Umm... huh?

[PallentisLunam]

Hello entities in the playground,

I recently picked up the fantasy board game Talisman and had my first chance to play it last night with two of my friends. If you know anything about the game then this will make sense, we dealt out the character cards and I ended up as the Wizard, Friend A was the Dwarf, and Friend B was the Fighter. So as we are going along playing the game I am building a little bit of craft (spell power) and quite a bit of strength (Wizard starts low but regardless you need both). My friends seemed dead set on avoiding everything on the board, they didn't want to draw cards or win trophies and neither of them was at all interested in gaining or using spells.

As the wizard I always had at least one spell and whenever I cast my last spell I got to draw a new one. This led friend A to cork off with this gem towards the end of the game: "Magic in this game is as broken and over powered as it is underpowered in 3.5!"

Now this is a guy who I have run several 3.5 campaigns with before and who has built a sorcerer. I just cannot comprehend how he came to these conclusions. Can someone help me understand?

[JNAProductions]

It was a joke? Because... What? Whut. wut

[PallentisLunam]

No, that's just it! He was full on Richard Pryor's 3rd kind of person. (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/fc/c0/e3/fcc0e3464ee9614fd0378836ad79dcf7.jpg)

[ComaVision]

I got irritated every time I play Talisman because it takes sooo long to finish but it becomes pretty obvious halfway through who is going to actually win.

Anyway, I actually have 0 idea how anyone would think magic is underpowered in D&D. Even low-op players think Fireball is crazy.

[ATHATH]

Maybe he just misspoke?

How unoptimized was his Sorcerer? Can you post his spells and feats? Spellcasters tend to have a very low optimization floor.

[Pex]

I find these things wrong with the game.

1) Prophetess - the ability to ignore any bad card forever is too powerful.

2) Good and Evil are meaningless. They are just labels for particular effects. Nothing stops a Good character player from being a murdering hobo against everyone else. An Evil character player could just play the game like anyone.

3) The Crown of Command is boring. 50% chance of doing nothing, 50% chance of just prolonging the game that's already over.

Personal opinion hatred: I loathe The Raiders with a passion. It's a total $#@% card that you can not avoid unless you are the Prophetess or Gypsy. The Prophet has a chance if he can avoid drawing a card until someone else does. Even though The Witch can turn you into a toad it's not an automatic thing. I'm not a fan of The Hag either. I accept bad things can happen to you in the game as part of the fun of the challenge, just not automatic $#@% you can't avoid.

[Eloel]

Magic is underpowered in 3.5. As in, compared to magic. Magic is more powerful than magic, so magic is underpowered.

[Darrin]

Now this is a guy who I have run several 3.5 campaigns with before and who has built a sorcerer. I just cannot comprehend how he came to these conclusions. Can someone help me understand?

You obviously know more about this than I would, but my guess:

He played a sorcerer very badly. Even though magic spells tend to increase in power exponentially, it actually requires a considerable amount of book-keeping, system mastery, and a firm grasp on optimization. Wizards/sorcerers are not automatically in "Gawd Mode" right out of the box. You have to know what you're doing. So I'm guessing that he took fireball and finger of death, never managed to kill anything, and just assumed the rest of magic in 3.5 was underpowered.

My second guess is he was sober and thus bored out of his mind, spewing random incomprehensible thoughts just to keep himself awake. "Alcohol required" is probably the single most important (unwritten) rule in Talisman.

[Eloel]

He played a sorcerer very badly. Even though magic spells tend to increase in power exponentially, it actually requires a considerable amount of book-keeping, system mastery, and a firm grasp on optimization. Wizards/sorcerers are not automatically in "Gawd Mode" right out of the box. You have to know what you're doing. So I'm guessing that he took fireball and finger of death, never managed to kill anything, and just assumed the rest of magic in 3.5 was underpowered.


To be honest, that is not really true. You can spam Fireball (as in, without metamagic and PrCs and stuff) and still be more effective than a mid-optimized non-magic class.

[PallentisLunam]

Maybe he just misspoke?

How unoptimized was his Sorcerer? Can you post his spells and feats? Spellcasters tend to have a very low optimization floor.

I don't know if I still have the sheet but it was a low-mid optimization 3 player evil campaign and his character concept was "the burning soul" so he was running around shooting scorching rays and fireballs out of his ass constantly. We were also using a mana point system that gave him even more spells/day than usual. His main complaint about that character was that he couldn't fire off his biggest spells every round and go all day.


I find these things wrong with the game.

1) Prophetess - the ability to ignore any bad card forever is too powerful.

2) Good and Evil are meaningless. They are just labels for particular effects. Nothing stops a Good character player from being a murdering hobo against everyone else. An Evil character player could just play the game like anyone.

3) The Crown of Command is boring. 50% chance of doing nothing, 50% chance of just prolonging the game that's already over.

Personal opinion hatred: I loathe The Raiders with a passion. It's a total $#@% card that you can not avoid unless you are the Prophetess or Gypsy. The Prophet has a chance if he can avoid drawing a card until someone else does. Even though The Witch can turn you into a toad it's not an automatic thing. I'm not a fan of The Hag either. I accept bad things can happen to you in the game as part of the fun of the challenge, just not automatic $#@% you can't avoid.

Well I actually ended up with an item that gave me that particular Prophetess ability and while they both thought it was powerful neither of them ever tried to attack me and take it.

We actually ended up with a three way fight on the crown of command. I think the spell was only successfully cast once.


Magic is underpowered in 3.5. As in, compared to magic. Magic is more powerful than magic, so magic is underpowered.

:smalleek: now I'm even more confused.

[Eloel]

:smalleek: now I'm even more confused.

Good, now you can start learning about magic :smallamused:

[AvatarVecna]

Now this is a guy who I have run several 3.5 campaigns with before and who has built a sorcerer. I just cannot comprehend how he came to these conclusions. Can someone help me understand?

Sure, easy. Sorcerers get limited spells known, so even new/unoptimized players know they want to make their choices count...they're just not experienced enough to realize which spells are and aren't effective. A player can look at Haste and say "geez, there's no way for me to know how many attacks that's going to turn into, and an ongoing spell like that could get dispelled", and then they could look at Fireball and say "damage equal to a sneak-attacking rogue twice my level, which bypasses DR, and effects a huge area? That must be so overpowered, I'll take that". And now, because they don't realize that Fire Resistance/Immunity is more common than DR, because they don't realize that dealing X damage to 10 people is less useful than dealing 10X damage to 1 person, and because they don't understand how good a Reflex Save is for somebody getting Fireballed, the spell they thought was "too powerful" ends up being incredibly underwhelming outside of the one situation it's perfect for (taking out large groups of low-level minions).

Wizards, Clerics, and Druids are T1 partially because, even if they make terrible spell-prep decisions today, those decisions don't follow them to the next day; sure, Wizards have to worry about which spells they have in their spellbook, but Clerics/Druids can prepare from basically their entire class spell list. Sorcerers, meanwhile, are T2: partially because they can pull off a limited number of broken things, but partially because it's easier to screw up a Sorcerer build (by picking the wrong spells) than it is to screw up one of the big three (since Wizards can buy more spells known and Clerics/Druids know all their respective classes spell list). A sorcerer that chooses ****ty spells known is going to be in for a bad time...that said, building one that's absolutely terrible (T5) requires either deliberately choosing the worst possible spells to have, or requires choosing spells that are normally T4 (a lot of elemental blasting spells) and happening to choose the ones that are absolutely useless (such as choosing only fire spells in a campaign where you face off against the armies of Hell, who are all immune to fire).

[Inevitability]

Sorcerer might be the easiest to mess up of all tier 2 classes. You get a very small number spells known, there's a lot of trap options, and if you make a mistake, you're going to feel it until the character dies. Someone with no optimization knowledge might very well pick nothing but blasty spells then complain his character is useless.

[ComaVision]

@AvatarVecna

While I agree with you, I don't think Dispel Magic is a consideration for most new players. It seems to be under-appreciated in the same vein as Haste (in my experience).

[Troacctid]

And now, because they don't realize that Fire Resistance/Immunity is more common than DR, because they don't realize that dealing X damage to 10 people is less useful than dealing 10X damage to 1 person,
Let's be fair, a more accurate comparison would be dealing X damage to five people vs. dealing X damage to one person. The best single-target spells at that level are still doing roughly a d6/level in damage, they just use touch attacks instead of saves for half damage.

[AvatarVecna]

Let's be fair, a more accurate comparison would be dealing X damage to five people vs. dealing X damage to one person. The best single-target spells at that level are still doing roughly a d6/level in damage, they just use touch attacks instead of saves for half damage.

Sure, at 3rd lvl, yeah; Fireball is about the best you'll be getting (outside of force-multiplier spells like Haste). Get to some higher-level spells, though, and the difference between single-targets and AoEs becomes a lot more drastic (Chain Lightning is good, but I'd prefer to have Disintegrate).

[Âmesang]

I don't think Dispel Magic is a consideration for most new players. It seems to be under-appreciated in the same vein as Haste (in my experience).
I made dispel magic my first 3rd-level spell because I like to think of myself as a "just in case" kind of guy, not knowing what to expect. Due to how things played out, though, I wish I had opted for fly, instead.

(Greater dispel magic ended up being my first 6th-level spell, though, so… lesson unlearned?)

[Pex]

Well I actually ended up with an item that gave me that particular Prophetess ability and while they both thought it was powerful neither of them ever tried to attack me and take it.

We actually ended up with a three way fight on the crown of command. I think the spell was only successfully cast once.



Of course, that Orb. I covet it greatly, but really it and the Prophetess should not exist in the game. I wouldn't mind if the Orb was a one time use that you can use retroactively after you draw a card.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I'm gonna echo the others who are saying, essentially, "Just because he played a sorcerer doesn't mean he played it well."

Making a sorcerer utterly useless is difficult but not impossible and making one a force of nature takes a solid degree of skill that not every player has developed. From your comment about him spamming fire spells and focusing on blasting, I'd wager he's a fairly pedestrian wielder of arcane might.

Someone who knows blasting knows that the keys are to use rarely resisted energy types (or avoid energy types altogether) and to use metamagics with metamagic cost mitigators. Spamming unmodified fireballs and scorching rays is -not- keeping with that. You don't have to go full-on mailman. Indeed you probably shouldn't unless it's a high-op game. However, using -no- metamagic is unacceptable for a serious blaster unless he's a red wizard.