is this a min max build? summoners wizard

[karazka]

Dear forum people,

I am new here but i came here with a question. Me and my dm are having a discussion about my build. He is saying that it's min/max but off course i am saying its not. The build i am refering to is a summuning wizard>

the build i have
classes:
wizard: 5 lvls
alternate classfeature: conjurring
spell focus conjurring:
specialist conjurring
schools banned: necromancy, evocation, abjuration
wild soul: 2 lvls seelie side

Feats:
Fey presence: gain spell like abilities
fey heritage: +3 will saves on enchantments
Fey skin: damage reduction +1 per fey feat, 4/cold iron
Fey power: caster lvl plus dc 1 omhoog voor enchantments
and with a flaw a feat that lets me use a summon monster spontanous in one of my three conjuration spell slots

I dont think i am power playing but he thinks i am.
What am i missing here?

i made a mistake in my banned schools lolze, and forgot to tell you that my dm set wildsoul give's me full spellcasting XD
Greets karazka

[nedz]

Wizards are very powerful, or at least potentially so.
Conjuration is the most powerful school.
Immediate Magic (Conjuration) a.k.a. Abrupt Jaunt is one of the more powerful ACFs

On the other hand:

The Fey heritage feats are not so powerful.

Transmutation is the second most powerful school, so banning it is not minmaxing
Wild soul costs you a caster level and so this breaks the first rule of Char Op "Never sacrifice caster levels"

It's hard to read your DM's mind, out of interest what does the rest of the party look like ?

[Emperor Tippy]

You are a focused specialist conjurer who has banned transmutation and doesn't appear to have Abrupt Jaunt.

I would be fairly hard pressed to find an outright weaker base build for a wizard.

[Pluto!]

If you've put any levels into Wild Soul, there's no way that minmaxing is happening in any way, shape or form. Especially with the Fey Heritage feat line.

Is the DM new to the game or the role? I could see how a well-played caster in a game without a lot of well-played casters could look like an exercise in min-maxing.

Alternatively, and kind of what I suspect based on the way I've played, it's possible there's a difference in the attitudes toward rules in general. I know in my own games, by playing very thoroughly by-the-book and very awarely of the indirect rules that could be used in most situations (eg. using the Grease spell which cross-references to the Balancing rules, which cross-reference the flat-footed rules, which allow the Rogue to do his thing), I've had less rules-centric players call me a min-maxer even on silly weak builds (the one I'm thinking included both Swashbuckler and 3.5 Bladesinger levels).

[Craft (Cheese)]

You are a focused specialist conjurer who has banned transmutation and doesn't appear to have Abrupt Jaunt.

I would be fairly hard pressed to find an outright weaker base build for a wizard.

Focused Specialist Diviner banning Conjuration and Transmutation?

[Emperor Tippy]

Focused Specialist Diviner banning Conjuration and Transmutation?

Maybe. As I said, hard pressed.

[Urpriest]

Every build is min-maxing, and every build is power-playing. That's part of the nature of playing a game. I guarantee that when the other players built their characters, they did it by asking themselves what the best way was to achieve the goals they set out to achieve.

The only question is whether the build is too powerful for your group. And that's something we can't tell you without knowing who you're playing with.

[skyth]

I'm a little leery of any focused specialist build...As it makes the character more into a one trick pony. If your stuff works, you're more powerful than average. If it doesn't work, you're helpless.

If it's a type of DM (like me) that doesn't like to hit players with things that they are helpless against (As I consider it basically no fun if you can't contribute) then it is a bit of a min/max situation.

Also, conjuration is one of the more flexible schools since it can bring creatures in to do things from your banned schools, so having banned schools is less of a drawback.

[(Un)Inspired]

Great googa mooga! Why on earth did you ban transmutation? Wait, was banning transmutation and taking those fey feats a red herring strategy to throw your DM off your min maxing trail?

[Rebel7284]

Not even a little bit. Of course an unoptimized wizard, when played competently can still wipe the floor with many level-appropriate encounters.

[fluke1993]

In one sentence? No, this build, by playground standards, is not particularly powerful.

Why?

1: Banning transmutation is a bad move in 99 out of 100 builds. The sheer versatility of the school and the fact that it provides many things that can't be found in other schools make it one of the most powerful schools.

2: The Fey feats are generally underwhelming.

3: After about third level specialist wizard tends to fall off compared to generalists due to lower versatility

4: Due to your ban list you miss out on some of your spontaneous casting. (namely Baleful Polymorph, Prismatic spray and Timestop)

That being said, you are still a wizard and wild soul is a fairly powerful PrC (not amazing or anything but what you get is definetly worth the cost of entering. Your DM may not be happy with the fact that you skipped the roleplay requirements of the PrC however.

I feel like your DM is vastly overestimating the power of the Fey feats however with a DM who isn't familiar with them, it can seem like min-maxing. Which brings me to my next point, flaws while technically balanced, they aren't if your DM doesn't know how to deal with them. See flaws are supposed to cost something but what actually cost's something can vary between characters. A power-attacking barbarian really isn't going to be hurt if he takes a flaw that gives him a penalty to ranged attack rolls and shouldn't be allowed to take that flaw but a penalty to melee attack rolls will definetly be felt and is probably a valid flaw. Remind your DM that whether or not you can take a flaw is ultimately his decision. Finally your DM may be overwhelmed by the amount of books your build uses. (3-5 by my count)

Another point I would like to make is that while the power level of this build is low, that doesn't mean you can't overshadow the rest of the party. If the rest of the party consists of a healbot, a fighter w/ weapon the weapon focus chain and a poorly built rouge you will probably outdo at least one of the party in some way shape or form.

Finally though the power of your build is relatively low, what your doing is still definite and deliberate optimization. That's okay because everyone optimizes to a degree without knowing it and optimizing in and of itself only becomes a problem when you start overshadowing the other players. Let me be clear: unless your party is playing pre-made characters, I don't think you will overshadow the rest of the party. All optimization is making the choices to best accomplish what you set out to do. What you set out to do was create a Fey themed wizard who specializes in summoning and that is exactly what I see before me. As a DM I would have no problem with this character aside from the flaw. (due to the headache they can cause sometimes I generally don't allow them)

One suggestion I will make is to loose the flaw take fey power at level 9 instead or just skip Fey power entirely because it doesn't add a whole heck of a lot to your build. (1 extra DR and +1 DC enchants, which aren't the focus of yourbuild)

[nedz]

Character Flaws

A player may select up to two flaws when creating a character. After 1st level, a character cannot take on additional flaws unless the game master specifically allows it (for examples of times when doing this might be appropriate, see Character Traits).

You can only take flaws at first level, unless the DM allows you to do otherwise.

[Devils_Advocate]

I don't think those feats were meant to be listed in order taken.


What am i missing here?
A single term may be used to mean many different things by many different people in many different contexts.

For example, "min/max" can be used to refer to heavy emphasis on one aspect of a character to the detriment of others. In your case, you're clearly focusing hard on Conjuration and on DR via fey feats.

It may be that "min/max" has a connotation of "overpowered" for you, but I think that "overspecialized" is closer to the original meaning of the term.

What you're asking is basically purely a semantic question, but the answer is largely irrelevant, because even if your DM is incorrectly describing the problem he has with something, that doesn't somehow make it any less of an issue.

If you don't understand why someone said something, it's generally best to ask why, I think. I'd ask your DM whether he thinks there's a problem, and if so, what that problem is.

[karazka]

Heej people,

Thanks for the reply. i asked him last night because we always play on tuesday and the biggest problem is with the arcadian avenger, the damage reduction, and my ultimate i summon a lot of stuf.

BUt he is oke with it know he has read this topic also and some good point, The main school that i use for this character are illusion, enchantment and conjuration, fey like stuff.

You asked about the party, we have a master of many forms, a dude who does a lot with a lot of feats, a specialist diviner wizard, and a lucky dude with luck feats en is more a bard. They had problems with damage that's why i enrolled in this class.

Yeah i know about flaws but everybody was doing it. Last night we had an encounter with some hard pressed monster luckely my lvl 3 monster spell summoned max celestial badgers for protection XD

Know waiting for more possibilitys to summon'
did make some mistakes in my first post lolze

greets

[Amphetryon]

You are a focused specialist conjurer who has banned transmutation and doesn't appear to have Abrupt Jaunt.

I would be fairly hard pressed to find an outright weaker base build for a wizard.

Focused Specialist Enchanter banning Conjuration, Illusion, and Transmutation. :smallsmile:

[Segev]

Unlike "powergaming" or "munchkin" or other such subjective terms, "min/max" is actually a phrase with an identifiable denotative meaning.

To "min/max," you have to focus exclusively on those characteristics which increase your power in a chosen area, and be willing to plummet all others. Preferably in manners which allow your maxed-out area to compensate for and overcome any deficiencies introduced by your minimized stats in other areas. In D&D, this is often characterized by playing a wizard with maxed out Int and floored stats elsewhere, then relying on spells and the like to overcome any deficiencies due to the lower stats.

This build is not doing that.

[Barbor]

Hey everyone,

I'm another player in the game Karazka is talking about (the diviner wizard). We already talked about his build in person and agree'd that, while it is quite powerful (notably, transmutation isn't banned and wild soul doesn't give a CL loss at first level) it's not really powergaming in the sense that everything is 100% optimed. Rather, the build is good in what it does, namely summoning a whole load of monsters and having them do the dirty work. However, I told him there's (in my opinion) really nothing wrong with trying to optimize the role (in this case summoning stuff) which you want to perform. It's not like he's compensating the weaker areas of his character much either (well not too much :P). Also, it probably didn't help the DM misread some of the wild souls class features which caught him off guard in game.

I think the biggest reason the character looks "min-maxed" is the enormous power discrepancy within the group, with one character (while being very cool fluff wise, with almost all luck feats) not being able to do too much in combat, one character completely being focused on defense as it looks now (granting AC bonus to our whole party). Then there's me (the other wizard) and the master of many forms, that are able to contribute sufficiently, with my only means to doing damage being the fiery burst reserve feat (wanted to make a character with no offensive options but DM explicitly told that wouldn't be a good idea). Because of this, Karazka's character looks to do a lot of the heavy lifting in combat and could be what the DM sees as a problem.