting five spells to make the enemy suck before you make him die while melee is doing its thing. That would be stupid.

jiriku
2010-09-02, 10:19 AM
Therefore, you should never prepare SoDs.

Tyndy, I see where you're coming from, and it seems to me that in some situations, blasting can outperform an SoD spell.

But as they say, "never say never."

It's commonly accepted that versatility is the true strength of casters: if A and B have different, non-overlapping strengths, then a caster who can cast either A or B is more powerful than one who can only cast A, even if A is generally better than B.

In real games, monsters are different from one another. In the first room of a dungeon, you find a frost giant with a strong Fort save and fire vulnerability, and in the second room you find a sorcerer with resist energy (fire) and a terrible Fort save. Hitting the giant with an orb of fire and the sorcerer with finger of death is better than just spamming the orb.

You can certainly imagine situations where your OoF works better than the FoD. And for every situation you could propose, I could propose another in which the FoD was the better choice. But being a good caster is about not having to choose! It's about having such a broad variety of options available that you can always use the best tool for the job.

I'd suggest that in real games, the smart caster is the one who ensures that he has the choice of battlefield control, blasting, SoD, and utility magics in proportions appropriate to his expected needs.

Boci
2010-09-02, 10:21 AM
Also, a hard opponent will be a few points ABOVE your level in CR. Boss encounters are supposed to be average party CR+4, for crying out loud.
...and if you CAN get a SoD to work in those fights, chances are it'll feel very sucky. Like the time when my players finally faced off against the ghost of the demon summoner... to have him roll a 1 on his save against disruption. On the first round. Disappointing.
I generally agree with you, Tyndmyr. Nevermind all the people complaining about how SoS are better, it has nothing to do with the subject.
SoD is bad game design. That much is a fact.

PH II had some save or die over a couple of rounds, which sounds like a far better option.

Malakar
2010-09-02, 10:23 AM
See, you're not even pretending to make a fair comparison here. You're optimizing the SoD wizard, but putting no equal effort into the orb wizard.

Of course not. Because you didn't. You compared very good feats and very good spells on one side, versus very bad feats and very bad spells on the other.

So I countered that picking good feats and spells versus bad feats and spells the other way results in a different outcome, because of course being biases favors the side you are biased for.

I challenged you to compare actual good spells versus good spells if you want to have a real comparison.

Ashiel
2010-09-02, 10:33 AM
Ask Ashiel. He made some fairly cogent points about the effectiveness of this strategy in an earlier post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9266568&postcount=67). Gnaeus' PF party (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9263750&postcount=35) is another example. When I talk about party strategy, I'm not talking about casting five spells to make the enemy suck before you make him die while melee is doing its thing. That would be stupid.

Thank you for the vote of confidence. I actually made some mistakes in my last post (which I have edited to be correct, and can be found here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9266568&postcount=67)).

The long and short of the edits was I actually had set the save DC too low. I mentioned the party's warrior struck with the life drinker twice but I only calculated it for once. Basically, there's no way that the Balor can save against the SoD without a roll of 20 - even with a +5 cloak of resistance.

Lans
2010-09-04, 11:00 PM
Scorching ray is the best direct damage spell provided you can get through resistance.

Eldariel
2010-09-04, 11:16 PM
Scorching ray is the best direct damage spell provided you can get through resistance.

It's...not that simple. It's got a great level/damage ratio (12d6 for a level 2) but on the other hand, it offers many defenses (3xTouch Attack, Ray Descriptor, most common Energy Resist, and SR/Magic Immunity) and doesn't benefit that much of the greatest reason to use Rays - Split Ray metamagic.

It's one of the most efficient in vacuum (though Combust, likewise level 2, maxes out at 10d8 - 45 - which is slightly more than 12d6 - 42), but that's far from being the only consideration for "the best".

Peregrine
2010-09-05, 09:11 AM
There is no such thing as a 'CR X encounter'. CR is just used for monsters.
Encounters are rated by Encounter Level, as surprising as that may be.
Two CR 13 monsters are a encounter of level 15. But they are still two CR 13 monsters.

Quite right. It's something I consider rather daft, a needless propagation of dissimilar terminology and two-letter abbreviations for related concepts. But as I'm normally more pedantic than this, I stand chastised. :smallsmile:

Anyway, the point I was getting at was that looking at "CR 15 monsters" as being the sum total of level-appropriate encounters is disingenuous. Two CR 13s make an EL 15 encounter too.


True. And while SoDs are more effective on lower leveled mobs....so are everything else. Killing enemies several levels below you is generally relatively quick and easy.

Each one is easier, yes. But I've found, and I've read other people agreeing, that solo encounters are generally easier than group encounters of the same EL. The solo monster is tougher than any single monster from the group, but the action economy is against it: all the players are beating on it, and it can only use so many of its abilities in the time it's got. Therefore it's not fair to say that fighting two CR 13s instead of one CR 15 is fighting "easy opponents".

(Let's say it takes half the time to kill a monster two levels lower, assuming you all focus on it and let its buddy beat on you. I think that's a conservative estimate, by the way. But let's assume. So it gets off half as many actions before croaking... but its buddy also gets off that many actions. Then you turn on the buddy, which also goes down in half the time of the stronger monster. The result, in this very idealised example, is an encounter of exactly the same length, with the enemy getting 50% more actions. QED.)

To put it another way: yes, all tactics work better against lower-levelled opponents, all else being equal. But the difference in the effectiveness of "take away its HP" is "take them slowly" vs. "take them quickly". The difference in the effectiveness of a save-or-die is "do nothing" vs. "kill them". SoDs show a greater jump in effectiveness. So yes, there are tactics that are better against the CR 15 solo than SoDs. But SoDs are among the best tactics against lower-CR monsters, since they can rapidly thin the crowd and thus eliminate the advantage that makes two CR (x-2) monsters an EL (x) encounter.

Gnaeus
2010-09-05, 11:45 AM
As far as SOD's with lower level enemies go, my level 11 group survived 2 encounters this weekend solely because of the SOD function of cloudkill. One encounter had 8 Half Dragon advanced Dire Apes, another had 8 Winter Wolves with some kind of template. In both cases, EL appropriate encounters with monsters that killed PCs with their attacks (and could easily have TPKed us) before turning around the fight with green mist of death. In the winged monkey fight, our poison immune characters got to watch the Apes SoDing themselves as they flew into the cloud to get to us :-).

Lhurgyof
2010-09-05, 11:54 AM
Ugh, I hate SoD's... it's like having an "I win" button if you can play them right.

true_shinken
2010-09-05, 12:00 PM
A SoD made for the most anti-climatic ever boss fight in my game last night.
My players have been trying to fight this vampire crimelord for months now. Guy has pestering them like hell, sending vampires after them time and time again, destroying the city... they players basically hate him and they have good reasons for that.
After finally joining forces with the paladins of freedom, they enlist the help of shadar-kai from a demiplane they got access to and finally attack the vampire's mansion. Their allies open the way for them and they finally engage in battle against their nemesis.
The artificer had everyone buffed to hell. The swashbuckler risked her life facing the vampire alone so that she could keep him in the room the party would break into. Combat is joined. The artificer misses ALL of his maximized, quickened Scorching Rays (dude has a flat-footed touch AC of 41 against rays). The group's Paladin/Swordsage, using Surge of Fortune, Leap Attacks the enemy. He tries to double his damage with a Diamond Mind maneuver... and fails. Party begins to freak out. He barely hits the target. I was expecting him to deal enough damage to down the BBEG right there, but he had defensie roll but that was fine. So I roll for the save against disruption. Of course it is a 1.
My players were actually satisfied, so it was not that big of a deal, but I found it extremely anti-climatic. After I had alreayd packed all my stuff to leave, I remembered the guy had a cloak of displacement and had the Paladin roll... and he would have missed the attack. But the players liked that outcome, so I didn't retcon it.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-05, 12:05 PM
As far as SOD's with lower level enemies go, my level 11 group survived 2 encounters this weekend solely because of the SOD function of cloudkill. One encounter had 8 Half Dragon advanced Dire Apes, another had 8 Winter Wolves with some kind of template. In both cases, EL appropriate encounters with monsters that killed PCs with their attacks (and could easily have TPKed us) before turning around the fight with green mist of death. In the winged monkey fight, our poison immune characters got to watch the Apes SoDing themselves as they flew into the cloud to get to us :-).

Well, since I don't know the wolf advancement, I can't speak for that fight.

However, a half-dragon dire ape is CR 5, so eight of them is CR 11. Leaving aside the fact that the dire ape is notoriously under-CRed, this gives you a batch of monsters that each have 40 hp, and can fly really fast. Which begs the question of why they just keep flying into the highly visible cloud of death. Sure, they're not brilliant(Int 4), but they're not mindless, either. They could have opted to fly around the cloud using breath weapons first. At least some of them should have made their first save, too, with a +7 on fort.

Certainly, a level 11 party should be able to tear these guys apart. A CL 11 Cone of cold gets about 39 damage on average, so you've got good odds on just dropping a ton of them. Even if they make the saves, they take half, and they have slightly lower reflex saves than fort. It also is useful even if the mobs aren't run like suicidal bags of xp.

Cloudkill isn't a terrifically good SoD. The HD limit is a real problem for scalability. The visibility limiting and fort damage is just as useful as the actual SoD effect, but the immunity to poisons is a real pain.

Gnaeus
2010-09-05, 12:52 PM
Well, since I don't know the wolf advancement, I can't speak for that fight.
However, a half-dragon dire ape is CR 5, so eight of them is CR 11.

Leaving aside the fact that the dire ape is notoriously under-CRed, this gives you a batch of monsters that each have 40 hp, and can fly really fast.



One encounter had 8 Half Dragon advanced Dire Apes,

I don't know if they had 2 class levels, or just a couple of extra hd. They were also pre-buffed. They had a little energy resistance too, fiendish maybe, or a spell. Not entirely sure, I didn't make them, I just fought them. My DMs like to advance enemies.


Leaving aside the fact that the dire ape is notoriously under-CRed, this gives you a batch of monsters that each have 40 hp, and can fly really fast.

They killed 3 fairly optimized level 11 characters (Monk, Bard, Alchemist (O.K. I know monk isn't optimized, but it was well built for a monk)) and reduced 3 more (Sorcerer, Cleric, Witch) to under 1/3 of HP. I think that indicates CR appropriate. None of us were complaining that they were too weak.


Which begs the question of why they just keep flying into the highly visible cloud of death. Sure, they're not brilliant(Int 4), but they're not mindless, either.

Not a lot of knowledge Arcana on a Dire Ape. They have no reason to know that obscuring mist is harmless and cloudkill is deadly. Once they fly in, the others can't see what happened. Only 2 actually flew in, 2 were in the initial AoE.


They could have opted to fly around the cloud using breath weapons first. At least some of them should have made their first save, too, with a +7 on fort.

Their breath weapons were much less damaging than their absurd attack sequences, and some of them breathed on round 1. I think of the 4 of them that died to the DC 24 cloudkill, there was 1 successful save, which is about right. We might have had something altering their saves just a little, like a Prayer. I had been gaming for 44 of the previous 48 hours at that point, so my recollection is a little fuzzy.


Certainly, a level 11 party should be able to tear these guys apart. A CL 11 Cone of cold gets about 39 damage on average, so you've got good odds on just dropping a ton of them. Even if they make the saves, they take half, and they have slightly lower reflex saves than fort. It also is useful even if the mobs aren't run like suicidal bags of xp.

1. As I mentioned above, they were advanced with either HD or levels.
2. As I mentioned above, they had some energy resist.
3. The sorc did finally manage to blast about 3 out of the sky. A Cone of Cold would likely have killed the cleric and witch. (the last one died to a single target SoD (my definition), specifically, Slumber). The sorc spent much of the fight under the ground as an earth elemental after getting spanked because he didn't think they could see invisibility.
4. I'm sorry that the Int 4 mobs did not live up to your level of brilliance. The DM had been running the game for about 20 hours at that point also. Yes, they could have acted differently, but I don't think flying into a cloud is out of the question for an int 4 bruiser. If they had rolled well, they could have killed me easily.


Cloudkill isn't a terrifically good SoD. The HD limit is a real problem for scalability. The visibility limiting and fort damage is just as useful as the actual SoD effect, but the immunity to poisons is a real pain.

Well, you use it on things that aren't immune to poison. I use suffocation on enemies that breathe. Slumber on enemies that sleep. That is what high tier characters DO Tyndmyr. Yes, if my character only cast cloudkill, he would suck.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-05, 01:12 PM
I don't know if they had 2 class levels, or just a couple of extra hd. They were also pre-buffed. They had a little energy resistance too, fiendish maybe, or a spell. Not entirely sure, I didn't make them, I just fought them. My DMs like to advance enemies.

No, no, it's EL 11 with JUST half dragon dire apes. Any further advancement increases the EL further.

Additional templates and favorable circumstances could also change the EL. Hard to say without knowing what's involved.


They killed 3 fairly optimized level 11 characters (Monk, Bard, Alchemist (O.K. I know monk isn't optimized, but it was well built for a monk)) and reduced 3 more (Sorcerer, Cleric, Witch) to under 1/3 of HP. I think that indicates CR appropriate.

Err, no. Something that kills half your party, and nearly kills the rest is generally an overwelming encounter. Something you run from, not fight.

I imagine what happened is your DM saw the poison cloud, and used it as an excuse to not kill you with his over-advanced beasties.


Not a lot of knowledge Arcana on a Dire Ape. They have no reason to know that obscuring mist is harmless and cloudkill is deadly. Once they fly in, the others can't see what happened. Only 2 actually flew in, 2 were in the initial AoE.

If they pass the save initially, they should realize that staying there is a bad idea. Even those watching should realize that nobody coming out of the mist is a bad thing.

They don't know what the spell is, sure, they just need to know it contains some unspecified danger.


Their breath weapons were much less damaging than their absurd attack sequences, and some of them breathed on round 1. I think of the 4 of them that died to the DC 24 cloudkill, there was 1 successful save, which is about right.

Your DM does realize that the half-dragon natural attacks REPLACE the existing ones, right?


1. As I mentioned above, they were advanced with either HD or levels.
2. As I mentioned above, they had some energy resist.
3. The sorc did finally manage to blast about 3 out of the sky. A Cone of Cold would likely have killed the cleric and witch. (the last one died to a single target SoD (my definition), specifically, Slumber). The sorc spent much of the fight under the ground as an earth elemental after getting spanked because he didn't think they could see invisibility.
4. I'm sorry that the Int 4 mobs did not live up to your level of brilliance.

Well, they have scent. It's not quite the same as see invisibility, but it is dangerous. As for the rest...I don't expect brilliance from Int 4, but neither do I expect spellcasting. So, clearly, either these guys have some unexplained spellcasting(very doubtful), or they are not alone. Either way, Im doubtful that this encounter is very representative of normal D&D.


Well, you use it on things that aren't immune to poison. I use suffocation on enemies that breathe. Slumber on enemies that sleep. That is what high tier characters DO Tyndmyr. Yes, if my character only cast cloudkill, he would suck.

This assumes you always know what is immune to what. That's a questionable assumption.

Jack_Simth
2010-09-05, 01:19 PM
This assumes you always know what is immune to what. That's a questionable assumption.Luckily, Wizards get Knowledge(All skills, taken individually) as a class skill, and a very high Int score to give them plenty of skill points and a nice bonus to the Knowledge skills.

Will they always know what's vulnerable to what? No. They will, however, often know at least one gap in a monstrous opponent's defenses, which is really all they need to toss a useful save-or-lose through.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-05, 01:32 PM
Well, you have five knowledge skills to cover your creatures. Arcana can be expected to be high, as it's a frequent PrC prereq. The others vary quite a bit, but are usually mostly ignored in favor of spellcraft, concentration, etc. So, a wizard typically knows one or two types pretty well, but the rest is a crap shoot.

Knowing a monsters vulnerabilities is typically a harder check. A wizard is going to be familiar with the very basics of most monsters, but finding it's weak save, for instance, is anything but a guarantee. Sure, you use that info when it's available, but it's unwise to assume that it always will be. Therefore, packing some spells that work on pretty much anything is usually wise. The whole power of builds such as the mailman is that they really do work on absolutely anything.

Malakar
2010-09-05, 01:41 PM
Well, you have five knowledge skills to cover your creatures. Arcana can be expected to be high, as it's a frequent PrC prereq. The others vary quite a bit, but are usually mostly ignored in favor of spellcraft, concentration, etc. So, a wizard typically knows one or two types pretty well, but the rest is a crap shoot.

Spellcraft, Concentration, Knowledge Arcana.

Okay, you now have half of the skill points of a level 1 Wizard without an int boosting race.

What are they going to but the other ones in instead?

Craft (Int), Decipher Script (Int), Profession (Wis)?

Or Knowledge (Three more, Int)?

Yeah, unless you have an odd out PrC that requires some other thing, you are going to have 4 Knowledges with full ranks.

And even then, after getting four ranks in Profession Gambler for Fatespinner, or whatever, you are going to go right back to Knowledges and with a higher Int...

So If I'm making a straight Wizard right now, It has Knowledge Arcana, Planes, Dungeoneering, and either Nature or Religion, depending on who's in the party.

So... That's everything but Local between myself and the Cleric or myself and the Druid.

So... that's all the monsters, in the game. Sure we can't read humanoids with class levels, and we don't know about Drow, but we have everything else covered. And lots of PrCs and such have their information given out based on Knowledge Arcana or Planes or whatever.

So... Yeah, I guess you do get all your knowledges.

HamHam
2010-09-05, 01:41 PM
Let's not pretend that player knowledge isn't going to cover this. Anyone with any experience in DnD will quickly figure out that:

Casters have good Will, poor Fort.
Brutes have good Fort, poor Will.
Reflex is 50/50.
Really nasty things like Dragons and Outsiders get all good saves.

Gnaeus
2010-09-05, 01:53 PM
No, no, it's EL 11 with JUST half dragon dire apes. Any further advancement increases the EL further.

Additional templates and favorable circumstances could also change the EL. Hard to say without knowing what's involved.

So it probably wasn't over EL+4, so appropriate to our party


Err, no. Something that kills half your party, and nearly kills the rest is generally an overwelming encounter. Something you run from, not fight.

As you pointed out, they had a very high fly speed. The sorc could have escaped. The cleric (and other party members, except maybe the monk) would surely have died anyway. I could have D Doored, but then I would only have died tired.


I imagine what happened is your DM saw the poison cloud, and used it as an excuse to not kill you with his over-advanced beasties.

Nope, thats how we roll in this game. We make broken characters, DMs make broken, legal encounters. The dice decide.


As for the rest...I don't expect brilliance from Int 4, but neither do I expect spellcasting. So, clearly, either these guys have some unexplained spellcasting(very doubtful), or they are not alone. Either way, Im doubtful that this encounter is very representative of normal D&D.


They were ordered by an absent boss to drink some potions before attacking us. It was brought up later that See Invisibility, as a personal spell, should not be a legal potion in PF, but the DMs let it stand.

You:
Therefore, you should never prepare SoDs.

Me: One particular SoD saved my party from TPK twice this weekend.

Edit: Maybe 3. Cloudkill also beat the fight with the 32 shocker lizards in metal containers on a room with a metal floor and low roof, but we might have won that one anyway. We got initiative so they died before we got to see how screwed we were.


Either way, Im doubtful that this encounter is very representative of normal D&D.


But if it is never useful, the question of how "representative" the encounter is of "normal D&D" (whatever that is), is irrelevant. If it is SOMETIMES useful, then I guess you are wrong and your argument is full of fail.


This assumes you always know what is immune to what. That's a questionable assumption.

Same is true with your blaster. It is even more questionable that you always know what energy resistances and immunities things have. Maybe we should just stop casting spells on the enemies.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-05, 02:17 PM
So it probably wasn't over EL+4, so appropriate to our party

Favorable Circumstances are generally considered a +2. So, if they had more than 2 HD, they were over that.

Of course, if they had even a single additional HD from any kind of advancement, they're immune to the SoD part of cloudkill. So...yeah. Your SoD should have done nothing* at all.


But if it is never useful, the question of how "representative" the encounter is of "normal D&D" (whatever that is), is irrelevant. If it is SOMETIMES useful, then I guess you are wrong and your argument is full of fail.

Well, a legal encounter, for starters. Not one specifically designed to kill you all.


Same is true with your blaster. It is even more questionable that you always know what energy resistances and immunities things have. Maybe we should just stop casting spells on the enemies.

Immunities? Resistances? These things matter not to an orbwizard.

*well, minor con damage. meh.

Gnaeus
2010-09-05, 02:30 PM
Favorable Circumstances are generally considered a +2. So, if they had more than 2 HD, they were over that.

Of course, if they had even a single additional HD from any kind of advancement, they're immune to the SoD part of cloudkill. So...yeah. Your SoD should have done nothing* at all.

I don't have their stat block and you are trying to catch me out in technicalities of a monster that I didn't build or read the stats for. The DM said they were 6 HD. (also, don't forget in your maths that we had a party of 6 level 11s, not 4.)

Anyway, even if the encounter was over ELed, how does that matter to the argument AT ALL? If I proposed an identical encounter where the monsters had one less class level, and only killed one party member instead of 3 before dying of cloudkill, would that make you happy? The argument "that spell isn't useful because it killed an encounter that was too strong for you" doesn't make much sense to me.



Well, a legal encounter, for starters. Not one specifically designed to kill you all.

Clearly your orbzard thrives in a land of ponies and flowers where fights aren't designed to kill you. We won the fight, so it wasn't too hard.

If I am not fighting encounters with a real risk of character death, I don't think I'm playing D&D. Maybe that is unusual, but I have heard enough people on the interwebs say similar things that I don't think I am unique in that.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-05, 04:14 PM
I don't have their stat block and you are trying to catch me out in technicalities of a monster that I didn't build or read the stats for. The DM said they were 6 HD. (also, don't forget in your maths that we had a party of 6 level 11s, not 4.)

Well, if they're over 6 HD, it's a non issue, since Cloudkill would no longer legally work. Likewise if your arguments are based on an illegal encounter. Since a plain vanilla dire ape is 5hd, I can assume that very little advancement is available. Template stacking is possible, but without actual details, I can't very well evaluate it, now can I?

Going off the information you told me, you have eight half dragon dire apes. These are individually 40 hp, AC 15, and utilize a claw/claw/bite routine, with a possible rend. One of these guys, at level 5(one is a CR 5 mob) would be quite nasty. A bunch of them, at level 11, are less so.

The bits about prebuffs, energy resistances, see invisibility, etc are pretty dodgy. Once you start tossing in all sorts of random stuff, at least part of which is house ruled, your experiences become less relevant to D&D at large.


Anyway, even if the encounter was over ELed, how does that matter to the argument AT ALL? If I proposed an identical encounter where the monsters had one less class level, and only killed one party member instead of 3 before dying of cloudkill, would that make you happy? The argument "that spell isn't useful because it killed an encounter that was too strong for you" doesn't make much sense to me.

If your example is not legal, it's not relevant for making a broad point about the game. Likewise, if intelligent creatures are acting suicidal, then it's not a good point for the efficiency of the tactic used to defeat them.

After all, a wall of fire is an AWESOME spell if people just keep marching into it. However, normally it's a spell that's situational, and that tends to result in subpar damage when compared against other spells in many instances. Multiple shenanigans are available to make it good, but out of the box, it has some significant downsides that are somewhat masked by playing against stupid opponents.


Clearly your orbzard thrives in a land of ponies and flowers where fights aren't designed to kill you. We won the fight, so it wasn't too hard.

You're missing the point. The relative value of spells is not really related to fights designed to kill you. Better spells are better spells. Encounter design is a rather different topic.

An orbwizard is inheretly better at dealing with fights designed to kill you, though, since he has less exploitable weaknesses. SR does not matter to him. Thanks to searing spell, resistances are ignored, and immunity simply slows the damage some. SR is irrelevant, and immunities to poison, death effects, etc are not of concern to him. These are staples of the standard mailman build.

Yup, you can get other characters that have *ridiculously high number of damage in specific situation y*, but they are generally not as practical in actual play. Heck, you could get lucky in specific situations with any save or die spell, if everyone fails there save and happens not to be immune. It's not about the potential, it's about the reliability.


If I am not fighting encounters with a real risk of character death, I don't think I'm playing D&D. Maybe that is unusual, but I have heard enough people on the interwebs say similar things that I don't think I am unique in that.

I'd love to see you point out where I said anything to the contrary. Im also very confused as to how you believe this makes SoDs good.

Lans
2010-09-05, 08:35 PM
It's...not that simple. It's got a great level/damage ratio (12d6 for a level 2) but on the other hand, it offers many defenses (3xTouch Attack, Ray Descriptor, most common Energy Resist, and SR/Magic Immunity) and doesn't benefit that much of the greatest reason to use Rays - Split Ray metamagic.Touch attacks aren't that big of deal, I don't know whats wrong with rays, the energy resist/immunity/SR is what I meant by resistance. With other enhancers split ray becomes a bit better expecially with thesis. Though another spell might be better.


It's one of the most efficient in vacuum (though Combust, likewise level 2, maxes out at 10d8 - 45 - which is slightly more than 12d6 - 42), but that's far from being the only consideration for "the best".

Never heard of it. Though I hear streamers is good.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-05, 09:11 PM
Touch attacks aren't that big of deal, I don't know whats wrong with rays, the energy resist/immunity/SR is what I meant by resistance. With other enhancers split ray becomes a bit better expecially with thesis. Though another spell might be better.

Never heard of it. Though I hear streamers is good.

Rays are awesome. You can split ray for less of a level adjustment than you can twin a spell for. And of course, you can also twin the spell afterward.

Ray wizards can be pretty fearsome. See also, enervation.

Malakar
2010-09-05, 10:18 PM
An orbwizard is inheretly better at dealing with fights designed to kill you, though, since he has less exploitable weaknesses. SR does not matter to him. Thanks to searing spell, resistances are ignored, and immunity simply slows the damage some. SR is irrelevant, and immunities to poison, death effects, etc are not of concern to him. These are staples of the standard mailman build.

Ray Deflection, your Orbizard always loses.

To say nothing of how you are once again giving yourself multiple high optimization feats on your theoretical damage class, but refuse to use good save or dies like Crushing Grip or Sleep Arrows.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-05, 10:25 PM
Ray Deflection, your Orbizard always loses.


Always? EVERYONE has ray deflection prebuffed at all times, a min/cl spell?

It can hurt a ray or orb wizard, yes, but I believe dispel would be considered the way to counter that. It's frankly not a bad idea as an opener vs any casters.

After all, pretty much every spell has a counter SOMEWHERE in D&D. It's just that when it's really only one spell(two if you count scintillating scales), must be cast before the fight, and can be solved by a dispel, it's not that critical.

Aran Banks
2010-09-05, 10:35 PM
It can hurt a ray or orb wizard, yes, but I believe dispel would be considered the way to counter that. It's frankly not a bad idea as an opener vs any casters.

Always? EVERYONE has dispel readied for a combat? A spell far weaker than any SoD or even any damaging spell?

Boci
2010-09-05, 10:38 PM
Always? EVERYONE has dispel readied for a combat? A spell far weaker than any SoD or even any damaging spell?

Yes. Either through magical items or class features. Its one of the most often useful spells in the game.

Koury
2010-09-05, 10:39 PM
Always? EVERYONE has dispel readied for a combat? A spell far weaker than any SoD or even any damaging spell?

Well, personally, yes, I do. If I have 8 Level 3 slots, usually 3-5 of them are Dispel. Less so when I get level 6 spells (cuz now I have Greater Dispel), but even then, I keep 2 or 3.

It really is that useful, in my experiance.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-05, 10:41 PM
Always? EVERYONE has dispel readied for a combat? A spell far weaker than any SoD or even any damaging spell?

If you consider dispel magic far weaker than any SoD or ANY damaging spell, Im not sure you understand exactly how useful it is. I can't recall the last time I played a caster high enough to know/prepare it without doing so. It's a good idea for ANY specific build.

Peregrine
2010-09-05, 11:24 PM
Err, no. Something that kills half your party, and nearly kills the rest is generally an overwelming encounter. Something you run from, not fight.

I'm confused. Are you arguing that these were lower-level enemies, which is why the SoD was effective, and that casters shouldn't expect to face such easy enemies and therefore shouldn't waste their time on SoDs?

Or are you arguing that this was a quite difficult encounter in spite of being against lower-level enemies, and therefore a SoD was very, very effective (unless avoided because the enemy figured out it was bad)?

Tyndmyr
2010-09-05, 11:29 PM
I'm confused. Are you arguing that these were lower-level enemies, which is why the SoD was effective, and that casters shouldn't expect to face such easy enemies and therefore shouldn't waste their time on SoDs?

Or are you arguing that this was a quite difficult encounter in spite of being against lower-level enemies, and therefore a SoD was very, very effective (unless avoided because the enemy figured out it was bad)?

Im arguing that due to unknown rules involved, which do not appear to be legal, it can't be taken as a reasonable example.

There is the additional argument that enemies which behave stupidly are easier to take down with pretty much any build. If you can be assured that enemies will literally run into your spells, some pretty meh evocation spells look a lot better.

Peregrine
2010-09-05, 11:41 PM
Okay, first, let's assume that the encounter was legal. Maybe in this hypothetical, we have to bump down the apes-o'-doom a bit... so they become Challenging rather than Very Difficult, yeah?

So they're still vulnerable to the cloudkill. Two of them, we've been told, were caught in the AoE and killed outright. Two, in your variation on the scenario, did not fly in and die, but were kept away from the party -- reduced to using breath weapons that we're told were less of a threat than their full attacks.

One spell that immediately wipes out a quarter of the enemy and goes on serving as battlefield control... not a waste of time in my book. (Six CR 7 enemies is an EL 12 rather than EL 13, or Easy rather than Challenging.)

Malakar
2010-09-05, 11:47 PM
Always? EVERYONE has ray deflection prebuffed at all times, a min/cl spell?

It can hurt a ray or orb wizard, yes, but I believe dispel would be considered the way to counter that. It's frankly not a bad idea as an opener vs any casters.

After all, pretty much every spell has a counter SOMEWHERE in D&D. It's just that when it's really only one spell(two if you count scintillating scales), must be cast before the fight, and can be solved by a dispel, it's not that critical.

Your specific example was how a (highly optimized) orbizard is better at dealing with enemies that are specifically prepared to defeat your most common tactics than a (bog standard, low end optimization) save or die Wizard.

If I'm building a character for the explicit purpose of beating an Orbizard, yes it will have Ray Deflection, always, and yes, it will have Ray Deflection at CL 20 against dispels at ECL 10, and so you will in fact "open with" dispel magic to find out that you can't do anything, and then lose, because your orbs are useless.

And yeah... Anyone who thinks dispel magic is really that good against enemy casters is in for a pretty rude surprise the first time they actually use it on an enemy caster of equal level (not hybrid monsters like Dragons, it works on them at lower levels of optimization than Arcane Thesis Orbs, but if you get up to Arcane Thesis Orbs, yeah, all my Dragons will have a few levels of Abjurant Champion to go with their Ray Deflection).

Boci
2010-09-05, 11:50 PM
(not hybrid monsters like Dragons, it works on them at lower levels of optimization than Arcane Thesis Orbs, but if you get up to Arcane Thesis Orbs, yeah, all my Dragons will have a few levels of Abjurant Champion to go with their Ray Deflection).

Dragons will have a lower caster level than a wizard, and obviously you do not use dispel magic on a wizard that is so powerful it won't be affected by it.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-05, 11:52 PM
Okay, first, let's assume that the encounter was legal. Maybe in this hypothetical, we have to bump down the apes-o'-doom a bit... so they become Challenging rather than Very Difficult, yeah?

So they're still vulnerable to the cloudkill. Two of them, we've been told, were caught in the AoE and killed outright. Two, in your variation on the scenario, did not fly in and die, but were kept away from the party -- reduced to using breath weapons that we're told were less of a threat than their full attacks.

One spell that immediately wipes out a quarter of the enemy and goes on serving as battlefield control... not a waste of time in my book. (Six CR 7 enemies is an EL 12 rather than EL 13, or Easy rather than Challenging.)

If we assume the Apes of Doom are merely half dragon dire apes, they are still legal targets for cloudkill, yes. Two were caught in the AoE, he said. He said one ape passed it's save, but I don't believe which one was specified. If it was one of the initial ones(and it could have been any, as they all have an equal chance to pass), suddenly you're expending an AoE and a significant spell resource to kill only a single target.

You'll note that the sorc, despite spending most of his time hiding out of the fight due to the illegal see invisibility on the mobs, managed to down three with blasting. The other fell to battlefield control(slumber, which is good if there's no risk of the mob being awakened by more).

Cone of cold was used as a comparison because it's blasty, it's core, it's an Aoe, and it's the same level of spell. It's roughly as equal as possible. We already know the sorc was blasting, and was decently effective at it. A CoC without any optimization has average damage of about the flying monkey hp. It also covers a huge area. So, unless you get unlucky with the dice, you can blow away a couple in an action. If you get unlucky, they make their saves, etc, at least you do a good chunk of damage, which the sorc can finish off. The same is not true of cloudkill.


stuff

Yes, as the DM, you can make an unwinnable fight for a specific character if you really, really want to. Congrats.

Unless this character is pun-pun, I'm unimpressed, and don't think this is a revelation to anyone.

jiriku
2010-09-06, 12:08 AM
To pile on the examples of SoD relevance from the DM perspective, I recently ran a scry-n-die encounter against my PCs in which they were attacked by a team of two high-level druids (one a lich), some mummies, and a team of mid-level wandificers. The players were resoundingly walloped in the initial attack, and as they were breaking and running in all directions, my new player, a dread necromancer, squeezed off a destruction spell at the human druid (the leader of the group) and dusted him on the bottom of round one. What had been a PC rout turned into a disorganized retreat for the bad guys, as the fallen BBEG was the linchpin of their attack, and his death rallied the other players to get back into the fight.

Pursuing the bad guys back to their citadel, the players faced the same group again (BBEG having been rezzed), hustling to hit them on the same day before they could prep new spells. The dread necromancer dusted the BBEG AGAIN with another destruction, AGAIN on round 1. The other players had been running in fear of this pack of villains for months, and were in awe of him and his power.

SoD saved the day for the party. Twice in one day. Against an enemy with high Fort saves and buffs, even.

Aran Banks
2010-09-06, 12:09 AM
OKAY WE GET IT TYN, YOU THINK YOU'RE REALLY COOL AND CAN MAKE AWESOME CHARS WITHOUT SODS.

YOU HAVE NOT PROVED HOW SODS ARE USELESS.

Therefore, I propse a Same-Game Test.

Barring splatbooks, make any non-SoD caster that can make it through the SGT. Either I or Malakar can do the honors for the [s]actually useful[/b] SoD-based caster. If you want, each of us can pick up to X number of things from splatbooks (you pick three, and Malakar/I pick(s) three)

And we'll see how they match up. If you say no, you make it obvious that you don't know how game balance works (or you know you're wrong). If you say yes, then prepare to lose, be defeated, and also get disproved.

Koury
2010-09-06, 12:10 AM
SoD saved the day for the party. Twice in one day. Against an enemy with high Fort saves and buffs, even.

Any chance you remember what the villian needed to roll to fail? At least, ballpark?

jiriku
2010-09-06, 12:18 AM
Any chance you remember what the villian needed to roll to fail? At least, ballpark?

In the initial scry-n-die he would have failed on a roll of 6 or less (30%).

In the follow-up encounter, he was mostly dry on buff spells because they were doing the scry-n-die on him, and thus had a lower Fort save. He would have failed then on a roll of 11 or less (55%).

Tyndmyr
2010-09-06, 12:20 AM
OKAY WE GET IT TYN, YOU THINK YOU'RE REALLY COOL AND CAN MAKE AWESOME CHARS WITHOUT SODS.

YOU HAVE NOT PROVED HOW SODS ARE USELESS.

Therefore, I propse a Same-Game Test.

Barring splatbooks, make any non-SoD caster that can make it through the SGT. Either I or Malakar can do the honors for the [s]actually useful[/b] SoD-based caster. If you want, each of us can pick up to X number of things from splatbooks (you pick three, and Malakar/I pick(s) three)

And we'll see how they match up. If you say no, you make it obvious that you don't know how game balance works (or you know you're wrong). If you say yes, then prepare to lose, be defeated, and also get disproved.

I enjoy test runs. What level or levels do you wish to test at? I presume the test will be a neutral one run by a third party with a range of level appropriate encounters.

This should be a relatively easy build. It's not as if I include SoDs in my usual builds, so it should be pretty straightforward. If Im feeling froggy, I'll use a non-tier 1 for giggles.

Boci
2010-09-06, 12:21 AM
In the initial scry-n-die he would have failed on a roll of 6 or less (30%).

In the follow-up encounter, he was mostly dry on buff spells because they were doing the scry-n-die on him, and thus had a lower Fort save. He would have failed then on a roll of 11 or less (55%).

So 16.5% chance of failing both saves.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-06, 12:22 AM
So 16.5% chance of failing both saves.

I'd consider that fairly fortunate for the players.

Luck does happen, though. People have good streaks and bad. It'll be balanced by that run where everyone saves vs him.

Aran Banks
2010-09-06, 12:36 AM
A huge Animated iron statue.
A Basilisk.
A Large Fire Elemental.
A Manticore on the wing.
A Mummy.
A Phase Spider.
A Troll.
A chasm.
A moat filled with acid.
A locked door behind a number of pit traps.
A couple of Centaur Archers in the woods.
A Howler/Allip tag team.
A pit filled with medium monstrous scorpions.
A Grimlock assault team.
A Cleric of Hextor (with his zombies).


Wizard, level 5, Gray Elf. Knock yourself out.

Gnaeus
2010-09-06, 11:00 AM
OKAY WE GET IT TYN, YOU THINK YOU'RE REALLY COOL AND CAN MAKE AWESOME CHARS WITHOUT SODS.

YOU HAVE NOT PROVED HOW SODS ARE USELESS.

Therefore, I propse a Same-Game Test.

Barring splatbooks, make any non-SoD caster that can make it through the SGT. Either I or Malakar can do the honors for the [s]actually useful[/b] SoD-based caster. If you want, each of us can pick up to X number of things from splatbooks (you pick three, and Malakar/I pick(s) three)

And we'll see how they match up. If you say no, you make it obvious that you don't know how game balance works (or you know you're wrong). If you say yes, then prepare to lose, be defeated, and also get disproved.

Bear in mind that Tyndmyr does not actually have to lose to be proven wrong. All you have to show is that your SoD's are useful. So a decent showing by the SoD wizard, even if not a win in the contest, still disproves Tyndmyrs point.

And as Tyndmyr has already been proven to be incorrect at least 3 times in this thread so far, the entire thing is a little bit moot.


If we assume the Apes of Doom are merely half dragon dire apes, they are still legal targets for cloudkill, yes. Two were caught in the AoE, he said. He said one ape passed it's save, but I don't believe which one was specified. If it was one of the initial ones(and it could have been any, as they all have an equal chance to pass), suddenly you're expending an AoE and a significant spell resource to kill only a single target.

You'll note that the sorc, despite spending most of his time hiding out of the fight due to the illegal see invisibility on the mobs, managed to down three with blasting. The other fell to battlefield control(slumber, which is good if there's no risk of the mob being awakened by more).

They could still have been advanced by a class level and been 1 HD. You can't deny the utility of a spell because stupid monsters sometimes act stupid. If the Int 4 monsters always acted intelligently, THAT would be cheating. You are confused, again.

Also Slumber is a SoD, to people who understand what that means. Saving throw wizard 5, Sorcerer 3.


The same is not true of cloudkill.


Cloudkill does con damage even to things that make their saves, thereby making them better targets for EITHER further save effects or blasty damage.



The bits about prebuffs, energy resistances, see invisibility, etc are pretty dodgy. Once you start tossing in all sorts of random stuff, at least part of which is house ruled, your experiences become less relevant to D&D at large.

What is wrong with prebuffs? Players prebuff all the time, monsters can too. The DMG encourages monsters to use their items, IIRC.

And the D&D at large thing is still a bogus argument Tyndmyr. If there is ever a case in which a SoD beats a blasty spell, your argument that SoD's are useless and should never be prepared is disproven. I'm not arguing that cone of cold or other blasty spell X is useless and should never be prepared. The cloudkill caster also had a cone of cold, which it used to win a different encounter. But in that fight, and in the others mentioned previously, cloudkill was better.



After all, a wall of fire is an AWESOME spell if people just keep marching into it. However, normally it's a spell that's situational, and that tends to result in subpar damage when compared against other spells in many instances. Multiple shenanigans are available to make it good, but out of the box, it has some significant downsides that are somewhat masked by playing against stupid opponents.

Nobody wants to walk into a wall of fire. No animal will walk into a fire. A really stupid thing may walk into a mist. Otherwise, obscuring mist would be a 100% defense available at level 1, because no one would ever enter it. That isn't suicidal, it is playing monsters with their intelligence and knowledge. Your way is metagaming and cheating, playing all monsters like they know what non obvious spell effects do.

Amphetryon
2010-09-06, 11:13 AM
Cloudkill does fort damage even to things that make their saves, thereby making them better targets for EITHER further save effects or blasty damage.

FORT damage is hard to do. CON damage might be easier to accomplish. :smallwink:

Doing CON damage takes away HP, as well, making it at least as useful as a blasty spell with poor damage rolls, with generally better secondary benefits. Obviously those benefits are often contingent upon preparing to exploit them, but blasty spells are often contingent upon being prepared to overcome resistances to the energy type you're using. I'm not convinced that the latter is easier than the former.

Gnaeus
2010-09-06, 11:20 AM
FORT damage is hard to do. CON damage might be easier to accomplish. :smallwink:

Doing CON damage takes away HP, as well, making it at least as useful as a blasty spell with poor damage rolls, with generally better secondary benefits. Obviously those benefits are often contingent upon preparing to exploit them, but blasty spells are often contingent upon being prepared to overcome resistances to the energy type you're using. I'm not convinced that the latter is easier than the former.

Thanks. Corrected.

One might be easier than the other. That is irrelevant. Both are sometimes useful. Tynd has to prove never useful to make his point. He hasn't even come close.

Aran Banks
2010-09-06, 10:10 PM
Gnaeus, I didn't read the whole thread.

Just as a favor, could you show me one time where Tyn was disproved? I'm wondering what kind of logic I should use to knock these arguments down.

Emmerask
2010-09-07, 12:11 AM
To pile on the examples of SoD relevance from the DM perspective, I recently ran a scry-n-die encounter against my PCs in which they were attacked by a team of two high-level druids (one a lich), some mummies, and a team of mid-level wandificers. The players were resoundingly walloped in the initial attack, and as they were breaking and running in all directions, my new player, a dread necromancer, squeezed off a destruction spell at the human druid (the leader of the group) and dusted him on the bottom of round one. What had been a PC rout turned into a disorganized retreat for the bad guys, as the fallen BBEG was the linchpin of their attack, and his death rallied the other players to get back into the fight.

Pursuing the bad guys back to their citadel, the players faced the same group again (BBEG having been rezzed), hustling to hit them on the same day before they could prep new spells. The dread necromancer dusted the BBEG AGAIN with another destruction, AGAIN on round 1. The other players had been running in fear of this pack of villains for months, and were in awe of him and his power.

SoD saved the day for the party. Twice in one day. Against an enemy with high Fort saves and buffs, even.


A team of BBEG druids who try scry and die and donīt buff up deathward is a serious fail :smallwink:
A competent team would have it up and would have laughed at the dread necro...

And even if they did not have it the first time, the second time (and Iīm sorry about that), but that is just lazy on the dmīs part...

/edit
* or any other protection against destruction for the second fight

Gnaeus
2010-09-07, 06:12 AM
Gnaeus, I didn't read the whole thread.

Just as a favor, could you show me one time where Tyn was disproved? I'm wondering what kind of logic I should use to knock these arguments down.

Well it started on page 1 with:

Polymorph any Object, Glass Strike, etc.

Marut Inevitable, Fort +7, auto win.
Mummy Lord, Fort +13, auto win.

I gave 3 examples in which Cloudkills were useful to my party THIS WEEKEND, any one of which disproves his argument.

I don't have time to go back through the thread and pull out everyone elses examples. Remember, if ANY SoD is EVER useful to be prepared, Tyndmyr is disproven. We don't have to show that SoD's are usually, or even often better than blasting. He has to show that they are NEVER better than blasting.

Koury
2010-09-07, 06:40 AM
Remember, if ANY SoD is EVER useful to be prepared, Tyndmyr is disproven. We don't have to show that SoD's are usually, or even often better than blasting. He has to show that they are NEVER better than blasting.

I don't nessicarily believe that. Toughness is a waste of time as a feat. I believe it is worthless.

Is my opinion disproven because there are conceivable situations (or, indeed, anecdotal evidence) in which Toughness prevented a TPK? I don't really believe so.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-07, 07:13 AM
They could still have been advanced by a class level and been 1 HD. You can't deny the utility of a spell because stupid monsters sometimes act stupid. If the Int 4 monsters always acted intelligently, THAT would be cheating. You are confused, again.

"Oh dear, this poison cloud hurts. I made my save, yet still I lose con. I think I'll stay here anyway".

Yeah, running from the thing that hurts you doesn't require intelligence. It merely requires not being mindless.


Also Slumber is a SoD, to people who understand what that means. Saving throw wizard 5, Sorcerer 3.

Nope, it's a SoL. As already covered, not every SoL is a SoD. "save or die" means that you die if you fail the save. It's not "save or sleep and die if you get coup de graced before someone wakes you up".


Cloudkill does con damage even to things that make their saves, thereby making them better targets for EITHER further save effects or blasty damage.

Congrats on editing out the part of my post where I said that.


What is wrong with prebuffs? Players prebuff all the time, monsters can too. The DMG encourages monsters to use their items, IIRC.

Prebuffs that they could not possibly cast themselves. At least one of which they could not legally have at all.

Surely you realize that the blasty player almost dying to being surprised by a buff they could not legally possess is a significant factor, right?


And the D&D at large thing is still a bogus argument Tyndmyr. If there is ever a case in which a SoD beats a blasty spell, your argument that SoD's are useless and should never be prepared is disproven. I'm not arguing that cone of cold or other blasty spell X is useless and should never be prepared. The cloudkill caster also had a cone of cold, which it used to win a different encounter. But in that fight, and in the others mentioned previously, cloudkill was better.

Incorrect. There are all sorts of spells that are marginally superior in one corner case. They don't usually get prepared. Spells that are superior in a great many cases are vastly more likely to be prepared, and rightfully so.

Incidentally, this is why I assume a wizard will have Dispel Magic(or it's greater cousin) prepared. It's so widely useful that it's a bit foolish not to, once it's available. Best for absolutely every situation? No. But it's best for enough of them that you should take it.

It's not that an SoD never does anything. People do roll 1s. It's that you could take something more reliable instead.


Nobody wants to walk into a wall of fire. No animal will walk into a fire. A really stupid thing may walk into a mist. Otherwise, obscuring mist would be a 100% defense available at level 1, because no one would ever enter it. That isn't suicidal, it is playing monsters with their intelligence and knowledge. Your way is metagaming and cheating, playing all monsters like they know what non obvious spell effects do.

I didn't say that none of them would enter it. You are again, misrepresenting what I said. I said that those who passed their saves would know it was dangerous, and wish to leave. In addition, those outside may choose not to enter the suddenly appearing mist from which none of their fellows leave after entering. An int 4 thing isn't "really stupid". 3+ is humanlike. It's not brilliant, but it's certainly enough to realize that something causing it pain is something to be avoided. Even animals(int 1-2) can manage that, in real life.

true_shinken
2010-09-07, 10:38 AM
I think I should point out most of this argument is pretty pointless, as you are not even discussing the same thing.

Tyndmyr limits his evaluation to SoD spells in the strictest sense there is - Sleep does not count. He said that a number of times. He even acknowledged SoL spells are quite good.

If you disagree with his definition of SoD, fine. But what he said, within the confines of his definition, is quite right. It's as simple as that.

And Gnaeus, frankly - claiming that anecdotal evidence 'proves' anything is beneath you.

Jayabalard
2010-09-07, 01:19 PM
And Gnaeus, frankly - claiming that anecdotal evidence 'proves' anything is beneath you.Not at all.

If someone claims "Event (A) never occurs" then a single counter example is sufficient to disprove them. Likewise, if someone makes the claim that "Event (A) always happens" the single counter example is again sufficient. These are among the very situations that anecdotal evidence is a valid argument method.

Gnaeus is saying that Tyndmyr's claim is that "SoD are never useful" ... and if that is indeed the case*, then Gnaeus can indeed disprove that statement by offering a single piece of anecdotal evidence to the contrary.

* and I'm not saying this is the case, or that it's not the case; I'll leave that up to Tyndmyr to clarify

Malakar
2010-09-07, 05:56 PM
If you disagree with his definition of SoD, fine. But what he said, within the confines of his definition, is quite right. It's as simple as that..

If I define Spells as any "standard actions" that a PC takes, I'm right within my definition to declare that any character that can't cast spells is going to not contribute equally to a party of their own level.

The question is, "Is my definition useful and descriptive of the kind of thing people think about when I use the word?"

Boci
2010-09-07, 06:01 PM
If I define Spells as any "standard actions" that a PC takes, I'm right within my definition to declare that any character that can't cast spells is going to not contribute equally to a party of their own level.

The question is, "Is my definition useful and descriptive of the kind of thing people think about when I use the word?"

I'd say yes. From what I recall most people in dicussing spells accept that SoD and SoL are two different types of spells, or SoD being subgroup of SoL.

Aran Banks
2010-09-07, 08:03 PM
Oh, Tyn changed the argument?

At the beginning, "SoD" was the term for all SoL, SoS, and SoD spells.

If the argument has changed, that is Tyn's way of slowly backing down.

true_shinken
2010-09-07, 08:08 PM
Oh, Tyn changed the argument?

At the beginning, "SoD" was the term for all SoL, SoS, and SoD spells.

If the argument has changed, that is Tyn's way of slowly backing down.

You are incorrect. You really should read the thread again. Right from the starts, he has been defining SoD in the most strict sense possible.

This post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9263544&postcount=34) from page 2 sums it up quite throughly.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-07, 08:08 PM
Oh, Tyn changed the argument?

At the beginning, "SoD" was the term for all SoL, SoS, and SoD spells.

If the argument has changed, that is Tyn's way of slowly backing down.

No, I'm pretty sure I didn't. Read back through the thread, and read what I said. You'll find I pretty consistently do NOT include SoL and SoS as SoDs, and have argued that throughout.

Edit: Swordsaged. =)

Aran Banks
2010-09-07, 08:22 PM
No, I'm pretty sure I didn't. Read back through the thread, and read what I said. You'll find I pretty consistently do NOT include SoL and SoS as SoDs, and have argued that throughout.

Edit: Swordsaged. =)

Hmm... it seems very much to me that you were vague throughout page one. The only actual mention I can see of your term "SoD" was around finger of death in the OP. Around page 2, I begin to see the distinction.

It still seems to me like you started general and became more specific as the thread went on, which is a common tactic used to help win arguments. If this really wasn't the case, fine, but my prior bias (where everybody puts SoD, SoL, and SoS together) along with some incredibly open-to-interpretation arguments make it seem a lot like you're arguing anything in the SoL chain.

Jack_Simth
2010-09-07, 09:04 PM
Let's see....

Conditions under which a Save-Or-Die spell is useful:

1) The target is subject to it (no Death Ward, no racial immunities, et cetera).
2) The target is not overly likely to save against it (low fort save vs. the save DC, generally)
3) The target has enough other defenses that other effects are not vastly more useful.

What's a situation where this might come up?

A Wizard-11, surrounded by four Rogues-7's, casting Circle of Death, in a Core game?

Tyndmyr
2010-09-07, 09:19 PM
Hmm... it seems very much to me that you were vague throughout page one. The only actual mention I can see of your term "SoD" was around finger of death in the OP. Around page 2, I begin to see the distinction.

It still seems to me like you started general and became more specific as the thread went on, which is a common tactic used to help win arguments. If this really wasn't the case, fine, but my prior bias (where everybody puts SoD, SoL, and SoS together) along with some incredibly open-to-interpretation arguments make it seem a lot like you're arguing anything in the SoL chain.

Nah, there are some remarkably good SoLs.

Even in the OP, one of the things I busted on SoDs for is that they typically target fort saves. I wouldn't extend that trend to all SoLs, as there are a *lot* of spells that target will. Some that hit other things. Same goes for immunity. Immunity to death effects is relatively common, but the same is not true for all SoLs.

I didn't define SoD narrowly to begin with because it never occurred to me that people would use SoD to describe a spell that doesn't directly cause death.


Edit: Oh, and Jack, while I'd hazard a guess that you could indeed kill those rogues with SoDs, I'd argue that level 7 rogues should not pose a great threat to a level 11 wizard to begin with, provided the wizard is played competently. While sure, it's an appropriate CR fight, it's a fairly easy fight for the CR. Also, consider that first the wizard must roll for affected HD, with a 50/50 chance to not hit 28. If he doesn't, that's one rogue who doesn't even have to save. The others still have a chance. Plus, you're using a reagent costing 500g. On such a trivial encounter, I would suggest sniping them with lower level spells, wasting fewer resources. Guaranteeing your own safety against four known low level rogues within AOE range of each other should be trivial.

It's also a very situational spell. Circle of Death has the HD cap on targets, which makes it less awesome. At the level you get it, it can only affect things a couple levels lower than you, and it doesn't scale with you at all. It quickly gets fairly worthless.

jiriku
2010-09-07, 09:42 PM
I'd consider that fairly fortunate for the players.

Luck does happen, though. People have good streaks and bad. It'll be balanced by that run where everyone saves vs him.

Correct, luck does happen. But a lucky roll of a 7th-level blasting spell would not have killed any of the bad guys, let alone the boss (barring Cindy-level optimization, and my players are not that good). SoD spells possess the unique ability to "swing" a fight like that. That "swingyness" is an ability that direct-damage spells famously lack -- monsters fight as well with 1 hp remaining as with 100 hp. That's why many popular blasting spells are dual-threat spells that combine blasting with a debuff -- because sometimes there's considerable utility in stopping the big bad in his tracks. SoD spells possess that utility. Simple blasting spells do not.

Even a 30% chance to drop the bad guy right now is sometimes uniquely valuable. Sometimes the bad guy is going to do something on his turn that's better than just "attack and deal damage". Sometimes he's going to sacrifice the princess, or cut the rope bridge, or open the dark portal, or teleport to safety, and you have to stop him before it's too late! In those situations, a 1-in-3 chance of burning him down right now is more useful than a 100% chance of blasting him to death in 2 or 3 rounds, after he's already done his villainous deed.


A team of BBEG druids who try scry and die and donīt buff up deathward is a serious fail :smallwink:
A competent team would have it up and would have laughed at the dread necro...

And even if they did not have it the first time, the second time (and Iīm sorry about that), but that is just lazy on the dmīs part...

/edit
* or any other protection against destruction for the second fight


He did have death ward. Another PC had dispelled it earlier in the round. You remember how Tyndmyr described dispel magic as an extremely useful spell? He's right about that. :smallbiggrin:

Later in the day, he simply didn't have a second casting available, and being dead for most of the day left him with little time to improvise. You're also assuming that the villain had a way in-game to know the dread necro's capabilities beforehand. He did not -- the character had only recently joined the group, had a continuous mind blank effect on himself, and took great pains to keep a low profile. Trust me, I'm far from a lazy DM -- I make them sweat! The players got cocky after taking the boss down, and their recklessness earned them four PC deaths during that final combat. :smallamused:

And FYI, Emmerask? Even if I had been a lazy DM, many DMs are in fact lazy (or playing from a module, or new to the rules, or poor optimizers, or unfamiliar with high-level play, or improvising because their players jumped the plot rails, or working lots of overtime, or busy with family events, or distracted by drama from their GF/BF, or unprepared because they were ill), so real players in real games with real DMs will, from time to time, encounter enemies who don't have the perfect defenses prepared.

candycorn
2010-09-07, 10:09 PM
Frankly, the difference between SoD and SoL is... hair splitting.

Hold Person, for example... Charm Monster... Heck, Color Spray.

These are all spells which can, and do, put you at the mercy of your foes. The only difference, most of the time, is that the caster has the additional option of not killing you.

In either case? You're pretty well screwed.

Malakar
2010-09-07, 10:37 PM
Even in the OP, one of the things I busted on SoDs for is that they typically target fort saves. I wouldn't extend that trend to all SoLs, as there are a *lot* of spells that target will. Some that hit other things. Same goes for immunity. Immunity to death effects is relatively common, but the same is not true for all SoLs.

Number of times you mentioned Fort saves in OP:


Brass Dragon, Mature +18 fort, 253 hp
Bronze Dragon, Adult +17 fort, 241 hp
Inevitable, Marut -Immune to SoDs, orb clearly wins.
Mummy Lord -Immune to SoDs, orb clearly wins.
Red Dragon, Adult +18 fort, 253 hp
Silver Dragon, Adult +18 fort, 253 hp
White Dragon, Old +19 fort, 276

...

Thus, we can calculate on +18 fort,

...

your typical targets are up to a +23 fort save

Number of times in which you even made the assertion that save or dies usually target fort: 0.

Number of times you even use the word Immunity in your OP (Aside from declaring monster immune to all save or dies based on immunity to a single one. Hint Hint: all none Undead are Immune to Undeath to Death, does that make them immune to save or dies): 0.

Clearly you did not say the things you think you did.

Instead, you picked one spell that happened to have a fort save, and at no point either:

a) Stated that save or dies target fort.
b) Recognized that any other saving throws even exist.

Reverent-One
2010-09-07, 10:43 PM
Number of times you mentioned Fort saves in OP:



Number of times in which you even made the assertion that save or dies usually target fort: 0.

Number of times you even use the word Immunity in your OP (Aside from declaring monster immune to all save or dies based on immunity to a single one. Hint Hint: all none Undead are Immune to Undeath to Death, does that make them immune to save or dies): 0.

Clearly you did not say the things you think you did.

Instead, you picked one spell that happened to have a fort save, and at no point either:

a) Stated that save or dies target fort.
b) Recognized that any other saving throws even exist.


Edit: Targetting weaknesses is a valid strategy, but the fact remains, SoDs are overwhelmingly fort saves, and fort saves are generally high. Those are ALL the monster manual CR15 encounters. Yes, your DM might build an NPC via class levels. Odds are pretty solid that he is a class with good fort saves too. Roughly even, at any rate. There is also a chance that he'll be flat out immune to death via death ward from casting, racial immunity, or equipment.

Yes, it wasn't actually in the OP, but it was in his second post in a 7 page thread, simple mis-rememberings happen.

jiriku
2010-09-07, 10:46 PM
Frankly, the difference between SoD and SoL is... hair splitting.

Hold Person, for example... Charm Monster... Heck, Color Spray.

These are all spells which can, and do, put you at the mercy of your foes. The only difference, most of the time, is that the caster has the additional option of not killing you.

In either case? You're pretty well screwed.

Screwed, yes. But I do see the distinction that Tyndmyr is making.

With a SoL effect, the party typically has to devote another action in combat to put you down for good. Often, that action is a coup-de-grace, which is time-consuming and can be risky. If the party does not do this, but opts to wait until the battle is "over" before finishing you, there is the possibility that you may recover from the SoL (you may make a subsequent save vs. the hold person, or a foolish move by a PC may entitle you to another save vs. the charm, or an allied caster may cast dispel magic on you and remove the SoL effect).

An SoD, on the other hand, puts you down now, puts you down hard, and puts you down for good.

SoD spells typically pay for this certainty by affecting fewer targets, having a shorter range, or having less effect on a successful save, when compared to equivalent-level SoL spells.

Emmerask
2010-09-08, 01:04 AM
He did have death ward. Another PC had dispelled it earlier in the round. You remember how Tyndmyr described dispel magic as an extremely useful spell? He's right about that. :smallbiggrin:


Ah, okay because your explanation made it seem as if the other players all ran in fear while the dread necro single handedly saved the day with a single sod:smallwink:



any DMs are in fact lazy (or playing from a module, or new to the rules, or poor optimizers, or unfamiliar with high-level play, or improvising because their players jumped the plot rails, or working lots of overtime, or busy with family events, or distracted by drama from their GF/BF, or unprepared because they were ill), so real players in real games with real DMs will, from time to time, encounter enemies who don't have the perfect defenses prepared.

That is a fair enough point
but my oppinion remains that sods are very situational, have a lot of counters and in more cases then not exclude your party members while other spells have similar effects but include them and make them feel important too (sol spells which let the fighter guy swing his sword rolling d20 == fun) which is why I for the most part chose to use those options :smallwink:

Gnaeus
2010-09-08, 05:24 AM
Not at all.

If someone claims "Event (A) never occurs" then a single counter example is sufficient to disprove them. Likewise, if someone makes the claim that "Event (A) always happens" the single counter example is again sufficient. These are among the very situations that anecdotal evidence is a valid argument method.

Gnaeus is saying that Tyndmyr's claim is that "SoD are never useful" ... and if that is indeed the case*, then Gnaeus can indeed disprove that statement by offering a single piece of anecdotal evidence to the contrary.

* and I'm not saying this is the case, or that it's not the case; I'll leave that up to Tyndmyr to clarify

I am not saying what Tyndmyr's claim is. Check OP.



Therefore, you should never prepare SoDs.

If you don't like anecdotes, (although Jay is completely correct in why they are useful to disproving Tynd's claim in this case) here are are some generic circumstances in which one might want to prepare an SoD (using Tyndmyr's pointlessly narrow definition). Any one of which, if not completely disproven, invalidates Tyndmyr's argument.

1. A specialist or focused specialist necromancer. He has his save DCs for Necromancy heavily buffed, so that his fear and effect spells work. On day x, he is fighting something alive but mind immune (like plants) or fear immune. He has lots of spell slots for necromancy spells, and wants to prepare some save or lose spells...

2. A generalist wizard or archivist has found a scroll or spellbook containing a SoD spell of their highest castable level. On day x, one or more of their regular prepared spells will not be useful (like, maybe they have a blasting spell, of a type that they know their enemies will be immune to, and they are not a blasting spec wizard with lots of blast metamagics).

3. Big Bad has been killed 3 times. He always has minions set up in clever ways to steal his body, and he comes back raised. He likes to use things like spell immunity to remain free of disintegrate. You want him to STAY DEAD.

4. You are fighting a burrowing creature in a maze of warrens. You want a heavier than air spell that will sink into the ground and kill all of them that you find.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-08, 07:45 AM
1. A specialist or focused specialist necromancer. He has his save DCs for Necromancy heavily buffed, so that his fear and effect spells work. On day x, he is fighting something alive but mind immune (like plants) or fear immune. He has lots of spell slots for necromancy spells, and wants to prepare some save or lose spells...

Is it also immune to energy drain? Because if not, energy drain is a very effective necromancy option. Spells like enervation are pretty painful to the target, and even if they don't kill it, they have the advantage of making it less effective. The number of things immune to fear, mind affecting and energy drain but NOT death effects has to be rather small.


2. A generalist wizard or archivist has found a scroll or spellbook containing a SoD spell of their highest castable level. On day x, one or more of their regular prepared spells will not be useful (like, maybe they have a blasting spell, of a type that they know their enemies will be immune to, and they are not a blasting spec wizard with lots of blast metamagics).

Scrolls and spellbooks can be sold. In particular, scrolls can be sold for more money than it takes to bribe a wizzie to copy from their spellbook. Therefore, it's the cost effective answer. Given that all wizards will know at least two spells of their highest level at all times, and usually significantly more, I don't see lack of options being a realistic reason for using sub-standard spells. The more limited your spell selection is, the more critical it is to select spells that work on essentially everything.


3. Big Bad has been killed 3 times. He always has minions set up in clever ways to steal his body, and he comes back raised. He likes to use things like spell immunity to remain free of disintegrate. You want him to STAY DEAD.

First off, SoDs are not a guarantee that someone cannot be rezzed. Oh, there are clever tricks, like the flesh to stone, stone to mud, mud to water, yadda yadda, but that's a nice combination of effects, not something inherent in a SoD. And lesser tactics leave open the tactic of true rez.

Spell immunity is annoying, but it can target any spells, including SoDs. It can't do anything against SR:No spells, though, like the aforementioned orbs. So, killing the guy isn't really the hard part here. The hard part is ensuring the raise can't happen. And frankly, that's not that hard.

A more entertaining solution is to level drain him to death, which results in him coming back as undead after 24 hours. Effective way of preventing your generic raise deads, and for added hilarity, makes a great surprise for the mooks stealing the body. Plus, of course, level drain and debuffing can be amusing for making a powerful boss no longer powerful. Death can be fixed rapidly. Being level drained to level 1 is vastly harder.


4. You are fighting a burrowing creature in a maze of warrens. You want a heavier than air spell that will sink into the ground and kill all of them that you find.

This is pretty limited to cloudkill, vs tucker's kobolds. This was actually addressed in the thread devoted to them, by the answer that all burrowing creatures, if they want to not drown in every heavy rain, must have drainage(some of which is probably into large holding tanks for drinking needs) Therefore, your cloudkill will be of limited effectiveness at best.

Gnaeus
2010-09-08, 07:41 PM
Is it also immune to energy drain? Because if not, energy drain is a very effective necromancy option. Spells like enervation are pretty painful to the target, and even if they don't kill it, they have the advantage of making it less effective. The number of things immune to fear, mind affecting and energy drain but NOT death effects has to be rather small.

He wanted save or loses, particularly ones that take advantage of his already pumped save DC. Enervation, unless you are a metamagic specialist, with things like split ray and maximize, is a useful debuff, but not a killer. He will of course, probably prepare Enervation ALSO, but not with all of his Level 4+ necro spell slots. With the right necro feats, any spell that forces a saving throw makes the target less effective. All plants and vermin are immune to mind affecting but not death effects.

Unless you can come up with something a lot better, that was a reason to prepare a SoD. Your argument is disproven.




Scrolls and spellbooks can be sold. In particular, scrolls can be sold for more money than it takes to bribe a wizzie to copy from their spellbook. Therefore, it's the cost effective answer. Given that all wizards will know at least two spells of their highest level at all times, and usually significantly more, I don't see lack of options being a realistic reason for using sub-standard spells. The more limited your spell selection is, the more critical it is to select spells that work on essentially everything.

He hasn't been back to town. He knows 2 spells of his highest level, + the free SoD. One of his free spells isn't useful on that day (lack of spell component, fighting an enemy that is immune to it, or for whatever reason situationally not useful.)

Unless you can come up with something a lot better, that was a reason to prepare a SoD. Your argument is disproven.




First off, SoDs are not a guarantee that someone cannot be rezzed. Oh, there are clever tricks, like the flesh to stone, stone to mud, mud to water, yadda yadda, but that's a nice combination of effects, not something inherent in a SoD. And lesser tactics leave open the tactic of true rez.

He doesn't have access to rez. He has access to Raise Dead & or Revivify. Spells with death descriptor don't allow those spells.

Unless you can come up with something a lot better, that was a reason to prepare a SoD. Your argument is disproven.



This is pretty limited to cloudkill, vs tucker's kobolds. This was actually addressed in the thread devoted to them, by the answer that all burrowing creatures, if they want to not drown in every heavy rain, must have drainage(some of which is probably into large holding tanks for drinking needs) Therefore, your cloudkill will be of limited effectiveness at best.

Drainage doesn't mean that a lot of them won't be killed by the fog, especially if, unlike tuckers kobolds, the enemies don't know what a cloudkill is. You can walk around behind it while it kills everything 6 HD and below in front of you.

Unless you can come up with something a lot better, that was a reason to prepare a SoD. Your argument is disproven.

So you see, Tyndmyr, even with your pointlessly, meaninglessly narrow definition of what is a SoD, there are many possible reasons to prepare them. Maybe they are only the most useful spells 1% of the time, but then, SoD's (going by the pointlessly narrow definition) are only about 1 % of the spells, so that makes sense. Your argument has more holes in it than an archery target. Frankly, it is embarrassing.

Lamech
2010-09-08, 09:28 PM
He wanted save or loses, particularly ones that take advantage of his already pumped save DC. Enervation, unless you are a metamagic specialist, with things like split ray and maximize, is a useful debuff, but not a killer. He will of course, probably prepare Enervation ALSO, but not with all of his Level 4+ necro spell slots. With the right necro feats, any spell that forces a saving throw makes the target less effective. All plants and vermin are immune to mind affecting but not death effects. So... if a the necro is specced for SoDing people they will be better at... SoDing people? True, but I note, you can build a character is such a way as to make a normally sub-par tactic his more effective for him than other tactics.

But this is rather trivial. One can build a sorc with only SoD. It doesn't mean that SoD become good. It simply means that the sorc has only SoD.


He hasn't been back to town. He knows 2 spells of his highest level, + the free SoD. One of his free spells isn't useful on that day (lack of spell component, fighting an enemy that is immune to it, or for whatever reason situationally not useful.)Well congrats. You have shown another trivial thing. If you only have access to SoD spells SoD spells are better. But this is true for every spell. It doesn't make them good.

This does make you technically right. If a character is limited to SoD spells, or you put a large amount of optimization into SoD and none in something else, they will be better at SoDs. That doesn't make SoD a better option.



He doesn't have access to rez. He has access to Raise Dead & or Revivify. Spells with death descriptor don't allow those spells. Burn the body to ash. That will block those spells.



Drainage doesn't mean that a lot of them won't be killed by the fog, especially if, unlike tuckers kobolds, the enemies don't know what a cloudkill is. You can walk around behind it while it kills everything 6 HD and below in front of you. It absolutly will be drained into pointlessness. Since most things like drinking the drainage will go into a storage tank which means it won't do any damage there.

Koury
2010-09-08, 09:29 PM
He wanted save or loses, particularly ones that take advantage of his already pumped save DC. Enervation, unless you are a metamagic specialist, with things like split ray and maximize, is a useful debuff, but not a killer. He will of course, probably prepare Enervation ALSO, but not with all of his Level 4+ necro spell slots. With the right necro feats, any spell that forces a saving throw makes the target less effective. All plants and vermin are immune to mind affecting but not death effects.

Unless you can come up with something a lot better, that was a reason to prepare a SoD. Your argument is disproven.

Wait, time out. The only SoD I'd ever consider preparing from Necromancy is Wail of the Banshee. What, exactly, do you propose gets prepared in those slots that is SoD? Necromancy has a ton of debuffs, but almost no worthwhile SoDs (or SoLs at all for that matter).

jiriku
2010-09-08, 11:40 PM
Implosion and destruction are pretty hot (yeah, I know implosion isn't necromancy). They also doesn't require you to close to melee range, unlike many necromancy SoL effects. Circle of death has its uses. Arrow of bone is outstanding if you have an archer in your party, because it's got great range and is almost certainly a heck of a lot better than anything he can do with his normal ammo. Greater consumptive field is golden in large set-piece battles, although that's admittedly a dual-threat spell. If you're stuck with a sword-and-board fighter in your party, you can make him feel a lot more useful by putting a symbol of death on his shield, keyed to exclude all party members. He can keep his shield covered and unveil it dramatically during difficult fights, and as with the ranger example above, that's probably a more useful thing for him to do than whatever he was probably going to do with his turn otherwise.


@ skeptical others: Be reminded again, no one in this thread is arguing that SoD spells are inherently superior to other types of spells, nor even that they're equal. We're arguing that there are a wide enough variety of situations where they're of value that it's useful to learn and sometimes prepare them. Tyndmyr, on the other hand, is arguing that one should never prepare them.

Myself, I don't prepare many of them for my wizards, but I do always prep one or two at high levels when I have spell slots to spare. You never know when they might be useful, and it's not like a high-level wizard is going to run out of spells, eh? If you're a cleric, you have an even easier time of it, since you can always convert the spell. Dread necromancers have it easiest of all, since they can just spontaneously cast one whenever they feel like it, and suffer no opportunity cost for having that option.

And really, look at the arguments you guys are having to use against the SoD examples: a counter of some kind might exist, another option might also conceivably solve the same problem, or the situation "isn't realistic" (even when the situation comes from actual gameplay). Blasting spells are just as vulnerable to those same arguments. Which is to say, not very vulnerable, because all those arguments are weak and unpersuasive.

Just admit it. SoD spells might not be that great, but they have their uses.

Koury
2010-09-08, 11:44 PM
Just admit it. SoD spells might not be that great, but they have their uses.

So they are the Fighters of spells? :smallamused:

Kyeudo
2010-09-09, 01:40 AM
So they are the Fighters of spells? :smallamused:

Fighter is a 4 level class. Beyond that, there is only CoDzilla.

Math_Mage
2010-09-09, 02:19 AM
So they are the Fighters of spells? :smallamused:

Well, to some extent. They do one thing, and if you optimize, they do that one thing well, but they aren't useful for a wide range of situations. Difference being that you can prepare some SoL, some debuff, some buff, some BC, and--yes--some SoD. And calling out a tiny fraction of spells whose effects are so powerful they require a balancing factor (situational, easy to save against, whatever) for not being as good as the best spells of other categories is...unreasonable. It's not like the Fighter's effects are so powerful it needed to be nerfed to heck and back.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-09, 07:56 AM
But this is rather trivial. One can build a sorc with only SoD. It doesn't mean that SoD become good. It simply means that the sorc has only SoD.
Well congrats. You have shown another trivial thing. If you only have access to SoD spells SoD spells are better. But this is true for every spell. It doesn't make them good.

This.

And yeah, you can make a workable SoD build. Just like you can make a workable fighter 20. That doesn't make fighter good, and your character would have been better if you'd replaced levels of fighter with something else.

As for the symbol of whatever, on the fighters shield, well, yeah. The fighter, given access to spells, will probably be more useful than he was just hitting stuff. This is again true for pretty much any spell. You can give him a deck of cards with explosive runes on each one and let him play Gambit, if you want.

Implosion is still close range. This is better than melee, yes, but it's still a disadvantage. It packs a decent punch...but it's a 9th level spell. We're comparing preparing this to things like Genesis, Prismatic Sphere, Wish or Gate. Those are horrifically powerful by comparison. Im curious for something solvable by implosion that isn't solvable by Gate.

Destruction is on the high end of SoDs, mostly because it still does somewhat decent damage on a successful save. It's clearly flat-out superior to Finger of Death, at the same level. However, it's still inferior to things like Limited Wish, Simulacrum, or Spell Turning. It's basically a blasting spell with more variable damage. It's still not a good use of your highest level slots, and since the damage doesn't scale, it won't remain a good source of damage for long. One of the best of the SoDs, yes, but still not great.

Malakar
2010-09-09, 08:10 AM
Those are horrifically powerful by comparison. Im curious for something solvable by implosion that isn't solvable by Gate.

Beat X without spending XP like a ponce. Where X is any number of monsters less than your CL who are corporeal, not undead, and not constructs (because you use Glass Strike on those).


Destruction is on the high end of SoDs, mostly because it still does somewhat decent damage on a successful save. It's clearly flat-out superior to Finger of Death, at the same level. However, it's still inferior to things like Limited Wish, Simulacrum, or Spell Turning. It's basically a blasting spell with more variable damage. It's still not a good use of your highest level slots, and since the damage doesn't scale, it won't remain a good source of damage for long. One of the best of the SoDs, yes, but still not great.

Pretty sure I'd rather have Glass Strike and Final Rebuke than Destruction.

Oslecamo
2010-09-09, 09:05 AM
Fighter is a 4 level class. Beyond that, there is only CoDzilla.

Wich is just 5 level long, as you then change into some Prc.:smalltongue:

Heck, wizard is 2 levels long when you compare it to Master Specialist!:smallbiggrin:

Malakar
2010-09-09, 09:59 AM
Heck, wizard is 2 levels long when you compare it to Master Specialist!:smallbiggrin:

Master Specialist means you have to be a specialist, which means you can't be an Elven Generalist Domain Wizard.

Also, Spontaneous Divination, assuming your DM either ignores the errata, or houserules it to be spells in your spellbook as opposed to spells known, seeing as Wizards don't have the latter.

So there are reasons to take Wizard for 5 levels.

Oslecamo
2010-09-09, 10:04 AM
So there are reasons to take Wizard for 5 levels.

And dungeon crasher gives a reason to take 6 levels of fighter!:smalltongue: