Playing a cleric or druid or wizard or such.

[Lord.Sorasen]

Ok, so it's no news to me that magic classes completely destroy non-magic classes. But, I really don't quite understand what it is that makes it so. I can see the benefits of having casters even in the low level, low optimization games I am currently dm-ing, as our beguiler puts enemies to sleep and our druid entangles and such.. But it doesn't seem completely imbalancing. I know I'm missing something.

Suddenly I remembered that thing about how wizards that blast aren't too hot, and clerics that heal in combat are sub-optimal. And it made me wonder... What else am I missing? I bet I'm missing everything. To my knowledge, my group is playing D&D entirely wrong. Well, not wrong. But incredibly sub-optimally.

SO, let's say you're one of the tier 1s. You are in a campaign at mid levels or whatever, and you're set in the world to do... Actually, that's part of the question. What sort of challenges would you expect to face, and how would you face them? I often hear something about night sticks, and I understand staffs or rods or... something like that, play a huge part in a tier 1 character's use. That's how little I know. Enlighten me?

[RaggedAngel]

The first thing that you have to understand is the Tiers don't indicate direct power level; they're more a measure of versatility. However, in DnD, if your character is extremely versatile power follows.

One of the various reasons that Wizards are seen as the most powerful class is their versatility, both due to the spells that they can gain as they level and the spells that they can gain with money or by stealing the spellbooks of others. A decent wizard at level 10 should have access to far more spells than he would have if all he did was gain them as he leveled. By spending a few gp on a scroll he gains the ability to cast that spell as much as he wants.

This is compounded by wands and scrolls, that allow the wizard to cast tons and tons of niche spells at just the right occasion. A wizard would never prepare Remove Curse (unless it's that kind of campaign, or he used a divination spell to know exactly what to prepare), but he can easily have a scroll for that one time when it's vital to cast Remove Curse. A Fighter or Scout or Rogue simply doesn't have the options that wizard does. Heck, all three of them together would be pressed to show a demonstrable amount of variety compared to the wizard, and a lot of that would come from the Rogue's Use Magic Device skill.

Finally, Polymorph. If you're unfamiliar with the spell, bask in the brokenness. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/polymorph.htm)

[Felyndiira]

The first thing that you have to understand is the Tiers don't indicate direct power level; they're more a measure of versatility. However, in DnD, if your character is extremely versatile power follows.

This, pretty much. The idea of Tier 1 characters is that through the sheer diversity of their prepared skills and class features/options, you can literally prepare yourself for any oncoming encounter. If in doubt, cast a divination and see what dangers lies in the future, and start preparing spells to counter that possibility. If you're ever caught guard, they also have a plethora of spells to whisk themselves (+party) out of the danger zone so that they can prepare accordingly and fight back the next day.

Since the wizard is already discussed, I'll follow the lead and give you an idea of why clerics are considered to be tier 1 classes.

First, a cleric's spell list is focused on utility. Clerics do not get the sheer power and blasty goodness that the druid spell list offers (or get them one level later than usual), but their spells offers . At high level, with only core spells and nothing out of the splatbooks, clerics can get three of the most powerful spells at ninth level (Astral Projection, Gate, and Miracle); to give you an idea of what these spells offer you, let's say you're a good cleric that has just entered the room of the BBEG. Well, how about using a magical item to boost your caster level to 24, and summoning a solar to help you fight? That solar has ridiculous stats and, to add icing to the cake, has access to all nine levels of cleric spells. How about asking the solar to gate in another solar, and so on, to end this evil menace once and for all (something that they should be all too happy to do)? Let's do this while you're astral projected and entirely safe from harm, too. And while you're at it, let's invoke a miracle and pay a bit to alter reality to the whim of your god, or make a free magnificent mansion to escape to in case - just in case - if something happens to go wrong.

The cleric gets even more powerful with the addition of splatbooks to her arsenal. Her already heavy specialty in buffs and party buffs gets even more ridiculous once you start doing things like turning into bone demons, giving people extra attacks, turning yourself into a glowing avatar of god, summon wind and fly and shoot lightning in one turn, ignore any non-magical attack and auto-half any magical attack, summon all sorts of extra-planar creatures, mind rape evil people, bury things in death slimes, and so on. With each splatbook, the cleric's options only increase, and since they know every spell in their class off the get go...

Domains seem like a minor trick at first, but they offer so much versatility to your spell lists. Other broken wizard spells such as Time Stop, Shapechange, Polymorph Any Object, and Mage's Disjunction can be yours if you don't mind casting them only once per day. Is that too few for your tastes? No problem! The spontaneous domain casting ACF allows you to throw away your spontaneous cure/inflict and instead spontaneously convert spell slots into spells from a single domain. Use this ACF on the trickery domain, and you can spontaneously stop time and spontaneously transform yourself into something ridiculously overpowered...permanently, all while transforming your allies into uber-races and your enemies into housecats (until you dismiss it, of course). Oh, right - some domains also have feats, which count toward prereqs and can give you some very nice abilities.

Spontaneous domain isn't the only good ACF that the cleric gets. Don't like your second domain? Well, why not go ahead and rehaul the entire thing? Divine Magician allows you to lose a domain to get nine wizard spells (one of each level) added to your spell list, to be prepared as many times as you'd like. Sure, you're restricted to three schools, but that still opens up other super-spells like mind blank, sixth-level antimagic shell, maw of chaos (uncapped damage!), awaken undead, the ever-useful fourth level enervation, foresight, and a plethora of other good spells. The cloistered cleric ACF is borderline broken, as you simply lower your hit die to d6 and get poor BAB (covered by Divine Power), and in return, you get 6+Int skill points, all knowledge skills, bardic lore, and an additional domain that can be traded for knowledge devotion. Speaking of knowledge devotion, that's +1 attack / +1 damage to any creature you can make a knowledge check against. Do well in your check and it's +2/+2. Invest more ranks and it gets higher, and it's always on, too. Now, look at weapon focus, and laugh XD.

Your only class ability, Turn Undead, is gimmicky at best. It is also used to power one of those uber-feats out there: Divine Metamagic. By sacrificing some turn undead attempts, you can apply metamagic on your spells pretty much for free. If you managed to get seven TU attempts, use DMM: Persist to persist something like divine power. You now have max BAB and a free +6 STR plus +1 temp HP per level. Did you take extra turning a few times? Persist something like righteous might or greater visage for even more uber stats. Persisting mass lesser vigor allows you to heal more than 10k a day with one action. If you think that's too cheesy, DMM can also be used on quicken, or maximize, or some of those other fun metamagic that you would otherwise love to apply to eighth-level spells. Run out of turnings? Each nightstick gives you four turn undead attempts - grab a pair of them, buff, drop them, and repeat the process for maximum insanity.

Because TU doesn't scale well with level, you can freely take any of the myriad of awesome prestige classes for clerics without guilt. Divine Oracle offers you the awesomeness of never being surprised or flat-footed (plus a free domain, which can be traded for knowledge devotion). Contemplative is two free domains. Rainbow Servant of Pelor gives you godly heals and godly turns, dweomerkeeper knocks a level off of all metamagic, etc. Even some of the lesser prestige classes offer some nice and awesome options if you want a bit of flavor, and aside from some feats and skills, you're losing nothing by taking them (losing BAB is usually not an issue).

So yeah, that's a brief overview of a cleric. There are definitely more awesome things, and a bunch of things that makes a cleric broken, but even without them, cleric is a solid class with many nasty tricks behind their sleeves for all situations.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Night Sticks in Libris Mortis increase your daily Turn Undead uses by four for each one you have. It's not specified as a bonus so they technically stack with each other. They don't occupy a body slot, or if they occupy a hand you can just put a rubber band around them and hold the whole bunch at once.

Clerics use Turn Undead attempts to fuel a feat called Divine Metamagic in Complete Divine. Combined with the metamagic feat Persistent Spell in Complete Arcane, this allows them to cast personal-range buffs like Divine Favor and Divine Power from their normal spell slot, and spend seven turn attempts to make their duration 24 hours. Now your 1 round/level buff that typically takes up your first combat round and only lasts one fight is up ahead of time and lasts all day long.

Thus the party Cleric gets Fighter BAB, an attack and damage bonus equivalent to the Fighter's Weapon Focus/Specialization tree, and a +6 enhancement bonus to strength, for less than the cost of a +6 Belt of Strength in Night Sticks. It takes quite a few feats, but there are quite a few more spells that can be made to last all day with this.

He can also get a Lesser Metamagic Rod of Extend and cast Magic Vestment on his armor and shield every day to get an enhancement bonus equal to whatever the party's combat characters would have at that level. With a Strand of Prayer Beads he can activate the Bead of Karma before buffing and get +4 caster level to all of his buffs, which means an extra +1 from Magic Vestment. Greater Magic Weapon works similarly.

I am a druid, I have special abilities that are more powerful than your entire class! (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0346.html) Also, this (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0353.html). I'd just like to point out that Creeping Cold with a Lesser Rod of Extend applied will do 21d6 damage cast by a level 3 character. In one game we were fighting a large wolf-based lycanthrope at an extremely low level (4th or 5th I think), but someone's wolf animal companion or wild cohort (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20031118a) tripped it and I cast Wall of Smoke across its space. Between full-attacking from prone, failing half its Fort saves and being Nauseated round after round, and being surrounded/flanked and prone thus extremely easy for everyone to hit, we made short work of it with little danger to our safety. A lowly 1st level Wall of Smoke spell stopped a dangerous foe from attacking for long enough to trivialize the encounter.

Sleet Storm will prevent most creatures in the area from doing anything at all, Wall of Thorns is one of the most annoying hindrances in existence, and Fire Seeds (berry bombs) with a Rod of Empower is possibly the single most damaging spell/metamagic combination in core. Cast Summon Nature's Ally IV for 1d3 lions (or SNAV for 1d4+1), at the start of your next round they appear and you can cast Animal Growth on all of them and your animal companion, and they can charge in, pounce, improved grab, and completely own an entire encounter. With Augment Summoning they're even more capable/dangerous. A single 9th level druid can solo one CR 10 fire giant per lion summoned this way, plus he has his animal companion, plus he can be wild shaped into a powerful combat form himself.

Arcane spellcasters stop the enemy from doing whatever it is they would otherwise be doing. While the Fighters and Rogues can deal damage, they probably won't deal enough damage to kill multiple foes in a single round, so in the time it takes them to kill the opponents their foes will be attacking them back. An arcane spellcaster can use Color Spray, Web, Glitterdust, Stinking Cloud, Black Tentacles, Solid Fog, Wall spells, etc. to keep multiple opponents from fighting back while the Fighters and Rogues can kill stuff. Druids have several spells which can accomplish this, Clerics have a few as well but mostly from domains. Why bother taking Improved Disarm and making opposed checks when you can just cast Heat Metal on an opponent's sword (like how Aragorn got pwned in Fangorn Forest).

In my above example, we had a Bard, Cleric, Charging Smite Paladin, Druid, Druid, and Sorcerer/Paladin, plus two animal companions (magebred warbeast wolves), and two wild cohorts (magebred warbeast wolves). Both Paladins used Harmonious Knight (http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20060327a), the Sorcadin had Draconic Heritage (something sonic) and Dragonfire Inspiration, the Bard had DFI, Song of the Heart, and Inspirational Boost, and all three had a Badge of Valor. We were level four or five, fighting a large black dragon (CR 9 at least) which the DM told us had max HP. We lured it back into a low tunnel so it couldn't fly, it was overconfident. The Druids cast Enrage Animal on their companions, substituting Whirling Frenzy (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/classFeatureVariants.htm#rageVariantWhirlingFrenzy ) for the standard bonuses. It started out on the ground, so the wolves all charged in and lined up across its front. It sidestepped and used its acid breath on all four of them. All four made the saving throw, and all four had evasion, so it didn't deal any damage. The Bard cast Glitterdust and it failed the save, so it was blinded. The four wolves attacked it again and one managed to trip it. The party surrounded it and started attacking, +2 attack and damage for Inspire Courage, +4d6 Fire, +2d6 Sonic on every attack. It full attacked from prone a few times but didn't hit anyone, we continued to pound on it. It got up from prone and ate a bunch of AoOs, and missed its one attack due to blindness. We managed to kill it without taking a single point of damage, and that was the last session we played those characters. The guy DMing is under the illusion that the classes are balanced in power and that a Fighter or Monk is just as good/capable as any other class, and that session must have shaken him to his core.

[jiriku]

RA and Fel talked a lot about combos, so I'll address the part of question about what you can do.

For my example, I'll use a wizard of, say, 12-16th level, which is pretty high for most games but not yet at the unlimited godlike power of 9th level spells (and just for clarification, that's literal. 9th level spells grant you the ability to stop time, press angels to your cause, and create new living creatures and new planes of existence).

As a high-level wizzie, here are some challenges I'd expect to face (that are worthy of my time), and the spells and items I'd use to solve them. I'll simply provide the most obvious solution. With thought, a clever wizard can probably find even more optimal ways to solve these problems.

O mighty wizard:

The king is ill and lies on his deathbed. Limited wish duplicates remove disease.
The king suffers from a disease that magic cannot heal. Contact other plane, legend lore, and discern location identify who inflicted the disease, who knows of a cure, and where they can be found.
The king died of his disease. Limited wish duplicates raise dead.
An enemy threatens to invade from the north, and building a proper keep to coordinate defenses would take years or decades. Assemble a keep in a matter of days, using multiple castings of move earth, wall of stone, wall of iron, and fabricate, plus perhaps a lyre of building and persistent stone body to go without sleep while playing.
An enemy threatens to invade tomorrow, and we have only a token force of poorly trained defenders. Use planar binding, polymorph any object, geas, charm monster, necrotic tumor, animate sand, animate dead, and similar spells to create or conscript expendable defenders.
An enemy still threatens, and while the royal army has assembled reinforcements, they are still two weeks' march away. Planar binding to summon an outsider with at-will greater teleport. Fit troops ten at a time in a portable hole and use the outsider to ferry them all to the castle in a matter of minutes or hours. Transport supplies in the same manner.
The enemy general is too mighty for our forces to face in battle. Greater scrying, scry location, discern location, or contact other plane to determine the general's location, then teleport to drop in on him with a party of fully buffed allies while he's in his bedclothes or on the privy. Use solid fog and wall of force to hold off his bodyguards, assassinate him, grab the body to prevent resurrection, and greater teleport to escape before defenders can rally to counterattack.
The enemy have sent a fearfully skilled diplomat to negotiate truce, and we need to extract as many concessions as we can. Charm person or charm monster to conscript the diplomat, or kill him and use disguise self to impersonate him, or detect thoughts and glibness (duplicated through limited wish) to simply outmaneuver him at the bargaining table.
The diplomat has revealed an assassination planned against our king! The assassination is supposed to happen any minute now, but it would take two weeks to reach him on foot. Teleport gets the whole party there in the nick of time.


Now, ask yourself, in similar situations, how would a fighter, samurai or barbarian solve these challenges? Generally the answers come down to one of three possibilities:


He would do the best he can using his sword and his horse and perhaps a skill or two.
He would succeed through a DM-provided plot device which is just as easily available to a character of any class. (i.e. his class features contribute nothing useful to the solution)
He would fail.

[Major]

Mine is way off from other players who have played more, but I felt guilty playing a sorcerer in one of my campaigns. The other players had fun so I guess it doesn't matter, but when we walked into a room and my fireball was doing much more damage (and to more enemies) than the Barbarian, rogue, etc.

To me I stopped liking casters because combat would have the rogue stealth in, and say "alright, shoot right there to hit the most enemies." and I'd blow up most the grunts. Had I been a martial person like them it'd have taken time since we can only kill one at a time.

And that's a NON-optimized sorcerer/wizard who is simply blasting. I've never gotten to high level games, but I'm just curious is a longsword ever going to be doing 20d6 or more (hell even a basic time stop, delayed blast fireball which is a pretty simple combo is like 60d6 or more based on what you roll without metamagic.)

What I want to know (cause I've never got to high levels in campaigns) is will martial types (fighter, ranger, paladin, etc) ever be able to match a wizard/sorcerer in combat even in terms of just damage? Not counting all the gate, buff, battlefield control spells. If you want to play a damage dealer it seemed like a blaster sorcerer/wizard (even unoptimized) was better than a martial class.

(That's a question again I've not gotten high level plays and I'm moderately new so I'm asking in terms of just damage power)

[Lord_Gareth]

Mine is way off from other players who have played more, but I felt guilty playing a sorcerer in one of my campaigns. The other players had fun so I guess it doesn't matter, but when we walked into a room and my fireball was doing much more damage (and to more enemies) than the Barbarian, rogue, etc.

To me I stopped liking casters because combat would have the rogue stealth in, and say "alright, shoot right there to hit the most enemies." and I'd blow up most the grunts. Had I been a martial person like them it'd have taken time since we can only kill one at a time.

And that's a NON-optimized sorcerer/wizard who is simply blasting. I've never gotten to high level games, but I'm just curious is a longsword ever going to be doing 20d6 or more (hell even a basic time stop, delayed blast fireball which is a pretty simple combo is like 60d6 or more based on what you roll without metamagic.)

What I want to know (cause I've never got to high levels in campaigns) is will martial types (fighter, ranger, paladin, etc) ever be able to match a wizard/sorcerer in combat even in terms of just damage? Not counting all the gate, buff, battlefield control spells. If you want to play a damage dealer it seemed like a blaster sorcerer/wizard (even unoptimized) was better than a martial class.

(That's a question again I've not gotten high level plays and I'm moderately new so I'm asking in terms of just damage power)

Mailman Sorcerer > Ubercharger, but takes much more effort to pull off.

[Major]

But that's kinda the point. You have to optimize a martial build just to compete with the most unoptimized sorcerer.

[Lord_Gareth]

But that's kinda the point. You have to optimize a martial build just to compete with the most unoptimized sorcerer.

Well, see, an optimized martial build can still crank out thousands of points of damage on a single charge. But an optimized mailman can deal damage that has to be expressed as X times 10 to the nth.

[Major]

Which was my point. I was trying to present another reason why magic users are so broken. Aside from fly, gate, time stop, buffing, battlefield control, etc etc. which give them MASSIVE variety and as such power, the sheer blaster nature of them even not optimized is going to challenge and surpass even the most optimized of martial builds.

"I'm a fighter. I got my sword. I can cut things and by using one build that massively limits what I can do and forces me to charge all the time and only charge I can compete with a wizard."

"Actually you can't. You can just get close to being able to compete with a simple spell. I still got metamagic, broken builds, and more."

So Cleric/Druid/Wizard have the ability to do anything any class martial class, and do it better without having to limit themselves to one build. As well as just use one ability to equal what a martial class can do with ALL their abilities.

[The Rabbler]

Which was my point. I was trying to present another reason why magic users are so broken. Aside from fly, gate, time stop, buffing, battlefield control, etc etc. which give them MASSIVE variety and as such power, the sheer blaster nature of them even not optimized is going to challenge and surpass even the most optimized of martial builds.

"I'm a fighter. I got my sword. I can cut things and by using one build that massively limits what I can do and forces me to charge all the time and only charge I can compete with a wizard."

"Actually you can't. You can just get close to being able to compete with a simple spell. I still got metamagic, broken builds, and more."

So Cleric/Druid/Wizard have the ability to do anything any class martial class, and do it better without having to limit themselves to one build. As well as just use one ability to equal what a martial class can do with ALL their abilities.

Actually no, you misunderstand the point of the previous post. An optimized ubercharger can deal thousands of points of damage in a single charge. An optimized mailman sorcerer can deal mind-bogglingly large amounts of damage. An unoptimized blaster generally sucks.

Example: Fireball for 10d6 at level ten or have the barbarian charge for (2d6+str+40)*2 each hit with 3+ hits; which would you rather have? The barbarian in question requires exactly 4 feats, a valorous weapon, two ACFs, and some ranks in jump.

This barbarian isn't even particularly optimized; rather it's utilizing synergistic feats and making smart decisions. That's it. The wizard (or in this case, mailman) would have to be throwing around twinimaxempowered orbs of doom three times in a single round to compare damage-wise and by then you've crossed over into optimization.

EDIT: and to address your other point, to really match the damage of an optimized ubercharger, a caster would have to build towards it; it would take some thought, effort, and sacrifice.

[faceroll]

A marginally optimized hulking hurler can do damage: yes. But damage isn't what makes a T1 build. Even T7 can do a lot of damage. T1 is being able to derail the campaign with a standard action.

[Major]

Ok, but the point is the blaster has picked ONE spell (fireball in your example) and is doing 10d6 (this is not counting any of his feats or abilities btw). The charger however has used all his feats and can only do it if he charges.

Meaning while the sorcerer still has lots of other spells and ways to boost those blasters (since we haven't selected feats or anything), the charger is forced to EVERY turn. "Run at the enemy and attack. That's all you can do."

My point is in norms. An unoptimized magic user is stronger than an unoptimized martial user. A optimized magic user is stronger than an optimized martial user. On an equal build level (optimized vs optimized) (unoptimized vs unoptimized) the magic user will beat out the martial user.

Yeah, at level ten the fireball is going to on almost every occasion do a minimum of 10d6. But you still have all your feats that could increase that. Plus those feats will help ALL your spells usually, not just one.

While the charger has to pick a specific set of feats to do one specific thing and only one specific thing and if he is denied that he is left with nothing else.

Example: Oh no the enemy is fire resistant, I lose fireball. I can still fall back on other blast spells that are most likely boosted by my feats and abilities just as much as fireball was. No harm done.

vs

Oh no rough terrain, obstructed view, some other block of charge. Well...that's all I can do. Time to just wack it with my stick.

--------

On top of that most of the blast effects can hit multiple enemies at once, easily taking out a group while the charger can pick one person. Meaning sure, a one-on-one fight the charger is great (assuming he can charge), most times you are going to be taking out less enemies per round, doing only one attack, and hoping you don't get denied it.

--------

Is it possible for a martial user to beat a magic user? Yes. The magic user has to be heavily underoptimzied, picked horrible feats, picked horrible spells, and basically TRIED to suck. While the martial user has to have heavily focused on one area, increased that area, and done everything to boost that one thing.

So magic users have to try to suck while martial have to try to be good.

That was my point. Aside from versatility and ridiculous spells, even in simple blaster cases the magic users tend to be able to excel (at the very least they aren't falling way behind)


--------------


Edited to add in:

Example: Fireball for 10d6 at level ten or have the barbarian charge for (2d6+str+40)*2 each hit with 3+ hits; which would you rather have? The barbarian in question requires exactly 4 feats, a valorous weapon, two ACFs, and some ranks in jump.

Note your example has "The fireball does this without anything" versus "the charger does this with four feats, a specific weapon, two alternate class features, and skills."

Now add four feats, a metamagic rod (the blaster's weapon) and other things and see how easy it is to boost that fireball.

That's a stupid claim. four feats, two acfs, skills, and a specific weapon vs one spell.

[Zaydos]

Barbarian Str 18 Lv 5. Raging and charges to deal 2d6+7 damage with a +15 to hit (assumes +1 weapon). AC of young black dragon (CR 5): 19. Average damage: 11.9. Non-charge 10.5 damage average.

Wizard Fireball (Int 18) Lv 5. 5d6, Ref DC 17 halves. Ref of young black dragon +7. Average Damage: 12.7.

This is no more optimization than high stat goes to main stat (and maybe +2 to Stat item to get an 18). Barbarian can rage 2/day for 5+ rounds. Wizard can fire 2 fireballs per day. Fireball can hit mulitple targets but I'd take comparable damage each round over 2/day to multiple enemies.

Level 6 the barbarian deals 12.6 on a charge (without pounce) and 18.9 with a full attack. The wizard deals 15.2 to the same CR 5 black dragon.

This is 0 feats, 0 ACFs, and only item assumed is a +1 weapon because by Lv 5 you need one for the game to work (DR and incorporeal creatures).

So no melee doesn't have to optimize to keep up with unoptimized blasting. Blasting has to optimize to some extent to keep up with melee.

[Major]

Cool, so if I want to play a martial class the only thing I can do to be able to compete with a magic user is charge and I should make sure I pick good charge things cause charge is the only way I can compete. Ohhh and it better be a barbarian so I can get pounce and all my attacks, otherwise I'm getting one attack and am SoL.

Hopefully my feats can compare to metamagic feats and other boosters that magic user gets. And dear god I better not fight anything in an area with difficult terrain or where I don't have a straight line to charge.

On a side note though, my original question was asking at higher levels. I've only ever played lower levels since most games died off. So I've not seen much at high levels. But I'm curious about at higher levels how the martial classes keep up with the higher level CL and spells.

Weapons can only get magically enhanced so far. And what do you do in a case where either you don't have pounce (or something similar) or where charging isn't possible? Cause right now I've seen you able to argue ONE type of martial build (the charger)

[The Rabbler]

Barbarian Str 18 Lv 5. Raging and charges to deal 2d6+7 damage with a +15 to hit (assumes +1 weapon). AC of young black dragon (CR 5): 19. Average damage: 11.9. Non-charge 10.5 damage average.

Wizard Fireball (Int 18) Lv 5. 5d6, Ref DC 17 halves. Ref of young black dragon +7. Average Damage: 12.7.

This is no more optimization than high stat goes to main stat (and maybe +2 to Stat item to get an 18). Barbarian can rage 2/day for 5+ rounds. Wizard can fire 2 fireballs per day. Fireball can hit mulitple targets but I'd take comparable damage each round over 2/day to multiple enemies.

Level 6 the barbarian deals 12.6 on a charge (without pounce) and 18.9 with a full attack. The wizard deals 15.2 to the same CR 5 black dragon.

This is 0 feats, 0 ACFs, and only item assumed is a +1 weapon because by Lv 5 you need one for the game to work (DR and incorporeal creatures).

So no melee doesn't have to optimize to keep up with unoptimized blasting. Blasting has to optimize to some extent to keep up with melee.

I'm so bad at saying what I think.

[Major]

The problem I have is two-fold.

1) What to play?
-On one hand I want to be able to fight monsters and not suck and get creamed, but I want to be able to build how I want to build, have fun role-playing, etc without having to say "Alright, look online, find a charger build...oh and make sure I get pounce/some variant or I'm screwed. Combat begins, charge. That's it."
-On the other hand I don't want what happened the last game I played a magic user "Alright, Chaucer...I snuck in and here is a layout of the room. We'll kick the door down, you fire ball here. And we'll take out the surviving mooks that are left...if there are any left. With our raipers and crossbows that do 1/7th of your fireball". Again, none of the other players minded but I felt guilty...

2) Who I play with?
-Rogues, fighters, etc. who optimized about as much as I do. They don't build a uber charger or plan on how to charge every attack, etc. They run in and charge when its an option, stab what they can and hope to hit and kill their targets then move onto the next. As such they just kinda build what seems cool and are pretty laid back meaning they don't have these uber charge builds to compete with my 7d6 fireball.

^Actually 2 strongly connects with the second part of 1...

[Warlawk]

The problem I have is two-fold.

1) What to play?
-On one hand I want to be able to fight monsters and not suck and get creamed, but I want to be able to build how I want to build, have fun role-playing, etc without having to say "Alright, look online, find a charger build...oh and make sure I get pounce/some variant or I'm screwed. Combat begins, charge. That's it."
-On the other hand I don't want what happened the last game I played a magic user "Alright, Chaucer...I snuck in and here is a layout of the room. We'll kick the door down, you fire ball here. And we'll take out the surviving mooks that are left...if there are any left. With our raipers and crossbows that do 1/7th of your fireball". Again, none of the other players minded but I felt guilty...

2) Who I play with?
-Rogues, fighters, etc. who optimized about as much as I do. They don't build a uber charger or plan on how to charge every attack, etc. They run in and charge when its an option, stab what they can and hope to hit and kill their targets then move onto the next. As such they just kinda build what seems cool and are pretty laid back meaning they don't have these uber charge builds to compete with my 7d6 fireball.

^Actually 2 strongly connects with the second part of 1...

Play a martial adept from Tome of Battle. You get respectable damage for melee, you get a lot of options that amount to more than just "I charge" and you're good without completely stealing the show.

Crusader is the energizer bunny of melee, it just doesn't stop. Warblade is a nice offensive machine and Swordsage makes a good monk/skirmisher type melee sneak combatant.

Honestly blast casters have never been the problem. The problem comes into play with debuffs and control. When you start tossing out maximized empowered chained ray of enfeeblement, or maximized empowered chained twinned repeating enervation, or ray of stupidity or etc... that's when you start neutering encounters in a single spellcast. Leaving out the things that straight up break the game, debuffs of that nature are what can really start to throw things out of whack. At least that was my experience when I dabbled with a wizard. I don't like to blast, but our group is pretty low op, so I was starting to throw off the curve.

[Zaydos]

Cool, so if I want to play a martial class the only thing I can do to be able to compete with a magic user is charge and I should make sure I pick good charge things cause charge is the only way I can compete. Ohhh and it better be a barbarian so I can get pounce and all my attacks, otherwise I'm getting one attack and am SoL.

Hopefully my feats can compare to metamagic feats and other boosters that magic user gets. And dear god I better not fight anything in an area with difficult terrain or where I don't have a straight line to charge.

On a side note though, my original question was asking at higher levels. I've only ever played lower levels since most games died off. So I've not seen much at high levels. But I'm curious about at higher levels how the martial classes keep up with the higher level CL and spells.

Weapons can only get magically enhanced so far. And what do you do in a case where either you don't have pounce (or something similar) or where charging isn't possible? Cause right now I've seen you able to argue ONE type of martial build (the charger)

I have to ask what is your definition of a non-optimized blaster? 60d6 damage, save for half 3 times, won't take down much. Average is 210 damage if they fail 3 saves. DC would be 26 assuming +9 Int (max without racial, aging, or inherent bonuses) 28 with two feats. So a CR 20 black dragon would save on an 9, or a 7 if it took Lightning Reflexes (which is an unoptimal feat for a dragon). So on average you're doing 147 damage with 4 spells if it didn't take the feat and 136.5 if it did (see not optimal).

A 20th level barbarian raging (you're using a 9th level spell they can rage) and a +5 Holy weapon (suboptimal, it's better to get the 20th level wizard to cast Greater Magic Weapon on the +1 Holy Keen Flaming Acidic Shocking weapon) has a +38 to hit assuming same base Str and no feats and deals 4d6+24 per hit and gets four attacks per round. Ignoring criticals that's 93.1 damage per full attack. 102.4 with crits included. Give them two feats for their weapon (suboptimal ones like Weapon Focus and Improved Critical) and you have 118.6 per round. So the sorcerer uses a sizable chunk of his daily resources (1 9th and 3 7th) and the barbarian uses a noticeable chunk to but can do this every round for the battle.

Now in this case the 18 starting stat helps the barbarian more.

The sorcerer also has save or dies. There is Grease (Ref save or die) which a dragon laughs off by flying or unless you have rogues using its reach and breath weapon and not walking. There are very few other Ref saves or die/lose. Solid fog stops it from moving which might help unless it has teleport. So you have Fort and Will save effects. It succeeds a Fort save on a 2 unless you spend one or more feats for that school, and a Will save on a 5. It could also have Great Fortitude and Iron Will (again not the best feats on a dragon but ones they are fairly likely to have since I know I at least don't bother to optimize dragons since they kill my party when I do).

Unoptimized blasting is not a problem. Even giving it a Rod of Maximize Spell they're only dealing 234 damage using all three daily uses. So yes he can double the barbarian's round by round damage output, if he spends a large chunk of his resources. On an average strength encounter.

Now non-blasting stuff you have Gate abuse which breaks the game, polymorph and shapechange which just makes me laugh (I've actually broken things with polymorph and a familiar before), Save or Dies, Debuffs and once you veer into optimization things like metamagic reducers and stacking metamagic reducers.

At level 7 an unoptimized rogue's rapier or crossbow or short bow with sneak attack is dealing 5d6+ damage. Unoptimized blasting is not effective.

[Gnaeus]

The problem I have is two-fold.

1) What to play?
-On one hand I want to be able to fight monsters and not suck and get creamed, but I want to be able to build how I want to build, have fun role-playing, etc without having to say "Alright, look online, find a charger build...oh and make sure I get pounce/some variant or I'm screwed. Combat begins, charge. That's it."
-On the other hand I don't want what happened the last game I played a magic user "Alright, Chaucer...I snuck in and here is a layout of the room. We'll kick the door down, you fire ball here. And we'll take out the surviving mooks that are left...if there are any left. With our raipers and crossbows that do 1/7th of your fireball". Again, none of the other players minded but I felt guilty...

2) Who I play with?
-Rogues, fighters, etc. who optimized about as much as I do. They don't build a uber charger or plan on how to charge every attack, etc. They run in and charge when its an option, stab what they can and hope to hit and kill their targets then move onto the next. As such they just kinda build what seems cool and are pretty laid back meaning they don't have these uber charge builds to compete with my 7d6 fireball.

^Actually 2 strongly connects with the second part of 1...

1. Non-charge melee can compete with casters if well built. A character with Improved Trip or Stand Still, EWP Spiked Chain, Combat reflexes, and a reliable method of becoming large/huge (of which there are many) is an asset to almost any party. Battlefield controllers are the one other gold standard for melee besides chargers. Edit: for Core melee. ToB is also competative. Psi-Wars, Duskblades, Totemists, etc can all play good roles.

2. Look up Batman Wizard in a google search. The key to playing a caster without overshadowing people is to be a team player. Haste is usually a better spell than fireball in combat, and it lets your fighter roll a lot of dice and feel important. You could polymorph yourself into a combat beast, or Polymorph your fighter into a much better combat beast. Slow won't end most encounters, but it nerfs most monsters so much that your melees have an easy time of it. Enlarge Person. Heroics. Stat + spells. Greater Invisibility. Wall or other battlefield control spells so that your team can roll monsters one at a time while their monster pals watch helplessly and wait for their turn to die. Focus on Buffs, Debuffs, and Controlling the Battlefield.

And you can still keep a fireball or a save or lose in your pocket for when you really need it.

The problem with blasting isn't whether or not you can keep up with the barbarian. You want a range of characters in a party so that you have a wide range of abilities. All the barbarian can do well is damage. A tier 1-3 caster can do lots of stuff. It is mean to take the Barbarian's only cookie when you have a whole bag of cookies in your spell component pouch.

[Gullintanni]

2. Look up Batman Wizard in a google search. The key to playing a caster without overshadowing people is to be a team player. Haste is usually a better spell than fireball in combat, and it lets your fighter roll a lot of dice and feel important.


This. IMHO this is what being a caster is really all about. Manipulate the battlefield so that your fighters (who don't need to rest to hit people effectively with swords and repeat until dead) can do their job. Make everyone else better at what they do.

While your spells are doing a lot of the heavy lifting, the rest of the party gets to claim the glory of the kill. There's a payoff for everybody.

[Asgardian]

This. IMHO this is what being a caster is really all about. Manipulate the battlefield so that your fighters (who don't need to rest to hit people effectively with swords and repeat until dead) can do their job. Make everyone else better at what they do.

While your spells are doing a lot of the heavy lifting, the rest of the party gets to claim the glory of the kill. There's a payoff for everybody.

Exactly. Its not a competitive game. its a cooperative one

[Major]

I know its not competitive which is why I was guilty playing magic users. But playing one with buffs like that is a good point and pretty nice idea. I like it. Thanks.

[Gullintanni]

I know its not competitive which is why I was guilty playing magic users. But playing one with buffs like that is a good point and pretty nice idea. I like it. Thanks.

You don't even need to go straight buffs. Co-operative spellcasting is best characterized in the following ways:

1 - Summons. Put them into flanking position and your optimized SA rogue dealing 13d6 of damage per SA will love you forever. Summons can also be used to block paths, granting you the ability to contain opponents movement to a limited degree.

2 - Buffs...obviously. I like Prayer, Recitation, Righteous Wrath of the Faithful, Greater Magic Weapon and Magic Vestment (Can you tell I play clerics?)

3 - Debuffing is a lot of fun. Ray of Exhaustion and Enervation are the obvious ones. Stack negative levels and status effects makes opponents less dangerous to your fighters. Prayer and Recitation are both solid buffs that also lower enemy scores with a failed save. More mileage for your spells.

4 - Battlefield Control. Grease, Ice Slick, Entangle, Solid Fog. All of these limit enemy movement. Mobility is amazing, especially when you take it away from enemies.

None of these four roles will cause you to steal the whole show. You are quite realistically the most effective person in the party, even though you're not getting the kills. These are great suggestions for playing a caster guilt free. Have fun :smallsmile:

Edit: One other solid trick...and I'm not sure if this works. I'm AFB so I can't confirm. Pop an extended Deeper Darkness on a dagger and keep it in a sheath. Now, for a significant duration, any time you draw the dagger, everyone in the area suffers 20% miss chance. Apply Faerie Fire (negates concealment) liberally to your enemies, and now you're immune to their SA's and they're not immune to yours.

[Tyndmyr]

The first thing that you have to understand is the Tiers don't indicate direct power level; they're more a measure of versatility.

Yup. I'm currently playing a "paladin". He's straight wizard 3 atm, and he's using a greatsword. Things like mage armor, shield, magic weapon, true strike, etc make him really good at beating people down. He's tied with the fighter for top kills, IIRC, despite terrible rolling.

Now granted, not every wizard takes feats like Power Attack, but they *could*, and pull it off fantastic. Once they get heroics, they don't even really need to have taken the feats.

And of course, there is absolutely nothing mechanical to prevent this caster from being a blaster as well. Or a controller.

[Gnaeus]

You don't even need to go straight buffs. Co-operative spellcasting is best characterized in the following ways:


Ooh. One more. Get a team oriented Crafting feat. Wondrous Items, or Arms/Armor. Start with the weakest character in the party and craft stuff for him until he rocks. Repeat.

This:
Takes away a feat from you, while helping the party.
Lowers your exp a bit. It is pretty hard to actually craft yourself down a level, and very difficult to craft down more than one ("experience is a river") but as a wizard, it doesn't hurt you if you are one level below the party fighter.
Lets you do other stuff in combat. You can stop memorizing blur when everyone has a cloak of displacement.

[Gullintanni]

Ooh. One more. Get a team oriented Crafting feat. Wondrous Items, or Arms/Armor. Start with the weakest character in the party and craft stuff for him until he rocks. Repeat.

This:
Takes away a feat from you, while helping the party.
Lowers your exp a bit. It is pretty hard to actually craft yourself down a level, and very difficult to craft down more than one ("experience is a river") but as a wizard, it doesn't hurt you if you are one level below the party fighter.
Lets you do other stuff in combat. You can stop memorizing blur when everyone has a cloak of displacement.

On that note, not all item creation feats are created equal. The two suggested are probably the only ones worth taking. Rings and Rods are both useful but they're a bit more situational. But everyone wants Wondrous Items. Truckloads of them.