Is there anything wrong with linear Fighter-quadratic Wizard? [Archive]

eggynack

2016-08-06, 06:00 PM

The game doesn't actually work this way, exactly. The wizard doesn't really start out all crappy, eventually working their way up to power, with the fighter entering the game with a massive amount of power. The reality is that wizards and fighters are pretty close together at first level, especially in moderate to high optimization games. The game looks kinda close to how it's intended to look, actually. The fighter has some long term applicability compared to the wizard's relatively small stack of spells per day, and they have some beef, but the wizard is more versatile, with abilities that work in and out of combat, can hit groups, and has the simple defense of being able to be where the enemy is not. The wizard has a lower floor, if they pick bad spells, but a higher ceiling, with stuff like abrupt jaunt along with either focused specialist or elven generalist combined with domain wizard to boost spells per day a lot. And then you get into druids and clerics, and that first level comparability starts fading away in favor of the casters just being better. The cleric isn't losing all that much combat ability for their awesome and versatile spellcasting, and the druid is doing even better, getting combat ability that sometimes just exceeds that of the fighter on top of that same awesome casting. And, while the part about fighters starting better is wrong, the part about casters ending better is clearly right, and it happens really fast. Like, within the first five or six levels fast.

Beyond that, even assuming 3.5 operates under this paradigm, the paradigm itself is pretty mediocre. Basically, you're sacrificing balance for two different imbalances. Yes, the caster can console themselves with future awesome, and the fighter with future glory, but what you're getting here is still full of all those normal problems with imbalance. In particular, imbalance means that opponents designed for the low end party members will be crushed by the high end ones, and opponents designed for the high end party members will crush the low end ones. Instead of continuous engagement, you wind up with half the party bored for a long time, until the other half finishes their turn. Far better is a game where everyone is engaged as often as possible, where you are always challenged but never to the point of impossibility. Also problematic is the fact that a player's "turn" lasts a really long time. It could be a whole bunch of sessions, each hours long, before this theoretically crappy wizard comes into its own, and then the fighter has a whole bunch of long sessions where they suck. In a single player game, these are issues that a player takes on themselves with no concern for any other player, and you can make sure that the crappy character can still handle things. D&D is more complex though, and the issues that come up are by virtue of the overall party, rather than any one decision. There's a lot working against this sort of balance, and not a lot in its favor.

martixy

2016-08-06, 06:02 PM

It's a classic trope and adds to the charm of the game.

I find that the disbalance is okay exactly because of what you said - a DM can tailor the experience, so fun doesn't diminish.

Waker

2016-08-06, 06:03 PM

Obviously this will vary a bit depending on optimization and playstyle, but the often end result of linear/quadratic is that someone ends up being babysat. It's not as apparent at lower levels, but once you get to higher levels, mundane types run the risk of being cohorts. Nearly every problem has a spell that can directly or indirectly solve it, whether you need to SoD the enemies, grant yourself skills to obviate the skillmonkey or teleport across the world/between planes.
Now I'm never the type to always want to be in the spotlight, but I wanna contribute a fair share to the encounters.

Morty

2016-08-06, 06:06 PM

Any situation where someone always feels weaker and less useful than someone else doesn't strike me as terribly optimal for a fun gaming experience. Besides, it's not like it's equal, anyway. A low-level wizard is competent, if constrained. A high-level fighter is just inept.

Troacctid

2016-08-06, 06:17 PM

There are multiple problems with the Linear Fighters, Wizards paradigm.

First off, as a balancing method, it just assumes that all games will take place over a certain range of levels and advance through levels at a reasonable clip. The fighter is weak at level 20, but strong at level 1, so it evens out. Unfortunately, that's not really how D&D campaigns work in the real world. It's not a video game. You don't always start at level 1 and there's really no predicting when you'll finish. As a result, balancing over time is highly impractical.

Second, it's a group game. Having one player who's useless in early sessions and then having a different player be useless in later sessions isn't a desirable, balanced outcome. It's two players having bad experiences. Remember, this isn't League of Legends, where your Nasus is weak for the first 10 minutes but takes over the game around the half-hour mark. Campaigns last a long time. One level of uselessness might translate into multiple weeks where you aren't contributing. Not cool.

Third, even if you believe the Linear/Quadratic divide is okay in theory, this edition completely botches the execution on both ends. The Linear Fighters are anemic and fall off much too quickly, while the Quadratic Wizards rocket up much too high much too quickly. Some of the Quadratic Wizards even start off at a higher power level than the Linear Fighters (cough druids cough), which is, frankly, egregious. All the problems with the Linear/Quadratic method of balance are exacerbated by the poor design decisions that went into 3e's core classes.

I believe it's okay, generally speaking, for the shape of the power curve to vary between different classes. It works fine in a lot of games. Heck, it even works in other editions of D&D—I think 5e pulls it off a lot better. But in D&D 3.5, it does not work.

Calthropstu

2016-08-06, 07:24 PM

Elder_Basilisk

2016-08-06, 07:33 PM

There are a few problems with the idea of "Linear fighter, quadratic wizard" formula.

1. In a cooperative game that falls along the line of published adventures, the wizard's out of combat abilities often end up being more party abilities than wizard abilities. "You could teleport us to Greyhawk then we'll hide out in your Magificent Mansion." The wizard character is the one using the abilities, but that doesn't mean that the wizard's player is the only one who gets to do anything. In a more adversarial/less cooperative, sandbox game focused on domain level action, that may not be the mitigating factor but most D&D games don't fall into that category.

2. At high levels a lot of the best things wizards can do involve applying the fighter to problems. For example, "I move up to within 5' of the enemy wizard as a move action and draw my metamagic rod of chain spell. As my standard action, I use the rod and hit all of the bad guys with targeted greater dispel magic. Then, as a swift action, I do a quickened benign transposition and swap places with the fighter. They're all yours, Robilar, tear them up." The wizard may be the more versatile party in the situation, but in game terms, there's still interesting stuff for the fighter to do even if in this situation, all he has to do is five foot step and rip some fools apart with a full attack. And the character who gets to actually roll the dice and reduce the enemy to nothingness? The fighter.

3. Most of the "high level fighters are useless" rants focus on class abilities and ignore magic items because they're a bandaid or because anyone can use a helm of teleportation etc. However that kind of theorycrafting explicitly fails to deal with the game as it is actually played.

4. Some people actually like having limited options and not having to think through a million permutations every time their character prepares spells. (And whether they like it or not, a lot of gamers are simply not capable of playing high level spellcasters effectively. Heck, a lot of gamers can't even handle the flexibility of playing a low level spellcaster). Just because you are the kind of player who does not enjoy playing a barbarian "because all I can do is hit things" doesn't mean there aren't other players who enjoy hitting things far more than trying to figure out the best way to use mass dimension shuffle. Playground posters seem quite prone to this kind of thinking but that doesn't mean the people who like their characters to hit things with a stick are not having fun.

MaxiDuRaritry

2016-08-06, 07:37 PM

Anyone who thinks casters are too powerful at high level have never played with a creative gm.

Oh, you have an awesone, uber optimized wizardwho thinks they are so much better than a fighter? Eat a wizard slaying optimized fighter. Surprise round: Pounce, full attack. Second round: Eat my +16 init. Full attack. Casting defensively? Instant death spell? Oops, it gets redirected right back at you by spell turning. Full attack. Dead....Except there are so many ways to curb-stomp the game without even being present. From directing hordes of called minions from behind a ring gate to residing on a demiplane and astral projecting out, this means the wizard isn't even there to be attacked.

And that's not even including the fact that it's trivial to become immune to death by damage, and just damage in general. All the fighter can do is hit you and deal damage, so what happens when you completely obviate that strategy by becoming flat-out immune to damage and the negative effects thereof?

On the fighter's end, it's just impossible to become immune to everything a wizard can dole out without comparable magic of his own, which isn't something a fighter has, even with items (since the wizard can have items, too -- and more and better ones, since he doesn't have to spend money on stupidly expensive weapons and armor, and he can replace many of the other most important items with spells, easily, and he can further double his WBL or more, given he can craft stuff and the fighter can't).

Troacctid

2016-08-06, 07:49 PM

Endarire

2016-08-06, 07:50 PM

OP: The answer is "Only if the relevant group believes so."

I've been in many theoretics arguments over the past 16ish years and I found that trying to make the game run how it 'should' run based on Internet arguments contrasted too heavily with how I wanted to play or/and run it. The best counterargument to any argument about how things work in games is, "How fun is it for those doing it? How fun is it for those receiving it?"

Gnaeus

2016-08-06, 08:10 PM

My complaint isn't that fighters are weaker than wizards at most levels. It's all in the billing. 1. The game does not suggest on its face that it is a thing that is likely to happen. 2, and more importantly, is that the game suggests that fighters are good at fighting, when they really aren't, at least at higher levels compared with many other classes. Certainly by mid level, it is not incredibly difficult to make a Sor/wiz/cle/Druid that can beat a melee fighter in melee.

If the game had classes at a range of power tiers (it does) and there were classes to fit many archetypes at each tier (it does not, there isn't a good low tier arcanist or high tier non-caster) and if it clearly indicated which classes were equivalent to which others, it would be way less of a problem. But if you pick a class that is supposed to be the master of fighting, you shouldn't be worse at fighting than a persist DMM cleric, or a wizard polymorphed into a super-monster, or the druid's heavily buffed T-Rex. It destroys your ability to to when your character can't do the thing he is built around doing. It's ok sometimes if the wizard can do things that are way beyond what Sir Gareth Dragonsbane the level 20 fighter/ranger can do. It's not ok when Sir Gareth mostly carries heavy things and whenever they see a dragon the wizard just shrugs, shapechanges from a dire tortoise into an angel and one shots it with a metamagiced shivering touch.

Strigon

2016-08-06, 08:11 PM

Anyone who thinks casters are too powerful at high level have never played with a creative gm.

Oh, you have an awesone, uber optimized wizardwho thinks they are so much better than a fighter? Eat a wizard slaying optimized fighter. Surprise round: Pounce, full attack. Second round: Eat my +16 init. Full attack. Casting defensively? Instant death spell? Oops, it gets redirected right back at you by spell turning. Full attack. Dead.

I'm sorry, but having a fighter who hits hard and fast isn't really a creative GM - and good luck sneaking up on that awesome, uber optimized Wizard.
I have no real system mastery, as anyone who's followed me around on this forum will go, but I know a few things.
Here's what really happens:
Surprise Round: Fighter flexes to pounce, when suddenly the wizard disappears in a blur of motion - he has a contingent Time Stop. From here, there are 2 possibilities - 1) The fighter dies, almost immediately. He succumbs to one of the wizard's spells, and is gooified, Baleful Polymorphed into a flea, Disintegrated, or hit by any number of more optimized spells.
2) The fighter doesn't die immediately. He continues moving to attack, when suddenly the wizard moves again in a blur of action - his contingent Celerity activated, and he's just used Greater Teleport/Expeditious Retreat/Fly/any number of more optimized spells to run away from this fighter and kill him another time.

Waker

2016-08-06, 08:34 PM

Surprise Round: Fighter flexes to pounce, when suddenly the wizard disappears in a blur of motion - he has a contingent Time Stop. From here, there are 2 possibilities - 1) The fighter dies, almost immediately. He succumbs to one of the wizard's spells, and is gooified, Baleful Polymorphed into a flea, Disintegrated, or hit by any number of more optimized spells.
2) The fighter doesn't die immediately. He continues moving to attack, when suddenly the wizard moves again in a blur of action - his contingent Celerity activated, and he's just used Greater Teleport/Expeditious Retreat/Fly/any number of more optimized spells to run away from this fighter and kill him another time.
No need to even get that complicated. If you have Abrupt Jaunt, you can as an Immediate Action simply teleport to the side. Unless the Fighter in question has a feat or ability that lets him turn as part of a charge, you effectively wasted his turn. Incidentally you can't charge during a surprise round since you are allowed only a standard action, while a charge requires a full-round action. Then of course there is the question of how did a Fighter get a drop on a Wizard (or other spellcaster) with their non-existent stealth skills. Really, the list goes on.

Strigon

2016-08-06, 08:39 PM

Godskook

2016-08-06, 08:52 PM

Yes, because of how D&D handles weaknesses.

Functional weaknesses are weaknesses that allow specialists to shine while generalists remain -relevant-.

Dysfunctional weaknesses are weaknesses where a character with that weakness is useless due to his lack of specialization.

Specifically, D&D makes weakness almost universally dysfunctional. Aren't the trapmonkey specialist? You're useless at it. Not a scout specialist? Useless. Not a combat specialist? Useless. In almost all situations, things you're not specialized in, you're dysfunctionally weak in.

Fighters are specialized in -combat-, and....get progressively weaker at combat as the game goes on? WTF? They're dysfunctionally weak everywhere else already and are now steadily getting more irrelevant in their own specialization as the game goes on? Sucks.

Wizards, otoh, are specialized in...utility and AoE, and can bring this to the table at any level usefully. And then, they get progressively better at not only those things, but all things as they level up, ending the game at level 20 with no functional weaknesses.

In order to have class-level based scaling balance, you need a system that doesn't force dysfunctional weakness as hard onto classes. E6 fixes this by not scaling long enough to matter, Gestalt by allowing/forcing greater class diversity in PCs.

Aquillion

2016-08-06, 08:56 PM

There are ways to finesse it if you take it into account when designing your game.

Ars Magicka (a game that is, obviously, totally wizard-centric) does a lot of things to make fighter-characters relevant even though casters are obviously central. In a typical troupe, for instance, each player has one wizard character, one "companion" character (people with no magic but with more real-life experience than typical wizards), and a bunch of grogs (basically, tough guys and servants and the like.)

In a given story, you might only have one or two people playing their wizards while the other people's wizards remain at home studying. And when you're playing a grog, while you're not the star of the show, you're also more expendable, which lets you take risks and have dramatic death scenes, etc.

Also, there are things within the rules themselves intended to preserve a space for non-magical characters, even though they clearly don't have center stage. eg. normally, spells go off at the end of a round (meaning it's dangerous to let anyone get too close; you need grogs to cover you, etc.)

Generally speaking, people are making a mistake when they focus on wizard-vs-fighter duels. The important part is preserving some sort of a niche for non-casters - for example, setting up the rules so fighter-types can cover and protect caster-types, and so caster-types rely on that protection. There are some vague attempts at that in 3e (eg. concentration checks, attacks of opportunity for casting), but they tend to be too easy for casters to finesse - and there's not actually any easy way to "cover" someone, either, so the fighter-types don't really provide casters with much help in the first place.

You can sort of see what they were trying to do, though. The fighter gets up in the enemy's face, engaging them, and the risk of attacks of opportunity keeps the enemy from breaking away to attack the caster - who needs that protection because casting provokes an attack of opportunity itself. Unfortunately, attacks of opportunity and concentration checks just aren't nasty enough to work at any level of this system, so the whole thing falls apart.

If it worked, then you could have casters that are really powerful, while still leaving the fighters with a clear role and contribution.

(There's a bigger underlying issue, though. Casters have more choices to make at any given time - and more important choices, generally - which tends to lead to them just dominating the story later on.)

Godskook

2016-08-06, 08:58 PM

Incidentally you can't charge during a surprise round since you are allowed only a standard action, while a charge requires a full-round action.

Yes, you can.

If you are able to take only a standard action or a move action on your turn, you can still charge, but you are only allowed to move up to your speed (instead of up to double your speed). You can’t use this option unless you are restricted to taking only a standard action or move action on your turn. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/specialAttacks.htm#charge)

Aetis

2016-08-06, 09:01 PM

It's fine as long as the players themselves know what they're getting into, and the DM is skilled.

Big Fau

2016-08-06, 10:46 PM

"Oh hey, I just spent 300K on my weapons and armor. Can anyone lend me another 200K for my shield?"

"Why bother when I just zombified a Solar?"

Calthropstu

2016-08-06, 11:30 PM

No need to even get that complicated. If you have Abrupt Jaunt, you can as an Immediate Action simply teleport to the side. Unless the Fighter in question has a feat or ability that lets him turn as part of a charge, you effectively wasted his turn. Incidentally you can't charge during a surprise round since you are allowed only a standard action, while a charge requires a full-round action. Then of course there is the question of how did a Fighter get a drop on a Wizard (or other spellcaster) with their non-existent stealth skills. Really, the list goes on.

You might want to read up on immediate actions.

If the mage is THAT optimized, then the simple way is the best. Antimagic field. Have it imbued in an item, the fighter has feats that allows him to stop the enemy from moving away...

I have murdered more than my fair share of wizards who decided they should now rule the roost.

Before I start running any campaign, I create an "ultimate solution" that the kingdom/country or whatever has to specifically deal with ultra spellcasters who get out of hand. Something called in only when all else fails.

And it has never failed.

Troacctid

2016-08-06, 11:36 PM

If the mage is THAT optimized, then the simple way is the best. Antimagic field. Have it imbued in an item, the fighter has feats that allows him to stop the enemy from moving away...
So now that your magic items don't work, how are you getting into melee range with the wizard who is 40 feet in the air via overland flight? Are you making a DC 300 Jump check?

Also, you still haven't answered how, exactly, a fighter would be any better than a wizard at stopping this amazing assassin of yours. You're not honestly suggesting that a handful of extra hit points will make the difference?

JNAProductions

2016-08-06, 11:42 PM

So now that your magic items don't work, how are you getting into melee range with the wizard who is 40 feet in the air via overland flight? Are you making a DC 300 Jump check?

Also, you still haven't answered how, exactly, a fighter would be any better than a wizard at stopping this amazing assassin of yours. You're not honestly suggesting that a handful of extra hit points will make the difference?

On the one hand, he can use a bow. On the other hand, aren't there about 50 spells that stop bows from being effective? And can't he just summon a Wall of Iron or something to make the Fighter go smoosh?

Calthropstu

2016-08-06, 11:43 PM

Arbane

2016-08-07, 01:42 AM

I need to remind every one what teamwork really means (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw). Yeah, it's BMX Bandit and Angel Summoner.

One time, that solution was an exceptionally well built anti mage rogue. Another time a mage slaying fighter.

I'd argue that if the GM needs to send precision-crafted grudge-monsters after a character to hose them, that character miiiight be a trifle overpowered.
(What do you need to kill a fighter?)

And if you say "Oh, I begin summoning monsters from another dimension from the safety of my heavily fortified tower and sic them on..."

Congratulations, your character has just become an npc villian, make a new character.

The point of D&D is to tell the story of heroes (or anti-heroes). You start sitting in complete safety and start attacking everyone from afar so the country's top assassin can't get to you...

Time to retire the character.

Two immediate reactions on my part:

"If PCs aren't supposed to USE these spells, why are they in the game?"

"So, playing like a person with a sense of self-preservation gets a player disqualified in your game. Good to know. My next character will be an Lemming Totem Barbarian."

Troacctid

2016-08-07, 01:51 AM

"High-level spellcasters aren't that powerful, because they have to contend with a neverending stream of deadly high-level mage-killing assassins!"

"So how do high-level fighters and monks and barbarians deal with their neverending stream of deadly high-level fighter-killing assassins?"

"Oh, they don't have to worry about that. They're not powerful enough to attract assassins."

"..."

Aquillion

2016-08-07, 01:56 AM

Again, regarding the mage-slayer builds, whoooo cares. It's totally irrelevant to the discussion. D&D isn't a PVP game.

The linear fighter / quadratic wizard issue has to do with how wizards become exponentially more powerful as the game continues and eventually dominate the story. If you're introducing custom-built characters specifically to threaten them, and writing entire encounters around them, that's just acknowledging how severe the situation is - it's not a solution.

Time Stop is not the issue. Even the tricks people use for those sorts of encounters (like Abrupt Jaunt or Greater Celerity or Mind Blank or whatever) are not the issue.

The Teleport line, the Polymorph line, the Planar Binding and Gate lines, those are the problem. Sleep or Disintegrate or Solid Fog or Wall of Force are the problem. The entire Divination school is the problem. If we're talking about full-casters in general (and we are, really), Control Winds is the problem. Entangle is the problem.

These spells allow a caster to easily resolve an entire encounter or, in some cases, even a major plot thread in a single action. Yes, you can build around them by having every single encounter take place in a massive antimagic field and have every enemy constantly mind-blanked, but come on - they'll still dominate any situations where you don't do that, and if you're going to do it constantly, you might as well just ban T1 / T2 casters. It's not even a very good solution, because you swing wildly between the casters overwhelming everything and being completely useless.

Tuvarkz

2016-08-07, 01:57 AM

(Paraphrasing a post from elsewhere) Yes, there is a big issue. In a system where levels work as a measurement of player power, two characters of the same level should have about the same character power. If a n level Wizard is incredibly stronger than a n level Fighter, that defeats the entire point of levels, which are there to gauge player power.

It is true that at levels 1-2 the fighter has far more staying power than the wizard, yet the wizard's two level 1 spells can each entirely defeat a single level-appropriate encounter in a given day. As more spell levels are gained, the Wizard for most practical issues has enough spell slots to spare for anything needed in a day, and unless the DM runs the characters through meatgrinders designed to always keep the casters low on spell slots, the wizard will have minimal issues at later levels.

Arbane

2016-08-07, 02:20 AM

tiercel

2016-08-07, 02:28 AM

It seems to me at least some of the problem depends on how TO your actual table play gets.

I have never been in a game where being immune to damage is a thing, much less trivial. For actual groups I've been in, such things have been silly to us -- after all, if that's the way rules actually work, there is no adventuring in the world: the first wizard to hit Tippyverse levels of power is an invincible BBEG who annihilates anyone who even threatens to become mildly annoying, with one of his infinite combos. Um, no?

For us that's meant house rules, gentleman's agreements, plus we just haven't played at truly high levels. That's not to say there's no imbalance, but with people actively 1) avoiding breaking the game and 2) working together, most of the disparity is not insurmountable.

This is not to say there are no problems in the game system. But they aren't unworkable -- obviously -- otherwise people wouldn't still be discussing and playing 3.5 when there are two later versions (much less PF or other variants of 3.5), much less a plethora of other game systems to choose from.

icefractal

2016-08-07, 02:35 AM

On the OP directly -
It would be fine to have a game where magic explicitly has a higher cap than non-magic fighting prowess. No to everyone's taste, but then what game is? However, that's still no excuse to say that two characters are both the same level when they have vastly different scopes of power. Instead, you'd need to say that not all classes go 1-20.

For instance, let's say that the world's best Fighter is only as strong as a middle of the range Wizard. If those were the only classes, you'd do say that Fighter goes from 1-10, Wizard goes from 1-20. If you want to play a 15th level game, either everyone plays Wizards, or else there's some PrCs for Fighter that give it 11th+ level abilities.

But the thing of "everyone is supposedly the same level, but in practice not really" is just bad design.

ryu

2016-08-07, 02:36 AM

And also, there's more to the game than combat - and Fighters are worse at non-combat stuff than just about anyone else, while healing is just about the only thing Wizards aren't good at with the right spells.

And there are still totally ways that you can do that perfectly well without investing all THAT much in terms of character resources. Like any of several feats to just get access to the standard healing spells, or if you're like me cross class ranks in UMD will let you use spells you couldn't normally. Now mind I usually do that so the familiar turns into a second set of relevant actions per turn, but you get the point.

Big Fau

2016-08-07, 03:55 AM

One time, that solution was an exceptionally well built anti mage rogue. Another time a mage slaying fighter.

I never use a caster for this purpose, because should a spell duel break out, it could level sections of the city they are trying to protect.

And if you say "Oh, I begin summoning monsters from another dimension from the safety of my heavily fortified tower and sic them on..."

Congratulations, your character has just become an npc villian, make a new character.

The point of D&D is to tell the story of heroes (or anti-heroes). You start sitting in complete safety and start attacking everyone from afar so the country's top assassin can't get to you...

Time to retire the character.

You do not sound like a reasonable DM, if the idea of a Summoner build is enough to force you to retire a PC. One of the key issues with Linear Warrior/Quadratic Wizard is how early Wizards begin to overtake noncasters without actually being "Tier 0" optimized. Wizards have spells available to them at each spell level that just trivialize common encounters or even allow them to bypass campaigns simply because the DM didn't have a plan for dealing with Black Tentacles or Glitterdust.

It doesn't even have to involve mass-Planar Binding Solars so you can kill them and turn them into Dread Warriors, chain-Gating Titans, or even building demiplanes to control time itself, it just has to be disruptive enough that the spellcasters start doing the rest of the party's job. Clerics overshadowing Fighters with buffs is one thing, the Druid holding cities hostage better than the Rogue's entire guild is another (and yes, the latter can happen without needing a single Intimidate check).

The point of D&D isn't storytelling; it's to have fun. Hard to do that when your class is only as meaningful as the Druid's single class feature.

Edit: Forgot to mention the whole "Antimagic' debate. A standard 10th level Wizard ability is to fly for 12 hours/day, and hide in another dimension (inaccessible without deity-level intervention) for the other 12. Hell, he only needs 8 hours of sleep and 1 hour to prepare new spells so he doesn't even need all 12 hours of hiding. There isn't a legal way for an AMF-focused encounter to actually find him if he doesn't want to be because of this text:

Antimagic does not dispel magic; it suppresses it. Once a magical effect is no longer affected by the antimagic (the antimagic fades, the center of the effect moves away, and so on), the magic returns. Spells that still have part of their duration left begin functioning again, magic items are once again useful, and so forth.

Spell areas that include both an antimagic area and a normal area, but are not centered in the antimagic area, still function in the normal area. If the spell’s center is in the antimagic area, then the spell is suppressed.

Even if you FIND a Rope Trick's window, AMFing it just prevents anyone from leaving it until the duration is up. Nevermind that you don't need to cast these spells on the ground, so unless the "assassin" has Ex Flight he isn't going to be AMFing it anyway.

The Insanity

2016-08-07, 04:16 AM

D&D isn't a PVP game.
I assume you never fight NPCs?

Big Fau

2016-08-07, 04:22 AM

I assume you never fight NPCs?

NPCs are one thing, full WBL PVP isn't practical or viable in this system.

The Insanity

2016-08-07, 04:39 AM

NPCs are one thing, full WBL PVP isn't practical or viable in this system.
WBL doesn't matter when facing a caster enemy.

AvatarVecna

2016-08-07, 09:01 AM

WBL doesn't matter when facing a caster enemy.

Hell, it doesn't even have to be humanoid; just to throw out an example of a monster caster, dragons are kind of a thing that can cast spells...and something tells me dragons might show up with some level of frequency in this game. :smallamused:

Cosi

2016-08-07, 09:43 AM

There is not necessarily anything "wrong" with any choice made by the game. If you happen to have preferences that exactly match "RAW 3.5", then RAW 3.5 is the perfect game for you.

That said, Linear Warrior Quadratic Wizard is just arbitrarily shrinking the play space by making it harder to play Sword Guy at high level (and, in theory, Spell Guy at low level). There's no reason you couldn't do all the things it does by having Wizards be higher level than Fighters. Then people who want spell to be better than sword can play that way, and people who want them to be equal can play characters of equal level. I've never seen a coherent explanation of what class imbalance brings to the table.

It's like requiring that all Barbarians be named Carl. You could do it, but it excludes a bunch of stuff people want to do for no reason.

The linear fighter / quadratic wizard issue has to do with how wizards become exponentially more powerful as the game continues and eventually dominate the story.

There is a sentiment on this forum that because the Wizard pulls ahead of the Fighter by getting new abilities that allow them to solve new problems, the power imbalance must be the Wizard's "fault" and those abilities should be taken away. This sentiment is incredibly bad for the game, and taken to its logical conclusion it gets you things like 4e's complete lack of non-combat (or even non-damage) powers or Pathfinder's double secret non-errata errata. These are not good things. The solution to the Wizard getting high level abilities and the Fighter not getting them is not to take abilities away from the Wizard. It is to give them to the Fighter.

The Teleport line, the Polymorph line, the Planar Binding and Gate lines, those are the problem.

You are missing the point. How can those be the problem if we don't know what the game is supposed to look like? Couldn't it equally be said that cone of cold and meteor swarm are the problem because they aren't that powerful? Until you formalize what the game is supposed to be, you can't identify problems.

These spells allow a caster to easily resolve an entire encounter or, in some cases, even a major plot thread in a single action. Yes, you can build around them by having every single encounter take place in a massive antimagic field and have every enemy constantly mind-blanked

Or, you could realize that people getting new abilities means that they need new challenges. Just as you wouldn't expect a CR 3 Ogre to challenge a 10th level Fighter, you shouldn't expect a 3rd level adventure to challenge a 10th level Wizard (or Fighter for that matter). Consider some characters in the Second Apocalypse series. Achamain and Kellhus are both "Wizards" (technically: Gnostic Sorcerers). Kellhus is "higher level" than Achamain, in that he has access to tricks like teleportation, the Daimos (summoning demons), and the Meta-Gnosis. So he faces different challenges. Achamain spent the last several books on an extended overland journey. Kellhus traveling that same distance (actually, longer) doesn't even happen on screen.

And there are still totally ways that you can do that perfectly well without investing all THAT much in terms of character resources. Like any of several feats to just get access to the standard healing spells, or if you're like me cross class ranks in UMD will let you use spells you couldn't normally. Now mind I usually do that so the familiar turns into a second set of relevant actions per turn, but you get the point.

You don't even have to do that. There are outsiders that have pretty much any healing spell you want (or just wish) as SLAs, and planar binding is on your spell list. Since casting healing spells in combat is pretty terminally stupid, you aren't really losing anything by having to do a slightly longer runaround to get raise dead or cure serious wounds or whatever (at least, once you can start binding).

I assume you never fight NPCs?

Yes, you might fight NPCs. But NPCs are only one of many things you could fight. You could also fight Undead or Outsiders or Dragons. Or any number of other things. As long as everyone has a roughly equal number of encounters where they are useful or useless, it doesn't matter if specific classes auto-lose to specific enemies. If Wizards beat Fighters but lose to Golems, and Fighters beat Golems but lose to Wizards, that's a fine state of affairs.

The issue is simply that there aren't enemies which make you say "man, I wish we had a Fighter" or "boy, this Wizard is useless".

ryu

2016-08-07, 09:50 AM

I listed those things because people always respond to solving everything with binding by pointing out the levels where you can't do that. Best to nip arguments in the bud before they begin.

Big Fau

2016-08-07, 12:28 PM

Yes, you might fight NPCs. But NPCs are only one of many things you could fight. You could also fight Undead or Outsiders or Dragons. Or any number of other things. As long as everyone has a roughly equal number of encounters where they are useful or useless, it doesn't matter if specific classes auto-lose to specific enemies. If Wizards beat Fighters but lose to Golems, and Fighters beat Golems but lose to Wizards, that's a fine state of affairs.

The issue is simply that there aren't enemies which make you say "man, I wish we had a Fighter" or "boy, this Wizard is useless".

Just gonna dispute this: there was an old WotC post about a 4th level Wizard being fully capable of soloing an Iron Golem using nothing more than his daily spell allotment and a fully charged Wand of Electric Jolt. Maybe the Familiar was involved, I don't fully remember.

ryu

2016-08-07, 12:53 PM

Calthropstu

2016-08-07, 01:49 PM

I need to remind every one what teamwork really means (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw). Yeah, it's BMX Bandit and Angel Summoner.

I'd argue that if the GM needs to send precision-crafted grudge-monsters after a character to hose them, that character miiiight be a trifle overpowered.
(What do you need to kill a fighter?)

Two immediate reactions on my part:

"If PCs aren't supposed to USE these spells, why are they in the game?"

"So, playing like a person with a sense of self-preservation gets a player disqualified in your game. Good to know. My next character will be an Lemming Totem Barbarian."
Not at all. But if you start doing things to make it so that the other players have NOTHING to do, then it is time to retire the character.
I am running a game for a GROUP. Not so you can play "the solo adventures of Wizard McScaredycat."

Edit: As for the Wizard Hoser, this is something I create at the start of my campaigns. More often than not, it never sees the light of day. One time, I used it as a plot device... the wizard hoser had failed and needed to be rescued.

Only twice have I actually had to send it at the PCs, both times they decided to overthrow the government and take over. The rogue snuck attacked the wizard 8 times before he even got to go, each time she struck he was hit with a greater dispel.
The fighter went exactly as I said earlier. The rebounded spell from spell turning put the wizard at one hitpoint, and the fighter put him down.

Both times they had thought no one could stop them.

Beheld

2016-08-07, 01:52 PM

Just gonna dispute this: there was an old WotC post about a 4th level Wizard being fully capable of soloing an Iron Golem using nothing more than his daily spell allotment and a fully charged Wand of Electric Jolt. Maybe the Familiar was involved, I don't fully remember.

He's not saying that is how the rules work, he's saying that if the rules worked that way, that would be fine. Now, in point of fact, Golems often punch fighters to death and then lose to Silent Image, which is like... Damn, sucks to be Fighters.

But the point is that if you are trying to balance the classes while still having them do different things, one of the many things you could do is make a list of all the enemies or enemy types you are likely to face, and then figure out which enemies each class is supposed to be "good/neutral/bad" against that enemy.

Golem is a pretty prime candidate for Fighters (or even better, actually good class names that imply out of combat abilities like Skin Wearer, Knight, or something) to be good against, since it's supposed to be immune to Rogue SA (obviously easily bypassed with a level 1`wand) and a Wizards spells (also easily bypassed by not using SR spells, or using spells which you don't care if the golem is immune to, like Silent Image, since his perceptions aren't immune to it).

NomGarret

2016-08-07, 03:52 PM

Point being: it would be fine if golem beat wizard, but it doesn't.

Beheld

2016-08-07, 03:56 PM

Point being: it would be fine if golem beat wizard, but it doesn't.

Yeah my point was, that that was Cosi's point too.

AvatarVecna

2016-08-07, 04:51 PM

Not at all. But if you start doing things to make it so that the other players have NOTHING to do, then it is time to retire the character.
I am running a game for a GROUP. Not so you can play "the solo adventures of Wizard McScaredycat."

Edit: As for the Wizard Hoser, this is something I create at the start of my campaigns. More often than not, it never sees the light of day. One time, I used it as a plot device... the wizard hoser had failed and needed to be rescued.

Only twice have I actually had to send it at the PCs, both times they decided to overthrow the government and take over. The rogue snuck attacked the wizard 8 times before he even got to go, each time she struck he was hit with a greater dispel.
The fighter went exactly as I said earlier. The rebounded spell from spell turning put the wizard at one hitpoint, and the fighter put him down.

Both times they had thought no one could stop them.

Your wizard players don't seem that optimized, really, if they're getting gimped by lame tactics like that. I can understand you not allowing them to take advantage of BS like Hide Life (which makes you immine to dying), but not being immune to sneak attack? Getting surprised/losing initiative when Contingency and Celerity are things that exist? This isn't even touching on such BS tactics as "using divination spells like Contact Other Plane or Legend Lore for their intended purpose of discovering threats so youcan prepare accordingly" or "Time Stop+Cloudkill+Forcecage=Dead Martial most every time". I suppose you could make an argument that the Antimagic Field thing mentioned trumps Forcecage by RAW, although the RAI is pretty clear Forcecage was intended to operate in an AMF the same way a Wall Of Force would, but that just means you'll need an extra Time Stop to set up enough Wall Of Force spells to make a totally RAW compliant AMF-proof Forcecage.

How on earth are you calling these jokers "uber optimized" with a straight face?

Eladrinblade

2016-08-07, 08:07 PM

MaxiDuRaritry

2016-08-07, 08:13 PM

I know this is pretty much guaranteed to start an argument, but I think everything is fine the way it is. I don't think fighters are "useless" and I don't think mages are as godlike as everybody claims. It's a big argument, but I'm willing to jump in.

The biggest problem is people not following all the rules in the books, and DM laziness.And the fact that spellcasters get spells that can rewrite reality, while fighters...hit...things. A lot. And can't really do anything else.

Another problem is splat-usage; it's clear that splats were not as well thought out as core, so balance goes out the window early and hard.Pardon, but PHB is the most unbalanced book in the entire game, including half of the most powerful classes in the game, as well as several of the weakest.

Cerefel

2016-08-07, 08:15 PM

The biggest problem is people not following all the rules in the books, and DM laziness.

What rules exactly are people supposedly ignoring that make spellcasters weaker or martial characters stronger?

Gnaeus

2016-08-07, 08:17 PM

I know this is pretty much guaranteed to start an argument, but I think everything is fine the way it is. I don't think fighters are "useless" and I don't think mages are as godlike as everybody claims. It's a big argument, but I'm willing to jump in.

The biggest problem is people not following all the rules in the books, and DM laziness.

Another problem is splat-usage; it's clear that splats were not as well thought out as core, so balance goes out the window early and hard.

Splats are actually way more balanced than core. For the fighters to even be remotely competent at doing their jobs requires feat trees in splats, while 90% of the most broken wizard cheese is right there in core. Shapechanges, planar binding armies, wish loops, contingency. At least with the splats the fighter has a chance to be more than the wizard's valet.

Malimar

2016-08-07, 08:20 PM

Another problem is splat-usage; it's clear that splats were not as well thought out as core, so balance goes out the window early and hard.

:smallconfused:

We are in the 3.5 forum, yes? And this thread specifies 3rd Ed? I had to double-check, because this claim could well be true for other editions, but is exactly the opposite of accurate for 3.5.

:smallconfused:

Core has wizards, druids, and clerics; Core has monks and fighters. Core has the polymorph, planar binding, gate, virtually every problem spell. Sure, if you dig, you can come up with some OP or brokenly bad things in splats, but nothing more powerful than druids or the aforementioned spells, and only a handful of things worse than monks. By and large, each book is better-balanced than the previous book. The devs got better at designing for their game over the course of 3.5's lifetime, not worse.

Big Fau

2016-08-07, 08:37 PM

I know this is pretty much guaranteed to start an argument, but I think everything is fine the way it is. I don't think fighters are "useless" and I don't think mages are as godlike as everybody claims. It's a big argument, but I'm willing to jump in.

The biggest problem is people not following all the rules in the books, and DM laziness.

Another problem is splat-usage; it's clear that splats were not as well thought out as core, so balance goes out the window early and hard.

If you want to go by the Rules-as-written, the Paladin is the single strongest class in the game by virtue of being the basis for Pun-Pun. Everyone else is lower than that on the proverbial totem pole, but the core-Spellcasters are racing for 2nd place.

ryu

2016-08-07, 09:03 PM

If you want to go by the Rules-as-written, the Paladin is the single strongest class in the game by virtue of being the basis for Pun-Pun. Everyone else is lower than that on the proverbial totem pole, but the core-Spellcasters are racing for 2nd place.

To be fair literally anyone who can get a wish gets to be pun-pun. Paladins just get it sooner than most due to pazuzu shenanigans.

Calthropstu

2016-08-07, 09:32 PM

Your wizard players don't seem that optimized, really, if they're getting gimped by lame tactics like that. I can understand you not allowing them to take advantage of BS like Hide Life (which makes you immine to dying), but not being immune to sneak attack? Getting surprised/losing initiative when Contingency and Celerity are things that exist? This isn't even touching on such BS tactics as "using divination spells like Contact Other Plane or Legend Lore for their intended purpose of discovering threats so youcan prepare accordingly" or "Time Stop+Cloudkill+Forcecage=Dead Martial most every time". I suppose you could make an argument that the Antimagic Field thing mentioned trumps Forcecage by RAW, although the RAI is pretty clear Forcecage was intended to operate in an AMF the same way a Wall Of Force would, but that just means you'll need an extra Time Stop to set up enough Wall Of Force spells to make a totally RAW compliant AMF-proof Forcecage.

How on earth are you calling these jokers "uber optimized" with a straight face?

Celerity is absolutely useless when flatfooted. You need to look up the rules for "immediate action." I don't know how many times I have had to explain this.

And permanent immunity to sneak attack is... costly. Not too many avenues for it, and mist require giving up other benefits. And, though the guy had about 15 spell protections up, his DR 15 and his his near invulnerability was stripped by the third hit. We are talking a 20 caster level greater dispel with each strike. This rogue was worked to have 7 attacks each round.

The wizard never got to go. And he DID HAVE ADVANCED WARNING. He put numerous long duration spell protections, and prepped a chain contingency to trigger when he said a specific word. BUT HE NEVER GOT TO GO. Until you act, YOU ARE FLAT FOOTED. NO FREE ACTIONS, NO IMMEDIATE ACTIONS, NO ACTIONS PERIOD.

Cerefel

2016-08-07, 09:38 PM

I'd like to see a source for the rule of not being able to use an immediate action due to being flat-footed... As a matter of fact I've seen numerous feats and abilities and such that support using an immediate action before initiative is even rolled.

JNAProductions

2016-08-07, 09:49 PM

Relevant text, from the SRD:

Flat-Footed
A character who has not yet acted during a combat is flat-footed, not yet reacting normally to the situation. A flat-footed character loses his Dexterity bonus to AC (if any) and cannot make attacks of opportunity.

Edit: Also relevant:

Immediate Actions
Much like a swift action, an immediate action consumes a very small amount of time, but represents a larger expenditure of effort and energy than a free action. However, unlike a swift action, an immediate action can be performed at any time — even if it's not your turn. Casting feather fall is an immediate action, since the spell can be cast at any time.

Using an immediate action on your turn is the same as using a swift action, and counts as your swift action for that turn. You cannot use another immediate action or a swift action until after your next turn if you have used an immediate action when it is not currently your turn (effectively, using an immediate action before your turn is equivalent to using your swift action for the coming turn). You also cannot use an immediate action if you are flat-footed.

Edit II: More relevancy:

Speak
In general, speaking is a free action that you can perform even when it isn’t your turn. Speaking more than few sentences is generally beyond the limit of a free action.

So, to summarize: No you cannot use Celerity if caught flat-footed. But yes, you can speak just fine.

Strigon

2016-08-07, 09:59 PM

The wizard never got to go. And he DID HAVE ADVANCED WARNING. He put numerous long duration spell protections, and prepped a chain contingency to trigger when he said a specific word.

First off, then he dun goofed hard; the whole point of a contingency is to take an action at a very specific time, and that time isn't when you can take an action. The more you explain, the more it's looking like these optimized wizards may well be optimized by your standards, maybe even by most other people's standards, but not by the standards you'll see employed here.

Secondly, if he had advanced warning, why was he still caught off guard? Divination's a thing - a powerful thing, at that. Even without it, summoning watch dogs isn't that hard.

Thirdly:

Speak

In general, speaking is a free action that you can perform even when it isn’t your turn. Speaking more than few sentences is generally beyond the limit of a free action.
By not allowing him to say that word, you were fiating away a very simple rule. And, might I add, in a very unrealistic way - you were essentially saying that his character was so caught off guard by something he was already warned about that he couldn't speak a single word for - at a minimum - six full seconds.
It's one thing to say that you've been caught off guard and aren't fully prepared for a fight, it's quite another to say you can't open your mouth.

Beheld

2016-08-07, 10:01 PM

Celerity is absolutely useless when flatfooted. You need to look up the rules for "immediate action." I don't know how many times I have had to explain this.

And permanent immunity to sneak attack is... costly. Not too many avenues for it, and mist require giving up other benefits. And, though the guy had about 15 spell protections up, his DR 15 and his his near invulnerability was stripped by the third hit. We are talking a 20 caster level greater dispel with each strike. This rogue was worked to have 7 attacks each round.

The wizard never got to go. And he DID HAVE ADVANCED WARNING. He put numerous long duration spell protections, and prepped a chain contingency to trigger when he said a specific word. BUT HE NEVER GOT TO GO. Until you act, YOU ARE FLAT FOOTED. NO FREE ACTIONS, NO IMMEDIATE ACTIONS, NO ACTIONS PERIOD.

1) Presumably the Contingency triggers the Celerity, rendering the ability to cast irrelevant. At least in his hypothetical list. Personally I prefer Shapechanging into a Dire Tortoise, or if I really have to casting Foresight.

2) Permanent immunity to Sneak Attack is two Polymorph Any Objects and a Disguise away. Or you know, Superior Invisibility+Mindblank, or Superior Invisiblity+Non-Detection. I can understand why you might houserule that last (pair of) combo(s), but it still remains true that being an Elemental makes you immune to SA from everyone not using that one gauntlet set from the Magic Item Compendium, and so those things are highly limited in usages, you can probably convince them not to use them. Not to mention, very few Rogues really run around with True Seeing at will, and any number of illusions or contingencies can break line of effect or sight.

If you can avoid being flanked (pretty darn easy) then Foresight alone completely negates Sneak Attack, much less something like spending a feat on Shape Soulmeld (Impulse Boots).

And of course, good luck even getting the Rogue within 30ft when you have an army of Glabrezus.

3) Immunity to Greater Dispelling is pretty easy at high level. The last time I played a level 18+ caster who didn't hit CL 30+against dispels on their buff spells was never. Also wonder if you had to get SA to do those Greater Dispels, (or have them be flat footed) in which case that whole Foresight thing would completely negate it.

Big Fau

2016-08-07, 10:15 PM

We are talking a 20 caster level greater dispel with each strike. This rogue was worked to have 7 attacks each round.

Show me where on earth this ability exists, because as far as my knowledge of D&D goes that is impossible. It breaks numerous rules regarding magic item activation times. The only thing that even comes close is a Spellthief, and that only applies if the Wizard's CL is lower than the Spellthief's Level+Cha mod and doesn't affect personal-range spells.

Liquor Box

2016-08-07, 10:51 PM

How exactly, pray tell, is a fighter-type going to defend against that kind of attack better than a wizard-type? Are her extra 15 hit points really going to tip the scales where 7th and 8th level spells didn't?

Why only 15 extra hit points at high levels?

A fighter would average 83hp at 15th level, a wizard 38 from the dice. Several games allow for better than average hit points, which increases the difference. Then add constitution - either class can have high constitution, but fighters have a greater tendency to do so. Fighters are also more likely to have hp improving feats.

Whether it tips the scales ahead of high level spells depends on what spells the particular 15th level wizard had prepared and cast in advance (presumably he has not prepared for this specific encounter).

Troacctid

2016-08-07, 11:20 PM

Why only 15 extra hit points at high levels?

A fighter would average 83hp at 15th level, a wizard 38 from the dice. Several games allow for better than average hit points, which increases the difference. Then add constitution - either class can have high constitution, but fighters have a greater tendency to do so. Fighters are also more likely to have hp improving feats.

Whether it tips the scales ahead of high level spells depends on what spells the particular 15th level wizard had prepared and cast in advance (presumably he has not prepared for this specific encounter).

Wizards specifically have d4 hit dice, but plenty of wizard-types have bigger hit dice, including clerics and druids, whose HD are only one size smaller—an average of 16 HP difference at level 15.

Calthropstu

2016-08-07, 11:25 PM

Show me where on earth this ability exists, because as far as my knowledge of D&D goes that is impossible. It breaks numerous rules regarding magic item activation times. The only thing that even comes close is a Spellthief, and that only applies if the Wizard's CL is lower than the Spellthief's Level+Cha mod and doesn't affect personal-range spells.

OK, I will post exactly how this went down.

"Divination, will I be attacked today?"

"Yes."
"Is it a serious threat?"
"Yes."
"Name of attacker?"
"Allana the mage slayer"
"Where is this person now?"
"No response."
"When will she attack?"
"When you are most vulnerable."

He didn't know WHEN the attack was coming, he just knew it was coming, and that it would be when he was vulnerable. She was not in a place he could scry, and her protections made it so he could not get any specifics about her. His first attempt was to throw out an attack of his own, but after wasting 5 spells trying to scry and/or locate her to no avail, he decided to throw out 6 planar bindings to guard him, 15 protection spells (spell resistance, spell turning, threw his stats really high, added a good amount of dr, put his AC to about 45)

Her in was his prisoner, the princess. She swapped places with her, and when he said "I go to question the princess about this person" he entered the cell, and was promptly murdered.

Her disguise check and bluff check were such that he could not make the check, well into the 50s.

As for the weapon, look up rules for custom magic items. If anyone is getting a custom magic item that is super geared towards magicide... it's the person charged with killing super mages who threaten or attempt to take over.

The cost of this weapon was 350k if I remember correctly.

Liquor Box

2016-08-07, 11:43 PM

I'm sorry, but having a fighter who hits hard and fast isn't really a creative GM - and good luck sneaking up on that awesome, uber optimized Wizard.
I have no real system mastery, as anyone who's followed me around on this forum will go, but I know a few things.
Here's what really happens:
Surprise Round: Fighter flexes to pounce, when suddenly the wizard disappears in a blur of motion - he has a contingent Time Stop. From here, there are 2 possibilities - 1) The fighter dies, almost immediately. He succumbs to one of the wizard's spells, and is gooified, Baleful Polymorphed into a flea, Disintegrated, or hit by any number of more optimized spells.
2) The fighter doesn't die immediately. He continues moving to attack, when suddenly the wizard moves again in a blur of action - his contingent Celerity activated, and he's just used Greater Teleport/Expeditious Retreat/Fly/any number of more optimized spells to run away from this fighter and kill him another time.

Waker said:No need to even get that complicated. If you have Abrupt Jaunt, you can as an Immediate Action simply teleport to the side. Unless the Fighter in question has a feat or ability that lets him turn as part of a charge, you effectively wasted his turn. Incidentally you can't charge during a surprise round since you are allowed only a standard action, while a charge requires a full-round action. Then of course there is the question of how did a Fighter get a drop on a Wizard (or other spellcaster) with their non-existent stealth skills. Really, the list goes on.

I'm sure the two of you have a much better understanding of how spell casting works than me, so I expect you will have answers here. But:
Strigon, a couple of questions about your contingency scenario:
- Isn't contingency (in 3.5, it pathfinder is different and that is what you are addressing fair enough) restricted to spells of up to a third of the caster's level, and no higher than level six? If so, how can he cast contingent time stop?
- If you are using the Craft contingent spell feat, isn't that a significant resource cost (particularly including time)? Wouldn't it be quite expensive to have to expend those resources every time you are attacked?

Waker, abrupt jaunt is an immediate action, and immediate actions can't occur during a surprise round, and then during a first round where you lose initiative (see scenario proposed by Calthropstu).

Incidentally, I'm not saying that Calthrupstu is right that the wizard would be killed in his scenario (it obviously depends heavily on what spells the wizard had active in advance), only that I don't find either of your answers particularly satisfactory (that may well be due to some misunderstanding on my part).

JNAProductions

2016-08-07, 11:46 PM

So he had 350,000 GP spent on his weapon alone?

That's MORE than a 17th level character's entire WBL. What level was this wizard again?

Liquor Box

2016-08-07, 11:47 PM

Wizards specifically have d4 hit dice, but plenty of wizard-types have bigger hit dice, including clerics and druids, whose HD are only one size smaller—an average of 16 HP difference at level 15.

Well, he specified a wizard. If you are going to translate "wizard" to "spellcaster most beneficial to my particular point" one could as easily translate "fighter" to "melee fighter most beneficial to my particular point (whether that be a warblade of a melee optimised cleric)".

JNAProductions

2016-08-07, 11:59 PM

Also, such an item would cost 240,000 GP (6*20*2,000) if treated as a use-activated item... But since it can proc multiple times in a turn, that should probably be multiplied by the amount of times it can reasonably proc in a turn (in this case, 4-one for each iterative attack) for closer to 1,000,000 GP. (960,000 GP to be exact.)

Now, as a DM, I wouldn't make it THAT costly... Probably just double the cost, since attacks CAN miss. For 480,000 GP (or maybe just an even 500,000, to make it neat number).

But either way, 350,000 is probably the wrong cost. It should either be cheaper, or (more likely) much more expensive.

Blackhawk748

2016-08-08, 12:00 AM

Well, he specified a wizard. If you are going to translate "wizard" to "spellcaster most beneficial to my particular point" one could as easily translate "fighter" to "melee fighter most beneficial to my particular point (whether that be a warblade of a melee optimised cleric)".

The Quadratic Wizard refers to all Full Prepared Casters, and as such includes Clerics and Druids who also snap game balance over their knee.

Also the Wizard could easily be a Necropolitan with Farie Mysteries Initiate and as such have more HP than the fighter.

Also, such an item would cost 240,000 GP (6*20*2,000) if treated as a use-activated item... But since it can proc multiple times in a turn, that should probably be multiplied by the amount of times it can reasonably proc in a turn (in this case, 4-one for each iterative attack) for closer to 1,000,000 GP. (960,000 GP to be exact.)

Now, as a DM, I wouldn't make it THAT costly... Probably just double the cost, since attacks CAN miss. For 480,000 GP (or maybe just an even 500,000, to make it neat number).

But either way, 350,000 is probably the wrong cost. It should either be cheaper, or (more likely) much more expensive.

It doesn't really matter does it? Hes using an the entire wealth of a 17th level character to defeat 1 dude and he still had to deprive him of his ability to speak via fiat, or more likely, ignorance of that rule. Its just proving the point. I too can make an Assassin to kill mages, that doesnt stop the fact that i have to do it in the first place from proving the point.

LooseCannoneer

2016-08-08, 12:14 AM

So, to summarize: No you cannot use Celerity if caught flat-footed. But yes, you can speak just fine.

So you say the phrase keyed to the Contingent Celerity.

eggynack

2016-08-08, 12:14 AM

And permanent immunity to sneak attack is... costly. Not too many avenues for it, and mist require giving up other benefits. And, though the guy had about 15 spell protections up, his DR 15 and his his near invulnerability was stripped by the third hit. We are talking a 20 caster level greater dispel with each strike. This rogue was worked to have 7 attacks each round.
It's pretty cheap on a wizard, actually, especially a really high level one. The heart of X spells from complete mage grant full immunity to sneak attacks while active, and last hours/level. It's only four spells that max out at 5th level, and the other effects of the spells are strong, so it's far from ridiculous to have those effects up. Separately, it strikes me as pretty weird that this fellow that knew he would be attacked didn't have dire tortoise form up, or foresight.

- Isn't contingency (in 3.5, it pathfinder is different and that is what you are addressing fair enough) restricted to spells of up to a third of the caster's level, and no higher than level six? If so, how can he cast contingent time stop?
The traditional method would be contingency for celerity, and then celerity for time stop, or whatever else you'd want.

- If you are using the Craft contingent spell feat, isn't that a significant resource cost (particularly including time)? Wouldn't it be quite expensive to have to expend those resources every time you are attacked?
It's somewhat expensive, but less expensive than dying. Realistically, you'd prefer to have the crafted contingencies be for less expensive spells. Y'know, craft contingent teleport, or revivify.

Well, he specified a wizard. If you are going to translate "wizard" to "spellcaster most beneficial to my particular point" one could as easily translate "fighter" to "melee fighter most beneficial to my particular point (whether that be a warblade of a melee optimised cleric)".
If you mean Calthropstu, that's fair, because we're working with a very specific scenario, though the claim does show the limitations to the claim. If you mean the OP, then it seems to me that the weirdly beefy nature of some other casters is relevant.

It doesn't really matter does it? Hes using an the entire wealth of a 17th level character to defeat 1 dude and he still had to deprive him of his ability to speak via fiat, or more likely, ignorance of that rule. Its just proving the point. I too can make an Assassin to kill mages, that doesnt stop the fact that i have to do it in the first place from proving the point.
Indeed, he's using all that wealth, a dose of fiat, and also the often borked and bordering on houserules magic item creation guidelines. It's a long way to go for a single killed wizard.

darkdragoon

2016-08-08, 12:38 AM

Magic is a gigantic toolbox and gets to circumvent if not outright ignore what is "supposed" to keep it in check. Melee on the other hand is lumped with a large number of iffy options that have alternately been described as "we included bad feats to see if you're smart enough to know what a bad feat is" and "3 more HP is better than raising the dead because uh, you might run out of bodies!"

Liquor Box

2016-08-08, 12:43 AM

The Quadratic Wizard refers to all Full Prepared Casters, and as such includes Clerics and Druids who also snap game balance over their knee.

Also the Wizard could easily be a Necropolitan with Farie Mysteries Initiate and as such have more HP than the fighter.

Yeah, I get that, but we were discussing a scenario proposed by a member that specifically referred to a wizard. Also the "linear fighter" does not refer only to figthers, but also to barbarians and knights and other D12 characters.

If Troacctid had been referring to casters vs melee instead of wizards vs fighters (which she has basically clarified that she was), it might have been reasonable to say "some lvl 15 casters can come within 15HP of some lvl15 melee on the basis of average dice alone". This is true (if we ignore things like max HP at lvl 1), but we could also say "some lvl 15 melee can exceed some lvl 15 casters by 60HP on the basis of average dice alone".

Liquor Box

2016-08-08, 12:55 AM

The traditional method would be contingency for celerity, and then celerity for time stop, or whatever else you'd want.

It's interesting to how that would work in a surprise round. In the scenario proposed, the wizard is surprised. A contingent magic effect occurs giving him a standard action (contingent celerity), but it seems to me that he is surprised so cannot act at all. It's not a matter of it not being his turn, it's a matter of him being surprised so unable to act. This may be open to interpretation, but I suggest he could not act due to the celerity round due to the few seconds it takes him to react to the surprising circumstance. Would you rule differently?

Then he is stunned after casting celerity, so the fighter effectively gets the benefit of the surprise round anyway.

I assumed the poster had specified contingent timestop (instead of celerity) to get around the surprise round - time stop has a longer duration. Of course this perhaps suggests the wizard was planning for this particular scenerio when I suspect the intent of the scenario was that the wizard not know it was coming in advance.

It's somewhat expensive, but less expensive than dying. Realistically, you'd prefer to have the crafted contingencies be for less expensive spells. Y'know, craft contingent teleport, or revivify.

Sure, better than dying and not expensive in the context of killing a character of equal level. But the wizard does not know that he will be attacked by a fighter that day - so he must be very lucky (the fighter attacks on the day the wizard happened to have this spell up) or he must have it up at all times. Depending on when the contingency triggers (I'm assuming when he is attacked), this might be very expensive - would it trigger if he stung by a bee, or bitten by a flea? Even if he doesn't get attacked at all, he would have to recast every few days due to the duration.

The point is (unless the wizard had foreknowledge) that for the wizard to be sure he would have contingent timestop (or any other contingent spell) active when the fighter attacked, he would have to have had it constantly active - and that is very expensive - he wold have to spend a very significant proportion of his waking hours throughout his life preparing to renew the contingency effect.

If you mean Calthropstu, that's fair, because we're working with a very specific scenario, though the claim does show the limitations to the claim. If you mean the OP, then it seems to me that the weirdly beefy nature of some other casters is relevant.

Yes, this was said in Troacctid's quote of Calthruptsu's post.

eggynack

2016-08-08, 01:26 AM

It's interesting to how that would work in a surprise round. In the scenario proposed, the wizard is surprised. A contingent magic effect occurs giving him a standard action (contingent celerity), but it seems to me that he is surprised so cannot act at all. It's not a matter of it not being his turn, it's a matter of him being surprised so unable to act. This may be open to interpretation, but I suggest he could not act due to the celerity round due to the few seconds it takes him to react to the surprising circumstance. Would you rule differently?
I don't think there's any underlying condition of surprised-ness that stops you from acting. The relevant condition s flat-footed, and being flat-footed has nothing, to my knowledge, that stops standard actions. It stops immediate actions, but you're not personally making use of those.

Then he is stunned after casting celerity, so the fighter effectively gets the benefit of the surprise round anyway.
A wizard can do a lot in a standard action, especially at that level. Worst case scenario is probably something like teleport, to get away from the rogue. Best case is something that can win the fight instead of escaping it, and there're a bunch of options for that at that level. There're also ways to get immunity to daze, if necessary.

Sure, better than dying and not expensive in the context of killing a character of equal level. But the wizard does not know that he will be attacked by a fighter that day - so he must be very lucky (the fighter attacks on the day the wizard happened to have this spell up) or he must have it up at all times. Depending on when the contingency triggers (I'm assuming when he is attacked), this might be very expensive - would it trigger if he stung by a bee, or bitten by a flea? Even if he doesn't get attacked at all, he would have to recast every few days due to the duration.

The point is (unless the wizard had foreknowledge) that for the wizard to be sure he would have contingent timestop (or any other contingent spell) active when the fighter attacked, he would have to have had it constantly active - and that is very expensive - he wold have to spend a very significant proportion of his waking hours throughout his life preparing to renew the contingency effect.

Craft contingent just stays on until activated. Contingency doesn't, but it doesn't have much cost, either in cash or spells used (given the duration). And the ideal is generally the cited trigger, one using your words, and you can set up more specific ones otherwise, like a revivify plus teleport in case of death.

squiggit

2016-08-08, 02:12 AM

Ignoring the balance discussion of how effective it is, I'd argue that even if linear fighter, quadratic wizard worked exactly as intended that it's just fundamentally not a great idea. D&D is a cooperative adventure game and the whole idea of telling someone that they don't get to be of any use for the first month of a campaign and then in turn another player isn't going to be good for anything in the month after that is really awful design.

In fact that's the main reason why basically every edition makes low level wizards better than they were in the last, because getting to be relevant one round per day and dying in one hit to anything is just awful.

Liquor Box

2016-08-08, 02:36 AM

I don't think there's any underlying condition of surprised-ness that stops you from acting. The relevant condition s flat-footed, and being flat-footed has nothing, to my knowledge, that stops standard actions. It stops immediate actions, but you're not personally making use of those.

Then why can you not attack in the surprise round if it you who is surprised? There is more to being surprised than being flatfooted.

SRD
"Unaware Combatants

Combatants who are unaware at the start of battle don’t get to act in the surprise round. Unaware combatants are flat-footed because they have not acted yet, so they lose any Dexterity bonus to AC."

The contingency triggers because it doesn't require awareness on behalf of the wizard. But the wizard is unable to do anything during the surprise round, even if he otherwise would because of whatever is triggered from contingency.

If the contingency triggered time stop (which I don't think he can, for reasons already given), I would rule that the wizard could act in the second round of the time stop. But this doesn't help the wizard if it only has contingent celerity.

A wizard can do a lot in a standard action, especially at that level. Worst case scenario is probably something like teleport, to get away from the rogue. Best case is something that can win the fight instead of escaping it, and there're a bunch of options for that at that level. There're also ways to get immunity to daze, if necessary.
The suggestion that the wizard would not be able to do anything in the standard action turns on whether the wizard is surprised during the standard action. If he is not surprised, I agree there are lots of things he can do. If he is surprised he can not take an action.

Craft contingent just stays on until activated. Contingency doesn't, but it doesn't have much cost, either in cash or spells used (given the duration). And the ideal is generally the cited trigger, one using your words, and you can set up more specific ones otherwise, like a revivify plus teleport in case of death.

OK - fair point - the craft one stay on until activated (not a day/lvl).

How do you think people commonly word a crafted contingency so that it would trigger when the fighter attacks, but not when the wizard is stung by a bee, considering the spell descriptions says "If complicated or convoluted conditions are prescribed, the whole spell combination (contingency and the companion magic) may fail when called on."?

Beheld

2016-08-08, 02:56 AM

How do you think people commonly word a crafted contingency so that it would trigger when the fighter attacks, but not when the wizard is stung by a bee, considering the spell descriptions says "If complicated or convoluted conditions are prescribed, the whole spell combination (contingency and the companion magic) may fail when called on."?

If your DM follows the "can talk whenever" thing, then you can just tie it to saying a word. If you DM doesn't allow that, you can either use Foresight or Dire Tortoise Form to guarantee you can immediate action Celerity, in which case, your contingency is not for "a fight starting" it is for "something bad happening."

Honestly though, if I was going pretty ham on the whole not dying as a Wizard thing, I'd have a Nightmare Astral Projecting me from level 9 on, so when I get Contingency, I would probably tie the Contingency to someone attacking my Astral Cord with a Silver weapon. Although, if I'm an Incantatrix with Persisted Ironguard, even that isn't going to hurt me, so I'd probably just use the Contingency as an extra attack spell.

squiggit

2016-08-08, 03:06 AM

The contingency triggers because it doesn't require awareness on behalf of the wizard. But the wizard is unable to do anything during the surprise round, even if he otherwise would because of whatever is triggered from contingency.

I'm not sure I really buy this. Surprised characters don't get actions, but Celerity (and other moves that grant actions) are special exceptions. That's the whole idea behind how they function.

Ultimately though this comes down to how you think readied actions work with surprise rounds, since Celerity functions as one.

Liquor Box

2016-08-08, 03:13 AM

If your DM follows the "can talk whenever" thing, then you can just tie it to saying a word. If you DM doesn't allow that, you can either use Foresight or Dire Tortoise Form to guarantee you can immediate action Celerity, in which case, your contingency is not for "a fight starting" it is for "something bad happening."

Honestly though, if I was going pretty ham on the whole not dying as a Wizard thing, I'd have a Nightmare Astral Projecting me from level 9 on, so when I get Contingency, I would probably tie the Contingency to someone attacking my Astral Cord with a Silver weapon. Although, if I'm an Incantatrix with Persisted Ironguard, even that isn't going to hurt me, so I'd probably just use the Contingency as an extra attack spell.

Saying a word is a good idea, if you are allowed to talk during the surprise round.

As for the rest of your post, it all rests on the wizard knowing ahead of time that the fighter would attack, and being prepared for that particular event (which was not what I understood from the scenario proposed on page 1):
- As for foresight, it has a duration of 10/lvl, so you would be using a lot (all three wouldn't be enough) to have it active all day.
- As for Dire turtle, you it may be hard to live in that form all day every day. I don't think natural spell applies to polymorph, so you wouldn't be able to case any spells.
- Where do you get the nightmare from?

Liquor Box

2016-08-08, 03:21 AM

I'm not sure I really buy this. Surprised characters don't get actions, but Celerity (and other moves that grant actions) are special exceptions. That's the whole idea behind how they function.

Ultimately though this comes down to how you think readied actions work with surprise rounds, since Celerity functions as one.

Yeah I agree that it is open to some interpretation.

But I think that you shouldn't be able to act during a contingency triggered celerity in the surprise round under RaW or RaI:
- RaW state you cannot act in surprise round. Simple as that really. Even if you had 10 move actions and 10 standard actions available you couldn't take them.
- RaI - the theory behind the surprise round is that it takes a round (6 seconds) for you to register that enemies are present, and you are unable to take actions during that period. Merely because an automatic effect triggers does not mean you are automatically aware of enemies. If you are unaware of your enemies, celerity triggers, then you waste you standard action looking around, seeing the attacker, registering that he is there etc...

Celerity is not an exception to surprise rounds. It is an exception to the ordinary order of events (allowing you to act out of turn). But a surprise round is not merely someone else's turn, it is someone else's turn when you are not yet aware of the someone else.

I don't think celerity is analogous to a readied action either. All celerity does is open a thin slice of time for you. The very process of readying an action suggests getting ready for a potential threat (rather the opposite of surprise). A celerity triggered magically does no such thing.

Beheld

2016-08-08, 03:34 AM

As for the rest of your post, it all rests on the wizard knowing ahead of time that the fighter would attack, and being prepared for that particular scenario (which was not what I understood from the scenario proposed on page 1):

The vast majority of what I just explained is in fact literally the opposite of that. You should be Astral Projected all the time, you should have Foresight or Shapechange or both up all the time that are out of you fortress (whatever form that takes) as a high level Wizard.

- As for foresight, it has a duration of 10/lvl, so you would be using a lot (all three wouldn't be enough) to have it active all day.

You are a Wizard capable of casting at least 8th level spells. Which means you can travel anywhere in the entire world with Greater Teleport or Astral Projection as many times as you want at will. So a typical day involves leaving your MMM, walking outside, Greater Teleporting with your Gorilla Pet, to whatever place you wanted to go, doing whatever you want during your 2 hours of having all your 10 minute per level spells active (like Superior Invis, and Shapechange and Foresight) and then Greater Teleporting back (again see Gorilla Pet).

- As for Dire turtle, you it may be hard to live in that form all day every day. I don't think natural spell applies to polymorph, so you wouldn't be able to case any spells.

Shapechange allows you to change form as a free action. So the Surprise Round starts, and even if you decide you need to cast spells you can't cast in Fire Tortoise Form, you can free action switch to Chronotyryn and then cast two spells because you now have two standard actions, and then move on with your life.

- Where do you get the nightmare from?

Lesser Planar Binding allows you to Planar Bind a Nightmare, and have it Astral Project you whenever you want for the next 2xCL days, and then you can adventure as an Astral Projected Wizard only from level 9 on. If you require further refinement of getting to the adventure local, you can also use Lesser Planar Binding to get you a Bar Lgura to Greater Teleport you around all day as your personal Taxi.

eggynack

2016-08-08, 04:29 AM

Celerity is not an exception to surprise rounds. It is an exception to the ordinary order of events (allowing you to act out of turn). But a surprise round is not merely someone else's turn, it is someone else's turn when you are not yet aware of the someone else.
It is an exception. No matter what else is happening, you're getting a standard action here. The existence of that action is in direct contravention to the notion that you're not getting actions. And, beyond that, it seems to me that the notion of taking a standard action implies also the things that a standard action allows you to do. As an example, to attack someone you must take a standard action, and celerity meets that requirement by giving you one. A standard action isn't just a period of time in which you can do standard action stuff. It's an action, in and of itself.

I don't think celerity is analogous to a readied action either. All celerity does is open a thin slice of time for you. The very process of readying an action suggests getting ready for a potential threat (rather the opposite of surprise). A celerity triggered magically does no such thing.
I dunno if it matters if it's analagous or not. The spell says it works as a readied action, so that's the way it works. So, instead of acting similar to a readied action, to some extent it just is a readied action.

AvatarVecna

2016-08-08, 04:49 AM

Celerity is absolutely useless when flatfooted. You need to look up the rules for "immediate action." I don't know how many times I have had to explain this.

And you need to look up the rules for Contingency: it activates a spell automatically based on pre-set trigger conditions...in this case, losing initiative. I lost initiative? Contingency activates, casting Celerity for me. It doesn't matter that I couldn't cast Celerity right now under normal circumstances, because I'm not casting it right now, I cast it hours/days ago, and the effect is coming into place now without any action on my part.

And permanent immunity to sneak attack is... costly. Not too many avenues for it, and mist require giving up other benefits. And, though the guy had about 15 spell protections up, his DR 15 and his his near invulnerability was stripped by the third hit. We are talking a 20 caster level greater dispel with each strike. This rogue was worked to have 7 attacks each round.

You can't Greater Dispel immunity from creature types, such as from being a Necropolitan or (since undead SA immunity can be circumvented in other ways) being a Living 1st lvl Spell who had Awaken Ooze cast on them. Both of those have basically no cost, since they're an LA-less template and a 1 HD race, respectively. The Foresight spell means I'm never surprised or flat-footed, so you don't get a surprise round, and we just go into initiative...at which point, I either win initiative and go first, or my Contingency activates from my losing initiative and I go first anyway.

The wizard never got to go. And he DID HAVE ADVANCED WARNING. He put numerous long duration spell protections, and prepped a chain contingency to trigger when he said a specific word. BUT HE NEVER GOT TO GO. Until you act, YOU ARE FLAT FOOTED. NO FREE ACTIONS, NO IMMEDIATE ACTIONS, NO ACTIONS PERIOD.

I like how your version of an uber-wizard has so many buffs that still allow the fighter the opportunity to attack him. I also like how you're telling me what I set my contingencies to trigger off of. I also like how you're ignoring the existence of Foresight.

OK, I will post exactly how this went down.

"Divination, will I be attacked today?"

"Yes."
"Is it a serious threat?"
"Yes."
"Name of attacker?"
"Allana the mage slayer"
"Where is this person now?"
"No response."
"When will she attack?"
"When you are most vulnerable."

"Huh, this person's really gonna cause me a problem sometime later today...guess I shouldn't be here later today."

*TTT back several decades or so*

*Prepare optimized defenses, to become immune to everything, including becoming immune to dying with Hide Life*

*hunt down mage-killer or their parents/grandparents*

*erase mage-killers family tree from existence*

Her in was his prisoner, the princess. She swapped places with her, and when he said "I go to question the princess about this person" he entered the cell, and was promptly murdered.

And there it is. The reason this worked at all: the Wizard was stupid, and trusted somebody.

Your "uber-optimized wizards" are jokes by the playgrounds standards. They're not even "practically optimized", much less theoretically optimized.

AvatarVecna

2016-08-08, 04:52 AM

[- RaW state you cannot act in surprise round. Simple as that really. Even if you had 10 move actions and 10 standard actions available you couldn't take them.
- RaI - the theory behind the surprise round is that it takes a round (6 seconds) for you to register that enemies are present, and you are unable to take actions during that period. Merely because an automatic effect triggers does not mean you are automatically aware of enemies. If you are unaware of your enemies, celerity triggers, then you waste you standard action looking around, seeing the attacker, registering that he is there etc...

Foresight renders the surprise round debate completely moot. Let's continue on, though:

Celerity is not an exception to surprise rounds. It is an exception to the ordinary order of events (allowing you to act out of turn). But a surprise round is not merely someone else's turn, it is someone else's turn when you are not yet aware of the someone else.

Whether you believe Celerity is an exception to surprise rounds, Contingency absolutely is: it's a spell that activates itself based on pre-set conditions...in the cast of my Contingency: Celerity, the trigger is "losing initiative".

Liquor Box

2016-08-08, 06:03 AM

The vast majority of what I just explained is in fact literally the opposite of that. You should be Astral Projected all the time, you should have Foresight or Shapechange or both up all the time that are out of you fortress (whatever form that takes) as a high level Wizard.
So 3 out of your 4 ninth level spells (other than whatever bonuses you get for your build) are shapechange,superior invisiblity and foresight, both in case a fighter attacks you by surprise, and you never leave the house for more than an hour at the time.

You realise that you are making wizards sound much less powerful here? You would be better off saying that this was a build in case a fighter attacked, and normal wizards have much wider range of ninth level spells.

You are a Wizard capable of casting at least 8th level spells. Which means you can travel anywhere in the entire world with Greater Teleport or Astral Projection as many times as you want at will. So a typical day involves leaving your MMM, walking outside, Greater Teleporting with your Gorilla Pet, to whatever place you wanted to go, doing whatever you want during your 2 hours of having all your 10 minute per level spells active (like Superior Invis, and Shapechange and Foresight) and then Greater Teleporting back (again see Gorilla Pet).

So the wizard needs help from a pet (I suppose wizards can spend a feat on leadership), and is still only allowed out of the house for 2 hours a day. Doesn't sound very flexible or powerful to me.

Shapechange allows you to change form as a free action. So the Surprise Round starts, and even if you decide you need to cast spells you can't cast in Fire Tortoise Form, you can free action switch to Chronotyryn and then cast two spells because you now have two standard actions, and then move on with your life.

Ah, so you were relying on shapechange. There's your third ninth level spell. Also 10minutes, a level so you are allowed outside for less time than a five year in summer without a sunhat. Also, you cannot go through most buildings or dungeon passages, probably are not allowed in cities, and certainly cannot talk to anyone. All in case an all powerful figther attacks. I hink foresight was a better idea

Lesser Planar Binding allows you to Planar Bind a Nightmare, and have it Astral Project you whenever you want for the next 2xCL days, and then you can adventure as an Astral Projected Wizard only from level 9 on. If you require further refinement of getting to the adventure local, you can also use Lesser Planar Binding to get you a Bar Lgura to Greater Teleport you around all day as your personal Taxi.

I'm not up for a debate, since this is a minor sub-point, because I don;t actually think that most wizrds woalk around with a nightmare tailing behing them projecting for them, but I'm not convinced this works as easily as you say it does. First, the spell specifies that the subject is to do one task - casting astral projection once is one task. Casting it again is two. Following the wizard to the shops and casting it is two tasks. Also, it is an evil spell to call an evil outsider, so shifts your alignment toward evil each time you do it - fine if we assume our wizard is evil I suppose. It also requires a charsima check, which means it is only sometimes succesful.

Liquor Box

2016-08-08, 06:30 AM

It is an exception. No matter what else is happening, you're getting a standard action here. The existence of that action is in direct contravention to the notion that you're not getting actions. And, beyond that, it seems to me that the notion of taking a standard action implies also the things that a standard action allows you to do. As an example, to attack someone you must take a standard action, and celerity meets that requirement by giving you one. A standard action isn't just a period of time in which you can do standard action stuff. It's an action, in and of itself.

My wizard is battling your wizard. My wizard casts sleep. My wizard's turn ends and your wizard is sleeping. You get a standard action (and a move action) because it is your turn. By your logic, the existance of that action is in direct conravention to the notion that you cannot act because you are sleeping. To apply your example, to attack someone you must take a standard action, and it being your turn meets that requirement by giving you one....

The sleeping example is analogous to surprise. If your wizard was sleeping and his contingency celerity was trigger would he then be able to take a standard action, then go back to being asleep the next round? Surprise, like sleep are states when you are not able to take any action. Having a bonus action available (from celerity) does not mean you can take it when the rules say you cannot (from sleep or surprise).

I dunno if it matters if it's analagous or not. The spell says it works as a readied action, so that's the way it works. So, instead of acting similar to a readied action, to some extent it just is a readied action.

Yes, you are right here, I had not read that part.

This forum has discussed ready actions in combat several times before (unfortunately not contingency celerity in surprise round that I could find):
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?325792-Surprise-ready-and-actions-out-of-combat
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?381483-Why-no-one-uses-readied-actions&highlight=ready%20action
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?383173-Help-on-using-Readied-actions-vs-ambush-surprise-in-a-maze-and-in-general

It seems that the general consensus is that you cannot ready an action outside combat, so a readied action cannot occur in a surprise round. So I'm not sure that it not "as if" it was a readied action actually assists.

Beheld

2016-08-08, 06:32 AM

So 3 out of your 4 ninth level spells (other than whatever bonuses you get for your build) are shapechange,superior invisiblity and foresight, both in case a fighter attacks you by surprise, and you never leave the house for more than an hour at the time.

Look, there is absolutely no excuse for this from you. Superior Invis isn't a 9th level spell. Foresight and Dire Tortoise are two different ways of getting similar effects, and the post that you quoted and replied to explains how you get Astral Projection without casting it from any of your daily slots, not to mention that Astral Projection has an indefinite duration, so even if you were casting it with your own 9th level slots, it still wouldn't cost a 9th level spell that day.

So yes, if I'm adventuring I spend one of my daily 9th level spell slots on Shapechange, because aside from broken Gate, it is literally the best 9th level spell in the game. One out of 5-7 9th level spells.

You realise that you are making wizards sound much less powerful here? You would be better off saying that this was a build in case a fighter attacked, and normal wizards have much wider range of ninth level spells.

I realize that you are basically lying by claiming that somehow Free permanent Astral Projection that lasts literally years if you want is somehow costing me anything at all. Or that having prepared Shapechange is somehow a loss in any way.

So the wizard needs help from a pet (I suppose wizards can spend a feat on leadership), and is still only allowed out of the house for 2 hours a day. Doesn't sound very flexible or powerful to me.

Are you allergic to truth or something? I ask, because you literally quoted the post that explains to you the Wizard spell that gives them these minions and then complained about how they "need" the help from their spell effects, as if this was somehow a negative, instead of a huge positive.

Of course you don't need Greater Teleport and Astral Projection at will at the cost of LITERALLY FREE ZERO SPELL SLOTS, but the fact without it you are infinity times more powerful than a fighter, and with it you are infinity times more powerful than a fighter and also unkillable is generally considered a positive.

Ah, so you were relying on shapechange. There's your third ninth level spell.

No, there is my first 9th level spell, for anyone who knows the actual rules.

Also 10minutes, a level so you are allowed outside for less time than a five year in summer without a sunhat. Also, you cannot go through most buildings or dungeon passages, probably are not allowed in cities, and certainly cannot talk to anyone. All in case an all powerful figther attacks. I hink foresight was a better idea

Shapechange allows you to change forms as a free action, you can do literally all those things. And the point is to be able to beat actually meaningful enemies, like Balors and Pit Fiends and Solars, not Fighters, who are such a joke that they aren't even worth planning for, since your plans would include how to protect against Fire Giants already, and Fire Giants are just more versatile Fighters.

Also not sure why you think 2-4 hours of adventuring for one spell slot when you can Greater Teleport at will is somehow a limit. I mean I guess if I wanted to kill literally every single god in the entire pantheon in one day, it might take me like 8 hours, just because there are so many, but I could also just be an Incantatrix and have 48 hour Shapechange from a single spell slot. (Or heck, shapechange and other spells with 48 hour duration, and then rest and prepare even more spells.)

I'm not up for a debate, since this is a minor sub-point, because I don;t actually think that most wizrds woalk around with a nightmare tailing behing them projecting for them, but I'm not convinced this works as easily as you say it does.

1) Most Wizards probably don't, but then again, lots of level 2 Wizards cast dumb bad spells like Flaming Sphere instead of good spells like Glitterdust, doesn't have any bearing on the fact that if you wanted to be unkillable as a Wizard, having an Astral Projection adventure is safer than not, and costs nothing at all.

2) You don't need the Nightmare at all once he transports you back to the material plane, at least not if you don't want to go to some other plane.

First, the spell specifies that the subject is to do one task - casting astral projection once is one task. Casting it again is two. Following the wizard to the shops and casting it is two tasks.

Perhaps you could read the duration of Astral Projection? I mean, you could argue that casting half a spell is one task two, and you'd be on the same ground, because obviously what the spell actually says is that you compel the creature to perform a service, and since service is undefined, you can try to convince your players to get up and walk away and never game with you again by talking about how ephemerally a service is any imposition, so the imposition to not attack you on the first round is the service, and then the Nightmare attacks you on the second round, but back in the world of sane people, ferrying someone around for an extended time is still one service.

Also, it is an evil spell to call an evil outsider, so shifts your alignment toward evil each time you do it - fine if we assume our wizard is evil I suppose. It also requires a charsima check, which means it is only sometimes succesful.

Who on earth cares if your alignment changes, since apparently your actions have no bearing on alignment and your actions don't conform to alignment, you can just keep being Ghandi if you want, while being "Evil" for the crime of having cast Protection from Good. (Unless you know, you cast Magic Circle Against Evil when you Planar Bound that evil creature, and then the alignment casts cancel out. YMMV.)

2) The Charisma check can be repeated over and over, even if you weren't a Wizard on an off day casting spells, so you could just give yourself a +30 to the check with buff spells and succeed no matter what, you can still just do it again the next day, or you can Lesser Planar Bind 6 Nightmares on the first day, and 6 Teleport Gorillas on the second day, and make checks until you succeed on one of them.

It seems like in general your biggest problem is your inability to comprehend how off day spells works, or how the duration of off day casts like Astral Projection work. Or how Shapechange allows you to change form as a free action, or... you know what, just all spells ever apparently.

Liquor Box

2016-08-08, 06:37 AM

Foresight renders the surprise round debate completely moot. Let's continue on, though:

Sure, if you happen to have it up when the fighter attacks. I said from thestart that the outcome of the scenario would depend what spells the wizard had activated at the point in time when the fighter attacked. Having foresight activated at the time, plus contingency celerity would do the trick against the particular scenario.

Whether you believe Celerity is an exception to surprise rounds, Contingency absolutely is: it's a spell that activates itself based on pre-set conditions...in the cast of my Contingency: Celerity, the trigger is "losing initiative".
Yes, I have already agreed that contingency activates in a surprise round if triggered - so if you had contingency stoneskin, you would get stoneskin in the surprise round. If you had contingency celerity, celerity would be cast but you would not be able to take the standard action becuase you cannot act in a surprise round because you are not aware of your enemies.

In the scenario proposed on page one a contingency that activated on losing initiative may not help you because the surprise round will have happened before you lose initiative.

eggynack

2016-08-08, 06:37 AM

So 3 out of your 4 ninth level spells (other than whatever bonuses you get for your build) are shapechange,superior invisiblity and foresight, both in case a fighter attacks you by surprise, and you never leave the house for more than an hour at the time.
Invisibility is apparently minutes/level and 8th level, rather than hours/level and 9th level, as per the spell compendium. Not sure how that impacts stuff.

You realise that you are making wizards sound much less powerful here? You would be better off saying that this was a build in case a fighter attacked, and normal wizards have much wider range of ninth level spells.
Eh. Shapechange is practically the world within itself. You get piles of wishes, immunity to a pile of stuff, and all kinds of other effects within a free action. You don't need a second spell, for the most part, and you can relegate everything else to defense if you want. And you do want, because a wizard at that level that happens to stay alive will likely win the battle in any sort of longer term.

Ah, so you were relying on shapechange. There's your third ninth level spell. Also 10minutes, a level so you are allowed outside for less time than a five year in summer without a sunhat. Also, you cannot go through most buildings or dungeon passages, probably are not allowed in cities, and certainly cannot talk to anyone. All in case an all powerful figther attacks. I hink foresight was a better idea
A pearl of speech can handle the talking. Taking other forms with comparable power can handle the rest, especially if you still have up foresight while you're doing all of this.

I'm not up for a debate, since this is a minor sub-point, because I don;t actually think that most wizrds woalk around with a nightmare tailing behing them projecting for them, but I'm not convinced this works as easily as you say it does. First, the spell specifies that the subject is to do one task - casting astral projection once is one task. Casting it again is two. Following the wizard to the shops and casting it is two tasks. Also, it is an evil spell to call an evil outsider, so shifts your alignment toward evil each time you do it - fine if we assume our wizard is evil I suppose. It also requires a charsima check, which means it is only sometimes succesful.

You're the one defining the task, so you can easily set up something more elaborate. It's not too difficult to win the charisma check either. Various spell effects can reduce the creature's charisma (lesser geas is a classic), various other effects can increase your charisma (eagle's splendor helps a bunch), and you can make a bunch of attempts if needed.

Edit:
My wizard is battling your wizard. My wizard casts sleep. My wizard's turn ends and your wizard is sleeping. You get a standard action (and a move action) because it is your turn. By your logic, the existance of that action is in direct conravention to the notion that you cannot act because you are sleeping. To apply your example, to attack someone you must take a standard action, and it being your turn meets that requirement by giving you one....

The sleeping example is analogous to surprise. If your wizard was sleeping and his contingency celerity was trigger would he then be able to take a standard action, then go back to being asleep the next round? Surprise, like sleep are states when you are not able to take any action. Having a bonus action available (from celerity) does not mean you can take it when the rules say you cannot (from sleep or surprise).
The issue here is general versus specific. The rules for surprise rounds are general rules which celerity acts an exception to. The rules for actions you can naturally take within a turn are general rules which the conditions of sleep and helplessness act as an exception to (though, as is the case for death, it seems to be taken as an assumption by the rules that you cannot act while asleep, because helplessness doesn't strictly define a set of actions you cannot take, which means that you can theoretically do some weird stuff while sleeping).

Liquor Box

2016-08-08, 07:11 AM

Look, there is absolutely no excuse for this from you. Superior Invis isn't a 9th level spell. Foresight and Dire Tortoise are two different ways of getting similar effects, and the post that you quoted and replied to explains how you get Astral Projection without casting it from any of your daily slots, not to mention that Astral Projection has an indefinite duration, so even if you were casting it with your own 9th level slots, it still wouldn't cost a 9th level spell that day.

So yes, if I'm adventuring I spend one of my daily 9th level spell slots on Shapechange, because aside from broken Gate, it is literally the best 9th level spell in the game. One out of 5-7 9th level spells.

I realize that you are basically lying by claiming that somehow Free permanent Astral Projection that lasts literally years if you want is somehow costing me anything at all. Or that having prepared Shapechange is somehow a loss in any way.

Are you allergic to truth or something? I ask, because you literally quoted the post that explains to you the Wizard spell that gives them these minions and then complained about how they "need" the help from their spell effects, as if this was somehow a negative, instead of a huge positive.

Of course you don't need Greater Teleport and Astral Projection at will at the cost of LITERALLY FREE ZERO SPELL SLOTS, but the fact without it you are infinity times more powerful than a fighter, and with it you are infinity times more powerful than a fighter and also unkillable is generally considered a positive.

No, there is my first 9th level spell, for anyone who knows the actual rules.

Shapechange allows you to change forms as a free action, you can do literally all those things. And the point is to be able to beat actually meaningful enemies, like Balors and Pit Fiends and Solars, not Fighters, who are such a joke that they aren't even worth planning for, since your plans would include how to protect against Fire Giants already, and Fire Giants are just more versatile Fighters.

Also not sure why you think 2-4 hours of adventuring for one spell slot when you can Greater Teleport at will is somehow a limit. I mean I guess if I wanted to kill literally every single god in the entire pantheon in one day, it might take me like 8 hours, just because there are so many, but I could also just be an Incantatrix and have 48 Shapechange.

1) Most Wizards probably don't, but then again, lots of level 2 Wizards cast dumb bad spells like Flaming Sphere instead of good spells like Glitterdust, doesn't have any bearing on the fact that if you wanted to be unkillable as a Wizard, having an Astral Projection adventure is safer than not, and costs nothing at all.

2) You don't need the Nightmare at all once he transports you back to the material plane, at least not if you don't want to go to some other plane.

Perhaps you could read the duration of Astral Projection? I mean, you could argue that casting half a spell is one task two, and you'd be on the same ground, because obviously what the spell actually says is that you compel the creature to perform a service, and since service is undefined, you can try to convince your players to get up and walk away and never game with you again by talking about how ephemerally a service is any imposition, so the imposition to not attack you on the first round is the service, and then the Nightmare attacks you on the second round, but back in the world of sane people, ferrying someone around for an extended time is still one service.

Who on earth cares if your alignment changes, since apparently your actions have no bearing on alignment and your actions don't conform to alignment, you can just keep being Ghandi if you want, while being "Evil" for the crime of having cast Protection from Good. (Unless you know, you cast Magic Circle Against Evil when you Planar Bound that evil creature, and then the alignment casts cancel out. YMMV.)

2) The Charisma check can be repeated over and over, even if you weren't a Wizard on an off day casting spells, so you could just give yourself a +30 to the check with buff spells and succeed no matter what, you can still just do it again the next day, or you can Lesser Planar Bind 6 Nightmares on the first day, and 6 Teleport Gorillas on the second day, and make checks until you succeed on one of them.

It seems like in general your biggest problem is your inability to comprehend how off day spells works, or how the duration of off day casts like Astral Projection work. Or how Shapechange allows you to change form as a free action, or... you know what, just all spells ever apparently.

This is getting a little long for me, so I wont go point by point.

Superior invisibility IS a 9th level spell (perhaps you were thinking of greater invis?):
http://dnd.arkalseif.info/spells/complete-arcane--55/superior-invisibility--517/

EDIT: Afterseeing Eggynack's post, I checked the book. You are right it is lvl 8, I've never known DnD tools to be wrong before. I guess you get one point back...

You also referred in your previous post to having superior invs AND shapechange AND foresight up. At another place you referred to having both foresigth and shapechange up while out of your fortress. So I have no doubt you were intially suggesting that you wizard would have all three

But if you want to revise your strategy (not for this particular encounter of course :smallwink:) that's fair enough. Nothing wrong with us learnign as we discuss these matters. So you would just have shapechange, leaving you a few other lvl 9 spells for that day.

But then you run into the problem I already mentioned with shapechange - your two hour limit. Your answer is that you can accomplish a lot in 2 hours of adventuring. But who says that the the fighter attacks you while adventuring. What if he attacks you while you are strolling the city streets, or attending the grand ball (as a dire tortoise I'm sure).

I accept 2 hours may be long enough for most dungeon delves, but it is a very narrow game you are playing if all attacks must take place while you have your adventuring hat on. It reminds me of the old fashioned battles, where the commenders would agree on a time for the battle, and that would be it. Unfortunately though, the fighter who attacks your wizard attacks with surprise, so lets assume the encounter does not happen at your appointed "adventruing" time.

Then we get to the third problem - that dire tortoises have severe limitations for adventring. Sure if you are adventuring in the sea or on a plain they are fine. But what if you want to go inside - you answer is that you can take a free action to change into something else. Quite right, you can, but then you are no longer immune to surprise and once again you are vulenerable to the fighter's surprise attack (especially since you have now forsaken foresight). So all the fighter would have to do to get around our idea of avoiding surprise by being a tortoise would be to wait until you changed out of dire tortoise form (which it sounds like you do a lot) then attack.

Unless another restirction you will place on your vulnerable wizard, in addition to only being allowed out of the fortress 2 hours a day, is that he is not allowed to go into any enclosed spaces too small for an elephant.

As for astral projection, I think I got it spot on.

You admit most wizards don't cast astral projection - which means it wouldn't protect most wizards from the surprise fighter. I said right from the start that some wizards would be safe from the surprise fighter, but not all, and you have just supported that point.

But that aside, I think you are misinterpreting what a single service is. Ask a bus driver or a ferry captiain whether "ferrying someone around for an extended time is still one service". I think you'll find it is not, in that world of the sane you refer to. But you are not merely asking it to ferry you around all day, instead you are asking it to ferry you around and cast is projection spell - that is two services even if the ferrying all day was just one.

Obviosuly casting one spell is one task - your suggestion that casting the first half of a spell is one task and the second half of the spell another is silly.

As for the duration of the spell, there are multiple ways for it to end - one way is that ends when the creature finishes the "one task". So once has taken you from poitn A to B the duration of the spell is over (if that is the task you give it).

As to being evil - well we are discussing the utility of the classes in play - but if you don't have any problem with evil PCs, then that's another debate (neither do I to be honest).

Yes, you can repeat the charisma check the next day. But again, that restricts your wizard just like the shapenchange spell menaing it can only leave the house for 2 hours a day, the charisma check means it cant leave the house at all several days. "Sorry, I know I'm an all powerful wizard, but I cannot come down to the tavern today because I failed my charisma check".

Liquor Box

2016-08-08, 07:25 AM

Invisibility is apparently minutes/level and 8th level, rather than hours/level and 9th level, as per the spell compendium. Not sure how that impacts stuff.

So it is, D&D tools was wrong.

Eh. Shapechange is practically the world within itself. You get piles of wishes, immunity to a pile of stuff, and all kinds of other effects within a free action. You don't need a second spell, for the most part, and you can relegate everything else to defense if you want. And you do want, because a wizard at that level that happens to stay alive will likely win the battle in any sort of longer term.

A pearl of speech can handle the talking. Taking other forms with comparable power can handle the rest, especially if you still have up foresight while you're doing all of this.

You're the one defining the task, so you can easily set up something more elaborate. It's not too difficult to win the charisma check either. Various spell effects can reduce the creature's charisma (lesser geas is a classic), various other effects can increase your charisma (eagle's splendor helps a bunch), and you can make a bunch of attempts if needed.

If you have foresight up and shapenchange up, that's half your 9th level spells (plus the extras that most builds will have), and you have it for 2 or 3 hours. You have protection from the fighter's suprise for 2 or 3 hours of the long day. Granted you would have it up when you thought an attack most likely - so you may be able to guess right, or you may hole up and hide under your bed for the other 21 hours. An additional problem with dire tortioise is that the fighter would be able to see when the wizard was in that form.

At the start of the thread, I said whether the fighter's surprise attack would suceed would depend on what spells the wizard had up. If the wizard who was attacked did have foresight up (or dire tortoise up) at the time, then that would probably be a case where the wizard won. If not, the fighter may win (although I'm sure there are other spells that owuld protect the wizard).

Edit:
The issue here is general versus specific. The rules for surprise rounds are general rules which celerity acts an exception to. The rules for actions you can naturally take within a turn are general rules which the conditions of sleep and helplessness act as an exception to (though, as is the case for death, it seems to be taken as an assumption by the rules that you cannot act while asleep, because helplessness doesn't strictly define a set of actions you cannot take, which means that you can theoretically do some weird stuff while sleeping).

I don't agree I'm afraid. What is the distinction between sleeping and surprise that means sleeping is classified as an exception of a specific and surprise is a general? Surprise would seem to me to be the exception - it is certainly the exception to a normal combat round where both sides get a turn.

We may be at a point where we have to agree to disagree on this point. I can certainly concede that it is not clear cut.

Gnaeus

2016-08-08, 07:31 AM

So he had 350,000 GP spent on his weapon alone?

That's MORE than a 17th level character's entire WBL. What level was this wizard again?

More to the point, if we are wading into crafting custom items by the broken formulas, the wizard is better at it than anyone else. Oh look, my robe automatically casts a greater dispel magic on my attacker's weapon whenever someone hits me with an attack. Or it automatically teleports me 800 feet straight up or any of a dozen other custom effects that are in line with that weapon. But I halved the cost of the robe by crafting it and then I multiplied it by a fraction by "limiting" it so that it only operates when it is worn by a Neutral Evil wizard named Steve. Your assassin can only get that toy by DM fiat. The Wizard can make better ones at a tiny sliver of market price. Pretending that the custom item guidelines are rules for player use only vaults every tier 1 above third level into hitherto unknown realms of power.

eggynack

2016-08-08, 07:37 AM

So it is, D&D tools was wrong.
Nah, you just gotta check the alternate sources for spells. The higher level and longer term version is from complete arcane. The spell compendium version overwrites that one.

If you have foresight up and shapenchange up, that's half your 9th level spells (plus the extras that most builds will have), and you have it for 2 or 3 hours. You have protection from the fighter's suprise for 2 or 3 hours of the long day. Granted you would have it up when you thought an attack most likely - so you may be able to guess right, or you may hole up and hide under your bed for the other 21 hours. An additional problem with dire tortioise is that the fighter would be able to see when the wizard was in that form.

At the start of the thread, I said whether the fighter's surprise attack would suceed would depend on what spells the wizard had up. If the wizard who was attacked did have foresight up (or dire tortoise up) at the time, then that would probably be a case where the wizard won. If not, the fighter may win (although I'm sure there are other spells that owuld protect the wizard).
The neat thing about wizards, though, is that you can become close to unassailable when you're not up for a fight, where not being up for a fight is here defined as not having the ability to bypass surprise. Something as low level as rope trick can do the job, and by 17 you have access to private demiplanes and such. And, besides, there's always ways to bypass those duration issues. As was mentioned, persisting these 9th level spells is plausible with outside resources, and extending them is possible on the relative cheap while investing neither levels nor feats.

I don't agree I'm afraid. What is the distinction between sleeping and surprise that means sleeping is classified as an exception of a specific and surprise is a general? Surprise would seem to me to be the exception - it is certainly the exception to a normal combat round where both sides get a turn.

We may be at a point where we have to agree to disagree on this point. I can certainly concede that it is not clear cut.
Sleep is a condition layered on in spell-form, while surprise is the baseline nature of the game. I mean, if you think about it, each pair of two things are in basically the same orientation within the books. You have surprise and the nature of standard actions hanging out in the general combat rules, and you have celerity and sleep as specific spells. And, anyway, the fact remains that spells break the rules, just by their very nature. Everything does, really. I don't think it's really reasonable to consider combat rules, the things that act as the foundational elements of the game, the specific to the general of spells, things that you're using to apply new rules as defined within said spells.

AvatarVecna

2016-08-08, 09:12 AM

Sure, if you happen to have it up when the fighter attacks. I said from thestart that the outcome of the scenario would depend what spells the wizard had activated at the point in time when the fighter attacked. Having foresight activated at the time, plus contingency celerity would do the trick against the particular scenario.

Foresight, cast by a 20th level wizard with no CL boosters and nothing else, lasts 200 minutes, or a little over three hours; obviously, this is less than "all day", but there's ways to increase it. Boosting CL to, say, 25 with a few different methods (various items and class features) can be done without too much investment, and a Greater Rod Of Extending can double the duration; both together gives us over 8 hours of Foresight, which lets us cover the entire day with maybe half the 9th lvl spell slots our practically optimized Wizard can expect. Hell, if we can get a Consumptive Field running beforehand, we can use that to boost our CL up to 37, giving us 12 hours on Foresight with the rod's help. There, now we're down to two spells per day; costly, for sure, but permanent Foresight is useful enough to warrant it.

...but we can take it a bit further if we're willing to get a bit crazy.

Reserves Of Strength+Consumptive Field (mimicked with Limited Wish) lets you murder a bee farm* for great effect...but that only last for the duration of the original Consumptive Field. Of course, if you cast a new CF with RoS and Extend Spell while under the effects of the first (and it's CL boosting powers), you'll get an Extended Reserves Of Strength'd Consumptive Field that boosts your CL to 1000000 for the next 4.5 months (at least, once you murder another bee farm while under the effects of the 2000000 round duration GCF.

At this point, you can cast Foresight (with the use of a Greater Rod Of Extending, because why not) and have that one spell last somewhere in the neighborhood of 38 years. That's not "one 9th lvl slot per day", that's "one 9th lvl slot per human mid-life crisis". Incidentally, having a 7 digit caster level makes dispelling your spells a tad difficult; at the very least, you need the person casting Dispel Magic to have used similar shenanigans to boost their own CL to 1 million and then used RoS on that Dispel Magic spell...which isn't unreasonable, at this level of char-op, but it means that it's not likely something you could just buy, since you can't really apply feats to spells you cast out of items IIRC.

The plan of murdering bee hives does come with a slight caveat, though: you need to be careful, since gathering swarms of bees together is also a path to ultimate power in and of itself, and it may turn out that the bee keeper (and every bee on their bee farm) is a powerful caster in their own right.

Let's say maybe 1 million bees? This source (http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/how-to-raise-honeybees-zmaz85zsie.aspx) claims a beehive could have up to 100k members, and I would assume a bee farm would have a good number of large hives, but for whatever reason my google-fu isn't returning many hard numbers on bee farm populations, so that 1 million is only a vague estimate. For what it's worth, this source (http://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=6564) claims a full-time beekeeper could be looking after up to 1000 hives, which seems to be backed up by this source (http://sfp.ucdavis.edu/pubs/SFNews/archives/94032/). Now, even assuming that an average beekeeper only looks after 1/10th that many hives, and each of their hives averages 1/10th that "maximum hive population", that's still 1 million bees (100 hives with 10k bees each, which is appropriate since a Fine Swarm in D&D is 10000 individual members), so I think it's a good estimate. I wish I was able to find a source that could I could quote for an actual number though, and if you're able to find one, I'd appreciate a link so I can bring it up the next time I mention this possibility.

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 09:21 AM

More to the point, if we are wading into crafting custom items by the broken formulas, the wizard is better at it than anyone else. Oh look, my robe automatically casts a greater dispel magic on my attacker's weapon whenever someone hits me with an attack. Or it automatically teleports me 800 feet straight up or any of a dozen other custom effects that are in line with that weapon. But I halved the cost of the robe by crafting it and then I multiplied it by a fraction by "limiting" it so that it only operates when it is worn by a Neutral Evil wizard named Steve. Your assassin can only get that toy by DM fiat. The Wizard can make better ones at a tiny sliver of market price. Pretending that the custom item guidelines are rules for player use only vaults every tier 1 above third level into hitherto unknown realms of power.

I allowed the PCs to use them as well, and they opted for several amazing items... The wizard in question had a rod of maximize with several added abilities, and intelligence.

Not wielded when he went into a prison cell.

It could be said that he should have had the supreme magic item as a robe or in his headband etc, but since I had already had someone they were fighting sunder their headbands once, he opted for something with more hitpounts.

He was under the same false impression of "attacks will never come from my own demiplane."

eggynack

2016-08-08, 09:26 AM

He was under the same false impression of "attacks will never come from my own demiplane."
How's that a false impression? How's someone attacking your secret private demiplane that's warded against divination?

Big Fau

2016-08-08, 09:33 AM

As for the weapon, look up rules for custom magic items. If anyone is getting a custom magic item that is super geared towards magicide... it's the person charged with killing super mages who threaten or attempt to take over.

The cost of this weapon was 350k if I remember correctly.

So you actually broke the rules for item creation. Got it. That's an Epic-level ability on a 17th level NPC. You also DM Fiated his ability to speak out of turn.

I'm done having this "debate" with you.

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 09:37 AM

How's that a false impression? How's someone attacking your secret private demiplane that's warded against divination?

Because when a wizard keeps disappearing with absolutely no trace, all it takes is a spellcraft roll and a planeshift.

Gnaeus

2016-08-08, 09:38 AM

I allowed the PCs to use them as well, and they opted for several amazing items... The wizard in question had a rod of maximize with several added abilities, and intelligence.

Not wielded when he went into a prison cell.

It could be said that he should have had the supreme magic item as a robe or in his headband etc, but since I had already had someone they were fighting sunder their headbands once, he opted for something with more hitpounts.

He was under the same false impression of "attacks will never come from my own demiplane."

Then, quite frankly, your wizard was pretty foolish/badly optimized, and you should stop talking about how many 9th level spells he had available. With free reign to abuse the custom item rules and 17+th WBL, my biggest problem at any given time would be whether to use my underwear of foresight or my contingent vest or my robe of wish. All of which would be specifically designed to only be usable by me so that I could cut the price to a level way below even the normal items a wizard would be wearing.

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 09:41 AM

So you actually broke the rules for item creation. Got it. That's an Epic-level ability on a 17th level NPC. You also DM Fiated his ability to speak out of turn.

I'm done having this "debate" with you.

Broke rules for item creation?

HOW?
I have gone over every inch of custom item cteation. I DO dm fiat away the xp cost of items, a rule pathfinder got rid of, but I go over rules very carefully.

There is absolutely ZERO item cost caps listed ANYWHERE.

eggynack

2016-08-08, 09:51 AM

Because when a wizard keeps disappearing with absolutely no trace, all it takes is a spellcraft roll and a planeshift.
The spellcraft roll allows you to determine that the wizard got away by using planeshift. I don't see anything in the text that allows you to determine where they planeshifted to, and that's necessary information if you plan to planeshift after them. You can't set your planeshift target as, "Where that wizard just went," any more than you can set that as the target of a teleport.

Broke rules for item creation?

HOW?
I have gone over every inch of custom item cteation. I DO dm fiat away the xp cost of items, a rule pathfinder got rid of, but I go over rules very carefully.

There is absolutely ZERO item cost caps listed ANYWHERE.
The epic magic item rules (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/magicItems/basics.htm) specify that an item with a GP cost over 200k is an epic magic item. Thus, you need to spend more and take craft epic wondrous item to make it.

MilleniaAntares

2016-08-08, 09:51 AM

Linear fighter, quadratic wizard has the issue of GMs like one of mine thinking that I - essentially the fighter - am overpowered for having some non-mundane non-combat capabilities (unlimited flight, high move speed, no fatigue, movement through some walls), whereas the "wizard" gets all the combat and non-combat capabilities they want (higher ac and damage than me, double move actions for all time) without issue.

Gnaeus

2016-08-08, 09:51 AM

Broke rules for item creation?

HOW?
I have gone over every inch of custom item cteation. I DO dm fiat away the xp cost of items, a rule pathfinder got rid of, but I go over rules very carefully.

There is absolutely ZERO item cost caps listed ANYWHERE.

Then the wizard 20 has access to wish at will. He can have pretty much all the spells on him all the time. He will never be surprised. Never lose initiative. His AC will be pretty much unhittable. He will have spell immunity to greater dispel. All before he puts his slippers on in the morning.

OldTrees1

2016-08-08, 09:52 AM

Broke rules for item creation?

HOW?
I have gone over every inch of custom item cteation. I DO dm fiat away the xp cost of items, a rule pathfinder got rid of, but I go over rules very carefully.

There is absolutely ZERO item cost caps listed ANYWHERE.

FYI: Epic Level Handbook details when an item crosses the cost cap and gets struck with the x10gp penalty.

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 09:53 AM

Then, quite frankly, your wizard was pretty foolish/badly optimized, and you should stop talking about how many 9th level spells he had available. With free reign to abuse the custom item rules and 17+th WBL, my biggest problem at any given time would be whether to use my underwear of foresight or my contingent vest or my robe of wish. All of which would be specifically designed to only be usable by me so that I could cut the price to a level way below even the normal items a wizard would be wearing.

That is not something I allow, and, as per the rules, isn't allowed. Cutting the item cost to be usable by a race or skill check is. I don't see specific people listed anywhere, and nothing below half.

Your underwear of foresight would be about 960,000 gold. Your vest of wish, per the rules? We are talking about 10,000,000. Divide by 2 I guess, you can also craft it yourself...

So 5,000,000 gold piece item...

So ummm yeah. If you started having it crafted now, you could have it done in how many years?

ryu

2016-08-08, 09:54 AM

Broke rules for item creation?

HOW?
I have gone over every inch of custom item cteation. I DO dm fiat away the xp cost of items, a rule pathfinder got rid of, but I go over rules very carefully.

There is absolutely ZERO item cost caps listed ANYWHERE.

Wrong. Past 200,000 or so I believe it was an item is considered epic and thus not allowed to see play pre-epic.

Blackhawk748

2016-08-08, 09:55 AM

Because when a wizard keeps disappearing with absolutely no trace, all it takes is a spellcraft roll and a planeshift.

Except when a Wizard makes their Demiplane they make it so that only they, and people they allow, can enter it, and there is not way to circumvent that.

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 10:02 AM

The spellcraft roll allows you to determine that the wizard got away by using planeshift. I don't see anything in the text that allows you to determine where they planeshifted to, and that's necessary information if you plan to planeshift after them. You can't set your planeshift target as, "Where that wizard just went," any more than you can set that as the target of a teleport.

The epic magic item rules (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/magicItems/basics.htm) specify that an item with a GP cost over 200k is an epic magic item. Thus, you need to spend more and take craft epic wondrous item to make it.

Thanks for that.

To be fair though, the dagger is the prize secret treasure of a royal family of a major kingdom, given to the person responsible for eliminating major magical threats. I see no problem with having to have it crafted by an epic crafter.

The rogue certainly didn't make it herself.

eggynack

2016-08-08, 10:08 AM

So ummm yeah. If you started having it crafted now, you could have it done in how many years?
Zero years, cause you can use shapechange or planar binding granted wishes to make the items nearly instantly and at no cost. Wizards be crazy like that.

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 10:10 AM

I actually had this argument with him.

The spellcaster creates a finite plane with limited access: a demiplane. Demiplanes created by this power are very small, very minor planes.

A character can only cast this spell while on the Ethereal Plane. When he or she casts the spell, a local density fluctuation precipitates the creation of a demiplane. At first, the fledgling plane grows at a rate of 1 foot in radius per day to an initial maximum radius of 180 feet as it rapidly draws substance from surrounding ethereal vapors and protomatter.

The spellcaster determines the environment within the demiplane when he or she first casts genesis, reflecting most any desire the spellcaster can visualize. The spellcaster determines factors such as atmosphere, water, temperature, and the general shape of the terrain. This spell cannot create life (including vegetation), nor can it create construction (such as buildings, roads, wells, dungeons, and so forth). The spellcaster must add these things in some other fashion if he or she desires. Once the basic demiplane reaches its maximum size, the spellcaster can continue to cast this spell to enlarge the demiplane, adding another 180 feet of radius to the demiplane each time

There is nothing that says "I cast planeshift to go to the demiplane created by xxx" does not work.

Big Fau

2016-08-08, 10:10 AM

Thanks for that.

To be fair though, the dagger is the prize secret treasure of a royal family of a major kingdom, given to the person responsible for eliminating major magical threats. I see no problem with having to have it crafted by an epic crafter.

The rogue certainly didn't make it herself.

You don't see an issue with NPCs having access to items far beyond what can be afforded by them (100,000 gp for a 17th level NPC) when the item itself would seriously destabilize the WBL of your party if they defeat the encounter?

You don't see the logistical problem of a single kingdom commissioning a dagger worth hundreds of thousands of gold?

You don't see an issue with allowing players to put spell effects on a trigger as simple as making attack rolls? The MIC has rules for such abilities: Either it triggers on critical hits only or it costs a Swift action to use.

Edit:

You move yourself or some other creature to another plane of existence or alternate dimension. If several willing persons link hands in a circle, as many as eight can be affected by the plane shift at the same time. Precise accuracy as to a particular arrival location on the intended plane is nigh impossible. From the Material Plane, you can reach any other plane, though you appear 5 to 500 miles (5d%) from your intended destination.

Note: Plane shift transports creatures instantaneously and then ends. The creatures need to find other means if they are to travel back.

Focus
A small, forked metal rod. The size and metal type dictates to which plane of existence or alternate dimension the spell sends the affected creatures.

Barstro

2016-08-08, 10:12 AM

To be fair though, the dagger is the prize secret treasure of a royal family of a major kingdom, given to the person responsible for eliminating major magical threats. I see no problem with having to have it crafted by an epic crafter.

Which is prima facie "DM Fiat". If it requires a DM to make a decision on whether something is allowed, then it is not RAW; no matter how logical the backstory is.

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 10:20 AM

Zero years, cause you can use shapechange or planar binding granted wishes to make the items nearly instantly and at no cost. Wizards be crazy like that.
My players are smart enough not to try using planar binding for wishes like that, I would twist the crap out of such a wish. Besides, you might want to look up wish. There are massive limits to prevent speciffically that.

And where in shapechange does it grant you wishes?

Supernatural and extraordinary abilities...

NOT SPELL LIKE. Last I checked, every creature with the ability to cast wish had it as a spell like ability, not supernatural.

MaxiDuRaritry

2016-08-08, 10:22 AM

My players are smart enough not to try using planar binding for wishes like that, I would twist the crap out of such a wish.As per the rules of wish, you can only twist the effects if they're out of line for the spell. And since wish explicitly grants the ability to create magic items, you're using houserules to screw over one side of the equation while boosting the other side, and the Oberoni Fallacy (https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Oberoni_Fallacy) has no bearing on this conversation.

Blackhawk748

2016-08-08, 10:22 AM

My players are smart enough not to try using planar binding for wishes like that, I would twist the crap out of such a wish. Besides, you might want to look up wish. There are massive limits to prevent speciffically that.

And where in shapechange does it grant you wishes?

Supernatural and extraordinary abilities...

NOT SPELL LIKE. Last I checked, every creature with the ability to cast wish had it as a spell like ability, not supernatural.

Zodars have Su Wish

eggynack

2016-08-08, 10:23 AM

There is nothing that says "I cast planeshift to go to the demiplane created by xxx" does not work.
That's not a plane that you know of. It's not the name or identity of a plane which you have the ability to plug into the spell. Yes, it's technically a description of the plane, but you have no idea what or where the plane is, and the spell doesn't either. Planeshift has no additional ability beyond what the spell says to fill in the gaps of your description for you. So, for example, you can't say, "I planeshift to that one plane that's all shadowy and junk." You have to specifically identify that you're going to the plane of shadows. Hell, you don't even strictly know that the character is planeshifting to a demiplane. For all you know they are going to the plane of shadows. You don't know, and you can't know, and your spell doesn't either.

Flickerdart

2016-08-08, 10:26 AM

NOT SPELL LIKE. Last I checked, every creature with the ability to cast wish had it as a spell like ability, not supernatural.

Noble djinn grant wishes as a natural ability (not SU, SP, or EX). Zodar, I believe, have a Supernatural wish.

There is nothing that says "I cast planeshift to go to the demiplane created by xxx" does not work.

Where did you find the tuning fork focus required for that specific plane? Oh, you didn't? Your spells fails because you don't have the focus. It's somewhere in your component pouch? Oh, feel free to pick any one you want from forks for every single plane and demiplane that exists. You might be here a while...

AvatarVecna

2016-08-08, 10:33 AM

Items costing more than 200000 gp are epic items that are...less than easy to locate and purchase, for a number of reasons. That said, the "x10" cost multiplier only comes into play if the effect itself is epic (for instance, mimicking 10th lvl or higher spells, mimicking spells cast with more than 20 caster level, enchanting a weapon with more than +5 enhancement or more than effective +10, making an ability mod'ing item granting more than +6 to an attribute, etc). For instance, an item of Continuous Foresight would cost 459000 (spell level*caster level*2000* duration modifier, so 9*17*2000*1.5), and would not be available to non-epic characters, but it wouldn't have the x10 multiplier since the effect is not epic; now, if it was instead an item granting use-activated Extended Foresight, that would get the x10 because that's a 10th lvl spell being replicated, but both are epic items in that they're unavailable to non-epic PCs.

Now, an item of continuous Foresight that can only be used be (say) a Chaotic Neutral Wizard would cost 183600 (spell level*caster level*2000*1.5*class restriction modifier*alignment restriction modifier, or {9*17*2000*1.5}*{1-[0.3+0.3]}, or 9*17*2000*1.5*0.4), which is totally purchasable by a non-epic character.

There is nothing that says "I cast planeshift to go to the demiplane created by xxx" does not work.

Plane Shift requires that special rod material component, and even if you can get around the material component, you still need more specific targeting than what you've specified here; it's not a divination spell that finds the information for you, you need to plug in the planar equivalent of coordinates. Gate doesn't have this restriction - it's a powerful 9th lvl spell, after all - but Gate also specifies that plane/demiplane rulers can refuse to allow Gates to open in their domain; deities are given as the example, but the wording is open enough that wizards ruling their own demiplane can also prevent this.

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 10:39 AM

That's not a plane that you know of. It's not the name or identity of a plane which you have the ability to plug into the spell. Yes, it's technically a description of the plane, but you have no idea what or where the plane is, and the spell doesn't either. Planeshift has no additional ability beyond what the spell says to fill in the gaps of your description for you. So, for example, you can't say, "I planeshift to that one plane that's all shadowy and junk." You have to specifically identify that you're going to the plane of shadows. Hell, you don't even strictly know that the character is planeshifting to a demiplane. For all you know they are going to the plane of shadows. You don't know, and you can't know, and your spell doesn't either.

You can assume. And if you believe it exists, and it DOES, is there any difference between knowing and believing at that point?

With all the wizards who use demiplanes, it is entirely a logical conclusion to believe the high level wizard who has deposed the rightful ruler has one. Since the wizard in hiding assisting the wizard slayer had numerous divination spells at hiis command, "probably a demi plane with divination protections" was a solid conclusion to come to. Since genesis must be cast on the ethereal plane, planeshifting there then planeshifting into the "The demiplane of xxx." would work.

As for the tuned focus: Eschew Materials.

Gnaeus

2016-08-08, 10:42 AM

That is not something I allow, and, as per the rules, isn't allowed. Cutting the item cost to be usable by a race or skill check is. I don't see specific people listed anywhere, and nothing below half.

Your underwear of foresight would be about 960,000 gold. Your vest of wish, per the rules? We are talking about 10,000,000. Divide by 2 I guess, you can also craft it yourself...

So 5,000,000 gold piece item...

So ummm yeah. If you started having it crafted now, you could have it done in how many years?

Aside from the correct answers everyone else gave.
1. I think your price is way high. 5 gp/xp x 5000/wish x 100 charges =2.5 million + (9x20x1800=324k) for command activated wish with unlimited charges. 1/2 for crafting, then we start applying cost reducers. It's under a million cost to me before I start working hard.
2. But Bastion did all the heavy lifting... http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=1000.0 . I can get that million way way down. Probably to under 10% of base cost.
3. Who cares how long it takes my dedicated wright to make an item while I sit by the pool drinking in my fast time plane? I can even adventure astrally while he does it if I care.

Seriously, while I agree with their discussion of epic v. non epic items, its a side point. Opening these rules doesn't help non-casters beat casters with one specific underpriced toy. It lets casters shatter game balance and WBL starting at level 3.

Flickerdart

2016-08-08, 10:43 AM

As for the tuned focus: Eschew Materials.

Let's take a look at the complete text of the feat Eschew Materials.

Eschew Materials [General]
Benefit
You can cast any spell that has a material component costing 1 gp or less without needing that component. (The casting of the spell still provokes attacks of opportunity as normal.) If the spell requires a material component that costs more than 1 gp, you must have the material component at hand to cast the spell, just as normal.

Please point out to the court where it allows you to bypass a spell's focus.

Blackhawk748

2016-08-08, 10:44 AM

Except thats not how plane shift works. You need to know where that plane is in the cosmological sense, and before you say "Its on the Etheral Plane" do you realize how freakin huge that is??? Its like trying to teleport to an island "In the World Ocean with Xs castle on it" and that doesnt work.

eggynack

2016-08-08, 10:45 AM

You can assume. And if you believe it exists, and it DOES, is there any difference between knowing and believing at that point?
Yes. You can't just guess where you're going. Even if you were sure they had a demiplane, you still can't just guess where that demiplane is, or what its effective name is.

With all the wizards who use demiplanes, it is entirely a logical conclusion to believe the high level wizard who has deposed the rightful ruler has one. Since the wizard in hiding assisting the wizard slayer had numerous divination spells at hiis command, "probably a demi plane with divination protections" was a solid conclusion to come to. Since genesis must be cast on the ethereal plane, planeshifting there then planeshifting into the "The demiplane of xxx." would work.
A logical conclusion just isn't sufficient, even if you didn't need the focus (which you do). You need to name the place you're going to, not an arbitrary fact about the place you're going to.

As for the tuned focus: Eschew Materials.
Plane shift doesn't have a material component to be eschewed. It has a focus, which isn't obviated by the feat.

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 10:45 AM

Barstro

2016-08-08, 10:47 AM

With all the wizards who use demiplanes,

This exact phrase is why your logic fails. There is an unknown number of demiplanes out there. SOMETHING is needed in order to locate the one that you want (a Wizard of the type you are seeking is hardly going to have things listed in the phonebook).

I seem I'm already beaten on the Focus discussion.

Flickerdart

2016-08-08, 10:47 AM

Not the wording on planeshift. You travel to any plane of existance is the wording.

Not "find the coordinates of demiplane on x y z..."

Name plane, you go there. You have to know the plane exists and tell the spell to take you there, that is all.

And provide the focus specifically tuned to that one plane, which Eschew Materials does not affect. You can't just pick a random fork off the ground and tell it to go.

Also, "the demiplane created by X" fails to work for a number of reasons:

X created multiple demiplanes.
X created no demiplanes - he is using a friend's, or had a contractor/slave/alternate universe double do it for him.
X's name is not X at all, but a pseudonym used by 1 or 1,000,000 beings across the multiverse.

eggynack

2016-08-08, 10:47 AM

Not the wording on planeshift. You travel to any plane of existance is the wording.

Not "find the coordinates of demiplane on x y z..."

Name plane, you go there. You have to know the plane exists and tell the spell to take you there, that is all.
Exactly. Name the plane. What is the name of the plane? "The plane where the wizard just went," is as good as, "The plane that has trees on it," as far as the spell is concerned. Both are facts about some arbitrary plane you're going to. Neither is a specific plane that you're travelling to.

Blackhawk748

2016-08-08, 10:48 AM

Not the wording on planeshift. You travel to any plane of existance is the wording.

Not "find the coordinates of demiplane on x y z..."

Name plane, you go there. You have to know the plane exists and tell the spell to take you there, that is all.

Except you don't know the name of the Wizards plane. They could have named it Bob for all you know. Going "I plane shift to that wizards Demiplane" doesn't work as that isn't its name.

Edit: NINJAAAAAS!!!

Barstro

2016-08-08, 10:49 AM

Not the wording on planeshift. You travel to any plane of existance is the wording.

Not "find the coordinates of demiplane on x y z..."

Name plane, you go there. You have to know the plane exists and tell the spell to take you there, that is all.

You travel to any plane of existence provided you have the correct tuning fork. It's a required focus.

eggynack

2016-08-08, 10:51 AM

Heh. I just checked out ignore material components, the epic extension of eschew materials. "You may cast spells without any material components. This feat does not affect the need for a focus or divine focus." Not especially pertinent, but it's amusing to me that even the epic version of the feat doesn't work on focuses.

Flickerdart

2016-08-08, 10:53 AM

Except you don't know the name of the Wizards plane. They could have named it Bob for all you know. Going "I plane shift to that wizards Demiplane" doesn't work as that isn't its name.

Edit: NINJAAAAAS!!!

Rather than naming it Bob, what about giving it a name in Dark Speech? It has this lovely caveat: "Attempting to utter a word of the Dark Speech always ends in immediate death for a speaker who is not trained in its dark power."

I hope you've got the feat. :smallsmile:

Blackhawk748

2016-08-08, 10:57 AM

Rather than naming it Bob, what about giving it a name in Dark Speech? It has this lovely caveat: "Attempting to utter a word of the Dark Speech always ends in immediate death for a speaker who is not trained in its dark power."

I hope you've got the feat. :smallsmile:

Well that is just brilliant. I was gonna name it "Steve, son of Steve, of Clan Steve, from the village of Steve, ruled by Lord Steve, in the County of Steve, under the Duke Steve, in the Kingdom of Steve, under King Steve, part of the Empire of Steve, ruled by the Great Emperor Steve Stevenson", but now im gonna do that but in Dark Speech.

Jormengand

2016-08-08, 10:58 AM

Blackhawk748

2016-08-08, 10:59 AM

But more to the point, aren't we just proving that the solution to wizards is wizards, not fighters?

Yes we are, and we all know that.

Flickerdart

2016-08-08, 11:01 AM

To be fair, nothing says you have to say its name (Otherwise I'd be tempted to make it the personal true name of some random dragon, and good luck with the truespeak check) but you would have to describe it unambiguously.
To be fair, I'm pretty sure that the requirements of speaking the truespeak check to use an Utterance are much more exact than simply giving directions to a place. Otherwise, all the Brooklynites trying to get to "New Yahk" would be hopelessly lost somewhere in the East River.

But more to the point, aren't we just proving that the solution to wizards is wizards, not fighters?
The solution to wizards seems to be not wizards, but rather post-fact house-ruling until you can't do anything anymore.

Well that is just brilliant. I was gonna name it "Steve, son of Steve, of Clan Steve, from the village of Steve, ruled by Lord Steve, in the County of Steve, under the Duke Steve, in the Kingdom of Steve, under King Steve, part of the Empire of Steve, ruled by the Great Emperor Steve Stevenson", but now im gonna do that but in Dark Speech.

Does the village of Steve sit on the banks of the river Lancre Steve by any chance?

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 11:20 AM

Except you don't know the name of the Wizards plane. They could have named it Bob for all you know. Going "I plane shift to that wizards Demiplane" doesn't work as that isn't its name.

Edit: NINJAAAAAS!!!

"The demiplane of xxx" Is more than enough. It would be the same as "I planeshift to the demiplane of Baal on the 532nd layer of the Abyss"

I, and my players, were under the assumption a focus counted as a material component and was eliminated with eschew materials, so that was never argued. Mostly the argument hinged on whether believing a plane existed was the same as knowing.

To be fair, however, I do not see anything that would prevent a wizard from using a spell to say... "what metal fork do I need to enter the demiplane of xxx." You aren't divining the plane itself, so the spell protections available to hide a demiplane wouldn't trigger.

I suppose a wizard with demiplanes could simply do "Where are all the metals that could possibly allow someone to enter my plane" and eliminate them, but a simple minor creation fixes that problem.

As for the limitless wish cost: half is all it says. It doesn't say the decreaes STACK. So you can halve the cost. So: ((17*9*2,000 + 5,000,000) * 2.5)/2 is the cost of the item. Any gm that allows further reductions is insane.

edit: to be fair, it seems many of you think I am insane for alliwing custom item creation in the first place.

Most people I play with do not try to abuse it.

If I ran a game for you guys, I think I might reconsider. :p

Flickerdart

2016-08-08, 11:25 AM

"The demiplane of xxx" Is more than enough. It would be the same as "I planeshift to the demiplane of Baal on the 532nd layer of the Abyss"
Again, that's not specific enough:

You may not know the wizard's actual name.
You may not know any accurate identifiers (not a wizard, not a man, not a human, etc).
The wizard's name might be shared with many similar, if not identical, entities.
He may have gone to a demiplane someone else created.

You have no way of knowing which of these are true.

To be fair, however, I do not see anything that would prevent a wizard from using a spell to say... "what metal fork do I need to enter the demiplane of xxx." You aren't divining the plane itself, so the spell protections available to hide a demiplane wouldn't trigger.
Which spell?

eggynack

2016-08-08, 11:29 AM

"The demiplane of xxx" Is more than enough. It would be the same as "I planeshift to the demiplane of Baal on the 532nd layer of the Abyss"

It'd be similar, except for the part where the second planeshift simply has more information. But, if you don't know anything about this plane aside from this arbitrary fact, then I completely disagree with your idea that it's enough. You're not giving some guy that already knows the general layout of the planes directions. You're telling a spell exactly where you're going, without any ambiguity. And you don't know where you're going, or even if the place exists.

Edit:

edit: to be fair, it seems many of you think I am insane for alliwing custom item creation in the first place.

Most people I play with do not try to abuse it.

If I ran a game for you guys, I think I might reconsider. :p
The problem isn't strictly that you're using some quantity of custom item creation so much as that it seems like you're the one abusing it in this case.

AvatarVecna

2016-08-08, 11:31 AM

The way most people block planar travel to their demiplane is covering it in Forbiddance spells that have been altered to exclude the demiplane's owner from the effect; nothing short of a Gate spell is getting through that...but then, Gate can be blocked with other things.

ryu

2016-08-08, 11:33 AM

OldTrees1

2016-08-08, 11:34 AM

I wish the Fighter had an ally/NPC wish "I wish to teleport the Fighter adjacent to [description of foe] regardless of local conditions".

Blackhawk748

2016-08-08, 11:36 AM

ryu

2016-08-08, 11:36 AM

I wish the Fighter had an ally wish "I wish to teleport the Fighter adjacent to [description of foe] regardless of local conditions".

And then proceeds to die immediately, because of local conditions.

AvatarVecna

2016-08-08, 11:36 AM

Like the fact that you are the Ruler of the Plane and can just deny them entrance. Demiplanes be wack like that.

Exactly. :smallbiggrin:

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 11:37 AM

Again, that's not specific enough:

You may not know the wizard's actual name.
You may not know any accurate identifiers (not a wizard, not a man, not a human, etc).
The wizard's name might be shared with many similar, if not identical, entities.
He may have gone to a demiplane someone else created.

You have no way of knowing which of these are true.

Which spell?

A minor locate object may be enough. In the case of minor creation it might require a divination spell to know what to create.

All of the protection spells available hide the location, prevent scrying etc. But once you believe it to exist, nothing stops you from going there.

There is an epic version of genesis I saw that may allow you to prevent people from entering, but well... epic.

AvatarVecna

2016-08-08, 11:38 AM

All of the protection spells available hide the location, prevent scrying etc. But once you believe it to exist, nothing stops you from going there.

Forbiddance is a thing that exists.

Blackhawk748

2016-08-08, 11:39 AM

A minor locate object may be enough. In the case of minor creation it might require a divination spell to know what to create.

All of the protection spells available hide the location, prevent scrying etc. But once you believe it to exist, nothing stops you from going there.

There is an epic version of genesis I saw that may allow you to prevent people from entering, but well... epic.

Well you can go ahead and believe, but you don't know where it is. Hell the plane could be located in a mordenkainen's mansion on the Astral plane, and theres no way in hell you're getting in that.

OldTrees1

2016-08-08, 11:41 AM

And then proceeds to die immediately, because of local conditions.

Perhaps. It depends on the local conditions, the source of those conditions, the fighter, and the wizard.

However it would be more enjoyable to read about than this planeshift nonsense.

ryu

2016-08-08, 11:45 AM

Perhaps. It depends on the local conditions, the source of those conditions, the fighter, and the wizard.

However it would be more enjoyable to read about than this planeshift nonsense.

Well for one did you know it's entirely possible to have planar effects that either specifically target an entity to the exclusion of all else, or that target everything excluding that entity? More so that you can do this with spell effects? At that point it's just a matter of naming as many horrible, deadly things that can happen to a person as you can. Demiplane using wizards can think of many.

Flickerdart

2016-08-08, 11:46 AM

A minor locate object may be enough. In the case of minor creation it might require a divination spell to know what to create.
Wrong.

Locate object: "You sense the direction of a well-known or clearly visualized object." You neither know this object, nor can you visualize it, because you don't know which fork you need and what it looks like.

Divination: Cleric-only spell, advice can be cryptic or wrong, can be fooled, can't request for specific information but rather only general advice.

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 11:57 AM

Forbiddance is a thing that exists.

And prevent the wizard himself from ever entering his plane.

I suppose he could park something there he never wanted found. But forbiddance stops ALL planar travel including the caster's.

MaxiDuRaritry

2016-08-08, 11:57 AM

I like situating my demiplanes in such a way that using wish or gate or plane shift to get there is a very, very bad idea for anyone who isn't told about the defenses in advance.

For instance, 90% of the demiplane consists of solid granite, with tunnels and chambers only wide enough for a Fine-size creature to exist in comfortably. The other 10% is a single open space large enough for a Colossal creature, but that 10% is filled with quintessence. So unless you're Fine- or Diminutive-sized (and capable of squeezing), you appear in the open space, coated in quintessence, whereupon you can be disposed of at my leisure.

Oh, you've decided to miracle, gate, plane shift, or wish me out? Good luck with that; I'm wearing poison rings which are spellblades of those exact spells, making me immune.

AvatarVecna

2016-08-08, 12:07 PM

And prevent the wizard himself from ever entering his plane.

I suppose he could park something there he never wanted found. But forbiddance stops ALL planar travel including the caster's.

As mentioned in my previous post, Forbiddance doesn't stop the Gate spell, so the caster can Gate into his own demiplane any time he wants...and anybody else trying to use Gate to get in gets told "lol nope" because the ruler of the demiplane can refuse to allow Gates into their domain.

OldTrees1

2016-08-08, 12:14 PM

Well for one did you know it's entirely possible to have planar effects that either specifically target an entity to the exclusion of all else, or that target everything excluding that entity? More so that you can do this with spell effects? At that point it's just a matter of naming as many horrible, deadly things that can happen to a person as you can. Demiplane using wizards can think of many.

Can't one become flat out immune to detrimental planar effects? Some spell WotC put in for going to hazardous planes.

I don't disagree with your conclusion. I just expect that argument to be more enjoyable to watch (I would not participate) than this planeshift argument.

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 12:17 PM

As mentioned in my previous post, Forbiddance doesn't stop the Gate spell, so the caster can Gate into his own demiplane any time he wants...and anybody else trying to use Gate to get in gets told "lol nope" because the ruler of the demiplane can refuse to allow Gates into their domain.

Forbiddance stops ALL PLANAR TRAVEL. It doesn't specifically name gate, but gate is planar travel.
Gate is stopped.

MaxiDuRaritry

2016-08-08, 12:18 PM

Aquillion

2016-08-08, 12:21 PM

There is a sentiment on this forum that because the Wizard pulls ahead of the Fighter by getting new abilities that allow them to solve new problems, the power imbalance must be the Wizard's "fault" and those abilities should be taken away. This sentiment is incredibly bad for the game, and taken to its logical conclusion it gets you things like 4e's complete lack of non-combat (or even non-damage) powers or Pathfinder's double secret non-errata errata. These are not good things. The solution to the Wizard getting high level abilities and the Fighter not getting them is not to take abilities away from the Wizard. It is to give them to the Fighter.

You are missing the point. How can those be the problem if we don't know what the game is supposed to look like? Couldn't it equally be said that cone of cold and meteor swarm are the problem because they aren't that powerful? Until you formalize what the game is supposed to be, you can't identify problems.

Or, you could realize that people getting new abilities means that they need new challenges. Just as you wouldn't expect a CR 3 Ogre to challenge a 10th level Fighter, you shouldn't expect a 3rd level adventure to challenge a 10th level Wizard (or Fighter for that matter). Consider some characters in the Second Apocalypse series. Achamain and Kellhus are both "Wizards" (technically: Gnostic Sorcerers). Kellhus is "higher level" than Achamain, in that he has access to tricks like teleportation, the Daimos (summoning demons), and the Meta-Gnosis. So he faces different challenges. Achamain spent the last several books on an extended overland journey. Kellhus traveling that same distance (actually, longer) doesn't even happen on screen.I am just outlining the problem, not seriously suggesting any particular solution (and certainly not suggesting that they remove wizards; I think we can all agree that that sucks as an answer.) My comment about how throwing AMF fields everywhere means you might as well remove T1 casters entirely was just to illustrate that that's not a really useful solution.

(And I was partially trying to get people back on-topic, since they'd gone off on a digression about mage-slayer builds or mage-vs-fighter PVP combat which really has nothing to do with the problem.)

But the issue is that the wizard gets a lot more new abilities than the fighter. If you keep throwing in new challenges for the wizard, you're going to end up in a story where the fighter has little to do. A book, where the writer has full control over every aspect of the characters, setting, and focus, can gloss over that. A game can't, at least not so easily.

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 12:26 PM

Can't one become flat out immune to detrimental planar effects? Some spell WotC put in for going to hazardous planes.

I don't disagree with your conclusion. I just expect that argument to be more enjoyable to watch (I would not participate) than this planeshift argument.

Fair enough. I am getting tired of arguing it myself. Ultimately, as gm, I can pretty much fiat anything I want as can any gm out there. Do wizards enjoy a wide array of late game power house moves? Sure. Can they be killed by non mages? Absolutely.

Anything a caster can do, there is another caster out there who can get someone there to kill him. Could my rogue have gotten to the wizard pc who had decided to take over without the assistance of another group of casters? No.

Are you going to get yourself killed if you decide to grossly harm the GM's carefully constructed world and destroy the game for the other PC's?

Absolutely.

Jormengand

2016-08-08, 12:27 PM

Selective spell, then standing in the area when you cast forbiddance, is a great way to get into your own demiplane while barring all other access.

ryu

2016-08-08, 12:37 PM

There are a few ways that I know of, actually. The planar bubble spell, the planar shepherd's planar bubble ability, the vestments of steadfast spellcasting, and the adapt body power all make you immune to negative planar traits (and some positive ones, on a case-by-case basis).

[edit] Oh, and astral projection does it, as well.

Congratulations. That's layer one. Next we get into the horrors of anchored objects within the otherwise featureless void of the plane casting harmful spells at people who aren't you. Disjunction among them. As a word of advice never ever cast disjunction yourself. There's a method available to everyone that makes the caster lose spellcasting ability for it involving infinite supplies of costless, otherwise useless artifacts from spell component pouches. Casting by proxy from an object or similar is fine though.

AvatarVecna

2016-08-08, 12:39 PM

Fair enough. I am getting tired of arguing it myself. Ultimately, as gm, I can pretty much fiat anything I want as can any gm out there. Do wizards enjoy a wide array of late game power house moves? Sure. Can they be killed by non mages? Absolutely.

Anything a caster can do, there is another caster out there who can get someone there to kill him. Could my rogue have gotten to the wizard pc who had decided to take over without the assistance of another group of casters? No.

Are you going to get yourself killed if you decide to grossly harm the GM's carefully constructed world and destroy the game for the other PC's?

Absolutely.

Nobody is denying that casters can be killed. The only reason anybody is arguing with you in the first place is because you were insisting that noncasters could do it themselves; in truth, an actually optimized caster (unlike the clowns you've been playing with) can't be touched by a non-caster unless the non-caster has caster assistance themselves.

Also, I could've sworn that either Forbiddance or Gate called out the latter as bypassing the former, but apparently neither does. Still, that just means that you can use the Method Jormengand mentioned to enter your own demiplane risk-free.

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 12:42 PM

I guess what I am trying to say is that the role of the gm is to tell a story and, above all, make sure everyone enjoys themselves.

There are plenty of ways to swing a sword at challenges difficult for a wizard to take on at high levels.

I outright require players to clear sources of spells and abilities. Anything outside of the core rulebook and apg is iffy ( I have completely switched to pathfinder now)

Yes, the rules can be abused, yes there are flaws, yes if the casters try to overly dominate some gm intervention may be required.

Side note: The player in question accepted his character's defeat graciously and rolled up a new character, this time one who didn't go on a rampage and try to take over.

I later had his character come back as undead as an encounter. Seemed to go over quite well.

Deadline

2016-08-08, 12:44 PM

Fair enough. I am getting tired of arguing it myself. Ultimately, as gm, I can pretty much fiat anything I want as can any gm out there. Do wizards enjoy a wide array of late game power house moves? Sure. Can they be killed by non mages? Absolutely.

No, not really, except for three possibilities:

1. The person running the non-mage is dramatically better at optimizing than the wizard player, and/or the wizard players does something stupid to get themselves killed.
2. The person running the non-mage is the DM, and fiats the wizard's death (this includes contrived combat situations - fiat to get the "mage-slayer" into striking range where it would otherwise be impossible).
3. Rules mistakes are made.

It sounds like in your specific cases, it was mostly #1 with a couple bits of #3 thrown in. I'd suggest #2 for the epic weapon, but it sounds like that only really happened due to #3.

Are you going to get yourself killed if you decide to grossly harm the GM's carefully constructed world and destroy the game for the other PC's?

Absolutely.

Well, the social contract should be well in place, and you should be gaming with friends. But that doesn't mean that Wizards aren't supremely powerful, it just means that their players are likely neutering their own power rather dramatically so the Fighter can still feel useful.

It also doesn't address what happens when the Wizard decides to be a team player instead of doing everything by themselves, and the party proceeds to curbstomp the GM's encounters. GM either needs to up their game, or talk to the players about toning things down. I suppose using fiat to "rocks fall, everyone dies" the party is an option, but it's not a particularly good one.

JNAProductions

2016-08-08, 12:47 PM

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 12:49 PM

Selective spell, then standing in the area when you cast forbiddance, is a great way to get into your own demiplane while barring all other access.

Except forbiddance doesn't target people. It has no targets, it targets an area. It has no effect on people whatsoever, so excluding yourself would be useless.

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 12:54 PM

You realize core is broken as all hell, right?

Aside from polymorph any object, the most broken spell ever created ever, not really. I like a lot of what pathfinder did to the 3.5 rules.

JNAProductions

2016-08-08, 12:58 PM

Aside from polymorph any object, the most broken spell ever created ever, not really. I like a lot of what pathfinder did to the 3.5 rules.

...

Really?

Druids have a Fighter-Lite in the form of an Animal Companion, who, at many levels, is MORE EFFECTIVE than a regular Fighter. Plus the Druid is a gorram full-caster with Wildshape.

PAO is broken as hell. But don't pretend that the rest of core is fine.

Edit: Unless you're referring specifically to PF, not 3E in general. In which case, I'm not sure how well-balanced it is.

Deadline

2016-08-08, 01:00 PM

PAO is broken as hell. But don't pretend that the rest of core is fine.

Edit: Unless you're referring specifically to PF, not 3E in general. In which case, I'm not sure how well-balanced it is.

Most of the worst offenders in the category of "broken stuff" are in core. I know some of them were nerfed in PF, but it's nowhere near as rosy as PF-fans would have you believe. It's still way better to be a caster than a mundane in PF. The Path of War stuff is nice though (assuming you are ok with the ToB subsystem).

MaxiDuRaritry

2016-08-08, 01:09 PM

Aside from polymorph any object, the most broken spell ever created ever, not really. I like a lot of what pathfinder did to the 3.5 rules.You forgot a few, like prestidigitation, detect magic, the silent image line, protection from [alignment], true strike, floating disk, telekinesis, color spray, sleep, alter self, polymorph, shapechange, the planar binding line, gate, astral projection, shrink item, greater/fabricate, summon monster I-IX, summon nature's ally, grease, spike stones, entangle, control winds, wind wall, control weather, simulacrum, clone, greater invisibility, greater/teleport, plane shift, disjunction, and on and on and on.

Beheld

2016-08-08, 01:11 PM

Aside from polymorph any object, the most broken spell ever created ever, not really. I like a lot of what pathfinder did to the 3.5 rules.

It's funny because Planar Binding is both more broken than Polymorph Any Object, and also Core, so it makes your statement double wrong at the same time.

But then you run into the problem I already mentioned with shapechange - your two hour limit. Your answer is that you can accomplish a lot in 2 hours of adventuring. But who says that the the fighter attacks you while adventuring. What if he attacks you while you are strolling the city streets, or attending the grand ball (as a dire tortoise I'm sure).

Then you do those things during the duration of your buff spells, because of course you do, because there is no reason for you to ever leave your MMM, or fortress, or demiplane except when you have your buff spells. (And in each case, you'll probably be Astral Projected anyway.)

Unfortunately though, the fighter who attacks your wizard attacks with surprise, so lets assume the encounter does not happen at your appointed "adventruing" time.

Except for that whole thing where he is actually incapable of surprising you ever, because you only leave your MMM with buff spells active and you greater teleport around, so anyone who can't Greater Teleport at will is never going to be able to find you.

As for astral projection, I think I got it spot on.

No you don't, you have committed yourself to incredibly dumb positions, so now you are going to attempt the most ridiculous interpretations to try and argue that Wizards can't use Planar Binding to Planar Bind things.

You admit most wizards don't cast astral projection - which means it wouldn't protect most wizards from the surprise fighter.

.............. No one ever claimed that all Wizard PCs ever are invulnerable. We all freely admit that stupid people exist, you've definitely proven that. But the point remains that the only reason people don't all adventure as Astral Projections from level 9 on is because it would remove the vast majority of the challenge, and so they deliberately hold themselves back. It remains true that all Wizards can do that at no cost if they want.

But that aside, I think you are misinterpreting what a single service is. Ask a bus driver or a ferry captiain whether "ferrying someone around for an extended time is still one service". I think you'll find it is not, in that world of the sane you refer to. But you are not merely asking it to ferry you around all day, instead you are asking it to ferry you around and cast is projection spell - that is two services even if the ferrying all day was just one.

1) Every single time you get in a taxi or on a bus, you are forcing them to ferry you around for an extended time. So it sure looks like they think that is one service.

2) You are now claiming that the act of casting Astral Projection is different from the act of Astral Projecting. Do you not see how your commitment to your conclusion "I can't let the Wizard use his spells to Astral Project because then I would be wrong" is causing you to make bad arguments.

As for the duration of the spell, there are multiple ways for it to end - one way is that ends when the creature finishes the "one task". So once has taken you from poitn A to B the duration of the spell is over (if that is the task you give it).

Please read the spell Astral Projection before talking about the spell Astral Projection. Please please please, please please please. Please please. Please.

If the Nightmare literally dies in a fire two seconds after he takes you back to the material plane, then you are still Astral Projecting for the next 1000000000000000 years, if you so choose (and avoid dying). So once it Astral Projects you to the material plane, you can just send it home, service rendered, and never worry about it again.

Yes, you can repeat the charisma check the next day. But again, that restricts your wizard just like the shapenchange spell menaing it can only leave the house for 2 hours a day, the charisma check means it cant leave the house at all several days. "Sorry, I know I'm an all powerful wizard, but I cannot come down to the tavern today because I failed my charisma check".

Once again, your complete failure to understand how off days and the linear progression of time works is still very annoying. If you are a Wizard using Lesser Planar Binding, you Lesser Planar Bind things on your day off, and then you make the first Charisma check, because of course you do, and then you have them sitting around ready for services or performing services on your on days. That's literally the entire point of spells you cast on off days, is to have cast them in advance. And since in particular you only need Nightmares to perform the task once per times your astral body is literally killed, you can have a veritable stable saved up waiting to Astral Project you at a moments notice.

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 01:18 PM

You forgot a few, like prestidigitation, detect magic, the silent image line, protection from [alignment], true strike, floating disk, telekinesis, color spray, sleep, alter self, polymorph, shapechange, the planar binding line, gate, astral projection, shrink item, greater/fabricate, summon monster I-IX, summon nature's ally, grease, spike stones, entangle, control winds, wind wall, control weather, simulacrum, clone, greater invisibility, greater/teleport, plane shift, disjunction, and on and on and on.

None of those are truly broken.

Try abusing planar binding. When all of a sudden you are jumped say 500 lantern archons for having bound 12 planetars to lengthy service...

and most of those other spells I see no problem with whatsoever.

MaxiDuRaritry

2016-08-08, 01:23 PM

None of those are truly broken.

Try abusing planar binding. When all of a sudden you are jumped say 500 lantern archons for having bound 12 planetars to lengthy service...

and most of those other spells I see no problem with whatsoever."I planar bind a genie and tell it that I will be fair and make one wish on its behalf out of the three it has to give, if it agrees to grant the other two in a fair and equitable manner, with the proviso that if it doesn't want to take the deal, I will simply send it back and get another one, and it can be the one to get free wishes out of the deal. I will, of course, leave open the option for future dealings. And if the DM decides to jerk me around, that's when I dominate or diplomancy it, or buff myself and debuff it all to hell, and proceed to get free wishes anyway."

Also, the above discussion on planar binding nightmares for freebie astral projections.

That's two ways to get free 9th level spells using the planar binding line.

You can also neuter epic golems with grease, and create tornado-force winds with control winds and control weather, and summon healing unicorns or better-fighters-than-the-party-fighter with summon monster, or deal dozens of d6s in damage with a properly prepared telekinesis (and hundreds to thousands of d6s if you combine it with shrink item), teleport spells can bypass hundreds of potential encounters, and so on.

Meanwhile, fighters have "I hit it," and "I hit it harder."

Jormengand

2016-08-08, 01:24 PM

Except forbiddance doesn't target people. It has no targets, it targets an area. It has no effect on people whatsoever, so excluding yourself would be useless.

Uhm... selective spell only works on spells with areas, and doesn't work on ones with targets, so by this point I'm just going to wonder aloud if you're actually reading the rules before you say all this nonsense because seriously, come on. It does have an effect on people, obviously, unless you're going to count being unable to teleport to an area and possibly taking damage if you walk in as "No effect... whatsoever", in which case that's even more ridiculous.

Big Fau

2016-08-08, 01:52 PM

You also referred in your previous post to having superior invs AND shapechange AND foresight up. At another place you referred to having both foresight and shapechange up while out of your fortress. So I have no doubt you were initially suggesting that you wizard would have all three

Foresight and Shapechange both last 3 hours at 18th level without using CL boosters or Metamagic Rods of Extend. With CL boosters you can push 50 hour durations in a single casting of both spells. Superior Invisibility has already been dealt with, but there is a better way: Deeper Darkness+ a Ring of Darkhidden (completely invisible to all sight, including True Seeing, still able to use Blindsight).

But then you run into the problem I already mentioned with shapechange - your two hour limit. Your answer is that you can accomplish a lot in 2 hours of adventuring. But who says that the the fighter attacks you while adventuring. What if he attacks you while you are strolling the city streets, or attending the grand ball (as a dire tortoise I'm sure).

3 hours. 6 with a metamagic rod. 12 with Sudden Extend or Master Transmorgrofist (24 with both). More with CL boosters.

Then we get to the third problem - that dire tortoises have severe limitations for adventring. Sure if you are adventuring in the sea or on a plain they are fine. But what if you want to go inside - you answer is that you can take a free action to change into something else. Quite right, you can, but then you are no longer immune to surprise and once again you are vulenerable to the fighter's surprise attack (especially since you have now forsaken foresight). So all the fighter would have to do to get around our idea of avoiding surprise by being a tortoise would be to wait until you changed out of dire tortoise form (which it sounds like you do a lot) then attack.

Stop. Tortoises are land-dwelling reptiles. There is also no limit to free actions during surprise rounds. There are also divinations you can do 24 hours in advance to know if it is safe for you to be out of dire tortoise form. If it isn't, you instead use your Familiar (or more conveniently through Create Fetch and a means of communicating that doesn't involve you being in the same room; said Familiar would work if it is a raven).

Unless another restirction you will place on your vulnerable wizard, in addition to only being allowed out of the fortress 2 hours a day, is that he is not allowed to go into any enclosed spaces too small for an elephant.

Reduce is a spell.

As for astral projection, I think I got it spot on.

No, you don't. You REALLY don't.

But that aside, I think you are misinterpreting what a single service is. Ask a bus driver or a ferry captiain whether "ferrying someone around for an extended time is still one service". I think you'll find it is not, in that world of the sane you refer to. But you are not merely asking it to ferry you around all day, instead you are asking it to ferry you around and cast is projection spell - that is two services even if the ferrying all day was just one.

Planar Binding and telling it to "Use Astral Projection" is a single service. You do not tell it to perform that as your Planar Binding deal. You tell it to assist you for X duration, including using its special abilities.

Or you can just hit it with Dominate Monster and say "screw the check".

As for the duration of the spell, there are multiple ways for it to end - one way is that ends when the creature finishes the "one task". So once has taken you from poitn A to B the duration of the spell is over (if that is the task you give it).

If you set the condition during the bargaining process that the creature is free to go once it has completed a single task, then yes. But that is foolish and short-sighted.

Yes, you can repeat the charisma check the next day. But again, that restricts your wizard just like the shapenchange spell menaing it can only leave the house for 2 hours a day, the charisma check means it cant leave the house at all several days. "Sorry, I know I'm an all powerful wizard, but I cannot come down to the tavern today because I failed my charisma check".

Nightmares have a 12 Cha. You can hit it with spells that lower/damage its Cha to inflict a penalty to the Cha check, and you can buff your Cha check in multiple ways. Or, again, Dominate Monster.

Oh, and one more thing: Shapechanging into a Nightmare allows you to use its Astral Projection at will, skipping the Planar Binding entirely.

Psyren

2016-08-08, 01:53 PM

I'll still disagree with that can't-contribute-much part. Well, actually, nvm. I think you're right. Fighters aren't good for much, but they're decent at what they do. Yeah, a Wizard can do it better (I'm thinking summoning here), but uhh... hmm, not sure I have a good point here.

I do. The idea here is an economic principle called Comparative Advantage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage); it's a theory that explains why it's often more beneficial for an actor to specialize in one thing and then partner with other specialists, than it is for that actor to try to do everything by themselves, even if they are physically capable of doing everything/going it alone.

The analogy I've seen used is a large country that can produce a variety of fruits - plums, pears, apricots, apples, and bananas - considering whether to trade with a small island nation that can only produce bananas, and furthermore has less land mass and so actually produces less bananas than the larger nation can make by itself (i.e. large one has Absolute Advantage in bananas). Both countries have finite land mass - the large nation of course having much more than the small island nation. Should they work together?

The answer is almost always yes because of scarcity - the large nation, even though it can grow bananas on its own, is still giving up land area that it could have used to produce the fruits that only it can (the apples, pears etc) to do so. By specializing and working together, both nations are better off. The more the large nation can do, the higher its opportunity cost for allocating that land becomes, because growing bananas in that land means not growing many other things. Comparatively, the island nation is giving up nothing - all they can grow are bananas, so growing bananas means they're not foregoing anything.

So bringing this back to D&D, instead of two nations we have two classes, the fighter and the wizard. The wizard has an Absolute Advantage - they can do everything the fighter does (via shapeshifting, summoning, or domination) while also doing things the fighter can't (blasting, divination, teleportation etc.) Should the wizard bring the fighter along?

The answer here is usually yes too, because the wizard has limited resources (slots and actions, especially with the shapeshifting option) with which to emulate a fighter. Those resources could instead be used specializing in the things that only the wizard can do, and leave the fighting to the fighter.

Therefore the designer's job isn't actually to remove a wizard's ability to emulate a fighter completely; rather, it's to make that scarcity matter. If there's an ally around who wants to be the fighter, the cost to the wizard of doing so himself should be high enough that he doesn't want to. 3.5 does attempt this strategy, though I think Pathfinder ultimately does a much better job - and so, even in decently optimized parties you can see a T4 class like the PF Fighter or Barbarian hanging around with T1 powerhouses like Cleric and Wizard.

Big Fau

2016-08-08, 01:56 PM

None of those are truly broken.

Try abusing planar binding. When all of a sudden you are jumped say 500 lantern archons for having bound 12 planetars to lengthy service...

and most of those other spells I see no problem with whatsoever.

You don't see a problem with this?

The spell projects an astral copy of you and all you wear or carry onto the Astral Plane. Since the Astral Plane touches upon other planes, you can travel astrally to any of these other planes as you will. To enter one, you leave the Astral Plane, forming a new physical body (and equipment) on the plane of existence you have chosen to enter.

"Oh hey, I have a second Ring of Three Wishes. For free."

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 02:00 PM

You don't see a problem with this?

"Oh hey, I have a second Ring of Three Wishes. For free."

And using a wish uses the wish for both. If your gm rules differently?

He's an idiot.

TheIronGolem

2016-08-08, 02:03 PM

So bringing this back to D&D, instead of two nations we have two classes, the fighter and the wizard. The wizard has an Absolute Advantage - they can do everything the fighter does (via shapeshifting, summoning, or domination) while also doing things the fighter can't (blasting, divination, teleportation etc.) Should the wizard bring the fighter along?

The answer here is usually yes too, because the wizard has limited resources (slots and actions, especially with the shapeshifting option) with which to emulate a fighter. Those resources could instead be used specializing in the things that only the wizard can do, and leave the fighting to the fighter.

That's true if the choice is "do the fighting myself, or bring a fighter to do it", but it isn't. The choice is "do the fighting myself, or bring a fighter to do it, or bring a wizard to do it, or bring a druid to do it, etc". The fighter should be the best of those choices, but isn't.

Big Fau

2016-08-08, 02:04 PM

And using a wish uses the wish for both. If your gm rules differently?

He's an idiot.

Show me a rule that says a copy uses the charges of the original. Because DM Fiat doesn't change the fact that the RAW is absurdly overpowered.

Psyren

2016-08-08, 02:07 PM

That's true if the choice is "do the fighting myself, or bring a fighter to do it", but it isn't. The choice is "do the fighting myself, or bring a fighter to do it, or bring a wizard to do it, or bring a druid to do it, etc". The fighter should be the best of those choices, but isn't.

If all we cared about was bringing the best X to do anything, then we'd all just play Pun-Pun. That's clearly not the case.

People play what they want to play, and even if there are options that possess more raw power, all you need is to be good enough. A fighter with PC wealth can (at least in PF) take on/contribute to CR-appropriate combat challenges. That's the metric that matters.

AvatarVecna

2016-08-08, 02:10 PM

And using a wish uses the wish for both. If your gm rules differently?

He's an idiot. (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/91/96/e5/9196e56d9ccb1e014a776fb1c5ea6c41.jpg)

*blows raspberry*

JNAProductions

2016-08-08, 02:11 PM

And using a wish uses the wish for both. If your gm rules differently?

He's an idiot.

I think he just called Emperor Tippy an idiot.

Troacctid

2016-08-08, 02:14 PM

I do. The idea here is an economic principle called Comparative Advantage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage); it's a theory that explains why it's often more beneficial for an actor to specialize in one thing and then partner with other specialists, than it is for that actor to try to do everything by themselves, even if they are physically capable of doing everything/going it alone.

The analogy I've seen used is a large country that can produce a variety of fruits - plums, pears, apricots, apples, and bananas - considering whether to trade with a small island nation that can only produce bananas, and furthermore has less land mass and so actually produces less bananas than the larger nation can make by itself (i.e. large one has Absolute Advantage in bananas). Both countries have finite land mass - the large nation of course having much more than the small island nation. Should they work together?

The answer is almost always yes because of scarcity - the large nation, even though it can grow bananas on its own, is still giving up land area that it could have used to produce the fruits that only it can (the apples, pears etc) to do so. By specializing and working together, both nations are better off. The more the large nation can do, the higher its opportunity cost for allocating that land becomes, because growing bananas in that land means not growing many other things. Comparatively, the island nation is giving up nothing - all they can grow are bananas, so growing bananas means they're not foregoing anything.

So bringing this back to D&D, instead of two nations we have two classes, the fighter and the wizard. The wizard has an Absolute Advantage - they can do everything the fighter does (via shapeshifting, summoning, or domination) while also doing things the fighter can't (blasting, divination, teleportation etc.) Should the wizard bring the fighter along?

The answer here is usually yes too, because the wizard has limited resources (slots and actions, especially with the shapeshifting option) with which to emulate a fighter. Those resources could instead be used specializing in the things that only the wizard can do, and leave the fighting to the fighter.

Therefore the designer's job isn't actually to remove a wizard's ability to emulate a fighter completely; rather, it's to make that scarcity matter. If there's an ally around who wants to be the fighter, the cost to the wizard of doing so himself should be high enough that he doesn't want to. 3.5 does attempt this strategy, though I think Pathfinder ultimately does a much better job - and so, even in decently optimized parties you can see a T4 class like the PF Fighter or Barbarian hanging around with T1 powerhouses like Cleric and Wizard.
But that just means that having an extra fighter is more beneficial than having no one. It doesn't solve the more important balance problem, which is that if wizards (or more accurately clerics and druids) are better fighters than fighters, why would anyone choose to play a fighter? It's practically an NPC class in comparison.

Not to mention the egregious design flaws in a lot of 3.5's fighter-type classes, like dead levels and unappealing class feature progressions, but PF at least made some strides there.

Edit: Swordsage'd.

Flickerdart

2016-08-08, 02:26 PM

But that just means that having an extra fighter is more beneficial than having no one.
There are cases where I would prefer having no one to having a fighter. For example, if I am fighting a powerful cyclops.

MaxiDuRaritry

2016-08-08, 02:32 PM

There are cases where I would prefer having no one to having a fighter. For example, if I am fighting a powerful cyclops.Please tell me this isn't a sexual metaphor.

AvatarVecna

2016-08-08, 02:36 PM

Please tell me this isn't a sexual metaphor.

I'm about 99% certain it's a mythology reference to how Odysseus defeated Polyphemus, but I'll admit the other 1% of me is pretty sure it's a masterbation joke.

Psyren

2016-08-08, 02:49 PM

But that just means that having an extra fighter is more beneficial than having no one. It doesn't solve the more important balance problem, which is that if wizards (or more accurately clerics and druids) are better fighters than fighters, why would anyone choose to play a fighter? It's practically an NPC class in comparison.

And yet, despite exhortations like these, Fighters still see play. Why do you think that is?

I can't speak for any gaming group's motivations but my own, but my likely guess is simplicity; Wizards, Druids et al. are only better fighters once you line up all the right buffs, summons, transformations, companions, ACFs and so on. Picking up a cleric instead of a fighter is a whole other chapter of the PHB that player needs to learn; picking up a druid adds that same additional chapter plus an entire book. Those players who choose Fighter or are steered to it by their GMs get to evade all of that. And for more experienced groups, the likely answer becomes challenge; it's easy to take on a Balor as a Cleric, but doing it as a Fighter or Paladin is a much more noteworthy battler. You even see it on forums - "help my wizard kill this dragon" is a pretty dull topic, but I'd wager that "help my monk kill this dragon" would get an optimizers gears turning and juices flowing.

Flickerdart

2016-08-08, 02:53 PM

Please tell me this isn't a sexual metaphor.

When I need a sexual metaphor, I prefer monks using a flurry of blows with the Rod of Lordly Might.

You even see it on forums - "help my wizard kill this dragon" is a pretty dull topic, but I'd wager that "help my monk kill this dragon" would get an optimizers gears turning and juices flowing.
Retrain to Swordsage. :smallamused:

Gnaeus

2016-08-08, 02:57 PM

I do. The idea here is an economic principle called Comparative Advantage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage); it's a theory that explains why it's often more beneficial for an actor to specialize in one thing and then partner with other specialists, than it is for that actor to try to do everything by themselves, even if they are physically capable of doing everything/going it alone.

The analogy I've seen used is a large country that can produce a variety of fruits - plums, pears, apricots, apples, and bananas - considering whether to trade with a small island nation that can only produce bananas, and furthermore has less land mass and so actually produces less bananas than the larger nation can make by itself (i.e. large one has Absolute Advantage in bananas). Both countries have finite land mass - the large nation of course having much more than the small island nation. Should they work together?

The answer is almost always yes because of scarcity - the large nation, even though it can grow bananas on its own, is still giving up land area that it could have used to produce the fruits that only it can (the apples, pears etc) to do so. By specializing and working together, both nations are better off. The more the large nation can do, the higher its opportunity cost for allocating that land becomes, because growing bananas in that land means not growing many other things. Comparatively, the island nation is giving up nothing - all they can grow are bananas, so growing bananas means they're not foregoing anything.

So bringing this back to D&D, instead of two nations we have two classes, the fighter and the wizard. The wizard has an Absolute Advantage - they can do everything the fighter does (via shapeshifting, summoning, or domination) while also doing things the fighter can't (blasting, divination, teleportation etc.) Should the wizard bring the fighter along?

The answer here is usually yes too, because the wizard has limited resources (slots and actions, especially with the shapeshifting option) with which to emulate a fighter. Those resources could instead be used specializing in the things that only the wizard can do, and leave the fighting to the fighter.

Therefore the designer's job isn't actually to remove a wizard's ability to emulate a fighter completely; rather, it's to make that scarcity matter. If there's an ally around who wants to be the fighter, the cost to the wizard of doing so himself should be high enough that he doesn't want to. 3.5 does attempt this strategy, though I think Pathfinder ultimately does a much better job - and so, even in decently optimized parties you can see a T4 class like the PF Fighter or Barbarian hanging around with T1 powerhouses like Cleric and Wizard.

Only if the fighter is meaningfully more relevant than the planar bindings and created undead and golems and other assorted minions. The fighter, after all, is likely to want 1/4 of the treasure. And the wizard loses very little by bringing an army of slaves with him. In the comparative advantage analogy, the 3rd world neighbor isn't just asking for a share in the marginal improvement in efficiency enjoyed by the advanced ally. It is asking for a flat % share in the bigger nations GDP. Not to mention their research budget, since the EXP he is eating is slowing down the caster's leveling.

If you are running, say, an adventure path or a randomized sandbox, where challenges and loot are not customized to party size/composition, it is likely to be an absolute disadvantage to the casters to bring the fighter rather than divide up whatever portion of his share is left after you pay the hound archons and buy more onyx to replace the lost skeletons.

The reason we keep the fighter has little to do with comparative advantage and a lot more to do with the fact that he is in your living room with his dice and you can't throw him out and he refused to play a warblade.

Of course, for an optimized party, most adventure paths aren't incredibly challenging and paying the beatstick doesn't hurt you much. But it would be an interesting comparison if someone compared the final levels and wealth of a 3 man Wizard Cleric Rogue team and the same group plus a fighter.

Deadline

2016-08-08, 03:00 PM

Retrain to Swordsage. :smallamused:

Oh! Hey! There's another reason someone might want to play a Fighter! They want a melee class and the ToB is banned. And they don't like any of the more competent melee classes for some reason...

AvatarVecna

2016-08-08, 03:06 PM

Oh! Hey! There's another reason someone might want to play a Fighter! They want a melee class and the ToB is banned. And they don't like any of the more competent melee classes for some reason...

"My DM banned ToB and Monk for being overpowered, so what should I do?" :smallamused:

Deadline

2016-08-08, 03:12 PM

"My DM banned ToB and Monk for being overpowered, so what should I do?" :smallamused:

Play an Unarmed Barbarian? :smallwink:

AvatarVecna

2016-08-08, 03:15 PM

Play an Unarmed Barbarian? :smallwink:

Nah, make an unarmed Swift Hunter build. :smallbiggrin:

ryu

2016-08-08, 03:20 PM

And yet, despite exhortations like these, Fighters still see play. Why do you think that is?

I can't speak for any gaming group's motivations but my own, but my likely guess is simplicity; Wizards, Druids et al. are only better fighters once you line up all the right buffs, summons, transformations, companions, ACFs and so on. Picking up a cleric instead of a fighter is a whole other chapter of the PHB that player needs to learn; picking up a druid adds that same additional chapter plus an entire book. Those players who choose Fighter or are steered to it by their GMs get to evade all of that. And for more experienced groups, the likely answer becomes challenge; it's easy to take on a Balor as a Cleric, but doing it as a Fighter or Paladin is a much more noteworthy battler. You even see it on forums - "help my wizard kill this dragon" is a pretty dull topic, but I'd wager that "help my monk kill this dragon" would get an optimizers gears turning and juices flowing.

Oh you wanna talk simplicity? Fine. Barbarian. It's manifestly superior at everything the fighter IS out of the box, no muss, no fuss, and it grows in effectiveness more with system mastery too. So why do fighters exist again?

Oh did your fighter learn what flanking is. Congratulations. Rogue is now also a better fighter.

Troacctid

2016-08-08, 03:20 PM

And yet, despite exhortations like these, Fighters still see play. Why do you think that is?
Players trust the game designers. Putting a class in the core rulebook creates the (entirely reasonable) expectation that the class, having earned the stamp of approval from the designers, will be balanced and fun in actual play. Part of the designers' job is to ensure that the reality of the class lives up to the power fantasy it promises. In the case of the monk, I think they failed. In the case of the fighter and paladin, they didn't fail outright IMO, but they did a pretty shoddy job.

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 03:28 PM

I got to see a 14th level paladin once trounce a 23rd level lich wizard in 1 round.

But the wizard was NOT optomized, and the paladin was equipped with about 4x his wbl.

OldTrees1

2016-08-08, 03:30 PM

So why do fighters exist again?

Same reason as martial rogues.
One word: Feats
Those drawn to feature based progression will be naturally drawn to the class based around advancing by a set of features you choose.

ryu

2016-08-08, 03:30 PM

I got to see a 14th level paladin once trounce a 23rd level lich wizard in 1 round.

But the wizard was NOT optomized, and the paladin was equipped with about 4x his wbl.

ANYONE epic losing to a non-epic is atrociously unoptimized. that goes double if they have native access to epic spellcasting.

Except the barbarian has a ready made list of features called ACFs more immediately powerful and available than feats. Shorter too and paired down to actually useful stuff.

Deadline

2016-08-08, 03:31 PM

One word: Feats
Those drawn to feature based progression will be naturally drawn to the class based around advancing by a set of features you choose.

Which would be awesome if the feats themselves weren't so ... underwhelming.

But at least it's good for a 2 level dip!

AvatarVecna

2016-08-08, 03:56 PM

I got to see a 14th level paladin once trounce a 23rd level lich wizard in 1 round.

But the wizard was NOT optomized, and the paladin was equipped with about 4x his wbl.

Even assuming Epic Spellcasting is off the table (because that stuff is stupid OP), an epic character's gotta be pretty underoptimized to get pwn'd by a non-epic character. The access to epic items alone, even without WBL shenanigans, is significant, and the much better BAB/HP/Saves doesn't hurt either. Of course, it's pretty understandable if the lich was designed by the game designers: NPCs built with PC rules tend to be rather underwhelming, casters and non-casters alike.

If any non-epic non-caster is giving an epic lich wizard a run for their money, though, it would be a paladin, if only thematically. In fact, there's an interesting PrC (Hunter of the Dead, I think?) that has an ability where any undead destroyed by you can't be re-undead'd by any means...which happens to include liches destroyed by the HotD not being brought back by their phylacteries.

OldTrees1

2016-08-08, 03:58 PM

Which would be awesome if the feats themselves weren't so ... underwhelming.

But at least it's good for a 2 level dip!

Yes, it would be awesome if the features named feats were adequate/competent at their job/role. Luckily that is a content and not a skeletal problem and thus can be fixed with the addition of content. Which of course speaks to one reason why fighter PC still exist without absolving WotC for their mistakes.

ryu

2016-08-08, 04:06 PM

Yes, it would be awesome if the features named feats were adequate/competent at their job/role. Luckily that is a content and not a skeletal problem and thus can be fixed with the addition of content. Which of course speaks to one reason why fighter PC still exist without absolving WotC for their mistakes.

It isn't a problem solved merely by addition. You also have the problem of large sections of the most prominently visible feats being utterly terrible. The fighter problem isn't limited to classes. It permeates most every system in this game on some level or another.

Liquor Box

2016-08-08, 04:09 PM

Foresight, cast by a 20th level wizard with no CL boosters and nothing else, lasts 200 minutes, or a little over three hours; obviously, this is less than "all day", but there's ways to increase it. Boosting CL to, say, 25 with a few different methods (various items and class features) can be done without too much investment, and a Greater Rod Of Extending can double the duration; both together gives us over 8 hours of Foresight, which lets us cover the entire day with maybe half the 9th lvl spell slots our practically optimized Wizard can expect. Hell, if we can get a Consumptive Field running beforehand, we can use that to boost our CL up to 37, giving us 12 hours on Foresight with the rod's help. There, now we're down to two spells per day; costly, for sure, but permanent Foresight is useful enough to warrant it.

...but we can take it a bit further if we're willing to get a bit crazy.

Reserves Of Strength+Consumptive Field (mimicked with Limited Wish) lets you murder a bee farm* for great effect...but that only last for the duration of the original Consumptive Field. Of course, if you cast a new CF with RoS and Extend Spell while under the effects of the first (and it's CL boosting powers), you'll get an Extended Reserves Of Strength'd Consumptive Field that boosts your CL to 1000000 for the next 4.5 months (at least, once you murder another bee farm while under the effects of the 2000000 round duration GCF.

At this point, you can cast Foresight (with the use of a Greater Rod Of Extending, because why not) and have that one spell last somewhere in the neighborhood of 38 years. That's not "one 9th lvl slot per day", that's "one 9th lvl slot per human mid-life crisis". Incidentally, having a 7 digit caster level makes dispelling your spells a tad difficult; at the very least, you need the person casting Dispel Magic to have used similar shenanigans to boost their own CL to 1 million and then used RoS on that Dispel Magic spell...which isn't unreasonable, at this level of char-op, but it means that it's not likely something you could just buy, since you can't really apply feats to spells you cast out of items IIRC.

The plan of murdering bee hives does come with a slight caveat, though: you need to be careful, since gathering swarms of bees together is also a path to ultimate power in and of itself, and it may turn out that the bee keeper (and every bee on their bee farm) is a powerful caster in their own right.

Let's say maybe 1 million bees? This source (http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/how-to-raise-honeybees-zmaz85zsie.aspx) claims a beehive could have up to 100k members, and I would assume a bee farm would have a good number of large hives, but for whatever reason my google-fu isn't returning many hard numbers on bee farm populations, so that 1 million is only a vague estimate. For what it's worth, this source (http://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=6564) claims a full-time beekeeper could be looking after up to 1000 hives, which seems to be backed up by this source (http://sfp.ucdavis.edu/pubs/SFNews/archives/94032/). Now, even assuming that an average beekeeper only looks after 1/10th that many hives, and each of their hives averages 1/10th that "maximum hive population", that's still 1 million bees (100 hives with 10k bees each, which is appropriate since a Fine Swarm in D&D is 10000 individual members), so I think it's a good estimate. I wish I was able to find a source that could I could quote for an actual number though, and if you're able to find one, I'd appreciate a link so I can bring it up the next time I mention this possibility.

I have no doubt it is possible. But we were not talking about a wizard optimised to avoid surprise attacks by this particular fighter by having . We were talking about an ordinary wizard. How many wizards have you actually created for play that tended to have foresight up for the entirety of their waking hours?

Sure, if the fighter happens to attack during the two hours or so that foresight is up, a tactic relying on surprise wouldn't work. Sure, if you build your wizard to have foresight up constantly, then the surprise tactic wouldn't work. But most wizards do not have foresight up constantly, so the surprise attack tactic would work on most wizards.

Liquor Box

2016-08-08, 04:12 PM

The neat thing about wizards, though, is that you can become close to unassailable when you're not up for a fight, where not being up for a fight is here defined as not having the ability to bypass surprise. Something as low level as rope trick can do the job, and by 17 you have access to private demiplanes and such. And, besides, there's always ways to bypass those duration issues. As was mentioned, persisting these 9th level spells is plausible with outside resources, and extending them is possible on the relative cheap while investing neither levels nor feats.

That may all be true, but doesn't add much to the scenario on the first page with respect to your average lvl 15 (or lvl 20) wizard.

Sleep is a condition layered on in spell-form, while surprise is the baseline nature of the game. I mean, if you think about it, each pair of two things are in basically the same orientation within the books. You have surprise and the nature of standard actions hanging out in the general combat rules, and you have celerity and sleep as specific spells. And, anyway, the fact remains that spells break the rules, just by their very nature. Everything does, really. I don't think it's really reasonable to consider combat rules, the things that act as the foundational elements of the game, the specific to the general of spells, things that you're using to apply new rules as defined within said spells.

So your argument is based largely on which chapter of the PHB the rules are presented in? I'm afraid I don't agree from either a RaW perspective or a RaI perspective. But I acknowledge that your interpretation is also valid, and I suppose DM may vary as to the approach they take.

Troacctid

2016-08-08, 04:17 PM

I have no doubt it is possible. But we were not talking about a wizard optimised to avoid surprise attacks by this particular fighter by having . We were talking about an ordinary wizard. How many wizards have you actually created for play that tended to have foresight up for the entirety of their waking hours?

Sure, if the fighter happens to attack during the two hours or so that foresight is up, a tactic relying on surprise wouldn't work. Sure, if you build your wizard to have foresight up constantly, then the surprise tactic wouldn't work. But most wizards do not have foresight up constantly, so the surprise attack tactic would work on most wizards.
But apparently this fighter is only optimized to kill wizards and other spellcasters. He can't do enough damage to defeat a character with slightly larger hit dice. So all the wizard really needs to do is take Improved Toughness as a feat and cast Heart of Earth in the morning. Then she'll have as much HP as a fighter, and the assassin won't be able to kill her.

I'm assuming, of course, that the whole reason this issue came up was because this assassin is supposedly a problem for wizards, but not fighters. Otherwise why even mention it?

AvatarVecna

2016-08-08, 04:22 PM

I have no doubt it is possible. But we were not talking about a wizard optimised to avoid surprise attacks by this particular fighter by having . We were talking about an ordinary wizard. How many wizards have you actually created for play that tended to have foresight up for the entirety of their waking hours?

Sure, if the fighter happens to attack during the two hours or so that foresight is up, a tactic relying on surprise wouldn't work. Sure, if you build your wizard to have foresight up constantly, then the surprise tactic wouldn't work. But most wizards do not have foresight up constantly, so the surprise attack tactic would work on most wizards.

Two of my nine...although in total fairness, the other seven were too low-level to cast it at all. Of the three other wizards I've seen played in the games I've played in that were actually at a level where it was feasible, only one of them had it up all day (although the others had it up for several hours using some lower-op CL boosting and Sudden Extend/Greater Rod Of Extend)

Also, why are you saying two hours? The post you quoted specifies how even a Wizard who isn't pulling CL shenanigans or Extending the spell in any way still manages to get over three hours.

Psyren

2016-08-08, 04:27 PM

Retrain to Swordsage. :smallamused:

Ahh yes, "Use ToB instead." What a fresh and exciting perspective! :smalltongue:

The fighter, after all, is likely to want 1/4 of the treasure.

Thing is - thanks to WBL, the Wizard actually gets no extra loot overall by going it alone. In fact, they get distinctly less if you consider that some of the Fighter's own purchases can either be shared or mitigate the wizard's own resource expenditures. Whereas outfitting a minion, cohort or planar bound ally would all come out of the lone wizard's own wealth.

If you are running, say, an adventure path, where challenges and loot are flat, it is likely to be an absolute disadvantage to the casters to bring the fighter rather than divide up whatever portion of his share is left after you pay the hound archons and buy more onyx to replace the lost skeletons.

Adventure Paths are even better for the Fighter; the monsters have very prescribed tactics in those and the Fighter's deficiencies are less pronounced. Most APs were designed to be completed by almost any party composition after all.

And the wizard loses very little by bringing an army of slaves with him. In the comparative advantage analogy, the 3rd world neighbor isn't just asking for a share in the marginal improvement in efficiency enjoyed by the advanced ally. It is asking for a flat % share in the bigger nations GDP.

I wouldn't say he loses little - those slots could be put to much more powerful uses than simply churning out meatshields, especially since the GM can throw unlimited spell slots in opposition (like an entire cult capable of Dismissing your summoned/called backup.)

What I will agree with however is that 3.5 and PF casters have too many spell slots at later levels - but this is what I mean about design. As it currently stands, the Wizard has so many to burn that they can afford to do "army of slaves" even when a Fighter that costs them no wealth or slots at all is waiting in the wings. This is one of the things I think 5E did right, by making non-cantrips so limited in supply and requiring higher-level slots for higher-CL effects (e.g. more damage or duration.) In PF, if I'm faced with a caster who wants to operate the way you describe, I employ the Simplified Spellcasting rules to greatly trim their daily allotment.

The reason we keep the fighter has little to do with comparative advantage and a lot more to do with the fact that he is in your living room with his dice and you can't throw him out and he refused to play a warblade.

If both the Fighter and the Warblade can kill the green dragon at the end of your adventure path, why do you care so much? Sure the Warblade does it considerably more easily, but a dead dragon is a dead dragon.

Oh you wanna talk simplicity? Fine. Barbarian. It's manifestly superior at everything the fighter IS out of the box, no muss, no fuss, and it grows in effectiveness more with system mastery too. So why do fighters exist again?

Oh did your fighter learn what flanking is. Congratulations. Rogue is now also a better fighter.

This is true in 3.5, but PF has plenty of reasons to go with Fighter over Barbarian, especially now that Advanced Weapon Training was created.

Players trust the game designers. Putting a class in the core rulebook creates the (entirely reasonable) expectation that the class, having earned the stamp of approval from the designers, will be balanced and fun in actual play. Part of the designers' job is to ensure that the reality of the class lives up to the power fantasy it promises. In the case of the monk, I think they failed. In the case of the fighter and paladin, they didn't fail outright IMO, but they did a pretty shoddy job.

In 3.5, absolutely. In PF, all these classes are T4 minimum and therefore are "fun in actual play."

Liquor Box

2016-08-08, 04:27 PM

But apparently this fighter is only optimized to kill wizards and other spellcasters. He can't do enough damage to defeat a character with slightly larger hit dice. So all the wizard really needs to do is take Improved Toughness as a feat and cast Heart of Earth in the morning. Then she'll have as much HP as a fighter, and the assassin won't be able to kill her.

I'm assuming, of course, that the whole reason this issue came up was because this assassin is supposedly a problem for wizards, but not fighters. Otherwise why even mention it?

I don't think anyone claimed that the fighter assassin couldn't also kill another fighter.

I think the fighter may have some advantages against the assassination attempt than the wizard (generally significantly higher hitpoints, often higher AC (I know there are ways to optimise wizard AC, but do most wizard usually have those on all the time?) amongst other things), and the wizard may have other advantages (which would vary greatly depending on the particular spell cast in advance).

I didn;t propose the scenario, but I assume it was mentioned because the poster got the impression that some people think wizards are godlike and near invulnerable to similar level fighters at high level. That they are "too powerful at high level" (to use his words) for the game to handle them. He then proposed a scenario where a fighter would more often than not kill an ordinary high level wizard.

You could go into an arms race (as many posters have) and propose that this is a wizard who would always be prepared for this particular type of attack and would never ever ever leave home unless all those defences were up (being confined to ones home for all but a few hours a day seems to me to mean a wizard has less freedom than a lvl 1 commoner), but that is not the point being made.

Of course fighters would have to worry about assassins as well. But I don;t think anyone has said that fighters a godlike near invulnerable at high levels or are too powerful for the game.

Liquor Box

2016-08-08, 04:31 PM

Two of my nine...although in total fairness, the other seven were too low-level to cast it at all. Of the three other wizards I've seen played in the games I've played in that were actually at a level where it was feasible, only one of them had it up all day (although the others had it up for several hours using some lower-op CL boosting and Sudden Extend/Greater Rod Of Extend)

Also, why are you saying two hours? The post you quoted specifies how even a Wizard who isn't pulling CL shenanigans or Extending the spell in any way still manages to get over three hours.
I'm saying two hours because that was the duration proposed by another poster in another limb of the conversation, so that was in my mind.

We don;t know the actual duration because we do not know the level of the wizard involved. The scenario on page 1 only specified "high level". Troacctid assumed level 15 when discussing relative HP, someone must have assumed level 12 to propose a 2 hour duration, you seem to have proposed level 18. All are perfectly valid.

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 04:35 PM

Even assuming Epic Spellcasting is off the table (because that stuff is stupid OP), an epic character's gotta be pretty underoptimized to get pwn'd by a non-epic character. The access to epic items alone, even without WBL shenanigans, is significant, and the much better BAB/HP/Saves doesn't hurt either. Of course, it's pretty understandable if the lich was designed by the game designers: NPCs built with PC rules tend to be rather underwhelming, casters and non-casters alike.

If any non-epic non-caster is giving an epic lich wizard a run for their money, though, it would be a paladin, if only thematically. In fact, there's an interesting PrC (Hunter of the Dead, I think?) that has an ability where any undead destroyed by you can't be re-undead'd by any means...which happens to include liches destroyed by the HotD not being brought back by their phylacteries.

Lol, yes the lich was made by game designers. We were playing a ravenloft adventure path and had to decide to help strahd destroy ravenloft to go be able to go home, or help destroy strahd and prevent ravenlofts destruction. I do not remember the name of the adventure, but we opted to kill the lich, destroy ravenloft...

Then surprise attack strahd with a one shot maximized disintigrate kill, and a summoned earth elemental to find his coffin and put him down for good.

The 23rd caster lich was done in by a smite crit on a x3 weapon.

Flickerdart

2016-08-08, 04:44 PM

Ahh yes, "Use ToB instead." What a fresh and exciting perspective! :smalltongue:

Fresh and exciting doesn't exist in a game that's almost old enough to drive. Which is why it's extra fun every time someone comes in to say that no, fighters are totally a real character class, because you all missed that one thing or that other one thing and once I saw a fighter beat up a squirrel.

Liquor Box

2016-08-08, 04:49 PM

Foresight and Shapechange both last 3 hours at 18th level without using CL boosters or Metamagic Rods of Extend. With CL boosters you can push 50 hour durations in a single casting of both spells. Superior Invisibility has already been dealt with, but there is a better way: Deeper Darkness+ a Ring of Darkhidden (completely invisible to all sight, including True Seeing, still able to use Blindsight).

3 hours. 6 with a metamagic rod. 12 with Sudden Extend or Master Transmorgrofist (24 with both). More with CL boosters.

Stop. Tortoises are land-dwelling reptiles. There is also no limit to free actions during surprise rounds. There are also divinations you can do 24 hours in advance to know if it is safe for you to be out of dire tortoise form. If it isn't, you instead use your Familiar (or more conveniently through Create Fetch and a means of communicating that doesn't involve you being in the same room; said Familiar would work if it is a raven).

See my conversation with Avatar Vecna regarding this In short, the question is not whether it is possible, the question is whether most wizards have it on all (or at least most) of the time.

Reduce is a spell.

Is that how you ordinarily play a wizard - only go outside when in dire tortoise form? Visit the local merchant in dire tortoise form by reducing to enter the shop and then using some work around so that you can communicate effectively and handle the merchandise? Make sure your home within the duration (however long that is with the extensions to duration you tend to have in place on your average high level wizard)?

Planar Binding and telling it to "Use Astral Projection" is a single service. You do not tell it to perform that as your Planar Binding deal. You tell it to assist you for X duration, including using its special abilities.

Or you can just hit it with Dominate Monster and say "screw the check".
I'm note sure I follow you here. Telling it to cast astral projection is a single service as you say - the spell then ends. But how do you return to the material plane without the nightmare. Where the spell reutrns to changing planes at will it is referring to the caster' will (the nightmare) not the recipient.

As for saying "assist me for x duration", that is clearly not one service. If the spell allowed you to make the outsider a slave for the duration of the spell, the spell would not include a reference to "one service".

If you set the condition during the bargaining process that the creature is free to go once it has completed a single task, then yes. But that is foolish and short-sighted.

This may be where i do nto share your understanding of the rules. I am sure you will enlighten me. The spell description says "Once the requested service is completed, the creature need only so inform you to be instantly sent back whence it came"

Nightmares have a 12 Cha. You can hit it with spells that lower/damage its Cha to inflict a penalty to the Cha check, and you can buff your Cha check in multiple ways. Or, again, Dominate Monster.

Even if the nightmare's charisma were reduced to -4, and yours was increased to +4 (say) there is a fair chance that after all that work it would still beat you.

Oh, and one more thing: Shapechanging into a Nightmare allows you to use its Astral Projection at will, skipping the Planar Binding entirely.

That may work. But every time you state "you could..." or "x would allow you to...." instead of "all wizards do" you are missing the point somewhat. This is not about whether a wizard could be built to avoid the figther's attack (I admitted it could on my first post on the subject), but the attack would succeed against most wizard's who did not have forewarning.

ryu

2016-08-08, 04:49 PM

I have no doubt it is possible. But we were not talking about a wizard optimised to avoid surprise attacks by this particular fighter by having . We were talking about an ordinary wizard. How many wizards have you actually created for play that tended to have foresight up for the entirety of their waking hours?

Sure, if the fighter happens to attack during the two hours or so that foresight is up, a tactic relying on surprise wouldn't work. Sure, if you build your wizard to have foresight up constantly, then the surprise tactic wouldn't work. But most wizards do not have foresight up constantly, so the surprise attack tactic would work on most wizards.

It's not optimization to avoid surprise attacks by any fighter. It's optimization to avoid surprise attacks in general. Getting surprised in combat SUCKS. Can you even think of a reasonable encounter where you'd want to give the other side extra actions right at the start? For that matter can you think of an encounter that was a legitimate threat where being surprised didn't significantly decrease odds of general survival?

Liquor Box

2016-08-08, 04:57 PM

It's not optimization to avoid surprise attacks by any fighter. It's optimization to avoid surprise attacks in general. Getting surprised in combat SUCKS. Can you even think of a reasonable encounter where you'd want to give the other side extra actions right at the start? For that matter can you think of an encounter that was a legitimate threat where being surprised didn't significantly decrease odds of general survival?

Sure, all that may be true.

Do the wizards you play always have foresight (or a substitute) active whenever the leave the house (not only when expecting trouble)? If so, this tactic may not work against your wizard (although I'm sure another might). But it would work against many wizards who are not optimised to avoid surprise attacks in general. Whether thats a question of playing a wizard worse/better or playing a wizard differently is another debate.

OldTrees1

2016-08-08, 04:59 PM

It isn't a problem solved merely by addition. You also have the problem of large sections of the most prominently visible feats being utterly terrible. The fighter problem isn't limited to classes. It permeates most every system in this game on some level or another.

Huh? How are a bunch of worthless feats still a problem once you add enough worthwhile feats that there are more than enough worthwhile feats in every category? Consider MtG for a moment. There are a bunch of completely worthless cards that nobody uses. However they made enough worthwhile cards that nobody needs to use those worthless cards. So if you add worthwhile feats it doesn't matter if there is some worthless feats out there. Just make sure there are enough worthwhile feats to cover everything and things will be good.

Again, this does not excuse WotC for producing the worthless options or for not making enough worthwhile options. I am merely saying that when the problem is lack of worthwhile options, one can fix that by addition.

AvatarVecna

2016-08-08, 05:01 PM

I'm saying two hours because that was the duration proposed by another poster in another limb of the conversation, so that was in my mind.

We don;t know the actual duration because we do not know the level of the wizard involved. The scenario on page 1 only specified "high level". Troacctid assumed level 15 when discussing relative HP, someone must have assumed level 12 to propose a 2 hour duration, you seem to have proposed level 18. All are perfectly valid.

Except Foresight is a 9th lvl spell. The lowest level it can be cast at is 17 under most any circumstance, except perhaps a cheesed-out Beholder Mage. I donct think you can even craft an item of it with less than CL 17, but I could be wrong. That puts the minimum duration at 170 minutes, just under three hours.

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 05:04 PM

See my conversation with Avatar Vecna regarding this In short, the question is not whether it is possible, the question is whether most wizards have it on all (or at least most) of the time.

Is that how you ordinarily play a wizard - only go outside when in dire tortoise form? Visit the local merchant in dire tortoise form by reducing to enter the shop and then using some work around so that you can communicate effectively and handle the merchandise? Make sure your home within the duration (however long that is with the extensions to duration you tend to have in place on your average high level wizard)?

I'm note sure I follow you here. Telling it to cast astral projection is a single service as you say - the spell then ends. But how do you return to the material plane without the nightmare. Where the spell reutrns to changing planes at will it is referring to the caster' will (the nightmare) not the recipient.

As for saying "assist me for x duration", that is clearly not one service. If the spell allowed you to make the outsider a slave for the duration of the spell, the spell would not include a reference to "one service".

This may be where i do nto share your understanding of the rules. I am sure you will enlighten me. The spell description says "Once the requested service is completed, the creature need only so inform you to be instantly sent back whence it came"

Even if the nightmare's charisma were reduced to -4, and yours was increased to +4 (say) there is a fair chance that after all that work it would still beat you.

That may work. But every time you state "you could..." or "x would allow you to...." instead of "all wizards do" you are missing the point somewhat. This is not about whether a wizard could be built to avoid the figther's attack (I admitted it could on my first post on the subject), but the attack would succeed against most wizard's who did not have forewarning.

The service could easily be "Help me, best as you are able, to complete quest x. You must use all your abilities as I direct until we have succeeded."

As for the charisma check, I have gotten my sorceror to do regular planar bindings at a + 15 on his charisma check at 12th level by pfs rules. Everything he can summon with pb needs a nat 20 on the saving throw, and literally CANNOT pass the charisma check to break the prison.

He generally has a +12 to +18 over everything with 12 hd.

Troacctid

2016-08-08, 05:05 PM

This is true in 3.5, but PF has plenty of reasons to go with Fighter over Barbarian, especially now that Advanced Weapon Training was created.

In 3.5, absolutely. In PF, all these classes are T4 minimum and therefore are "fun in actual play."
Well sure. That's one of the ways (actually the main way) that PF is better-designed than 3.5. Same's true for 4e and 5e.

I don't think anyone claimed that the fighter assassin couldn't also kill another fighter.
The original scenario was framed as something that would cause problems for wizards, with the implicit claim that it wouldn't cause problems for fighters and rogues. If, in actuality, non-spellcasters have no meaningful advantage against the assassin, then the whole scenario is irrelevant to this discussion, so there wouldn't be any point bringing it up in the first place.

Calthropstu can correct me if I'm off-base here, but I'm pretty sure there was an implicit claim that fighters would be able to clean up the assassin where wizards would be doomed.

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 05:19 PM

Well sure. That's one of the ways (actually the main way) that PF is better-designed than 3.5. Same's true for 4e and 5e.

The original scenario was framed as something that would cause problems for wizards, with the implicit claim that it wouldn't cause problems for fighters and rogues. If, in actuality, non-spellcasters have no meaningful advantage against the assassin, then the whole scenario is irrelevant to this discussion, so there wouldn't be any point bringing it up in the first place.

Calthropstu can correct me if I'm off-base here, but I'm pretty sure there was an implicit claim that fighters would be able to clean up the assassin where wizards would be doomed.

That was exactly the case.

A rogue would have had improved uncanny dodge, making it immune to the sneak attack which killed this wizard, and the fighter would have a massive amount of hp (coincidentally, this 18th level wizard had a mere 114 hp, while the fighter in their group had 280)

Both of them would have trounced or escaped this assassination attempt.

Troacctid

2016-08-08, 05:22 PM

JNAProductions

2016-08-08, 05:30 PM

That was exactly the case.

A rogue would have had improved uncanny dodge, making it immune to the sneak attack which killed this wizard, and the fighter would have a massive amount of hp (coincidentally, this 18th level wizard had a mere 114 hp, while the fighter in their group had 280)

Both of them would have trounced or escaped this assassination attempt.

Right... The bolded bit seems inaccurate. The Fighter would survive the first round, but how exactly is he winning with absolutely no magic left on him? Especially since this assassin, I'm sure, used poison. 7 hits of Drow Sleep poison gives him a 30% chance of rolling a 1 and falling unconscious, whereupon he's immediately going to die. And I guarantee you there's better poisons to use.

Likewise, let's actually check the damage. He's got 10d6 sneak attack, I'm pretty sure, and let's say 1d6+10 damage on the actual weapon itself. (Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.) That means the Fighter takes 48.5*7, or 339.5 points of damage. He had 280, you said? He's dead. We could even drop sneak attack by 2d6, meaning he's only a 15th level Rogue, and the Fighter still dies.

LTwerewolf

2016-08-08, 05:35 PM

Fresh and exciting doesn't exist in a game that's almost old enough to drive. Which is why it's extra fun every time someone comes in to say that no, fighters are totally a real character class, because you all missed that one thing or that other one thing and once I saw a fighter beat up a squirrel.

I'm sigging this and there's very little you can do to stop me.

ryu

2016-08-08, 05:36 PM

Sure, all that may be true.

Do the wizards you play always have foresight (or a substitute) active whenever the leave the house (not only when expecting trouble)? If so, this tactic may not work against your wizard (although I'm sure another might). But it would work against many wizards who are not optimised to avoid surprise attacks in general. Whether thats a question of playing a wizard worse/better or playing a wizard differently is another debate.

Literally as soon as it's available and a whole list of other defensive buffs, contingencies, and counters to common strategies. First goal of a well-made mage is not to die. Second goal is to have powerful and relevant contributions to all possible encounters. Third is to do all of these while being as completely and utterly inexorable as possible. In short? You can't kill me, the reverse is not true, and no, you can't stop me.

Oldtrees: The problem with that proposition is that options so completely and utterly worthless that no one wants are a waste of designer resources, and more importantly function as traps for the unwary newbies. Why is this awful? Because alienating newbies off the bat is one of the fastest ways to lose a customer. It's worse in collectible card games. There every card so terrible you'd never use seen is money that have wasted. This is terrible even beyond the previous problem. Do I need to explain why making people feel they've wasted money is, like, the worst thing for business?

Gnaeus

2016-08-08, 05:45 PM

Thing is - thanks to WBL, the Wizard actually gets no extra loot overall by going it alone. In fact, they get distinctly less if you consider that some of the Fighter's own purchases can either be shared or mitigate the wizard's own resource expenditures. Whereas outfitting a minion, cohort or planar bound ally would all come out of the lone wizard's own wealth.

2 real problems with that. 1. it assumes that WBL is a rule not a guideline, and that it cannot be altered by more logical play. This is not an assumption in any game I have ever been in. As I said, I was discussing it in context of a prepublished adventure where treasure is set, or a randomized sandbox where treasure is random.
2. It assumes that your wizard is Deadpool and is not only unable to exceed WBL, but is aware of WBL as a metaphysical entity. This wizard can not only casually include the fighter without any loss of money, he can fireball all the chests into slag without risk of consequence, because he will be at WBL whatever he does. You might as well say that he is aware that he is a fictional construct run by 5 people at a gaming table to prevent him from ordering his useless fighter to spend half of his WBL on consumable wands and staves that he just hands to the wizard on request.

I wouldn't say he loses little - those slots could be put to much more powerful uses than simply churning out meatshields, especially since the GM can throw unlimited spell slots in opposition (like an entire cult capable of Dismissing your summoned/called backup.)

I'm not creating undead or golems or planar binding on the day of the adventure. I'm doing it the day or the week before. My spent spell slots when I walk into the tower are completely unchanged.

Also, Dismissal is a single target mid level will SOL which allows SR. Any cultist who can dismiss my summoned outsiders can also lock down my lower will save fighter much more easily, if not turn him against me.

So, because the DM has theoretical access to unlimited spell slots, the Wizard needs to metagame and not prepare for adventures in a logical manner because he knows that the gods prefer the contributions of Steve the fighter over Steve2 the planar bound angel? Does any part of this discussion not involve the wizard metagaming?

What I will agree with however is that 3.5 and PF casters have too many spell slots at later levels - but this is what I mean about design. As it currently stands, the Wizard has so many to burn that they can afford to do "army of slaves" even when a Fighter that costs them no wealth or slots at all is waiting in the wings. This is one of the things I think 5E did right, by making non-cantrips so limited in supply and requiring higher-level slots for higher-CL effects (e.g. more damage or duration.) In PF, if I'm faced with a caster who wants to operate the way you describe, I employ the Simplified Spellcasting rules to greatly trim their daily allotment

Thats some nice Oberoni there. If the Wizard obsoletes the fighter, you just nerf the wizard, which makes fighter ok.

But I guess the wizard should metagame and not use his class abilities because he knows that planar binding things/making undead/golems/mind control over npc meatshields will result in him being punished by the gods?

If both the Fighter and the Warblade can kill the green dragon at the end of your adventure path, why do you care so much? Sure the Warblade does it considerably more easily, but a dead dragon is a dead dragon.

I don't know. Maybe if you wanted to pretend that the characters in your group were something like equals, capable of pulling their own weight? As opposed to 2 characters who can do things, the guy they point to when there is a trap, and the native porter.

Troacctid

2016-08-08, 05:49 PM

ryu

2016-08-08, 06:10 PM

To be fair, newbies are probably waaay more alienated by the steep learning curve than by the imbalance between classes. The barrier to entry is real.

The learning curve to reach the highest echelons of power is steep. The learning curve to be orders of magnitude more competent than this game ever demands is literally just: Pick pretty much any class that isn't fighter. Experiment with abilities. You'll be good within the month. Hell there's literally classes where the baseline assumption is that you never use any of your class features and are in-fact just a worse fighter. Druid is not hard to play competently. A druid picking almost all of his relevant options at random is still more capable of contributing than necessary if he actually makes use of whatever the hell he picked.

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 06:13 PM

Right... The bolded bit seems inaccurate. The Fighter would survive the first round, but how exactly is he winning with absolutely no magic left on him? Especially since this assassin, I'm sure, used poison. 7 hits of Drow Sleep poison gives him a 30% chance of rolling a 1 and falling unconscious, whereupon he's immediately going to die. And I guarantee you there's better poisons to use.

Likewise, let's actually check the damage. He's got 10d6 sneak attack, I'm pretty sure, and let's say 1d6+10 damage on the actual weapon itself. (Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.) That means the Fighter takes 48.5*7, or 339.5 points of damage. He had 280, you said? He's dead. We could even drop sneak attack by 2d6, meaning he's only a 15th level Rogue, and the Fighter still dies.

7 attacks, targeted at flat footed touch ac by a 17th level rogue. 7d4 + 63d6 + 54 with one dose of mage bane poison. (poisons are good for one strike only)

Average roll is just at the threshold for the fighter to survive assuming no misses.

Oh, and discounting his dr that was from wearing adamantine and a couple other items. The dagger could only do a targeted dispel, not affect items or areas. So yeah. He would have survived.

And the wxtra hp the wizard would have gotten from spells with toughness etc just wouldn't have been enough.

OldTrees1

2016-08-08, 06:14 PM

JNAProductions

2016-08-08, 06:16 PM

7 attacks, targeted at flat footed touch ac by a 17th level rogue. 7d4 + 63d6 + 54 with one dose of mage bane poison. (poisons are good for one strike only)

Average roll is just at the threshold for the fighter to survive assuming no misses.

7d4=2.5*7=17.5

63d6=3.5*63=220.5

17.5+220.5+54=292

That is a dead Fighter.

Edit: And this guy is an Assassin! You say Wizards don't always have buff spells up? I say Fighters don't always wear their armor. No DR, and a crap AC.

Edit II: Also, assuming heavy adamantine armor, that's DR 3/-. That's 21 points of damage off, for 271. He only needs to roll 9 points of damage high to kill him. Let me check anydice...

81% chance of him dying in one round.

My bad! 27% chance! I thought something looked wrong.

Of course, assuming average damage, he lives... With 9 HP. How is he gonna survive round 2?

Troacctid

2016-08-08, 06:20 PM

7 attacks, targeted at flat footed touch ac by a 17th level rogue. 7d4 + 63d6 + 54 with one dose of mage bane poison. (poisons are good for one strike only)

Average roll is just at the threshold for the fighter to survive assuming no misses.

Oh, and discounting his dr that was from wearing adamantine and a couple other items. The dagger could only do a targeted dispel, not affect items or areas. So yeah. He would have survived.

And the wxtra hp the wizard would have gotten from spells with toughness etc just wouldn't have been enough.

The extra HP the wizard would have gotten puts her HP total exactly 3 points shy of a single-class fighter with the same Constitution score. 15d4+45 is an average of 84 HP before Con, while the fighter's 15d10 is an average of 87. There's no reason to assume the fighter has a higher Con, because it's a secondary stat for both classes; their score should be about the same.

Also, if the fighter only has exactly enough HP to barely survive, that means the ranger and monk are dead.

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 06:26 PM

7d4=2.5*7=17.5

63d6=3.5*63=220.5

17.5+220.5+54=292

That is a dead Fighter.

Edit: And this guy is an Assassin! You say Wizards don't always have buff spells up? I say Fighters don't always wear their armor. No DR, and a crap AC.

Edit II: Also, assuming heavy adamantine armor, that's DR 3/-. That's 21 points of damage off, for 271. He only needs to roll 9 points of damage high to kill him. Let me check anydice...

81% chance of him dying in one round.

My bad! 27% chance! I thought something looked wrong.

Of course, assuming average damage, he lives... With 9 HP. How is he gonna survive round 2?

His dr was 6 if I recall, he had 3 more points added in from something. So 30 points.

So He gets to respond...
Activate his belt of heal standard action.
Rogue's turn... no sneak attack. Run.

JNAProductions

2016-08-08, 06:28 PM

3 charges, I assume, heals 4d8. So that's an extra 18 HP. Assuming DR 6/-, he now has 48 HP.

7 attacks at 7d4+54 (why doesn't he have rapiers, for d8 base?) is 17.5+54 is 71.5 damage on average.

Dead Fighter.

Also, why is he lacking the Craven Feat? That'd up his damage... A lot. As in, more than enough to make the Fighter dead DR or not.

Edit: The feat in question:

Benefit
You take a -2 penalty on saving throws against fear effects. However, when making a sneak attack, you deal an extra 1 point of damage per character level.

Edit II: So, with that in mind, his damage ups by 119 on the first round. That's more than enough to make a dead Fighter.

Edit III: This (http://www.lby3.com/dnd/index.php/Healing_Belt) is the Belt of Healing I found. let me know if it's wrong.

Liquor Box

2016-08-08, 06:35 PM

Except Foresight is a 9th lvl spell. The lowest level it can be cast at is 17 under most any circumstance, except perhaps a cheesed-out Beholder Mage. I donct think you can even craft an item of it with less than CL 17, but I could be wrong. That puts the minimum duration at 170 minutes, just under three hours.

Yep, fair point.

So either the wizard in the scenario can't cast foresight at all, or it lasts at least 170 minutes, depending what level he is.

ryu

2016-08-08, 06:36 PM

Um. Who are you talking to? Did you realize I was talking about how a DM could fix the mess WotC made? In every post I clearly stated that this did not excuse WotC (the game designer) so I thought you would have realized what I was talking about. Apparently Not! Adding more feats is a fix a DM can do for their table. Please take more care to actually respond to the person's posts rather than merely vomit words.
:annoyed:

I'm talking to you. Fixing the mess WotC made in general requires removing things just as much as it requires addition. This is true whether the person performing the fixing is WotC itself wising up, a DM experimenting with the system, or a competitor. If you'd taken more time to read the post you were responding to you'd have realized the explanation for why deletion of trap options is necessary was literally direct response to the post where you questioned why such traps are a problem. At any rate considering you're agitated enough to use terms like vomit words lightly I would recommend the first course of action recommended for internet anger. Namely chill out, and perform some calming activity or another.

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 06:37 PM

3 charges, I assume, heals 4d8. So that's an extra 18 HP. Assuming DR 6/-, he now has 48 HP.

7 attacks at 7d4+54 (why doesn't he have rapiers, for d8 base?) is 17.5+54 is 71.5 damage on average.

Dead Fighter.

Also, why is he lacking the Craven Feat? That'd up his damage... A lot. As in, more than enough to make the Fighter dead DR or not.

Edit: The feat in question:

Actually, it be 7d4 + 12. 6×7 = 42 points reduced. and now he is facing a high level fighter with his weapons drawn.

Oh, and you seem to be confused when I said belt of heal. Not belt of healing. Remember how I said the PCs had access to custom magic items?

edit: He added the ability to cast heal twice per day on his belt of fortitude +5

As for the weapon, it is much much harder to hide a rapier than a dagger. This is a rogue mage slaying weapon of major importance. The harder it is for people to notice it, the easier it is to do its job.

Liquor Box

2016-08-08, 06:38 PM

The original scenario was framed as something that would cause problems for wizards, with the implicit claim that it wouldn't cause problems for fighters and rogues. If, in actuality, non-spellcasters have no meaningful advantage against the assassin, then the whole scenario is irrelevant to this discussion, so there wouldn't be any point bringing it up in the first place.

Calthropstu can correct me if I'm off-base here, but I'm pretty sure there was an implicit claim that fighters would be able to clean up the assassin where wizards would be doomed.

Ok, I didn't read it as having such an implicit claim. I await calthrop's clarification.

Edit: I see he has clarified - I hadn't read it that way.
In my view whether a fighter or a wizard (or a rogue) would be more likely to survive in tha particular scenario depends on the particular builds, and much less so on the class generally.

JNAProductions

2016-08-08, 06:38 PM

Actually, it be 7d4 + 12. 6×7 = 42 points reduced. and now he is facing a high level fighter with his weapons drawn.

Oh, and you seem to be confused when I said belt of heal. Not belt of healing. Remember how I said the PCs had access to custom magic items?

As for the weapon, it is much much harder to hide a rapier than a dagger. This is a rogue mage slaying weapon of major importance. The harder it is for people to notice it, the easier it is to do its job.

Did you miss the bit about Craven? That's 119 extra points of damage. He's dead.

Edit: I do concede that if said Fighter survives round one, he's got a chance. But, uh... He ain't surviving round one.]

He's looking at 119+54+7+63-42=201 damage MINIMUM. His chances of dying round one are, according to anydice...

Um... I think I broke anydice. It says 100%

Someone check my math? I used this

output 279<(7d4+63d6+54+119-42)

In anydice (http://anydice.com/). That's the right way to do it, right?

Troacctid

2016-08-08, 06:39 PM

Yep, fair point.

So either the wizard in the scenario can't cast foresight at all, or it lasts at least 170 minutes, depending what level he is.

9th level spell for wizards, but 2nd level power for psions (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/detectHostileIntent.htm).

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 06:44 PM

I have never seen that feat before to be honest.

JNAProductions

2016-08-08, 06:45 PM

I have never seen that feat before to be honest.

And there's nothing wrong with that! It's from Champions of Ruin, on page 17.

But... It does mean you don't have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to optimization. That's pretty basic optimization there. (Hell, I know it! And I'm not a good optimizer.)

OldTrees1

2016-08-08, 06:45 PM

Oldtrees: The problem with that proposition is that options so completely and utterly worthless that no one wants are a waste of designer resources, and more importantly function as traps for the unwary newbies. Why is this awful? Because alienating newbies off the bat is one of the fastest ways to lose a customer. It's worse in collectible card games. There every card so terrible you'd never use seen is money that have wasted. This is terrible even beyond the previous problem. Do I need to explain why making people feel they've wasted money is, like, the worst thing for business?

I'm talking to you. Fixing the mess WotC made in general requires removing things just as much as it requires addition. This is true whether the person performing the fixing is WotC itself wising up, a DM experimenting with the system, or a competitor. If you'd taken more time to read the post you were responding to you'd have realized the explanation for why deletion of trap options is necessary was literally direct response to the post where you questioned why such traps are a problem. At any rate considering you're agitated enough to use terms like vomit words lightly I would recommend the first course of action recommended for internet anger. Namely chill out, and perform some calming activity or another.

Uh huh. :smallmad: I requoted your post up above and underlined several key phrases that made it clear that your words, if perhaps not your intent, were clearing talking to WotC/some game designing business rather than addressing my post.

However I will take your advice and exit this toxic conversation. Please do me the courtesy of not responding to this post.

Calthropstu

2016-08-08, 06:52 PM

Ok, I didn't read it as having such an implicit claim. I await calthrop's clarification.

Edit: I see he has clarified - I hadn't read it that way.
In my view whether a fighter or a wizard (or a rogue) would be more likely to survive in tha particular scenario depends on the particular builds, and much less so on the class generally.

Agreed, builds at high levels can cause completely different scenarios. A low hp high damage high ac would almost certainly fall here, while a super high hp melee character with high dr would have a chance.

That extra damage from craven would greatly change the outcome though, but to be honest I doubt I would allow it in my campaigns for PCs since I don't run in the realms. I am a little iffy on it.

And if I won't allow pcs access, npcs dont get it either.

Der_DWSage

2016-08-08, 06:56 PM

All this going round-and-round about the Wizard and the Dispelling Assassin is missing a very important point-what does this actually prove?

It proves that an unoptimized, flat-footed wizard is, indeed, worse at AC defenses than an equal-level Fighter. Defense is one aspect of a character. This doesn't change the fact that a wizard has infinitely more options in offense, defense, crowd control, and defense than the Fighter, nor is the Fighter's option the best option, even though it's his only option. (Barring a few feats spent at tripping, grappling, etc. Which are always worse options than a wizard's equivalent.) Even the few things that are supposed to be debilitating to the wizard (Spell resistance, spell immunity, antimagic fields, etc.) are as nasty as they're advertised, whereas the Fighter usually has his main attack method shut off just by an opponent being slightly further away than they'd like.

LTwerewolf

2016-08-08, 06:58 PM

All this going round-and-round about the Wizard and the Dispelling Assassin is missing a very important point-what does this actually prove?

It proves that some people are never going to let up about saying the fighter is just as good as the wizard, even if it means going so far as to dm fiat ways for wizards to die, because they like the fighter. I personally like the fighter archetype. It simply just doesn't work in a game where "be a fighter but better" comes in about 50 different ways on caster spell lists/class features.

AvatarVecna

2016-08-08, 07:02 PM

Actually, it be 7d4 + 12. 6×7 = 42 points reduced. and now he is facing a high level fighter with his weapons drawn.

Oh, and you seem to be confused when I said belt of heal. Not belt of healing. Remember how I said the PCs had access to custom magic items?

edit: He added the ability to cast heal twice per day on his belt of fortitude +5

As for the weapon, it is much much harder to hide a rapier than a dagger. This is a rogue mage slaying weapon of major importance. The harder it is for people to notice it, the easier it is to do its job.

+5 Keen Kaorti Resin Daggers of Speed being dual-wielded by a Dex 30 Rogue 17 with the Craven and Weapon Finesse feats and the TWF feat tree, wearing a Ring Of Continuous Wraithtouch, Gloves of Dex +6 (which are boosting his Dex to 30 from their original 24), and nothing else.

Attack routine is +25/+25/+25/+20/+20/+15/+15 against flat-footed touch AC. He deals 1d4+9d6+22 damage on a hit (avg 2.5+31.5+22=56), threatens a critical on a 17-20, and deals 4d4+9d6+88 on a crit (avg 10+31.5+88=129.5). Assuming even his lowest attacks hit on anything but a 1 (that is, assuming the Fighter doesn't have a FF Touch AC of 18 or higher), he would miss once, would hit 15.2 times (including missed crits), and would crit 3.8 times. Thus, his average damage per attack would be 67.165 ([{1*0}+{15.2*56}+{3.8*129.5}]/20); over the course of his seven attacks, this would deal a total of 470.155 damage, or 428.155 assuming DR 6. Even if your Fighter rolled maximum on every HD, and has Con 30, he's a dead doorstop.

ryu

2016-08-08, 07:07 PM

It proves that some people are never going to let up about saying the fighter is just as good as the wizard, even if it means going so far as to dm fiat ways for wizards to die, because they like the fighter. I personally like the fighter archetype. It simply just doesn't work in a game where "be a fighter but better" comes in about 50 different ways on caster spell lists/class features.

Or the class features of most any other non-caster. Or the commoner with chicken infested. Or less expensively with hired help. Or by selling your spellbook and using the funds to hire help in addition to getting a new one with a few less cantrips in it. Or by training animals with skill use bubs the commoner style. Yeah.... It's a pretty sad lot in life really.

SoulSalvage

2016-08-08, 07:09 PM

I feel like this entire discussion has shown that there is an inherent problem with the LF-QW paradigm. Eight pages were just spent talking about how a single NPC, created with epic-level items, could be used to kill a Wizard even with foreknowledge of the problem, and there was plenty of dispute about how exactly that would go down. Several posts were specifically about how a Wizard could avoid that scenario in its entirety, starting at level 9, and how higher levels only make the problem that much more vast.

And through all of this, the Fighter (or melee classes in general) are hardly mentioned. And that's because the GM doesn't need anything specific to kill a Fighter; just about anything can keep up with the Fighter, and anything with spell-casting would just obliterate them. There has also been some rather odd logical fallacies thrown about (a wizard that hides in his home instead of adventuring? Sounds pathetic, not all-powerful! Okay, sure. Give the wizard no prep time, and he's better than the Fighter. Give him and the Fighter prep time, and only the Wizard gains an advantage. No problem there at all.

Tying this back to the original topic, I think that that shows a huge problem. Anything can be thrown at the Fighters and give them a challenge, which reduces GM prep time and allows for more spontaneity in stories. If casters are in the party, however, they can circumvent encounters or even dungeons, readily become immune to nearly anything the GM can throw at them, and a whole slew of other things on top of all of those things listed before. Which means either loads more work for the GM or the GM having to fiat everything, neither or which is a good solution.

And none of that is mentioning the players themselves; sure, some people enjoy playing the Fighter because it's simple, and most players don't have an Int score as high as their wizards and they'll die to a lot of unavoidable thing. However, simple should not equal weak. Something being complex doesn't justify omnipotence. Just because a player doesn't want something complex for a character doesn't mean they should be restricted to "hit things with your sword, but do it worse than the Druid's pet. While they also have the luxury of casting spells on top of their pet." The entire thing is a mockery of game design, and you can see the problems abound in many other games. So yes, the difference is a problem; whether the GM has the time or ability to rectify these mistakes doesn't mean that there is no inherent problem, it simply addresses the GM's time/abilities while admitting the problem is glaring enough for a fix to be needed.