Does This Make Me Immune to Spells?

[Baron Corm]

I just found a spell in Races of Eberron, and a quick Google search didn't find me any discussions about it. The spell is golem immunity, and it gives any touched construct immunity to spells and SLAs that offer spell resistance for 1 minute/level. It's an 8th level cleric, sorcerer, and wizard spell. The caveat is that you also get the spell weaknesses of a chosen golem. A flesh golem's spell weaknesses are minor, in that cold or fire spells slow you, as the spell, for 2d6 rounds.

Disjunction will take this off of anything in its radius, because it ignores spell resistance. However, if I put golem immunity on an item as a continuous effect, can I make my warforged completely immune to most spells for only a gold investment, assuming I make my Will save on the item?

If the answer is yes, my next goal would be to gain protection against spells that don't afford spell resistance, and pump my Will save higher than an optimized caster can get his DCs. I'm not too worried about touch spells, with a few feats giving me my armor and shield bonus to touch AC (Deflective Armor and Parrying Shield, respectively). What other non-SR non-touch spells should I worry about, and does anyone have any tips for pumping my Will save? I know of Steadfast Determination, moment of perfect mind, and paladin/hexblade granting Charisma to saves, off hand, but I'm not sure if that's enough. I'd prefer just having a huge save to things like moment of perfect mind that require actions, in case they do something like throw two Quickened disjunctions at me in a surprise round.

Some gold calculations follow, if interested.

I've estimated the cost of this item at 480,000 gp (Spell level (8) × caster level (15) × 2,000 gp x 2 for duration measured in rounds). This is indeed a lot, but since I won't have to spend money on things like immunity to mind-affecting and so forth, I'm saving some there. A 20th level character's wealth should be 760,000, which leaves barely enough room for a decent set of +5 armor and shield (50,000 gp), +5 weapon (50,000 gp), cloak of resistance +5 (25,000 gp), primary stat booster +6 (36,000 gp), and ring of protection +5 (50,000 gp), leaving me with 69,000 to spend on whatever I like. I'm thinking wings of flying for 54,000 gp.

[Urpriest]

It would make you immune to spells, yes. Keep in mind that custom items always have a good deal of DM adjudication involved.

An optimized Hail of Stone would ruin your day for anything short of Abrupt Jaunt/stealth optimization, but it's a rare threat.

[Kuulvheysoon]

I believe that you're also vulnerable to acid rain (HoB). I'm AFB, but does anyone know if it's a ranged touch? I'm pretty sure that it's not, but I'm not 100% sure.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I can't see any flaw in your logic, except the assumption that your DM will allow this.

[HunterOfJello]

Custom continuous item creation has always been all kinds of broken.

However, if you're running around with a PC who has 480,000 gp to spare on an item like that, you're going to come up against enemies who will laugh at your immunity to spells and SLA while throwing non-SR spells and Su abilities at you.

Also, don't be surprised if the DM has a wicked grim on his face as you fail a save for the item from the first Disjunction spell cast at you, or when a powerful Conjuror or level 20 Beguiler takes you out and steals the item for them self.

[Baron Corm]

An optimized Hail of Stone would ruin your day for anything short of Abrupt Jaunt/stealth optimization, but it's a rare threat.

I'd like to be prepared! This spell seems like a tough one to defeat, the main weakness being its low starting damage. With a starting level of only 1 though, I can only imagine the metamagics that could be applied to it. I'll have to keep thinking about it. A decent pool of hitpoints, possibly a race or template with Fast Healing, or a class with healing spells might help me to outlast it, if in the end they can't one-shot me. The cast time is 1 round so Quicken is out, which helps.


I believe that you're also vulnerable to acid rain (HoB). I'm AFB, but does anyone know if it's a ranged touch? I'm pretty sure that it's not, but I'm not 100% sure.

I just looked it up, it's not. I found another acid spell as well, vitriolic sphere, to worry about. Without resorting to magic exactly, and since I probably don't have any more gold for magic items, I know there's a Dark dragonfire adept invocation that can make me immune to acid. Getting up there would kill my BAB so I'll stay on the lookout for alternatives.


I can't see any flaw in your logic, except the assumption that your DM will allow this.

I've been trying to find a semi-reasonable hard counter to Batman for years, but I have no intention of playing this character any more than I do of playing with a DM who allows Batman. Batmen play in such a way that just about anything possible is allowed to be used, so I shall too. I can become immune to him in other ways as well, but not having to spend any class levels or feats on it would be great! As would having this spell/item as a two-word counterattack to anyone that touts Batman as god. My hopes are high, but they are usually dashed eventually.

[Lapak]

Isn't a 480,000 gp item going to hit the >200,000 Epic Magic Item wall and end up costing 4,800,000?

Or am I misinterpreting that?

EDIT: It looks like I might be misreading it, but it will still be an Epic item, which might cause you problems in acquiring it.

[Reluctance]

The other big thing I see here is protection through obscurity. Putting most of your eggs in one basket, that you assume is safe because nobody would think to attack the basket.

Assuming that such an item is possible, someone would've made it already and it would be a known possibility. Known possibilities can be spotted with Spellcraft checks, and a targeted Dispel Magic (which targets the item, not you) could make you really exposed for 1d4 rounds.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I've been trying to find a semi-reasonable hard counter to Batman for years, but I have no intention of playing this character any more than I do of playing with a DM who allows Batman. Batmen play in such a way that just about anything possible is allowed to be used, so I shall too. I can become immune to him in other ways as well, but not having to spend any class levels or feats on it would be great! As would having this spell/item as a two-word counterattack to anyone that touts Batman as god. My hopes are high, but they are usually dashed eventually.

Batman Wizard doesn't use spells that allow SR usually anyways. Glitterdust, in particular, will shut you down. As a living construct, you're already immune to Enervation, which is the big spell that Batman Wizards use that allow SR.

[Kuulvheysoon]

I'd like to be prepared! This spell seems like a tough one to defeat, the main weakness being its low starting damage. With a starting level of only 1 though, I can only imagine the metamagics that could be applied to it. I'll have to keep thinking about it. A decent pool of hitpoints, possibly a race or template with Fast Healing, or a class with healing spells might help me to outlast it, if in the end they can't one-shot me. The cast time is 1 round so Quicken is out, which helps.

I just looked it up, it's not. I found another acid spell as well, vitriolic sphere, to worry about. Without resorting to magic exactly, and since I probably don't have any more gold for magic items, I know there's a Dark dragonfire adept invocation that can make me immune to acid. Getting up there would kill my BAB so I'll stay on the lookout for alternatives.

Looks like they're all Conjuration spells, so finding a way to be immune to that school might help solve that problem.

[Baron Corm]

Batman Wizard doesn't use spells that allow SR usually anyways. Glitterdust, in particular, will shut you down. As a living construct, you're already immune to Enervation, which is the big spell that Batman Wizards use that allow SR.

I don't particularly mind being shut down for a duration measured in rounds, as long as I'm not dead or permanently disabled. Glitterdust, grease, and so forth shouldn't bother me too much, even if they land.

My high Will save should also protect me from glitterdust in particular, and there is a cheap item in MIC that makes you immune to blind which I can still afford (3500 gp) if I needed nothing else.

As far as the acid thing is concerned, I've got the Saint template to make me immune to it, or Half-Black Dragon if being exalted is too annoying, though that comes with an extra +1 LA.


Looks like they're all Conjuration spells, so finding a way to be immune to that school might help solve that problem.

I really, REALLY wish I could find something like that.

[Alabenson]

As far as damage dealing spells, you're biggest threats are probably the orb line, which are not only SR no, which means you're still vulnerable to them, but are very popular amoung optimized damage dealing casters.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I don't particularly mind being shut down for a duration measured in rounds, as long as I'm not dead or permanently disabled. Glitterdust, grease, and so forth shouldn't bother me too much, even if they land.

My high Will save should also protect me from glitterdust in particular, and there is a cheap item in MIC that makes you immune to blind which I can still afford (3500 gp) if I needed nothing else.

As far as the acid thing is concerned, I've got the Saint template to make me immune to it, or Half-Black Dragon if being exalted is too annoying, though that comes with an extra +1 LA.

Orb of Sound. It's cursedly difficult to be immune to it. Metamagic + Orb of Sound = bad things. Alternately, Scorching Spell + Searing Spell + Orb of Fire. Even if you're immune to it, you aren't immune to it. See also: Mailman.

Shut down for a duration of rounds = lose, when you are dealing with a Batman Wizard.

[Baron Corm]

Orb of Sound. It's cursedly difficult to be immune to it. Metamagic + Orb of Sound = bad things. Alternately, Scorching Spell + Searing Spell + Orb of Fire. Even if you're immune to it, you aren't immune to it. See also: Mailman.

Shut down for a duration of rounds = lose, when you are dealing with a Batman Wizard.

Can he hit a touch AC of 37 ish? That's the base AC from a +5 armor and shield with Deflective Armor and Parrying Shield. In a Charisma-based build, which is useful for pumping the saves too, Divine Shield can add another +12 touch AC. If he can, but he needs true strike, there are ways of becoming immune to the Divination school, which arguably (and I'm going to say yes), makes you immune to true strike.

[HunterOfJello]

Isn't a 480,000 gp item going to hit the >200,000 Epic Magic Item wall and end up costing 4,800,000?

Or am I misinterpreting that?

EDIT: It looks like I might be misreading it, but it will still be an Epic item, which might cause you problems in acquiring it.

If we're going into Epic Magic items (which we are), you might as well just grab the Mantle of Epic Spell Resistance instead. It gives SR 40 and only costs 290,000gp. You'll find the occasional enemy that can be a SR of 40, but if you do then your much more expensive Immunity item won't be much help either.

[Kuulvheysoon]

If we're going into Epic Magic items (which we are), you might as well just grab the Mantle of Epic Spell Resistance instead. It gives SR 40 and only costs 290,000gp. You'll find the occasional enemy that can be a SR of 40, but if you do then your much more expensive Immunity item won't be much help either.

How would his (admittedly more expensive) custom item not be as much help? There's a huge difference between SR40 and SR999 (well, infinite, but you get my drift).

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Can he hit a touch AC of 37 ish? That's the base AC from a +5 armor and shield with Deflective Armor and Parrying Shield. In a Charisma-based build, which is useful for pumping the saves too, Divine Shield can add another +12 touch AC. If he can, but he needs true strike, there are ways of becoming immune to the Divination school, which arguably (and I'm going to say yes), makes you immune to true strike.

True Strike is a self-buff, with a range of Personal. Immunity to the divination school might make you immune to having the spell cast on you, but it does not affect their bonus to hit you.

Besides, the spell you are actually looking for is Moment of Prescience (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/momentOfPrescience.htm).

And hitting an AC of 37 is pathetically easy at these levels.

And, as you pointed out in your OP, Disjunction will still ruin your day.

[Baron Corm]

Isn't a 480,000 gp item going to hit the >200,000 Epic Magic Item wall and end up costing 4,800,000?

Or am I misinterpreting that?

EDIT: It looks like I might be misreading it, but it will still be an Epic item, which might cause you problems in acquiring it.


If we're going into Epic Magic items (which we are), you might as well just grab the Mantle of Epic Spell Resistance instead. It gives SR 40 and only costs 290,000gp. You'll find the occasional enemy that can be a SR of 40, but if you do then your much more expensive Immunity item won't be much help either.

Optimizers are always in favor of allowing DW kobolds to take epic feats so I think that should be okay. I'm sure they could pump their caster level up pretty high, so I'd rather stick with the blanket immunity route.


The other big thing I see here is protection through obscurity. Putting most of your eggs in one basket, that you assume is safe because nobody would think to attack the basket.

Assuming that such an item is possible, someone would've made it already and it would be a known possibility. Known possibilities can be spotted with Spellcraft checks, and a targeted Dispel Magic (which targets the item, not you) could make you really exposed for 1d4 rounds.

Wowwie this got a lot of replies once I said "Batman", missed this one. A Greater Dispel check has a maximum bonus of +20, so increasing the caster level of the item to +40 would be the only way to be sure it's not getting dispelled. That would cost a lot, more than a level 20 character's total WBL. Not sure if there's any way around this. Perhaps enclosing the item in a pouch of some kind, giving it total cover? Does that work?


True Strike is a self-buff, with a range of Personal. Immunity to the divination school might make you immune to having the spell cast on you, but it does not affect their bonus to hit you.

Besides, the spell you are actually looking for is Moment of Prescience (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/momentOfPrescience.htm).

And hitting an AC of 37 is pathetically easy at these levels.

And, as you pointed out in your OP, Disjunction will still ruin your day.

Assume the mechanism of the divination spell requires knowledge of me, and since you can't divine anything about me, it doesn't work. Same for Moment of Prescience. If you disagree, that's fine, but please go with that assumption, because it's another few pages of arguments about it otherwise. How else is it pathetically easy for someone with BAB +10 and very little Dexterity to hit AC 37?

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Assume the mechanism of the divination spell requires knowledge of me, and since you can't divine anything about me, it doesn't work. Same for Moment of Prescience. If you disagree, that's fine, but please go with that assumption, because it's another few pages of arguments about it otherwise. How else is it pathetically easy for someone with BAB +10 and very little Dexterity to hit AC 37?

First off, how do you assume very little dexterity since Wizards are SAD (Single Attribute Dependent) and the most commonly used race for Wizards also has a Dex bonus?

Second off, assuming the mechanism of the divination spell requires knowledge of you is the most arbitrary and blatantly false setup I've ever heard of.

Having said that, you can pump your dex into the 30's fairly easily. Tomes, enhancement bonuses, and a high base stat starting out. Pick up a feat to get access to a domain and pick up Divine Power. Persist it, using one of several methods of mitigating or eliminating spell level increase. Now I actually have a BAB of 20 at level 20. Even with a Dex of 10, I'd have at least a chance of hitting you. Crank in the dex stacking, and I can't possibly miss you, even WITHOUT getting a +25 from MoP, save on a natural 1.

[Metahuman1]

Might I suggest making the Item a Component attached to your Core With Riverine, and made of the same stuff, to jam any attempts to take it off you or break it with anything other then a very limited list of magics?

[Baron Corm]

Second off, assuming the mechanism of the divination spell requires knowledge of you is the most arbitrary and blatantly false setup I've ever heard of.

I don't think it's any more arbitrary or blatantly false than saying things like "my character has a 30 Intelligence score, therefore it's appropriate and in character for him to have thought of anything", or, "kobolds have some characteristics of true dragons, so they are by RAW true dragons". I REALLY don't want to get into a debate about either of those, but my point is that in Batman's game, his DM rules favorably for him every time, and in my game, my DM rules favorably for me every time. It is not described how the mechanism of the spells work, or how immunity to divination spells works period, so I will see it however I want, even if it is 99% ridiculous, if there's that grain of possibility, I'm allowed to rule in favor of it. Optimizers do this in favor of magic all the time, but never against it. If these things weren't ambiguous whatsoever, we couldn't have a discussion about them, and there wouldn't be tons of threads of existing discussions about them.


Having said that, you can pump your dex into the 30's fairly easily. Tomes, enhancement bonuses, and a high base stat starting out. Pick up a feat to get access to a domain and pick up Divine Power. Persist it, using one of several methods of mitigating or eliminating spell level increase. Now I actually have a BAB of 20 at level 20. Even with a Dex of 10, I'd have at least a chance of hitting you. Crank in the dex stacking, and I can't possibly miss you, even WITHOUT getting a +25 from MoP, save on a natural 1.

Okay, my character is SAD on Charisma, with his secondary stat as Wisdom, and takes a level of unarmed swordsage. I'm poorly-versed enough on buffing touch AC that I'm probably not doing it justice, but even I can see it's not trivially easy for a wizard to hit such a character. There is also the spell ray deflection from Spell Compendium which makes you immune to rays. I don't have the chance to look it up right now but I would easily rule that "ray" applies to any ranged touch attack (and make a continuous item of it, 4th level spell). I'm not even sure how possible it is for Batman and Mailman to be contained within the same build, but I'm not as afraid of the Mailman.


Might I suggest making the Item a Component attached to your Core With Riverine, and made of the same stuff, to jam any attempts to take it off you or break it with anything other then a very limited list of magics?

That would be a very good idea. I'm thinking a neck-slot component, covered with cloth, or even some metal bolted over it (lead?) to give total cover.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Okay, my character is SAD on Charisma, with his secondary stat as Wisdom, and takes a level of unarmed swordsage. I'm poorly-versed enough on buffing touch AC that I'm probably not doing it justice, but even I can see it's not trivially easy for a wizard to hit such a character. There is also the spell ray deflection from Spell Compendium which makes you immune to rays. I don't have the chance to look it up right now but I would easily rule that "ray" applies to any ranged touch attack (and make a continuous item of it, 4th level spell). I'm not even sure how possible it is for Batman and Mailman to be contained within the same build, but I'm not as afraid of the Mailman.

You'd need two levels, actually. And the Orb series are NOT rays, so that spell wouldn't work.

Basically, what you are talking about is declaring a couple of house rules to support your point.

And it still doesn't stop Disjunction from ruining your day.

You are also talking about exploiting the custom magic item creation rules, and bypassing the restrictions on price value of non-epic items.

In other words, what you are doing is WBLomancy, a known tactic, but not even following the rules set down for it.

[Baron Corm]

You'd need two levels, actually. And the Orb series are NOT rays, so that spell wouldn't work.

Basically, what you are talking about is declaring a couple of house rules to support your point.

And it still doesn't stop Disjunction from ruining your day.

I just looked up the spell. It uses the language "including ranged touch attacks" in a general sense. This is not even close to a houserule. I was working on buffing my Will save for disjunction, but got a little sidetracked.


You are also talking about exploiting the custom magic item creation rules, and bypassing the restrictions on price value of non-epic items.

In other words, what you are doing is WBLomancy, a known tactic, but not even following the rules set down for it.

I don't think a level 20 mundane can beat a level 20 caster with no magic items, no. And I don't think they should be expected to. It's part of the game. As I said, I don't particularly need this item, or any custom item really, to become immune to almost everything Batman can do, but I do need items. Being immune to mind-affecting, death effects, blinding, having freedom of movement, true sight, and so on and so forth, can be gotten in other ways. For the purpose of this thread I'm going to assume the "spell immunity" item can be bought or found somewhere in the world, as epic items are simply called "rare" and not restricted to level 21 characters, that I can tell. It's helpful to narrow down what the remaining problem spells would be.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

It's helpful to narrow down what the remaining problem spells would be.

The fact that WBL for a 20th level character cannot afford either of the items you mentioned... They're called Epic items for a reason... you need an Epic bankbook to afford them.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Despite being in favor of DW kobolds getting cool stuff, Arcanist's thread proved pretty decisively that they don't.

And by 30 int? Yeah, you're Xanatos on a bad day.

As for AC 37...

Level 20 wizard. BAB +10. Dexterity 16 base, Gloves of Dexterity +6, Manual of Quickness of Action +4. Let's say... two Moment of Presiences cast earlier, which do work because the effect targets the caster, not your monster. And since I just cleared up the DW situation, no more excuses, for either this or the true cost of an epic item. I want you to go read those rules on epic item prices, find the relevant bits, and post them WITH CONTEXT.

As for Ray Deflection, give me the exact wording. Secondhand remarks from a poster who's heavily biased towards making his pet build work exactly as he intended... isn't the best source of information.

The burden of proof is on you, my friend.

[Mithril Leaf]

Or you could just pick up a Custom Item of Dweomer of Transference (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/spells/dweomerOfTransference.htm) and the wild talent feat. Immunity to all targeted spells isn't bad. Way better than infinite SR, and slightly cheaper, although it costs a feat.

[Baron Corm]

The fact that WBL for a 20th level character cannot afford either of the items you mentioned... They're called Epic items for a reason... you need an Epic bankbook to afford them.

20th level WBL is 760k, which is less than the amount I detailed in my first post.


Despite being in favor of DW kobolds getting cool stuff, Arcanist's thread proved pretty decisively that they don't.

And by 30 int? Yeah, you're Xanatos on a bad day.

As for AC 37...

Level 20 wizard. BAB +10. Dexterity 16 base, Gloves of Dexterity +6, Manual of Quickness of Action +4. Let's say... two Moment of Presiences cast earlier, which do work because the effect targets the caster, not your monster. And since I just cleared up the DW situation, no more excuses, for either this or the true cost of an epic item. I want you to go read those rules on epic item prices, find the relevant bits, and post them WITH CONTEXT.

As for Ray Deflection, give me the exact wording. Secondhand remarks from a poster who's heavily biased towards making his pet build work exactly as he intended... isn't the best source of information.

The burden of proof is on you, my friend.

I will agree with you that getting epic items before epic is silly. However I see nothing right now in the SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/magicItems/basics.htm) that says you can't get them if you can afford them. My point in previous posts is that the item isn't a lynchpin to my build, it just makes it easier to discuss other things I need to work on. The point of this thread was, however, to see if it was possible to get the item, so that is still relevant here. I just don't want to give up my point :smallwink:. I've already learned that the Saint template and a continuous item of ray deflection are amazingly useful things to someone who is already immune to most disabling forms of magic.

"you are protected against ranged touch attacks, including ray spells" is an exact quote from the spell text. I'm not going to copy paste the whole block because it's probably frowned upon.

Breaking News: I've just noticed what someone earlier was talking about, that the cost might be multiplied by 10. But it says some epic characteristics don't trigger this multiplier. Is it farfetched to say that a continuous item of a non epic spell would fall in that category? Everything else listed is something you could never even come by in a non-epic situation.

[ben-zayb]

As the others have already said, Disjunction would be bad news. So you might prepare for an StP Erudite.

Alternatively, you need to also be prepared for the cheese that is Dweomer Cheater Keeper. Spell Immunity is pointless against Sus.

Oh, and a walking AMF Cleric of Mystra, would like to have a word with you. :smallbiggrin: Might want to prepare for that as well.
This practically removes all your possible non-Ex (and most likely item-bought) defenses. Mind Blank? Check. Freedom of Movement? Check. True Seeing? Check. Energy Immunity? Check. Death Ward? Check. Foresight? Check. Flight? Check.


Generally Batman don't involve those (although it CAN) builds anyway, but it never hurts to be more prepared. (ironically, being prepared for any of those kind of makes you a Batman yourself) :smallbiggrin:

[Kuulvheysoon]

As for Ray Deflection, give me the exact wording. Secondhand remarks from a poster who's heavily biased towards making his pet build work exactly as he intended... isn't the best source of information.

The burden of proof is on you, my friend.

Well, I'm here, and, admittedly, I'd like to see Bane (might be an appropriate name) succeed as well, so this might be of aid. (http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-legacy-discussion/314667-rules-clarification-ray-deflection.html#post5741758)

[ben-zayb]

I'm not even sure how possible it is for Batman and Mailman to be contained within the same build, but I'm not as afraid of the Mailman

Keep in mind that while Orb mailmans inflict 5-digit damage, a good Hail of Stone mailman can just as easily break the 4-digit damage range.


Breaking News: I've just noticed what someone earlier was talking about, that the cost might be multiplied by 10. But it says some epic characteristics don't trigger this multiplier. Is it farfetched to say that a continuous item of a non epic spell would fall in that category? Everything else listed is something you could never even come by in a non-epic situation.
Let's see...
Bite of the Were-X: gives a 6+ enhancement bonus to certain Ability Scores, and a 5+ natural armor bonus to AC.
Giant Size: enlarges someone up to Colossal size, +32 size bonus to strength
Divine Agility: +10 enhancement bonus to Dex
Protection from Spells: gives a +8 resistance bonus to saves (granted, only against spells and spell-like abilities--but that's like at least 50% of the time one makes a save)
Owl's Insight: +CL/2 (+10 at CL20) insight bonus to Wisdom

Yup, doesn't ring epic to me, going by that logic. That is, Ignoring the fact that +6 is the highest enhancement bonus to ability scores, that +5 is the highest natural armor bonus to AC, and that +6 is the highest resistance bonus to saves from a non-epic item. :smallwink:

I've no problem with cheese, I ferment some of them at epic myself. It's just I prefer them be reasonable and adheres to RAW.

[Alabenson]

You'd need two levels, actually. And the Orb series are NOT rays, so that spell wouldn't work.

Basically, what you are talking about is declaring a couple of house rules to support your point.

And it still doesn't stop Disjunction from ruining your day.

You are also talking about exploiting the custom magic item creation rules, and bypassing the restrictions on price value of non-epic items.

In other words, what you are doing is WBLomancy, a known tactic, but not even following the rules set down for it.

While agree with most of your post, I should point out that the Epic Item x10 cost multiplier only kicks in for items that exceed the usual maximum number threshholds, i.e. deflection bonus higher than +5, stat bonus higher than +6, etc.
Other items with prices higher than 200k as a result of normal cost determination methods are considered epic, but don't incur the multiplier on top of the regular cost.

[Baron Corm]

As the others have already said, Disjunction would be bad news. So you might prepare for an StP Erudite.

Alternatively, you need to also be prepared for the cheese that is Dweomer Cheater Keeper. Spell Immunity is pointless against Sus.

Oh, and a walking AMF Cleric of Mystra, would like to have a word with you. :smallbiggrin: Might want to prepare for that as well.
This practically removes all your possible non-Ex (and most likely item-bought) defenses. Mind Blank? Check. Freedom of Movement? Check. True Seeing? Check. Energy Immunity? Check. Death Ward? Check. Foresight? Check. Flight? Check.


Generally Batman don't involve those (although it CAN) builds anyway, but it never hurts to be more prepared. (ironically, being prepared for any of those kind of makes you a Batman yourself) :smallbiggrin:

I probably have no counter to these, but I'll be damned if I'm not gonna try. For the first one, it comes from a web enhancement rather than an official 3.5 book, so I'm not sure how much it counts. Assuming it does, the OP becomes mostly useless against someone that takes this class. My other methods of becoming immune to non-damaging spells, which I'll put in a spoiler just because it seems like a good time for it, might be needed. This is copy-pasted from a Word document for self-reference which I compiled myself and am not presenting as factual argument, but it will give the general idea.

Divination: Spymaster 7 (CAdv), Vecna-Blooded (+1 template, requires level 2 arcane spells and being evil, minimum 4 wasted levels, MM5), or mind blank

Conjuration: Touch AC helps (divination immunity protects against true strike), banishment or antimagic field to remove summons, protection from good/evil makes you immune to their natural attacks (though their SR can bypass it)

Enchantment: Mind-affecting immunity (Third Eye Conceal, 120000 gp, permanent, MIC), Warforged Juggernaut 3 (ECS), or Occult Slayer 5 (CW)

Necromancy: Warforged Juggernaut 4 (ECS), or any construct, immunity to ability damage, death effects, and/or energy drain helps (Necropolitan, Talisman of Undying Fortitude lasts 3 rounds, swift to activate, 2/day, 8000 gp, MIC)

Transmutation: Master of Many Forms 10 (CAdv), immunity to ability damage and/or not being made of flesh (Warforged Juggernaut 5) helps, disjunction to revert polymorph, shapeshifter subtype to revert polymorph cast on you

Evocation: Improved Evasion and energy immunity help; being Large or larger, or having the Aporter property makes you immune to windowless cell forcecages; being Huge, Gargantuan, Colossal, or Fine, or having an Anklet of Translocation makes you immune to barred forcecages.

Illusion: True seeing (Scout’s Headband, 3400 gp, lasts 1 minute, MIC, or Gem of Seeing, 75000 gp, 30 minutes per day divided as you please, probably free action to activate, SRD)

Abjuration: Disjunction is the only important spell, so counterspell it, have a high Will save, or have total cover, such as from a tower shield

Raptor's Mask (3500, immune to blind and dazzle, MIC)

Scarab of Invulnerability (40000, immune to damage for 1 round as a swift action, MIC)

If you still wanted to use the item in the OP against someone with that web enhancement, you could try making them waste their Supernatural spell uses per day on decoys or lesser threats. If they aren't very careful, the tables could turn very quickly.

For the second one, I'm assuming he has no defenses of his own up, and would be much more vulnerable to my own attacks, as well. He can go first with celerity, but he'll probably have a lot of problems finding me before I find him if I pelt him with ranged attacks from a bow or throwing weapon at least 10 feet away, no? Assuming I'm immune to divinations.

"Ah you think darkness is your ally? You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but blinding!", basically.


Keep in mind that while Orb mailmans inflict 5-digit damage, a good Hail of Stone mailman can just as easily break the 4-digit damage range.

Ow, my face. If this was my only counter, I would still be happy. On the other hand, if I had some kind of regeneration... I hear Troll-Blooded and a flaw can get anyone regeneration, though resorting to Dragon Magazine would of course open me up to random web enhancements.

[ben-zayb]

Divination: Spymaster 7 (CAdv), Vecna-Blooded (+1 template, requires level 2 arcane spells and being evil, minimum 4 wasted levels, MM5), or mind blank

Conjuration: Touch AC helps (divination immunity protects against true strike), banishment or antimagic field to remove summons, protection from good/evil makes you immune to their natural attacks (though their SR can bypass it)

Enchantment: Mind-affecting immunity (Third Eye Conceal, 120000 gp, permanent, MIC), Warforged Juggernaut 3 (ECS), or Occult Slayer 5 (CW)

Necromancy: Warforged Juggernaut 4 (ECS), or any construct, immunity to ability damage, death effects, and/or energy drain helps (Necropolitan, Talisman of Undying Fortitude lasts 3 rounds, swift to activate, 2/day, 8000 gp, MIC)

Transmutation: Master of Many Forms 10 (CAdv), immunity to ability damage and/or not being made of flesh (Warforged Juggernaut 5) helps, disjunction to revert polymorph, shapeshifter subtype to revert polymorph cast on you

Evocation: Improved Evasion and energy immunity help; being Large or larger, or having the Aporter property makes you immune to windowless cell forcecages; being Huge, Gargantuan, Colossal, or Fine, or having an Anklet of Translocation makes you immune to barred forcecages.

Illusion: True seeing (Scout’s Headband, 3400 gp, lasts 1 minute, MIC, or Gem of Seeing, 75000 gp, 30 minutes per day divided as you please, probably free action to activate, SRD)

Abjuration: Disjunction is the only important spell, so counterspell it, have a high Will save, or have total cover, such as from a tower shield

Raptor's Mask (3500, immune to blind and dazzle, MIC)

Scarab of Invulnerability (40000, immune to damage for 1 round as a swift action, MIC)

If you still wanted to use the item in the OP against someone with that web enhancement, you could try making them waste their Supernatural spell uses per day on decoys or lesser threats. If they aren't very careful, the tables could turn very quickly.

For the second one, I'm assuming he has no defenses of his own up, and would be much more vulnerable to my own attacks, as well. He can go first with celerity, but he'll probably have a lot of problems finding me before I find him if I pelt him with ranged attacks from a bow or throwing weapon at least 10 feet away, no? Assuming I'm immune to divinations.

"Ah you think darkness is your ally? You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but blinding!", basically.

The thing is, for every item/feat/template/race in your arsenal, he will have an item of equivalent potency as well. The difference between you and him is that he is Batman and you most likely aren't.

As for the cheater of mystraWhy the assumption? He's a cleric. He's a buffer, probably one with the most diverse buffs as well. He's buffed to the bone, probably more than you could ever hope for... probably better than you are buffed. WBL can only get one so far.

He has AMF, ergo he has 101 ways to not get hit. Spells normally don't work in an AMF. That means your dispels (save disjunction) don't work either. Heck, going by your description he'll just need forceward and shapechange to an incorporeal swarm (zeitgeist?) and call it a day--and that's him on a not-paranoid day.

TL;DR: Someone who wants a degree of batman immunity are better of being Cleric of Mystra. They are better protected.


There are many ways to detect mundane hide, not to mention darkstalker not even bypassing touchsight/mindsight/lifesense RAW. And clerics are good counterspellers as well, just so you know.

See, it's becoming a schrodinger's battle now. Practically speaking, it would be weird if one made a character exactly to beat this character.

Going by the OP: Does Golem Immunity Make Me Immune to Spells? Yes, for those that allow SR.
Does Golem Immunity slapped with bajillions of templates/feats/race/ACFs/magic items make me immune to spells? Maybe, up to 99.99% of the time.

I just remembered, one could argue that Factotum's Cunning Breach is a negative infinity debuff, compared to Spell Immunity's infinite SR buff. (or factotum multiplies SR by 0, and Spell Immunity multiplies SR by infinity)

Ulitimately, if I were the DM, I'd check on the character's INT score first to see if he is capable of doing these things IC-wise.

[Psyren]

Dispel Magic targeting your Golem Immunity gizmo will suppress its protection for 1d4 rounds as well. DM is SR: No.

[Baron Corm]

Why the assumption? He's a cleric. He's a buffer, probably one with the most diverse buffs as well. He's buffed to the bone, probably more than you could ever hope for... probably better than you are buffed. WBL can only get one so far.

He has AMF, ergo he has 101 ways to not get hit. Spells normally don't work in an AMF. That means your dispels (save disjunction) don't work either. Heck, going by your description he'll just need forceward and shapechange to an incorporeal swarm (zeitgeist?) and call it a day--and that's him on a not-paranoid day.

TL;DR: Someone who wants a degree of batman immunity are better of being Cleric of Mystra. They are better protected.

I'm basing this on the assumption that buffs continue to not work in his AMF. He can cast spells in them, sure, but anything "persistent" that he tries to have up should still be winked out. With those gone, I have an advantage in that I've spent most of my class levels and feats on being good with regular ole weapons.

Aside from that, if this guy is actually a cleric, he's not as much my concern, but being decent against him is nice.


There are many ways to detect mundane hide, not to mention darkstalker not even bypassing touchsight/mindsight/lifesense RAW. And clerics are good counterspellers as well, just so you know.

How many of those are Supernatural or psionic and thus don't work in an AMF, assuming magic/psionic transparency?


I just remembered, one could argue that Factotum's Cunning Breach is a negative infinity debuff, compared to Spell Immunity's infinite SR buff. (or factotum multiplies SR by 0, and Spell Immunity multiplies SR by infinity)

I just googled it, and came across this thread on GitP where someone had a rebuttal: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10889839&postcount=144. I haven't seen the actual ability text myself, yet.


Ulitimately, if I were the DM, I'd check on the character's INT score first to see if he is capable of doing these things IC-wise.

I would never play a Troll-Blooded warforged juggernaut Saint with a cohort crafting custom magic items of golem immunity, ray deflection, and mind blank in an actual game. A warforged juggernaut with various reasonable, non-custom magic items, mostly from the MIC or SRD, which make me immune to most magic anyway, sure. A standard batman wizard has a tough time with even that, and it could be used as an example of how to take one down a peg. Once he pulls out his various high-op tricks, I can pull out mine.

[ericgrau]

I'd say a way to teleport is essential, preferably as a swift, move or immediate rather than trading actions every round with standards. Most control casters I make use mainly no save no SR spells to divide and conquer; they aren't some rare backup consideration. Web (delays you even if you pass the save), haste, solid fog, wall of force, reverse gravity for example. Buffs like haste mean you still need to be able to fight well like anyone else and/or dispel. Cheesier mages will polymorph the fighter with an OP form from some poorly written monster manual.

OTOH you might be going for 1v1 fights, but that has nothing to do with the "batman" caster. He is after all an over glorified support caster who requires a party. One good for duels is something else.

[Baron Corm]

Dispel Magic targeting your Golem Immunity gizmo will suppress its protection for 1d4 rounds as well. DM is SR: No.

I understand it's a long thread full of long-winded posts, so I'm guessing you haven't read all of it. In a previous post I mentioned covering up the "gizmo" with something to give it total cover. Does this work?


I'd say a way to teleport is essential, preferably as a swift, move or immediate rather than trading actions every round with standards. Most control casters I make use mainly no save no SR spells to divide and conquer; they aren't some rare backup consideration. Web (delays you even if you pass the save), haste, solid fog, wall of force, reverse gravity for example. Buffs like haste mean you still need to be able to fight well like anyone else and/or dispel. Cheesier mages will polymorph the fighter with an OP form from some poorly written monster manual.

OTOH you might be going for 1v1 fights, but that has nothing to do with the "batman" caster. He is after all an over glorified support caster who requires a party. One good for duels is something else.

Making Batman into a useless member of a party is easier with the miscellaneous items than with the golem immunity item. That one is more for the 1v1s, where slowing me down without hurting me doesn't really affect me. Teleportation and freedom of movement take care of most methods of slowing me down or stopping me, and are relatively cheap magic items. See also the spoiler in my previous post for the rest of the items I would use. Polymorph can be defeated with disjunction and antimagic fields, like any other buff. You might say "you need to mimic a wizard to beat a wizard", but I'll say, "you needed to mimic a fighter to beat a fighter". I have not gone over polymorph lists carefully, but each monster probably has its own weakness as well. How do they hold up to common optimized melee builds?

This still applies mostly to arena battles, or when the BBEG is a powerful wizard, which I believe is where a lot of the "tiers" and "unfairness" chat comes from. A fighter supposedly cannot do anything against this BBEG, while his friend the wizard handles it while sitting inside his demiplane sipping tea (see also: githyanki silver sword).

When simply fighting common monsters, I don't think any of this is an issue, as taking 1000000 damage from an ubercharger is equally as useful as any disabling would be, and even takes things a step further in ending the encounter.

[Psyren]

I understand it's a long thread full of long-winded posts, so I'm guessing you haven't read all of it. In a previous post I mentioned covering up the "gizmo" with something to give it total cover. Does this work?

So it's an unslotted item? That would be... pretty prohibitively expensive, but if they can't see it they can't target it, yeah.

[Baron Corm]

So it's an unslotted item? That would be... pretty prohibitively expensive, but if they can't see it they can't target it, yeah.

Warforged component around his neck area, with a cloth or bolted-on slab of metal covering it.

[mattie_p]

Line of Effect (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/spellDescriptions.htm#lineofEffect) works both ways. If it is a solid barrier that protects the item from being dispelled/disjoined, then it is a solid barrier that prevents the emanating benefit to you from working.

EDIT: internal component works, I suppose. I was thinking you keep this in a sack or something. Disregard.

[ericgrau]

Making Batman into a useless member of a party is easier with the miscellaneous items than with the golem immunity item. That one is more for the 1v1s, where slowing me down without hurting me doesn't really affect me. Teleportation and freedom of movement take care of most methods of slowing me down or stopping me, and are relatively cheap magic items. See also the spoiler in my previous post for the rest of the items I would use. Polymorph can be defeated with disjunction and antimagic fields, like any other buff. You might say "you need to mimic a wizard to beat a wizard", but I'll say, "you needed to mimic a fighter to beat a fighter". I have not gone over polymorph lists carefully, but each monster probably has its own weakness as well. How do they hold up to common optimized melee builds?

Ya teleportation is cheap enough as long as you remember it and budget for it, which is easier at high levels than low. The other issue is coordinating and making sure your entire party has the same crowd control immunities, since if you're free and your party isn't then you're in exactly the same boat: divided. At lower levels budget becomes an issue. Even if you can afford a few k for a defense you can't afford every few k defense and you gotta prioritize. At high levels you can grab UMD or a dip plus an expensive staff and practically be a full caster yourself.

Polymorph cheese generally provides big stats, reach and grapple. Grapple is covered, you just need to get past the attack of opportunity and AC to million damage cheese it into oblivion. Swift action teleport can also help there. For hitting the typical cheese method is UMD/custom-item wraithstrike for touch attacks. Or just disjunction the foe ya.

For 1v1 I think it's a matter of finding other builds and meticulously going through every trick they use.

[Baron Corm]

Ya teleportation is cheap enough as long as you remember it and budget for it, which is easier at high levels than low. The other issue is coordinating and making sure your entire party has the same crowd control immunities, since if you're free and your party isn't then you're in exactly the same boat: divided. At lower levels budget becomes an issue. Even if you can afford a few k for a defense you can't afford every few k defense and you gotta prioritize. At high levels you can grab UMD or a dip plus an expensive staff and practically be a full caster yourself.

This is all true, and I'm not sure exactly what the best class is at a low level, but I do believe that meleers are generally stronger in those levels, as they can one- or two-shot most things, all day, and casters only have a few spells per day.

As food for thought, now that a bunch of things have been taken care of, I figured I would give my logic for Divination immunity bypassing moment of prescience. If it can be explicitly disproved, I will agree with you (you being whoever is still around to disagree, if any :smalltongue:), but if it's even slightly ambiguous, I'll have to agree to disagree, and say that whoever has the more favorable DM is right. My goal is not to explicitly prove you wrong either, as I don't believe the answer is printed anywhere. It is simply to prove that an argument exists, and I don't deserve to be called ridiculous.

- Spymaster 7 gives you a fake persona which is detected when any Divination spell is used on you.
- Mind blank protects against all information-gathering divination spells and effects, and goes on to say that scrying targeted on you simply fails. I believe Vecna-Blooded works in a similar way to mind blank.
- Moment of prescience is a divination spell with a range of Personal, that grants you "a powerful sixth sense in relation to yourself".
- I take this to mean that when you attack someone and use moment of prescience, you gain a sixth sense (information-gathering effect) about where I will be in the near future, allowing you to place your blow perfectly.
- Therefore, as a spymaster, you detect where my persona will be in the near future, which is meaningless with regards to my actual self.
- With mind blank activated, you are simply unable to discern where I will be.
- If moment of prescience was not an information-gathering effect and simply enhanced your own ability to attack, it would not be a divination spell, or say that it grants you a sixth sense. You would be sensing nothing, merely having improved in skill.
- "An insight bonus improves performance of a given activity by granting the character an almost precognitive knowledge of what might occur." The bonus you gain is an insight bonus, and this coincides with my interpretation of what is happening.

[ben-zayb]

I'm basing this on the assumption that buffs continue to not work in his AMF. He can cast spells in them, sure, but anything "persistent" that he tries to have up should still be winked out.
If this check is successful, your spell functions normally.Emphasis mine. So if you have a 1 round/level duration, and your DM had it only last for 1 round--with no reason (not even a DM fiat) other than him thinking that what he did was RAW normal--then sure, 1 round in an AMF it is!

How many of those are Supernatural or psionic and thus don't work in an AMF, assuming magic/psionic transparencyBy RAW? Only touchsight is explicitly defined as a psionic power, and will not work on an AMF. Lifesense doesn't require anything except for the user's ability score requirements. The Mindsight feat requires telepathy (it still has inside an AMF, only suppresed), but the effect explicitly does not (it has a parameter based on telepathy's range, but does not explicitly says that it needs telepathy itself to be functional) Outrageous and silly, I know, but that's RAW for you. :smalltongue:

I just googled it, and came across this thread on GitP where someone had a rebuttal.Another person's mere interpretation (if it's not Errata, nor even Sage/FAQ) is just as good as yours or mine, unfortunately.

I would never play a Troll-Blooded warforged juggernaut Saint with a cohort crafting custom magic items of golem immunity, ray deflection, and mind blank in an actual game... And I am not arguing against that. Heck, I don't even know why you would try to beat someone you most likely wouldn't personally encounter (Batman wizard). But you're missing my point there. Does your character have enough foresight and intelligence to know what he's up against? Does he even know what the names of items/spells he is going to buy / he is up against?
[QUOTE]If it can be explicitly disproved, I will agree with you (you being whoever is still around to disagree, if any :smalltongue:), but if it's even slightly ambiguous, I'll have to agree to disagree, and say that whoever has the more favorable DM is right.[QUOTE]Unfortunately, the burden of proof is yours. The same reason that in the real world, the ex-(I guess that's forbidden to discuss. I'll stop right there). I won't argue on your interpretation of that however, since my Divination understanding is pretty bad myself. :smallbiggrin:

Again, I will reiterate my point. Making a build to make you immune to most spells will (sorry for the redundancy) indeed make you immune to most spells.
Using Golem Immunity alone will not cut it, however. (saying "Does this..." seemed to be asking for that)

With that, I rest my case and just grab a popcorn. :smallcool:

[Augmental]

Assume the mechanism of the divination spell requires knowledge of me, and since you can't divine anything about me, it doesn't work. Same for Moment of Prescience. If you disagree, that's fine, but please go with that assumption, because it's another few pages of arguments about it otherwise.

Why not just cut out the middleman and tell everyone that your build is completely immune to everything a Batman wizard can do and not to argue about that point?

[Kelb_Panthera]

Disclaimer: I haven't read this discussion post-for-post.

Two things I think bear saying here.

1) Somebody got a batman and god wizard confused. Batman wizard is the one who has a solution to every problem. God is the one that buffs his party into orbit then sits back and watches the fireworks, with a little BFC thrown in for good measure.

2) There's a reason that the build is compared to batman. Just like the DC superhero, a batman wizard is simply unbeatable unless you, somehow, catch him completely unawares, which is a near impossibility, especially with divination being available. Pretty much the only thing that can neutralize a batman wizard is another batman wizard. Though a joker bard can irritate him to no end.

It's an unfortunate truth that, at the highest level of optimization, the T1's are nigh unstoppable by anything that isn't another T1.

Edit: Even if you somehow manage to become completely immune to every spell ever, batman just buffs himself into a better fighter than you and kicks your butt the old-fashioned way.

[Baron Corm]

Emphasis mine. So if you have a 1 round/level duration, and your DM had it only last for 1 round--with no reason (not even a DM fiat) other than him thinking that what he did was RAW normal--then sure, 1 round in an AMF it is!

It functions as normal, then is instantly winked about by being within the radius of an antimagic field. I don't understand how you can have the following idea about how Mindsight works, then be so adamant about how this works, and consider both to be explicit RAW. If the feat's wording happens to make it barely do anything at all, is it broken in that way, or in the way that lets a spellcaster easily bypass an antimagic field? That's simply for each person to decide.


Does your character have enough foresight and intelligence to know what he's up against? Does he even know what the names of items/spells he is going to buy / he is up against?

There is nothing in the rules that states how much Intelligence you need to buy certain items. 12 might be enough. 3 might be enough, if you write a good enough mage-hating backstory.


Again, I will reiterate my point. Making a build to make you immune to most spells will (sorry for the redundancy) indeed make you immune to most spells.
Using Golem Immunity alone will not cut it, however. (saying "Does this..." seemed to be asking for that)

With that, I rest my case and just grab a popcorn. :smallcool:

Workin' on it! I feel moderately successful in it, even if it wasn't the original intention of the thread. I was going to continue refining my Word document in secret until I had gotten things well laid out. But this is working much faster, so maybe it's a good thing.


Why not just cut out the middleman and tell everyone that your build is completely immune to everything a Batman wizard can do and not to argue about that point?

Read the thread please. If you do, you will find that I did, indeed have reasoning for those words, and said them to lead the discussion to more important things, defeating things I didn't know existed yet, or how to defeat them. A few posts up, I've revisited the issue with more detail.


There's a reason that the build is compared to batman. Just like the DC superhero, a batman wizard is simply unbeatable unless you, somehow, catch him completely unawares, which is a near impossibility, especially with divination being available. Pretty much the only thing that can neutralize a batman wizard is another batman wizard. Though a joker bard can irritate him to no end.

Divination is unavailable, with the right build. There's no reason a Bane character couldn't do similar things that a Joker character does, hurting the Batman's friends while he can only look on helplessly, or using elaborate schemes to make Batman waste his spells per day, before finally meeting him at the Batcave and breaking his back (or cutting his astral cord, as it were). The difference between the Joker and Bane being, Bane is actually capable of fighting Batman if it came down to it.

These metaphors are really fun, after watching TDKR.


It's an unfortunate truth that, at the highest level of optimization, the T1's are nigh unstoppable by anything that isn't another T1.

Edit: Even if you somehow manage to become completely immune to every spell ever, batman just buffs himself into a better fighter than you and kicks your butt the old-fashioned way.

I've made progress in many other areas, so I would be genuinely interested to know how the wizard accomplishes this, without spending his feats on Robilar's Gambit, Shock Trooper, and whatnot. I'm assuming they're spent on metamagic and stuff. What specifically beats an optimized meleer?

Keep in mind also that if the wizard wants to play fighter, I can play wizard and use disjunction or antimagic field on him to dispel all of those buffs, either from a UMD'd scroll, a cohort (though if we both use a cohort, it might arrive at a stalemate), or maybe a custom magic item. Having only 1 use per day divides the total cost by 5, and I shouldn't need more than that to beat him up. The scroll is cheapest of them all, but wouldn't work with every martial build.

[Augmental]

Read the thread please. If you do, you will find that I did, indeed have reasoning for those words, and said them to lead the discussion to more important things, defeating things I didn't know existed yet, or how to defeat them. A few posts up, I've revisited the issue with more detail.

This is all I found:


I don't think it's any more arbitrary or blatantly false than saying things like "my character has a 30 Intelligence score, therefore it's appropriate and in character for him to have thought of anything", or, "kobolds have some characteristics of true dragons, so they are by RAW true dragons". I REALLY don't want to get into a debate about either of those, but my point is that in Batman's game, his DM rules favorably for him every time, and in my game, my DM rules favorably for me every time. It is not described how the mechanism of the spells work, or how immunity to divination spells works period, so I will see it however I want, even if it is 99% ridiculous, if there's that grain of possibility, I'm allowed to rule in favor of it. Optimizers do this in favor of magic all the time, but never against it. If these things weren't ambiguous whatsoever, we couldn't have a discussion about them, and there wouldn't be tons of threads of existing discussions about them.

To that, I respond - so what if your DM rules favorably for you every time? This is Theoretical Optimization, it's usually assumed that there isn't a DM when doing Theoretical Optimization. And besides, there's also a grain of possibility that your always-lenient DM would give your character +infinity to everything and every spell ever at-will as a free action. You aren't assuming that.

[Baron Corm]

Two posts above the one where you made your first comment. Repasting it as a spoiler so as to not add length to the page.

- Spymaster 7 gives you a fake persona which is detected when any Divination spell is used on you.
- Mind blank protects against all information-gathering divination spells and effects, and goes on to say that scrying targeted on you simply fails. I believe Vecna-Blooded works in a similar way to mind blank.
- Moment of prescience is a divination spell with a range of Personal, that grants you "a powerful sixth sense in relation to yourself".
- I take this to mean that when you attack someone and use moment of prescience, you gain a sixth sense (information-gathering effect) about where I will be in the near future, allowing you to place your blow perfectly.
- Therefore, as a spymaster, you detect where my persona will be in the near future, which is meaningless with regards to my actual self.
- With mind blank activated, you are simply unable to discern where I will be.
- If moment of prescience was not an information-gathering effect and simply enhanced your own ability to attack, it would not be a divination spell, or say that it grants you a sixth sense. You would be sensing nothing, merely having improved in skill.
- "An insight bonus improves performance of a given activity by granting the character an almost precognitive knowledge of what might occur." The bonus you gain is an insight bonus, and this coincides with my interpretation of what is happening.

[Kelb_Panthera]

It functions as normal, then is instantly winked about by being within the radius of an antimagic field. I don't understand how you can have the following idea about how Mindsight works, then be so adamant about how this works, and consider both to be explicit RAW. It seems to me you're just one of those who easily finds in favor of spellcasters. The feat could be ruled either way. It is EXTRAORDINARILY cheesey to begin with, so I will use as favorable an interpretation as I like.



There is nothing in the rules that states how much Intelligence you need to buy certain items. 12 might be enough. 3 might be enough, if you write a good enough mage-hating backstory.



Workin' on it! I feel moderately successful in it, even if it wasn't the original intention of the thread. I was going to continue refining my Word document in secret until I had gotten things well laid out. But this is working much faster, so maybe it's a good thing.



Read the thread please. If you do, you will find that I did, indeed have reasoning for those words, and said them to lead the discussion to more important things, defeating things I didn't know existed yet, or how to defeat them. A few posts up, I've revisited the issue with more detail.



Divination is unavailable, with the right build. There's no reason a Bane character couldn't do similar things that a Joker character does, hurting the Batman's friends while he can only look on helplessly, or using elaborate schemes to make Batman waste his spells per day, before finally meeting him at the Batcave and breaking his back (or cutting his astral cord, as it were). The difference between the Joker and Bane being, Bane is actually capable of fighting Batman if it came down to it.

These metaphors are really fun, after watching TDKR.



I've made progress in many other areas, so I would be genuinely interested to know how the wizard accomplishes this, without spending his feats on Robilar's Gambit, Shock Trooper, and whatnot. I'm assuming they're spent on metamagic and stuff. What specifically beats an optimized meleer?

Keep in mind also that if the wizard wants to play fighter, I can play wizard and use disjunction or antimagic field on him to dispel all of those buffs, either from a UMD'd scroll, a cohort (though if we both use a cohort, it might arrive at a stalemate), or maybe a custom magic item. Having only 1 use per day divides the total cost by 5, and I shouldn't need more than that to beat him up. The scroll is cheapest of them all, but wouldn't work with every martial build.

There's a big flaw in your "I play the wizard" counter. Batman, being an actual wizard, counterspells your amf or dijunction as you cast it, if it's from a scroll. If you produce it by, yet another, prohibitively expensive item, he hits the item with a targeted dispel magic, or has the sneaky-type minion he called with planar binding, sleight-of-hand it away from you. Sometimes minionmancy is the correct solution after all. Come to think of it, skill boosting is trivial enough he could sleight-of-hand your disjoiner or amf device away from you himself. He won the initiative after all. Also, called bruiser type beats you up for him. Can your warforged warrior call minions without spending even more of his limited WBL? Haggling with the called outsider doesn't necessarily have to involve gold after all, but casting spells from expendables or buying more magic items adds up quick. Besides, how did you even get to batman in the first place? Dropping an astral projection only takes 1 action. An action he would've taken as soon as he saw that silver sword. Hell, even if you do kill him, there's a clone in a vat in that demiplane with him just waiting to wake up, or he cast contingency to limited wish himself back to life a week or two ago. No divination is necessary if he's seen you fight once before.

An artificer might be able to afford everything needed to go toe-to-toe with batman, but he's paying less than half-price to craft everything himself. Either iteration of CoDzilla could take him with a bit of luck. StP Erudite is batman 2.0. Warforged fighter that's immune to magic and can't do much else? Not so much.

Don't get me wrong, I wish there were a way for mundanes to compete at that level, but the system just doesn't allow it.

[Baron Corm]

There's a big flaw in your "I play the wizard" counter. Batman, being an actual wizard, counterspells your amf or dijunction as you cast it, if it's from a scroll. If you produce it by, yet another, prohibitively expensive item, he hits the item with a targeted dispel magic, or has the sneaky-type minion he called with planar binding, sleight-of-hand it away from you. Sometimes minionmancy is the correct solution after all. Come to think of it, skill boosting is trivial enough he could sleight-of-hand your disjoiner or amf device away from you himself. He won the initiative after all. Also, called bruiser type beats you up for him. Can your warforged warrior call minions without spending even more of his limited WBL? Haggling with the called outsider doesn't necessarily have to involve gold after all, but casting spells from expendables or buying more magic items adds up quick. Besides, how did you even get to batman in the first place? Dropping an astral projection only takes 1 action. An action he would've taken as soon as he saw that silver sword. Hell, even if you do kill him, there's a clone in a vat in that demiplane with him just waiting to wake up, or he cast contingency to limited wish himself back to life a week or two ago. No divination is necessary if he's seen you fight once before.

A 1/day warforged component item of antimagic field covered with lead costs about 80,000 gp and solves most of the problems you just mentioned. Summoned creatures wink out if they enter an antimagic field. If I reduce the wizard to living within his demiplane and not being able to affect this world, or else I find him and kill him, I consider it a victory.

There is a prestige class called Silver Key which can enter demiplanes and end the problem once and for all, but it requires significant levels, and would be only for a specialized mage-hunter build. Disjunction gets rid of contingencies, and you can't counterspell it if I catch you unaware. If you find a way to counterspell while flatfooted, read the next part.


Don't get me wrong, I wish there were a way for mundanes to compete at that level, but the system just doesn't allow it.

Where there's a will, there's a way. My main interest is in a change of attitude, where wizards acknowledge that maybe the fighter can end an encounter faster than he can depending on the situation, and maybe he will have as tough of a time dealing with a prepared fighter as a fighter would dealing with a prepared him, and maybe his cheese options are equally delicious. Maybe not more, but equally. Best summarized as, "fighters can play rocket tag too".

I have to go to sleep like two hours ago, so this will be my last post for the night, but I'll come back tomorrow.

[Augmental]

A 1/day warforged component item of antimagic field covered with lead costs about 80,000 gp and solves most of the problems you just mentioned. Summoned creatures wink out if they enter an antimagic field. If I reduce the wizard to living within his demiplane and not being able to affect this world, or else I find him and kill him, I consider it a victory.

The "once per day" part is a rather large problem. The wizard could just use Invoke Magic, Dimension Door out of range, and Plane Shift back to his private demiplane. If your warforged somehow finds a way to get to the wizard's demiplane while still having his antimagic field up, out come the rust monsters.

[Kelb_Panthera]

A 1/day warforged component item of antimagic field covered with lead costs about 80,000 gp and solves most of the problems you just mentioned. Summoned creatures wink out if they enter an antimagic field. If I reduce the wizard to living within his demiplane and not being able to affect this world, or else I find him and kill him, I consider it a victory.

There is a prestige class called Silver Key which can enter demiplanes and end the problem once and for all, but it requires significant levels, and would be only for a specialized mage-hunter build. Disjunction gets rid of contingencies, and you can't counterspell it if I catch you unaware. If you find a way to counterspell while flatfooted, read the next part.



Where there's a will, there's a way. My main interest is in a change of attitude, where wizards acknowledge that maybe the fighter can end an encounter faster than he can depending on the situation, and maybe he will have as tough of a time dealing with a prepared fighter as a fighter would dealing with a prepared him, and maybe his cheese options are equally delicious. Maybe not more, but equally. Best summarized as, "fighters can play rocket tag too".

I have to go to sleep like two hours ago, so this will be my last post for the night, but I'll come back tomorrow.

I didn't say summoned, I said called. Huge difference. AMF doesn't do crap against a called outsider, except what it does to any creature with su abilities. If the outsider could take you naked, without resorting to his su and sp abilities. That's exactly what he's gonna do inside your amf, since it shuts your magic items down too. Even if your Amf lets you catch him, just this once, he comes right back to life, creates a new astral projection and planeshift/teleports it right back to where you just fought. Your AMF for the day is used up, and he's fresh and ready to go. AMF isn't really all that great. 10ft isn't a lot of distance even in tactical situations.

You didn't disjoin that contingent, "I come right back" because that's nowhere near your disjunction. That contingent is on his actual person in his little demiplane hideaway. Even if it was, there's the clone.

An extremely prep'ed fighter whose sole goal for existence is to destroy a batman wizard, will annoy the devil out of batman, but he won't kill him. With some luck, he'll manage to force a withdrawal, and that's it. Batman will come back and kill him for the annoyance.

As for your notion that divinations don't work because you're immune to divination. I'm sorry, your logic doesn't hold. Maybe that insight isn't about where you're swinging, maybe it's simply awareness of where it's about to hurt for no forseeable reason. If he can forsee the effect, there's no need to forsee the cause. Likewise, truestrike doesn't need to involve you either. He's simply forseeing whether or not his spell will stop or keep going if he aims it just so, or which way he swings his sword will catch the most resistance. Immunity to divination means that divinations that target you auto-fail, not that all divinations in your general vicinity fail.

Edit: found it. A wizard can out feat a fighter thanks to the Sorc/Wiz 2 spell, heroics. Each casting gets you a fighter bonus feat, and it lasts 10min/rnd.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Furthermore, you have still not addressed how you are actually going to affect said wizard while he is Astral Projecting from his Genesis Demiplane.

Yanno, without declaring yourself the owner of an Artifact, the possession thereof making you the instant top listing of the hit parade for two entire races and an entire dimension's worth of inhabitants.

Bane can affect Batman. You... can't. Even if you make yourself immune to everything he does, every last trick he has, yea even that one... you still have no method by which you can effectively counter-attack.

[ben-zayb]

I won't add anything of value in this discussion anymore. I, however, have a proposition. Someone make a generic Batman Wizard, while Baron Corm makes his however-you-want-to-build Warforged Fighter. Then someone make a thread in the PbP section, and let the results speak for themselves.

Baron Corm can retry it as many times as he wants, possibly against a different playgrounder each time. And it's actually a good suggestion, he'd have a good sampling size based on these fights. Heck, he may even be allowed to tweak his build per different opponent.

If the Batman Wiz is feeling lucky he may restrict himself to certain sources, too. Then, the Warforged Fighter may use even some obscure 3.5 sources with DM approval as long as it is official.

You see, this game of Schrodinger's fighter and Schrodinger's wizard has got to stop somewhere. I've already seen gazillions of claim that an optimized Fighter 20 can beat an optimized Batman Wizard 20 (or Wizard 13?) that I might've already died of liver complications had I taken a shot of tequila per thread (GiTP, and other forums).

I'm not saying that it's impossible, but as much as I want to see Batman being Superman's personal pincushion in this universe (D&D3.5), I'm yet to see a fighter(nay, a fighter/x# of dips/y# of prc) actually pull it off. Not even an optimized warlock could outplay a batman. *Sighs*

So, any takers? Willing DMs? Willing challengers?

[Drglenn]

*cough*Forcecage (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/forcecage.htm)*cough*

[Wings of Peace]

Short Answer: Yes.

Long Answer: No, but if you use it in parallel with Dweomer of Transference you're immune to around 95% of published spells.

Ostensibly Longer Answer: Save yourself some gold and just build The Twice-Betrayer of Shar (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19871166/New_Build_and_Challenge:_The_Twice-Betrayer_of_Shar).

[ShneekeyTheLost]

*cough*Forcecage (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/forcecage.htm)*cough*

If he's assuming a budget big enough for multiple custom magic items costing 450k+... He's not going to blink at this (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/rods.htm#cancellation) baby for only 11k.

[Zale]

I won't add anything of value in this discussion anymore. I, however, have a proposition. Someone make a generic Batman Wizard, while Baron Corm makes his however-you-want-to-build Warforged Fighter. Then someone make a thread in the PbP section, and let the results speak for themselves.

Baron Corm can retry it as many times as he wants, possibly against a different playgrounder each time. And it's actually a good suggestion, he'd have a good sampling size based on these fights. Heck, he may even be allowed to tweak his build per different opponent.

If the Batman Wiz is feeling lucky he may restrict himself to certain sources, too. Then, the Warforged Fighter may use even some obscure 3.5 sources with DM approval as long as it is official.

You see, this game of Schrodinger's fighter and Schrodinger's wizard has got to stop somewhere. I've already seen gazillions of claim that an optimized Fighter 20 can beat an optimized Batman Wizard 20 (or Wizard 13?) that I might've already died of liver complications had I taken a shot of tequila per thread (GiTP, and other forums).

I'm not saying that it's impossible, but as much as I want to see Batman being Superman's personal pincushion in this universe (D&D3.5), I'm yet to see a fighter(nay, a fighter/x# of dips/y# of prc) actually pull it off. Not even an optimized warlock could outplay a batman. *Sighs*

So, any takers? Willing DMs? Willing challengers?


I'd like to see that. Not any good at optimizing myself, however. Nice to watch.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Furthermore, you have still not addressed how you are actually going to affect said wizard while he is Astral Projecting from his Genesis Demiplane.

Yanno, without declaring yourself the owner of an Artifact, the possession thereof making you the instant top listing of the hit parade for two entire races and an entire dimension's worth of inhabitants.

Bane can affect Batman. You... can't. Even if you make yourself immune to everything he does, every last trick he has, yea even that one... you still have no method by which you can effectively counter-attack.

As of XPH the silver swords are no longer artifacts, if they ever were. Githyanki -are- quite loathe to part with them however.

[Baron Corm]

Short Answer: Yes.

Long Answer: No, but if you use it in parallel with Dweomer of Transference you're immune to around 95% of published spells.

Ostensibly Longer Answer: Save yourself some gold and just build The Twice-Betrayer of Shar (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19871166/New_Build_and_Challenge:_The_Twice-Betrayer_of_Shar).

LordofProcrastination is a good man in that he recognizes that everything has a counter. He mentions certain banned things that shouldn't be used against that build. Even Pun-Pun has counters, and I'm sure those do too.

I went to sleep at 3 am last night providing rebuttals to this thread, which has been quite derailed from its original purpose, so instead of taking this to an arena, I'm going to leave with a closing statement. Whether or not you believe it, I believe I've promoted at least some awareness of its truth, and awareness is half the battle! I don't have the time for anything else right now, but I will be sure to come back at a later date, if it's still needed.

My statement is this. Anything, at any level of optimization, can be countered if you try hard enough. When you tear away bias, you can find the solution. Whoever you want to win will win. At the apex of this discussion, our fighter and wizard could be locked in a battle of immortals, with the fighter constantly regenerating, and the wizard constantly respawning. Either side could likely provide answers to even these things, and escalate it further. All I want is for this to be seen, so that the opinion often touted as fact that "wizards are unbeatable" is changed to "any character is unbeatable with enough optimization". And for wizard proponents to be slightly more humble. That is all.

[Kelb_Panthera]

You're right, everything does have a counter. Unfortunately the counter to Batman is another batman.

Just as it's true that everything has a counter, it's also true that the only counter to T1's is other T1's. It's not bias. It's poor editing and game design.

[Psyren]

As of XPH the silver swords are no longer artifacts, if they ever were. Githyanki -are- quite loathe to part with them however.

As a matter of fact, they can even be created, which means they can be Wished for. The stats/prices for Silver Swords are given in MotP. (Only +5 vorpal Silver Swords are considered artifacts.)

But there's a few problems with this nonetheless:

1) The cord can only be attacked at the distance before which it fades into the background essence of the Astral, i.e. 5 feet behind the traveler. This means you have to get almost within melee range of the wizard/cleric to hit his cord. The book mentions that doing this draws an AoO from the traveler, but I would think being within 5 feet of a wizard capable of Astral Projection is likely to have more serious implications.

2) If you damage the cord without destroying it, the wizard needs to make a fort save or be instantly (and harmlessly) returned to his body. Since you can voluntarily fail saves, that means that the wizard can leap back to his body perfectly safely if you fail to sever the cord in one hit, even if he is outmatched.

[Snowbluff]

As far as damage dealing spells, you're biggest threats are probably the orb line, which are not only SR no, which means you're still vulnerable to them, but are very popular amoung optimized damage dealing casters.


Orb of Sound. It's cursedly difficult to be immune to it. Metamagic + Orb of Sound = bad things. Alternately, Scorching Spell + Searing Spell + Orb of Fire. Even if you're immune to it, you aren't immune to it. See also: Mailman.

Shut down for a duration of rounds = lose, when you are dealing with a Batman Wizard.

Friendly Fire, from Exemplars of Evil, I believe.

[Baron Corm]

You're right, everything does have a counter. Unfortunately the counter to Batman is another batman.

Just as it's true that everything has a counter, it's also true that the only counter to T1's is other T1's. It's not bias. It's poor editing and game design.

I know I said I wouldn't comment any more, but this one is too juicy. I Iron Heart Surge your negative attitude (it's an effect affecting me and my sleep schedule that has lasted longer than 1 round), and with it the wizard you were playing, and all of his clones. Poor editing exists on both sides. Okay I'm done now.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I know I said I wouldn't comment any more, but this one is too juicy. I Iron Heart Surge your negative attitude (it's an effect affecting me and my sleep schedule that has lasted longer than 1 round), and with it the wizard you were playing, and all of his clones. Poor editing exists on both sides. Okay I'm done now.

umm....... what :smallconfused:

Iron heart surge was poorly worded, but I don't see how that changes the fact that poor editing made the tiers' existence possible.

Everything a martial character can do by buying magic items and selecting particular feats, the wizard can counter with a spell or two, or otherwise copy through magic and do it better. Which, ironically enough, includes iron heart surge. Repeat, heroics, a second level spell, allows a wizard to copy as many fighter feats as he qualifies for. Two castings get you martial study (iron heart maneuver of choice) and Martial study (iron heart surge).

It sucks, but it's true.

[Baron Corm]

I just read the spell, and I don't see two of them stacking, as they are the same effect. Furthermore, a fighter can't have his entire martial ability dispelled, and he can use it all day without spending extra resources. Your premise just again, seems heavily biased, not looking at the whole picture. I don't mean to offend but I've seen enough of it on these boards that I can recognize it. This is starting to get into flaming so I'd really like if you would just agree to disagree and walk away with me :smallfrown:.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I can see where you're coming from on two castings of heroics not stacking, but I can just as easily see it working just fine. Two different effects from the same spell, you understand.

I do agree with you that it sucks that the concensus is "martial types just can't compete with casters," but it's the concensus for a reason. Notice, that while you've highlighted a number of items, several of them custom and most of them fairly expensive, the wizard has barely spent a cp. A couple hundred gold here and there on focii and expensive material components and that's it. The wizard still has the money to just hire mobs of hirelings to swarm you until nat20 attacks take you out, without ever being in the same zip-code.

I don't see how this is flaming. However it's your thread and others are more than capable of picking up my slack, so I will leave it at that and withdraw.

[Baron Corm]

I don't see how this is flaming. However it's your thread and others are more than capable of picking up my slack, so I will leave it at that and withdraw.

I don't plan on talking with them either. The original thread question has been answered. I just have this compulsive behavior where I keep checking it, though I'm trying to stop. I probably take these things more seriously/stressfully than I should. Thanks and no hard feelings :smallsmile:.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Meh, as long as I'm not insulted directly I'm a pretty easy-going guy. No hard-feelings here.

It's only natural to want to see how someone else will respond to something you said. I'd honestly be surprised if someone wasn't curious about it. By the same token, it's very difficult to ignore someone who directly contradicts you, or otherwise disagrees very strongly.

Discussions that are allowed to run their natural course rarely stay on the same topic for the whole thing. This one seems to have run its full course now though.