What is broken and not a spell?

[Yora]

And also does not require spells to have an effect.

I've just seem someone making the question what 5th Edition would need to do to be balanced, and I think when looking at 3rd Edition it comes down to "do not make spells that do exactly what another class does, but better". And now that I think about it a bit more, what exactly is broken in 3rd Edition that is not a spell or improves spellcasting?

Monks: They are just really bad. Their two main strength cancel each other out. Full attack and movement.

Truenamers: Successrate for the magic goes down as you level up and face stronger enemies.

Wild Shape: It is really exceptionally good. But then, it is so good because it basically copies the rules of the polymorph spell.

[Augmental]

You mean broken in the sense of being incredibly weak, or broken in the sense of being overpowered? Because the Monk and Truenamer are the former, while Wild Shape is the latter.

[Autopsibiofeeder]

Well, not quite 'broken' per se, but very good and sought after quality is Divine Grace (or equivalents). Adding one of your (main) stats to all your saves is just that good, I believe.

[Kelb_Panthera]

IMO, excessive charge multipliers are broken.

Any time you can one-shot creatures that you're not supposed to even face for another three or four levels, there's a problem.

[Tvtyrant]

Assuming that we are also ignoring pseudo-casting (psionics, magic items, mysteries, etc?)

Dragonfire Inspiration+Words of Creation can be pretty broken IMO. +16d6 to everyone's attacks gets pretty silly.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Stat-stacking in general can easily break the system. Casters break it harder by jacking DC's so high that no one can make them, but it is also one of the problems with Uberchargers (which it may be a static bonus, it is a static bonus which is then multiplied by all the multipliers), and in general, lets a character do things they really aren't supposed to be able to do.

[maximus25]

Iron Heart Surge.

[Kelb_Panthera]

You mean broken in the sense of being incredibly weak, or broken in the sense of being overpowered? Because the Monk and Truenamer are the former, while Wild Shape is the latter.

I would imagine, both.

It seems to me the OP is looking for things that wreck game balance by being at either extreme of the power spectrum.

[Piggy Knowles]

In general, I think that if you take away the ability to gain the abilities of a monster, you eliminate a lot of the more broken things in this edition.

That includes the polymorph/shapechange line, the binding/calling/gating spells, Manipulate Form, Assume Supernatural Ability/Metamorphic Transfer, simulacrum/ice assassin, and probably a bunch of stuff that I've forgotten.

The big problem with these effects is that they need to be balanced against literally every single creature ever printed. Even if the entire Monster Manual was designed with the above spells and features in mind (which, judging from its content, it wasn't), all it would take is one splatbook author to print a silly creature in a sidebar and they all suddenly become broken.

EDIT: Poor reading comprehension. Sorry.

[StreamOfTheSky]

WR Tactics if used by RAW and thus can give yourself double turns is super broken.

Rushed diplomacy auto-winning encounters is possibly broken (I like getting treaure, which is hard if you make friends instead of kill...).

Leadership is insanely broken, though if you had to take a noncaster cohort with it, it'd probably be not too bad. :smallsmile:

Grapple rules are broken in that there's no setting between high and off. The bonuses get stupid crazy, to the point where its auto-win, and it doesn't even take till late levels for this. Monsters are the worst offenders here, by far. But then on the other end...a moderate duration 4th level spell / 40000 gp magic item make one COMPLETELY immune to it. And teleportation spells and effects available as early as level 1 let you "automatically win a grapple check to escape." The entire mechanic is one big game of rocket tag one-upsmanship, and it's nuts.

[Eldariel]

Hulking Hurler (well, converting your carrying capacity into damage) is utterly broken on any natively larger-than-Medium creatures (Centaurs are probably the worst offenders at affordable, Large Quadropeds).

If we're talking about "broken" as in "not working properly", we can say AoOs and in general, combat turns are kinda broken since in effect everybody stands still while somebody moves a whole 6 second distance; makes it stupidly easy to walk around people.

[eggs]

Intimidate/fear effects make a really binary Encounter On/Off switch. With even moderate specialization, either the targets are susceptible, and the encounter ends in one roll, or the targets are immune, and the ability is useless.

Plus, social skills in general.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

The thing that wrecks Monks is a lack of synergy between abilities.

For example, Flurry and a higher Movement. Flurry can only be used with a Full Attack, which is a Full Round Action, which means you can't be moving around.

On paper, they should be a damage machine. They start out with a bonus attack, and have a scaling unarmed damage which ends up the highest base weapon damage in the game.

Unfortunately, they have several problems with this. First, as previously mentioned, they can't really apply them all that well. Second, the actual damage dice these days tend to be the icing on the cake. When your damage is 2d6+4,096... the extra 2-12 damage is really rather pointless. And Monks are not very well primed to take advantage of the damage multipliers most other classes can because they can't use two-handed weapons without completely obviating their unarmed damage dice. Third, they're only a 3/4 BAB class, which hampers their ability to actually land a blow compared to full BAB classes, with no means of compensating for this BAB lack.

With their low AC and lower base HD, they really can't handle being on the 'front line', however they can't really apply damage unless they remain there, because if they move, their damage output drops significantly.

So I guess to tl;dr this thread: Mutually exclusive and conflicting class abilities and stats.

[Yora]

My first thought was "what is considered grosly unbalanced and would not be solved by changing spells".

To which I personally also would count ToB maneuvers, because it's the same principle, just with a weapon in hand.

[Roguenewb]

Hmm. It's hard to find broken non-spells. The wierdest part? Some of the broken stuff listed above are just skill uses that work like Spells. Use an ability, someone makes a save, or something goes poorly.


Things that are broken:
The bonus to power attack for 2 handed weapons. It completely obviates 2 entire fighting styles (einhander and sword and board). In addition, there are enough things that multiply on charges, making Power Attack one of the prime damage sources for most martial characters (incidentally it's partly why monks are so bad, they can't use power attack effectively). I've always thought that Combat Expertise should reward einhander, giving double AC boost, and that there should be two more sliding scale feats, one that rewards Sword and Board (maybe something to do with DR?) and two-weapon fighting.

[Autopsibiofeeder]

My first thought was "what is considered grosly unbalanced and would not be solved by changing spells".

To which I personally also would count ToB maneuvers, because it's the same principle, just with a weapon in hand.

Then I would repeat Divine Grace (because it is that good and that restricted), and I would also like to back up the Leadership vote. Dragonfire Inspiration shenanigans, as mentioned, belong up there though that gets cose to 'spell-like'. Actually, when you don't consider it a 'spell-type' of ability and we are disregarding spell-like stuff, Inspire Courage can be optimized to a level that makes a full-class, dedicated, barbarian cry (or laugh when he has a bard in his crew).

[Keld Denar]

Shocktrooper. It completely removes the risk from the Risk vs Reward formula that PA has built in. There is no thought for how much one should PA for, because full is the only number that matters.

[eggs]

So I guess to tl;dr this thread: Mutually exclusive and conflicting class abilities and stats.
I hear both these often, but outside the context of the Monk itself, they make no sense.

Take a Cleric:
Let's say it's Cloistered for all the various skill and domain-based goodies and has DMM: Persist going on a good number of buffs. Its numbers are probably in the same ballpark or a bit above a Fighter with similar optimization, but it also has access to the class's awesome list of spells.

Its melee abilities are scary. I don't think anyone would deny that.
Its spells are also scary - between summons, buffs, debuffs, control spells, etc. it can break encounters apart.

But using either of those precludes the other. If the Cleric's casting Holy Words at CL=Win, it's not bashing face with its Moringstar. And if it's bashing faces, it's not summoning Ursinals. These abilities are just as exclusive as the Monk's speed.

(There are ways to combine them or make them not conflict, such as Quicken/Contingencies/whatever, but there are also ways for the Monk to move and attack; the discussion is about neither of those specific situations.)

Getting back to the Cleric and its melee role, it's putting all its attributes to work. The use of Wisdom is obvious; any Strength bonus is boosting its damage; any Dex bonus is boosting its Initiative/Armor class; any Con bonus is boosting its HP and survivability in the front line; any Intelligence bonus is helping its Knowledge Devotion or Lore checks; any Charisma bonus is giving it more Turn attempts or boosting its CL through Divine Spell Power. But despite keying its job-relevant powers off of every attribute, the Cleric is still kicking total ass. Because its class features are just good: it can still get huge damage boosts without strength, and anything coming from the base score is just gravy; it can still crank its survival with spells to take the pressure off its con; it can find AC and init boosts outside its dexterity, etc.

So relating those back to the Monk, it frankly suffers those problems less than the cleric (Charisma doesn't determine any of its abilities and Intelligence has few mechanical repercussions; it only has a handful of potential options competing for any one action, compared to the Cleric's dozens of spells prepped). Its problem in both those cases is the same: the monk's abilities just aren't any good. Nobody cares how fast he can run a hundred meters or how many times he can whack something for a handful of damage. Doing them together or doing them with fewer stats might make the Monk's numbers go up, but we only care about that because its abilities as a whole are trash.

[Manly Man]

Deep Impact paired with Diamond Nightmare Blade. Get a Keen Scythe, and pretty much anything you hit on a critical will be so much further than dead that Dead will be like, "Sheeeeeeeit."

[StreamOfTheSky]

I think the complaints about 2H PA and Shocktrooper are missing the mark. Those are what martial feats SHOULD be doing. You're griping at the cure, instead of the disease. The disease is the worthless crap that passes for the other "fighting styles."

[Kelb_Panthera]

I think the complaints about 2H PA and Shocktrooper are missing the mark. Those are what martial feats SHOULD be doing. You're griping at the cure, instead of the disease. The disease is the worthless crap that passes for the other "fighting styles."

Power attack + shocktrooper isn't a problem or even particularly unbalanced compared to twf or sword and board, if it's just those two feats.

The problem is that it's never just those two. There's also pounce making the benefits of shocktrooper apply to 4 attacks when it was designed for one, valorous weapons doubling the damage for all of those attacks, and a handful of other multipliers, such as leap attack, cranking the damage for a single charge into the thousands of points of damage.

By themselves, PA + ST gives a 12th level fighter an extra 24 damage on the end of the charge. That's not going to be enough to kill anything at cr12 on the first hit, and it leaves him exceedingly vulnerable to counter attacks. Even with leap attack it's still only 36 which, though it'll hurt more, still isn't killing the target outright. But if you add pounce, then those become 72 and 108 respectively. 72 may not kill a cr 12 but 108 almost certainly will, and that's not even counting base weapon or str bonus damage.

Pounce is the biggest offender in the uber-charger game, IMO.

[Snowbluff]

Assuming that we are also ignoring pseudo-casting (psionics, magic items, mysteries, etc?)

Dragonfire Inspiration+Words of Creation can be pretty broken IMO. +16d6 to everyone's attacks gets pretty silly.

No, that's fine.

Now combine with Leading the Charge and Combine Songs to DFI and IC at the same time... now everyone on your team is a competent melee fighter. Even the NPC commoners.

[Eldariel]

Power attack + shocktrooper isn't a problem or even particularly unbalanced compared to twf or sword and board, if it's just those two feats.

The problem is that it's never just those two. There's also pounce making the benefits of shocktrooper apply to 4 attacks when it was designed for one, valorous weapons doubling the damage for all of those attacks, and a handful of other multipliers, such as leap attack, cranking the damage for a single charge into the thousands of points of damage.

By themselves, PA + ST gives a 12th level fighter an extra 24 damage on the end of the charge. That's not going to be enough to kill anything at cr12 on the first hit, and it leaves him exceedingly vulnerable to counter attacks. Even with leap attack it's still only 36 which, though it'll hurt more, still isn't killing the target outright. But if you add pounce, then those become 72 and 108 respectively. 72 may not kill a cr 12 but 108 almost certainly will, and that's not even counting base weapon or str bonus damage.

Pounce is the biggest offender in the uber-charger game, IMO.

Rather, the fact that all the multipliers can be applied on all attacks in a Pounce. Of course, whether it's a "problem" depends on the level of the game; FB Barbarian is probably still tier 4 after all. He doesn't do anything beyond "kill that", which he's fairly good at. Still, whether game design should remove any choice from melee is another question entirely.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I hear both these often, but outside the context of the Monk itself, they make no sense.

Take a Cleric:
Let's say it's Cloistered for all the various skill and domain-based goodies and has DMM: Persist going on a good number of buffs. Its numbers are probably in the same ballpark or a bit above a Fighter with similar optimization, but it also has access to the class's awesome list of spells.

Its melee abilities are scary. I don't think anyone would deny that.
Its spells are also scary - between summons, buffs, debuffs, control spells, etc. it can break encounters apart.

But using either of those precludes the other. If the Cleric's casting Holy Words at CL=Win, it's not bashing face with its Moringstar. And if it's bashing faces, it's not summoning Ursinals. These abilities are just as exclusive as the Monk's speed.

(There are ways to combine them or make them not conflict, such as Quicken/Contingencies/whatever, but there are also ways for the Monk to move and attack; the discussion is about neither of those specific situations.)I think you misunderstand, because this is a clear example of class ability synergy.

With spells and DMM Persist, he buffs himself up before combat, allowing himself to be a combat monster. This is good synergy between his spells and his melee. Without that synergy, his melee would be even worse than the Monk's. His synergy with Travel Devotion gives him something the Monk doesn't... effective pouncing by spending turn attempts to close with opponents so he can make a full attack.

These are prime examples of class synergy.


Getting back to the Cleric and its melee role, it's putting all its attributes to work. The use of Wisdom is obvious; any Strength bonus is boosting its damage; any Dex bonus is boosting its Initiative/Armor class; any Con bonus is boosting its HP and survivability in the front line; any Intelligence bonus is helping its Knowledge Devotion or Lore checks; any Charisma bonus is giving it more Turn attempts or boosting its CL through Divine Spell Power. But despite keying its job-relevant powers off of every attribute, the Cleric is still kicking total ass. Because its class features are just good: it can still get huge damage boosts without strength, and anything coming from the base score is just gravy; it can still crank its survival with spells to take the pressure off its con; it can find AC and init boosts outside its dexterity, etc.

So relating those back to the Monk, it frankly suffers those problems less than the cleric (Charisma doesn't determine any of its abilities and Intelligence has few mechanical repercussions; it only has a handful of potential options competing for any one action, compared to the Cleric's dozens of spells prepped). Its problem in both those cases is the same: the monk's abilities just aren't any good. Nobody cares how fast he can run a hundred meters or how many times he can whack something for a handful of damage. Doing them together or doing them with fewer stats might make the Monk's numbers go up, but we only care about that because its abilities as a whole are trash.

Monk is the most MAD class in Core. He needs Str even more than ClericZilla, because he has fewer means by which he can boost it. He needs Con because he has worse AC and the same HD, and doesn't have Clericzilla's ranged capabilities. He needs Dex because it is one of only two sources of AC he can have. He needs Int to function in his primary role as a skillmonkey. He needs He needs Wis as his only other source of AC allowed him. About the only stat he can safely dump is Charisma.

Compare with a Clericzilla.

Str is nice, but he can boost it with Divine Power, Righteous Might, and other boosters, so it doesn't need to be as high for the same damage output. Con... sure, who doesn't need it? But really, he's got so much healing ability that it's not as important. Persisted Vigor gives him Fast Healing more than enough to offset a poor Con. Dex is almost a dump stat, because he's got much better ways of defending himself than Dex. Besides, with full plate, Dex is a wash anyways. Int is, point blank, a dump stat. He doesn't need anything here. Wis is needed, since he casts off of this. Charisma is needed for TU attempts, unless Cracksticks are in play, in which case this can be a dump stat.

Because his spells synergize well with his melee, his melee is an actual option. Because a Monk's other abilities do not synergize well with his melee, it is not a viable option. Unfortunately, it is his *only* option. A Cleric who doesn't want to melee can fall back on encounter-winning spells, a Monk doesn't have that option. His only option is to charge into the frey and be unable to do anything, or sit and hope something comes close enough to him that he can do something relevant, assuming he can actually hit it.

[Keld Denar]

All of the multipliers in the world won't matter if you can't it. Go ahead, PA a Bone Devil for full. You'll miss. Probably. Shocktrooper takes out the risk vs reward from PA. It is the lynchpin that makes the whole ubercharger schtick work. Without it, you can't PA for full. You can't even PA for half without some decent buffs. It doesn't matter if you have pounce because your iteratives probably won't hit either. It doesn't matter if you have quadruple or quintuple PA multipliers, because again, missing means dealing 0 damage. It takes the CHALLENGE out of playing a fighter and makes them even more simple minded to play. That, if you ask me, is the broken part. If a feat is so good that you can't afford not to take it, you might want to think about it.

[eggs]

With spells and DMM Persist, he buffs himself up before combat, allowing himself to be a combat monster. This is good synergy between his spells and his melee. Without that synergy, his melee would be even worse than the Monk's. His synergy with Travel Devotion gives him something the Monk doesn't... effective pouncing by spending turn attempts to close with opponents so he can make a full attack.
I think we're agreeing more than we're disagreeing, but I think I can make my point more clear.

If the Cleric is only running around whacking things in melee, no matter how big Divine Power/Bite of the Werebear/ make its numbers, it's still a character who runs around whacking things in melee. A Cleric who is strictly filling that role is playing the same game as the Warblade, not the Wizard or Archivist. It's the other spells like Summons, Holy Words Dispels, Wall of X, etc. that define the Cleric as a monster, not its damage mods.



Monk is the most MAD class in Core.
...
Compare with a Clericzilla.
Here you're just touching on my point, which is what specifically constitutes "MAD" and its associated problems.

I think we'd both agree that both the melee Cloistered Cleric and Monk have relevant abilities keyed off different attributes - even if the Cloistered Cleric can patch over a low Str with its spells, a higher score still translates to higher damage per round, and the Monk just goes from "weak" to a "waste of space" without high Str/Con/Dex/Wis.

But even though the Cleric has abilities keyed off every stat, I don't think anyone would call it MAD - it doesn't depend on those abilities; its class features are powerful enough to patch over or ignore any weak scores and to turn any high abilities into just a useful boost.

The Monk, on the other hand, does need them, even though its class features themselves only ever mention Wisdom as a relevant score. That's because the class features themselves aren't pulling the Monk's weight: they're basically taking a Warrior, stripping its BA and proficiencies, and dedicating most of the class's abilities to merely compensating their loss. Monk also gets a couple feats, minor plusses to saves, a couple parlor tricks, etc., but the majority of its features are just there to match a naked class chassis. It relies on its attributes because it can't rely on anything else to excel.

If the Monk had similar features keyed off exactly the same Con/Str/Dex/Wis scores, but those features were designed to do more than catch up to an empty chassis, members of the Monk class wouldn't have any trouble at all (look at Tash builds or Unarmed Swordsages, for instance).

tl;dr - Conflicting stats aren't damning; crappy class features are.

[Akal Saris]

Intimidate/fear effects make a really binary Encounter On/Off switch. With even moderate specialization, either the targets are susceptible, and the encounter ends in one roll, or the targets are immune, and the ability is useless.

Plus, social skills in general.

Yeah, this was my response. Either you're completely unable to effect somebody or your opponent is cowering/panicked and you've pretty much won.

[Kelb_Panthera]

All of the multipliers in the world won't matter if you can't it. Go ahead, PA a Bone Devil for full. You'll miss. Probably. Shocktrooper takes out the risk vs reward from PA. It is the lynchpin that makes the whole ubercharger schtick work. Without it, you can't PA for full. You can't even PA for half without some decent buffs. It doesn't matter if you have pounce because your iteratives probably won't hit either. It doesn't matter if you have quadruple or quintuple PA multipliers, because again, missing means dealing 0 damage. It takes the CHALLENGE out of playing a fighter and makes them even more simple minded to play. That, if you ask me, is the broken part. If a feat is so good that you can't afford not to take it, you might want to think about it.

It only takes the risk/reward out of power attacking if you can kill the creature outright, which is where the multipliers come in. If the enemy survives the initial charge, then you haven't eliminated the risk, you've simply shifted it from a greater chance of missing on this turn to a better chance of being hit on your next turn.

If anything it's a greater risk for the damage return if you're playing close to the game's expected power level.

Of course, the game's expected power level is pretty low. It's not generally assumed that a martial type is going to under the affect of a dozen buffing spells at the beggining of every encounter.

Let's look at an example.

12th level fighter, built with the elite array since the elite array is what the designers said they used in playtesting.

BAB 12, plus 4 str mod, plus 1 for guantlets of ogre power (magic item compendium puts the girdle of giants str at a higher level) and a +2 weapon (again MIC puts a +3 at a higher level) makes +17 to attack. The designers also seem to think that the WF line is worth something so we'll add 2 more for WF and GWF, then another 2 for a charge.

+21 against the cr12's average ac of 25. That's only a 20% miss chance, assuming that the enemy doesn't have some sort miss chance granting effect in place. Most of the CR12 monsters don't have any such ability.

This fighter's baseline damage is, assuming a greatsword, 7 for the greatsword (average for 2d6) plus 7 for his str mod on a two handed weapon, plus 2 for the weapons enhancement, plus 4 for WS and GWS, and 2 more from the charge makes 22 damage.

The roper, one of the softest CR12 enemies in the MM has 85 hp. Without power attack, our fighter will likely kill one in only a couple of rounds. If he has ST + PA he can nab an extra 24 damage at no change to his chance of hitting, but he still won't kill the thing on his first turn. Even if he was under a permanent enlarge person he'd only get another 6.5 average damage and increase his hit chance to 90%

On the other hand, pounce will allow him to make 3 attacks on that charge, 4 if he's under a haste effect as well. Turning that 22 average damage into a potential 88. The average would look like this: (22 average damage X .8 for the to-hit chance = 17.6)+(22 X .55 = 12.1)+(22 X .3 = 6.6)= 36.3 or (22 X .9 = 19.8)+(22 X .9 = 19.8)+(22 X .65 = 14.3)+(22 X .4 = 8.8)= 62.7 average damage on a charge.

The roper is dead in the second round without anything other than pounce; no multipliers, no power attack, just pounce.

The other extreme is the mature adult white dragon, at 241hp on average. Even with pounce and shocktrooper you're not going to kill it in one turn, though you'll wound it severely. (46 X .8 = 36.8)+(46 X .55 = 25.3)+(46 X .3 = 13.8)= 75.9 average or (46 X .9 = 41.4)+(46 X .9 = 41.4)+(46 X .65 = 29.9)+(46 X .4=18.4)= 131.1 average damage.

Clearly pounce is the greater offender here. 46 average damage for a shocktrooper charge without pounce (if it hits) V 36.3 or 62.7 average with virtual guarantee of at least partial damage.

Combined they get obscene with as much as 131.1 damage on average, which will one-shot most CR appropriate challenges.

Between being clearly more powerful, and usually having no feat cost in a system where feats come at a premium, pounce is clearly the bigger problem.

Neither is broken by itself, but together......

[TuggyNE]

The Top Ten Worst thread, as found in my sig, has a fairly comprehensive list of broken things, and spells and maneuvers are tagged as such, so it should not be difficult to filter out the 80 or so entries that are non-spell-ish. Admittedly the number of entries that rely on spells to be broken is harder to ascertain, and if that's highly desirable I could probably dredge through there myself.

[Obviously, if you disagree with some of the entries, vote! :smalltongue:]

[Dimers]

Any immunities or other such absolutes can lead to brokenness quickly. 3.X rogue's sneak attack is broken if the campaign only features undead, constructs, plants and oozes, because they're flat-out immune. Necropolitans and warforged are frequent picks for optimizing in certain areas because they get immunities. The existence of mind blank and widespread immunity to mind-affecting stuff makes enchanters a poor option for high-level play.

More generally, any kind of absolute can be 'broken'. Paladins' code of conduct. Abilities that make you go first in combat, no-matter-what. Senses against which no stealth is possible, or vice versa. Miss chance (you take absolutely no damage if your miss chance works). Sovereign glue and universal solvent. Actions that require absolutely no time (e.g. commoner railgun).

[Dsurion]

Intimidate/fear effects make a really binary Encounter On/Off switch. With even moderate specialization, either the targets are susceptible, and the encounter ends in one roll, or the targets are immune, and the ability is useless.

Plus, social skills in general.I'm not well educated in using fear-stacking. Is it that good even without spells?

[lsfreak]

Binary stuff tends to be this - either it effects you or doesn't. Immunities are the main thing, mind-affecting immunities take out an entire school-and-a-half of spells, crit immunities completely destroy rogues and scouts, etc. With spells in the mix this also extends to save-or-dies. Flat defenses border on broken, I think, as well - DR5 should really be something like DR25%.

Anything that's presented as general but is strongly campaign-specific I consider broken by default. Core the main two offenders are Turn Undead and Favored Enemy. Turn Undead itself possibly falls into this even without considering that, because of its wonky mechanics (and because allips).

Broken-to-uselessness, un-feated combat "options" probably fall under this. The risks in terms of retaliation, action drain, or getting it turned against you for things like bull rushing and feinting are extremely severe on their own, and require feats or entire prestige classes to even make them legitimate options (at which point they're prone to not just being options but the entire focus of your build, because you've sunk so much into making them worthwhile).

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I'm not well educated in using fear-stacking. Is it that good even without spells?

Imperious Command. Target is Cowering. End stacking.

Check my sig for a build which locks down everything within 30' that is not immune to Intimidate to Demoralize action.

[Blue1005]

Assuming that we are also ignoring pseudo-casting (psionics, magic items, mysteries, etc?)

Dragonfire Inspiration+Words of Creation can be pretty broken IMO. +16d6 to everyone's attacks gets pretty silly.

Why hate on psionics? I encourage the use of them.

And i dont think anything is "broken" not every person is equal in life, nor should they be in fantasy. Some of the best characters are the weaker than infant ones that use utility spells in awesome and new ways.

[Coidzor]

Why hate on psionics? I encourage the use of them.

And i dont think anything is "broken" not every person is equal in life, nor should they be in fantasy. Some of the best characters are the weaker than infant ones that use utility spells in awesome and new ways.

Well, there are some things about the action-economy that can be really busted wide open with psionics, IIRC. I don't think it was a judgment about the system as a whole so much as covering the bases that the question is just covering things that aren't part of the various magic systems.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Well, there are some things about the action-economy that can be really busted wide open with psionics, IIRC. I don't think it was a judgment about the system as a whole so much as covering the bases that the question is just covering things that aren't part of the various magic systems.

That's how I read it too. Even if you allow binding, invocation users, and incarnum; psionics, shadow-casting, and truenaming are all pretty much the same thing as spellcasting.

ToB is kinda on the fence though, not that there are many truly broken things in ToB. Once you note iron heart surge, the cheesy reading for WRT, and the idiot crusader you've pretty much named all the "broken" in there.

The d2 crusader requires multiple splats so it's not ToB's fault alone.

[Blue1005]

Well, there are some things about the action-economy that can be really busted wide open with psionics, IIRC. I don't think it was a judgment about the system as a whole so much as covering the bases that the question is just covering things that aren't part of the various magic systems.

Fair enough. I think it comes down to this with brokenness. If someone is a powergamer they will break the system cause they pour over the books for insane periods. I dont, and reading this thread, i have no clue about what most of it means. But if my players could on their own figure out a way to deal over 100 dmg every round, heck yes i would encourage it. People have fun dealing triple digits of damage, game is about fun.

And yes, there is always the one person that is crazy power gamer that will hog all the combat and glory, limit them personally, not the game as a whole, if it becomes an issue.

[Spuddles]

Rather, the fact that all the multipliers can be applied on all attacks in a Pounce. Of course, whether it's a "problem" depends on the level of the game; FB Barbarian is probably still tier 4 after all. He doesn't do anything beyond "kill that", which he's fairly good at. Still, whether game design should remove any choice from melee is another question entirely.

"kill that" with every action is kind of broken, in my experience. I have run games with shadowpouncers and uberchargers, and basically every monster arbitrarily gets more HP.

Over 9000 damage is harder to balance for and makes combat boring and contrived. Teleporting and fabricating and turning into a beholder to tunnel into ancient crypts is at least interesting, and with the right players, totally doable.

But ubercharging is just a system failure and is hard to build, via the RAW, around. It doesn't add anything to the game. Uberchargers are actually really dangerous in a player vs. monster campaign, in my opinion they're as bad as mailmen.

[Gnorman]

I definitely agree with the following things:

Binary encounter-enders.

Numerical inflation.

Monks.

I'd also like to add alignment in general, and alignment-based restrictions on classes specifically. It's not really "broken" in a mechanical sense but I think that it is a bit of a doddering dinosaur that should be dispensed with in all future editions. Bards, barbarians, paladins, and monks should be free from the tyranny of alignment.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I'd also like to add alignment in general, and alignment-based restrictions on classes specifically. It's not really "broken" in a mechanical sense but I think that it is a bit of a doddering dinosaur that should be dispensed with in all future editions. Bards, barbarians, paladins, and monks should be free from the tyranny of alignment.Now this I wholeheartedly disagree with.

While many people dislike the alignment system, for varying reasons (I've seriously seen different people argue that it's too simple, too complex, not realistic, or too confining) some of us actually like it.

It's better to put it in and let individual tables remove it if they don't like it than it is to not even give them the opportunity to play characters of the moral/ethical archetypes with mechanics to back it up.

[Gnorman]

Now this I wholeheartedly disagree with.

While many people dislike the alignment system, for varying reasons (I've seriously seen different people argue that it's too simple, too complex, not realistic, or too confining) some of us actually like it.

It's better to put it in and let individual tables remove it if they don't like it than it is to not even give them the opportunity to play characters of the moral/ethical archetypes with mechanics to back it up.

With the exception of the paladin (whose "moral mechanics" amount to little more than "if I do not follow this code I lose all class features," the occasional smite and a shiny horse) and to a much lesser extent the monk (whose strict discipline and ordered mind offer him the staggeringly impressive ability to strike as lawful three levels after everyone else can), the mechanics of such classes do not actually back up the morality. Bards and barbarians, unless I am sorely mistaken, gain no abilities that key off of their alignment. They are restricted purely because the designers thought that bards and barbarians shouldn't be lawful. Used to be you couldn't make a lawful good thief - why did that change but the bard did not? Are lawful bards so hard to imagine? My problem with this is that it's unnecessarily restrictive.

The monk and paladin are so easily adapted to alternate alignments that I don't think it's much of a problem. Change a few instances of the word "Good" or "Lawful" to whatever is appropriate. As a general rule, I think that classes should cast a wide net and not restrict player creativity by saying "you can only play a lawful good paladin" (UA variants notwithstanding). I think it should work the other way around - the option should be general, but if a specific table wants to only allow lawful good paladins or non-lawful bards, then have at it.

Keep it in if you're wedded to the archetypes, but don't keep it in because it "give[s] them the opportunity to play characters of the moral/ethical archetypes with mechanics to back it up". It doesn't do that very well. A fighter with a holy weapon is achieving the same thing.

I'm not advocating removing alignment altogether (that's too drastic). Just removing alignment restrictions on base classes.

[Kelb_Panthera]

With the exception of the paladin (whose "moral mechanics" amount to little more than "if I do not follow this code I lose all class features," the occasional smite and a shiny horse) and to a much lesser extent the monk (whose strict discipline and ordered mind offer him the staggeringly impressive ability to strike as lawful three levels after everyone else can), the mechanics of such classes do not actually back up the morality. Bards and barbarians, unless I am sorely mistaken, gain no abilities that key off of their alignment. They are restricted purely because the designers thought that bards and barbarians shouldn't be lawful. Used to be you couldn't make a lawful good thief - why did that change but the bard did not? Are lawful bards so hard to imagine? My problem with this is that it's unnecessarily restrictive.

The monk and paladin are so easily adapted to alternate alignments that I don't think it's much of a problem. Change a few instances of the word "Good" or "Lawful" to whatever is appropriate. As a general rule, I think that classes should cast a wide net and not restrict player creativity by saying "you can only play a lawful good paladin" (UA variants notwithstanding). I think it should work the other way around - the option should be general, but if a specific table wants to only allow lawful good paladins or non-lawful bards, then have at it.

Keep it in if you're wedded to the archetypes, but don't keep it in because it "give[s] them the opportunity to play characters of the moral/ethical archetypes with mechanics to back it up". It doesn't do that very well. A fighter with a holy weapon is achieving the same thing.

I'm not advocating removing alignment altogether (that's too drastic). Just removing alignment restrictions on base classes.

What you're describing is more changing the system than dropping it. A holy sword doesn't do anything if there are no rules regarding evil enemies.

I'm not saying the alignment system is perfect. What I am saying is that, IMO, taking it out in later editions will do more harm to the game than good.

Adapt it, change it, repeat the fact that it can be dropped from any individual group's game if you don't like it; both before and after you outline it; but don't remove it altogether.

I think it's always better to give players more options than to take options away. In the case of alignment I feel that the option of being able to play to certain archetypes is more valuable than the options "lost" by making some things mutually exclusive. The DM can wave that mutual exclusivity, as you've just demonstrated, but if there's no alignment, then there can be no paladins or blackguards, outsiders would all be the same, and playing a "Holy Warrior" would only be a bit of fluff.

[Kelb_Panthera]

With the exception of the paladin (whose "moral mechanics" amount to little more than "if I do not follow this code I lose all class features," the occasional smite and a shiny horse) and to a much lesser extent the monk (whose strict discipline and ordered mind offer him the staggeringly impressive ability to strike as lawful three levels after everyone else can), the mechanics of such classes do not actually back up the morality. Bards and barbarians, unless I am sorely mistaken, gain no abilities that key off of their alignment. They are restricted purely because the designers thought that bards and barbarians shouldn't be lawful. Used to be you couldn't make a lawful good thief - why did that change but the bard did not? Are lawful bards so hard to imagine? My problem with this is that it's unnecessarily restrictive.

The monk and paladin are so easily adapted to alternate alignments that I don't think it's much of a problem. Change a few instances of the word "Good" or "Lawful" to whatever is appropriate. As a general rule, I think that classes should cast a wide net and not restrict player creativity by saying "you can only play a lawful good paladin" (UA variants notwithstanding). I think it should work the other way around - the option should be general, but if a specific table wants to only allow lawful good paladins or non-lawful bards, then have at it.

Keep it in if you're wedded to the archetypes, but don't keep it in because it "give[s] them the opportunity to play characters of the moral/ethical archetypes with mechanics to back it up". It doesn't do that very well. A fighter with a holy weapon is achieving the same thing.

I'm not advocating removing alignment altogether (that's too drastic). Just removing alignment restrictions on base classes.

What you're describing is more changing the system than dropping it. A holy sword doesn't do anything if there are no rules regarding evil enemies.

I'm not saying the alignment system is perfect. What I am saying is that, IMO, taking it out in later editions will do more harm to the game than good.

Adapt it, change it, repeat the fact that it can be dropped from any individual group's game if you don't like it; both before and after you outline it; but don't remove it altogether.

I think it's always better to give players more options than to take options away. In the case of alignment I feel that the option of being able to play to certain archetypes is more valuable than the options "lost" by making some things mutually exclusive.

The DM can wave that mutual exclusivity, as Gnorman just demonstrated, but if there's no alignment, then there can be no paladins or blackguards, outsiders would all be the same, and playing a "Holy Warrior" would only be a bit of fluff.

Edit: Just saw the last line of your post. I don't necessarily agree with that, but I feel much less strongly about it.

Edit 2: Removed some of the strike out because, while what I wrote isn't an appropriate response to what Gnorman said, it's still several paragraphs that do a good job of expanding upon my previous statement.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

What you're describing is more changing the system than dropping it. A holy sword doesn't do anything if there are no rules regarding evil enemies.

I'm not saying the alignment system is perfect. What I am saying is that, IMO, taking it out in later editions will do more harm to the game than good.I disagree.


Adapt it, change it, repeat the fact that it can be dropped from any individual group's game if you don't like it; both before and after you outline it; but don't remove it altogether.If you have to fix it to get it to work as intended, then it doesn't work as intended.


I think it's always better to give players more options than to take options away.Which is why I suggest you eliminate the alignment rules
In the case of alignment I feel that the option of being able to play to certain archetypes is more valuable than the options "lost" by making some things mutually exclusive. The DM can wave that mutual exclusivity, as you've just demonstrated, but if there's no alignment, then there can be no paladins or blackguards, outsiders would all be the same, and playing a "Holy Warrior" would only be a bit of fluff.

I'm sorry, but a lack of alignment restrictions coded into a rule system does not, in any way, restrict my ability to roleplay a 'holy warrior'. Legend, for example, has done away with Alignments completely, and their Paladin class is a much better designed one than core. Not having alignment rules does not prevent me from playing a 'holier than thou, stick-up-the-pigu' character. It just doesn't unnecessarily penalize me if I develop my character to incorporate a somewhat broader moral code, as a result of realizing what kind of a crapsack world he's actually dumped in. A Paladin in 3.5 really can't have a 'heel face turn' without going Blackguard, which he apparently can't do until he gets ranks in Hide, for some unknown reason.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I disagree.

If you have to fix it to get it to work as intended, then it doesn't work as intended.

Which is why I suggest you eliminate the alignment rules

I'm sorry, but a lack of alignment restrictions coded into a rule system does not, in any way, restrict my ability to roleplay a 'holy warrior'. Legend, for example, has done away with Alignments completely, and their Paladin class is a much better designed one than core. Not having alignment rules does not prevent me from playing a 'holier than thou, stick-up-the-pigu' character. It just doesn't unnecessarily penalize me if I develop my character to incorporate a somewhat broader moral code, as a result of realizing what kind of a crapsack world he's actually dumped in. A Paladin in 3.5 really can't have a 'heel face turn' without going Blackguard, which he apparently can't do until he gets ranks in Hide, for some unknown reason.

There's a difference between roleplaying a character who gets power from his convictions and roleplaying a character who is granted power from an outside source because of his convictions. It's a subtle difference but it -is- there.

The alignment system does work as intended. It creates a mechanic that adds a concrete consequence to either being an agent of the heavens or a fiend of a man, as well as being either a paragon of order or a seed of chaos.

People disagree on how well it does this, but it does do it.

Since it's tied to some of the most complex of all human ideas it also gets frequently misunderstood and misused, but that doesn't make it a useless waste of page-count.

Edit: and on a paladin's heel-face-turn options, one word: Greyguard.

[DeusMortuusEst]

While many people dislike the alignment system, for varying reasons (I've seriously seen different people argue that it's too simple, too complex, not realistic, or too confining) some of us actually like it.

Some people like monks as well. They are still not working as intended. Neither do the alignment system.

I can see the reason behind it, but as written it causes loads of trouble for DM:s and players alike. Just look at all the alignment threads on this forum alone.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Some people like monks as well. They are still not working as intended. Neither do the alignment system.

I can see the reason behind it, but as written it causes loads of trouble for DM:s and players alike. Just look at all the alignment threads on this forum alone.

The alignment debates here almost certainly don't give an unbiased and large enough sample for any kind of statistical analysis, especially since people rarely get on the internet to complain about how well things are going.

I also contend that monks work reasonably well "as they were intended." Unfortunately, vancian casters don't. Thus, the monk is broken in the sense of being too weak.

To elaborate, the designers made casters far stronger than they initially intended, as evidenced by the fact that, while the melee types stayed at a relatively simliar power level as more were printed; including most melee PrC's; the later casters were all dramatically less powerful than the 4 core casters. Even the majority of caster PrC's lose several levels of casting whether they're arcane or divine.

[DeusMortuusEst]

The alignment debates here almost certainly don't give an unbiased and large enough sample for any kind of statistical analysis, especially since people rarely get on the internet to complain about how well things are going.

True, but then again, it's the only evidence we have. You do a survey that's statistically significant and I'll look at the numbers and see what we got.


I also contend that monks work reasonably well "as they were intended." Unfortunately, vancian casters don't. Thus, the monk is broken in the sense of being too weak.

To elaborate, the designers made casters far stronger than they initially intended, as evidenced by the fact that, while the melee types stayed at a relatively simliar power level as more were printed; including most melee PrC's; the later casters were all dramatically less powerful than the 4 core casters. Even the majority of caster PrC's lose several levels of casting whether they're arcane or divine.

[Citation needed] & correlation does not imply causation and all that. Funny that you'd make such a claim after having complained about me doing the same.

Did the designers ever say that 'sorry, we made the wizard too strong. We aimed for the power level to be on par with the monk.' ?

[123456789blaaa]

Please for the love of (insert diety here) do not turn this thread into another alignment debate. Make a new thread of you must.

[Kelb_Panthera]

True, but then again, it's the only evidence we have. You do a survey that's statistically significant and I'll look at the numbers and see what we got.



[Citation needed] & correlation does not imply causation and all that. Funny that you'd make such a claim after having complained about me doing the same.

Did the designers ever say that 'sorry, we made the wizard too strong. We aimed for the power level to be on par with the monk.' ?

I don't understand what you mean about me making the same argument?

Nowhere that I've seen have the designers ever come out and said plainly, "We screwed up with the power level of casters. Sorry," but I wouldn't expect them to either.

A comparison of the system as a whole and the wholesale reduction in the average power of casters next to the relatively small rise in power for non-casters as the run progressed speaks volumes though.

The knight is one of the last straight melee base classes to come out in 3.5, that didn't use a new subsystem, and its power is on virtually the exact same level as a fighter, ranger, paladin, samurai, swashbuckler, or hexblade.

One of the last straight casters was the beguiler, who is only second to the healer in terms of how low its overall power is. Before that there was the warmage and the dread necro both of whom are much, much less powerful than a straight wizard or sorcerer, and all three, rather tellingly, lack what is regarded as possibly the most powerful of effects, polymorph; a line of spells that was "clarified" (read: nerfed) no less than 4 times. The relative power of divine casters didn't drop as dramatically, but there was still a drop.

And all this says nothing about the fact that while all of the splats are balanced against the power level that core was aimed at (no matter how badly they missed) the designers didn't, and quite probably couldn't, balance them against the myriad possible interactions they have with one another.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone complain about a single splat being broken, unless it introduced a new subsytem. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen any combo that breaks melee classes come entirely from a single splat, again not counting splats that introduced new subsystems. For that matter, I don't think I've ever heard of a combo to break spellcasters that didn't involve more than one splat, not counting the typical "core is broken" which -is- true.

You're probably wondering why I left out the subsytems in the previous paragraph. It's because many people give knee-jerk "It's broken" reactions when they misunderstand something, e.g. the typical "psionics is broken" that stems from not understanding that pp use is capped by ML, or the usual "ToB is broken" when initiators are only a relatively small degree more powerful than other melee classes, and the book gives ways to get those abilities on non-initiators, without multiclassing, as well.

While I can provide no concrete evidence for my position, neither can you. I -have- layed out what I feel is a compelling amount of circumstantial evidence that supports my position. Can you do the same?

Edit: forgot to address the alignment thing.

No alignment system can be written in such a way as to have everyone agree on it because, as I said earlier, it is connected to some of the most complex and nebulous of all human ideas.

The alternatives, then, are A) an alignment system that gives rise to myriad disputes or B) No alignment system at all.

Since A) gives a mechanic that gives concrete consequences to in character behavior, and effects to interact with those consequences, it creates options that are unavailable in its absence. Creating these options is its only purpose. How well it does this is something that will never be agreed upon, no matter how it is written.

Since B) creates no options, and leaves the overall system less rich and varied, it is, IMO, the inferior choice.

[Yora]

To elaborate, the designers made casters far stronger than they initially intended, as evidenced by the fact that, while the melee types stayed at a relatively simliar power level as more were printed; including most melee PrC's; the later casters were all dramatically less powerful than the 4 core casters. Even the majority of caster PrC's lose several levels of casting whether they're arcane or divine.
No! That is my point! Casters are not broken. Some of their spells are.

[Spuddles]

I disagree.

If you have to fix it to get it to work as intended, then it doesn't work as intended.

Which is why I suggest you eliminate the alignment rules

I'm sorry, but a lack of alignment restrictions coded into a rule system does not, in any way, restrict my ability to roleplay a 'holy warrior'. Legend, for example, has done away with Alignments completely, and their Paladin class is a much better designed one than core. Not having alignment rules does not prevent me from playing a 'holier than thou, stick-up-the-pigu' character. It just doesn't unnecessarily penalize me if I develop my character to incorporate a somewhat broader moral code, as a result of realizing what kind of a crapsack world he's actually dumped in. A Paladin in 3.5 really can't have a 'heel face turn' without going Blackguard, which he apparently can't do until he gets ranks in Hide, for some unknown reason.

The first airplane flew for 12 seconds. Clearly the Wright Brothers and all that followed should have given up on flight.

Perhaps core classes the are dependent on alignment should be scrapped, though I would like to see legacy options, especially for divine casters, for those of us with the capability to deal with the nuances of such a system.

The best interaction of alignments of course comes from monster-player interactions.


True, but then again, it's the only evidence we have. You do a survey that's statistically significant and I'll look at the numbers and see what we got.



[Citation needed] & correlation does not imply causation and all that. Funny that you'd make such a claim after having complained about me doing the same.

Did the designers ever say that 'sorry, we made the wizard too strong. We aimed for the power level to be on par with the monk.' ?

Do they need to? The evidence is as plain as day- convergence through books at t3 power and per encounter abilities. More focus on action economy. Then BOOM 4th edition.

[Kelb_Panthera]

No! That is my point! Casters are not broken. Some of their spells are.

Casters are their spells.

A caster with no spells is either left with nothing at all (core, minus druid) or is left with class-features that don't stack up next to the other classes (outside core).

The only exception is the druid, and that's because he gets polymorph (wild shape) regardless of his spellcasting.

You do, however, bring up an interesting point. Seperated from the multisplat cheese and the handful of game breaking spells, specifically the polymorph line, the line of conjuration(calling) spells, and the action economy breakers, even the dread wizard and cleric are reduced to a level that's not too distant from the level of the melee types.

[Spuddles]

Casters are their spells.

A caster with no spells is either left with nothing at all (core, minus druid) or is left with class-features that don't stack up next to the other classes (outside core).

The only exception is the druid, and that's because he gets polymorph (wild shape) regardless of his spellcasting.

What's up with the silly binary arguments? A wizard that preps time stop and shapechange will be a very different beast than the one with two meteor storms.

[Kelb_Panthera]

What's up with the silly binary arguments? A wizard that preps time stop and shapechange will be a very different beast than the one with two meteor storms.

Please note that I've edited my previous post.

What binary arguments?

A wizard with no spells at all is a commoner with a smart pet.

I'm arguing that the sum total of spellcasting in core is what makes casters so much more powerful than was intended. Taken one at a time most splats don't do anything to increase the overall power of casters, and that many of them offer much less powerful options and spells than the broken ones, I mentioned above, is telling. The majority of caster splat-support comes in metamagics that are considered subpar on their own, PrC's that lose caster levels; sometimes as many as half; and spells that are either blasting spells or spells that are currently regarded as inferior options.

The designers very studiously did not increase the power of casters in any single splat, with the possible exception of SpC, and decreased the average power of spellcasting instead. There are only a few noteable exceptions to this trend.

At the same time melee was kept at about the same level of power throughout, except for the final splat that was explicitly for melee, ToB. Even that was only a small increase in power, though a great boost in versatility.

[Snowbluff]

Once you note iron heart surge, the cheesy reading for WRT, and the idiot crusader you've pretty much named all the "broken" in there.

The d2 crusader requires multiple splats so it's not ToB's fault alone.

Idiot Crusader is not so bad. It mostly makes me a Crusader much less of a nuisance. It require considerable investment and planning as well.

D2 Crusader requires casting. Straight up.

[DeusMortuusEst]

While I can provide no concrete evidence for my position, neither can you. I -have- layed out what I feel is a compelling amount of circumstantial evidence that supports my position. Can you do the same?

Yes, by pointing at the numerous threads on this, and other forums debating the problems of the alignment system. I recognize that it is not usable as proof, but it is certainly pointing in a specific direction.

Problem is that neither of us have concrete evidence of our claims, and so we could continue this discussion at any length without reaching a solution.

I will say that the alignment system, while it perhaps works as intended, does not work well, or in some cases at all and could by that definition be called broken.

There are simply too many interpretations possible of the (arguably horribly worded) text that describes the different alignments.

Further it shoehorns several classes into corners without any real explanation as to why, severely limiting the possibilities for RP:ing different types of characters.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

ToB is kinda on the fence though, not that there are many truly broken things in ToB. Once you note iron heart surge, the cheesy reading for WRT, and the idiot crusader you've pretty much named all the "broken" in there.

The d2 crusader requires multiple splats so it's not ToB's fault alone.

You forgot Ruby Knight Windicator

[Kelb_Panthera]

Yes, by pointing at the numerous threads on this, and other forums debating the problems of the alignment system. I recognize that it is not usable as proof, but it is certainly pointing in a specific direction.

Problem is that neither of us have concrete evidence of our claims, and so we could continue this discussion at any length without reaching a solution.

I will say that the alignment system, while it perhaps works as intended, does not work well, or in some cases at all and could by that definition be called broken.

There are simply too many interpretations possible of the (arguably horribly worded) text that describes the different alignments.

Further it shoehorns several classes into corners without any real explanation as to why, severely limiting the possibilities for RP:ing different types of characters.The numerous threads debating alignment are not proof that it is unusable. They are unequivocal proof that it can be interpreted in many different ways, but that's game design mirroring reality and, IMO a feature, not a bug.

The explanations for what constitutes good and evil in 3.5 are fairly consistent. They're also not particularly restrictive if you bear in mind that most of them are guidlines rather than hard and fast rules, and that behavior determines alignment rather than alignment determining behavior.

The biggest detriment to the system working as intended is peoples' inability or unwillingness to either seperate their own morality from game's morality when they differ, or to adapt the rules to their own outlook in the places it does differ.

Bottom line: the system works as intended both from a designer's viewpoint, and in practice with many groups. If you don't like it or can't work with it, you're as free to ignore it as you are to ignore the rules for encumbrance or the weather or multiclassing xp penalties or any other rule that doesn't work for your play-group.


You forgot Ruby Knight Windicator

Cut me some slack, it was 5AM when I wrote that. :smallamused:

And upon checking up on it, RKW is a multi-splat combo too.

[Autopsibiofeeder]

Ok, while I did not agree at first, I have been convinced: Alignment is broken.

I mean, it has the power to derail threads in the real world. Wow, somebody needs to fix that :smallwink:.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Ok, while I did not agree at first, I have been convinced: Alignment is broken.

I mean, it has the power to derail threads in the real world. Wow, somebody needs to fix that :smallwink:.

The second and third sentences are clearly in jest, but is the first?

I'm inclined to think so, but if not, I'd appreciate you elaborating.

[Menteith]

I believe that alignment restrictions on classes diminishes the quality of the game, as it places limits on what kind of character a player can create without adding in a benefit to me. For example, I can easily envision a lawful bard who records her tribe's oral history and acts as a leader or judge. I do not believe that this is a game breaking issue, but it does affect my playing experience. I do not believe that alignment is a game breaking issue, played by strict RAW or otherwise. I believe that many alignment arguments that occur are symptoms of greater problems within a game such as lack of player agency (you do this because your alignment says). Alignment is an interesting concept, and I believe that it can be used to add a lot to the game.

More on topic
- Any instance of physics in the game;

- Archery in general takes a lot of work to get powerful (I'd put it about on the same level of the Monk. If the Monk's broken, I'd consider archery broken).

- The Paladin's Code of Conduct. Related to the alignment issues, this tends to be the biggest problem most people have had with alignment. As has been noted, it can lead to very different interpretations by different people, and as it has a huge mechanical impact on the class, can lead to frustration/campaign breaking when handled poorly.

- Deck of Campaign Breaking Many Things.

[Spuddles]

Please note that I've edited my previous post.

What binary arguments?

A wizard with no spells at all is a commoner with a smart pet.

That, right there. A total strawman argument. And binary, like schneeky's "alignment doesn't work sometimes therefor it's not a perfect system therefore it's broken and you have to get rid of it."

They're compositions of true statements that reach false conclusions. Wizards would be a perfectly cromulent class if they only got one school- evocation. But transmutation, conjuration, and divination are superbly broken, in a myriad of ways.

[Kelb_Panthera]

That, right there. A total strawman argument. And binary, like schneeky's "alignment doesn't work sometimes therefor it's not a perfect system therefore it's broken and you have to get rid of it."

They're compositions of true statements that reach false conclusions. Wizards would be a perfectly cromulent class if they only got one school- evocation. But transmutation, conjuration, and divination are superbly broken, in a myriad of ways.

You can't seperate spellcasters from their spells.

It's true that fixing or removing the spells that make casters broken does bring them a long way back toward the expected power level, but that's like saying that you can fix the overpoweredness of the paladin by removing smite evil, (facetious example to make my point, paladins aren't overpowered), and it doesn't change the fact that the spells that break the casters are a part of those spellcasters.

Even the schools you've listed as broken aren't really. They just have the broken spells. Conjuration is fine if you remove the calling spells, transmutation works just fine without polymorph subschool and the celerity line, and the broken divinations are so DM dependent that they can't be objectively measured, though a certain consensus of how they work has been reached on this forum giving them the appearance of an objective level of power. Btw, you forgot to call illusion broken since it contains the shadow conjuration/evocation line.

You can reduce the power of any class by taking its options away.

Again, the alignment system is mostly guidelines, with only a very few hard and fast rules. Many groups never encounter any problems with it whatsoever, even when they're making heavy use of BoED, BoVD and classes with alignment based codes of conduct. Most of the people who have a probelm with the alignment system don't even seem to have a problem with the system on the whole, just with certain corner cases that didn't even crop up until BoED and BoVD put foward official rules that caused those corner cases.

[Gnorman]

Even the schools you've listed as broken aren't really. They just have the broken spells. Conjuration is fine if you remove the calling spells, transmutation works just fine without polymorph subschool and the celerity line, and the broken divinations are so DM dependent that they can't be objectively measured, though a certain consensus of how they work has been reached on this forum giving them the appearance of an objective level of power. Btw, you forgot to call illusion broken since it contains the shadow conjuration/evocation line.

It's not just Planar Binding and Polymorph that make the spellcaster overpowered. It's also Glitterdust, Stinking Cloud, and Grease (and that's just one school). Three low-level spells, each targeting a different save and offering no spell resistance, and each one is an encounter-ender if it sticks. Generally, if you have an opponent that is nauseated or blinded for three to five rounds, that opponent is effectively out of the fight. A wizard can do all that and still do everything else. He can still fly, he can still turn his opponents' minds into jelly, he can raise the dead to do his foul bidding, he can call upon angels and demons to carry out his will, and he can still make his allies into giant spinning murder tops with glistening diamond armor and swords that cut through chitin and bone like a monofilament wire through microwaved butter.

Conjuration gets so many toys that it's ridiculous not to see it as broken: summoning, teleportation, creation, save-or-lose, save-or-"die" (Plane Shift), save-or-suck, save-and-suck, panic buttons, utility, blasting, et cetera. Transmutation is almost as bad: Fly alone trivializes a vast number of opponents. Any arcane spellcaster could dominate the playing field even if limited to just one of either Conjuration or Transmutation. Even if he didn't use a single calling or polymorph spell and never went outside Core. Changing the game requires a lot more work than that. "Magic dude" encompasses so much more possibility and power than "dude with sword," and it always will - unless you narrow the focus of "magic dude," or widen that of "dude with sword."

On Topic: You know what's broken about "dude with sword?" He gets reduced to "hits things with sword," and as we all should know, HP damage is far from the most effective method of combat, even if it is the gold standard. Widen his focus. Let him afflict status effects normally restricted to magic. Let him blind people by throwing sand in their eyes, or nauseate them with a punch to the gut. Let him control the battlefield by controlling his opponents, forcing them into tactically disadvantageous positions and/or decisions. This was one of the things I feel that 4E got right, and should be carried over.

Or make HP damage less of a "Fine fine fine fine fine dead" situation. Inflict penalties on critters near-death.

[Autopsibiofeeder]

The second and third sentences are clearly in jest, but is the first?

I'm inclined to think so, but if not, I'd appreciate you elaborating.

All three in jest :smallsmile:.

[Kelb_Panthera]

It's not just Planar Binding and Polymorph that make the spellcaster overpowered. It's also Glitterdust, Stinking Cloud, and Grease (and that's just one school). Three low-level spells, each targeting a different save and offering no spell resistance, and each one is an encounter-ender if it sticks. Generally, if you have an opponent that is nauseated or blinded for three to five rounds, that opponent is effectively out of the fight. A wizard can do all that and still do everything else. He can still fly, he can still turn his opponents' minds into jelly, he can raise the dead to do his foul bidding, he can call upon angels and demons to carry out his will, and he can still make his allies into giant spinning murder tops with glistening diamond armor and swords that cut through chitin and bone like a monofilament wire through microwaved butter.

Conjuration gets so many toys that it's ridiculous not to see it as broken: summoning, teleportation, creation, save-or-lose, save-or-"die" (Plane Shift), save-or-suck, save-and-suck, panic buttons, utility, blasting, et cetera. Transmutation is almost as bad: Fly alone trivializes a vast number of opponents. Any arcane spellcaster could dominate the playing field even if limited to just one of either Conjuration or Transmutation. Even if he didn't use a single calling or polymorph spell and never went outside Core. Changing the game requires a lot more work than that. "Magic dude" encompasses so much more possibility and power than "dude with sword," and it always will - unless you narrow the focus of "magic dude," or widen that of "dude with sword.

Added and adjusted the bold, to show why those spells aren't broken.

Summoning is only marginally problematic, summons tend to be noticeably weaker than the casters that summon them, and the melee of the same level. They also take an entire round to summon and as such can be prevented relatively easily. Summons win encounters by shattering the action economy, not by being supremely powerful in any other way.

The same holds true for necromancy creating undead. Though it requires no in-combat action, it does require the aquisition of raw materials and corporeal undead are dramatically less powerful than the PC's at the level you can get them with few exceptions. Incorporeal undead on the otherhand are either A) mid-high level and relatively rare, in core or B) easily prepared for when out of core.

Anything save-or-X has a built in failure chance. DC's can only get so high without splat support, and debuffing before using the save-or-die spell takes in combat action and benefits everyone, not just the wizard.

The ability to buff allies isn't something that should even cross someone's mind as broken. Teamwork is the very esscence of the game and again, can't be done to rediculous levels without multiple splats.

Only at the highest level of play do no-save-just-die spells appear with any frequency, and they were always relatively few in number because they either end an encounter or do nothing.

Utility spells are just that, utility. They're for the aspects of the game that don't revolve around combat. Sure a caster can do most anything a skill monkey can, but he's got to burn off more expensive, or more limited, resources in addition to giving up in-combat options to do so.

[Gnorman]

Added and adjusted the bold, to show why those spells aren't broken.

Summoning is only marginally problematic, summons tend to be noticeably weaker than the casters that summon them, and the melee of the same level. They also take an entire round to summon and as such can be prevented relatively easily. Summons win encounters by shattering the action economy, not by being supremely powerful in any other way.

Summons are one of the worst offenders in the "replacing other class abilities entirely" pool. The round-long casting time is easily circumvented with the Rapid Summoning ACF, so that's not really an issue for a dedicated summoner. They may not always be level appropriate for every purpose, but they almost always are for their intended purpose - putting a warm body between the caster and the pointy end of his enemies' weapons. Summon Monster III can get you a Huge monstrous centipede - call it Wall of Chitin. They also add a great deal of on-the-fly versatility to a prepared caster in the form of SLAs. If you think "shattering the action economy" isn't a problem in and of itself, you are sorely mistaken. That's precisely why spells like Celerity are considered so useful.

The same holds true for necromancy creating undead. Though it requires no in-combat action, it does require the acquisition of raw materials and corporeal undead are dramatically less powerful than the PC's at the level you can get them with few exceptions. Incorporeal undead on the other hand are either A) mid-high level and relatively rare, in core or B) easily prepared for when out of core.

It's not really about the undead being dramatically less powerful than PCs, it's more about a spellcaster also having the capacity to destroy the action economy again and control a horde of (in this case cold) bodies to put between them and the enemy. If anything, Animate Dead is theoretically worse, since it has no time limit. Also, shadows and allips called, they're both incorporeal undead with a CR of 3.

Anything save-or-X has a built in failure chance. DC's can only get so high without splat support, and debuffing before using the save-or-die spell takes in combat action and benefits everyone, not just the wizard.

Almost everything has a failure chance in D&D. That's a terrible argument, "this isn't broken because it can fail". Here's an analogy: "My supercharger, who can deal triple-digit damage at level 6, isn't broken because he can miss". DCs don't need to be that high. It's easy to have a DC of 17 on Grease at level one. Your average group of orcs has an 80% chance of failing that. Stinking Cloud would have a DC of 19 - a CR 5 Dire Lion (which has a good Fort save and a decent Constitution) is put out of commission half the time. Those are damn good odds. Target the weak save and you get even better odds. If you play it smart (and you shouldn't play a wizard any other way), it's not a question of "if it sticks". It's a question of "how long do my friends have to beat the everloving tar out of it before it can fight again". And the answer is usually "one round per caster level."

The ability to buff allies isn't something that should even cross someone's mind as broken. Teamwork is the very essence of the game and again, can't be done to ridiculous levels without multiple splats.

I didn't say that it was broken, at least not by itself. I said that being able to do that and everything else was broken. What is your definition of "ridiculous levels"? Haste by itself can win encounters if applied to the right people. An extra attack on a charging barbarian is absolute gravy.

Only at the highest level of play do no-save-just-die spells appear with any frequency, and they were always relatively few in number because they either end an encounter or do nothing.

I never mentioned "no-save-just-die" spells, so don't use that as an example. I said "no-save-just-suck." Don't misquote me and attack the misquote. Sure, Holy Word exists (though it is Evocation, and so irrelevant to the argument), but I'm keeping myself limited to spells between levels one and four just to show you how broken the system is from the get-go. If you really want to get into save-or-dies, Plane Shift on a reasonably-optimized wizard has a higher than 50% chance of sending that CR 13 Glabrezu straight to Baator (Plane Shift having a DC of about 24 and the Glabrezu a Will save of only +11). Yeah, you have to touch it, but it has a touch AC of 8 - even a wizard only screws that up on a one. Is your fighter going to hit 50% of the time? Even then, unless he kills it in one hit, the wizard is doing the fighter's job better than the fighter.

Utility spells are just that, utility. They're for the aspects of the game that don't revolve around combat. Sure a caster can do most anything a skill monkey can, but he's got to burn off more expensive, or more limited, resources in addition to giving up in-combat options to do so.

The caster not only can do most anything a skill monkey can, but about a million things the skill monkey can't, too. That's bad design. Very few problems can't be solved with Major Creation and Fabricate. Can a skill monkey conjure matter out of thin air? I thought not. The spellcaster also doesn't need to burn off expensive resources to do so - refreshing his spell slots doesn't cost him a thing but time and sleep, and he can learn the spells as part of leveling to avoid scribing costs. Limited I will grant you, but a well-built wizard will have more spell slots than he knows what do to with.

Responses in bold. Math is fun.

In a perfect world, casters should only be able to focus on one or two of the following: buffing, debuffing, controlling, blasting, or utility. They certainly shouldn't be allowed to change that focus on a daily basis. Other classes have to make meaningful, permanent choices about their abilities and features. Prepared spellcasters do not.

[Yora]

I just checked and the SRD has 850 individuals spells and psionic powers. Does anyone know how many spells and powers are in all the Complete books?
(And maybe also all FR and Eberron books, since those are also often assumed to be used.)

Edit: Found a source. 3775, but that's really just the "spells". The full number should be closer to 5,000.

[Augmental]

I just checked and the SRD has 850 individuals spells and psionic powers. Does anyone know how many spells and powers are in all the Complete books?
(And maybe also all FR and Eberron books, since those are also often assumed to be used.)

Edit: Found a source. 3775, but that's really just the "spells". The full number should be closer to 5,000.

Where did you get that number from? D&D Tools's spell list is giving me the same number, but it includes every official WotC 3.5 and 3.0 book, plus the manuevers from ToB.

[Yora]

I think it was D&D tools, but when I set source to Complete Psionics, it sayed no results.

[Big Fau]

I think it was D&D tools, but when I set source to Complete Psionics, it sayed no results.

That's just too funny.

[Augmental]

I think it was D&D tools, but when I set source to Complete Psionics, it sayed no results.

I don't think it includes powers. Which is odd, considering that it includes maneuvers...

[Coidzor]

Responses in bold. Math is fun.

In a perfect world, casters should only be able to focus on one or two of the following: buffing, debuffing, controlling, blasting, or utility. They certainly shouldn't be allowed to change that focus on a daily basis. Other classes have to make meaningful, permanent choices about their abilities and features. Prepared spellcasters do not.

In a perfect world utility casting would not be essential and therefore would either not exist or would be ubiquitous to all casters because of the lack of oomph and necessity rather than an "equal" choice to battlefield control, buffing, debuffing, and blasting.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Responses in bold. Math is fun.

In a perfect world, casters should only be able to focus on one or two of the following: buffing, debuffing, controlling, blasting, or utility. They certainly shouldn't be allowed to change that focus on a daily basis. Other classes have to make meaningful, permanent choices about their abilities and features. Prepared spellcasters do not.

@ the responses to summon monster and undead creation: I, in-fact, said that both are much more problematic in their aspect of breaking action economy. That was never in dispute. The damage to the action economy however is noticeably less than with other action economy breakers, because unlike the others, it takes one casting per set of actions generated and those sets of actions can only sometimes be used to create a very limited set of spell effects generally of a much lower level. Your "wall of chitin" has the issue of being uncontrollable without further spellcasting since centipedes (even fiendish and celestial ones) don't have a language you can direct them with.

Undead rarely do that much and generally are only good for creating as you put it "cold bodies between the caster and his enemies," relatively fragile cold bodies at that. Allips aren't available on create undead and thus have the problem of needing to be found and controlled, while shadows are created by 15th level casters. One requires a DM to put it in front of the caster while the other is a triviality at the level it can be had with certainty, and these are two of only 5 incorporeal undead in core. 5 creatures out of a book whose ToC takes up two pages with nothing but monster names, while several of the named creatures have 10 or more varieties, is pretty rare relatively speaking.

@ the apparent "misquote" I had already covered save or suck and save or "lose" with my comments on debuffs. Save or die and no save just die were all that was left.

@ the misuse of probability: Assuming that DC17 on grease, that is an 80% chance to affect any given orc. If however there are three orcs, then it's only a little better than a 50% to affect all three. That's hardly an auto-win.

In any situation where there are four enemies, the absolute best that probability can get you, providing you can hit them all with the same save or x AoE is 81.5% that you'll nail all four if they can only save on a 20. Ending or trivializing the encounter four times out of five with that many caveats isn't going to happen as often as many people seem to think.

@ buffing comments: again, I don't have any problem with buffing allies. Casting haste on the fighter is contributing to victory, but it's not "winning the encounter outright." Neither is any other tactic that doesn't actually eliminate the target entirely. If there's still something to kill the fighters still have something to do.

@ utility spells: as I said, every utility spell a spellcaster has is using up resources the skillmonkey isn't, e.g. a wizard learns knock by spending 200gp to scribe it into his book 100gp to have another wizard allow him to copy it or one of his freebies at level up, and either a spellslot or 125gp (or 62.5gp, 3xp, and a day) on a scroll every time he wants to use it. A rogue spent 50gp on a set of lock-picks and one of his 8 skills on open lock, and he has no cost per use. That's rather a considerably smaller investment for the rogue, wouldn't you say? Sure the rogue's method isn't guaranteed, but, thanks to its limitations, knock isn't either.

@ casters doing everything: while casters have the potential to do anything, in practice they -are- limited if you remove the spell effects I mentioned. WBL is a cap on spells scribed, and spell-slots or spells known are limits on the load-out potential of all casters.

@ WBLomancy (pre-emptively): This sort of exploitative abuse of the rules is exactly the kind of thing the OP is looking for, but it's also one of the things DM's kill on sight. Not to indulge in an oberroni fallacy here, but between nearly all competent DM's hard-banning it and the fact that it requires either calling creatures, which for this portion of the discussion we're eliminating remember, or assuming that economics isn't a thing, it really shouldn't be taken into consideration. Edit: also, since WBL is a rule, actually using the exploits to circumvent WBL is effectively using one rule to break another, you're simultaneously using and breaking RAW.

@ your final note on casters being able to change their load-out daily: if they're not focusing on something, the numbers for the probability calculations become even more uncertain. Versatility at the cost of power is a fair trade, and the cost of being able to do anything on a given day gets pretty high, pretty quick for wizards. While clerics and druids can only do everything after a significant amount of optimization and splat-diving has been applied after you remove calling. Nevermind that this particular problem is unique to prep'ed casters, when we're talking about casters in general.

And on a personal note, could you use the quote tags instead of the bold tags when you add to my posts, I can't copy-paste and it'd be alot easier for me to go point by point if I can just use the forum's quote function.

[Gnorman]

To reiterate my two main points here:

1. Conjuration is so powerful that it overshadows most other schools

2. Spellcasters (especially of the prepared variety) are so powerful that they overshadow most other classes


@ the responses to summon monster and undead creation: I, in-fact, said that both are much more problematic in their aspect of breaking action economy. That was never in dispute. The damage to the action economy however is noticeably less than with other action economy breakers, because unlike the others, it takes one casting per set of actions generated and those sets of actions can only sometimes be used to create a very limited set of spell effects generally of a much lower level. Your "wall of chitin" has the issue of being uncontrollable without further spellcasting since centipedes (even fiendish and celestial ones) don't have a language you can direct them with.

What other action economy breakers are you referencing, then? Celerity? If so, yes, Celerity is one of the bigger offenders, but that doesn't mean that Summon Monster isn't a problem. More actions in a given turn is something that mundane classes simply don't get (or have to use a small selection of magic items to get), so yes, it's unfair. This is a problem that only got worse in Pathfinder, for example, as they felt comfortable with upping the CR of summoned monsters. I will grant you that summoning is not the most powerful tactic in terms of raw damage, but it's easily optimized to become more efficient and effective than blasting. Score one for Conjuration.


Undead rarely do that much and generally are only good for creating as you put it "cold bodies between the caster and his enemies," relatively fragile cold bodies at that. Allips aren't available on create undead and thus have the problem of needing to be found and controlled, while shadows are created by 15th level casters. One requires a DM to put it in front of the caster while the other is a triviality at the level it can be had with certainty, and these are two of only 5 incorporeal undead in core. 5 creatures out of a book whose ToC takes up two pages with nothing but monster names, while several of the named creatures have 10 or more varieties, is pretty rare relatively speaking.

Lack of specificity: you did not make an overt reference to creating incorporeal undead, you just said "Incorporeal undead on the other hand are either A) mid-high level and relatively rare, in core or B) easily prepared for when out of core," and so I was providing examples of incorporeal undead that are low level. I agree with you that at the point at which you can create/control allips and shadows, they are often trivial (except in the case of an early-entry Master of Shrouds). The problem with undead summoning isn't their individual fragility, but the ability to create a horde of them during downtime.


@ the apparent "misquote" I had already covered save or suck and save or "lose" with my comments on debuffs. Save or die and no save just die were all that was left.

Fair enough, but again: I did not claim that Conjuration had "no save just die" spells. It does not, at least in core.


@ the misuse of probability: Assuming that DC17 on grease, that is an 80% chance to affect any given orc. If however there are three orcs, then it's only a little better than a 50% to affect all three. That's hardly an auto-win.

In any situation where there are four enemies, the absolute best that probability can get you, providing you can hit them all with the same save or x AoE is 81.5% that you'll nail all four if they can only save on a 20. Ending or trivializing the encounter four times out of five with that many caveats isn't going to happen as often as many people seem to think.

A 81.5% to effectively end an encounter with a single action? That's a damn sight better than most other options. I don't need to get all of them to justify my own effectiveness, either - even if I only get two or three, I've still severely hampered most of the opposing side. A spellcaster may not be able to trivialize every encounter. A spellcaster is going to trivialize an encounter a lot more often than a mundane class.


@ buffing comments: again, I don't have any problem with buffing allies. Casting haste on the fighter is contributing to victory, but it's not "winning the encounter outright." Neither is any other tactic that doesn't actually eliminate the target entirely. If there's still something to kill the fighters still have something to do.

I specifically said "casting haste on a charging barbarian," which can certainly end an encounter with an extra attack. I suppose we'd need to define our encounters for this to be a useful discussion.

As to your second point: a sleeping foe may not be eliminated entirely, but it's definitely out of combat and able to be put out of its misery at my leisure. But you're right, the fighters still have something to do: coup de grace. Nothing screams "I'm helping!" like slaughtering sleeping goblins, right?


@ utility spells: as I said, every utility spell a spellcaster has is using up resources the skillmonkey isn't, e.g. a wizard learns knock by spending 200gp to scribe it into his book 100gp to have another wizard allow him to copy it or one of his freebies at level up, and either a spellslot or 125gp (or 62.5gp, 3xp, and a day) on a scroll every time he wants to use it. A rogue spent 50gp on a set of lock-picks and one of his 8 skills on open lock, and he has no cost per use. That's rather a considerably smaller investment for the rogue, wouldn't you say? Sure the rogue's method isn't guaranteed, but, thanks to its limitations, knock isn't either.

No, it's not a smaller investment. A rogue is investing a permanent portion of his character-based resources, i.e., skill points. He can never do anything else with those skill points (unless retraining rules are used). He can't wake up one morning and decide that since he's going to be attending a debutante ball, his points in Open Lock would be better used in Diplomacy or Disguise. The wizard can. He can prepare Charm Person and Disguise Self and forget about Knock. But the day after that, when he's breaking into a royal prison? Welcome back, Knock.

The gold cost is negligible, and even if it were not (say if you live in a low-magic world or your DM is stingy with treasure), there are plenty of ways of getting around it (Collegiate Wizard, Mage of the Arcane Order).


@ casters doing everything: while casters have the potential to do anything, in practice they -are- limited if you remove the spell effects I mentioned. WBL is a cap on spells scribed, and spell-slots or spells known are limits on the load-out potential of all casters.

WBL is not a hard cap, and scribing scrolls is pretty cheap, considering.

A reasonably-optimized wizard can have a lot of spell slots. A level 8 wizard who started with 20 Intelligence, invests his two points, and has picked up a reasonably-priced Headband of Intellect +4 has 26 in the score, giving him an extra two spell slots per level. Specialization adds one more, at the cost of some versatility. Focused Specialist adds one more on top of that. Now I've got six fourth-level spell slots, seven third and second level, and eight first level. Not infinite, sure, but I can safely spend about six, seven spells per encounter (assuming the average of 3-4 per day). I can plan enough versatility in those slots to handle a wide variety of situations.

Taking away Planar Binding, Polymorph, Celerity, and then calling it good is a half measure. I don't disagree with you that those are the most problematic spells. But they're not the only ones.


@ WBLomancy (pre-emptively): This sort of exploitative abuse of the rules is exactly the kind of thing the OP is looking for, but it's also one of the things DM's kill on sight. Not to indulge in an oberroni fallacy here, but between nearly all competent DM's hard-banning it and the fact that it requires either calling creatures, which for this portion of the discussion we're eliminating remember, or assuming that economics isn't a thing, it really shouldn't be taken into consideration. Edit: also, since WBL is a rule, actually using the exploits to circumvent WBL is effectively using one rule to break another, you're simultaneously using and breaking RAW.

I don't understand what this paragraph is in reference to.


@ your final note on casters being able to change their load-out daily: if they're not focusing on something, the numbers for the probability calculations become even more uncertain. Versatility at the cost of power is a fair trade, and the cost of being able to do anything on a given day gets pretty high, pretty quick for wizards. While clerics and druids can only do everything after a significant amount of optimization and splat-diving has been applied after you remove calling. Nevermind that this particular problem is unique to prep'ed casters, when we're talking about casters in general.

Versatility vs. power is a false dichotomy when talking about spellcasters. They get both very easily. Can a fighter or a rogue adapt in the same way? Not at all. They're stuck with their permanent choices - their skills and their feats. It's a different game entirely. Mundane classes are laboratory chemists, mixing the materials they have on hand. Maybe some of those materials are powerful in the right situation, but they're always stuck with the same periodic table. Spellcasters are quantum theorists - they are not constrained by petty considerations like "reality." They can change their fundamental nature on a daily basis.

The majority of spellcasters are prepared spellcasters (at least in core), so it seems relevant to the discussion to focus on them. Sorcerers are less of a problem. Still a big one, due to the fact that spells are generally the broken bits, not spellcasters.


And on a personal note, could you use the quote tags instead of the bold tags when you add to my posts, I can't copy-paste and it'd be alot easier for me to go point by point if I can just use the forum's quote function.

Done.

BACK ON TOPIC:

The concept that mundane heroes cannot break the laws of physics. We need more Ex abilities.

[Kelb_Panthera]

To reiterate my two main points here:

1. Conjuration is so powerful that it overshadows most other schools

2. Spellcasters (especially of the prepared variety) are so powerful that they overshadow most other classes.

1 is difficult to dispute, but being the most powerful school doesn't mean it can solve everything, and 2 is only true sometimes in actual play.


What other action economy breakers are you referencing, then? Celerity? If so, yes, Celerity is one of the bigger offenders, but that doesn't mean that Summon Monster isn't a problem. More actions in a given turn is something that mundane classes simply don't get (or have to use a small selection of magic items to get), so yes, it's unfair. This is a problem that only got worse in Pathfinder, for example, as they felt comfortable with upping the CR of summoned monsters. I will grant you that summoning is not the most powerful tactic in terms of raw damage, but it's easily optimized to become more efficient and effective than blasting. Score one for Conjuration. I know next to nothing about pathfinder, but the scuttlebutt and what I do know turned me off to it, so I won't comment on that point. Summoning creatures isn't -really- giving the caster more actions. It's putting more creatures into play. If he's spamming them it's a stalling tactic, if he's only summoning 1 at highest level that's only one extra enemy for the opposing group. If he's summoning a few at highest level -1 they amount to little more than damage sponges. If you're focused enough on summoning to make them credible threats in their own right, you're not spending resources on something else.




Lack of specificity: you did not make an overt reference to creating incorporeal undead, you just said "Incorporeal undead on the other hand are either A) mid-high level and relatively rare, in core or B) easily prepared for when out of core," and so I was providing examples of incorporeal undead that are low level. I agree with you that at the point at which you can create/control allips and shadows, they are often trivial (except in the case of an early-entry Master of Shrouds). The problem with undead summoning isn't their individual fragility, but the ability to create a horde of them during downtime.

You're right, I should've been more specific, however I thought creation/summoning was implied since we were talking about casters and the only alternative for their collection is DM fiat.


Fair enough, but again: I did not claim that Conjuration had "no save just die" spells. It does not, at least in core.

at that point I was talking about spells in general.


A 81.5% to effectively end an encounter with a single action? That's a damn sight better than most other options. I don't need to get all of them to justify my own effectiveness, either - even if I only get two or three, I've still severely hampered most of the opposing side. A spellcaster may not be able to trivialize every encounter. A spellcaster is going to trivialize an encounter a lot more often than a mundane class. I still disagree. If he effectively eliminates 2 or 3 out of 6 or 8 he's pulled his weight, but the remaining 3-6 enemies will still pose a threat to the rest of the party. Being able to crush encounters that've been poorly designed in the tactical sense just doesn't impress me.




I specifically said "casting haste on a charging barbarian," which can certainly end an encounter with an extra attack. I suppose we'd need to define our encounters for this to be a useful discussion. In your specific example, the ubercharger is what's trivializing the encounter, not the wizard. I just cannot see a circumstance under which buffing is a bad thing except for DMM'ing a cleric into clericzilla and destroying Tokyo. I like Tokyo darnit.


As to your second point: a sleeping foe may not be eliminated entirely, but it's definitely out of combat and able to be put out of its misery at my leisure. But you're right, the fighters still have something to do: coup de grace. Nothing screams "I'm helping!" like slaughtering sleeping goblins, right? Again, this is only trivializing if you get all of the enmies. If you miss one, he can wake his buddies up, or go for reinforcements.




No, it's not a smaller investment. A rogue is investing a permanent portion of his character-based resources, i.e., skill points. He can never do anything else with those skill points (unless retraining rules are used). He can't wake up one morning and decide that since he's going to be attending a debutante ball, his points in Open Lock would be better used in Diplomacy or Disguise. The wizard can. He can prepare Charm Person and Disguise Self and forget about Knock. But the day after that, when he's breaking into a royal prison? Welcome back, Knock.

The gold cost is negligible, and even if it were not (say if you live in a low-magic world or your DM is stingy with treasure), there are plenty of ways of getting around it (Collegiate Wizard, Mage of the Arcane Order). It is a smaller investment for the rogue, because while skillpoints are a fixed cost, for a fixed ability, the monetary and/ or time investments on knock result in the possibilty of having spent those resources to no effect at all under more circumstances. To use your ball example, if the rogue wants to leave the ballroom and investigate/ loot the estate, open lock becomes useful again. If the wizard didn't prepare knock tonight, too bad. The rogue also has at least 7 more skills if he doesn't do any half-spending on skillpoints. Not spending any on at least one social skill is foolhardy at best.




WBL is not a hard cap, and scribing scrolls is pretty cheap, considering. You're right, in that WBL isn't a hard cap, expendables are acounted for in the treasure guidelines. However, the soft cap still means that every scroll of knock is 62-125gp not spent on something else, like say a potion, and in the case of crafting a day per scroll. How much downtime do you have? Also note that if the door you want to open is bigger than 30 square feet the scroll is useless, while the rogue's ability to pick locks doesn't care what size they are.


A reasonably-optimized wizard can have a lot of spell slots. A level 8 wizard who started with 20 Intelligence, invests his two points, and has picked up a reasonably-priced Headband of Intellect +4 has 26 in the score, giving him an extra two spell slots per level. Specialization adds one more, at the cost of some versatility. Focused Specialist adds one more on top of that. Now I've got six fourth-level spell slots, seven third and second level, and eight first level. Not infinite, sure, but I can safely spend about six, seven spells per encounter (assuming the average of 3-4 per day). I can plan enough versatility in those slots to handle a wide variety of situations. Except at 8th level it's rather a bold assumption that thoes 1st level slots will actually prove useful if they're not used exclusively on spells that don't allow a save and still provide some meaningful effect. That knocks the total to 13 useful spells or 3-4 useful spells per encounter. Just enough for one each round. Though tbh, I'm not certain of the validity of gaining extra spell-slots through a headband of intellect. Can you cite me a source for that one?


Taking away Planar Binding, Polymorph, Celerity, and then calling it good is a half measure. I don't disagree with you that those are the most problematic spells. But they're not the only ones. Nice to know we agree on something. :smalltongue: I still think that it's considerably better than a half-measure though.




I don't understand what this paragraph is in reference to. I presumed you'd mention the fact that casters are capable of shattering WBL with relative ease. I'm pleasantly surprised that you did not. Kudos.




Versatility vs. power is a false dichotomy when talking about spellcasters. They get both very easily. Can a fighter or a rogue adapt in the same way? Not at all. They're stuck with their permanent choices - their skills and their feats. It's a different game entirely. Mundane classes are laboratory chemists, mixing the materials they have on hand. Maybe some of those materials are powerful in the right situation, but they're always stuck with the same periodic table. Spellcasters are quantum theorists - they are not constrained by petty considerations like "reality." They can change their fundamental nature on a daily basis. The choice to be either versatile or powerful is not a false dichotomy. Barring exploits it's exceedingly difficult to be both at once. If you're versatile on a day you discover you need power you have a problem, likewise the other way around. The fighter and rogue don't get to choose from day to day, but that's why adventurers travel in groups. They also don't have to worry about getting progressively less powerful/versatile as the day wears on if the day is particularly grueling with little chance to recover.


The majority of spellcasters are prepared spellcasters (at least in core), so it seems relevant to the discussion to focus on them. Sorcerers are less of a problem. Still a big one, due to the fact that spells are generally the broken bits, not spellcasters. There are no spells without casters. Trying to seperate the two is drawing a meaningless distinction. Also, while 3/4 core casters are indeed prepared, since bard is being ignored for not being broken until he's splatted to hell and back, the wizard is the only one that can "do it all" as it were. The cleric list is nothing but buffs and specifc utility until you add in a specific domain. The domains can't be switched around, and so clerics can't do everything. The core druid list is even tighter than the cleric list, with no domains. Outside of core the ratio of prep'ed to spontaneous is much closer. 6 spontaneous (sorc, beg, war, dread necro, shugenga, and favored soul) to 5 prep'ed (wiz, clc, drd, wu-jen, and archivist).




Done.Much appreciated, thank you. :smallbiggrin:


BACK ON TOPIC:

The concept that mundane heroes cannot break the laws of physics. We need more Ex abilities.

Whole-heartedly agreed.

[Augmental]

However, the soft cap still means that every scroll of knock is 62-125gp not spent on something else, like say a potion,

There aren't many potions under 125 GP. Going down the list of 50 GP potions:
Cure Light Wounds: Might be useful at levels 1-2, a waste of a standard action anyways.
Endure Elements: This would be better if is wasn't only for one person.
Hide from Animals/Undead: Again, single target only.
Jump: Meh, not that useful.
Mage Armor: An hour of this isn't as good as CL/hours.
Magic Fang/Weapon: These are pretty much a +1 to attack and damage. Not worth it.
Magic Stone: Turn some random stones into okay throwing weapons. One of the better 50 GP potions.
Pass Without Trace: Single person only.
Protection from Alignment: Decent.
Remove Fear: Can you drink potions while frightened? That may actually make this a decent value, but otherwise...
Sanctuary: It lasts for one round. I'd say that makes it the worst potion on this list.
Shield of Faith: Mediocre.
Shillelagh: One of the best potions here.

So that's only Shillelagh, Magic Stone, Protection from Alignment, and (maybe) Remove Fear on that list that are sort of worthwhile.

[ryu]

Plus no one bringing up xp being a river and the fact that wizards can be higher level than the party by cr rules. Sometimes this happens without the wizard even intending to do so. Also I don't know about the rogue, but I'd rather spend a difference of 12.5 gold and an irrelevant single digit xp cost over permanent, non-refundable skillpoints that the wizard can use to be more viable in a wide range of areas thanks to use magic device.

[Wise Green Bean]

Diplomacy in general doesn't work well. The GITP rules for it are decent, but really, any system that could take into account risk and reward and only talks about a specific bargain would be a welcome fix. The existing system it changes whether or not they like you. Simplistically at that. It needs to be a bargain system with at least 2-3 factors involved. Personally, I also think that moral obligation should be a factor, to explain the home town rival who hates you but knows he is morally obligated to help you. But a 4 factor system to work up DCs is a bit much.
That way, it's not so easy to convince a peasant, even if he likes you, to jump down a dragon's gullet, as it's still a serious challenge. Even then, it's probably a good idea to cut down on some of the synergy. A level 2 shouldn't have a +16 modifier.
The general ranges I'd suggest for factors to DC would be:
-20 to 0 for reward, -20: exceptional reward, and 0: no reward.
0 to +20 for risk, 0 being risk free, and +20: nearly certain death.
-20 to +20 for how much they like you, -20: you are there idol, +20: you are their nemesis.
You could potentially put risk and reward on the same scale, but I feel it would be awkward.
And personally I like moral obligation too, with:
-20 to +20, -20: it would be morally repugnant to not lend aid, and +20: it would be morally repugnant to help.

So the peasant who likes you that you want to jump down a dragon's throat would start at a base of DC 20, he likes you so -10, the risk is huge so +20, there's no reward so 0 there. That leaves it as a DC 30 challenge, nothing to sniff at. Personally, I think the extra +10 should be thrown in for morals, as he is obligated to stay alive and take care of his family.
So virtually anything can be arbitrated by this system, including the much glossed over field of seduction. It also encourages GMs to think about NPC motivation, and still gives them control of the NPCs and their feelings.

[Ravens_cry]

Hulking Hurler.
When you start needing scientific notation to track damage in a game where enemies peak in the low thousands at most, something is wrong.
Or very, very right.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Plus no one bringing up xp being a river and the fact that wizards can be higher level than the party by cr rules. Sometimes this happens without the wizard even intending to do so. Also I don't know about the rogue, but I'd rather spend a difference of 12.5 gold and an irrelevant single digit xp cost over permanent, non-refundable skillpoints that the wizard can use to be more viable in a wide range of areas thanks to use magic device.

...... :confused:

The xp is a river deal only allows characters that spend xp to keep up with the party, it most certainly does not put them ahead. Being a level behind means having fewer spell slots and being an entire spell level behind the curve on every other level. Even if the extra gear is enough to raise his cr by one that's just putting him back at even. If he's not burning so much xp that he stays behind a level then the gear isn't going to raise his CR. Of course, that doesn't even adress the fact that a caster's CR is meaningless unless he's an npc.

Also, the cost of the scroll isn't just 62.5gp. It's 62.5gp and a day. A day that you're not adventuring and gaining xp, a day where the plot can move on without you. Reasonable down-time can be reasonably expected, a day for every locked door you want to open should stretch anyone's definition of reasonable. Alternately, it's 125gp, the equivalent of 2, 1st level potions, 2 disguise kits, the cost of upgrading to a masterwork armor, a masterwork tool for each of concentration and spellcraft, etc. Not all of these things will be desireable to every spellcaster, but sometimes they will, and whether you craft it yourself or not, you'll need it for every door* you want opened, unless the door is bigger than 30 feet square. It won't even open a door that's got more than two locks on it.

*Door in this case meaning any locked portal that has a hinge. Knock won't raise portcullises or open sliding walls at all.

Then there's UMD. Rogues have it, wizards don't. Further, if wizards did have UMD it'd be a waste of skill-points besides. Why would a wizard put ranks in a skill that lets him do something he can do anyway. If anything, the fact that a rogue can access many of the wizard's schticks, including that scroll of knock if he's worried a lock might be beyond his skill, is a point -for- the rogue, not against him.

[ryu]

Unless you're throwing twenty locked things I want open and tying up other utility transport spells with other things why do I care?

As for the first part the wizard in question if further behind in level assuming no template or La will be getting more xp from the same encounters. In some cases this can in fact put them forward and the results are funny. Further A day becomes far less important in the long run outside of an incredibly small number of situations. Does the bbeg have some kind of superweapon or ritual that we were sent to stop on a stated time limit or are we just murdering hobos in a dungeon?

[Kelb_Panthera]

Unless you're throwing twenty locked things I want open and tying up other utility transport spells with other things why do I care?

As for the first part the wizard in question if further behind in level assuming no template or La will be getting more xp from the same encounters. In some cases this can in fact put them forward and the results are funny. Further A day becomes far less important in the long run outside of an incredibly small number of situations. Does the bbeg have some kind of superweapon or ritual that we were sent to stop on a stated time limit or are we just murdering hobos in a dungeon?

Since you're fond of dungeon robbing how's this, every treasure chest has a lock. Every door to an important room is locked. The door to the dungeon itself is locked.

If there are 5 treasure chests, 3 important rooms and the front door, that's 9 locks to bypass. If the guy that built the place is a little paranoid that could easily be 3 locks on the front door, making it a two scroll door, if it's small enough for the scroll to open. 30 feet square is only a 4X7-ish foot door. At just 9 locks that's 562.5gp and 9 days of prep or 1125gp. Sure you could try to just smash the locks, but with your 8str that will either take a hell of a long while or some other form of magic. Nevermind that if you blast the lock off of a treasure chest you could destroy any art pieces that may be inside, and blasting doors tends to draw attention.

The rogue on the other hand spent 100gp on a set of thieves tools before he made level 2 and just needs between 6 seconds and 2 minutes to open any of those locks that's not beyond him, and can UMD one of those scrolls if it's absolutely necessary.

I still think you've misunderstood the xp is a river idea. CR has no meaning to PC's other than how much xp treasure they get from killing something. It has no bearing on their level or any kind of dice roll.

Say, for example, you're a level behind when the party is at 11th level. You're only 10th level. Either you've only burned off enough xp to put you a little behind, meaning you'll catch up in a few encounters, at which point you stop getting extra and get the same as everyone else; or you've burned off so much that you just gained 10th level at the same time they gained 11th. Your gear will let you keep up, but you're either not catching up in level at all because you're still burning off xp or you've slowed down your xp use and are going to catch up somewhere toward the end of your career, since the extra xp gained for being behind isn't much more than an extra 30%. That's around 40 encounters to catch up, if you never burn another xp.

More likely, you'll continue burning xp and stay one level behind forever, but the xp cost of making items is covered by your extra 30% xp.

Xp is a river is the reason that you can afford xp costs. It's not some magic bullet that will shoot you ahead of everyone else in level.

[ryu]

30% is quite a bit if you only budget to be slightly behind at a given point. thus the extra xp can actually give you a lead on the others in some situations. Doubly so if you use this trick on large encounters. Further over sixty percent of what you just mentioned in locks are things we don't use knock for. Multiple stage utility/travel spells that while low in level continue to be relevant when knock is obsolete. Knock scrolls or wands in extreme cases are only for making early life easier. As for drawing attention there are other ways to take down a door besides blasting it down. Any dungeon using stonework? Stone to mud and I don't care. That's also a fun combat spell even if door shenanigans don't happen.

[Kelb_Panthera]

30% is quite a bit if you only budget to be slightly behind at a given point. thus the extra xp can actually give you a lead on the others in some situations. Doubly so if you use this trick on large encounters. Further over sixty percent of what you just mentioned in locks are things we don't use knock for. Multiple stage utility/travel spells that while low in level continue to be relevant when knock is obsolete. Knock scrolls or wands in extreme cases are only for making early life easier. As for drawing attention there are other ways to take down a door besides blasting it down. Any dungeon using stonework? Stone to mud and I don't care. That's also a fun combat spell even if door shenanigans don't happen.

:smallsigh: If you're only slightly behind, you only get the extra 30% for one or two encounters, then you get the same as everyone else. You might end up far enough ahead in terms of overall xp for one or two items that are pitifully underpowered for your level. An extra 30% for one encounter is only an extra 2.25% for the entire level. It becomes 4.5% if it's for two encounters. That's utterly trivial.

Even if you don't use knock, any spell you use to open or bypass some obstacle you can't handle in a mundane manner, while a rogue can, is burning off expendable resources that you have to recover. You're either using up a spell known, a currently preped slot, or the cash that you've been putting your neck on the line to get.

In the case of a spell known, you've payed an opportunity cost and reduced your potential in some other area.

Putting it in the spellbook takes two days, minimum (one to decipher the spell, one to scribe it) and 150gp per spell level 100/level of which -does- count against your WBL, or the opportunity cost of not getting something else as a freebie. A blessed book doesn't save you from the immediate cost of renting another caster's book, and still ends up with a net cost of 62.5gp per spell level once the book is full. When you first get the BB it takes a 12,500gp chunk out of your WBL all at once and you have to spend weeks or even months transfering the spells from your old mundane book into it, if you want all your spells in one place and to remove the cost of the old spellbook from your WBL.

If your DM is the type to only let you learn via scroll it gets worse. Then it's (spell level X caster level X 25gp)+(100 X spell level) to get a new spell, or a net cost of (Spell Level X Caster Level X 25)+(12.5 X spell level) once you've filled up your BB.

If you prep it, and it turns out you didn't need it today, you've payed yet another opportunity cost by reducing your defacto ability in another area.

Meanwhile anything the rogue can do, cost him a single opportunity cost when he decided to learn that thing. He may need some magic items to support it later in his career, but skill boosters are cheap and not always strictly necessary.

A one time opportunity cost and maybe an ongoing but fairly low financial cost, for the rogue, is substantially less than a recurring opportunity cost and/or a constantly ongoing financial cost, for the wizard.

[ryu]

Difference being we're assuming the wizard is fighting solo and thus individual encounters are worth more and the effect of the trick is rather increased by cr rules kicking in because of it yes?

Are we also assuming monsters have less treasure to make WBL still a thing?

I'm only scribing anything for verisimilitude.

[Sayt]

Sorry I'm a bit confused, if the wizard is fighting solo, one assumes presumably he doesn't have a party to get ahead of using this river trick, or have I missed something?

Edit for better wording

[ryu]

I don't have a party to get ahead of, but I do have ''amount of xp the dm expects me to have'' to get ahead of. High level wizard has an easier time of it than low level wizard, and getting up faster is nice.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I don't have a party to get ahead of, but I do have ''amount of xp the dm expects me to have'' to get ahead of. High level wizard has an easier time of it than low level wizard, and getting up faster is nice.

If your wizard is alone, you're not playing anymore. You're just theory crafting and that's not what we were talking about.

A wizard by himself doesn't have to be balanced with anything. There's noone else at the table to care how powerful the wizard is.

Also, assuming that the previous is somehow ignored, the party's level would be the wizard's level, so he'd get 4 times the xp he would get otherwise by taking down an encounter of his own level. If he were a fighter instead, that'd be no different. Soloing an encounter of your challeng rating is always worth X times more, where X is the normal number of party members. Since the game generally assumes a 4 man team, it's usually going to be 4 times what you would've recieved had you been playing in a typical party. This is completely independent of class.

[ryu]

The core assumption that you seem to be making is that I didn't intentionally stay slightly low on xp to reap 30% extra xp applied as multiplier to the four times bonus. This is why I don't care about such petty things as time management. I get just over six times normal xp with good planning and rapid easy to obtain spells. It's not about challenging set number of encounters per day and then finding shelter. It's about living long enough to level up for the day. If you specifically disallow this trick as I have ''no party'' I can just hire an npc warrior with relative ease as a token and pay a fixed price for all the fighter was ever good for rather than straight even shares.

[Togo]

If you're going that far into game distortion, why stop there? Get into 'adventuring party plc' tactics, avoid going on adventurers at all, and just hire other people to engage in your game exploits for you.

Because a wizard turning up to an adventure site and using his class abilities to bypass encounters is severely unoptimised compared to the guy who sits at home, hires other people to take all the risks for him, and makes a killing on %s, agent fees, land speculation and monster breeding.

If you really want to optimise a character to break the game, why the heck would you rely on something as limited as abilities on your character sheet?

Kill WBL first, use the money to buy xp or opportunities to gain it as necessary, and then take over the world. At the highest level of optimisation your character sheet is largely irrelevent - try not to let it distract you. :smallwink:

[ryu]

Mostly because I find replacing monsters, blinded, deafened, upside down while prone, and possibly flesh to stoned all at the same time fun in a hilarious sort of way. I don't use save or dies you see? They're too quick. You don't get a chance to savor all the... little emotions... of your dm.

Yes I make a habit of applying joker to various abominations against nature for fun. I have a sadistic sense of humor.

[Gnorman]

If you're going that far into game distortion, why stop there? Get into 'adventuring party plc' tactics, avoid going on adventurers at all, and just hire other people to engage in your game exploits for you.

Because a wizard turning up to an adventure site and using his class abilities to bypass encounters is severely unoptimised compared to the guy who sits at home, hires other people to take all the risks for him, and makes a killing on %s, agent fees, land speculation and monster breeding.

If you really want to optimise a character to break the game, why the heck would you rely on something as limited as abilities on your character sheet?

Kill WBL first, use the money to buy xp or opportunities to gain it as necessary, and then take over the world. At the highest level of optimisation your character sheet is largely irrelevent - try not to let it distract you. :smallwink:

Is it a bad thing that I would play this game so hard?

I mean, you had me at "agent fees" and "land speculation," but then you threw in "monster breeding" and it was like you found the hidden key to my secret heart.

[Kelb_Panthera]

The core assumption that you seem to be making is that I didn't intentionally stay slightly low on xp to reap 30% extra xp applied as multiplier to the four times bonus. This is why I don't care about such petty things as time management. I get just over six times normal xp with good planning and rapid easy to obtain spells. It's not about challenging set number of encounters per day and then finding shelter. It's about living long enough to level up for the day. If you specifically disallow this trick as I have ''no party'' I can just hire an npc warrior with relative ease as a token and pay a fixed price for all the fighter was ever good for rather than straight even shares.

Ignoring for the moment that you can't actually be a level below yourself and hirelings don't count for determining party level, can't you just admit that you've misunderstood the concept and stop grasping at straws?

^This isn't even recognizable as a game anymore.

[ryu]

That's what happens when you have a lone caster playing without allies. The question is less a matter of conflict and more a matter of how he'll render it irrelevant. That's what wizard does without flunkies and most of the time when they do have said flunkies.

Also alternatively flesh to stone and shrink item to postpone encounters until items are created. Works unless you say that the baddies loss cr when stone to fleshed.

[Kelb_Panthera]

That's what happens when you have a lone caster playing without allies. The question is less a matter of conflict and more a matter of how he'll render it irrelevant. That's what wizard does without flunkies and most of the time when they do have said flunkies.

Also alternatively flesh to stone and shrink item to postpone encounters until items are created. Works unless you say that the baddies loss cr when stone to fleshed.

This will be my last attempt to understand the madness you're putting forth.

I think..... what you're saying is that the DM would be placing creatures of a higher CR in front of your solo wizard than his level, and that your solo wizard would be anihilating these "challenges" and gaining "extra" xp.

If that's right, then there's still one gaping hole in your theory.

No sane DM will do that. If you're not being challenged the challenges will be turned up. That's the DM's job. He puts challenging encounters in front of the players, or in this weird case player. If he can't do that, he'll eventually give up as a failed DM. Way to shrink an already small subsection of the community. :smallmad:

Another hole in your theory: at that point you're not getting "extra" xp, you're just getting xp. Of course, he could always just put ..... a wizard ..... in front of you. The enemy would be the same CR as your level at the same level: no "bonus" xp. He could likely do the same with several other casters, or even give you a seriously dangerous challenge with a group of casters a couple levels lower than yours. A wizard can't beat the action economy of a wizard, a cleric, and a sorcerer together, even if he has a couple levels on them. You might even get less xp than the typical 4x.

In any case, you can't get more xp than a party that's not there and as a consequence can't get "extra," because extra means more than normal. What you'd be getting, whatever the differences between CR of the challenges and your character level, is normal xp for your character.