spicing up things for high level spell casters

[Kafros]

I am playing a high level campaign with gestalt characters now we are on epic levels, and i increasingly have been noticing that the game is less and less fun for the spell casters.
Now I am playing a pretty high magic setting so I have allowed my players to get whatever they wanted, from classes, followers (even buffed up leadership so they lead armies), or items, the only thing I restricted is the spell list, I only allowed spells from Phb.
So here is the problem, spell casters do fine vs mobs they do great in wiping full sections of the opposing armies... but when dealing with lets say boss fights where there is creature vs group fight they are seriously underpowered. The high level roguish character is dishing out 500-1k damage /round, the ranger and the barbarian keep up or even top it but at most the spell caster will dish out a 1-200 that if he passes the SR

problems with spell casters I identify is that the high level spells are virtually useless, unless I roll a natural 1 no creature they face will ever fail a save (and frankly for creature that can fail the saves I do not even bother making stat blocks they slaughter a whole army each session got a lot of things to do i don t even make stats for the idividual units anymore i stuck 2000 orc together and make a swarm llike creature for them to kill :P). that makes illusion necromancy, and enchantment schools useless apart from his lucky brake on level 18 when he imploded a boss cause I rolled a 1... the characters usual action is to take out pon pons and cheer for the group and then heal them afterwards or turn to a hydra and go close range for a 300 damage... (if he is lucky and hit on everything) or 100 as an average.

So apart from the utility between the fights in the actual boss fights he feels useless... and this is quite the bummer cause lets face it in a session the utility is like 30 mins to 1 hour followed by 4 or 5 hours combat. in world of warcraft terms he is always first from the bottom in the dps meter.

So what can I do to fix that? I told him to look the spells outside phb he came up with nothing for me (and tbh I dont want to allow spells in the campaign that can 1 shot the group the spell restrictions are there mostly for me not for the group ) but I think the main problem is the character build h chose a rather feat starving combination of druid cleric (which is doubly bad cause he gets not complimenting spell lists) and on top he lost a bunch of BAB by not complementing with a fighter class so he has trouble to hit on AC that is... he hits on 17+ on full BAB and thats on low challenge boss fights. granted the boss fight would never happen if he did not get them to the correct plane, discerned the location of the boss with divinations and w/e (which are things I plan just to make him look good but less face it I cant have the other 3 do nothing the entire session just for that)

[Rebel7284]

Do you ever have encounters that don't involve dealing damage?

Usually mundanes do damage fairly well while casters do EVERYTHING.

Please read Treantmonk's guide to wizard being god and then link the player to it. I am convinced that playing the character better is the answer.

If you really want to boost the wizard to silly levels, let him take epic spellcasting and develop his own spells. Of course opening other spell sources would help too.

[heavyfuel]

Is this a joke thread? Because like.... For real?


I am playing a high level campaign with gestalt characters now we are on epic levels, and i increasingly have been noticing that the game is less and less fun for the spell casters.

Only is by "less fun" you mean they can now do absolutely everything and the lack of challenge makes the game boring.


So here is the problem, spell casters do fine vs mobs they do great in wiping full sections of the opposing armies... but when dealing with lets say boss fights where there is creature vs group fight they are seriously underpowered. The high level roguish character is dishing out 500-1k damage /round, the ranger and the barbarian keep up or even top it but at most the spell caster will dish out a 1-200 that if he passes the SR

problems with spell casters I identify is that the high level spells are virtually useless, unless I roll a natural 1 no creature they face will ever fail a save (and frankly for creature that can fail the saves I do not even bother making stat blocks they slaughter a whole army each session got a lot of things to do i don t even make stats for the idividual units anymore i stuck 2000 orc together and make a swarm llike creature for them to kill :P). that makes illusion necromancy, and enchantment schools useless apart from his lucky brake on level 18 when he imploded a boss cause I rolled a 1... the characters usual action is to take out pon pons and cheer for the group and then heal them afterwards or turn to a hydra and go close range for a 300 damage... (if he is lucky and hit on everything) or 100 as an average.

Except there are a BUNCH of spells that have "Saving Throw: None" and "SR: No". Even then SR shouldn't be a problem what with spells like True Casting (+10 bonus) and Assay Resistance (another +10 bonus).

While that makes Illusion Enchantment and Necromancy "useless", a high level wizard has Shapechange, probably the best spell in the game. Or Gate, which can be used to call Solars (which can be used to call Solars, which can be used to call Solars, which can be used to call Solars, which can be used to call Solars... You get the drill)


So apart from the utility between the fights in the actual boss fights he feels useless... and this is quite the bummer cause lets face it in a session the utility is like 30 mins to 1 hour followed by 4 or 5 hours combat. in world of warcraft terms he is always first from the bottom in the dps meter.


See "The Mailman" build. He deals more damage than most non-casters per round. Also, check the "Twice Betrayer of Shar". If any of your characters can put a dent on him, they deserve a prize


So what can I do to fix that? I told him to look the spells outside phb he came up with nothing for me (and tbh I dont want to allow spells in the campaign that can 1 shot the group the spell restrictions are there mostly for me not for the group ) but I think the main problem is the character build h chose a rather feat starving combination of druid cleric (which is doubly bad cause he gets not complimenting spell lists) and on top he lost a bunch of BAB by not complementing with a fighter class so he has trouble to hit on AC that is... he hits on 17+ on full BAB and thats on low challenge boss fights. granted the boss fight would never happen if he did not get them to the correct plane, discerned the location of the boss with divinations and w/e (which are things I plan just to make him look good but less face it I cant have the other 3 do nothing the entire session just for that)

What you can do is teach your players to be better casters, although you will probably regret doing this, especially when the caster starts outshining every single character and ending every encounter with a single standard action.

[TheIronGolem]

Casters have all the "spice" they could ever possibly need. They own the freaking spice store.

[eggynack]

What you can do is teach your players to be better casters, although you will probably regret doing this, especially when the caster starts outshining every single character and ending every encounter with a single standard action.
Yeah, might be worth teaching them how to be, I dunno, mediocre casters. Point them towards prismatic sphere instead of shapechange, and black tentacles instead of polymorph. Really though, the party's casters already are more powerful. That bone you think you tossed the caster, arbitrary plane and location based defenses, those are defenses that just about every enemy at that level should have, and they should have many more. Toss the enemies more defenses like that, like miss chance, or frigging immunity to damage, because the latter is totally a thing at these levels, and you'll see much less useful mundanes.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Melee characters that do high damage tend to spend a lot of resources (feats, levels & money) on it. A spellcaster that wants to do the same high damage needs to spend resources.

The same concept applies to saving throws. A really optimized spellcaster can get save DCs in the 60-70s and thus be a threat even to a CR 59 Great Wyrm Force Dragon (which is kind of overkill for most campaigns, admittedly, but the resources are there). CL boosts are plentiful even at non-epic levels so any SR short of Magic Immunity should be a minor annoyance at best, not an insurmountable problem.

If your casters are throwing around unaugmented blasting spells it's no wonder they don't do much damage. If they haven't spent any build resources on improving their spell DCs it's pretty clear that most enemies won't fail their saving throws. If they can't be bothered to boost their CL or use other anti-SR resources they're not going to get through SR.

A summoner needs either Cosmic Descryer levels or epic spellcasting to let his summons keep up with advancing enemies. A debuffer needs to improve his spell DCs. A blaster needs to invest in metamagic and metamagic reducers.

A non-epic caster gets away with increasing his casting stat at level up and buying an enhancement item and tome. Spell DCs don't scale at higher levels like BAB does though, so the higher the level goes the more you'll have to compensate with build choices. Otherwise you're pretty much stuck with +1 to DCs every 8 levels, which just isn't enough to keep up.

You need at least a vague idea of your build if you want to actually compete in epic.
My suggestion is to sit them down, introduce them to the retraining rules and let them turn their builds into a cohesive whole that actually does what the player wants it to do. Most of your problems should disappear then.

[eggynack]

You need at least a vague idea of your build if you want to actually compete in epic.
Well, you need that if you're trying to compete with other epic casters, or things of that ilk. If you're trying to compete with standard crazy damage melee builds, presumably without Tippy level optimization, I've gotta figure that efficient use of 9th's like shapechange or gate will be more than sufficient. As in, so much more than sufficient that it enters the realm of the ridiculous.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Well, you need that if you're trying to compete with other epic casters, or things of that ilk. If you're trying to compete with standard crazy damage melee builds, presumably without Tippy level optimization, I've gotta figure that efficient use of 9th's like shapechange or gate will be more than sufficient. As in, so much more than sufficient that it enters the realm of the ridiculous.

Apparently his players are either blasting, gishing or trying non-specified spells that require saving throws/SR. If they want to affect epic enemies with those they'll have to optimize at least a little.
If you've got a playstyle picked out that doesn't rely on saves/penetrating SR/hitting something you obviously don't need to optimize those. It does limit your options though.

[Kafros]

??? solars? well they are an evil group but the actual CR of a solar in my campaign is 11 at this point they don t even award xp. in the last session they summoned 2 pit fiends a balor and he has a permanent succumbus as a follower. (with actual gestalt levels and stats), when all 3 pit fiend + balor met 1 of my lesser bosses he wiped the floor with one of them and the other 2 teleported for dear lives. I know solars have higher CR... take my word for it though if it were 3 of them they might not even have time to teleport.

spells that have no sr or saves that could help... so please suggest a few. the most useful spell outdoors so far was reverse gravity but that is practically useless to any room with a ceiling and since they want to invade the lair of an epic dragon the next month the encounters will be indoors.

so you suggest that in order to cast a spell... he needs to cast another spell (partial action and partial action) so what spell you had in mind that would deal 1k damage per round to keep relevant? since I guess he should quicken the true spell casting?

No I don't intend to have them make new characters and start over and since the campaign is going on for 2 years I am pretty sure I am doing something right so if you do not feel you can answer please don't troll me and don't post if you have no answer

He is a druid on one side as I mentioned he can do better than shape change.

I gave them epic spellcasting already but developing spells seems very expensive and dont forget he is a wisdom based character so his knowledge religion is kind of low atm since he adds int to it instead of wis maybe you can suggest a feat to fix that. (and funny thing is that I also gave him and the rest of the group a 1 M to spend each)

even if half the creatures in the MM did not have true sight tremor sence and whatever to make most illusions useless gems of true seeing have been purchased since level 12 now... if you feel like doing illusions where the creature has to fail 2 saves go ahead. Necromancies... yeah I failed 1 fort save 3 months ago. and that cause I dont want to give my creatures death ward so if he gets lucky to get a kill. enchantments are practically as usefull as necromacies.

well up to level 15 he was ok cause he could harm for 150 hp and cast a spell and be relevant but as the gear went up I feel he is becoming more and more uselss.

oh I wonder who is going to say... maximized twin casted shivering touch! we had that spell in the game earlier in the campaign but they asked me to remove it themselves since a lot of creatures are immune to stat damage.

As I said we have sessions for role play, we have things that involve thinking and things outside battle, and the rogue class also shines there. Also I mentioned is a gestalt campaign the rogue can do everything, even spell cast. (heck he even stole a bunch of 9 level spells from my last monster and used it against it) maybe it was my mistake cause for the transition to epic I gave them a rather long dungeon where they were trialed by some demi deities and there were no easy encounters in between. just boss fights and puzzles in between. (and to be honest they dont like easy encounters initially I had an easy encounter before each fight but they asked me to remove them)

The reason I am asking is cause I feel the player is a bit disappointed since he has been giving me character sheets in case his character dies (now thats the 8th I got) and all his back up characters are martial types. Now I am playing with this guy for a year already so I dont want him to leave. I guess the best solution is to just let him switch his character but I want to suggest alternatives.

[heavyfuel]

Well, I didn't realize you had mentioned they were in Epic Levels. I just assumed you meant high levels as in, 17+. My bad


spells that have no sr or saves that could help... so please suggest a few. the most useful spell outdoors so far was reverse gravity but that is practically useless to any room with a ceiling and since they want to invade the lair of an epic dragon the next month the encounters will be indoors.

There's always the "Irresistible Spell" metamagic feat that outright removes any Saves from any spell. You mentioned that the casters sometimes beat SR, so Assay Resistance and (Quickened) True Casting will make them pass SR 100% of the time (because a nat 1 isn't a failure)


so you suggest that in order to cast a spell... he needs to cast another spell (partial action and partial action) so what spell you had in mind that would deal 1k damage per round to keep relevant? since I guess he should quicken the true spell casting?

What are partial actions? Are you sure you're playing 3.e/d20?

However, now that I know that epic spellcasting is involved, I'll just say that I'm not, by any means, the best person to teach you about it, so I'll just say this: Emperor Tippy, the person who is famous in this forum for having his campaigns played in ridiculously high optimization standards, bans epic spellcasting for being way too powerful. This is the guy that once played an entire planet. He bans epic spellcasting.

Anyone who is more qualified than I am, please teach him about epic spellcasting as I watch from the corner and try to learn somethings as well.

[Kafros]

Melee characters that do high damage tend to spend a lot of resources (feats, levels & money) on it. A spellcaster that wants to do the same high damage needs to spend resources.

The same concept applies to saving throws. A really optimized spellcaster can get save DCs in the 60-70s and thus be a threat even to a CR 59 Great Wyrm Force Dragon (which is kind of overkill for most campaigns, admittedly, but the resources are there). CL boosts are plentiful even at non-epic levels so any SR short of Magic Immunity should be a minor annoyance at best, not an insurmountable problem.

If your casters are throwing around unaugmented blasting spells it's no wonder they don't do much damage. If they haven't spent any build resources on improving their spell DCs it's pretty clear that most enemies won't fail their saving throws. If they can't be bothered to boost their CL or use other anti-SR resources they're not going to get through SR.

A summoner needs either Cosmic Descryer levels or epic spellcasting to let his summons keep up with advancing enemies. A debuffer needs to improve his spell DCs. A blaster needs to invest in metamagic and metamagic reducers.

A non-epic caster gets away with increasing his casting stat at level up and buying an enhancement item and tome. Spell DCs don't scale at higher levels like BAB does though, so the higher the level goes the more you'll have to compensate with build choices. Otherwise you're pretty much stuck with +1 to DCs every 8 levels, which just isn't enough to keep up.

You need at least a vague idea of your build if you want to actually compete in epic.
My suggestion is to sit them down, introduce them to the retraining rules and let them turn their builds into a cohesive whole that actually does what the player wants it to do. Most of your problems should disappear then.

you got the right idea thank you.

he is a priest, summoner, druid. because I saw he was lagging behind cause of his lack of feats I added several ways in the game so he could buy the extra feats he needed, so all characters can buy feats pretty much (which is why the campaign is at such a high level of power at this point as to say that to them a sollar should not even be a challenge) He can practically buy feats for 15000 (and doubling the price for every feat afterwards) so if you can suggest some good feats it would be great. but I think the whole idea of a summoning build is ineffective since practically MM creatures don't quite cut it for the game anymore, summoned creatures would never manage to hit let alone damage something I made. So I think his whole build not to mention class selection is rather in the wrong way. :( I actually added that option so he can get split ray twin cast divine spellcasting and other feats like that. Restriction no epic feats can be attained in this way. I dont have a link at his character sheet atm and he seems to be sleeping so I ll link it later.

They dont seem to know what items to select for the optimization, and frankly I cant help them there cause I never optimize the damage of my creatures, I only optimize defences. The point is not to kill the group just let them have fun killing things. Things are there to be killed and frankly I dont mind him being op. for a change the idea is they are epic in order to be overpowered.

I dont think I can teach much more to my players for spellcasting. They are as you understand a group of power gamers and that includes spellcasting. in the high levels I gave them a bunch of wizard and cleric encounters (thats where he stole the idea for the reverse gravity) but obviously I cant have them fight someone who will cast a spell and the whole group will kill over thats not an encounter to give to your players.

[AvatarVecna]

At about ECL 3, the fighter and the rogue can greatly outdo the wizard or cleric, because the most broken options aren't available yet; we're comparing huge damage to mediocre low-level spells. At 17th level, the fighter is swinging his weapon faster, and the rogue is dual-wielding; the wizard, meanwhile, can busy making infinite wishes, summoning literal armies of high-HD outsiders, cloning themselves, persisting buffs to last all day, using time-stop and time-travel spells to completely screw with the concept of "game balance".

And you're playing an epic game, where the caster is whining about being ineffective? Learn to optimize. There is no excuse for this; you have to be intentionally playing them terribly to suck in comparison to Sir BSF, and even then Sir BSF has to optimize to outdo you.

[icefractal]

In a really high-level environment, certain tactics do stop working. "Absolute" effects, like Solid Fog, are great up to a certain point, because there's no generalized immunity, only specific ones. But once foes are strong enough that they can simply have all those immunities, by items if nothing else, then BFC pretty much gets shut down, as does a fair amount of SoD (assuming you can even boost your DCs to the useful range to start with). And summoning - anything less than Gate, don't even bother.


So - some tactics that do work (in combat; outside of combat even a non-epic caster has abundant options). We're going to assume no Epic Spellcasting abuse, and no infinite free wishes, because at that point you might as well just write "I win" on your character sheet and stop playing.

1) Mailman-style Blasting. If you invest some feats into it, and utilize action-economy abuse, then you can deal enough damage to vaporize even epic-level threats. Although you'll need a bit more work in dealing with immunities, since being immune to all energy types and even force damage is easily doable by this point.

2) Custom Summon. Ok, so standard summons aren't cutting it. And maybe even Gate is lagging. That's where making custom stuff to summon comes in.
1) Find the biggest tank that's not immune to mind control. Dominate it.
2) Cast a truckload of buff spells on it. Maybe give it some items too. Make sure to include something to deal with dispelling/disjunction/AMF.
3) Store it on your very-slow-time demiplane. Now your buffs (and the mind control) won't run out.
4) When applicable, call it with Gate. Since you already control it, HD is irrelevant.

3) Be a force multiplier. Your BSF does more with an attack than you do with a spell? Then cast Snake's Swiftness, and now his attack is your spell. Better yet, throw out some heavily metamagic'd Mass Snake's Swiftness spells and make the entire team launch dozens of attacks as a swift action. Limited Wish makes an attack auto-hit. By this point, you should be able to throw that out like candy.

[heavyfuel]

At about ECL 3, the fighter and the rogue can greatly outdo the wizard or cleric, because the most broken options aren't available yet

I'll give you the Cleric, but the Wizard should already have access to Abrupt Jaunt 4+ times per day and the Druid (by RAW) should have Greenbound Summons. Seriously, most T1 are broken from the get go :smallannoyed:

[eggynack]

I'll give you the Cleric, but the Wizard should already have access to Abrupt Jaunt 4+ times per day and the Druid (by RAW) should have Greenbound Summons. Seriously, most T1 are broken from the get go :smallannoyed:
I don't even think you should really give the cleric. Clerics are running the same approximate chassis of a rogue, and if anything an even better one, and they have much more utility. Probably even do better than fighters if you put together the right domains, and again, massive utility. Same applies to wizards, actually. Fighters have a lot of those advantages that are put forth in their favor at low levels, like endurance and damage, but wizards do too, like the ability to solve problems that fighters just can't. Differences in scale instead of differences in kind.

Really, if someone puts forth an argument about how wizards and fighters are totally balanced, because one gets this pile of stuff and the other gets this other pile of stuff, then it's likely that that argument will apply reasonably at really low levels, and then never again. Also, druids don't need greenbound summoning to kick rogue and fighter ass at low levels. The animal companion is right there, being amazing, and he's supported by some spells with really direct combat applications.

[heavyfuel]

I don't even think you should really give the cleric. Clerics are running the same approximate chassis of a rogue, and if anything an even better one, and they have much more utility. Probably even do better than fighters if you put together the right domains, and again, massive utility. Same applies to wizards, actually. Fighters have a lot of those advantages that are put forth in their favor at low levels, like endurance and damage, but wizards do too, like the ability to solve problems that fighters just can't. Differences in scale instead of differences in kind.

Yeah, when I said I gave AvatarVecna the Fighter or Rogue vs Cleric I meant that they can probably compete, assuming a rather high optimization level on their part, especially when you have the Rogue with Trapfinding, Disable Device, Open Locks and UMD, which can be very useful at lower levels (even at higher lvs in the case of UMD)

[Kazyan]

Are we at the point where less-than-high-OP 3.5 is considered a joke, now? Looks like it might be time to move to Pathfinder; Path of War sounds interesting...

You don't need to be at near-zero optimization to run into this problem, and you don't have to count anything short of the spellcaster saying "as a standard action, I automatically win" every encounter as near-zero. The game assumes that an opponent making their saving throw is basically the spellcaster's version of the fighter--sorry, warblade--failing to hit AC. Surprisingly, tons and tons of spells work this way. If the enemy always makes their saves, and is furthermore immune to everything under the sun, you might have problems. Very few monsters are immune to being hit with a magic sword--off the top of my head, only Fine/Diminutive swarms and Zodars--but 'sorry, but the monster is immune' comes up all the time when you're a spellcaster. Just ask the Beguiler in the game I DM for; he still hasn't figured out that Vertigo has the [Unreliable] descriptor. If your counterargument is 'Mailman', all you're telling me is that you can only come up with one specific build based around one of a handful of splatbook spells that can function at these levels. If your counterargument is 'but infinite wishes/gate/shapechange', I'm going to ask how exactly you got a block of tofu to DM for you.

As for solutions...immunities are not a problem when you're buffing your allies (unless you're trying a [Mind-affecting] buff), and that's always helpful.

[heavyfuel]

Are we at the point where less-than-high-OP 3.5 is considered a joke, now? Looks like it might be time to move to Pathfinder; Path of War sounds interesting...

You don't need to be at near-zero optimization to run into this problem, and you don't have to count anything short of the spellcaster saying "as a standard action, I automatically win" every encounter as near-zero. The game assumes that an opponent making their saving throw is basically the spellcaster's version of the fighter--sorry, warblade--failing to hit AC. Surprisingly, tons and tons of spells work this way. If the enemy always makes their saves, and is furthermore immune to everything under the sun, you might have problems. Very few monsters are immune to being hit with a magic sword--off the top of my head, only Fine/Diminutive swarms and Zodars--but 'sorry, but the monster is immune' comes up all the time when you're a spellcaster. Just ask the Beguiler in the game I DM for; he still hasn't figured out that Vertigo has the [Unreliable] descriptor. If your counterargument is 'Mailman', all you're telling me is that you can only come up with one specific build based around one of a handful of splatbook spells that can function at these levels. If your counterargument is 'but infinite wishes/gate/shapechange', I'm going to ask how exactly you got a block of tofu to DM for you.

As for solutions...immunities are not a problem when you're buffing your allies (unless you're trying a [Mind-affecting] buff), and that's always helpful.

I'm assuming this was directed at me, at least partially, as I was one of the two people to mention the Mailman and the only to mention Standard Action victory on part of the caster and the joke-like nature of the thread.

The only reason I asked if the thread was a joke is because it's pretty much assumed, with good reason, that casters dominate the game from levels 10+ without much effort. It seemed so alien to me that someone was having the opposite problem that I had to ask if it was a joke or not.

But no. I don't think less-than-high-OP is a joke. Heck, I don't even allow for Tiers 1 and 2 at my tables because their optimization ceiling is so high I'm not really comfortable DMing it. And no DM I've ever played with would also allow for infinite loops or Mailman builds, but these are things that are possible by RAW and should be brought to the attention of someone that was asking for help making casters stronger. Note that I told him to look the Mailman up, not copy him exactly, just as a demonstration that yes, casters CAN deal a lot of damage. The Mailman/Twice Betrayer, much like Chain-Gating, were just examples of the powers that can be achieved by a caster and it's up to the DM on how much of this power he wants to let permeate his campaign.

While I can definitely see the resemblance of Saves = AC, the caster still has a major advantage here. A successful hit will damage the mob, but a failed save will probably take him out of the fight. But also remember that a good amount of spells are "Don't save, Just suck" and they are also found in the SRD. And the "Mind-Affecting" descriptor you say is unreliable, while it truly is, there are also many spells that don't have this descriptor, especially buffs like Timestop and Shapechange. It's not even about being "high op" and reading every splatbook to find broken comboes, it's about reading the entry of two cool sounding spells so you can get yourself a kickass caster at high levels.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Are we at the point where less-than-high-OP 3.5 is considered a joke, now? Looks like it might be time to move to Pathfinder; Path of War sounds interesting...

You don't need to be at near-zero optimization to run into this problem, and you don't have to count anything short of the spellcaster saying "as a standard action, I automatically win" every encounter as near-zero. The game assumes that an opponent making their saving throw is basically the spellcaster's version of the fighter--sorry, warblade--failing to hit AC. Surprisingly, tons and tons of spells work this way. If the enemy always makes their saves, and is furthermore immune to everything under the sun, you might have problems. Very few monsters are immune to being hit with a magic sword--off the top of my head, only Fine/Diminutive swarms and Zodars--but 'sorry, but the monster is immune' comes up all the time when you're a spellcaster. Just ask the Beguiler in the game I DM for; he still hasn't figured out that Vertigo has the [Unreliable] descriptor. If your counterargument is 'Mailman', all you're telling me is that you can only come up with one specific build based around one of a handful of splatbook spells that can function at these levels. If your counterargument is 'but infinite wishes/gate/shapechange', I'm going to ask how exactly you got a block of tofu to DM for you.

As for solutions...immunities are not a problem when you're buffing your allies (unless you're trying a [Mind-affecting] buff), and that's always helpful.

If you want to keep up with a melee character that does 1000+ damage/round as a blaster you'll have to optimize to some extent. That's a simple fact. The melee character got there by building for it - why should the caster get it without that investment? The caster equivalent to Power Attack & friends is metamagic & metamagic reducers.

The same logic applies to save DCs. Melee gets a stat (Str or Dex, usually), high BAB, weapon enhancement and maybe something else on this. Save DCs scale by spell level and casting stat - to get better save DCs you'll have to invest in it.

Summoners are pretty much hosed. Cosmic Descryer can help a little, but most of your summons abilities just stop scaling entirely. There is no Epic Augment Summoning. You're limited to Gate and Epic summon spells pretty much. Or you could summon hordes of Storm Elementals and use quantity over quality, but then you may as well optimize blasting yourself.

[Kazyan]

I'm assuming this was directed at me, at least partially, as I was one of the two people to mention the Mailman and the only to mention Standard Action victory on part of the caster and the joke-like nature of the thread.

The only reason I asked if the thread was a joke is because it's pretty much assumed, with good reason, that casters dominate the game from levels 10+ without much effort. It seemed so alien to me that someone was having the opposite problem that I had to ask if it was a joke or not.

But no. I don't think less-than-high-OP is a joke. Heck, I don't even allow for Tiers 1 and 2 at my tables because their optimization ceiling is so high I'm not really comfortable DMing it. And no DM I've ever played with would also allow for infinite loops or Mailman builds, but these are things that are possible by RAW and should be brought to the attention of someone that was asking for help making casters stronger. Note that I told him to look the Mailman up, not copy him exactly, just as a demonstration that yes, casters CAN deal a lot of damage. The Mailman/Twice Betrayer, much like Chain-Gating, were just examples of the powers that can be achieved by a caster and it's up to the DM on how much of this power he wants to let permeate his campaign.

While I can definitely see the resemblance of Saves = AC, the caster still has a major advantage here. A successful hit will damage the mob, but a failed save will probably take him out of the fight. But also remember that a good amount of spells are "Don't save, Just suck" and they are also found in the SRD. And the "Mind-Affecting" descriptor you say is unreliable, while it truly is, there are also many spells that don't have this descriptor, especially buffs like Timestop and Shapechange. It's not even about being "high op" and reading every splatbook to find broken comboes, it's about reading the entry of two cool sounding spells so you can get yourself a kickass caster at high levels.

I was indeed countering your particular talking points, partially*. Yeah, the way spellcasters work is actually pretty complicated, as you bring up. And I don't mean that in a "hard to play" sense, I mean that it's hard to make generalizations. Anyway, it does make sense to ask if a thread like this is a joke, on this subforum in particular.

*Only partially. I'm also just grumpy about the increasing concentration of TO and otherwise high-OP advice on this subforum.

[Kazyan]

If you want to keep up with a melee character that does 1000+ damage/round as a blaster you'll have to optimize to some extent. That's a simple fact. The melee character got there by building for it - why should the caster get it without that investment? The caster equivalent to Power Attack & friends is metamagic & metamagic reducers.

The same logic applies to save DCs. Melee gets a stat (Str or Dex, usually), high BAB, weapon enhancement and maybe something else on this. Save DCs scale by spell level and casting stat - to get better save DCs you'll have to invest in it.

Summoners are pretty much hosed. Cosmic Descryer can help a little, but most of your summons abilities just stop scaling entirely. There is no Epic Augment Summoning. You're limited to Gate and Epic summon spells pretty much. Or you could summon hordes of Storm Elementals and use quantity over quality, but then you may as well optimize blasting yourself.

Hmm? I never argued anything counter to this. Just giving possible reasons why spellcaster hosing can happen if you're in a group that still colors inside the designers' lines, so to speak.

[Kafros]

here is his character sheet since you said you needed it for suggestions
he went for epic leadership as his first epic feat cause as I mentioned they are leading armies and leadership is really needed in my campaign especially since his character wants to conquer toryl and make artic elves the chosen race, though he should have a second epic level feat I guess he did not update the sheet yet. (actually half the group chose the epic leadership feat as their first feat)

as you see he has little to no optimization and his gear does leave things to be desired, probably mislead by the belief that tier 1 classes just rock without effort.


about the suggestions I saw, the custom summons will be a bit problematic, the reason is their idividual wealth should be close to 4-5 M gp a normal custom summon npc will have gear worth 750 k, which is already quite a lot but probably not enough to be effective. Now provided I already gave them 2 ways to practically make money out of thin air (saves me the trouble of generating random treasures)... allowing them to practiacally summon gear might not be the best of ideas. (though so far they haven't disrespected me by abusing my house rules in such ways)

though making his own slow time plane is a good idea but still things like that cost resources and his gear is far from being completed.

Try not to bad mouth the guy it was his first time playing spell caster, he wanted to try it over fighter for a change. this post will be edited in 6 hours and I will remove the character sheet from it, since is not something I made I have no right to publish it for ever.

[Urpriest]

here is his character sheet since you said you needed it for suggestions
he went for epic leadership as his first epic feat cause as I mentioned they are leading armies and leadership is really needed in my campaign especially since his character wants to conquer toryl and make artic elves the chosen race

In that case, why isn't he carpet-bombing the world with Fimbulwinter?