Regarding Wraithstrike

[AlanBruce]

Greetings! I was wondering if there is any way to negate that amazing transmutation spell, {Scrubbed url} Wraithstrike[/URL]. Other than having an abnormally high touch AC (unlikely in most cases), are there spells or armor properties such as ghost ward or ghost touch that would negate such attack? Probably no, but it would be nice to know if there is a RAW defense against such spell.

Thank you in advance.

[MesiDoomstalker]

(Greater) Dispel Magic is great for those pesky Incantrix (Incantrixi?) and their Persist shenanigans.

Counterspelling if used in the way it was intended (IE: right before the attack its used on).

Stealing spellbooks/Mindraping Sorcerer's will make sure they can never cast it again (until they get a new spellbook and a Scroll of Wraithestrike).

[Feralventas]

To be fair, the point of Wraithstrike is to make folks with otherwise meh-at-best-and-often-awful attack rolls have a lower target to hit for success, so even if raising touch-ac was difficult, you wouldn't have to raise it much to make it much less of a threat.

Raising Dexterity four to six points via magic items or slight adjustments to a standard monster's stats should make that a much more effective option.

Deflection Modifiers aren't too difficult to come by (rings of protection, for example).

Anything with Natural Armor bonuses can make good use of the Scintillating Scales spell, which converts that Natural bonus temporarily into a Deflection Bonus (dragons Love this one.)

The X-stat-to-y-bonus thread has plenty of ways to make an evasion tank; I'm helping one of my players to build a character with everything but Strength to AC (Dex naturally, Con via Fist of the Forest, Int via Kung-Fu Genius, Wisdom via UA Druid, and Charisma via Battle Dancer.) There are also magic items like a Monk's Belt or Battledancer's Slippers to provide these bonuses without class levels.

The Wall of Blades maneuver (Tome of Battle) allows you to use an Attack roll to replace your AC, which then applies to both Touch and Standard attacks, though this is for only 1 attack per round; you can recover it the next turn, however, and it can be used After you know the result of the attack.

[AlanBruce]

Thank you for the quick response. The PC is a gish (fighter/wizard combo). And he loves mixing a bunch of feats like power attack and leap attack with the spell. Very effective, yes, but also makes encounters too short. The spellbook could be stolen, yes, but that would be excessively cruel.

[AlanBruce]

To be fair, the point of Wraithstrike is to make folks with otherwise meh-at-best-and-often-awful attack rolls have a lower target to hit for success, so even if raising touch-ac was difficult, you wouldn't have to raise it much to make it much less of a threat.

Raising Dexterity four to six points via magic items or slight adjustments to a standard monster's stats should make that a much more effective option.

Deflection Modifiers aren't too difficult to come by (rings of protection, for example).

Anything with Natural Armor bonuses can make good use of the Scintillating Scales spell, which converts that Natural bonus temporarily into a Deflection Bonus (dragons Love this one.)




The X-stat-to-y-bonus thread has plenty of ways to make an evasion tank; I'm helping one of my players to build a character with everything but Strength to AC (Dex naturally, Con via Fist of the Forest, Int via Kung-Fu Genius, Wisdom via UA Druid, and Charisma via Battle Dancer.) There are also magic items like a Monk's Belt or Battledancer's Slippers to provide these bonuses without class levels.

The Wall of Blades maneuver (Tome of Battle) allows you to use an Attack roll to replace your AC, which then applies to both Touch and Standard attacks, though this is for only 1 attack per round; you can recover it the next turn, however, and it can be used After you know the result of the attack.

Thank you. Yes, I have considered scintillating scales as a resource. The PC is a mix of fighter/wiz/spellsword/eldritch knight, so his BAB is decent. Add Polymorph into Bladerager Troll + leap attack + power attack + wraithstrike = pop goes the bad guy.

I would love to see your builds for AC increases using various stats. Not to use them on every encounter (the player build this PC to deal damage effectively, so he might as well enjoy it), but for certain boss encounters, that would be nice.

[Madwand99]

It sounds like your player is just a really good optimizer, in a low- or mid- op game. I've played a gish like that before in games, and I restrained myself by never using polymorph or wraithstrike, even though I kept them memorized.

If I were you, I'd just ban the worst offenders. Polymorph and wraithstrike are very bannable. Your player will still be effective. Explain that he's just too powerful for your game. Talk it out with him.

[TuggyNE]

If the other players are getting outshone, or if you're having trouble challenging him without curbstomping them, I'd advise talking to him and maybe getting him to tone it down a bit.

Also, unlike with most chargers, he's unlikely to be useless if you slap difficult terrain in his way; combine that with various debuffs to make him less effective (solid fog, bestow curse if you can land it on his good Will save, etc).

[Zdrak]

You can have enemies focus their defense on Miss Chance instead of AC liberally. Mirror Image, Greater Invisibility, Displacement, Child of Shadow stance, etc.

[AlanBruce]

Indeed, the other players are getting smacked around. And when you consider there's an 11th level druid in the mix and he isn't doing much, then yes. The gish is taking the fame.

I could ban wraithstrike and restrict his polymorphs , but that's just asking for cover when books fly at me. I will have a talk with him about toning down his gish. Hopefully, he will listen.

[Madwand99]

It's the DM's right and prerogative to ban unbalanced spells and abilities; indeed, I feel it is a necessary duty. Even speaking as a player, I would prefer that the DM controls his game by setting boundaries. Don't worry about making your player useless; a gish is one of the most adaptable PCs possible. If you are reasonable and firm about setting boundaries, you shouldn't have a problem.

[AlanBruce]

Thank you for all the responses. When the player added wraithstrike to his list, I didn't consider it much of a problem. Then I saw it escalating with the addition of feats. It wasn't until his chosen polymorph creature that it has gotten out of hand, overshadowing the party completely. I wish there were a RAW mechanic to determine what can a wizard polymorph to. If not, I will attempt to create a balanced list of creatures he may turn to, plus banning wraithstrike. Should be an interesting weekend session indeed.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Have you considered Incorporeal opponents? Wraithstrike and polymorphing into some kind of a troll won't net him an enhancement bonus to his natural attacks, thus he is completely incapable of hitting them.

[Spuddles]

You could try implementing Pathfinders polymorph fixes. That may handle *some* of the abuse, at least by requiring high level spell slots for all the ability score boosts.


Have you considered Incorporeal opponents? Wraithstrike and polymorphing into some kind of a troll won't net him an enhancement bonus to his natural attacks, thus he is completely incapable of hitting them.

1) ghost touch is a spell away
2) suddenly turning everything into ghosts is kind of weird
3) you're presenting a pokemon solution, which is a bad way to DM. Not that it's a true pokemon solution because hey, magic user, but it's not really a good habit to get into.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

1) ghost touch is a spell away
2) suddenly turning everything into ghosts is kind of weird
3) you're presenting a pokemon solution, which is a bad way to DM. Not that it's a true pokemon solution because hey, magic user, but it's not really a good habit to get into.

I think you rather missed the point.

The point is not to swing a nerf bat and shut down the OP character. The point is to drive home to the player that hey... sometimes your combo doesn't work.

[Rejakor]

Protip; Polymorph is considered the most broken spell in the game, and gets regularly banned in many, many games. Tell your players the internet said so, (i.e. blame us, not you).

Wraithstrike is fine until it gets used for a combo, but it sounds like the main problem is this guy going from str 14 elf to str 30 Large bladerager troll, which allows him to PA for full and ubercharge stuff.

I'd say remove polymorph, or restrict it's effects to something more like (up to a +6 enh to your physical stats, up to one size increase or decrease, up to +4 natural armour, up to +20 movement speed, up to one extra movement mode). That way, he can still get some bonuses from the spell, but not infinite bonuses.

Then if he's still a problem, ban wraithstrike, or, ban wraithstrike + power attack.

He'll still likely be more powerful than an unoptimized party, but he'll be more handleable.




Also consider more encounters with more than one monster. Putting one big monster in a room is far, far too easy to kill with even low level optimization at level 11. And, encounters with multiple enemies, especially multiple different enemies (a 9th level wizard, his 5 2nd level apprentices with wands of magic missile, and 2 stone golems, say), are far more fun for most dnd players than a single large bag of hitpoints for them to fight.

[lord_khaine]

Actualy, polymorph is kinda balanced as long as you stick to MM1 shapes.

[Eldariel]

Actualy, polymorph is kinda balanced as long as you stick to MM1 shapes.

...really? Remorhaz, Hydras, basically any magical beast has obscene numbers for its HD. Besides, turning somebody into Hydra effectively grants them Pounce too. And that's without going into Base Outsiders who can turn into Horned Devils and what-have-you.

The very reason Polymorph is as ridiculously strong as it is because it completely breaks open any near-Core on level 7 numbers-wise.

[dantiesilva]

how one of my Dms played it you had to be familiar with the creature to turn into it, so for example if he has never seen it he can not turn into it. If he is not familiar with the race well enough, has seen it and studied it, he could not get all the bonuses. Just a suggestion that may help.

[sdream]

I've always hated polymorph, both because of this and because it is just messy to deal with.

One spell turns you into hundreds of totally different creatures.

I second (third, fourth?) just banning polymorph first and seeing if things are much more reasonable.

Don't ban it flat out though... be creative.

Next time he uses polymorph into his battle troll form, let him know the rage of the troll is taking over. Give a rage bonus on top of his normal huge boost, but disallow spellcasting. "You are in a rage, you are too excited to focus properly."

The enemy should be defeated quickly.

But the rage isn't over.

He has to make a will save to halt the rage, or turn on his party mates next.

"Hmmm, looks like polymorph is a much more dangerous spell than you realized... powerful forms might take you over completely."

Don't think of the foe as the only part of the encounter, TROLLFORM is the other half of the encounter.

After this encounter, let the player know the internet advised you that polymorph seems to be the reason he is drastically outshining the rest of the party. You are nerfing the spell by giving it drawbacks in game, and he should try to use it more carefully, with less exploitative forms, or it will might get so difficult to return from that he might lose himself entirely.

[Eldariel]

how one of my Dms played it you had to be familiar with the creature to turn into it, so for example if he has never seen it he can not turn into it. If he is not familiar with the race well enough, has seen it and studied it, he could not get all the bonuses. Just a suggestion that may help.

This is actually written into the ability. Though Knowledge-check measures what you're familiar with within D&D and Wizards tend to be fairly good with those so it doesn't actually solve anything (not to mention, a limitation which can be overcome without investing any character resources or levels into it is fairly minor).

Likewise, needing to get acquainted with a form or taking penalties makes sense and does restrict the spell but it's again something that does not require anything but in-character time to overcome.

[sdream]

The upside of the "form taking over" solution is that it is:

- totally an in game consequence of overuse of powerful magic, not a mysterious force rewriting history or deleting his spell

- totally under GM control, if a form is abusive you can make it have interesting drawbacks, however works best for your plot

[elonin]

What level is the party that he could polymorph into a hydra? They have a lot of hit dice.

[Eldariel]

The upside of the "form taking over" solution is that it is:

- totally an in game consequence of overuse of powerful magic, not a mysterious force rewriting history or deleting his spell

- totally under GM control, if a form is abusive you can make it have interesting drawbacks, however works best for your plot

It is doing something contrary to what the spell claims it does tho so it would be cool to inform the player that "the spell works this way now" before just breaking it out randomly and going "oh, and now you go insane".

It's also a lot of work for the DM to work out the mind of every creature he Polymorphs into. That said, it's a pretty interesting drawback to the spell.


What level is the party that he could polymorph into a hydra? They have a lot of hit dice.

7-Headed Hydra has 7 Hit Dice. 8-Headed Hydra has 8 Hit Dice. 12-Headed Hydra is at level 12. So when you get Polymorph you can turn into a 7-Headed Hydra (provided you can make the Knowledge: Arcane check...which as a Wizard you probably can).

[roguemetal]

The upside of the "form taking over" solution is that it is:

- totally an in game consequence of overuse of powerful magic, not a mysterious force rewriting history or deleting his spell

- totally under GM control, if a form is abusive you can make it have interesting drawbacks, however works best for your plot

I actually really like this solution, and it's very different than the one I've used in the past. I am worried that it is too much of a drawback than useful in most situations, and may just deter players from using the spell in general.

(I usually enforce the idea that the "cocoon" spell component must be at least the size of the player, making it difficult to travel with... or find for that matter.)

[S_Grey]

Everywhere I read on the internet about 3.5, I see people complaining (or boasting) about how powerful this or that is and how it unbalances the game absolutely in the player's favor.

I scoff at these posts now.

If my players manage to trivialize an encounter, I'll just balance the next one around the trick that they pulled last time. If your players want to "optimize", let them. There isn't anything I can't do as a DM to ensure that my game is challenging.

[Boci]

I've always hated polymorph, both because of this and because it is just messy to deal with.

One spell turns you into hundreds of totally different creatures.

I second (third, fourth?) just banning polymorph first and seeing if things are much more reasonable.

Don't ban it flat out though... be creative.

Next time he uses polymorph into his battle troll form, let him know the rage of the troll is taking over. Give a rage bonus on top of his normal huge boost, but disallow spellcasting. "You are in a rage, you are too excited to focus properly."

The enemy should be defeated quickly.

But the rage isn't over.

He has to make a will save to halt the rage, or turn on his party mates next.

"Hmmm, looks like polymorph is a much more dangerous spell than you realized... powerful forms might take you over completely."

Don't think of the foe as the only part of the encounter, TROLLFORM is the other half of the encounter.

After this encounter, let the player know the internet advised you that polymorph seems to be the reason he is drastically outshining the rest of the party. You are nerfing the spell by giving it drawbacks in game, and he should try to use it more carefully, with less exploitative forms, or it will might get so difficult to return from that he might lose himself entirely.

Problem: the example you listed is contrived to put it mildly. Trolls are not known for their rage issues (barring a sub race in Drow of the Underdark), and certainly not attacking their allies, they can often be found in packs (or "gangs"). War trolls even less so, as they frequently work as mercenenary captains. So, yeah. War troll is a pretty popular form to polymorhp into. Can you come up with a legitimate disadvantage for it?

Nevermind, its blade rager troll, not war troll.


Everywhere I read on the internet about 3.5, I see people complaining (or boasting) about how powerful this or that is and how it unbalances the game absolutely in the player's favor.

I scoff at these posts now.

If my players manage to trivialize an encounter, I'll just balance the next one around the trick that they pulled last time. If your players want to "optimize", let them. There isn't anything I can't do as a DM to ensure that my game is challenging.

That works when the PCs are at the same level of power, but they often aren't.

[Eldariel]

Everywhere I read on the internet about 3.5, I see people complaining (or boasting) about how powerful this or that is and how it unbalances the game absolutely in the player's favor.

Nobody I've ever seen argues in a Player vs. DM perspective. It's players compared with other players that's the problem. You make the encounter stronger so that the PC on a powertrip is challenged, how much fun is it for the rest of the players to be completely dwarfed with every encounter leaving only the powertripping PC to play?

[roguemetal]

Nobody I've ever seen argues in a Player vs. DM perspective. It's players compared with other players that's the problem. You make the encounter stronger so that the PC on a powertrip is challenged, how much fun is it for the rest of the players to be completely dwarfed with every encounter leaving only the powertripping PC to play?

Actually, I've played ridiculously optimized Tier 1 builds in games with Tier 6 characters. So long as you don't take the spotlight, and mostly give your buffs to the other players instead of yourself, there's very little issue. It's a matter of the player and whether they see the tools before them as things to be used at every opportunity or something to assist only when absolutely necessary.

Powertripping players meanwhile, who consistently use things to their advantage, and would ordinarily require scaled up encounters, can be easily balanced. Add encounters that target them alone, using up most of whatever mechanic they are abusing for the day, and then have the rest of the encounters be on par with the party.

[Eldariel]

Powertripping players meanwhile, who consistently use things to their advantage, and would ordinarily require scaled up encounters, can be easily balanced. Add encounters that target them alone, using up most of whatever mechanic they are abusing for the day, and then have the rest of the encounters be on par with the party.

Tends to be an awful break in the verisimilitude of the game though not to mention toxic for the play experience. It can work in some groups but I don't see that being an universal solution.

[Rejakor]

Actually, I've played ridiculously optimized Tier 1 builds in games with Tier 6 characters. So long as you don't take the spotlight, and mostly give your buffs to the other players instead of yourself, there's very little issue. It's a matter of the player and whether they see the tools before them as things to be used at every opportunity or something to assist only when absolutely necessary.

Powertripping players meanwhile, who consistently use things to their advantage, and would ordinarily require scaled up encounters, can be easily balanced. Add encounters that target them alone, using up most of whatever mechanic they are abusing for the day, and then have the rest of the encounters be on par with the party.

If you are playing a real character in a real world, and he doesn't use every tool at his disposal to save the world/save his friends/get paid/whatever his motivations are, then that's unrealistic. And versimilitude breaking. And boring. {scrubbed}

As for the second one, that gets pretty old pretty fast too. {Scrubbed}

[Zdrak]

If you are playing a real character in a real world, and he doesn't use every tool at his disposal to save the world/save his friends/get paid/whatever his motivations are, then that's unrealistic.
Every tool at who's disposal? The character or the player? There seems to be some confusion here.

While certainly DMM: Persist is at the player's disposal, as he can simply leaf through a book and find it there, I can think of many reasons why DMM: Persist would not be at the character's disposal. Maybe he never found the right mentor to teach him that trick. Maybe he's not pious enough for his deity to grant him DMM: Persist. Maybe his deity, in its infinite wisdom, chose to grant him a different feat instead. Maybe he just never figured out how that persisting stuff works. All those things could happen in the real world. In the real world, we have plenty of example of people who lack a certain skill that might have been useful to them, because they just never got around to it. That's realistic.

In summary, I think you're mistaken on the whole player-vs-character issue, and your appeal to realism makes no sense.

[Rejakor]

Read the post I am responding to. It is quoted in the post I posted.

[shortround]

I asked my player to not cheese me with Polymorph. He laughed and said "that's a reasonable request" and then proceeded to cast the other spells he knew. He busted out Polymorph only when I had overestimated an encounter and the party needed saving. I think the trick about being a WIZARD is that you're a WIZARD. There are other things he can do well that highlight the party's strengths, too. I mean, I can understand that you're player is playing a gish and he wants to mix it up in combat with the rest of them, but he doesn't have to pull out a howitzer to deal with a mouse, right? I find that talking with players is usually the best choice. He can say stuff like "his character wouldn't do that" but that sort of takes away from the fact that you're playing a cooperative game and you aren't ACTUALLY your character. That's not an excuse for the actual person not to have sense and social tact enough to come to a reasonable compromise, given how much system mastery he has. I'm all for getting in character, but one person's immersion is at the expense of the majority's and that's not correct either.

A mechanical solution would just be to use more magic against him. Mirror image, concealment, and mundane things like situations where he can't just ubercharge, like in cramped and winding halls, and defenseive measures like Elusive Target. Or throw more money and magical gear on the other members of the party and make them benefit from the wizard's explots, too. It's clear that one player is schewing the actual APL, so just buff all the other players to reach the new APL and throw more challenging encounters at them. It may be a sloppy solution, but to be fair, the scenario isn't the cleanest either when different people are getting different things from a collective experience.

[AlanBruce]

The gish in question has had access to polymooph for about 3-4 sessions already. He surprised me when he used it stating that particular troll. Should've looked into the creature more closely- mea culpa. In the encounters that have followed, the party has been either killed or knocked heavy into the negatives. I can take the gish down, yes. Any PC can be taken down: Dispel Magic all his buffs + a dimensional anchor at the end to keep him from abrupt jaunting and you have a glass cannon waiting to break, meanwhile, the party gets butchered.

I like the insane aspect of the polymorph, and will likely apply it. Naturally, the player will argue against it because it is not in the spell's description, but it will hopefully see a lesser use of it. That, or call him aside and ask him to select a new form pending DM approval.

[Mithril Leaf]

I'm personally a fan of boosting your caster level and going Kelvezu. You end up with the potential to do damage if you need it while still having a good buff to your defense. You can still gish, but standard rogue shutdowns stop you. Might be an option to point out other forms like that instead of bladerager.

[AlanBruce]

Kelvezu is a nice monster to polymorph into. In the case of this gish, who weilds a falchion, does pounce apply to the weapon when he charges in his bladerager form? I know it applies to the monster's natural attacks (claws, in the case of the troll), but it never hurts to check. I'm guessing he does get a full attack with his blade on a charge, however.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I'm going to chime in with another vote for remove polymorph from the equation.

With most spells and combos there's a weakness in them somewhere, but polymorph always has an answer if you know your MM's well enough.

The player's shown that he can't be trusted not to abuse the spell, so take it away.

Messing around with adding houserules to the spell to make it unpleasant to use is just a passive-aggressive way of doing the same thing. Don't be passive-aggressive, just remove the spell.

(The above assumes you've already asked the player to cut it out, and he's ignored that request.)

[AlanBruce]

Indeed. I allowed the 5 MM. Mostly for encounter variety. Little did I know the gish would immediately choose that troll for his battleform. I will announce next session that that book is out and ask anyone wishing to cast polymorph to run the creature by me first. Either that, or ban polymorph completely.

Cue in drama.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Indeed. I allowed the 5 MM. Mostly for encounter variety. Little did I know the gish would immediately choose that troll for his battleform. I will announce next session that that book is out and ask anyone wishing to cast polymorph to run the creature by me first. Either that, or ban polymorph completely.

Cue in drama.

........ :confused:

A player is abusing polymorph, so you're going to nerf yourself by removing an entire book of possible encounters instead of nerfing the player by simply banning a spell that's well known for being a problematic spell?

What?

[AlanBruce]

A valid point. It's just difficult to have to pull rule 0, especially when the player has been enjoying such trick for awhile.

Will have to ban the spell, most probably.

[Kantolin]

A valid point. It's just difficult to have to pull rule 0, especially when the player has been enjoying such trick for awhile.

Well, if you ban the MM5, said player will go look for another powerful monster form to use. There are, as has been pointed out, quite a few.

[AlanBruce]

Another valid point. My game allows MM I-V. And I know there's a bunch of nasty stuff in there. I thought PH2 had an alternate rule for Polymorph.

[tyckspoon]

Another valid point. My game allows MM I-V. And I know there's a bunch of nasty stuff in there. I thought PH2 had an alternate rule for Polymorph.

Well, there's the Polymorph Subschool, which created a bunch of alternate spells that are much more controlled ways to do shapechanging.. but while Polymorph is a Polymorph Subschool spell, the Subschool rules specifically do not change how the PHB shapechanging spells work. So it doesn't really fix anything there..

What you *could* do is tell him Polymorph is now banned, but he can choose to exchange it for perhaps a number of Polymorph Subschool spells (I know trollform is one of them, although it's the basic MM Troll) and if he wants another specific form you'll let him research that particular spell.

[LordBlades]

Honestly, I'd advise against banning/nerfing the spell straight, and suggest having an honest chat with the player first.

The thing is he obviously is much better at optimizing than the rest of a party (if a full druid gets to be seriously outshined by a gish with 2 lost CL that hints at a pretty big mechanical skill difference) and sees nothing wrong with completely dominating encounters(otherwise he wouldn't be doing it). So if you're going to ban his favorite encounter dominating trick without making him understand that what he does is making the game worse, odds are he's perfectly able and willing to find another equally powerful encounter dominating trick(the main strength of wizards is that they have tons of extremely powerful tricks).




While certainly DMM: Persist is at the player's disposal, as he can simply leaf through a book and find it there, I can think of many reasons why DMM: Persist would not be at the character's disposal. Maybe he never found the right mentor to teach him that trick. Maybe he's not pious enough for his deity to grant him DMM: Persist. Maybe his deity, in its infinite wisdom, chose to grant him a different feat instead. Maybe he just never figured out how that persisting stuff works. All those things could happen in the real world. In the real world, we have plenty of example of people who lack a certain skill that might have been useful to them, because they just never got around to it. That's realistic.


On the other hand think something like a wizard: with maxed knowledge (Arcana) and Spellcraft he probably has at least a general idea what most spells ever discovered do and he can learn any of them at level up (and whenever he finds a scroll). Also, wizards tend to be quite smart as well. So I'd expect most wizards would be able to put two and two together and understand sooner or later that BFC and open ended effects (aka God wizard) are vastly superior to blasting. Hell, the optimization community has realized that in a couple of years with Int scores way below 18 on average.

Now, you have a wizard who understands playing God is the most expedient and safe way to achieve his goals, and this wizard and his companions get routinely put into life and death situations. Assuming he somewhat cares about his companions, what in-character justification he would have not to employ the best tactics at his disposal? Not doing so would put both him and his companions at greater risk of injury and even death and, assuming he means well for them, he probably wouldn't want that.

[AlanBruce]

His spells are self buffs. He does enjoy the good fight, and loves taunting and picking up fights with the bosses (tossing an ice lance at the captain of an invading army is usually not the best course for negotiations), to the party's chagrin. His most commonly spells are:

Blink

Polymorph

Wraithstrike

Create Magic Tattoo

With those, he wages into combat. Yes, I have knocked him down a few times, but if we compare the times he hits the floor vs. his party members, the difference is abyssmal. The other members are the full progression druid (using the PHB2 variant), a ranger, and a clr1/monk6/sacred fist 2.

[Rejakor]

Well, if you look at the tiers, you have a ranger (t4), a shapeshift druid (still technically tier 1, but it gives up both wildshape and animal companion, the two strongest combat abilities of the druid class), and a monk (with three levels of cleric all up.. still basically just a monk. t5) with a fully classed wizard (tier 1).

And from their class choices, i'm guessing most of the rest of the party has put their feats into stuff like Endurance and Animal Affinity and whatever- feats that are relatively low op instead of stuff that would help them keep up with a tier 1 character.


As a note, a Gish should be using those spells, and more than that. He is currently playing a weak wizard archetype (gish) and he's doing it without the full complement of spells he could be using. So he's essentially nowhere near as bad as it could be, the problem is that instead of being in the rear using BFC where people can ignore the fact he never dies, he's in the front row dodging bullets where people can't ignore the fact that he never dies.


If you think he's too powerful for the group, there's a number of ways to fix that, from giving stuff to the other players to compensate, to banning the most (ab)used wizard spells, to asking him to take a PrC that gives him something thematically cool while toning down his casting.

But yeah, most of the problem is that polymorph is wtf. Don't use it as written. In an earlier post I set some basic caps on what it can do, which makes it strong for a 4th level spell but still balanced.

[LordBlades]

His spells are self buffs. He does enjoy the good fight, and loves taunting and picking up fights with the bosses (tossing an ice lance at the captain of an invading army is usually not the best course for negotiations), to the party's chagrin. His most commonly spells are:

Blink

Polymorph

Wraithstrike

Create Magic Tattoo

With those, he wages into combat. Yes, I have knocked him down a few times, but if we compare the times he hits the floor vs. his party members, the difference is abysmal. The other members are the full progression druid (using the PHB2 variant), a ranger, and a clr1/monk6/sacred fist 2.

That's quite a tough situation. If this guy doesn't moderate himself heavily, there is simply nothing anyone but the druid can do in order not to be completely outclassed. He simply has a way better char, plain and simple.

Probably the best bet is taking him aside and explaining he's not making the game enjoyable for you (and other players), and either ask him to tone it down (a lot) or allow him to rebuild his character as something with similar feel but much less power like a Duskblade, Hexblade, Suel Arcanamach or the like (from my personal experience most players are more open toward fully rebuilding their char rather than having to self-nerf/seeing it nerfed beyond any recognition).

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Be a right shame if some Dispel Spam happened to him...

[Kantolin]

So I'd expect most wizards would be able to put two and two together and understand sooner or later that BFC and open ended effects (aka God wizard) are vastly superior to blasting.

A wizard, in-game, cannot determine 'Oh, he has a wisdom of 24, and is a cleric/favored soul multiclass, so he has only a 8% chance of being effected by my dominate person' unless the setting is very entertainingly Order of the Stick-like. I'm sure our physicists would be estatic if they could, in fact, open a handy book, pour over some quick math, and objectively explain a black hole. :P

(He could get 'mages who aren't clerics or druids or several multiclasses or variable or other variable or third variable tend to have strong minds and low fortitudes', which can be itself easily broken with a bit of evidence going the ohter way)

Thus, the evidence a given character - or even quite a few characters - see would change and be colored heavily by other factors. Even excluding the 'My school is best here's why' (which would likely be quite a few wizards or they wouldn't have specialized there, and thus throws a lot of things off), you get scenarios where:

"Look, there were 10 kobolds there. I threw down a solid fog; but I didn't realize one of the kobolds was a low level caster themselves and they negated my whole effort, in which all of them literally died to a fireball."

Now, because we can stare at game mechanics, we can determine that 'Only that one kobold could have solved the solid fog - it was actually a very good solution, and if the wizard had had a second one it would've been useful'. But from the wizard's point of view, it was, "Hey, Fireball sure seemed effective. I still don't like it, though, that's why I banned evocation."

And that's ignoring level specific things - toughness is an awesome feat if you are level one, to the point where it's rough to argue that a level 1 d4HD guy wouldn't take 'doubles my survivability'.

It also ignores, say, campaign settings where... let's say everyone was a batman-style wizard. Then, 20 years ago, a plucky group of adventurers went out to save the world from X or Y. They had with them a half-elven warmage who was upset at the whole batman-style wizard thing and out to prove them wrong, and said very popular by the end of the game warmage helped his party take out I dunno Lloth, while becoming a hero to people everywhere and a beacon that brought the human and elven people together. Lots of people would hop on the evocation bandwagon.

In that setting, 'most wizards' would probably blow up stuff with evocations.

And finally, like... people are pretty notoriously lazy. Maybe it's easier to pick up necromancy than abjuration. Or maybe it's the same effort, but it's portrayed as being easier and thus budding apprentices are encouraged to go with I dunno enchantment over illusion. Or maybe that apprentice really just wanted to make that girl he likes fall in love with him and went enchantment for that reason, then got swept up in this save the world nonsense. Or maybe after countless studies, the warmage academy made by that half-elf who stopped lost is by far the most effective group at solving the planar invasions that happened afterwards. Or...

[Zdrak]

"Hey, Fireball sure seemed effective. I still don't like it, though, that's why I banned evocation."
I don't think there's an ingame equivalent to banning a magic school. I mean, I'm an electrical engineer with no knowledge in mechanical engineering, but I didn't ban the mechanical school of engineering, I just never got around to studying it.

Ingame, a character would probably say he "could never figure out those Fireball incantations", or "never got around to learning it because I was busy with other stuff" or "allergic to bat guano" or something like that.

[Kantolin]

I don't think there's an ingame equivalent to banning a magic school. I mean, I'm an electrical engineer with no knowledge in mechanical engineering, but I didn't ban the mechanical school of engineering, I just never got around to studying it.

Haha, that's true. ^_^

Although the one possible common exception is necromancy - a lot of people who ban it ban it 'because they refuse to learn dark/evil magic'. So that might be one example where someone would consciously ban something and not just 'didn't have time to work on it as I was too busy focusing to be an illusionist or sommat'.

But yeah, that is true.

[Archmage1]

I would say Dispel, throw some dopplegangers at him, no persist on the wraithstrike, so he runs out of slots, or focus on stopping him from moving. Solid fog takes him out, as he can't see, so no jaunting, and it takes several rounds for him to escape. He can d-door/teleport, but you can fog again. after you do this, you could suggest that he tone it down a bit, to give the others a chance...

[nedz]

An amusing counter to Blink is to throw in the occasional wandering monster on the ethereal plane. Not one to over do.

[LordBlades]

A wizard, in-game, cannot determine 'Oh, he has a wisdom of 24, and is a cleric/favored soul multiclass, so he has only a 8% chance of being effected by my dominate person' unless the setting is very entertainingly Order of the Stick-like. I'm sure our physicists would be estatic if they could, in fact, open a handy book, pour over some quick math, and objectively explain a black hole. :P

(He could get 'mages who aren't clerics or druids or several multiclasses or variable or other variable or third variable tend to have strong minds and low fortitudes', which can be itself easily broken with a bit of evidence going the ohter way)

Thus, the evidence a given character - or even quite a few characters - see would change and be colored heavily by other factors. Even excluding the 'My school is best here's why' (which would likely be quite a few wizards or they wouldn't have specialized there, and thus throws a lot of things off), you get scenarios where:

"Look, there were 10 kobolds there. I threw down a solid fog; but I didn't realize one of the kobolds was a low level caster themselves and they negated my whole effort, in which all of them literally died to a fireball."

Now, because we can stare at game mechanics, we can determine that 'Only that one kobold could have solved the solid fog - it was actually a very good solution, and if the wizard had had a second one it would've been useful'. But from the wizard's point of view, it was, "Hey, Fireball sure seemed effective. I still don't like it, though, that's why I banned evocation."

Even without full access to the game mechanics, simple conclusions along the lines of :
a) people are largely unhindered by wounds, they perform just as well until they drop dead.
b) a spell that deals damage will therefore incapacitate an opponent only if it kills him/her
c)most spells that deal damage are unable to kill a tough opponent in a single casting
d) a spell that directly incapacitates an opponent has a pretty good chance of taking him/her out of the fight in a single casting.
a+b+c+d=incapacitating spells are a superior choice to damage.

Also, if wizards are at least 10% as inquisitive as real life scientists, I'd expect quite a lot of game mechanics to be known in setting. I mean stuff like HD (see the ton of spells that reference HDs and that simply wouldn't work without them existing as an in-game notion), DCs(I'd totally see a wizard doing experiments with harmless save or lose spells like sleep on subjects with or without int-boosting stuff on for example).




It also ignores, say, campaign settings where... let's say everyone was a batman-style wizard. Then, 20 years ago, a plucky group of adventurers went out to save the world from X or Y. They had with them a half-elven warmage who was upset at the whole batman-style wizard thing and out to prove them wrong, and said very popular by the end of the game warmage helped his party take out I dunno Lloth, while becoming a hero to people everywhere and a beacon that brought the human and elven people together. Lots of people would hop on the evocation bandwagon.

I'm assuming a functional world, not one where stuff hangs in the air waiting for the PCs to save the day. If the problem the warmage is solving was of any significance, a wizard would be a lot better prepared to both know about it and solve it before the warmage has finished walking to where he needs to go to solve it. If the warmage got to it, it will only be because the Batman wizards consider it not worth their attention and resources.




And finally, like... people are pretty notoriously lazy. Maybe it's easier to pick up necromancy than abjuration. Or maybe it's the same effort, but it's portrayed as being easier and thus budding apprentices are encouraged to go with I dunno enchantment over illusion. Or maybe that apprentice really just wanted to make that girl he likes fall in love with him and went enchantment for that reason, then got swept up in this save the world nonsense. Or maybe after countless studies, the warmage academy made by that half-elf who stopped lost is by far the most effective group at solving the planar invasions that happened afterwards. Or...

I'm talking average, not exception, and people, on average, will gravitate toward efficiency.

[Rejakor]

Evokers are good at some stuff. Like if you want to kill a whole bunch of little dudes.

There would be evokers. It'd just be a specialized role in wizardry, like there are lots of dentists but relatively few who specialize in treating one specific kind of tooth ailment.

Given the real world examples of 'who wants to be a doctor/lawyer', it's pretty ridiculous to say that humans are incapable of working out the most successful path to their goals.

[Kantolin]

A & B (And depending on optimization and enemy, C) are in fact true. now:


d) a spell that directly incapacitates an opponent has a pretty good chance of taking him/her out of the fight in a single casting.

(....)

Also, if wizards are at least 10% as inquisitive as real life scientists, I'd expect quite a lot of game mechanics to be known in setting. I mean stuff like HD (see the ton of spells that reference HDs and that simply wouldn't work without them existing as an in-game notion), DCs(I'd totally see a wizard doing experiments with harmless save or lose spells like sleep on subjects with or without int-boosting stuff on for example).

This one is the one I have trouble with.

You can take a thousand experiments with farmer joe and come the conclusion that your spells have a 85% chance of putting him to sleep, and then discover it's a 75% vs Farmer John, and a 95% chance vs Farmer Jane. Now, you know these three guys, so after some experimentation it makes sense to you - Farmer John is by far the most wise, while Farmer Jane is a dunce.

You then step into a dungeon and fight a kobold. Is this Farmer John? Farmer Joe? Farmer Jane? Every other kobold you've fought has had a will save significantly worse than Farmer Jane's. This one, however, took iron will/steadfast determination and has a surprisingly high wisdom(/con), so the wizard's odds are actually only like a 25%, but he doesn't know that - he's just informed it doesn't work. Or, potentially worse, he gets lucky and his 25% succeeds, resulting in it failing him later when he's now relatively certain it will work. Or, after a lot of 25% kobolds, he then starts running into 95% kobolds but is not informed about this.

I mean, this doesn't mean 'They are incapable of coming to the conclusion that save or lose is better than damage', but it does mean it's perfectly feasible to not come to that conclusion, especially with every other potential error involved. I mean, there are far more effective keyboard layouts for faster typing, but everyone's used to qwerty typewriter keyboards, so it kinda stays that way. You know there's gonna be the, "But when I was facing off against those 30 kobolds, one metamagiced fireball took them all out in one blast - and nevermind when I blew up the Lich of the North Wind while he had me make a fortitude save, not knowing that I'd taken three feats and a class feature specifically to make my fort save amazing."

Then depending on the setting, those examples can /easily/ become the more common result. The result doesn't /have/ to be 'Anyone who does damage is an idiot', it just has the option of being.

(And this all ignores high-optimized damage builds, scattered immunities


I'm assuming a functional world, not one where stuff hangs in the air waiting for the PCs to save the day. If the problem the warmage is solving was of any significance, a wizard would be a lot better prepared to both know about it and solve it before the warmage has finished walking to where he needs to go to solve it. If the warmage got to it, it will only be because the Batman wizards consider it not worth their attention and resources.

You mean a wizard 'could' be a lot better prepared, and if a warmage got to it, it 'could' be because the Batman wizards consider it not worth their attention.

I mean, if nothing else, nothing says the wizards were all cooperating with each other. There are a lot of reasons why people who could be helping aren't in many circumstances, and these reasons do not automatically have something to do with PCs.

I mean, I said '20 years ago, a plucky group of adventurers'. That sounds like NPC backstory to the current game more than PCs that the world is based around. :P

(And regardless of why it happened, that'd result in a heck of a lot more warmages anyway - so the sequestered 'I don't care' mages would end up dying out or liching, since I want to be like that guy. And then well... they might not even /care/ about that.)


I'm talking average, not exception, and people, on average, will gravitate toward efficiency.

Maybe you have different presumptions than I do. I expect your average person to gravitate towards the easy. Most people will take a windy mountain path rather than try to straight-climb the mountain, after all.

~
Edit: Although that'd be a funny conversation. Batman wizard realizes 'Hey, I'm getting old' and decides to go find an apprentice as none of the other batman wizards care either. Goes and finds a kid, who's like, "Wha? I don't wanna be like you, you're boring and selfish. I wanna be like that guy, he saved the world."

And amidst trying to convince the kid otherwise, he could even go try to duel the warmage... except now that warmage is quite epic while the batman wizard is nowhere near so.

Edit2: So the batman wizard kidnaps the kid to try to hold onto him long enough to obtain programmed amnesia or similar spells, resulting in his now distraught family seeking whatever aid they could muster, resulting in yet another plucky group of adventures showing up, resulting in another slightly higher level batman wizard seeing the first one's demise as a threat to his way of life and thus stepping in to help, while a third shrugs at this whole 'apprentice' nonsense and becomes a Lich before discovering that it horribly changes your mindset so he's not at all what he once was, resulting in what actually sounds like a kinda cool campaign setting!

[Zdrak]

On the other hand think something like a wizard: with maxed knowledge (Arcana) and Spellcraft he probably has at least a general idea what most spells ever discovered do and he can learn any of them at level up (and whenever he finds a scroll). Also, wizards tend to be quite smart as well. So I'd expect most wizards would be able to put two and two together and understand sooner or later that BFC and open ended effects (aka God wizard) are vastly superior to blasting.Well, you may think so, but a simple observation of that wonderful phenomenon we call Real Life (TM) shows otherwise. We can easily find a lot of people who are very smart, yet are working in a sub-par profession, have made subpar life choices, just because they either feel like it, or never got around to do the other stuff.

Yes, if you want to optimize, you can always find an in-character justification for having this specific spell or that specific PrC. And on the other hand, if you want to play an exceptionally smart wizard who has a bit subpar choices of spells and PrCs, you can find in-character justification for that too. Maybe he just never got around to learning that particular tactic. Maybe he didn't have the right mentor in the academy. Maybe he has instictive fear of aberrations, and doesn't want to cast any spells that create tentacles (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/blackTentacles.htm). And it is realistic, because in real life, it happens. In real life, people avoid lucrative careers because that type of career or education don't feel right for them.

In-character justification can be found for pretty much everything. But honestly, feats and PrC and mechanical builds are never about character's choices. It would be foolish to claim they are. Those are player choices. The in-character justification just covers the player's desires.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing. I'm just opposed to the type of argument that says, "hey, it's not me optimizing, it's my character!"

[Rejakor]

Well, you may think so, but a simple observation of that wonderful phenomenon we call Real Life (TM) shows otherwise. We can easily find a lot of people who are very smart, yet are working in a sub-par profession, have made subpar life choices, just because they either feel like it, or never got around to do the other stuff.

[...]

Which is not necessarily a bad thing. I'm just opposed to the type of argument that says, "hey, it's not me optimizing, it's my character!"

I'm sorry, but there are only so many doctor and lawyer jobs/degrees that they hand out to the world at large - and there is incredibly fierce competition for those degrees/jobs.

I know people who have spent every minute of every day doing things to be more the ideal doctor/lawyer/politician/[other thing they see as optimal].

Yeah, there are 13 int wizards who specialize in force spells.

And 24 int wizards who just are fascinated with summoning.

But the fact of the matter is, if something works better, or achieves [better] results by some set of universally admired standards, people will work super hard to get it. Being a wizard is probably seen as prestigious in a world with magic (barring prejudice or whatever), and inside wizardry there will be all the normal human politics and crap about which discipline of wizardry and what techniques are better, but at the end of the day certain disciplines of wizardry/jobs earn more money/slay monsters better. And so the more clued in, smarter apprentice wizards will study that. And some of them will get it wrong. And others will just be obsessed with something else. And some of them will settle for being sub-par because their girlfriend left them and their self-esteem has been shattered forever. And some will take safe jobs being an evoker for the town guard because they have a family now. But at the absolute cutting bleeding edge of the top tier companies(i.e. ADVENTURERS), you won't find those people. You will find the people who found and pursued the most effective course. Because those people are the ones that became the high powered lawyers/god wizards, and all the rest of the people who didn't are doing crappy jobs/dead.

So you could expect a decent portion of non-dead adventuring wizards to be using effective spells and effective classes and effective feats. It's not about 'wanting' to optimize and 'justifying' it. It's about whether you think high powered corporate lawyers get paid the big bucks by pure chance or if they tried to become corporate lawyers from the age of 14 and succeeded.

[Kantolin]

I know people who have spent every minute of every day doing things to be more the ideal doctor/lawyer/politician/[other thing they see as optimal].

Ooh, me too. So!

We have people who want to be a lawyer, which is being compared to people who want to be a powerful wizard.

So obviously they're studying for the Uniform Bar Exam - the UBE is best for portability of scores across state lines, after all. There are tons of classes and extra things you can do to help you study for the UBE - a good friend of mine was drowning in that just last year in fact, it's a lot of work!

Oh wait, that's only in a few states - and not most of the largest legal markets: It doesn't hold in california, DC, New york (Although they're considering it), Florida, and several others. So /obviously/, the best one is the Multistate Bar Examination - the MBE is the best for portability of scores across state lines. They test mostly based on common law and the Uniform Commercial Code, so you have to study those.

Then there's the Multistate Performance Test - that's good in 33 jurisdiciions of the US, and is really helpful as it's a performance test to mimic real life legal tasks these future lawyers may take. Or in California, you get a test far more difficult than the MPT but it's not useful anywhere else and it's up in the air if it's 'better' or 'worse'.

Then for a case you might want someone may ask, "So who did you take your one year apprenticeship under (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admission_to_practice_law#China)?" in which you go 'Wha?', and someone else responds 'Sorry, you didn't write in legal subject and have it discussed by a committee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admission_to_practice_law#Jordan)', in which someone else asks, 'How about your nine month pupilage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admission_to_practice_law#Malaysia)?' "Did you get your three year apprenticeship after the meester title (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admission_to_practice_law#Netherlands)?" and all of these ways are objectively and unarguably 'best' and any one who argues against them is an idiot despite not synchronizing with each other... so uh, you decide to go with the one that works near where you live (or where you want to live) instead. And later you might decide you don't care anymore about this crap and want to swap to enchantment since illusion keeps failing you Move to Fiji (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admission_to_practice_law#Fiji); you somewhere in there got your bachelors of law anyway. (But little did you know that it /isn't/ actually easier in Fiji!)

Now, I am aware that there are holes in this particular comparison. :P It's just meant to point out 'There are a lot of routes people take to be practicing lawyers or powerful wizards'. And I mean, this excludes the people who say 'screw law school', study law on their own, pass the bar, and become lawyers (Which works in quite a few states). Or the people that, once they finally become lawyers, are poor lawyers in general or apathetically just use it to pick up paychecks. Or those who disadvantage themselves for moral or ethical or familial or whatever reasons and end up making sub-par options based on that. Or the people who are really really smart, great at law, and end up being teachers despite teaching having terrible pay and being exceptionally stressful.

Now, a wizard can totally decide 'The best wizards use battlefield control spells' and go do that. I'm totally not saying that's not allowed - a highly optimized wizard can in fact make sense. It's just that it's not unreasonable - or even out of the ordinary - to presume that a or even most wizards can decide, 'The best wizards blow up stuff' and go do that. This is especially setting specific - if the setting is composed primairly of level 20 battlefield control wizards who control the populace, then everyone probably sees that as the best option (Or perhaps the weapon of the regime). If the setting is composed primarily of level 20 blaster mages, then everyone probably sees that as the best option (Or, again, rebels against it). If the setting has extremely rare spellcasters and you'll never see one, then people will pick spells based on what has specifically been useful to them in the recent past (Hey, we tend to fight a lot of groups with low reflex saves! Hey, we tend to fight single enemies with terrible fort saves! Dangit, everything everywhere has spell resistance! Nothing we've fought /yet/ has been immune to mind affecting or had a good will save!)... or possibly, your spellcaster will use whatever his mentor used (My grandfather used his ice magic to save the town when it was attacked by red dragons, so I always wanted to be an ice mage just like him) (Sure he was evil, but did you see the way Mindmaster Cerebremancer Nancy managed to control like half the continent before his plans went awry? Now /that's/ power!).

(And really, the highest level adventurers probably 'have friends' and 'are lucky' moreso than use any particular tactic in combat.)

[Zdrak]

It's about whether you think high powered corporate lawyers get paid the big bucks by pure chance or if they tried to become corporate lawyers from the age of 14 and succeeded.Uhm, both!? They tried to become corporate lawyer and succeeded, however it is by mere chance that they decided to. Many equally talented people either never got around to trying, or decided they are more interested in trying something else, or tried but failed due to various life circumstances that have nothing to do with innate talent or work.


Yeah, there are 13 int wizards who specialize in force spells.

And 24 int wizards who just are fascinated with summoning.
And Int 13 wizards who are fascinated with summoning.
And Int 24 wizards who specialize in force spells.
And everything in between. Just like in .... wait for it ... wait for it ... the real world.

[LordBlades]

And Int 13 wizards who are fascinated with summoning.
And Int 24 wizards who specialize in force spells.
And everything in between. Just like in .... wait for it ... wait for it ... the real world.

However, in most professions the majority of competent people do tend to gravitate toward what's widely accepted as 'effective'

[Zdrak]

However, in most professions the majority of competent people do tend to gravitate toward what's widely accepted as 'effective'
Again, you would think so, but real life shows us that it's not a play-by-the-numbers game and all possibilities are open.

Kantolin brought the example of teachers. Teaches would not exist, in fact, if life was a play-by-the-numbers game. But the fact is they do, and most chose their career based on 'inefficient' decision-making factors such as "I like working with kids". Woefully inefficient, and yet, smart people do become teachers. Amazing.

And if real life can be played out this way, why the heck can't fictional life?

[Rejakor]

And yet in the real world there aren't many people trying to become lawyers by doing degrees in gardening!

And they try to get into a prestigious university as opposed to a nonprestigious one!

And they do extracurricular activities to improve their chances, and seek information about how to get into the field and interview techniques and the whole nine yards!


It's almost like people who want to succeed put effort into researching the best techniques in order to succeed!

You are assuming that there is an equal distribution of every option - science, specifically psychology, neuroscience, and especially, sociology, say you are very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very wrong!


People in the real world make sub-par choices, that is true, but MOST of the people at least ATTEMPT to make above-par choices. Your argument that there would be just as many wizards focusing on Knock as there would be focusing on Polymorph or metamagicked blasting or conjuration is ludicrous. Humans DO fail to make the most optimum choices - they get obsessed with something that is sub-par, or think something sub-par is actually amazing for irrational reasons - but you're acting like that is universal, when in fact, MOST people aim for the top, and take techniques and methods useful to get there.

Sure, not everyone is going to be an optimized red wizard circle magic incantatrix sublime chord with 240 CL and free metamagic using persisted extended super buff spells to be immune to everything and a god of war - in the same way that there are only a few CEOs of large companies in the world. But people are going to WANT to be those wizards. And so they are going to do, if not that exact thing with the same success rate, similar things.

The real world is a hodgepodge of competing beliefs about success and the 'best' thing to do largely because if we make wrong choices we don't get eaten by an umber hulk.

Living in a world where that happens tends to crystallize things for most people.

EDIT: In response to your latest post - I am assuming that most wizards who go FIGHTING MONSTERS would have KILLING MONSTERS and SURVIVING as their goals. There are totally wizards whose goals are 'BE REALLY GOOD AT RESEARCH' or 'BE REALLY GOOD AT DIVINING' but, y'know, NOT A LOT OF THOSE GUYS BECOME ADVENTURERS.

THE PEOPLE WHO WANT TO BECOME ADVENTURERS DO THINGS TO BE GOOD AT ADVENTURING. Turning up with a guy who wants to be an adventurer but has ZERO abilities or skills to do with, y'know, ADVENTURING, is the thing that you ought to be 'justifying' - turning up with someone who wants to be an adventurer and is good at adventuring doesn't seem like something you need to justify at ****ing all.

[Kantolin]

And they try to get into a prestigious university as opposed to a nonprestigious one!

Lots of people try to get into less prestigious universities. These may be for 'good' reasons (I don't have the money and didn't get a good enough scholarship) to 'bad' reasons - I live in Hawaii. Tons of people come to the University of Hawaii for reasons quite unrelated ot education. :P


And they do extracurricular activities to improve their chances, and seek information about how to get into the field and interview techniques and the whole nine yards!

Well, yes. But not everyone will join a debate team. You actually have a really good chance of getting into 'any school you want' if you're good at football, for example. :P


It's almost like people who want to succeed put effort into researching the best techniques in order to succeed!

I think this is the big catch. Like... in real life, there are a lot of 'best' techniques to being a lawyer.


Your argument that there would be just as many wizards focusing on Knock as there would be focusing on Polymorph or metamagicked blasting or conjuration is ludicrous.

Oh, sure. For trying to kill things, you can objectively state that knock is worse at it than polymorph.

Of course, if your job involves going into dungeons, a lot of monsters and groups really love locked doors with traps and all kinds of nonsense, so a trap-focused wizard would be not only handy there but a heck of a lot more vital than a seven headed hydra. :P


Sure, not everyone is going to be an optimized red wizard circle magic incantatrix sublime chord with 240 CL and free metamagic using persisted extended super buff spells to be immune to everything and a god of war - in the same way that there are only a few CEOs of large companies in the world. But people are going to WANT to be those wizards.

/I/ wanna be... heh, real life examples aren't allowed here. Hm.

How do you become a CEO? I know you have to work hard, or get lucky and have your dad be already the CEO. But like... do you become the CEO by being the mailman? The most recent CEO had a mailman build. The CEO before that was a really nasty illusionist, but he went out of... business?

Man, CEO makes a rough metaphor. Anyway, especially on the presumption that 'effective wizards sit in their towers behind eighty layers of defenses', it's very likely that they did very little saving of worlds and becoming popular or really doing anything other than 'sitting in towers' :P Again, if the previous 'doing something' guy was a warmage, then:


And so they are going to do, if not that exact thing with the same success rate, similar things.

Will happen. Nobody says that an optimized wizard has to hvae good PR.

Again, if the local hero saved the village from a group of attacking red dragons via conjuration and ice spells, then people are going to want to do that. If the nation's hero saved the nation from a group of attacking red dragons via illusions and ice spells, people are gonna want to do /that/. If the most powerful wizard uses battelfield control, people are gonna want to do that. Unless he just sits in his tower all day, in which people aren't going to pay much attention to what he does.

Again, if a level 10 battlefield control mage who sits sequestered in his tower got upset at the fact that everyone was venerating the warmage and he couldn't find any apprentices, could choose to duel an epic level warmage, in which the latter would epic spellcast his face off. :P

Or he can just say 'screw other people' and go lich himself.
...or he could just say 'screw other people' and die with his magic, making this even more moot.

Edit for the edit:


turning up with someone who wants to be an adventurer and is good at adventuring doesn't seem like something you need to justify at ****ing all.

Um, no need to shout or swear.

The point isn't that 'being effective is bad', the point is, 'Just because you're a wizard doesn't mean you get to sit and look at the game mechanics to automatically discern what is best'. I mean heck, what saves things have is relatively campaign-dependant - that random kobold you're staring at may have iron will and steadfast determination and a third +will saves effect up, and thus sleep is actually a pretty poor option over shooting it with your crossbow (Which will probably kill it if you hit). :P

Remember, if you are in a level 1 game which is unlikely to get to level 2, Toughness becomes a pretty strong feat for a low level wizard. To most if not all level one wizards, telling them, "Take quicken spell" when they can't even figure out second level spells seems a little silly. Thus, many wizards should end up taking toughness and similar 'This is useful to me right this second' feats.

Of course, some people might end up taking quicken spell anyway. Heck, we know the Archmage Suspender Tallfellow always says that speed is the most important thing about combat, and he's one of the first people to master time stop which he uses to buff himself and set delayed blast fireballs all over the place. Or something.

People are funny.

[Zdrak]

And yet in the real world there aren't many people trying to become lawyers by doing degrees in gardening!Again, you would think so, but strangely enough, there are a lot of gardeners who wanted to be lawyers all their lives, but never got the chance, and the best that was left for them was a degree in gardening. And vice versa. A lot of lawyers are gardeners deep down inside.


The real world is a hodgepodge of competing beliefs about success and the 'best' thing to do largely because if we make wrong choices we don't get eaten by an umber hulk.

Living in a world where that happens tends to crystallize things for most people.Not at all. Because those who get eaten by an umber hulk don't get to post their sad tale on blogs for everyone else to analyze. Sir Bellacourt went to the Mountains of Doom, he never came back, do you know why he never came back? Your guess is as good as the village fool's. What exactly is crystallized here?


THE PEOPLE WHO WANT TO BECOME ADVENTURERS DO THINGS TO BE GOOD AT ADVENTURING. Again, you would think so, but humans [elves, halflings] are a lot more complicated than that. There are all-night parties with endless supply of dwarven ale and cute barmaids, there's the possibility to blow stuff up with a roaring ball of flame or show off your Hypnotic Pattern, there are gambling debts to be paid... sometimes, you just don't have time to study for that Conjuration/Summoning 101 exam. Even if you want to be an adventurer.


Turning up with a guy who wants to be an adventurer but has ZERO abilities or skills to do with, y'know, ADVENTURING, ...I know you didn't mean to, but you described pretty much every interesting fantasy character from Bilbo Baggins to Tyrion Lannister.

[Augmental]

Again, if a level 10 battlefield control mage who sits sequestered in his tower got upset at the fact that everyone was venerating the warmage and he couldn't find any apprentices, could choose to duel an epic level warmage, in which the latter would epic spellcast his face off. :P

What if an epic-level battlefield control mage did the same?

[Kantolin]

What if an epic-level battlefield control mage did the same?

Ooh, then it depends on the research they both did, thus the epic level diviner would probably beat up both of them and result in a heck of a lot of divination focused excited kids. :P

...Unless one or all of them were gigantic jerks, or evil, or heck good. Then some people might want to avoid doing that.

I mean, the battlefield control mage might shrug and say, "You can't fight what you can't see!" in which the other epic level warmage shrugs and states, "I made an epic spell specifically for this purpose" and blows him up. Or the BC mage might be able to lock down the warmage such that he's useless and plink him to death from comfort.

....Ooooor the warmage might use his epic shenanigans spell that rends the material plane in half and the BC mage counters with an army of solars, which in turn causes several of the higher planes to become quite upset at what is going on and try to interfere themselves, and everything goes nuts. ^_^

Edit: Importantly to this, however! There isn't /necessarily/ an epic level anything. Anyone who does get that far has either luck or the power of plot on their side - nothing is stopping that person from being severely overoptimized or severely underoptimized. In a game where powerful hyperoptimized carefully sculpted clerics and druids have everything under lock and key, wanting to be a 'wizard of any sort' probably sounds like a sub-par idea. Unless you're rebelling against the dominant regime, or...

[Zdrak]

And people most likely won't understand what happened in that battle anyway, and without anyone to take a cellphone video and post it on YouTube, all would be left is a hodgepodge of contradictory verbal reports. Most of them would start with "My cousin's friend was right there, and ..."

[kardar233]

Assuming the Ward seed immunity to spells acts as infinite SR like Spell Immunity, there are a few good ways for a well-prepared Wizard to take down an epic spellcaster.

[Kantolin]

Assuming the Ward seed immunity to spells acts as infinite SR like Spell Immunity, there are a few good ways for a well-prepared Wizard to take down an epic spellcaster.

Uh, Okay. ^_^

[ShneekeyTheLost]

A & B (And depending on optimization and enemy, C) are in fact true. now:



This one is the one I have trouble with.

You can take a thousand experiments with farmer joe and come the conclusion that your spells have a 85% chance of putting him to sleep, and then discover it's a 75% vs Farmer John, and a 95% chance vs Farmer Jane. Now, you know these three guys, so after some experimentation it makes sense to you - Farmer John is by far the most wise, while Farmer Jane is a dunce.

You then step into a dungeon and fight a kobold. Is this Farmer John? Farmer Joe? Farmer Jane? Every other kobold you've fought has had a will save significantly worse than Farmer Jane's. This one, however, took iron will/steadfast determination and has a surprisingly high wisdom(/con), so the wizard's odds are actually only like a 25%, but he doesn't know that - he's just informed it doesn't work. Or, potentially worse, he gets lucky and his 25% succeeds, resulting in it failing him later when he's now relatively certain it will work. Or, after a lot of 25% kobolds, he then starts running into 95% kobolds but is not informed about this.

This falls through when you can stack your DC's up into the 40's. Then it really doesn't matter if he has a +1 will save or a +20... the odds of making the save is 5% across the board. Doubly so when you use Conjuration-based shutdowns which bypass SR.

"They have a 95% chance to fall victim to my magic. Everything from Kobolds to Balors to Clerics to Barbarians... it doesn't matter what it is, 95% chance".

Then you come up with UPS man type builds, and it is simply 'fall over now, no save, no SR, no attack roll, no immunity... just fall over now'.

[Kantolin]

"They have a 95% chance to fall victim to my magic. Everything from Kobolds to Balors to Clerics to Barbarians... it doesn't matter what it is, 95% chance".

Only kinda. :P When you hit these levels of optimization, your enemies tend to run into similar levels of optimization (Or, I suppose, you curbstomp everything).

Thus at this point, immunities tend to become more key, which leads you to more mailman-style builds anyway.

[mucco]

I click on a thread titled "Regarding Wraithstrike" and I stumble on a discussion about reasons to choose universities. :smallconfused:

To the OP: AC is not and should never be your only defense at high levels. Use miss chance, maybe some AMF; have active defenses up like tripping or Abrupt Jaunt; have the battlefield be something you cannot charge through; use the Elusive Target feat, it negates the benefits of PA and keeps the drawbacks; (Lesser) Globe of Invulnerability makes any low level spell non-functional in its area; ToB maneuvers to elude/parry/counter attacks; Robilar's Gambit and a spell storing weapon to dispel the wraithstrike before the first attack.

Just throwing some ideas around.

[Rejakor]

{scrubbed}

[Zdrak]

there is no limited intake for incantatrixes
This made me chuckle a bit. You seem to be very confused between ingame and out-of-game decision making. Out of game, there is no limited intake for incantatrixes, as any player can roll up this particular class (unless the DM bans it, of course).

Ingame, the incantatrix prestige class is exactly as rare or as common as you want it to be. Maybe there's only one guy teaching the secrets of this particular technique, he doesn't like competition, access to him is limited, and 99.999999% of the wizards in your world have no chance to learn this PrC, regardless of how efficient they want to be, how talented they are, etc.

Of course, if you want this PrC to be available to your character (either because your character is in the 0.0000001%, or because it's actually not that rare), there's nothing wrong with that. But that would be a player decision that has nothing to do with in-character reasoning.

[Kantolin]

Um. Well!


I click on a thread titled "Regarding Wraithstrike" and I stumble on a discussion about reasons to choose universities. :smallconfused:

This is, in fact, true. ^_^ The topic involves wraithstrike, not 'is it logical for someone to make a build that is less than optimized in some campaign settings'.

I shall stop my end of the off-topic debate here, heh.

[AlanBruce]

I click on a thread titled "Regarding Wraithstrike" and I stumble on a discussion about reasons to choose universities. :smallconfused:

To the OP: AC is not and should never be your only defense at high levels. Use miss chance, maybe some AMF; have active defenses up like tripping or Abrupt Jaunt; have the battlefield be something you cannot charge through; use the Elusive Target feat, it negates the benefits of PA and keeps the drawbacks; (Lesser) Globe of Invulnerability makes any low level spell non-functional in its area; ToB maneuvers to elude/parry/counter attacks; Robilar's Gambit and a spell storing weapon to dispel the wraithstrike before the first attack.

Just throwing some ideas around.

Thank you so very much for those suggestions! I had overlooked both that feat from CW and the spell. Granted, not every foe will have such abilities (that would be awful metagaming), but past recurring villains that have suffered under such duress may surprise the gish in future sessions.

[Rejakor]

This made me chuckle a bit. You seem to be very confused between ingame and out-of-game decision making. Out of game, there is no limited intake for incantatrixes, as any player can roll up this particular class (unless the DM bans it, of course).

Ingame, the incantatrix prestige class is exactly as rare or as common as you want it to be. Maybe there's only one guy teaching the secrets of this particular technique, he doesn't like competition, access to him is limited, and 99.999999% of the wizards in your world have no chance to learn this PrC, regardless of how efficient they want to be, how talented they are, etc.

Of course, if you want this PrC to be available to your character (either because your character is in the 0.0000001%, or because it's actually not that rare), there's nothing wrong with that. But that would be a player decision that has nothing to do with in-character reasoning.

You're confusing game reality with out of character decisions.

If incantatrixes are awesome, there is nothing stopping [most wizards] who reach the appropriate power level becoming incantatrixes.


Your argument of 'well it's the DMs world so he says what's in it' is entirely correct except for the part where no-one was arguing about that - your appeal to authority is invalid. People were arguing, and talking about, the fact that it's more likely that when faced with the choice of being a blood magus or an evoker or an incantatrix, most sane people would choose incantatrix.

And thus, most non-dead wizards would have semi-optimized builds, at the very least.

The argument of 'well there might just NOT BE ANY INCANTATRIXES IN THAT WORLD' is ridiculous and childish. Whatever the [most optimized] i.e. [most successful] type of class or feat combination that exists in that world is, allowing for entropy i.e. randomization of data i.e. PEOPLE GETTING IT WRONG, that will be the most common aimed for, if not necessarily achieved, result.

That is the only logical solution, and metagaming or the lack thereof doesn't come into it whatsoever.

[Zdrak]

You're confusing game reality with out of character decisions.

If incantatrixes are awesome, there is nothing stopping [most wizards] who reach the appropriate power level becoming incantatrixes.{Scrubbed}

[TuggyNE]

{scrub the post, scrub the quote}

Might I politely suggest that you just patiently re-list them? A bit of forbearance goes a long way. :smallsmile:

[Acanous]

Well, to become an Incantatrix, you have to give up another school. Red Wizards already have to do that, as do Focused Specialists.

A Focust Specialist/Red Wizard/Incantatrix only gets 3 schools. One of those schools is Divination. Another is *Probably* Abjuration, depending on DM ruling. So you get one school of choice.

Conjuration? Transmutation? Illusion? Pick one.

A lot of wizards wouldn't go down this path because it does limit you.

Some, however, do go this way and reap the benefits.

In real life, it's analogolus to pick one field of study (Magic) then specialize on a certain aspect of that field (Your one school) and go for a doctorate there.

Even then, you're not guerunteed success, and failing here is worse than if you picked a broader field, because there's always going to be work for a JOAT, but someone who didn't get to the top in a narrow field? That means there's someone else, and they're better, and the job opportunities are not as plentiful.

So there's reasons.

In D&D, where you're a player character? There's not. But if it was a simulationist environment? Plenty.

Edit: In regards to the problem with Wraithstrike:

Have a look here (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cw/20070212a) for some armor that not only doesn't have a max dex bonus, but would increase your dex mod to 14. Just don't fail any saving throws against cold attacks, and make sure to get a high CL of hardening cast on the armor. edit: the reflective armor feat in Races of Stone can get your armor bonus to apply to touch AC, if that's of interest. There's a feat in Lords of Madness that makes your shield bonus apply to touch AC too, so you could use that with an animated shield.

[LordBlades]

Well, to become an Incantatrix, you have to give up another school. Red Wizards already have to do that, as do Focused Specialists.

A Focust Specialist/Red Wizard/Incantatrix only gets 3 schools. One of those schools is Divination. Another is *Probably* Abjuration, depending on DM ruling. So you get one school of choice.

Conjuration? Transmutation? Illusion? Pick one.

That's somewhat of a corner case.


A lot of wizards wouldn't go down this path because it does limit you.

Some, however, do go this way and reap the benefits.

It doesn't limit you that much. There's at least 3 schools most wizards wouldn't have much problem giving up:

Evocation: Even leaving 'blasting is suboptimal' aside (which isn't that hard to conclude in character), it doesn't take a genius to realize 90% of what evocation does is replicated by other schools.

Necromancy: If raising undead and 'dark magic' carries the usual stigma, I'd expect a lot of wizards would stay completely away from it.

Enchantment: Mind controlling people is nice, but until high level very glitchy and situational (the average adventuring wizard would realize non-immune enemies are a subset of total enemies, and humanoids which most low-level charm/compulsions affect are an even smaller subset). I really don't see the average wizard getting much mileage out of Enchantment unless he's not an adventuring wizard, but rather spending a lot of time in human(oid) communities.

So, in short, generalists can easily give up Evocation, and specialists can easily give up the 3 mentioned above. Focused specialists are faced with a choice, but claiming that a majority of wizards are focused specialists is actually reinforcing the point of view that most people make optimized choices.

[mucco]

Well, buffer wizards don't want to give up Enchantment and debuffer wizards don't want to give up Necromancy. Most generalist wizards want some utility blasts in their arsenal, and orbs are sometimes banned/AoE is preferred. Also, Contingency.

Your fog-grease-summon-happy conjurer and your alterself-polymorph-shapechange gish will not care about those, yes. I find that it is a relatively small subset of all good, if not "best possible", builds.

[LordBlades]

Well, buffer wizards don't want to give up Enchantment and debuffer wizards don't want to give up Necromancy. Most generalist wizards want some utility blasts in their arsenal, and orbs are sometimes banned/AoE is preferred. Also, Contingency.

Enchantment has a handful of buffs, msot of it is debuffs/save-or-suck with the [Mind Affecting tag].

Unless you rely on stuff like Heroism or Rage for buffs, you're not going to miss Enchantment much.
Fair point on debuffers, Necro isn't a bad school, but certainly harder to give up than Enchantment and Evocation.

Regarding AOE blasting, a quick skim through the Spell compendium Conjuration spells: Acid Breath (Lvl 3), Blast of Flame (lvl 4), Arc of lightning (Lvl 5), Vitriolic Sphere(Lvl 5), Acid Storm (lvl 6). I wouldn't say it lacks AOe blasting. Also, I was basing my position of an all spells available world. Of course, if you ban conjuration blasting spells, then conjuration can't blast, but that's not the default case.


Regarding Contingency, Craft Contingent Spell is arguably better, and Greater Shadow Evocation is an acceptable substitute (comes online 4 levels later though).

[mucco]

Oh, I guess. I consider that feat broken because the only limiting factor to Contingency is that you only have one, and I think that the Shadow X line of spells is a poor excuse for cheese and not that powerful after all. But yeah, opinion.

About Enchantment you are right - most beneficial enchantments are Cleric spells. My memory failed me. However, going around the books I spotted some very nice AoE SoSuck spells, and several powerful rays. I'm now thinking it might be a good school for debuffing.

Also I should point out one thing that this forums always gets wrong, in my opinion. If you tell your DM you want to make an enchanting focused character and he throws many creatures immune to you, he is being a bad DM. The fact that this school is easily negated shouldn't prevent players from playing it for flavor purposes. Sometimes it's ok when the occasional undead pops out, but if there is an Enchanter and the main villain is a Lich, the DM is bad or the game is not centered on combat.

[LordBlades]

Oh, I guess. I consider that feat broken because the only limiting factor to Contingency is that you only have one, and I think that the Shadow X line of spells is a poor excuse for cheese and not that powerful after all. But yeah, opinion.

Completely agree on Craft Contingent Spell (it's one of the very few things we don't allow in my group as our experience with it has been that it turns the fights into 'who has the better worded chain of contingent spells'), as for Shadow Evocation, it's only practical use IMO is to gain access to Contingency, which is a good thing (having to lug around a largely useless school, that can be 95% duplicated by Conjuration, usually with the added bonus of SR:no just for access to 1 spell isn't very appealing).





Also I should point out one thing that this forums always gets wrong, in my opinion. If you tell your DM you want to make an enchanting focused character and he throws many creatures immune to you, he is being a bad DM. The fact that this school is easily negated shouldn't prevent players from playing it for flavor purposes. Sometimes it's ok when the occasional undead pops out, but if there is an Enchanter and the main villain is a Lich, the DM is bad or the game is not centered on combat.

IMo it depends on the circumstances. If the DM asks the players to make characters for a new game (without providing much info on the plot) and somebody comes with an Enchanter, he should probably try and not make the character feel useless 90% of the time, or, if that's not possible (he has a plotline involving a lot of immune creatures and he doesn't want to change) he should at least advise the player to switch to something else.

However, if the DM says something like 'hey guys, the next campaign is going to be about stopping hordes of undead' then it's a player's own damn fault for bringing an enchanter to the table. Same goes for sandbox games. If you poke behind the 'Here be undead' sign, you're going to find undead there even if the whole party is made of Focused Specialist Enchanters and Beguilers.

[Rejakor]

So there's reasons.

In D&D, where you're a player character? There's not. But if it was a simulationist environment? Plenty.

The problem with that argument is; Magic.

Magic can teleport the exact specialist you need from whatever corner of the world he is hiding in.

Magic can find that specialist instantly through the agencies of powerful outsiders who know everything ever or simple stuff like the collective unconscious memory of humanity.

Magic can solve nearly any mundane problem you might have nigh instantly, not requiring the years of work that in the real world even the highest level of specialists tend to have to put in on any major project.



Magic is just so gosh-darned powerful in DnD that JOATs are relatively less useful in comparison to the guy with the right spell or speciality. Because what they trade in exchange for being a JOAT is the difference between a 220lb bomb and a tac nuke. Except even that's a flawed example, because tac nukes don't get to prepare their explosive force any way they want at the start of the day.

In the real world, a specialist in one field will be better, but not unimaginably better, than a generalist, on average - and the cross-training of a generalist can make his viewpoint more valuable than a specialist.

In DnD that's not really true.

And YES focused abjurers or whatever would have some role - especially if we allow roleplaying DM-designed stuff into the mix like 'portal that is really hard to close' kind of thing. But if we're assuming the most common type of wizard in adventuring parties is the adventuring wizard i.e. the combat wizard or the monster killer wizard, then we must assume that his magic is focused on surviving combat.

And generations of wizards would be able to tell that combat wizard [don't use evocations they tend to bounce off or not kill stuff that is tough] and [learn to empower your spells as or after you cast them as that is awesome (incantatrix)] in the same way we have learned in real life that a bad product with good marketing will completely outsell a good product with bad marketing, and other esoterica of various fields.

[Zdrak]

The problem with that argument is; Magic.

Magic can teleport the exact specialist you need from whatever corner of the world he is hiding in.

Magic can find that specialist instantly through the agencies of powerful outsiders who know everything ever or simple stuff like the collective unconscious memory of humanity.

Magic can solve nearly any mundane problem you might have nigh instantly, not requiring the years of work that in the real world even the highest level of specialists tend to have to put in on any major project.

The problem with this argument is: Magic.

Or rather, the assumption that as your character was developing, he had access to arbitrarity high levels of magic and magical knowledge which just so happened to work in his favor. While this, in theory, might be the case, I see no reason why it necessarily should be.

Example: let's say we determine that the optimal way to build a Wizard is Quicken Spell on level 1, [some metamagic reducer] on level 3, [some kind of PrC on level 4, so you don't get the 5th level wizard feat], and Arcane Thesis on level 6. Let's say it's well known over the Internet that this is the beginning for the most powerful wizard build.

How do we explain this in-character?

When he was level 1, he just happened to find the right mentor for Quicken Spell. Eventhough he can't actually cast any quickened spells and it's a wasted feat for now. But he, while still an entry-level mageling, managed to comb through the collective unconscious memory of humanity, whatever that may mean, teleport the right specialist, and took Quicken Spell, a feat he can't possibly use, because he knew it will benefit his build later and because he knew already then that his 3rd and 6th level feats will combo with it.

I mean, okay, I concede that it's possible, if a bit tenuous, that he happened to have the right mentor, who pointed him into an old book and said "study this. It will become of great value to you later, even if now you do not realize this".

But just because such build is known to be the most powerful out-of-game, it's utterly ridiculous to assume that it should become the norm in-game.

[LordBlades]

The problem with this argument is: Magic.

Or rather, the assumption that as your character was developing, he had access to arbitrarity high levels of magic and magical knowledge which just so happened to work in his favor. While this, in theory, might be the case, I see no reason why it necessarily should be.

Example: let's say we determine that the optimal way to build a Wizard is Quicken Spell on level 1, [some metamagic reducer] on level 3, [some kind of PrC on level 4, so you don't get the 5th level wizard feat], and Arcane Thesis on level 6. Let's say it's well known over the Internet that this is the beginning for the most powerful wizard build.

How do we explain this in-character?

When he was level 1, he just happened to find the right mentor for Quicken Spell. Eventhough he can't actually cast any quickened spells and it's a wasted feat for now. But he, while still an entry-level mageling, managed to comb through the collective unconscious memory of humanity, whatever that may mean, teleport the right specialist, and took Quicken Spell, a feat he can't possibly use, because he knew it will benefit his build later and because he knew already then that his 3rd and 6th level feats will combo with it.

I mean, okay, I concede that it's possible, if a bit tenuous, that he happened to have the right mentor, who pointed him into an old book and said "study this. It will become of great value to you later, even if now you do not realize this".

But just because such build is known to be the most powerful out-of-game, it's utterly ridiculous to assume that it should become the norm in-game.

That thing might happen more often than you think, especially if there's some soer of formal wizard wducation involved. See RL technical universities: in early years students are taught a ton of math, uselessbat the time but crucial in understanding other technical subjects taught in later years.

[Zdrak]

That thing might happen more often than you think, especially if there's some soer of formal wizard wducation involved. See RL technical universities: in early years students are taught a ton of math, uselessbat the time but crucial in understanding other technical subjects taught in later years.Hmm, you make a good point. However, I see no reason why even the formal wizardry education should necessary teach how to be an adventuring wizard. Especially given the fact that adventuring wizards usually advance in levels by adventuring and not by taking classes in an academy.

So, I stand by my opinion that yes, this efficient combo of feats might happen, but there is no reason to assume it should happen as a norm.

Additionally, the 'efficient' wizard who was taught that he should take Quicken Spell on level 1 and [some metamagic reducer] on level 3, is spending levels 1-5 of his career with two dead feats that do absolutely nothing for now. Meanwhile, he has to adventure, he has to fight level-appropriate enemies, he has to survive to level 6, before finally his 6th level feat ties up his build in a neat bundle. Meanwhile, he's at a clear disadvantage vs. the Wizard who took Toughness x2.

You and Rejakor claimed it's a natural selection thing, and characters with inefficient builds 'get eaten by Umber Hulks'. I say natural selection works both ways. Unlike the engineer who can afford to spend all of year 1 studying math, and only later study the things he needs math for, the wizard has to go adventuring now. The one who took Toughness or even Dodge or Lightning Reflexes as his first level feat is much more likely to make it to level 2 than the one who took Quicken Spell.

This type of natural selection could, who knows, maybe even give a bad rap to Quicken Spell. Maybe everyone hears stories of low-level wizards who studied Quicken Spell and died horribly in their first expedition, while those who lifted weights in their spare time (Toughness) survived to tell their tales. In fact, typical adventuring parties may view the Quicken Spell level 1 wizard as a liability and refuse to employ him, instead proactively seeking level 1 wizards who took Toughness or Lighting Reflexes.

Of course, these are all possible ingame considerations. Out of game? The DM tells you to make a 9th level Wizard, you make a 9th level wizard with the best combination of feats PrCs and ACFs.

[TuggyNE]

Hmm, you make a good point. However, I see no reason why even the formal wizardry education should necessary teach how to be an adventuring wizard. Especially given the fact that adventuring wizards usually advance in levels by adventuring and not by taking classes in an academy.

So, I stand by my opinion that yes, this efficient combo of feats might happen, but there is no reason to assume it should happen as a norm.

It is rather unlikely that most wizards, even adventuring wizards, will achieve maximally optimal builds. On the other hand, it's not implausible that a fair number (the successful ones, generally) will have relatively optimized builds, and a few may have extremely improbable and precisely tuned builds simply by the laws of probability.

Natural selection is pretty brutal on adventuring wizards, but they are not limited to mutations in order to evolve new ways of doing things, so they're likely to adapt and improve much faster.

[Zdrak]

Natural selection ....Please read my previous post. I have edited it with musings on natural selection. It works both ways.

[Acanous]

That's somewhat of a corner case.



It doesn't limit you that much. There's at least 3 schools most wizards wouldn't have much problem giving up:

Evocation: Even leaving 'blasting is suboptimal' aside (which isn't that hard to conclude in character), it doesn't take a genius to realize 90% of what evocation does is replicated by other schools.

Necromancy: If raising undead and 'dark magic' carries the usual stigma, I'd expect a lot of wizards would stay completely away from it.

Enchantment: Mind controlling people is nice, but until high level very glitchy and situational (the average adventuring wizard would realize non-immune enemies are a subset of total enemies, and humanoids which most low-level charm/compulsions affect are an even smaller subset). I really don't see the average wizard getting much mileage out of Enchantment unless he's not an adventuring wizard, but rather spending a lot of time in human(oid) communities.

So, in short, generalists can easily give up Evocation, and specialists can easily give up the 3 mentioned above. Focused specialists are faced with a choice, but claiming that a majority of wizards are focused specialists is actually reinforcing the point of view that most people make optimized choices.

Oh, I don't disagree that people try to make optimized choices. The factors that contribute to what they consider "Optimized" though, that's the thing.
For instance, most Illusionists are going to take a 4 dip in Master Specialist. After that, Shadowcrafter is a very enticing option. It's like majoring in Illusion and then going for your masters in [Illusion][Shadow]. If you can also be a Shadowcraft Mage, you're going for a doctorate.

But none of that is the same as say, an enchanter's optimal choices, which usually include a 1 level dip in Dread Witch, and doesn't often include ANY Master Specialist levels (M. Spec Enchantment is pretty lame unless you're taking the whole 10 levels).

Abjurers go Master Specialist into Initiate of the Sevenfold, or they Gish it up. Share some training with the Illusionists, but not for very long. It's like they attend the same college, but go to a different university.

Basically, even within "Combat Mage", there's a lot of different ways TO optimize, and they'll let you do very different things. That's why so many mages don't end up as an Incantatrix. In-world, there's only a few, select, wizarding academies, along with perhaps a more general association of Mage Guilds.

Plus, there's different motivations. Some folks would want what is effectively a desk job, like Divination. Many rulers, important officials, and major cities would have uses for a Diviner, and it carries much less of a stigma than other schools of magic. Diviners would be quite a bit like Electricians, really, in that they're always going to be needed. Large cities, you're going to need a few of them to deal with all the work. The difference is there is MUCH less risk, and you can make the clientelle come to you, where you do all your work in an office.

If you're a Conjurer, a Transmuter, or a Necromancer, the work is going to still be THERE, yes, but it's all high-level stuff. You aren't going to walk out the door of your college and be able to work in your field. Conjurers are going to need access to Teleport to see much coin, and Necromancers will need the ability to create and command undead.

That whole time, you're ging to be distrusted and feared by the common man, and if you're adventuring for your coin, good luck making it to level 5.

Then remember that there's competition. I mean, Bardic Knowledge and the like will only get you information on people higher than lv 10. So, as a Wizard, before anyone non-local will seek you out, you have to clear the low and mid game hurdle, which is where wizards are weakest.

The weak are culled, and only when you've made a name for yourself will you start rolling in dough.
Heck, there's more call for Bards than wizards, and being a Bard is more fun.
Why be a Civic engineer when you could be a rockstar?

So yeah. There's Optimized Choices, then there's Practical Opimization, Theoretical Optimization, etc.
Heck, that's not even counting things in-universe like tuition, accessability of education, class gaps (Social, not character) and the like that may prohibit you from becomming a Wizard.

[Lost in books]

The best way I have seen polymorph handled was that the DM had a list of "common" forms that wizards could easily learned because of study in becoming a wizard to begin with. The next way was for the wizard to add to his list creatures he personally encountered. The final way, for rare forms, the wizard had to do a high DC check looking for specific information i.e. "What is the fastest flying humanoid creature in this plane?" After a certain research time the wizard will roll his check and if he succeeded he will learn enough to be able to polymorph into a very low HD of that form. But with that knowledge he could scry on that type of creature to get more familiarity and increase the HD or learn other powers of the form. But the ultimate way to "unlock" all the abilities of the form is to face it in battle or study it in its presence at the required HD. So if he wanted to be able to polymorph into a 5 HD Smackdown terror he needed to find a specimen of at least that HD or higher.

Very sensible and made perfect sense to me.

[Augmental]

Additionally, the 'efficient' wizard who was taught that he should take Quicken Spell on level 1 and [some metamagic reducer] on level 3, is spending levels 1-5 of his career with two dead feats that do absolutely nothing for now. Meanwhile, he has to adventure, he has to fight level-appropriate enemies, he has to survive to level 6, before finally his 6th level feat ties up his build in a neat bundle. Meanwhile, he's at a clear disadvantage vs. the Wizard who took Toughness x2.

And if the wizard survives to level 6, at which point he becomes more effective then the double toughness wizard by a huge margin?


You and Rejakor claimed it's a natural selection thing, and characters with inefficient builds 'get eaten by Umber Hulks'. I say natural selection works both ways. Unlike the engineer who can afford to spend all of year 1 studying math, and only later study the things he needs math for, the wizard has to go adventuring now. The one who took Toughness or even Dodge or Lightning Reflexes as his first level feat is much more likely to make it to level 2 than the one who took Quicken Spell.

And the one who took Quicken Spell is a lot likelier to survive past level 6 than the one who took two Toughness feats.


This type of natural selection could, who knows, maybe even give a bad rap to Quicken Spell. Maybe everyone hears stories of low-level wizards who studied Quicken Spell and died horribly in their first expedition, while those who lifted weights in their spare time (Toughness) survived to tell their tales. In fact, typical adventuring parties may view the Quicken Spell level 1 wizard as a liability and refuse to employ him, instead proactively seeking level 1 wizards who took Toughness or Lighting Reflexes.

Or maybe everyone hears stories of the Quicken Spell level 1 wizard who overcame the challenging low levels and gained the power to defeat his enemies before they could even blink, while those who lifted weights in their spare time were left behind. Adventuring parties would then seek out wizards with Quicken Spell instead of Toughness or Lighting Reflexes, knowing that the early difficulties would pay off.

[TuggyNE]

You and Rejakor claimed it's a natural selection thing, and characters with inefficient builds 'get eaten by Umber Hulks'. I say natural selection works both ways. Unlike the engineer who can afford to spend all of year 1 studying math, and only later study the things he needs math for, the wizard has to go adventuring now. The one who took Toughness or even Dodge or Lightning Reflexes as his first level feat is much more likely to make it to level 2 than the one who took Quicken Spell.

This type of natural selection could, who knows, maybe even give a bad rap to Quicken Spell. Maybe everyone hears stories of low-level wizards who studied Quicken Spell and died horribly in their first expedition, while those who lifted weights in their spare time (Toughness) survived to tell their tales. In fact, typical adventuring parties may view the Quicken Spell level 1 wizard as a liability and refuse to employ him, instead proactively seeking level 1 wizards who took Toughness or Lighting Reflexes.

This has been brought up before in this thread, and reasonably countered by noting that higher-level selection pressures are far more severe. (Also, taking the view that XP can only be gained by adventuring is, in my opinion, very short-sighted; NPCs have to have some way to gain levels, and a "pre-PC" could use the same general mechanism, despite it having no fleshed-out rules.)

To that I'd add that the concept of a short-term dip in fitness as a necessary prelude to achieving higher long-term fitness than is otherwise possible is an important one in evolutionary theories; it's a difficult obstacle to get past with high selection pressure, blind natural selection, and random mutation, but by no means as difficult with directed changes and reasoning, not to mention the possibility of bypassing the dip by simply powerleveling through it.

So yes, it's a problem to consider, and one that probably does reduce the number of highly-optimal wizards to some extent, but it's not insurmountable by any means.


The best way I have seen polymorph handled was that the DM had a list of "common" forms that wizards could easily learned because of study in becoming a wizard to begin with.
[...]

This actually ties in with the question of whether academies teach adventurer-useful spells and spell usages; it's not especially difficult to imagine a couple centuries of arcane research producing a remarkably effective list of common forms, and wizard colleges going to some lengths to secure specimens for the students to study. Certainly, some of the more niche usages won't show up in this, but the ones that are best for brute-force fighting, or everyday scouting, or the other common uses? Yeah, they'll be pretty thoroughly optimized.

The only ways I can think of to avoid this involve DM fiat, if only to say "despite all appearances and the ability to enlist replacement PCs whenever one of you dies, adventurers are remarkably rare and never have formal job-specific training. Also, real wizards never fight."

[Rejakor]

The problem begins, and ends, with Zthrak's initial unchallenged suggestion that HIGH INT WIZARDS WITH ACCESS TO DIVINATION SPELLS would never be able to work out what produces the most powerful magic for them.

How would they learn, Zthrak? Simple. BY MAKING A KN: ARCANA CHECK.

Game, set, and match.

[Zdrak]

This has been brought up before in this thread, and reasonably countered by noting that higher-level selection pressures are far more severe. Now you're opening a whole new can of worms. I'd say that at low level, the selection pressures are far more severe because the margin of error is so small. For a typical level 1 wizard, the margin of error is exactly one random hit from a goblin arrow. Unless of course he took Toughness, in which case the margin of error is 2 random goblin arrows.


So yes, it's a problem to consider, and one that probably does reduce the number of highly-optimal wizards to some extent, but it's not insurmountable by any means.It was never my claim that highly-optimal wizards don't exist, or there is an "insurmountable problem" in way of their existance.

Only that in-character convergence on the One True Build does not happen naturally for all wizards. Not even most wizards.

[TuggyNE]

Now you're opening a whole new can of worms. I'd say that at low level, the selection pressures are far more severe because the margin of error is so small. For a typical level 1 wizard, the margin of error is exactly one random hit from a goblin arrow. Unless of course he took Toughness, in which case the margin of error is 2 random goblin arrows.

Or he's a Conjurer specialist with Abrupt Jaunt, in which case it's 4+Int goblin arrows.


Only that in-character convergence on the One True Build does not happen naturally for all wizards. Not even most wizards.

Well, if it helps, I certainly don't believe there's a single One True Build to begin with; there will tend to be some highly-optimal builds (some of them dead), a number of moderately-optimal builds (many of them dead), and quite a lot of sub-optimal builds (most of them dead).

Of course, factoring in resurrections complicates this, but tends to soften the selection pressures to some extent: as long as somebody retrieves you and spends a lot of cash, your learning is not wholly lost.

[Rejakor]

Also, most wizards do not exist in a vacuum.

A wizard who takes Toughness and Magic Missile at first level is much more likely to end up in a TPK than a wizard who takes Extend Spell and Colour Spray. Being able to shut down 15 goblins at once tends to mean even if you catch an arrow and go down, someone will stabilize you, because, y'know, THEY are still alive.

[nedz]

The problem being described here is what's known, in the world of optimisation, as the local maxima problem. (Note: I am talking about IRL optimisation, not [just] Char OP.)

Basically Toughness may be an optimal choice for a Wizard at 1st level, but it is a dead end in that it precludes more optimal choices which only become relevant later. But these are of no value to a dead wizard, and a 1st level character is unlikely to be raised.

1st level wizards who choose Magic Missile over, say, Colour Spray are a whole other story. These are not even trying to find the local maxima. MM is quite a useful 1st level spell to have available at middle levels, but not at 1st.

[Rejakor]

As far as I can tell, though, most DMs pull the punches a lot more at the mid and high levels - going solely by CR, if you have wasted feats on toughness and whatnot, you are much much less likely to survive against some of the more hardcore stuff in the MM1, much less the other MMs. Especially if the encounters are more than 'one big monster', or include enemies with class levels.

[nedz]

As far as I can tell, though, most DMs pull the punches a lot more at the mid and high levels - going solely by CR, if you have wasted feats on toughness and whatnot, you are much much less likely to survive against some of the more hardcore stuff in the MM1, much less the other MMs. Especially if the encounters are more than 'one big monster', or include enemies with class levels.

I don't know about most DM's, I can only speak for myself.

I have seen parties though where one character suddenly comes together, with lots of synergies arriving, and appear noticeably stronger than the others. They then frequently hit a plateau and the others catch up and even overtake them. These sweet spots are just local maxima which the build has achieved.

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff of Moddingham: Thread locked. After review, it can stay that way. There's altogether too much hostility here.