The myth of game-breaking abilities

[Kelb_Panthera]

I've grown tired of seeing a number of so-called game-breaking abilities called such when the problem lies more with the DM's setup of a situation than the spell (let's be real here, they're almost all spells) that invalidated it.

So to alleviate this, I've decided to ask for examples of some of these situations that DM's have had invalidated by game-breakers, either from your own games or made up on the spot, and I or anyone else that cares to will show how the game breaker could've been defeated in that circumstance, why it wasn't actually applicable, or why it was otherwise less of a problem than it seems.

A couple ground rules:

This is intended as a learning excersize. Let's bear that in mind as we go forward since any variation of "you did it wrong" tends to get people defensive and upset and it is almost inevitable that some of the submitted examples will fall into that category. I'd rather this didn't devolve into a flame war that has to be locked. If you can't handle hearing people telling you that you screwed up, don't bother submitting your example.

I acknowledge that there -are- some things in this system that are genuinely game-breaking in the sense that the game cannot function meaningfully if they're not flat-out disallowed either by banning or modifying them into something other than what they are by RAW. I'll get to them in a moment so let's avoid straw-manning my point that -most- of what is called game-breaking really isn't by bringing up the handful of things that really do break the game.

Genuine game-breakers:

These are the things that I don't think can be reasonably allowed if the game is to function. If your example is one of these, I'm sorry that happened to your game but I'm not interested in confirming the unworkable is unworkable.


Unlimited, free wishes
Nigh-infinite or genuinely infinite loops
The interpretation of gate whereby it grants absolute control over the called creature for rounds/lvl (mostly because it leads to one of the above)


I'm quite firmly of the notion that -anything- else the game has to offer outside of these can be dealt with. So let's put my money where my mouth is and start with the example I always find the most utterly absurd.

Long-term flight.

This comes online for (most) characters around level 9 or 10. The complaint always goes that the ability to fly all day invalidates most obstacles and makes overland travel based adventure hooks impossible.

Common obstacles include walls (and objects that function as such) and pits: in either case, this is only true if the -whole- party is capable of flight or if they've planned ahead and brought some means for the flying character to ferry them accross. If the obstacle is out-doors and meant to be overcome, then it likely still slows the party which is its purpose and there is no problem. If it's -not- meant to be overcome, you should use something that completely blocks travel in the given direction or would cause an unacceptable delay such as a massive storm or a large lake. If the obtacle flight would overcome is a pit-trap in a dungeon (walls obviousy block travel completely), then there are ways to ramp it up into something more dangerous: a roper in the pit or a falling block trap above the pit, even a simple dispelling trap.

The easiest way to have an overland travel hook when the PC's are flying overland is to simply have a flying encounter. There are myriad flying creatures both, intelligent and bestial, that could encounter the flying party and either engage them in conversation or battle either dropping the hook themselves or using the fight to drag the PC's to the hook. Then there's having something strange (the plot-hook) visible from the sky to draw the PC's attention and, of course, the oldest and most realistic way to delay a flight; good, old-fashioned bad weather. A storm rolls in, the PC's land to take shelter, *bam* the plot-hook is in whatever place they've taken shelter.

The final complaint leveled at flying PC's is that non-flying enemies are sitting ducks. This just isn't true. Land-bound beasts of low-intellect are screwed but they're generally poor foes outside of an ambush at this level pretty much regardless of what you do unless you only ever expect the PC's to deal with combat in the most direct manner possible anyway. Humanoid (and similar) foes can attack at range, use their own magic to try and even the circumstances up a bit, or take cover and force the enemy to come to them (assuming they -must- be defeated rather than bypassed). Natively flying foes can be peppered into an adventure's encountes as well. If the fight is indoors, the foes might even be able to bear the flyer to the ground with nets, lassos, or by simply leaping upon them and beginning a grapple.

Hopefully, that one at least is layed to rest for the time being. Does anyone else have any examples of "game-breakers" that ruin the game in principle or in a specific scenario that they're curious to have debunked?

[Beheld]

The interpretation of gate whereby it grants absolute control over the called creature for rounds/lvl (mostly because it leads to one of the above)

What other interpretation of gate could their possibly be?

Also, you don't mention Greater Planar Binding giving you an army of Pit Fiends. or Planar Binding giving you an Army of Glabrezu, which is weird, because those are obviously super broken on first principles on even the first one, much less the army.

[Crake]

What other interpretation of gate could their possibly be?

Also, you don't mention Greater Planar Binding giving you an army of Pit Fiends. or Planar Binding giving you an Army of Glabrezu, which is weird, because those are obviously super broken on first principles on even the first one, much less the army.

Planar binding requires negotiation though, and comes with the clause of "Impossible demands or unreasonable commands are never agreed to." giving them DM the ability to set the boundaries of what the creature considers reasonable. Participating in your little army is quite easily unreasonable unless you're paying these glabrezu/pit fiends something pretty significant, at which point you could have just gotten something more reasonable. Gate on the other hand gives you absolute control with no ability to resist on behalf of the summoned creature, and it's not limited by type at all, merely that the creature be extraplanar, which, if you do it from your own personal demiplane, would be every single creature in existence (except ones on the astral plane, nothing is extraplanar there).

Now, admittedly gate itself actually has an easy counter when used to summon specific creatures: the naturalized denizen feat, which makes you always considered a native, and thus never extraplanar, but if you're just summoning xyz creature, then it would be unreasonable to assume that every creature of that type has that feat, but since gate is a calling effect, and thus summons an actual creature, and not necessarily a fresh one, you could just as easily say that the summoned creature doesn't have access to the ability you want, having used it earlier in the day. Efreeti may have contracts set up to use their wishes for others, solars would use their wishes to perform holy miracles, and so on. So honestly, even gate is not exempt to this myth.

[Geddy2112]

High flying is cute, but it turns dispel magic from an inconvenience to a potential death sentence. Also, it does require a creature actively focus on it, so getting stunned/knocked out/otherwise unable to focus on flying can mean a quick death.

If you get reduced to zero HP airborne, it is all but certain you will be rolling a new one.

[Kelb_Panthera]

What other interpretation of gate could their possibly be?

Irrelevant to the thread and I don't feel like having that argument again.


Also, you don't mention Greater Planar Binding giving you an army of Pit Fiends. or Planar Binding giving you an Army of Glabrezu, which is weird, because those are obviously super broken on first principles on even the first one, much less the army.

As Crake pointed out, planar binding has a very explicit "the DM can say no" clause written right into it in no uncertain fashion. What is or isn't reasonable is an inherently subjective question that must be answered at any given table by each group. If you don't want armies of bound minions at your table, you are explicitly called on in the text of the spell itself and by rule zero to just give it a straight-up "no."

I also have no intention of debating this point. Please don't try to derail the thread with this non-starter argument. Make your own if you'd like to discuss it.

[MisterKaws]

I think Invisible Superior Invisibility is kinda broken. The specific-trumps-general thing means that "Those with detect magic, see invisibility, or true seeing spells or effects active at the time of the casting will see whatever visual manifestations typically accompany the spell," ergo, none. Someone with this, Fly, and Darkstalker is effectively undetectable by nearly anything.

Dealing with this without making every single foe in the campaign carry scrolls of Antimagic Field is nearly impossible.

Now please, poke my argument with holes.

[LTwerewolf]

I think Invisible Superior Invisibility is kinda broken. The specific-trumps-general thing means that "Those with detect magic, see invisibility, or true seeing spells or effects active at the time of the casting will see whatever visual manifestations typically accompany the spell," ergo, none. Someone with this, Fly, and Darkstalker is effectively undetectable by nearly anything.

Dealing with this without making every single foe in the campaign carry scrolls of Antimagic Field is nearly impossible.

Now please, poke my argument with holes.

True seeing explicitly beats it.

[AvatarVecna]

I think Invisible Superior Invisibility is kinda broken. The specific-trumps-general thing means that "Those with detect magic, see invisibility, or true seeing spells or effects active at the time of the casting will see whatever visual manifestations typically accompany the spell," ergo, none. Someone with this, Fly, and Darkstalker is effectively undetectable by nearly anything.

Dealing with this without making every single foe in the campaign carry scrolls of Antimagic Field is nearly impossible.

Now please, poke my argument with holes.

Darkstalker doesn't make you immune to the senses listed in Darkstalker, it means that those senses don't auto-detect you if you're hiding...and Hide checks don't auto-succeed.

Beyond that, even if you succeed on the Hide/Move Silently checks, your presence can be revealed by non-invisible objectsyou interact with (such as the claasic example of a cllsed door you need to get through). There's ways around that, sure, by that requires more investment than the stuff you mentioned.

[AvatarVecna]

True seeing explicitly beats it.

I think they think that the putting the Invisible Spell Metamagic on Superior Invisibility makes it trump True Seeing
Not true, although Superior Insibility comboned with some kind of cloud aura spell with the Invisible Spell metamagic attached would mean that the True Seeing would be obscured by the normally invisible cloud aura.

[Zanos]

High flying is cute, but it turns dispel magic from an inconvenience to a potential death sentence. Also, it does require a creature actively focus on it, so getting stunned/knocked out/otherwise unable to focus on flying can mean a quick death.

If you get reduced to zero HP airborne, it is all but certain you will be rolling a new one.
The fly spell, which most other abilities are based on, indicates that you slowly fall to the earth if you're airborne when the spell ends. There's also no rules that I'm aware of that cause you to plummet to earth if you can't take actions, other than that fly speeds with maneuverability of average and worse require a minimum forward speed to remain airborne.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I think Invisible Superior Invisibility is kinda broken. The specific-trumps-general thing means that "Those with detect magic, see invisibility, or true seeing spells or effects active at the time of the casting will see whatever visual manifestations typically accompany the spell," ergo, none. Someone with this, Fly, and Darkstalker is effectively undetectable by nearly anything.

Dealing with this without making every single foe in the campaign carry scrolls of Antimagic Field is nearly impossible.

Now please, poke my argument with holes.

Assuming invisible superior invisibility isn't a typo, the subject is still plainly visible to normal sight. A solid spot check modifier has you covered. More on that later.

In any case, there are still the normal methods for detecting an invisible creature indirectly. For mundane approaches, simply filling the area with smoke or aerosolized flour or some other fine particulate that the invisible creature can displace will foil their 8th level spell defense against visibility. The psionic power touch-sight is also a thing if psionics isn't banned from your game and tattoos of powers are cheap. Mindsight says, "hi" like it always does. Undead with life-sight still see the light emitted by the caster, assuming he's alive. Another spell approach is to cast a wide area spell that lingers for a while and look for the void in its aura where the invisible foe is floating. When going through a dungeon, NPC's can notice doors the invisible character opens seem to be doing so of their own accord. Trip wires don't have to be at ground level if they're thin enough. On the feat front, there's pierce magical concealment.

I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that putting invisible spell on superior invisibility does... anything but undo the spell's primary function. Ignoring sound and smell for a moment, the spell's normal, visual effect is to make the target invisible. When that change is, itself, rendered visually imperceptable then while you may be silent and scentless, you're painly visible. Seems a tad counterproductive and -certainly- doesn't foil true-seeing. True seeing explicitly counters superior invisibility and making your invisibility invisible doesn't change that.

It's a powerful spell, sure, but if it weren't for the [mind affecting] tag on cloud mind, the vanishing armor enhancement in XPH would be strictly superior.

[Kelb_Panthera]

The fly spell, which most other abilities are based on, indicates that you slowly fall to the earth if you're airborne when the spell ends. There's also no rules that I'm aware of that cause you to plummet to earth if you can't take actions, other than that fly speeds with maneuverability of average and worse require a minimum forward speed to remain airborne.

I suspect geddy had mundane flight in mind there. Wings don't flap if you're out cold.

[eggynack]

I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that putting invisible spell on superior invisibility does... anything but undo the spell's primary function. Ignoring sound and smell for a moment, the spell's normal, visual effect is to make the target invisible. When that change is, itself, rendered visually imperceptable then while you may be silent and scentless, you're painly visible. Seems a tad counterproductive and -certainly- doesn't foil true-seeing. True seeing explicitly counters superior invisibility and making your invisibility invisible doesn't change that.

I think the idea is that you have both superior invisibility and invisible superior invisibility up. That way, breaching the normal version would get you to only see the invisible version, rendering you invisible. Not sure if it works, cause invisible spell is weird, but it's plausible.

[LTwerewolf]

True seeing explicitly beats both. I know they're trying to use the "you'll see what's underneath" part to say it suddenly doesn't true see through it, but true seeing sees through that too. You just know you're seeing through it.

[eggynack]

True seeing explicitly beats both. I know they're trying to use the "you'll see what's underneath" part to say it suddenly doesn't true see through it, but true seeing sees through that too. You just know you're seeing through it.
I don't think so. Invisible spell isn't seemingly made invisible by some illusion effect. I think it just makes the spell actually invisible. The invisibility is what's really there, so that's presumably what true seeing would see.

[LTwerewolf]

I don't think so. Invisible spell isn't seemingly made invisible by some illusion effect. I think it just makes the spell actually invisible. The invisibility is what's really there, so that's presumably what true seeing would see.

Doesn't change the fact that true seeing says "you see all invisible creatures." It doesn't say that needs to be an illusion effect to accomplish it. In fact, illusions are mentioned specifically afterwards.

[LudicSavant]

@Kelb: What's your answer to Scry'n'Die?

Edit: Also, what's your answer to all of the stuff from the old CharOp boards "Campaign Smashers" thread, many of which weren't infinite loops?

Edit2: Frustratingly, it's really hard to find the old Campaign Smashers thread + links intact. Thanks WotC for nuking your boards. :smallannoyed: Anyways, tons of these things should be examples of genuinely game-breaking abilities... if the links weren't all broken: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?471384-Broken-Links!-Campaign-Smashers-III-The-Stuff-That-Completely-Breaks-the-Game-(ancientdragon)

[Florian]

Most game-breakers I know fall into three broad categories:
1) Abilities that start an "arms-race"
2) Abilities that turn anything into a binary solution
3) Abilities that shift creative control of the game over to the players and make the gm useless.

The first two are more a thing with inexperienced gms and players that are overwhelmed when new options become available and "beat" prepared encounters. We all know how it is when a player finds out that scry plus teleport is a thing, they circumvent the dungeon and the gm is frustrated. That leads to the usual questions and the usual arms-race of protection, beating the protection, and so on.
Stuff like that can be fun and be a game unto itself, but it can also be annoying and a quick gentlemens agreement can also solve it.

I think the third category is the only really problematic one. That includes abilities like Plane Shift, Planar Binding, Create Demiplane, and so on.

[Larrx]

Large scale minionmancy. Not because it's hard to deal with in-game, but because it can break things on a 'players around the table' level.

If the player is skilled, prepared, swiftly decisive, and comfortable with improvisation than it can be fine.

If the player hems and haws for five minutes in an attempt to discern the Platonic ideal of their action this round (I have two, pity me), and they do this for twenty skeletons as well, than it can turn a fun tactical scenario into a boring slog.

[Eladrinblade]

If the player hems and haws for five minutes in an attempt to discern the Platonic ideal of their action this round (I have two, pity me), and they do this for twenty skeletons as well, than it can turn a fun tactical scenario into a boring slog.

Probably my favorite house-rule is the 10-second turn.

"When the DM says 'okay anon, it's your turn', you have 10 seconds to decide what to do. That is; when (or before) the 10 seconds are up, you have to begin explaining what your character does. If you can't, then your character hesitates, taking the delay action. The player can, at the end of any other character's turn, pipe in with their actions for the round at this new lower initiative count, or wait until their next turn."

[Zanos]

If the player hems and haws for five minutes in an attempt to discern the Platonic ideal of their action this round (I have two, pity me), and they do this for twenty skeletons as well, than it can turn a fun tactical scenario into a boring slog.
The true game breaking ability.

"I uh...hang on, let me check a range. Hmmm, yeah my spell list is uh......hang on. I could spontaneously convert to a....nah lets not. Let me charge him...wait no there's difficult terrain...i could throw a....no. Is there somewhere I can flank from? I have to be directly across to flank? I don't think that's right. Someone hand me the PHB?" Then he asks what his attack roll is even though he's been playing 3.5 for years. :smallannoyed:

Even that's better than the guy that just sits there drooling for five minutes. I like to make a point of taking my turn super fast to lampshade people's actions. I stare at them and say. "I move to this position and cast fireball. Here's my damage roll. Can I get 3 reflex saves from the goblins? Okay, I'm done."

[Kelb_Panthera]

@Kelb: What's your answer to Scry'n'Die?

Scrying and greater scrying have sharp limits. Unless your PC's make a habit of just scrying -anyone- they meet for a while as a background check of some sort, it's not even a possibility unless they have some connection to the target and even then it'll probably take a natural 1 on the save to get a hit. So the first layer of defense is obscurity. I understand this isn't always possible but it's still a great start when it is.

Next up is misiinformation; a smart villain knows that scrying is a possibility. Intentionally misrepresenting who and what he is, outside of conducting the business of villainy, ensures that any scryer gets a mistaken impression unless they're extraordinarily observant or just plain lucky. This becomes especially true if he actually notices the scryign sensor and more deliberate misinformation becomes possible. Examples of this can include things like speaking and/or writing in code and/or in an obsucre language (hi, bluff and decipher script). Wearing the trappings of one class when trained in another i.e. a wizard wearing the tight fitting and non-descript outfit of a stealth rogue or a rogue wearing quick-release armor or a light-weight fighter wearing robes and carrying a book, etc. can trick the foe into preparing the wrong spells.

Also of note, the scrying sensor can only see what's within 10 feet of the target. All kinds of fun things can be kept 15 feet from someone important at all or most times; allies, discerning traps, etc. Keeping close proximity to things you -want- the enemy to see can also screw with a scryer's head; like innocent bystanders, hostages (might be redundant :smalltongue:), false documentation, etc.

And of course, there's good old fashioned blocking; scrying cannot penetrate areas shielded with lead plating and a number of spells are intended to deliberately screw with it.

Then there's the teleport aspect of scry and die: regular teleport has a number of exploitable weaknesses. First and foremost is that the familiarity with the destination can be screwed with by making regular significant changes to areas you have control over and spend more than an hour at a time in (try to avoid spending more than an hour in one place as much as you can) if you can get them to hit a false destinaton error you can dump them who knows where. If you can't, you can stiil force a 15% chance of a destination other than on-target by making sure they don't get an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the area around you. For places you can can't alter, setting up mock-ups of them with hidden traps and/or minions can put the enemy in a bind if they hit similar location.

After taking these steps or when greater teleport comes into play, there are magical means of foiling teleport that can be acquired and employed. Of note, the interior of a portable hole is technically not on the same plane as the exterior and is not a valid destination for teleportation. A demi-plane is also very difficult to reach or stronghold on some other plane can at least force the enemy to drop an extra slot on plane shift. Then there's magical architecture and individual spells like anticipate and delay teleportation or forbiddance.

Finally, the "die" of scry and die: do -not- telegraph your defenses. Always keep something as far up your sleeve as you can get it until you absolutely need it, both metaphorically and literally; hidden pockets are everyone's friend. The less you give away, the more generic their attack has to be. Also have an escape plan in mind. Word of recall keyed to a bunker you -never- visit, helm of teleportation on an instant equip item (there's a couple in MiC), a base with as many passages through it as a swiss cheese, all hidden behind secret panels. Unless the enemy nukes you the moment they arrive, you need to disapear a moment later. Leave a nasty suprise if you can but top priority is to escape and regroup.

An absolute defense of scry'n'die takes equal level magic but you can make 'em work for it even with just mundane means.



Edit: Also, what's your answer to all of the stuff from the old CharOp boards "Campaign Smashers" thread, many of which weren't infinite loops?

Edit2: Frustratingly, it's really hard to find the old Campaign Smashers thread + links intact. Thanks WotC for nuking your boards. :smallannoyed: Anyways, tons of these things should be examples of genuinely game-breaking abilities... if the links weren't all broken: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?471384-Broken-Links!-Campaign-Smashers-III-The-Stuff-That-Completely-Breaks-the-Game-(ancientdragon)

I'm not familiar, you'll have to give me some time to review or just pick your favorite and repost it here.

[LudicSavant]

Scrying and greater scrying have sharp limits. Unless your PC's make a habit of just scrying -anyone- they meet for a while as a background check of some sort, it's not even a possibility unless they have some connection to the target and even then it'll probably take a natural 1 on the save to get a hit. So the first layer of defense is obscurity. I understand this isn't always possible but it's still a great start when it is.

Next up is misiinformation; a smart villain knows that scrying is a possibility. Intentionally misrepresenting who and what he is, outside of conducting the business of villainy, ensures that any scryer gets a mistaken impression unless they're extraordinarily observant or just plain lucky. This becomes especially true if he actually notices the scryign sensor and more deliberate misinformation becomes possible. Examples of this can include things like speaking and/or writing in code and/or in an obsucre language (hi, bluff and decipher script). Wearing the trappings of one class when trained in another i.e. a wizard wearing the tight fitting and non-descript outfit of a stealth rogue or a rogue wearing quick-release armor or a light-weight fighter wearing robes and carrying a book, etc. can trick the foe into preparing the wrong spells.

Also of note, the scrying sensor can only see what's within 10 feet of the target. All kinds of fun things can be kept 15 feet from someone important at all or most times; allies, discerning traps, etc. Keeping close proximity to things you -want- the enemy to see can also screw with a scryer's head; like innocent bystanders, hostages (might be redundant :smalltongue:), false documentation, etc.

And of course, there's good old fashioned blocking; scrying cannot penetrate areas shielded with lead plating and a number of spells are intended to deliberately screw with it.

Then there's the teleport aspect of scry and die: regular teleport has a number of exploitable weaknesses. First and foremost is that the familiarity with the destination can be screwed with by making regular significant changes to areas you have control over and spend more than an hour at a time in (try to avoid spending more than an hour in one place as much as you can) if you can get them to hit a false destinaton error you can dump them who knows where. If you can't, you can stiil force a 15% chance of a destination other than on-target by making sure they don't get an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the area around you. For places you can can't alter, setting up mock-ups of them with hidden traps and/or minions can put the enemy in a bind if they hit similar location.

After taking these steps or when greater teleport comes into play, there are magical means of foiling teleport that can be acquired and employed. Of note, the interior of a portable hole is technically not on the same plane as the exterior and is not a valid destination for teleportation. A demi-plane is also very difficult to reach or stronghold on some other plane can at least force the enemy to drop an extra slot on plane shift. Then there's magical architecture and individual spells like anticipate and delay teleportation or forbiddance.

Finally, the "die" of scry and die: do -not- telegraph your defenses. Always keep something as far up your sleeve as you can get it until you absolutely need it, both metaphorically and literally; hidden pockets are everyone's friend. The less you give away, the more generic their attack has to be. Also have an escape plan in mind. Word of recall keyed to a bunker you -never- visit, helm of teleportation on an instant equip item (there's a couple in MiC), a base with as many passages through it as a swiss cheese, all hidden behind secret panels. Unless the enemy nukes you the moment they arrive, you need to disapear a moment later. Leave a nasty suprise if you can but top priority is to escape and regroup.

An absolute defense of scry'n'die takes equal level magic but you can make 'em work for it even with just mundane means.

You keep talking about villains, but that doesn't really answer the question. What about PCs? How do you defend against the world of scry and die while being big damn heroes as a PC?


I'm not familiar, you'll have to give me some time to review or just pick your favorite and repost it here.

Pick any of the dupe or invulnerability tricks. Or nanobots.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Most game-breakers I know fall into three broad categories:
1) Abilities that start an "arms-race"
2) Abilities that turn anything into a binary solution
3) Abilities that shift creative control of the game over to the players and make the gm useless.

The first two are more a thing with inexperienced gms and players that are overwhelmed when new options become available and "beat" prepared encounters. We all know how it is when a player finds out that scry plus teleport is a thing, they circumvent the dungeon and the gm is frustrated.

Circumventing the dungeon that way can only work if the goal is to kill the thing at the bottom of the dungeon that thing is a valid target for you to scry that hasn't taken sufficient precautions. Fetch quests blithely ignore this option by dint of the destination being impossible to scry and, thus, impossile to teleport into without greater teleport. Even greater teleport only works if you know the layout of the interior to succesfully identify the destination room. "where the mcguffin is" isn't a valid destination.


That leads to the usual questions and the usual arms-race of protection, beating the protection, and so on.
Stuff like that can be fun and be a game unto itself, but it can also be annoying and a quick gentlemens agreement can also solve it.

Agreed. That said, the DM -always- wins the arms race unless he just doesn't know the system as well as the player and/or is unwilling/unable to ask a forum like this one.


I think the third category is the only really problematic one. That includes abilities like Plane Shift, Planar Binding, Create Demiplane, and so on.

On this, however, I must strongly disagree. Demiplanes can be an issue if you allow for the manipulation of certain planar traits but that's a really simple fix: the psionic version is -the- version. Switch the older, arcane versions to that one and call it a day. Plane-shift should be discussed with the group as a whole unless you're just weaponizing it, and I've always thought of planar binding et al as free plot-hooks to run with. A DM doesn't need absoute narrative control to run a good game. In fact, player agency is one of the major draws of PNP over video games.

[Kelb_Panthera]

You keep talking about villains, but that doesn't really answer the question. What about PCs? How do you defend against the world of scry and die while being big damn heroes as a PC?

Most of the complaints about these abilities come from the DM's side of the screen but the spells' weaknesses don't change when they shift from player to NPC. As I said, there are magical defenses to every element of a standard scry'n'die routine that any PC can learn or purchase if they're up against a foe that might employ them. Hell, just lining a carriage with lead and using it to travel overland shuts off scry and die almost completely from well before it should even be a possibility. Avoid being scryable is far and away the easiest and cheapest way to foil it.


Pick any of the dupe or invulnerability tricks. Or nanobots.

Nanobots is the one you've actually named, so I'll look at that.

Can't address something I can't examine but on the face of it, nanobots looks an awful lot like it falls under the category of NI loops breaking things. How else would you get hundreds of tiny minions?

Edit, the second:

:smallconfused: well there -was- a post there to respond to....

[Zombimode]

@Kelb: What's your answer to Scry'n'Die?

I think the point of this thread is not the question "can this ability/tactic be answered" but "is this ability/tactic game-breaking"?
Those questions may be related but I think it is worth noting the difference.

So lets talk about Scry'n'Die.

It is a tactic that has the advantage of bypassing outer defenses and coming in prepared and buffed hopefully catching the enemy pants down.
Is this a problem by itself? No. It only becomes a problem if Scry'n'Die is THE answer to the majority of challenges you face and only produces one-sided outcomes. Or if the GM would have to go out of his way to prevent that.

Thankfully this is not the case.

There are several reasons:

1) Steamrolling Scry'n'Die some encounters is not a problem. This is especially true if the game has some strategic components to it.
2) Scry'n'Die could be needed. Maybe the time constraints require it or the enemy is to powerful if confronted in a "fair" manner.
3) Not all challenges can be solved by Scry'n'Die. "Defeat one important enemy" is only applicable in a true subset of possible adventure situations.
4) Scry'n'Die does not remove the challenge of actually defeating the enemy. Yes, in some cases it makes it easier. But some creatures have no need for preparation.
5) It can be defended against. There are some ways to defend against divinations but more importantly teleportation can be prevented. There are some magical ways but in addition the Teleportation spell itself notes "Areas of strong physical or magical energy may make teleportation more hazardous or even impossible." If the GM wants the BBEGs fortress to be Teleport proof this is trivially easy to do.
6) Scry'n'Die is not failsafe. It does not prevent you from walking into a trap.

The Shackled City adventure path is a good showcase why Scry'n'Die is not a problem. First, the AP mentions more then once that the players are expected to employ spells like Scry and Teleport. Then lets have a look at some of the later parts of the AP:
"Foundation of Flame": The party needs to help evacuating the city of Cauldron while a volcano erupts. Then a dragon attacks. Scry'n'Die is of no use at all.
"Thirteen cages": The party races through the Cagewrights main stronghold to destroy the Tree of Shackled Souls to stop the creation of a portal to Caceri in the last minute. Scry'n'Die could be of help, but the artifact level Tree of Shackled Souls (and the volcano) prohibits Teleportation, completely in line with the spell description.
"Asylum": The party has to confront and defeat the demon prince Adimarchus. Scry'n'Die or not, this is no easy ride.

In short Scry'n'Die is a problem in the same sense that flight is a problem: if walls, chasms and earth-bound enemies with no ranged attacks in wide open locations are the only challenges you face, its game-breaking. Otherwise it's not.

[LudicSavant]

http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=663.0 Here's some of the things from the Campaign Smashers list, with a non-broken link.

[Kelb_Panthera]

http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=663.0 Here's some of the things from the Campaign Smashers list, with a non-broken link.

I've skimmed what was presented there. Color me thoroughly unimpressed. Not only were most of those NI loops but some of them relied on dubious (at best) readings of some of the rules involved, and only one of them actually had any potentional to do anything but fling infinity-plus-one damage.

The beholder mage one at the top could potentially pose a problem but for a couple issues: it relies on the DM deciding that PAO is good enough to qualify as a "True beholder." True beholder isn't a game term. It is a creature that is a beholder, truely. If PAO is ruled "close enough" then you have ultimate cosmic powertm right up until the point that PAO is dispelled. You can't fire spells from spellstalks you don't have anymore. It's a solid trick but that's all it is; a trick. Also of note, it leaves you -behind- normal casting for the first 4 levels, catches normal on level 5, and only exceeds normal from levels 6-10, although free action casting is certainly nothing to sneeze at. Ultimately, it's far less terrifying than an -actual- beholder mage.

[Manyasone]

Hmmm... This thread makes me wonder about 'gate'. While I agree that indeed calling creature(s) twice you CL to control for 1k XP is nice I am of the idea that fiends have long memories (I began my rp experience in 2nd edition Planescape) and there will be repercussions for those silly mortals...

[Kelb_Panthera]

Hmmm... This thread makes me wonder about 'gate'. While I agree that indeed calling creature(s) twice you CL to control for 1k XP is nice I am of the idea that fiends have long memories (I began my rp experience in 2nd edition Planescape) and there will be repercussions for those silly mortals...

Please make your own thread. I've seen this discussion derail threads in the past, I know it will here as well (I ought to, as often as I took part in those derails :smalltongue:). In most cases it was at least tangentially relevant to the thread but not in this one. I don't mean to be rude, just trying to keep the thread on track by nipping this in the bud before it's an unkillable creeping vine on the wall of the discussion; like a kudzu.

[AvatarVecna]

Hmmm... This thread makes me wonder about 'gate'. While I agree that indeed calling creature(s) twice you CL to control for 1k XP is nice I am of the idea that fiends have long memories (I began my rp experience in 2nd edition Planescape) and there will be repercussions for those silly mortals...

I imagine Devils have a complicated system of rules and laws regarding trading SLAs, particularly 1/year Wishes, whereas Demons with wishes probably already used it. That's a large part of the reason people go for Efreeti.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I imagine Devils have a complicated system of rules and laws regarding trading SLAs, particularly 1/year Wishes, whereas Demons with wishes probably already used it. That's a large part of the reason people go for Efreeti.

No! Bad word kudzu! *smack* No taking root on my thread! No!

(I'm wasting my time and this is going to happen, isn't it? :smallsigh: I guess I'll dig up my notes.)

[LudicSavant]

only one of them actually had any potentional to do anything but fling infinity-plus-one damage.

What the actual heck? This statement is blatantly false. Your descriptions don't even remotely resemble what is being described in the linked thread. Even the one named "perpetual damage machine" can be used to gain massive bonuses to stuff like skills and saves, rather than just dealing damage.


I've skimmed what was presented there. Color me thoroughly unimpressed.

Skimmed indeed! It's like you read Pun Pun and came away with saying "Pfft, it only lets you turn into a Sarrukh."

[AvatarVecna]

No! Bad word kudzu! *smack* No taking root on my thread! No!

(I'm wasting my time and this is going to happen, isn't it? :smallsigh: I guess I'll dig up my notes.)

Nice try, but my cheeks have adapted a thicker skin to blunt the slapping trauma! :smalltongue:

I'm sorry for any part that post might have in helping the thread get derailed.

[Kelb_Panthera]

What the actual heck? Even the one named "perpetual damage machine" can be used to gain massive bonuses to stuff like skills and saves, rather than just dealing damage. :smallconfused:

Seriously, what thread are you reading?

It also engaged an infinite loop, something I already explicitly acknowledged was a problem. I stopped looking at it after that because it didn't matter anymore, thus "skimmed." Even so, infinite bonus to X basic ability doesn't accomplish a whole lot. Infinite +skill: not significantly different from more mundane optimization of skills. So you can balance on a cloud earlier; I'm supposed to be impressed? +infinte saves: still fail on a 1 though. +infinite attack: true strike says "I've been guaranteeing hits since level 1 and the fighter only misses on a 1 unless he tanks his to-hit on PA now anyway. What are you even doing?" +infinite AC: hello area attacks and targetted effects. Still unimpressed. If it can generate infinite spells, sure, that's a problem. But I acknowledged that on post 1 so why bring it up?

[LudicSavant]

It also engaged an infinite loop, something I already explicitly acknowledged was a problem. I stopped looking at it after that because it didn't matter anymore, thus "skimmed." Even so, infinite bonus to X basic ability doesn't accomplish a whole lot. Infinite +skill: not significantly different from more mundane optimization of skills. So you can balance on a cloud earlier; I'm supposed to be impressed? +infinte saves: still fail on a 1 though. +infinite attack: true strike says "I've been guaranteeing hits since level 1 and the fighter only misses on a 1 unless he tanks his to-hit on PA now anyway. What are you even doing?" +infinite AC: hello area attacks and targetted effects. Still unimpressed. If it can generate infinite spells, sure, that's a problem. But I acknowledged that on post 1 so why bring it up?

Nothing you've said here even begins to address that this:


only one of them actually had any potentional to do anything but fling infinity-plus-one damage.

is a blatantly false statement. The first trick can do an awful lot besides damage (and is finite). The second trick can do an awful lot besides damage (but is an infinite loop). The third trick can do an awful lot besides damage (and is finite). The fourth trick can do an awful lot besides damage (and is finite). The fifth trick can do an awful lot besides damage (and is finite). How on earth did you come to the conclusion that only one of them has the potential to do anything but damage?

[Big Fau]

Scrying and greater scrying have sharp limits. Unless your PC's make a habit of just scrying -anyone- they meet for a while as a background check of some sort, it's not even a possibility unless they have some connection to the target and even then it'll probably take a natural 1 on the save to get a hit. So the first layer of defense is obscurity. I understand this isn't always possible but it's still a great start when it is.

I don't know about you, but in my games players don't even cast Scry or Greater Scrying without first playing 20 questions via other Divinations. You don't even need to meet someone to find out how much of a threat they are to you a week in advance.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Nothing you've said here even begins to address that this:



is a blatantly false statement. The first trick can do an awful lot besides damage (and is finite). The second trick can do an awful lot besides damage (but is an infinite loop). The third trick can do an awful lot besides damage (and is finite). The fourth trick can do an awful lot besides damage (and is finite). The fifth trick can do an awful lot besides damage (and is finite). How on earth did you come to the conclusion that only one of them has the potential to do anything but damage?

Fine, you want me to knock 'em off one by one. Here goes.

Beholder mage; already covered it.

perpetual damage machine; already covered it, infinite loop, dubious ruling on spell interactions

Body outside body trick; failed ruling on psionics: transparency rules say that spells that could interact with powers as though they were spells do so. BOB's text that removes spellcasting also removes manifesting. Infinite loop: generates an infinite supply of XP (also dubious). Powerful trick but is sharply limited by requiring either a theurgy build with one of the weaker subsytems or just generating a few extra warriors on a gish build. Neat, not game breaking.

Nasty gentleman: failure on symbiont rules across the board. Only generates a few extra instances of any given spell and most such instances generate little to no benefit or just more damage.

Omnicifer; this is literally just the infinite damage mechanism in a different package. Infinite loop remains infinite, benefits remain lack-luster. Interaction of damage sharing remains dubious. Still an artificer, so there's that I guess.

I -repeat- the only one remotely interesting is the beholder mage one.

As for my exact phrasing of the "blatantly false" statement. I suppose I could've been clearer in how I said it but they don't do anything -of particular note- beyond what the character could have done without them, except arbitrarily large amounts of damage.


I don't know about you, but in my games players don't even cast Scry or Greater Scrying without first playing 20 questions via other Divinations. You don't even need to meet someone to find out how much of a threat they are to you a week in advance.

But you do need to know they exist. All of those other spells also have sharp limits that can be gamed and outright counters in some of those limits as well as the typical counter-magic designed to foil them. We can go through them one at a time, if you like.

[LudicSavant]

Infinite loop: generates an infinite supply of XP (also dubious). This makes about as much sense as calling Dominate Person an infinite loop because you can cast it an unlimited amount of times in your life (not to mention have dominated minions foot the bill for XP costs).


Nasty gentleman: failure on symbiont rules across the board. Only generates a few extra instances of any given spell and most such instances generate little to no benefit or just more damage.

How do you figure?



Omnicifer; this is literally just the infinite damage mechanism in a different package. Infinite loop remains infinite, benefits remain lack-luster. Interaction of damage sharing remains dubious. Still an artificer, so there's that I guess. Why are you even mentioning this? That isn't trick #5. This is. (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=663.0;msg=99303) You're just making it even more clear that you're not accurately addressing the tricks in the thread...

[Kelb_Panthera]

Why are you even mentioning this? That isn't trick #5. This is. (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=6570.0) You're just making it even more clear that you're not accurately addressing the tricks in the thread...

The save game trick cannot be used proactively. It's burning a whole bunch of resources to get the DM to let you take a mulligan on the past day or so without having to ask. A trick whose sole, intended purpose is to move things backwards -cannot- be used to advance by necessity. This actually does -less- than nothing in that it erases actions already taken. It literally produces a negative value for doing things. It -might- break the game in the sense that the other players get tired of having to do things over several times and ask you to roll up a new character. Not quite what most people mean by game-breaking.

Look. If there's more past the first page (missed that one because "skimming" and it was way down in a spoiler rather than quoted like the others) I'm -not- going to dig through the whole thing. If you don't care enough to dig 'em out and just copy-pasta, neither do I.

EDIT: not getting into an edit-off. I'll be back in a few hours.

[LudicSavant]

I'm -not- going to dig through the whole thing. If you don't care enough to dig 'em out and just copy-pasta, neither do I.

If you're explicitly not going to bother to read something, maybe don't make a big show about how it's a total failure, meets none of your criteria, and make a show of how thoroughly unimpressed you are with the thing you explicitly said that you didn't read.



Look. If there's more past the first page

That was on the first page. It was also mentioned in the first post of the first thread I linked.

[AnachroNinja]

This thread mostly lost any validity when multiple things became "No, the spell does what *I* say it does and that's why it doesn't break the game" and "Well obviously just house rule to use an alternate version of the spell" and my favorite "Just design the campaign so everyone and everything is deliberately set up to make usage of these abilities and spells impossible."

It's a long standing opinion of mine that if your solution to a game breaker is to engineer your campaign and enemies to make it useless, that is tacit admission of it being a game breaker. "Oh no, this villain has kept 15' away from all important things for his whole life and had lead plates implanted in his brain to protect his thoughts! LOLPWND I win at DnD". That kind of constant nonsense just isn't reasonable on a massive scale like that. You're average person has trouble remembering to take the garbage out every time with no issues, but you want me to believe every enemy in your world counts the minutes to maintain perfectly overlapping spells and never gets close to things or says anything out loud or is not perfect. You might as well just ban the spells at that point, and that's why they are game breakers.

Whether they break the game because your PCs use them or they break the game because your an ass who passive aggressively built a campaign world around denying your PC's the ability to use their spells and abilities, it's still a game breaker.

Edit: And since I just saw it up there, we'll add " LOL you can't scry the villain because you don't know who he is, he could be anyone, everyone's a villain! You'll never solve my mystery! " Ignoring the fact that no, you don't need to know who the villain is for any number of divinations since you can divine who is responsible for things, who has something, and etc.

[ArcanaGuy]

I've grown tired of seeing a number of so-called game-breaking abilities called such when the problem lies more with the DM's setup of a situation than the spell (let's be real here, they're almost all spells) that invalidated it.

Oooo, I quite agree. Most of those 'game breakers' just make me roll my eyes. Especially when they involve such a convoluted mass of tenuous abilities linked together that at any one point it'd be easy for the GM to go "That's not intended to be used that way. No."


Unlimited, free wishes

Would you consider a 'free wish once a day' to be an unlimited free wish?


Long-term flight.

This comes online for (most) characters around level 9 or 10. The complaint always goes that the ability to fly all day invalidates most obstacles and makes overland travel based adventure hooks impossible.

Thank you so much for addressing this. I had a game once where one of the 'core races' for that setting had wings and could fly. The GM then proceeded to refuse to let us fly to our target location, because it would completely invalidate all his overland travel stuff. I'm glad to see that my thoughts on this attitude as being tremendously unimaginative aren't unique.


@Kelb: What's your answer to Scry'n'Die?

I'm surprised the most obvious thing about this one hasn't been said yet: Lead sheets. In a world where everyone knows this is a thing, and there's a super-simple, very mundane solution ... and the rules surrounding base building acknowledge that it's assumed that for any major undertaking, people are going to be using magic to summon materials from extraplanar sources to speed up the building process ... why would anyone building their stronghold and concerned about security not have lead shielding up in their walls?


This thread mostly lost any validity when (snip) "Just design the campaign so everyone and everything is deliberately set up to make usage of these abilities and spells impossible."

That's like in our world, having a major stronghold and not having an alarm system on the windows and doors. Or having an internet server without a firewall. There are very known threats in our world, and we've come up with very known responses. Does this mean that SQL injection attacks are OP because every single online application and language needs to make sure to have code specifically to target against it? Nope! It's just a known threat and a known response.

Even in the fantasy world, that's like saying, "Swords are OP because everyone just wears armor to counter it."

I agree with you, however, that some of the responses "they always are deceitful every moment of every day and get up and move every hour even if asleep" are a bit stretched. I mean, who, by habit, makes themselves invisible when going to the bathroom just in case they're being watched? (coughcough)

In all seriousness, though, I agree that living one's whole life in paranoia only works for a few villains. I prefer much simpler counters than "Every villain is a chessmaster."

Which is why I love the lead shielding and lead box approach. And then I get to run scenarios where destroyed old ruins introduced lead poisoning into the water supply! It lets me build the world around it instead of just being used as a counter.


If you're explicitly not going to bother to read something, maybe don't make a big show about (etc)

Dude, you responded to his thread by pointing somewhere else entirely, going "Please do a ton of reading and research here and respond to EVERYTHING," and then declined to actually provide your favorite example from that thread for his convenience in responce. That's rather rude. You're coming to his thread and making demands. You're the guest here, be polite. If you have something specific you want him to respond to, then you do the work, do the copy-paste into this thread, and give him the full text of what you want a response from. Otherwise, he's perfectly reasonable in doing a quick skim to see whether or not it matches his standards, and if he didn't quite catch everything in his quick scan... don't blame him for being less than perfect in not meeting your unreasonable demand.


In any case, there are still the normal methods for detecting an invisible creature indirectly. For mundane approaches, simply filling the area with smoke or aerosolized flour or some other fine particulate that the invisible creature can displace will foil their 8th level spell defense against visibility.

Oh, no doubt. Most fanboys read RA Salvatore's series and went to make their own characters who were moody good Drow who dual-wield scimitars. As a young fanboy, I just made it a habit where every one of my characters always carried around a small sack of flour. Flour is a counter to so many abilities, and strangely useful in so many situations.

Which leads into my question on world-breaking. Well, OK, not world-breaking so much as just players can abuse the bejeebers out of it. (I certainly did, and I didn't mind when the GM invented a house-ruled counter because of my abuse.)

Pathfinder: Mythic Adventures. Legendary Items.

"Undetectable: This grants its bonded user the ability to become utterly undetectable while invisible. While invisible and in physical contact with this item, the bonded creature can't be detected or scryed by any method."

What this means is, even if they're talking, you can hear their voice ... but can't figure out where they are from it. Flour in the air is 'any method' - it doesn't work. Granted, there's still AOEs, but by the RAW, even mythic true sight can't get through this. Tremorsense can't detect the invisible character. Etc, etc.

Attach this to greater invisibility, and they can attack without losing invisibility. Would you qualify this single ability as a bit world-breaking and needing some house ruling?

[DarkSoul]

The Campaign Smashers thread is mostly just a collection of links to what have become common-knowledge high-PO-to-TO builds; Pun-Pun, the H.I.V.E., Uberchargers, Dragoons, Cheater of Mystra, Dragonwrought Kobolds and epic feats, Cancer Mage + Festering Anger. Because so many of them fall into the Theoretical Optimization category, they're basically unusable in everyday games.

Pun-Pun, for example, relies on getting the Manipulate Form ability from a sarrukh; a near-extinct, semi-mythical reptilian race from the Forgotten Realms that doesn't exactly advertise its continued existence, and the least powerful members of said race are CR 21. It also requires said kobold to have the Divine Minion template which is normally only given out by the Mulhorandi (Egyptian) pantheon, and definitely NOT by Kurtulmak and the rest of his brood. Any in-game justification for a level 5 kobold to A) know about sarrukh, B) impress a mulhorandi god enough to be granted the necessary template, and C) take the exact combination of classes (wizard 1, master of many forms 3? Who DOES that? Pun-pun, that's it.) needed is probably shaky at best.

I agree with K_P in that game-breaking abilities are a myth for the most part in any campaign where the DM has any kind of control and sense of continuity in his game. What this thread could end up being is a resource for less-experienced DMs pointing out what to look for and what possible problems may arise from different classes, feats, abilities, and/or combinations of the above.

[Boci]

Dude, you responded to his thread by pointing somewhere else entirely, going "Please do a ton of reading and research here and respond to EVERYTHING," and then declined to actually provide your favorite example from that thread for his convenience in responce. That's rather rude. You're coming to his thread and making demands. You're the guest here, be polite. If you have something specific you want him to respond to, then you do the work, do the copy-paste into this thread, and give him the full text of what you want a response from. Otherwise, he's perfectly reasonable in doing a quick skim to see whether or not it matches his standards, and if he didn't quite catch everything in his quick scan... don't blame him for being less than perfect in not meeting your unreasonable demand.

Counter points:

Doesn't starting a thread with:

I've grown tired of seeing a number of so-called game-breaking abilities called such when the problem lies more with the DM's setup of a situation than the spell (let's be real here, they're almost all spells) that invalidated it.

Imply you have already done your research and that therefor posters shouldn't be need to provide anything? I understand that digging through thousands of man hours of theorycrafting from dozens if not hundreds of people isn't too exciting a prospect, but if you haven't done that, then how can you accurately claim its a myth?

[LudicSavant]

Dude, you responded to his thread by pointing somewhere else entirely, going "Please do a ton of reading and research here and respond to EVERYTHING," and then declined to actually provide your favorite example from that thread for his convenience in responce. That's rather rude. You're coming to his thread and making demands.

You know what would actually be really rude? Stuffing words in people's mouths that they didn't say and wildly misrepresenting their position.


I'm surprised the most obvious thing about this one hasn't been said yet: Lead sheets.

This has actually been mentioned a few times in this thread. By Kelb, for one.

[AnachroNinja]

Worth noting to that lead sheets only block scrying, not the vast amounts of other divinations.

[DarkSoul]

Counter points:

Doesn't starting a thread with:

I've grown tired of seeing a number of so-called game-breaking abilities called such when the problem lies more with the DM's setup of a situation than the spell (let's be real here, they're almost all spells) that invalidated it.

Imply you have already done your research and that therefor posters shouldn't be need to provide anything? I understand that digging through thousands of man hours of theorycrafting from dozens if not hundreds of people isn't too exciting a prospect, but if you haven't done that, then how can you accurately claim its a myth?To be fair, and this relates to the Campaign Smashers link, most of those ARE pretty well known around this board already.

[Mehangel]

I have one that might be considered game-breaking: Locate City Bomb (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?138285-What-is-the-Locate-City-Bomb)

[AnachroNinja]

Get ready for "That doesn't work by my interpretation of the rules and if you want to argue it, start your own thread"....

[Mehangel]

Get ready for "That doesn't work by my interpretation of the rules and if you want to argue it, start your own thread"....

Well thing about Locate City Bomb is that there are so many variations of it. So while I agree that some of them might not work, others would be far more difficult to explain away.

[ArcanaGuy]

Counter points:

Doesn't starting a thread with:

I've grown tired of seeing a number of so-called game-breaking abilities called such when the problem lies more with the DM's setup of a situation than the spell (let's be real here, they're almost all spells) that invalidated it.

Imply you have already done your research and that therefor posters shouldn't be need to provide anything? I understand that digging through thousands of man hours of theorycrafting from dozens if not hundreds of people isn't too exciting a prospect, but if you haven't done that, then how can you accurately claim its a myth?

Well, let's say that 'ghosts are a myth - give me a ghost myth and I'll try to disprove it.' Your response is "What about all the ghost stories from South Africa?" Is that really a fair request?


Nice straw man argument.

Oh? How? I feel it's pretty accurate. When you call 'Straw Man Argument" you need to show why it's inaccurate, or else you are suffering from a Straw Man Argument yourself.



You know what would actually be really rude? Stuffing words in people's mouths that they didn't say and wildly misrepresenting their position.

Ah, another edit after others had replied. All right, then....

Still stands. How is it a misrepresentation?

You gave him a reference to a thread on another site and asked he read the whole thing. When he requested you give him specific examples that you felt were the most valid, you refused. When he didn't read the whole thing, you insulted him. When he missed even a single example, you condemned him.


This has actually been mentioned a few times in this thread. By Kelb, for one.

Oops! Went back and reread, missed that. Sorry! Still, I feel like it's worth more attention than a single sentence. Lead Sheeting is the biggest and easiest contributor to why this isn't a big deal. Because it IS so easy that every civilized stronghold probably has this as part of it.


Worth noting to that lead sheets only block scrying, not the vast amounts of other divinations.

Soooooort of, but a lot of divinations also state "1 foot of stone, 1 inch of common metal, a thin sheet of lead, or 3 feet of wood or dirt blocks it." I cannot swiftly find a divination spell that provides the same problem as a scry/teleport/kill combo which cannot be blocked by lead, except possibly Clairaudience and Clairvoyance, but the range is pretty limiting and even more limiting is the fact that you already have to be familiar with the location.

Most of those divination that don't directly state that they're stopped by lead sheeting ... are spells like 'True Strike' or 'True Seeing' where the lead sheeting clause wouldn't make a difference... because you can't see through the lead sheeting with your normal vision.


Well thing about Locate City Bomb is that there are so many variations of it. So while I agree that some of them might not work, others would be far more difficult to explain away.

So which variation do you feel is most valid? I have yet to see one where there wasn't an obvious "Uh... NO." link somewhere in the chain.

That being said, I'm still amused enough by it where the Locate City bomb was the inspiration for the most recent apocalypse in the campaign world I'm building. *^_^*

[Boci]

Well, let's say that 'ghosts are a myth - give me a ghost myth and I'll try to disprove it.' Your response is "What about all the ghost stories from South Africa?" Is that really a fair request?

I don't feel that's quite the same. That's literally hundreds of years of culture from an entire continent. Whilst daunting, every char-op trick from D&D is much less absurd a volume.

[Fizban]

Re: non-scrying divination

But you do need to know they exist. All of those other spells also have sharp limits that can be gamed and outright counters in some of those limits as well as the typical counter-magic designed to foil them. We can go through them one at a time, if you like.
It feels like something that should have been done a long time ago and everyone would have heard of it by now, but as far as I know no one's put together "The Grand Thread of DM's Counters Etc." The first part of which would go over every divination spell and it's countermeasures, the second part of which would put together those countermeasures in proper forms for what badguys should/could be doing at each level. Further parts expand on other topics as neccesary.

What I'd be interested in (if it even makes sense to you), is a rundown on just exactly how one counters Divination itself. The jist of it seems to be that it turns into some sort of chess-like temporal monstrosity where you have to line up the exact thought matrices of each party's paradoxical layers of intent before you can run them against each other to see who's Divination turns up what first. The easiest solution is obviously for the DM to exercise their control over what the result actually is and any time two parties point Divinations at each other (directly or indirectly) they both turn up fuzzy. But on the off chance you understand and can outlay how that all goes down it'd be interesting.

After Divination is Commune, for which I see very little in effective countermeasures, and while information isn't game-breaking the inability can cause a serious hit to fun. Being an indirect spell it of course avoids any direct shielding since you're asking what someone else knows. And the problem is weather or not you're actually getting your deity on the line. Deities have defined abilities, including portfolio sense that literally lets them know about anything they're related to and sense it weeks into the past or future, including their followers. There is no counter to this aside from having another deity of the same rank and with a portfolio connection of it's own shield the subject from view, and that's limited to two (2!) remote blocks at once.

So the only justification for having your god not know everything about your upcoming adventure and potential threats is for another god to have been spending half of their deific sight blocking on whoever it is you're asking about, also limiting them to a relatively small area.

Or you can making your own dubious rulings: it says your god answers questions based on it's current knowledge, not that it's allowed to use one of it's many actions to take a look at that moment in time for you and then assume gods never pay attention on their own. Or cut the god out completely and have all Commune spells connect with an agent, which can be anything of whatever reduced power you want in order to justify their ignorance. Neither is very satisfying.

[DarkSoul]

I have one that might be considered game-breaking: Locate City Bomb (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?138285-What-is-the-Locate-City-Bomb)


Get ready for "That doesn't work by my interpretation of the rules and if you want to argue it, start your own thread"....It undeniably works, but the argument can be made that it doesn't work out of a first-level spell slot because it requires a ruling from an FAQ, not errata, and FAQ's aren't looked very highly upon as official sources (around here at least).

This comes down to a player making a ridiculous choice for their character, much like Pun-Pun. The moment the DM sees someone take Arcane Thesis (Locate City) as a feat, they need to step in and clarify that the Locate City bomb won't work.

[Boci]

It undeniably works, but the argument can be made that it doesn't work out of a first-level spell slot because it requires a ruling from an FAQ, not errata, and FAQ's aren't looked very highly upon as official sources (around here at least).

This comes down to a player making a ridiculous choice for their character, much like Pun-Pun. The moment the DM sees someone take Arcane Thesis (Locate City) as a feat, they need to step in and clarify that the Locate City bomb won't work.

Even without metamagic reductors though, its what, a 4th level spell for the weight apocalypse version?

[ArcanaGuy]

I don't feel that's quite the same. That's literally hundreds of years of culture from an entire continent. Whilst daunting, every char-op trick from D&D is much less absurd a volume.

Fair enough, there is a difference in length of history, but given that the referenced thread wasn't even from this forum, and the sheer quantity of gaming forums out there on the web, expecting someone to read your specific reference point... it's full of finagled little details, and requires a lot of research into the rule sets involved to see what each individual element contains. That's requesting someone to do something like 1-4 hours of reading and research (depending on how thorough a response you want) for your one or two sentences, just so that you don't have to do it yourself and provide a specific example which you feel is the most valid one. And when Kelb *did* try to just skim it and response in a similarly generic fashion as the original request, he got called out on it. Kelb requested this for a discussion, not as an inquisition to find The Truth. Why should he be expected to go through all that effort for someone who just wants to throw demands and doesn't feel like going through the effort of contributing, himself?



What I'd be interested in (if it even makes sense to you), is a rundown on just exactly how one counters Divination itself.

All right. live in a null-magic zone.

I'm not sure one needs to counter 'all of divination'. Does 'detect magic' really impinge upon you all that much? Everyone carries some magic around. I fully expect that there are scythes out there with a "+4 Profession(farmer)" enhancement on it. Is 'detect magic' really game breaking, so that it needs to be countered all the time?

Why does 'all Divination' need to be countered in order to prevent world-breaking?


After Divination is Commune,

Commune is a series of yes/no questions, which the god (or its agent) already has to have a knowledge of. Asking after a specific kidnap victim only works if the deity (or its agent) has paid attention to this small kidnapping off in the middle of nowhere. What makes your quest so much more important than what everyone else is asking the deity and its agents at the same time? Major priests in far off lands are using their commune spell to ask the deity which nobleman they should support in the upcoming council vote. Why does your question take priority over that?

Or, contrariwise, if it's a huge kidnapping with the fate of the kingdom hinging on it, and your deity is already interested in it. OK, so your deity is a goodly deity, and interested in justice, and is interested in finding out where the kidnapped prince is. Your cleric casts commune to find out so she can go rescue the lost boy. For the goodly deity to take this much interest implies there's probably an evil deity which has taken just as much interest in keeping him hidden... this isn't just some theoretical artificial block - it's celestial politics.

There's a reason the deities are mostly 'non-involved' in worldly affairs. Because when the gods start opposing each other directly... stuff goes down. This is why you get riddles instead of full-out plainly worded answers for trying to get answers to this sort of stuff. It's a compromise between the opposed deities to prevent major world-shattering battles.


and that's limited to two (2!) remote blocks at once.

And this is the part where I'm confused. How are deities limited to 2 remote blocks at a time? I feel like I missed something.

[LTwerewolf]

-A geat idea-

The list should also include a fondue rating.

[AnachroNinja]

As pointed out already, dingy l divinations not blocked by lead include... Divination of course. Surgery, commune, circle dance legend lore, and probably a few others. To provide your requested example of alternate scry and die... Circle dance from multiple points to triangulate exact position, dimension door/greater teleport/wish to teleport. You can get the rough description needed for teleport from any of the other mentioned divinations, or even from scrying depending on layers. Lead sheets block scrying, they are not themselves immune to scrying.

To my knowledge the main point of contention on the locate city bomb is whether it's listed area actually conforms to standard area spells. It's unique listing of a circle has a number of possible dysfunctions. I personally don't really have an opinion.

Edit: I'm pretty sure he meant the specific spell divination Arcanaguy

[Boci]

Kelb requested this for a discussion, not as an inquisition to find The Truth. Why should he be expected to go through all that effort for someone who just wants to throw demands and doesn't feel like going through the effort of contributing, himself?


Because he made this thread that opened with a bold claim that would require hours of research to have been formed.


To my knowledge the main point of contention on the locate city bomb is whether it's listed area actually conforms to standard area spells. It's unique listing of a circle has a number of possible dysfunctions. I personally don't really have an opinion.

I'm pretty sure that only nixes the explosive variant preventing 1kd6 damage since they'd be pushed upwards, which means it cannot kill opponents of equal or higher CR, but it doesn't need to do that to be game breaking. It doesn't even need weight apocalypse, just a way to deal damage. 2nd level 30+ mile radius spell that does 2 damage? Cast it 3-5 times, and all commoners and experts in that area are dead. Even if that only hits 20% of a city, that is a great return on investment in how much damage you have caused an enemy kindgom.

[AnachroNinja]

I remember a lot of ranting about what exactly constitutes a circle, if it's two dimensional then it skips hills and depressions, blocked by walls, divots in the land. In theory any change in elevation could block it. Or bring under it could avoid it. Not saying it's useless, but potential issues exist.

[LTwerewolf]

Because he made this thread that opened with a bold claim that would require hours of research to have been formed.

It seems to have offended you greatly on a personal level and I'm unsure why. If fizban's idea ever happens, I think a lot of people will find that a lot of the things they thought wre game breaking weren't. Do I feel the list is as small as kelb's? Well probably not, I can imagine a couple others things, but It's not something to get all bent out of shape about.

[Mehangel]

What I'd be interested in (if it even makes sense to you), is a rundown on just exactly how one counters Divination itself.




All right. live in a null-magic zone.

I'm not sure one needs to counter 'all of divination'. Does 'detect magic' really impinge upon you all that much? Everyone carries some magic around. I fully expect that there are scythes out there with a "+4 Profession(farmer)" enhancement on it. Is 'detect magic' really game breaking, so that it needs to be countered all the time?

Why does 'all Divination' need to be countered in order to prevent world-breaking?

I think you misunderstood Fizban's question. I am pretty sure he was referring to the Divination spell (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/divination.htm), not the school of magic.

[DarkSoul]

Even without metamagic reductors though, its what, a 4th level spell for the weight apocalypse version?

Regardless what level it is, it's still a failure on the DMs part to have more control over their game than what these boards assume, if they ever have to deal with a game-breaking ability. Theoretical optimization requires that the letter of the rules, regardless of their intent, is what applies. In-game and/or roleplaying considerations have to be ruled out.

I'm not saying that only bad DMs are confounded by these abilities. An inexperienced DM with experienced players could just as easily run into these kinds of problems. Lack of experience does not equate to bad, in my opinion. I'm more inclined to call the pseudo-DM required to let TO tricks work "bad" than any other kind.

Regarding the actual mechanics of the bomb, though. It provokes a reflex save, and anything with lightning resistance 2+ is utterly immune, even to the wightocalypse (fell drain) version. Yes, it will kill a lot of people, but those that are left will be the ones that resisted or saved against the spell, which means they were lucky or good. The good ones are now almost universally pissed at you.

If a DM is aware of the trick and still allows it, odds are good they're planning some sort of retribution in-game that's arguably worse, like chain gating or something along those lines.

[ArcanaGuy]

As pointed out already, dingy l divinations not blocked by lead include... Divination of course. Surgery, commune, circle dance legend lore, and probably a few others. To provide your requested example of alternate scry and die... Circle dance from multiple points to triangulate exact position, dimension door/greater teleport/wish to teleport. You can get the rough description needed for teleport from any of the other mentioned divinations, or even from scrying depending on layers. Lead sheets block scrying, they are not themselves immune to scrying.

To my knowledge the main point of contention on the locate city bomb is whether it's listed area actually conforms to standard area spells. It's unique listing of a circle has a number of possible dysfunctions. I personally don't really have an opinion.

Edit: I'm pretty sure he meant the specific spell divination Arcanaguy

Ohhhhh.... the specific spell. That makes a LOT more sense. Whoops. *^_^* Quite right, thank you.

I wasn't aware that Divination was all that OP. I mean, the spell description itself, (doublechecks Pathfinder, at least) seems to suggest that it is always a riddle of some sort, or otherwise not a clear answer. It's also a check on the future, not a check on the present. So I'm sorry, what am I missing?

Circle dance requires 'firsthand knowledge of your target' which could be a challenge for you to receive if it's a casual enemy or a hired commission. Unless it's an arch-rival with STORY behind it, in which case it makes sense, and he's also got firsthand knowledge of you, it all creates story... and honestly, it takes a lot of effort to continually triangulate as you get closer and closer... we're talking "Lost Treasures of Rule" here, and I see nothing wrong with that in a story. And none of that provides the exact knowledge of location which provides the 'perfect teleport'. Greater teleport still wouldn't work. Wish teleport is, well ... a wish! And assumes that if you want it to be a challenge, your opponent is at the same level of power that involves wishes. There's a huge swath of issues there aside from being able to triangulate a general location.

[Boci]

Regarding the actual mechanics of the bomb, though. It provokes a reflex save, and anything with lightning resistance 2+ is utterly immune, even to the wightocalypse (fell drain) version. Yes, it will kill a lot of people, but those that are left will be the ones that resisted or saved against the spell, which means they were lucky or good. The good ones are now almost universally pissed at you.

So what other pre-5th level spells rivals the destruction of a locate city bomb? And "universally pissed at you" is not a balancing factor. Nukes tend to result similar feelings from the country you use them on, and yet their presence has greatly shaped the world and international relations.

That's what locate city bomb is: nukes in D&D, and the political and inter-kingdom relationship factors that come with weapons of mass destruction.


Regardless what level it is, it's still a failure on the DMs part to have more control over their game than what these boards assume, if they ever have to deal with a game-breaking ability. Theoretical optimization requires that the letter of the rules, regardless of their intent, is what applies. In-game and/or roleplaying considerations have to be ruled out.

So it's not game breaking because the DM can ban it?


It seems to have offended you greatly on a personal level and I'm unsure why.

Probably because you're wrong and it hasn't? I don't think Kelb has put enough research into the topic before making this thread, but it has no more offended me greatly on a personal level than you have been by me pointing this out.

[ArcanaGuy]

Holy smokes this thread is moving.


Because he made this thread that opened with a bold claim that would require hours of research to have been formed.

Ahhhh. And because of that, he's not allowed to expect people who want in on the thread to be polite?

[NichG]

Its funny, but I've been in and run games that managed to stay stable for a year or two despite having unlimited, free wishes - because in those campaigns, the actual infinite/unblockable holes elsewhere were plugged, so there wasn't anything too bad for Wish to emulate. Certainly though, those games were not dungeon crawls and would not have worked as dungeon crawls.

If I were to name a single spell that keeps bothering me abstractly and could cause all sorts of havoc and isn't on the OP's list, I'd say its Polymorph Any Object, due to the inherent ambiguity of how it's written. As written, it says nothing about the HD of what you turn things into, and there's an explicit example of transforming something inanimate into something with HD in the spell description. But maybe that counts as an infinite loop? Anyhow, we pretty much recognize that this is a problem and just don't go there, so its strictly a theoretical issue. I would love to run a character whose only mechanical ability was PaO at will (with the infinities closed) though - you can pretty much do anything and everything with that one spell.

For things which have actually been disruptive to game... it's not exactly plot-breaking, but anything where the ability asks the DM to take over for the player in choosing what to do kind of breaks what I think game should 'feel like' to players. For example, talking to allied super-intelligent NPCs via Planar Binding/etc, or due to some divination spells which imply a value judgment, or even arguably stuff like Find the Path which has terms like 'safest way' and includes finding paths which involve exactly-performed nontrivial actions like passwords. It also creates a bit of a problem in terms of running it - if a spell asks the DM to make a value judgment and then tell the player which of two options is better, what if the outcome is subjective and the player disagrees? There isn't much of this in D&D and there's almost always an out (almost all divinations allow some variation on 'answer unclear'), but it can be annoying or feel like a betrayal if a player has built an expectation that this will let them get explicit instructions of what they should do and then finds that they've wasted actions/resources/etc.

Stuff that forces sudden generation of large amounts of content can also be problematic - again, pretty rare, but there's a PrC in Complete Divine that can basically scry the entire planet for examples of a thing that they don't have to precisely specify or uniquely identify. There's also a spell that lets you know everything contained within a body of water up to a pretty huge size. Both of those would be annoying just because you'd be forced to list off a ton of irrelevant details or declare a large area forever uninteresting.

[Boci]

Ahhhh. And because of that, he's not allowed to expect people who want in on the thread to be polite?

Oh no, never said that. Sure, people should have been more polite, but object to "I'm -not- going to dig through the whole thing" because it sounds to me like you would need to dig through the whole thing before you make the statement the thread opened with. Or, as LTwerewolf said, your list of exceptions needs to be a lot longer.

[LTwerewolf]

Probably because you're wrong and it hasn't? I don't think Kelb has put enough research into the topic before making this thread, but it has no more offended me greatly on a personal level than you have been by me pointing this out.

From your first post you just seem to have a hostile tone, which generally signifies offense. Maybe you're just someone that naturally has a hostile tone, or mayeb you don't realize you're doing it, but it's there. Apologies for the misinterpretation from my end.

[Boci]

From your first post you just seem to have a hostile tone, which generally signifies offense. Maybe you're just someone that naturally has a hostile tone, or mayeb you don't realize you're doing it, but it's there.

That's entirely possible. If you don't mind, how would you have worded my counter point to make it less hostile?

[Emperor Tippy]

Breaking the game as a whole is relatively difficult. Short of Pun-Pun (Manipulate Form should never have been written) and Ice Assassin's of Greater Deities everything in the game can be countered, worked around, or mitigated by some other ability or combination of abilities.

The thing is that D&D 3.5 played at the limits of the systems potential with even moderately high level characters (12 or so plus) is a game of Xanatos speed chess (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosSpeedChess).

---

Take something like an Old Dragon. Going by straight book stats a party of four level twenty characters should be able to easily kill such a dragon. Now remember that it is a five hundred year old creature with racial memories and a base intelligence greater than that of the average super-genius. Oh yeah, and that it has triple standard wealth (so you are looking at a budget of upwards of 1.5 million GP).

Now you pump up all of its stats by 5 points from the Inherent bonuses that it got from tomes over the years. Then you add in the +6 to all stats from a Belt of Magnificence; species and alignment restrict it before doubling the price to make it slot-less and fluff it as a magical ritual to prevent PC stealing. There is also the Third Eye Conceal to provide always on Mind Blank.

Now its base of operations. Whip out the Stronghold Builders guide and spend a million GP or so making what is essentially one giant death trap for everyone not the dragon. Or just spend all of that on additional personal magic items.

Now factor in the planes spanning intelligence network that the dragon has established over the centuries to keep it appraised of any threats or other things of interest.

Now look at feats. Things like Permanent Emanation: Widened, Selective (the Dragon) Anti-magic field. And Permanent Emanation; Widened, Selective (the Dragon) Temporal Repair.

Then look at the Crafted Contingent Spells, an Old Red gets 28 of them. One of those will be a True Resurrection. The party kills the dragon only for it to come right back at full health and continue the fight as if nothing had happened. The other 27 are suited to taste. My personal preference is an entire personal buff routine set to go off upon the Dragons resurrection.

So you killed the Dragon, that's nice. Now the Dragon is under the effects of (all Persistent) Shapechange, Superior Invisibility, True Seeing, Greater Blink, Ironguard, and so on.

For extra fun the Dragon has used Hide Life and taking the epic feat Fast Healing. So you thought that you had killed the dragon, only for it to reform over a period of a minute or so ready to keep going.

---
All of the above still leaves you with a CR 20 Old Red Dragon for the party to kill. Except instead of the party wizard using a few divination spells to locate it, teleporting in while it sleeps, and hitting it with Shivering Touch you instead have something that will press even a fairly skilled and optimized party. And will likely require significant legwork to deal with.

Killing such a creature could easily be the culmination of a five or ten level quest chain involving social, combat, and exploration challenges. And none of that requires the use of any homebrewed abilities or the like.

Indeed it would, story wise at least, fit perfectly in D&D.

[Boci]

Breaking the game as a whole is relatively difficult. Short of Pun-Pun (Manipulate Form should never have been written) and Ice Assassin's of Greater Deities everything in the game can be countered, worked around, or mitigated by some other ability or combination of abilities.

The thing is that D&D 3.5 played at the limits of the systems potential with even moderately high level characters (12 or so plus) is a game of Xanatos speed chess (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosSpeedChess).

Isn't the logical result of magi'd ease of use, spammibility and ability to make permanent magical items in D&D named after you? That seems pretty game breaking if you don't want to play in the Tippverse, and most DMs don't I believe.

[AnachroNinja]

Greater teleport only requires a "reliable description" which you can get from other divinations. And divining the future is why divination can be great. Augery is the same way. "If I were to divine the location of everyone who's name starts with A today, would that include the person behind this plot.... How about B? C? " etc. Takes time and spell slots, but that's what dominated cleric farms are for.

[ArcanaGuy]

Oh no, never said that. Sure, people should have been more polite, but object to "I'm -not- going to dig through the whole thing" because it sounds to me like you would need to dig through the whole thing before you make the statement the thread opened with. Or, as LTwerewolf said, your list of exceptions needs to be a lot longer.

He's specifically asking for a discussion. He's not declaring himself an infallible expert. He needs to be an infallible expert who's done ALL THE RESEARCH before he requests a pleasant discussion on the subject where he asks for people to provide him specific examples of things for him to respond to? I mean, just because he's done hours of research doesn't mean he's hit that specific thread on the internet. So you're basically making the claim that without having read that specific thread, he had absolutely no right to start this thread as he did.

Even as such, he asked for specific examples. NOT giving him specific examples is outright ignoring the original poster and trying to hijack the thread.


Greater teleport only requires a "reliable description" which you can get from other divinations. And divining the future is why divination can be great. Augery is the same way. "If I were to divine the location of everyone who's name starts with A today, would that include the person behind this plot.... How about B? C? " etc. Takes time and spell slots, but that's what dominated cleric farms are for.

What other divination can you get a 'reliable description' from that isn't stopped by lead, again?

And Augery can't answer that question.

Firstly, it doesn't give a 'weal/woe' answer.

Secondly, augery only looks into the future about 30 minutes. Does it only take you 30 minutes to divine, one at a time, everyone whose name starts with A?

Thirdly, augery only works on a single action. Divining everyone on the planet whose name starts with A, one at a time, is not a single action.

Fourthly, even if you *could* somehow manage to get past the three problems above, Weal/Woe won't inherently give you an expected answer. "Ambergris" "Woe" (she's innocent) "Ambergrit" "Woe" (she's guilty, but it'd cause a huge fight and people would get hurt if you went after her.) "Ambergriz" "Woe" (she's innocent)

[Boci]

He's specifically asking for a discussion. He's not declaring himself an infallible expert. He needs to be an infallible expert who's done ALL THE RESEARCH before he requests a pleasant discussion on the subject? I mean, just because he's done hours of research doesn't mean he's hit that specific thread on the internet. So you're basically making the claim that without having read that specific thread, he had absolutely no right to start this thread as he did.

Once again, no.

He's allowed to open a thread and discuss and share the work, but that not how this opening post looked. It looked like someone who had already reached a conclusion, which would have required the research beforehand.

"I've grown tired of seeing a number of so-called game-breaking abilities called such when the problem lies more with the DM's setup of a situation than the spell (let's be real here, they're almost all spells) that invalidated it."

Doesn't sound like the opening of a friendly discussion, it sounds like a conclusion.

[Deophaun]

I think Invisible Superior Invisibility is kinda broken.
Only if you interpret "manifestation" to mean the spell's actual effect (remember that the spell talks about the effect of a fireball, which has no Effect line, so this is not being used as a rules term), not simply the sparkly-glowy pyrotechnic show that occurs when some spells go into effect (generally described in the little flavor text the precedes the spell description proper). RAW is a hot mess and open to such an interpretation, sure, but it's only one possible interpretation: the likely RAI-intended suppression of superfluous visible effects is another valid interpretation that doesn't break anything. If you're choosing to go with the one most open to abuse, then the consequences are entirely on you.

[ArcanaGuy]

Once again, no.

He's allowed to open a thread and discuss and share the work, but that not how this opening post looked. It looked like someone who had already reached a conclusion, which would have required the research beforehand.

"I've grown tired of seeing a number of so-called game-breaking abilities called such when the problem lies more with the DM's setup of a situation than the spell (let's be real here, they're almost all spells) that invalidated it."

Doesn't sound like the opening of a friendly discussion, it sounds like a conclusion.

So you are saying that without significant research, and reading that exact thread, he does not know what he's seen and what he's tired of seeing?

[Boci]

So you are saying that without significant research, and reading that exact thread, he does not know what he's seen and what he's tired of seeing?

For the third time, no, that's not what I'm saying. Merely that the tone of the thread was not one of open discussion, but forgone conclusion. When you open a thread with the claim that "the problem lies more with the DM's setup of a situation than the spell", I expect more research beforehand than what Kelb seems to have done.

[ArcanaGuy]

For the third time, no, that's not what I'm saying. Merely that the tone of the thread was not one of open discussion, but forgone conclusion. When you open a thread with the claim that "the problem lies more with the DM's setup of a situation than the spell", I expect more research beforehand than what Kelb seems to have done.

You're missing the important thing he said FIRST - which is that this describes the ones he's seen. It's completely unfair to paint him to saying that about every possible outcome in existence when he's specifically stated that this is what he's *seen* and he's inviting people to provide him with evidence to the contrary.

[Boci]

It's completely unfair to paint him to saying that about every possible outcome in existence when he's specifically stated that this is what he's *seen* and he's inviting people to provide him with evidence to the contrary.

So that he, in his own words, can debunk that. That doesn't sound like the start of an open minded discussion. But whatever, you read the tone of the OP differently to me, that's fine, people's perceptions vary.

[ArcanaGuy]

So that he, in his own words, can debunk that. That doesn't sound like the start of an open minded discussion. But whatever, you read the tone of the OP differently to me, that's fine, people's perceptions vary.

My last experience with him was arguing with him a lot. So hey, ymmv. However, if you felt this thread was that unuseful to you ... why did you bother joining it?

[Boci]

My last experience with him was arguing with him a lot. So hey, ymmv. However, if you felt this thread was that unuseful to you ... why did you bother joining it?

Just because I disagree with the tone of the OP doesn't mean the thread is unuseful to me.

[DarkSoul]

So what other pre-5th level spells rivals the destruction of a locate city bomb? And "universally pissed at you" is not a balancing factor. Nukes tend to result similar feelings from the country you use them on, and yet their presence has greatly shaped the world and international relations.

That's what locate city bomb is: nukes in D&D, and the political and inter-kingdom relationship factors that come with weapons of mass destruction.

So it's not game breaking because the DM can ban it?When everyone in the world wants you dead for something you did, that's a pretty good balancing factor. What would happen if someone in the real world actually used a nuclear weapon? I'm pretty sure that individual/group/country would cease to exist. In a world where someone can say "I wish..." and it happens, using a locate city bomb would bring chain gated solars, inevitables, various celestials, fiends, and pretty much every power group in the world after you to either prevent it from ever happening again, undoing it somehow, or convincing you to do it again but they pick the target this time.

It's also a ridiculous combination of feats that that have to be chained together in a specific order, and the indicators that a player is going to try it are there before it even becomes an issue.

Finally, I said that it "undeniably works" earlier. If you'd like more clarification: yes, it's game breaking whether the DM bans it or not. However, I think it's only game breaking if the DM doesn't ban it. That's the thing about most of these game-breaking abilities; they spring from campaigns with an overly permissive DM who's not willing to step in and say "No, you can't do that. Pick a different (feat/spell/item)." Even if it's at the point that the player says "Ok, my dominated apprentice walks into the middle of the market and reads the locate city scroll I prepared. This is what happens.", the DM needs to either ban it on the spot, or allow it to happen and create logical consequences within the framework of the game they're running.

[Boci]

When everyone in the world wants you dead for something you did, that's a pretty good balancing factor.

Why does everyone in the world want me dead for something I did to one kingdom? What if it was an evil kingdom that was about to invade the peaceful nation of Puppyhugs? (Yes yes, its still evil in most games to kill civilians, but that doesn't stop me from doing it). And that's just the PCs. What about the villains?

I don't even know why we are debating this, we both agree its game breaking and needs to be banned, though a game designed with the BBEG being the first to discover the trick could be interesting, though it would likely require PCs to not be forumites, otherwise they see it coming from the start.


In a world where someone can say "I wish..." and it happens, using a locate city bomb would bring chain gated solars, inevitables, various celestials, fiends, and pretty much every power group in the world after you to either prevent it from ever happening again, undoing it somehow, or convincing you to do it again but they pick the target this time.

So...how are there villains in this world? Or are they all doing stuff less evil than a single locate city bomb?

[geekintheground]

"D&D isnt broken!! the DM can fix it"
if you have to fix it, isnt it broken?

[DarkSoul]

Why does everyone in the world want me dead for something I did to one kingdom? What if it was an evil kingdom that was about to invade the peaceful nation of Puppyhugs? (Yes yes, its still evil in most games to kill civilians, but that doesn't stop me from doing it). And that's just the PCs. What about the villains?

I don't even know why we are debating this, we both agree its game breaking and needs to be banned, though a game designed with the BBEG being the first to discover the trick could be interesting, though it would likely require PCs to not be forumites, otherwise they see it coming from the start.

So...how are there villains in this world? Or are they all doing stuff less evil than a single locate city bomb?They don't want you dead because of something you did to one kingdom. They want you dead because they don't know if you can do it again, and don't want to take the chance that you can. If they don't want you dead, they want you working for them, or at least showing them how you did it. THEN they want you dead. Granted this is from a real-world perspective and there's a chance that the consequences wouldn't be quite so bad as I described.

It's not that we're debating anything, you're asking questions and I'm answering them from the standpoint of how I'd rule things happen in my own games.

That would be an interesting BBEG. I'm actually running an Incursion campaign where the enemy is known to magically destroy entire cities, and this could be one way to create the effect in-game.

[ArcanaGuy]

"D&D isnt broken!! the DM can fix it"
if you have to fix it, isnt it broken?

Correction:

"It isn't broken if the DM handles it the way he's supposed to."

D&D is inherently dependent upon the DM acting as a moderator upon the rules. That's kinda his job. It's not 'fixing something broken' if it's what he's supposed to be doing in the first place. That's why most rulebooks have a Rule 0.

[Boci]

They don't want you dead because of something you did to one kingdom. They want you dead because they don't know if you can do it again, and don't want to take the chance that you can. If they don't want you dead, they want you working for them, or at least showing them how you did it. THEN they want you dead. Granted this is from a real-world perspective and there's a chance that the consequences wouldn't be quite so bad as I described.

I don't get how this scenario plays out? How do they know it was me who did it, but not know how? It one or the other. Either they have no idea who did it or how, because divination don't work for some reasons, or divination do work, and they use them to find out I did it, but also know how I did it.

And again, in this setting, how are there villains that the PCs need to fight if this is the mobilization such a threat provokes?


Correction:

"It isn't broken if the DM handles it the way he's supposed to."

D&D is inherently dependent upon the DM acting as a moderator upon the rules. That's kinda his job. It's not 'fixing something broken' if it's what he's supposed to be doing in the first place. That's why most rulebooks have a Rule 0.

So you swapped "fixes it" for "handles it the way he's suppose to do". You do realize those are the same thing? Especially when "handles it the way he's suppose to do" for locate city bomb is "ban it".

[Krazzman]

To add my 2 copper pieces into this:

My definition of "Gamebreaking" is something I/theDM didn't plan for that invalidates 1 or more Sessions worth of what you thought up or what brings the whole campaign or session to a screeching halt.
The greatest problems I face are spells(as mentioned in the OP), as such I find the idea about "Handbook of blocking Divination and other useful tricks the players want to focus on" would be a fantastic idea not only for me but certainly for other people too. My biggest problem is Summon Swarm when the enemies don't have a logical way of engaging them.

While I wouldn't call it rude or somesuch thing, I would call it bad form to post a link to a collection of builds when even a few are already disqualified by the opening post. Especially when the OP already asked about a direct quote.

Edit:
To add to the "not everyone is a paranoid villain" point. Even Urgaz Warkruuhl the mighty Orc Barbarian Warchief most likely has an advisory shaman that knows about Divination and so on.
Even then Locate City Bomb and others... how often do they accomplish something really meaningful in published adventures? Let's assume the latest one for a second: Hell's Vengeance Part 2. Liberating Kantaria with Locate City Bomb could work but either breaks the campaign and or just kills your Character.

[DarkSoul]

I don't get how this scenario plays out? How do they know it was me who did it, but not know how? It one or the other. Either they have no idea who did it or how, because divination don't work for some reasons, or divination do work, and they use them to find out I did it, but also know how I did it.

And again, in this setting, how are there villains that the PCs need to fight if this is the mobilization such a threat provokes?Speak with dead on someone who didn't make the save would be a good start. That would tell them what happened and who, but not how. Let the how be part of the mystery of the story arc.

There are still villains because either no one's come up with the idea yet, or no one's been dumb enough to actually do it.

[Boci]

Speak with dead on someone who didn't make the save would be a good start. That would tell them what happened and who, but not how. Let the how be part of the mystery of the story arc.

No neccissarily. Terrain permitting, I could be anywhere from hidding in the city to 30 miles outside its walls. Odds are stacked against Speak with Dead working.

[ArcanaGuy]

So you swapped "fixes it" for "handles it the way he's suppose to do". You do realize those are the same thing? Especially when "handles it the way he's suppose to do" for locate city bomb is "ban it".

First, this is a big difference. "Fixes it" means that he changes the way it's supposed to work. "Handles it the way he's supposed to" means nothing has to change. The game was not designed to work without a game master's influence on matters. It cannot play without a game master, even if that role is shared among everyone. The game master is there for many, many reasons.

Second, as I said before, I've never come across any sort of 'locate city bomb' which didn't have a very fuzzy step somewhere in it. And no one, so far, has brought up any specific variants that they think would actually work inside the rules. They're only talking about the concept. Therefore, no, you can't say the only way is to 'ban it', because we don't even have any rules to consider yet. There's too many variants on the locate city bomb to talk about why it doesn't work without someone actually specifying a variant for us to discuss.

[Boci]

Second, as I said before, I've never come across any sort of 'locate city bomb' which didn't have a very fuzzy step somewhere in it.

Locate City Bomb + Snow Casting (for cold descriptor) + Flash Frost (2 points cold damage) + Fell Draining (1 negative energy level)

It won't hit everyone in the city, but it will hit enough to cause way more chaos than a 4th level spell should.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Teleport through time (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/pg/20030409b) + Eschew Materials. For a mere 1,000 xp, travel back in time to whatever point in history or prehistory you want. There are plenty of ways to travel forward in time without problems (see: slow time demiplane for an example). Note that you can gain access to a scroll of the spell via early access wishes as soon as you can afford a scroll of planar binding.

[ArcanaGuy]

Locate City Bomb + Snow Casting (for cold descriptor) + Flash Frost (2 points cold damage) + Fell Draining (1 negative energy level)

It won't hit everyone in the city, but it will hit enough to cause way more chaos than a 4th level spell should.

From the rules on Flash Frost: "that use cold and ice to damage your foes" It has the cold descriptor, but it doesn't match the part that says 'That use cold and ice to damage your foes.'

[Mehangel]

From the rules on Flash Frost: "that use cold and ice to damage your foes" It has the cold descriptor, but it doesn't match the part that says 'That use cold and ice to damage your foes.'

You mean the sentence that is obviously fluff because it is VERY CLEARLY placed before the 'Benefit:' ?

[ArcanaGuy]

Teleport through time (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/pg/20030409b) + Eschew Materials. For a mere 1,000 xp, travel back in time to whatever point in history or prehistory you want. There are plenty of ways to travel forward in time without problems (see: slow time demiplane for an example). Note that you can gain access to a scroll of the spell via early access wishes as soon as you can afford a scroll of planar binding.

Any point in history or prehistory so long as you can find a flower growing in a bit of soil that hasn't been disturbed since then. This can work, perhaps, for recent time, but good luck finding a patch of soil that'll give you access to prehistory.


You mean the sentence that is obviously fluff because it is VERY CLEARLY placed before the 'Benefit:' ?

You betcha. A bit of description that tells us exactly how this feat is intended to be used, which gives me a 'by the rules' reason to tell the rules lawyer "Not a chance in all the nine hells, buddy, and I don't even have to break the rules to do it."

[Boci]

You betcha. A bit of description that tells us exactly how this feat is intended to be used, which gives me a 'by the rules' reason to tell the rules lawyer "Not a chance in all the nine hells, buddy, and I don't even have to break the rules to do it."

Yeah, that's not how rules work:

"This metamagic feat can be applied only to spells that have the cold descriptor and that affect an area."

Those are the only requirements. Its a good houserule you have there, but its a house rule.

[LudicSavant]

Ah, another edit after others had replied. All right, then....
Kay. Edit: 7:49. Your post: 8:05. :smallannoyed:

Nevermind that the edit is telling you the exact same thing; it's just explaining what a straw man argument is instead of just telling you that you're making a straw man argument.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Any point in history or prehistory so long as you can find a flower growing in a bit of soil that hasn't been disturbed since then. This can work, perhaps, for recent time, but good luck finding a patch of soil that'll give you access to prehistory.Nope! Eschew Materials takes care of that prerequisite rather nicely -- and in an entirely airtight manner, too, with no room to argue against it whatsoever.

[Mehangel]

You betcha. A bit of description that tells us exactly how this feat is intended to be used, which gives me a 'by the rules' reason to tell the rules lawyer "Not a chance in all the nine hells, buddy, and I don't even have to break the rules to do it."

Except that wouldn't your players say that you are in-fact using cold and ice to damage your foes (albeit 2 cold damage per spell level) and leaving behind a thin layer of slippery frost? Or do you also rule similarly with EVERY fluff description in feats? For example, do you allow someone with Blood-Spiked Charger to make Throw attack using themselves as a Large-sized weapon?

[DarkSoul]

Any point in history or prehistory so long as you can find a flower growing in a bit of soil that hasn't been disturbed since then. This can work, perhaps, for recent time, but good luck finding a patch of soil that'll give you access to prehistory.That's what eschew materials is for. None of the listed material components have a gp value, so technically it's valid.


You betcha. A bit of description that tells us exactly how this feat is intended to be used, which gives me a 'by the rules' reason to tell the rules lawyer "Not a chance in all the nine hells, buddy, and I don't even have to break the rules to do it."The fluff before the actual rules text of the feat isn't "by the rules". I agree that Flash Frost Spell should only be able to apply to things that already deal damage, because it does say it deals an extra 2 points of damage per spell level, which strongly implies (but doesn't explicitly say, thus the problem) that the spell has to deal damage in the first place for the feat to increase it. A DM could (and likely should) rule that way because it makes a lot of sense, but the actual rules text of the feat is just ambiguous enough to cause problems in the rule set that TO tricks work in.

[ArcanaGuy]

Kay.

Edit: 7:49. Your post: 8:05. :smallannoyed:

Yup. And quite a few posts made before 7:49 between your post and my post.


Nevermind that the edit is telling you the exact same thing; it's just explaining what a straw man argument is instead of just telling you that you're making a straw man argument.

And either telling me what a straw man argument is ... or just telling me that I'm making a straw man argument ... is, in itself, a straw man argument, unless it is also accompanied by telling me in what way my specific statements are a straw man argument. You have shown yourself unable to do so thus far.

It's only a straw man argument if it's inaccurate.


That's what eschew materials is for. None of the listed material components have a gp value, so technically it's valid.

None of the listed material components have a set gp value. Tell me it'll cost you less than 1 gp to find that patch of soil. It's a variable gp value material component, the value dependent upon the rarity of the patch of soil you're looking for. Rarity drives up cost.

[Boci]

None of the listed material components have a set gp value. Tell me it'll cost you less than 1 gp to find that patch of soil. It's a variable gp value material component, the value dependent upon the rarity of the patch of soil you're looking for. Rarity drives up cost.

I'm pretty sure that if there is not listed price, then eschew materials allows you to ignore it.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I'm pretty sure that if there is not listed price, then eschew materials allows you to ignore it.This. Remember, no houserules to curb brokenness, else it's Oberoni.

[Beheld]

And either telling me what a straw man argument is ... or just telling me that I'm making a straw man argument ... is, in itself, a straw man argument, unless it is also accompanied by telling me in what way my specific statements are a straw man argument. You have shown yourself unable to do so thus far.

It's only a straw man argument if it's inaccurate.

Uh... Like... That's not how strawman works (the first part) it's a strawman if it is inaccurate. Regardless of whether or not he explains the way in which it is inaccurate, it either is or isn't a strawman depending on the accuracy of your depiction, not on whether the person chooses to point out the inaccuracy.

[LudicSavant]

Yup. And quite a few posts made before 7:49 between your post and my post.

None of which replied to said post.


Uh... Like... That's not how strawman works (the first part) it's a strawman if it is inaccurate. Regardless of whether or not he explains the way in which it is inaccurate, it either is or isn't a strawman depending on the accuracy of your depiction, not on whether the person chooses to point out the inaccuracy.

Yeah. It's the second time he's said it too.

And either telling me what a straw man argument is ... or just telling me that I'm making a straw man argument ... is, in itself, a straw man argument, unless it is also accompanied by telling me in what way my specific statements are a straw man argument. You have shown yourself unable to do so thus far.


When you call 'Straw Man Argument" you need to show why it's inaccurate, or else you are suffering from a Straw Man Argument yourself. Fallacies in general do not somehow magically get reversed on the person who points out that you used one in a schoolyard "no u" if they are not explained to you to your personal satisfaction. You just made up this rule out of whole cloth.


Still stands. How is it a misrepresentation?

Because the words you put in quotes and attributed to me (such as "Please do a ton of reading and research here and respond to EVERYTHING,") are not words that I said, nor is the position you attributed to me a position I hold.

[DarkSoul]

None of the listed material components have a set gp value. Tell me it'll cost you less than 1 gp to find that patch of soil. It's a variable gp value material component, the value dependent upon the rarity of the patch of soil you're looking for. Rarity drives up cost.That's all the feat cares about: whether the component has a listed gp value. None of them do for Teleport through Time, which is why Eschew Materials works.

Even ruling that Eschew Materials doesn't apply still doesn't give the patch of soil a value more than 1 gp, because the focus for Find The Path (directing the caster to the nearest location where Teleport through Time to point X in the timestream can be cast) doesn't cost anything either.

With time travel being the metaphorical powder keg that it is, I completely agree that that spell should be extremely hard to cast, or even gain access to. The last time I put it into my campaign it was in a staff. The PCs weren't allowed to have a copy (they couldn't cast 9th level spells at the time they used it).

[Darth Ultron]

I've grown tired of seeing a number of so-called game-breaking abilities called such when the problem lies more with the DM's setup of a situation than the spell (let's be real here, they're almost all spells) that invalidated it.


To expand on this a little, the problem is the way the game is played, not the rules.

The first big game breaking problem starts with the game style. It starts right with things like the ''gentleman's agreement'', ''the Rule of Cool'', ''Shared Storytelling'' and whatever someones definition of ''fair and balanced'' is.

A lot of game breaking comes from house rules. Should be easy enough to understand.

And game style and house rules alone can set a game up to be filled with game breaking things.

Interpretations come next. The rules are not always clear...and even when they are game breakers will always interpreter rules in only one way: in their favor.

And lastly is simply weak, low magic and low fantasy worlds. When your whole world has zero level nobodies with mud and sticks, then sure even a 1st level spell is game breaking.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Disjunction. Disjunction is broken no matter who uses it or how it's used, and it can't be misinterpreted, because it's very clear how it works.

[Darth Ultron]

Disjunction. Disjunction is broken no matter who uses it or how it's used, and it can't be misinterpreted, because it's very clear how it works.

How is this spell broken? How is it misinterpreted? It ends 'dispels'' all magic, and might destroy magic items.



Teleport through time (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/pg/20030409b) + Eschew Materials.

Except Oil of timelessness has a cost over 1gp, so Eschew Materials has no effect. Or are you somehow interpreting that ''a drop'' of oil of timelessness is worth less then one gp?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

How is this spell broken? How is it misinterpreted? It ends 'dispels'' all magic, and might destroy magic items.It auto-dispels everything that isn't an item, and it irrecoverably destroys every single item that fails its Will save. This spell is FAR worse than death at higher levels, to the point where it can make a character completely unplayable, since WBL is all that some classes get to make them even vaguely competitive. A fighter losing nearly three-quarters of a million gp is far nastier than the ten thousand it costs to resurrect him. And that's just one character; the entire party could easily lose its entire load of magic items and buffs with a single spell, turning any encounter it's used in into a potential TPK, all on its own.


Except Oil of timelessness has a cost over 1gp, so Eschew Materials has no effect. Or are you somehow interpreting that ''a drop'' of oil of timelessness is worth less then one gp?Tell me: what's the cost of a single drop of unguent of timelessness, as per RAW, book and page number?

Regardless, the oil isn't difficult to procure. The flower is the toughie, but that's a complete non-issue with Eschew Materials.

[Darth Ultron]

It auto-dispels everything that isn't an item, and it irrecoverably destroys every single item that fails its Will save. This spell is FAR worse than death at higher levels, to the point where it can make a character completely unplayable, since WBL is all that some classes get to make them even vaguely competitive. A fighter losing nearly three-quarters of a million gp is far nastier than the ten thousand it costs to resurrect him. And that's just one character; the entire party could easily lose its entire load of magic items and buffs with a single spell, turning any encounter it's used in into a potential TPK, all on its own.

Now see all of this is ''you don't like the spell'' not ''the spell is game breaking''.



Tell me: what's the cost of a single drop of unguent of timelessness, as per RAW, book and page number?


Well, now see your a perfect example of one of the mindsets that creates the game breaking problems. Your going to say it is a rule that ''anything without a listed cost is free'' and that leads down the crazy rabbit hole of ''you can put an artifacts out of a normal spell component pouch as artifacts have no cost listed.

I wonder how you interpret spell components that don't list a cost in the spell description, but do list a cost elsewhere. Must the cost be listed in the spell description or it's free? Like say Sword of Darkness. The spell does not list a cost for the long sword, but the weapon does have a cost....so does Eschew Materials work or not...in your interpretation?

[Deeds]

I haven't read the entire thread but I'll take a stab at it.



I'm quite firmly of the notion that -anything- else the game has to offer outside of these can be dealt with. So let's put my money where my mouth is and start with the example I always find the most utterly absurd.

Here's a scenario.
The party wishes to seek an audience with the mayor/king/head honcho but a guard refuses to let us see the authority figure. The guard says that the king is incredibly busy and can't be bothered with our trivial pursuit. The guard hints that the party could take the initiative and solve whatever the king's dilemma is and we'll be granted audience. The DM and the players rejoice as we have our hook and are ready to pursue the next fetch quest.

ENTER level 2 diplomancer

The diplomancer approaches the guard and insists that our trivial pursuit is a matter that concerns the realm: the very land the king has sworn to protect. The level 6 guard has ranks in intimidate, swim, and has even cross-classed ranks in spot, listen, and spellcraft. Sadly, he simply isn't equipped to deal with a +20 diplomacy check before rolling. The guard lets the party see the king and the DM throws away 3 pages of notes on where the stolen king's jewels are.

Arguably, the DM could grant the guard a +10 "you'll be fired if you disturb the king" modifier. However, the player could insist that guard would be inclined to let the king know that the player's plight is dire enough (i.e. the kobolds of kher keep are swarming and preparing to pillage the nearby county.)

Should the DM be prepared for a diplomacy check? Sure, but every DM I've encountered has at one point felt powerless to guide the party towards the intended scenario/dungeon. A quick thinking DM would have the king's steward, a fellow diplomancer, negotiate with the party. But can every future NPC realistically have 2 levels in marshal or bard? Eh, not likely.

tl;dr Diplomacy skill in non-combat scenarios can be a sucker punch.

This may be off topic, but no sane DM can be prepared for every little rules as written secenario. I can't expect the DM to have page 112 of Stormwrack to be memorized because it has a crucial ruling about Profeession: Chef when cooking crab legs.

EDIT: I see there are some fellow paladin avatars in this thread. Well met pious playgrounders!

[LudicSavant]

EDIT: I see there are some fellow paladin avatars in this thread. Well met pious playgrounders!

Hooray! Paladin avatars! :smallsmile:

[LTwerewolf]

Diplomacy doesn't say "you get whatever you want when you succeed." No, it says they're helpful. In your scenario, the guard doesn't just let them in, the guard explains the king's plight in detail, and gives them some advice on how to complete it quickly.

[martixy]

~Disjunction is brokeh, on noes!~

Besides what Ultron said, at this state of the game you are reasonably justified in expecting your players to come up with a few creative solutions to such an obstacle.

Things Disjunction explicitly mentions like AMF. They're also likely to have an artifact or two on their persons. That should factor into the decision of the caster. Counterspelling is also a valid option(Battlemagic Perception makes it extra-valid). There's many others, I'm sure, but I can't think of them right now.

[LudicSavant]

Diplomacy doesn't say "you get whatever you want when you succeed." No, it says they're helpful. In your scenario, the guard doesn't just let them in, the guard explains the king's plight in detail, and gives them some advice on how to complete it quickly.

This sounds more like the description of "Friendly" than "Helpful" to my eye. Chatting, advising, offering limited help.

Friendly Wishes you well Chat, advise, offer limited help, advocate

Helpful Will take risks to help you Protect, back up, heal, aid

Of course, it's open to interpretation. Beyond that, there are levels above "Helpful." http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/skills.htm#diplomacy

Of course, the "Fantatic" description can be defended against in some ways similar to Dominate Person.

[LTwerewolf]

Telling strangers guarded information is pretty hazardous to the job and the health.

To me in that situation:
Friendly: "Look, I'd like to help you, but my hands are tied. I won't mention you pressed the issue to anyone, I don't want you getting in trouble. Foreigners don't tend to last long around here when they make demands of kings."
Helpful: "Alright, alright." *whispers* "Here's the situation, if you can solve it, we can skip you ahead of a lot of people to see him."
Fanatic: "Sure I'll let you right in, oh no, I almost lost my job and the ability to feed my family. I'll never make that mistake again."

[Zanos]

Telling strangers guarded information is pretty hazardous to the job and the health.

To me in that situation:
Friendly: "Look, I'd like to help you, but my hands are tied. I won't mention you pressed the issue to anyone, I don't want you getting in trouble. Foreigners don't tend to last long around here when they make demands of kings."
Helpful: "Alright, alright." *whispers* "Here's the situation, if you can solve it, we can skip you ahead of a lot of people to see him."
Fanatic: "Sure I'll let you right in, oh no, I almost lost my job and the ability to feed my family. I'll never make that mistake again."
Considering one of the examples of a Fanatic is "throw self in front of onrushing dragon", I don't think your interpretation is very accurate.

[LTwerewolf]

Considering one of the examples of a Fanatic is "throw self in front of onrushing dragon", I don't think your interpretation is very accurate.

If they were around to regret their decision, they would. It's also in the book of broken things and terrible decisions, which is among the list of things I consider game breaking. Diplomacy itself is not.

[Darth Ultron]

Teleport through time (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/pg/20030409b) + Eschew Materials. For a mere 1,000 xp, travel back in time to whatever point in history or prehistory you want. There are plenty of ways to travel forward in time without problems (see: slow time demiplane for an example). Note that you can gain access to a scroll of the spell via early access wishes as soon as you can afford a scroll of planar binding.

The flaw here is there are no rules for Time Travel. Unless you know of such a D&D book with the page numbers please. Sure the ''notes'' of the spell has some suggestions, but not hard rules....

So this means ''time travel'' is whatever the DM says it is.

[LudicSavant]

Fanatic: "Sure I'll let you right in, oh no, I almost lost my job and the ability to feed my family. I'll never make that mistake again."

That doesn't sound very fanatical.

[Zombimode]

That doesn't sound very fanatical.

Since a check result of 90 is needed to make someone indifferent fanatical I don't see how this is relevant to the discussion.

Helpful is the most that can be achieved in most circumstances. And helpful doesn't mean that the party gets everything they want.
While it is a bit easy to get a high diplomacy modifier diplomacy is not broken if the GM is not a doormat and actually takes the rules seriously.

[eggynack]

Since a check result of 90 is needed to make someone indifferent fanatical I don't see how this is relevant to the discussion.

Helpful is the most that can be achieved in most circumstances. And helpful doesn't mean that the party gets everything they want.
While it is a bit easy to get a high diplomacy modifier diplomacy is not broken if the GM is not a doormat and actually takes the rules seriously.
You can get a pretty high number with optimization. Just look at this build (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=9217166&postcount=4), which hits +68 at level five, and can always take 10 and diplomance as a standard action. Hitting 90 from there isn't all that hard. Swap out the circlet for a courtier's obi and that's an extra +7 right there, getting it up to 75. The rest is trivially doable through a combination of levelling and charisma boosting.

[Zombimode]

You can get a pretty high number with optimization. Just look at this build (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=9217166&postcount=4), which hits +68 at level five, and can always take 10 and diplomance as a standard action. Hitting 90 from there isn't all that hard. Swap out the circlet for a courtier's obi and that's an extra +7 right there, getting it up to 75. The rest is trivially doable through a combination of levelling and charisma boosting.

Yes, it is possible (but not trivial) to reach such modifiers. But is that a problem?

[Boci]

Yes, it is possible (but not trivial) to reach such modifiers. But is that a problem?

Only in so much as you typically need to ban such combinations or else they will break the game. Hence, diplomacy can potentially be game breaking.

[Cosi]

I think this thread has missed a crucial step: getting everyone on the same page with regards to what it means to "break the game". Kelb has defined it as basically "anything that the game can't function if you allow". His list of that stuff is pretty good, although it has some omissions (notably, he's too soft on ice assassin/planar binding/Fanatic minions by only calling out gate, and he's skipped "actual RAW dysfunctions" - though they are probably not super relevant here). The problem is that he's given that definition in one sentence, like it's something that can be assumed. But it's really not. Just as there are lots of ways to play the game, there are lots of definitions of "breaking the game".

Maybe the game is broken if PCs can steamroll the Sunless Citadel adventure path series (it's certain not being played as the designers intended it). Maybe it's broken if the characters can go 50/50 with encounters two, or four, or eight levels about APL. Maybe it's broken if one character is strictly better than another. Maybe it's broken if the DM can't challenge the party without them constraining themselves. Those are all ways you could define "breaking the game", and because we skipped figuring out which of those we mean the discussion is now largely people talking past each other. Take the discussion of disjunction. Is it game breaking? Maybe. It certainly warps the game around itself (in that you have to have some contingency for losing all your items). On the other hand, in a near-TO type campaign it's a temporary debuff because you just wish all your items back tomorrow. In some games (and under some definitions of "broken") it's broken, in other games it's merely another tool.


So this means ''time travel'' is whatever the DM says it is.

Yes, the perfect solution! If there's a problem, the DM can just make up something on the spot. That will clearly make things better.


You can get a pretty high number with optimization. Just look at this build (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=9217166&postcount=4), which hits +68 at level five, and can always take 10 and diplomance as a standard action. Hitting 90 from there isn't all that hard. Swap out the circlet for a courtier's obi and that's an extra +7 right there, getting it up to 75. The rest is trivially doable through a combination of levelling and charisma boosting.

That build isn't even using guidance of the avatar for its Diplomacy checks, which is +20 (unless it already has some bonus of whichever type guidance is).

[VisitingDaGulag]

It's a long standing opinion of mine that if your solution to a game breaker is to engineer your campaign and enemies to make it useless, that is tacit admission of it being a game breaker. "Oh no, this villain has kept 15' away from all important things for his whole life and had lead plates implanted in his brain to protect his thoughts! LOLPWND I win at DnD". That kind of constant nonsense just isn't reasonable on a massive scale like that. You're average person has trouble remembering to take the garbage out every time with no issues, but you want me to believe every enemy in your world counts the minutes to maintain perfectly overlapping spells and never gets close to things or says anything out loud or is not perfect. You might as well just ban the spells at that point, and that's why they are game breakers. :smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin:


I think this thread has missed a crucial step: getting everyone on the same page with regards to what it means to "break the game". Kelb has defined it as basically "anything that the game can't function if you allow". His list of that stuff is pretty good, although it has some omissions (notably, he's too soft on ice assassin/planar binding/Fanatic minions by only calling out gate, and he's skipped "actual RAW dysfunctions" - though they are probably not super relevant here). The problem is that he's given that definition in one sentence, like it's something that can be assumed. But it's really not. Just as there are lots of ways to play the game, there are lots of definitions of "breaking the game".

Maybe the game is broken if PCs can steamroll the Sunless Citadel adventure path series (it's certain not being played as the designers intended it). Maybe it's broken if the characters can go 50/50 with encounters two, or four, or eight levels about APL. Maybe it's broken if one character is strictly better than another. Maybe it's broken if the DM can't challenge the party without them constraining themselves. Those are all ways you could define "breaking the game", and because we skipped figuring out which of those we mean the discussion is now largely people talking past each other. Take the discussion of disjunction. Is it game breaking? Maybe. It certainly warps the game around itself (in that you have to have some contingency for losing all your items). On the other hand, in a near-TO type campaign it's a temporary debuff because you just wish all your items back tomorrow. In some games (and under some definitions of "broken") it's broken, in other games it's merely another tool.This is the best post in the whole thread. I think we can agree that Kelb probably should have done a bit more research to expand his list, but that's not a big fault since we can expand it for him. I agree that ice assassin (it clones creatures & their abilities), planar binding (basically for the same reason), diplomancy (see a patter here?) also need to be on the list. How to fix each of these entires can be unique, however. Third edition has been fully finished for a while now and there are tons of little suggestions everywhere for how to balance it. Surely someone has released a compendium to fully fix 3e.

Let's number those levels of "brokenness"
1. Overkill on printed adventures
2. Regularly beating over-powering (or worse) party-level encounters.
3. Using abilities that go far beyond reasonable precautions in order to deal with.
4. Creating a PC that the DM can't challenge without steamrolling the party.
5. Exceeding your DMs ability to challenge your PC at all

Generally low levels of CO work result in #1. Higher end CO expects #2. It's a little tricky with #3. Some things (like lead-lined carriages and castle walls) are easy to incorporate and Kelb views this as a failure to properly DM. It may very well be. But it's also at this point that the game world seems to warp around the edition rather than the other way around. Keeping all items more than 15' way or never trusting any vision beyond the 120' feet of true seeing are not be acceptable solutions for many.

#4 Still renders all of the above moot when you have a sumarai, a truenamer, with a wizard and druid. Guess which half of the party will consider the other half dead weight. Massively unoptimal / self-nerfing play on one side and huge amounts of optimization on the other side of the party can't be part of a reasonable gentleman's agreement. Even if the DM and game world are comfortable with a warped campaign, there's little a DM can do but start instituting fixes.

#5 Includes things that start showing mass bans or obvious bias in a DM's judgment. Ice assassin, Gate, Wish, Disjunction, Astral Projection, Shapechange, etc are examples where these abilities either can't be allowed RAW without destroying any semblance of classic D&D or have to be so aggressively tuned that they don't resemble the RAI at all. The penultimate example is wish. What counts as an acceptable use for some, is instead a game of Mother May I to others.

Kelb goes straight from 3 to 5. He, like many of us, probably don't consider 1 or 2 to be a problem. Perhaps #4 is also a "feature" rather than a bug. But the rest of us are having trouble with #3 and are going to therefore have difficulty helping him with #5. Perhaps he might want to start with the Dirty Trick Handbook. It's at the top of a google search.

[Âmesang]

With time travel being the metaphorical powder keg that it is, I completely agree that that spell should be extremely hard to cast, or even gain access to. The last time I put it into my campaign it was in a staff. The PCs weren't allowed to have a copy (they couldn't cast 9th level spells at the time they used it).
Personally I would love to play a time travel game (inspired by Suel Imperium: Age of Glory), but I'd absolutely make the first commandment that nothing they do will have any intrinsic affect on time; no matter what happens, eventually time finds a way to right itself. I just like the idea of going back to explore the Suel Imperium, the Empire of Netheral, Pre-Cataclysm Krynn, &c., just for the novelty of it. :smallsmile:


Except Oil of timelessness has a cost over 1gp, so Eschew Materials has no effect. Or are you somehow interpreting that ''a drop'' of oil of timelessness is worth less then one gp?
Interesting fact, apparently "drop" is a legitimate form of measurement (1 fluid ounce = 456.01287792143 drops). So, if we assume that a flask of oil/unguent of timelessness is 16 ounces/1 pint, then a drop of the stuff would be worth approximately 2 cp.

[dascarletm]

"D&D isnt broken!! the DM can fix it"
if you have to fix it, isnt it broken?
If the game is intentionally designed to be interpreted through an arbiter that is sentient (the GM) isn't that part of the design?

Only in so much as you typically need to ban such combinations or else they will break the game. Hence, diplomacy can potentially be game breaking.
Barring the epic usage I don't see how diplomacy breaks the game.


Yes, the perfect solution! If there's a problem, the DM can just make up something on the spot. That will clearly make things better.

I just read the spell and correct me if I'm wrong but there is a special note specifically saying the DM can make the timeline "smooth over."

Special Note: The introduction of time travel into any campaign can be fraught with peril, so tread carefully. Players will wonder how much they can mess with the timeline, and you may run into instances of the grandfather paradox. Further, changes made very far back in time cannot really be worked out completely because of the chaotic aspect of events. Thus, it is simplest to use the rule that changes in time are minor and somehow time smooths them out. This argues for a determinism and predestination in the ways of your world, but you can say that once events have transpired, small perturbations are possible (this person lives rather than dies, but does not contribute to events in a meaningful way), but the large-scale events themselves somehow happen anyway. If the cause is changed, another cause comes along. In the case of someone killing their own grandfather, the PC might find that he is the same but has a different family when returning to the present. As long as you keep the knowledge of how to travel in time restricted, your campaign will not fall apart.

[Flickerdart]

Diplomacy isn't broken, but it's annoying to run. Let's compare it to the first example in this thread - long-duration flight.

Long-duration (hours/level) flight comes online at level 9 or 10. It makes ground-based obstacles obsolete. But by the time your heroes are level 10, they've already outgrown "bandits have set up an ambush" and "a troll under the bridge demands a toll." It's fine for them to sail right over the sort of encounters that flight makes obsolete.

Diplomacy, on the other hand, becomes abusable around level 2. It makes social obstacles obsolete. But your heroes haven't yet outgrown talking, and probably never should. You are forced to resort to various tricks simply to get in the way of diplomancy (the king refuses to speak with you, the enemy doesn't understand you, etc). And unlike flight which is an on/off switch, diplomacy optimization usually requires a substantial amount of build resources, so shutting down the trick completely (or all the time) makes the player sad.

As for what makes an ability broken, here's a decent definition - an ability that makes the DM unable to do his job, where the DM's job is to run an enjoyable game, and enjoy running it. It covers everything from "overpowered for Sunless Citadel" to "overpowered for the Epic Level Handbook" - if the DM could deal with it, but it's incredibly tedious to do so, then it's broken at your table.

[eggynack]

Yes, it is possible (but not trivial) to reach such modifiers. But is that a problem?
Yeah, probably. Any enemy can be turned to a friend as a standard action, and similarly, any stranger can be made your fanatical servant with the only recourse being immunity to mind affecting. This isn't like charm/dominate, where you have limited spells/day, a save, and big reactions to failed attempts to contend with. You could walk up to a king, surrounded by magical guards, hit them with your diplomatic whammy, and no one would have any reason to stop you whether you succeed or fail. And failure here (meaning immunity, not an impossible bad roll) would really mean that the target is made helpful, instead of fanatical, which is still an amazing result. There is little to no way for your targets to get around this effect, and the effect is brutal when it happens, capable of turning even a powerful enemy wizard into a good friend within a standard action. Y'know, assuming you get a standard action. But, alas, such is just the nature of rocket tag, and diplomancy is a very potent rocket. Especially with the factors I note below that allow this plan to extend fanaticism to actual enemies. The effect seems better than dominate too. Dominate allows for a save for self destructive acts, but standing in front of an attacking dragon would seem to qualify, and your fanatic will do it no problem. It's all just so impossible to deal with.


That build isn't even using guidance of the avatar for its Diplomacy checks, which is +20 (unless it already has some bonus of whichever type guidance is).
Guidance is a competence bonus, which overlaps both with the +3 already present in the build, and the +10 which I essentially replaced it with. +10 is still nice though, and the build already has one cleric level if you want the spell naturally instead of through a wand or something. Bit bothersome that the effect isn't just permanently up, but it's a great effect. It might even be plausible to hit 120 pre-epic, thus allowing you fanaticize unfriendly folk. I'ma poke at it. We're already at 85 with guidance, and the first step is adding some charisma. Let's just push thish to level 20, so that it can be pulled back from there. That means another four points from levelling, four points enhancement, and five points inherent, pushing up to 37 charisma, which notably means that we can reduce this to level 16 without hurting that number (but I won't yet). So, that's +6 charisma, for an extra +12, getting us to 97, only 13 points away from victory. Then you just add on thirteen levels worth of skill points, or even eleven points worth plus, say, negotiator, and we're actually doing this at level 16.

Of course, none of that is touching on what you're actually doing with those levels, which I think could involve a +cha race/template if nothing else (not sure which offhand), and it's not even using an item familiar for up to a +24 bonus. I mean, push the level back up to 20, add on the item familiar thing, and we're already hanging out at 138, two points away from 140, which allows you to hit hostile targets with fanaticism. That kinda distance has to be trivial with the level effect I noted above. Worst case scenario, dragon shaman 5 looks like it gives an easy (or not so easy) +2. We're going pretty deep at this point, but it all holds together pretty well, and, again, this all represents a high number that can be modified down to make use of other epic diplomacy options. Maybe you can't use item familiar, and you can "only" turn someone who dislikes you into someone that would do just about anything for you.

Edit:

Barring the epic usage I don't see how diplomacy breaks the game.
You're turning an enemy into anything that's not an enemy with no rolls and no recourse as a standard action. That alone is incredibly potent. Add on the fact that the thing that's not an enemy is a really good friend, and it becomes way more potent. It's really not that hard to get past a language barrier, leaving a lack of language altogether and, I dunno, deafness, as some of the few ways around this effect. You're getting something that's amazing when it works, and it works really frequently. It's like the enchantment school minus a lot of the downsides.

[LTwerewolf]

I feel a lot of people forget the amount of time it takes to complete a diplomacy roll. It takes a full minute, and if an enemy isn't willing to sit there and listen, it's pretty worthless. That's not dm adjudication or "not broken becuse it can be fixed." It's right there in the skill.

[Boci]

I feel a lot of people forget the amount of time it takes to complete a diplomacy roll. It takes a full minute, and if an enemy isn't willing to sit there and listen, it's pretty worthless. That's not dm adjudication or "not broken becuse it can be fixed." It's right there in the skill.

That just adds +10 to the DC. Or requires a dip in binder for....Mr. Diplomacy attempt at standard action with reduced penalty. (that may not be the vestiges actual name).

Even with the full 1 minute thing, it mitigates the impact, but there are still cases where the skill will be hugely problematic. PCs typically get an opportunity to talk to some important NPCs for an uninterrupted minute over the course of the campaign.

[dascarletm]

Edit:
You're turning an enemy into anything that's not an enemy with no rolls and no recourse as a standard action. That alone is incredibly potent. Add on the fact that the thing that's not an enemy is a really good friend, and it becomes way more potent. It's really not that hard to get past a language barrier, leaving a lack of language altogether and, I dunno, deafness, as some of the few ways around this effect. You're getting something that's amazing when it works, and it works really frequently. It's like the enchantment school minus a lot of the downsides.

The only problem I have seen with this is that the skill is very vague in what it actually does. Sure it tells you people are helpful or friendly, but what does that mean? I just don't see it as game breaking.

For example: suppose my best friend/love of my life, my wife, wanted me to embezzle money from my company, or help her rob a bank. No matter how close she is to me, I still wouldn't do it.

[Zancloufer]

It is still broken at "Fanatical" where the description is that:

Fanatic
The attitude of fanatic is added here. In addition to the obvious effects, any NPC whose attitude is fanatic gains a +2 morale bonus to Strength and Constitution scores, a +1 morale bonus on Will saves, and a -1 penalty to AC whenever fighting for the character or his or her cause. This attitude will remain for one day plus one day per point of the character’s Charisma bonus, at which point the NPC’s attitude will revert to its original attitude (or indifferent, if no attitude is specified).
Treat the fanatic attitude as a mind-affecting enchantment effect for purposes of immunity, save bonuses, or being detected by the Sense Motive skill. Since it is nonmagical, it can’t be dispelled; however, any effect that suppresses or counters mind-affecting effects will affect it normally. A fanatic NPC’s attitude can’t be further adjusted by the use of skills.

"Will give life to serve you" "Fight to the death against overwhelming odds"


Also let's be honest: If you take -10 on the check you can diplomacy as a standard action, which means anything that (A) Can understand You and (B) isn't immune, wait. Standard Diplomacy isn't stopped by Mind Blank and similar effects! DC 45 Check and anything you can talk to as a standard action goes from "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD" to "Oh yeah. Take a right, avoid the pit of doom, and over that bridge is how to get out of the forest".

Not like +35-45 is that hard. There are 3 skills that give +2 bonuses for ranks, 2 feats for another +5. Have 20 Cha (18+Item+level up) at level 5 thats +24!. Half-Elf with a +5 competence item increases that to +31. By level 5. Would not be out of place to pretty much auto-succeed at turning hostiles into friendlies as a NO SAVE NO RESIST Standard action before level 10. Half-Elf Bard doesn't seem so ridiculous now does it?

[dascarletm]

It is still broken at "Fanatical" where the description is that:

Fanatic
The attitude of fanatic is added here. In addition to the obvious effects, any NPC whose attitude is fanatic gains a +2 morale bonus to Strength and Constitution scores, a +1 morale bonus on Will saves, and a -1 penalty to AC whenever fighting for the character or his or her cause. This attitude will remain for one day plus one day per point of the character’s Charisma bonus, at which point the NPC’s attitude will revert to its original attitude (or indifferent, if no attitude is specified).
Treat the fanatic attitude as a mind-affecting enchantment effect for purposes of immunity, save bonuses, or being detected by the Sense Motive skill. Since it is nonmagical, it can’t be dispelled; however, any effect that suppresses or counters mind-affecting effects will affect it normally. A fanatic NPC’s attitude can’t be further adjusted by the use of skills.

"Will give life to serve you" "Fight to the death against overwhelming odds"


Also let's be honest: If you take -10 on the check you can diplomacy as a standard action, which means anything that (A) Can understand You and (B) isn't immune, wait. Standard Diplomacy isn't stopped by Mind Blank and similar effects! DC 45 Check and anything you can talk to as a standard action goes from "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD" to "Oh yeah. Take a right, avoid the pit of doom, and over that bridge is how to get out of the forest".

Not like +35-45 is that hard. There are 3 skills that give +2 bonuses for ranks, 2 feats for another +5. Have 20 Cha (18+Item+level up) at level 5 thats +24!. Half-Elf with a +5 competence item increases that to +31. By level 5. Would not be out of place to pretty much auto-succeed at turning hostiles into friendlies as a NO SAVE NO RESIST Standard action before level 10. Half-Elf Bard doesn't seem so ridiculous now does it?

If you were addressing me:


Barring the epic usage I don't see how diplomacy breaks the game.

Underlined for emphasis.
Additionally I think diplomancing to fanatic is blocked by standard mind control blocking stuff.

[icefractal]

Has anyone mentioned Simulacrum? Not for the minions aspect; that's covered by "no NI loops", and a force of Simulacra that you did pay for is powerful, maybe OP compared to other methods, but not game breaking.

But the information gathering aspect - that's a really difficult one to beat. Why bother with divinations, when you can just make a copy of your foe and have them draw you a nice map to their hidden fortress? There have been some threads about beating Simulacrum, and the methods required are rather extreme.

Like, "keeping your memories stored and only accessing them inside a Time Stop" or "becoming a creature without a physical body" (not even sure that one works), or "arranging things so you're dependent on a specific magic item to stay alive". Those aren't things that every 13th+ level character (or 7th+ with Mirror Mephits, I think) should be expected to do, IMO. Particularly since several of the methods require you to be immune to death and dispelling.


Also, any method of Simulacrum without a body part component (such as the Pathfinder version, or using it via SLA/Wish), raises a lot of questions to which the answers are undefined. Like just for example, you're trying to make a Simulacrum of "The Vermilion Duke", but secretly, the Duke ...
* Isn't one person, it's an identity used by a pair of twins.
* Is the body of one creature being possessed by the mind of another.
* Has reincarnated, been level drained/restored, and had his personality changed since you last saw him, so he now bears no resemblance to his former self. And no longer goes by the same name either.
* Is an amalgam of symbiotes - his left arm is a separate creature from his torso, for example.
* Is a real person, but not the one you're thinking of. Every time you saw or heard about The Vermilion Duke, it was actually his nemesis The Crimson Count impersonating him.

Having a body part involved answers those questions - you get the creature the body part was from - but without it, who knows?

[eggynack]

If you were addressing me:

Underlined for emphasis.
Additionally I think diplomancing to fanatic is blocked by standard mind control blocking stuff.
Sure, it's not quite a perfect swing swapping enemy to friend, but you're still basically running a standard action save or lose without the save which allows for roughly zero immunities, and that doesn't care much about targeting, or even knowing where the target is beyond nearby, and which seems like it'd have good range most of the time. Oh, and it also makes social situations go about as well as is normally plausible, without even opening you to attack.

So, pretty great, and nigh impossible to realistically stop aside from the fanatic function which does indeed have that defense.

[ArcanaGuy]

I'm pretty sure that if there is not listed price, then eschew materials allows you to ignore it.


That's all the feat cares about: whether the component has a listed gp value.

Actually, it cares whether the component has a gp value. It never says the gp value has to be listed - just that the material has to be worth less than 1 gp for it to apply.

Just because something does not have a listed price doesn't mean it's free. If it's something difficult to find, then the price is the cost it would take someone to acquire it for you. By listing a spell that must be cast in order to find it ... you are, in fact, giving it a price, because there is a service cost associated with spellcasting. In other words, a spell translates to a gp cost - so the assumed list price is the cost of casting said locator spell. A good argument could also be made that the cost of travel is also part of the assumed list price - teleport makes it easy, yes, but teleport also has a gp cost associated with it, and the listed pathfinding spell does not work with teleport. You actually have to travel. So then we have to deal with travel costs, costs of food and shelter, etc. All of that gets added to the assumed list price.


Uh... Like... That's not how strawman works (the first part) it's a strawman if it is inaccurate. Regardless of whether or not he explains the way in which it is inaccurate, it either is or isn't a strawman depending on the accuracy of your depiction, not on whether the person chooses to point out the inaccuracy.


Fallacies in general do not somehow magically get reversed on the person who points out that you used one in a schoolyard "no u" if they are not explained to you to your personal satisfaction.

Oh. OH. I was just being a bit informal and friendly, but you guys want to get pedantic! Well, I can do pedantic!

First: Logical fallacies aren't some magic 'I win' button that just magically ends the discussion if you bring it up. It's not a fallacy just because you say it is. If you bring up a fallacy, you need to back it up, just like with any other claim you make.

This is a basic element of civil discourse. To use your schoolyard analogy, you simply said, "DID NOT!" I responded with "OK, then what did you do?" To which your response is "DID NOT!"

Second, and here's where we get pedantic: Straw Man Arguments are not "You said I did something that I don't think I did." A straw man argument is "You are trying to refute my statement by creating a false stance which I do not possess, and then trying to discredit the false stance instead of what I actually said."

When I pointed out you were being rude, I wasn't trying to discredit or refute anything you were saying, I was just trying to remind you to keep this civil and friendly when you were being pretty offensive. Therefore, no Straw Man.

Third, if you tell me I'm wrong because I'm using a Straw Man Argument, and refuse to give justification, what you are doing is creating a stance and applying it to me. You are trying to discredit what I said based on that stance you created. So now, the question is whether or not that stance is justified.

You do not have any special authority which allows you to make such a claim unsubstantiated and without evidence. In a civil discourse, if someone challenges something that someone says, they can't just go "That's wrong!" They need to state why it's wrong, or the discourse can go nowhere. If I cannot then request a clarification, the conversation devolves, then, to use your schoolyard analogy, to 'Are not!' 'Am too!' 'Are not!' 'Am too!'

In the same way as we use dice to satisfy this dilemma in-game, when we are undergoing civil discourse, we use back-and-forth discussion to clarify. We do not simply sling out such accusations without basis. When we sling out an accusation without basis, this becomes name-calling or passive-aggressive insults. By giving you the opportunity to attach that sort of justification to the words you directed at me, I am giving you the opportunity to make it into a civil discourse instead of insulting name-calling.

Just saying "You're making a Straw Man Argument" but not expanding on that is no different from just saying "You're a jerk." It might be true, but without justification, it's just a name.


You just made up this rule out of whole cloth.

And no. I got this rule from the forum rules.


Name calling, including terms obviously meant in a pejorative sense such as "troll" or "fanboy"
Use passive-aggressive insults, such as "Anyone who believes that is an idiot," or "I'd call you an idiot, but it's against the rules." Yeah, we know that technically, you didn't call him or her an idiot, but guess what? It's still not allowed and will result in an additional infraction

I do not point this out because I'm trying to moderate you. I'm not pointing this out because I think you're trying to insult me. I'm pointing this out because you accused me of getting it from nowhere. This is the only way I can respond that no, I'm not getting it from nowhere. These are the terms you agreed to when joining these forums.

I don't think you set out trying to insult me. What I think is that you are getting carried away, defensive, and emotional, and I would like to have a civil discourse here.


Because the words you put in quotes and attributed to me (such as "Please do a ton of reading and research here and respond to EVERYTHING,") are not words that I said, nor is the position you attributed to me a position I hold.

Well, as I was rewording your demands so you realized how you sounded, that rephrasing was never intended as a direct quote. There are other uses for double-quoted text than direct quotes, you see. Context.

And as for meaning ... Yes, that is ... exactly what you said before and does not clarify anything at all. This is the third time I am requesting you to give details as to exactly what the difference is between what I claimed you were doing and what you think you were doing.

I can clarify that yes, you did that. You linked him to a rather involved thread, and despite him asking you to provide a specific example from the thread you felt was most valid, you refused to do so. In this manner, you provided him with a lot of text to read, and as it involves a lot of excess rules, he would then also have to research said rules, as I doubt he has all rulebooks everywhere memorized. This, then, qualifies as "a ton of reading and research. When he missed responding to a single element hidden behind a spoiler tag, you called him out on it quite rudely for it, declaring what he said to be invalid because he missed that one thing. This, then, qualifies as "and respond to everything."

What you need to say, if you want to continue this conversation in a civil manner, is not just 'No I didn't." You need to follow it up with "What I did was..." and point out why what you did is different than what I claimed you did.

And if you want to claim that I am making a Straw Man Argument, then you also have to point out where I used any of this to refute any of your points.

If, however, you are still unwilling to do so, then I am no longer interested in trying to have a conversation with you.

[Zancloufer]

If you were addressing me:

Underlined for emphasis.
Additionally I think diplomancing to fanatic is blocked by standard mind control blocking stuff.

Yes, essentially the "Dominate Monster" (At Will, No Save) diplomacy function can be defended against. The instant "Rip your face off" to "helping you find the store" has no defence. No Evasion. No Save. No way to be immune to (except language barrier, but hey Tongues Spell!). Also it's an AoE. At will. As a standard action. Even MORE useful out of combat. It is also achievable between levels 5-10 easily as a Bard without completely gimping your character in cases where you are fighting mindless enemies. Though an AoE "I Win" (or at least "Don't Loose") button as a standard at will option in and out of combat is probably worth more than ~30 skill points, 2 feats and a ~5K GP item. Heck save 15 skill points and 2 feats for another 5k GP.

[LTwerewolf]

If the problem is doing it in a standard action, why does that not make the binder's meld not the problem and make diplomacy the problem?

I mean if there was a feat to allow infinite casts of fireball as a free action, with whatever metamagic you like stuck on there, fireball doesn't suddenly become the broken thing, the feat is.

[Beheld]

If the problem is doing it in a standard action, why does that not make the binder's meld not the problem and make diplomacy the problem?

I mean if there was a feat to allow infinite casts of fireball as a free action, with whatever metamagic you like stuck on there, fireball doesn't suddenly become the broken thing, the feat is.

Skills are super easy to boost and Diplomacy has fixed DCs. The Binder level is a cheap way to get +10 and some other stuff, but it's still only +10 to the DC to perform the action as a standard action if you aren't a Binder.

Making all the Diplomacy DCs 10 points higher doesn't make the skill less broken, since you can still hit all the DCs on a 1.

[Âmesang]

I do think it's important to further define what "friendly" and "helpful" mean. For example, I like to imagine a decently-experienced wizard diplomacied into being helpful so as to craft a particular item for the party; yeah, he's listened to your words and now he's more than willing to set aside time from his busy schedule to craft this item…

…but it's still going to cost you …full price; and, no, he can't rush the creation process by forcing himself to work more than eight hours a day. Be thankful he's being helpful enough. Would you prefer he not be helpful? After all, he's got this brand-new disintegrate spell he learned last week and he's just dying to try it out. Castle Doctrine and all that.

I had one regrettable experience, participating as a player, in which the group's bard was able to roll Diplomacy so high that instead of the arts dealer selling us his choicest wares, he actually paid us to take it off of his hands. 'Cause, you know, helpful!

Oh, and the player didn't actually say anything particular diplomatic; he just rolled the die and gave the referee his result and told the referee what he wanted the NPC to do for him.

That's why I'm glad the Rules Compendium includes a specific rule for haggling that increases the Diplomacy DC by an amount equal to the seller's Diplomacy modifier; kind of turns the tactic against a conniving player, and if the player fails I believe the seller can refuse to sell anything to him for at least 24 hours. Success just means a 10% discount on the item's price.

[LTwerewolf]

Skills are super easy to boost and Diplomacy has fixed DCs. The Binder level is a cheap way to get +10 and some other stuff, but it's still only +10 to the DC to perform the action as a standard action if you aren't a Binder.

Making all the Diplomacy DCs 10 points higher doesn't make the skill less broken, since you can still hit all the DCs on a 1.

Without binder it's a full round action according to the srd.

[Beheld]

Without binder it's a full round action according to the srd.

Then it's probably a full round action for Binders too, but that doesn't matter, since if you do it in a full round action, it's still a huge no save AoE effect that works on literally all things with a language (and maybe ones that don't if you have telepathy) with no possible immunities except deliberate deafness (again, maybe not if you have telepathy). If takes a full round or standard action, you still instantly win 99.99% of fights as soon as you go, and win the other ones with your army of friends willing to kill them for you.

[eggynack]

Without binder it's a full round action according to the srd.
Yeah, but who cares? The issue is the time commitment and how capable you are of using the ability in any given situation. Yes, binder is good for this. If you can take it on a diplomancer, then you absolutely should. But it's not necessary.

Then it's probably a full round action for Binders too.
Nah, standard.

[ArcanaGuy]

I do think it's important to further define what "friendly" and "helpful" mean.

Rules for Diplomacy in 3.X (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/diplomacy.htm)

There are very brief definitions of helpful, but you're right - it sounds like your GM wasn't paying attention to them, and wasn't sure how to deal properly with someone having an absurd diplomacy check.

[Endarire]

The above example of 'I won't embezzle from my company even if my bride tells me to!' is an example of a low bonus on a Diplomacy check. Some people are simply so charismatic and convincing that 'rational thought' becomes far less important compared to 'listen to the expert talker.'

[Kelb_Panthera]

So a summer cold kicked my head in and I forgot I made this thread. Sorry about that.

Let's start with some extracted quotes and then I'll hit a few more things.


Re: non-scrying divination

It feels like something that should have been done a long time ago and everyone would have heard of it by now, but as far as I know no one's put together "The Grand Thread of DM's Counters Etc." The first part of which would go over every divination spell and it's countermeasures, the second part of which would put together those countermeasures in proper forms for what badguys should/could be doing at each level. Further parts expand on other topics as neccesary.

That would be a useful resource. I'd be willing to contribute if someone wants to get it started.


What I'd be interested in (if it even makes sense to you), is a rundown on just exactly how one counters Divination itself. The jist of it seems to be that it turns into some sort of chess-like temporal monstrosity where you have to line up the exact thought matrices of each party's paradoxical layers of intent before you can run them against each other to see who's Divination turns up what first. The easiest solution is obviously for the DM to exercise their control over what the result actually is and any time two parties point Divinations at each other (directly or indirectly) they both turn up fuzzy. But on the off chance you understand and can outlay how that all goes down it'd be interesting.

The nature of divination is such that it has an inherent chance of failure, so there's that. It also yields limited, often cryptic, and "subject to change" information. I honestly don't even see how this could pose a problem in the first place.

Blocking it directly is pretty difficult though. It doesn't invoke a particular entity to try to confuse. It targets the caster so you can't really do anything with general magic blocking tricks. About the only things that come quicky to mind as direct hard-counters are mindblank and the vecna blooded template. Otherwise about the only thing you can do is try to keep a low profile and have flexible plans that you can adapt quickly to changing circumstances. It just doesn't give the enemy enough information on its own that you should reasonably worry about it being the silver bullet to strike you down.

There -is- a note in the spell description about "specific magic yielding false information is at work" but, so far as I can tell, there is no spell other than mindblank whose description would have it foil the divination spell since virtually all other spells that foil divinations either specify certain types of divinations or require the divination to target the warded creature.


After Divination is Commune, for which I see very little in effective countermeasures, and while information isn't game-breaking the inability can cause a serious hit to fun. Being an indirect spell it of course avoids any direct shielding since you're asking what someone else knows. And the problem is weather or not you're actually getting your deity on the line. Deities have defined abilities, including portfolio sense that literally lets them know about anything they're related to and sense it weeks into the past or future, including their followers. There is no counter to this aside from having another deity of the same rank and with a portfolio connection of it's own shield the subject from view, and that's limited to two (2!) remote blocks at once

So the only justification for having your god not know everything about your upcoming adventure and potential threats is for another god to have been spending half of their deific sight blocking on whoever it is you're asking about, also limiting them to a relatively small area.

Commune has the caster contacting a deity. Don't be of interest to that deity. Seriously, each god has its portfolio and fairly limited ability to know about things within their portfolio, per Deities and Demigods. Only greater deities can even see the future or pick up on happenings that affect individuals rather than groups of their followers/people related to their portfolio. The spell is also limited to "yes," ""no," or "unclear" as an answer unless that would be deliberately confusing. Even then, a more specific answer is an extremely short and terse one.

I've seen where some have suggested setting up a series of questions akin to a set of logic gates to extrapolate more complex information from multiple castings of commune but if you've ever seen a simple program fail because of a bug then you know that this is -far- from an infallible method of gleaning information even if you're locked into -only- yes/no answers.

Finally, even with greater gods that -do- have the ability to see the future of individuals, you get into the metaphysical and philosophical discussion of whether the future they see is mutable or not. Personally, I subscribe to the idea that the future they see is, indeed, mutable but this is a discussion that has foiled the best minds of humanity since long before Arneson and Gygax even created this game's predecessors and I doubt we'll be able to come to a definitive answer if we do try to hash it out. The point being; if the future is mutable then any knowledge of it is subject to having become wrong by the time that future becomes the present.



Or you can making your own dubious rulings: it says your god answers questions based on it's current knowledge, not that it's allowed to use one of it's many actions to take a look at that moment in time for you and then assume gods never pay attention on their own. Or cut the god out completely and have all Commune spells connect with an agent, which can be anything of whatever reduced power you want in order to justify their ignorance. Neither is very satisfying.

I don't see any reason to consider the former dubious. They don't even have to actually look into the future if they have that ability since it's a passive one and such knowledge would be included in their current knowledge. While the deity's portfolio sense would update -them- with the corrected info in the moment it changes, only further castings of commune would update you of any changes unless your quest is of such importance that the god would send an agent to update you, in which case it wouldn't be inappropriate to consider that it may be of equal import to that gods foes who -may- be able to block him.

The description of the spell and nature of the divine is such that I'd imagine that agents are tapped unless deific powers are necessary to give the requested information unless the caster specifies a specific agent when casting. That is; no, I wouldn't say "The agent of your god that you've contacted is ignorant of this subject, therefore all answers are unclear." Like you said, that's kind of dodgy.

Of note, however, is this: burning all of your 5th level slots on playing 50 questions with your deity for information that is subject to you asking the -wrong- questions and/or changing because you don't ask 500 questions often enough seems like a way -waste- a lot of time and slots.

For active defense, just like divination and augury, keep information close so the enemy doesn't know which questions to ask and keep your plans flexible enough that a foe knowing parts of it isn't a guaranteed foil.



Because he made this thread that opened with a bold claim that would require hours of research to have been formed.

Try years. It goes way beyond just the rules of the game too. Information theory, espionage tactics, politics, a whole hot mess of research into a million and one different things; all kinds of seemingly extraneous knowledge plays into how I view this and similar matters.

I'm sorry you -think- I've made some claim to being smarter than most people, since that's what you -seem- to think, but from what I can see most people that claim that the commonly sited game-breakers are such, either haven't tried to think it all the way through or simply lack the knowledge of -how- to overcome these things. I'm not really any smarter than anyone but I -am- obsessive about researching anything that piques my interest to an exhuastive(ing?) degree and what doing so with D&D 3.5 has shown me is that it is very complex but only very rarely -broken-, as in; non-functional as written.


"D&D isnt broken!! the DM can fix it"
if you have to fix it, isnt it broken?

That would be the oberonni fallacy. I'm not saying "it's not broken because the DM can fix it." I'm saying "it's not nearly as broken as you think and you'd see that if you did a bit more research and/or looked at it a little differently." Of course there are -some- disfunctions and things that absolutely -do- make it impossible to continue the game if they're not houseruled. The bar is just higher than a lot of people think.


Teleport through time (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/pg/20030409b) + Eschew Materials. For a mere 1,000 xp, travel back in time to whatever point in history or prehistory you want. There are plenty of ways to travel forward in time without problems (see: slow time demiplane for an example). Note that you can gain access to a scroll of the spell via early access wishes as soon as you can afford a scroll of planar binding.

Oh dear gods. My mind had suppressed that particular piece of drek. I'm going to resist the urge to go into a tirade about what a horrid idea I think including time-travel in a game is on general principle and leave it at this: multiverse theory, butterfly effect, unintended consequences. It can be made to work but unless you're a theoretical physicist, you'll just end up making things up as you go no matter what rulings you make. Also, quaruts. Lots and lots of quaruts.

Now I'm going to need to take a minute to shake the cobwebs of time-travel theory out of my brain.


I haven't read the entire thread but I'll take a stab at it.



Here's a scenario.
The party wishes to seek an audience with the mayor/king/head honcho but a guard refuses to let us see the authority figure. The guard says that the king is incredibly busy and can't be bothered with our trivial pursuit. The guard hints that the party could take the initiative and solve whatever the king's dilemma is and we'll be granted audience. The DM and the players rejoice as we have our hook and are ready to pursue the next fetch quest.

ENTER level 2 diplomancer

The diplomancer approaches the guard and insists that our trivial pursuit is a matter that concerns the realm: the very land the king has sworn to protect. The level 6 guard has ranks in intimidate, swim, and has even cross-classed ranks in spot, listen, and spellcraft. Sadly, he simply isn't equipped to deal with a +20 diplomacy check before rolling. The guard lets the party see the king and the DM throws away 3 pages of notes on where the stolen king's jewels are.

Arguably, the DM could grant the guard a +10 "you'll be fired if you disturb the king" modifier. However, the player could insist that guard would be inclined to let the king know that the player's plight is dire enough (i.e. the kobolds of kher keep are swarming and preparing to pillage the nearby county.)

Should the DM be prepared for a diplomacy check? Sure, but every DM I've encountered has at one point felt powerless to guide the party towards the intended scenario/dungeon. A quick thinking DM would have the king's steward, a fellow diplomancer, negotiate with the party. But can every future NPC realistically have 2 levels in marshal or bard? Eh, not likely.

tl;dr Diplomacy skill in non-combat scenarios can be a sucker punch.

This may be off topic, but no sane DM can be prepared for every little rules as written secenario. I can't expect the DM to have page 112 of Stormwrack to be memorized because it has a crucial ruling about Profeession: Chef when cooking crab legs.

EDIT: I see there are some fellow paladin avatars in this thread. Well met pious playgrounders!

Is there any reason they can't meet the king now? They go in, meet the king, diplomance him, and then the king asks his new bested buddies for life to go take care of that little problem he's been having; the dungeon crawl you wanted them to do before meeting the king.

The fanatic status is worth noting; it's treated as a mind-affecting enchantment for immunity, saves, and suppression. If the most important characters in your societies aren't shielded against enchantments, somebody that talks good is amongst the least of their security threats. Protection from <alignment> says, "hi."

So that's the quotes addressed.

I saw the LCB come up. Roll with it. One of your PC's has created the wight-ocalypse. Now they get to clean it up before there's no one from whom to get quests or sell loot. If anybody finds out they were responsible, they also have to deal with being the guys in possession of a WMD that -every- major political power is going to want to control or eliminate and/or drawing the attention of any god/church concerned with death/undeath/destruction and possibly a deity of magic that would rather you didn't make -everyone- fear magic-wielders any more than they already do. Actions have consequences and setting off a nuke tends to have rather dire consequences.

The straight-up explosion version is dodgy rules-wise because of the old circular AoE argument.


I'm pretty sure there were one or two other things I wanted to touch on but I'll have to go through the thread again to find them.

EDIT:

Right, speak with dead: remove the jaw, don't let 'em see you coming. The corpse can't speak if its speaking apparatus is badly damaged and it can't tell the caster anything it didn't know in life so just make sure it doesn't know anything important.

[Gemini476]

Breaking the game as a whole is relatively difficult. Short of Pun-Pun (Manipulate Form should never have been written) and Ice Assassin's of Greater Deities everything in the game can be countered, worked around, or mitigated by some other ability or combination of abilities.

The thing is that D&D 3.5 played at the limits of the systems potential with even moderately high level characters (12 or so plus) is a game of Xanatos speed chess (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosSpeedChess).

---

Take something like an Old Dragon. Going by straight book stats a party of four level twenty characters should be able to easily kill such a dragon. Now remember that it is a five hundred year old creature with racial memories and a base intelligence greater than that of the average super-genius. Oh yeah, and that it has triple standard wealth (so you are looking at a budget of upwards of 1.5 million GP).

Now you pump up all of its stats by 5 points from the Inherent bonuses that it got from tomes over the years. Then you add in the +6 to all stats from a Belt of Magnificence; species and alignment restrict it before doubling the price to make it slot-less and fluff it as a magical ritual to prevent PC stealing. There is also the Third Eye Conceal to provide always on Mind Blank.

Now its base of operations. Whip out the Stronghold Builders guide and spend a million GP or so making what is essentially one giant death trap for everyone not the dragon. Or just spend all of that on additional personal magic items.

Now factor in the planes spanning intelligence network that the dragon has established over the centuries to keep it appraised of any threats or other things of interest.

Now look at feats. Things like Permanent Emanation: Widened, Selective (the Dragon) Anti-magic field. And Permanent Emanation; Widened, Selective (the Dragon) Temporal Repair.

Then look at the Crafted Contingent Spells, an Old Red gets 28 of them. One of those will be a True Resurrection. The party kills the dragon only for it to come right back at full health and continue the fight as if nothing had happened. The other 27 are suited to taste. My personal preference is an entire personal buff routine set to go off upon the Dragons resurrection.

So you killed the Dragon, that's nice. Now the Dragon is under the effects of (all Persistent) Shapechange, Superior Invisibility, True Seeing, Greater Blink, Ironguard, and so on.

For extra fun the Dragon has used Hide Life and taking the epic feat Fast Healing. So you thought that you had killed the dragon, only for it to reform over a period of a minute or so ready to keep going.

---
All of the above still leaves you with a CR 20 Old Red Dragon for the party to kill. Except instead of the party wizard using a few divination spells to locate it, teleporting in while it sleeps, and hitting it with Shivering Touch you instead have something that will press even a fairly skilled and optimized party. And will likely require significant legwork to deal with.

Killing such a creature could easily be the culmination of a five or ten level quest chain involving social, combat, and exploration challenges. And none of that requires the use of any homebrewed abilities or the like.

Indeed it would, story wise at least, fit perfectly in D&D.

No comments on the rest of the thread, but this is incorrect. Triple standard wealth just means three times the CR20 treasure - all in all that adds up to roughly 220k in pure wealth, but more properly it's a small hoard of (on average) 29k gp, 2.3k pp, 24 gems (6.5k gp total), 46 art object (50k gp total), and just 3 Medium magic items and 2.1 Major.

Even if it's specialized treasure, that's just 220k gp - and even if you use the value of NPC gear it only goes up to 660k. I'm not sure where you got the 1.5mil from, to be honest?

Of course, that's all assuming that you don't just go use the improved tables in the Magic Item Compendium. But either way your standard RAW Old Red Dragon doesn't have access to more than, say, nine tomes at the very maximum - most will have nothing near that many, since they're buried down below a 20% Wondrous Item chance and then have a 1% chance each (or 6% chance total for the +5 books, and 30% total if you include everything down to +1 books). (And it's also burrowed below a 3*35% chance of getting 1d3 major magic items in the first place, of course. Getting any tome at all is down to a 12% chance at that point.)

Also, a CR20 encounter isn't even supposed to be deadly to a level 20 party - it's just supposed to force them to use a quarter or so of their available resources for the day and 'threaten a member of the group'.

RAW 3E is a bit kinder than some might think to the PCs.

Sorry for being such a nit-pic, but that annoyed me so much I figured that I might as well correct it.

[AnachroNinja]

Kelb, I can't help but feel like a fair chunk of your responses to various divinations seem to come down to "well it says vague or cryptic or short answers, who knows what the gods actually know, so I can just tell you nothing or lie to you, haha!" Which combines to make the spells essentially useless. Why would any player or even in game character ever use or create these spells in your games when they are pointless and provide no actual information? How is that rational?

Very few people, if any, are arguing that a single divination tells you someone's life story. More so that repeated and varied divinations can get you useful information. If your stance is really that the DM is just justified in denying information on a whim to suit his story because the spell didn't specifically say that you get it, just ban the spells and we done with it. Don't use the spells vagueness, intended to allow the DM some leeway, to just invalidate PC choices. Obviously they couldn't cover the details of everything someone could ever divine to be more specific.

Also, your commentary about the logic gate method of using repeat divination is nonsense. "Haha, have you ever seen a bug in a program?!" Without actually stating where that bug would come from. There isn't the inherent level is complexity that a computer program has, even if your asking a thousand questions. There is much less room for flaw and user error, especially since it's a general assumption that if a player says "I do exactly this, asking these questions, in this way" and you just arbitrarily add an error that didn't exist, your just screwing them.

I get that you really don't want this stuff to work, but denying there's a problem by embracing vagueness and DM fiat is not a solution.

[Krazzman]

Also, your commentary about the logic gate method of using repeat divination is nonsense. "Haha, have you ever seen a bug in a program?!" Without actually stating where that bug would come from. There isn't the inherent level is complexity that a computer program has, even if your asking a thousand questions. There is much less room for flaw and user error, especially since it's a general assumption that if a player says "I do exactly this, asking these questions, in this way" and you just arbitrarily add an error that didn't exist, your just screwing them.


If I remember correctly the first one was a moth. Maybe in this case it was Mothra the Divine?

More seriously though, Commune is a simple yes, no or unsure answer. As such maybe whilst asking the information changed or it wasn't in the portfolio to begin with.

[AnachroNinja]

That's sort of my point though. When your doing that, your basically just making the decision to invalidate their efforts and not give them information. Yes, it is possible for a DM to spend considering the information available, what the gods may know (though since by the rules God's reside on infinite planes with infinite angels and therefore infinite spys and information gatherers) or not know, 99% of the time a DM is just saying "I don't want them to have that information." What if my god is vecna? His portfolio is "secrets". Justify him not knowing hidden information I want...

Yeah the spells vagueness allow you to just decide that the spell is useless, but if that's what you're going to do, why bother with it at all.

[Barbarian Horde]

Shirt of wraith stalking form MIC that has a modified version of hide from undead, that instead works on all undead with no save. Now undead by no means have a way to detect you in any form of any kind, you are invisible in all aspects to them. They simply cannot detect or locate you in anyway. Equip this in a strahd campaign and you've successfully took a huge dump on the campaign.

[Anthrowhale]

No comments on the rest of the thread, but this is incorrect.

In addition to Gemini's complaint about available wealth,


There is a problem with Selective[you] Antimgic Field in that it suppresses all magic in the area of effect including the contingencies, the other permanent emanation, and any personal buffs.
Widen does not work on AMF without quite bit more work. You need something like AMF + Magic of the land + Spellguard + spontaneous Reach to increase the range so that Widen alters the effect.


While I agree with the general thrust of the OP thesis (many breaks... aren't) I also wanted to mention some potential non-infinite game breakers:

Level 15: Initiate of Mystra + Persistent Ghostform + Selective[you] Antimagic Field. You are immune to nonmagical and magical effects.
Level 11: Initiate of Mystra + Persistent Starmantle + Antimagic Field. You are immune to weapons and magical effects.
Level 9: Supernatural Spell (from Dweomerkeeper). The ability to ignore expensive material/XP components is huge.
Level 7: Celerity + daze immunity. This is the seed of a several action economy breakers.
Level 6: The first powerful metamagic reducers (spelldancing, arcane thesis) become available. Persistent everything and always overkill damage come into effect.
Level 2: Troll-blooded + Gheden. Immune to damage except for fire and acid.
Level 1: Uncanny Forethought. Cast any known spell as a full round action. In addition to massive versatility, you drop the casting time to at most a full round.

Each of the above seems capable of making many/most level appropriate challenges unchallenging.

[dascarletm]

The above example of 'I won't embezzle from my company even if my bride tells me to!' is an example of a low bonus on a Diplomacy check. Some people are simply so charismatic and convincing that 'rational thought' becomes far less important compared to 'listen to the expert talker.'

Woah! My wife's diplomacy is optimized, I'll have you know. She took skill focus and everything.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Kelb, I can't help but feel like a fair chunk of your responses to various divinations seem to come down to "well it says vague or cryptic or short answers, who knows what the gods actually know, so I can just tell you nothing or lie to you, haha!" Which combines to make the spells essentially useless. Why would any player or even in game character ever use or create these spells in your games when they are pointless and provide no actual information? How is that rational?

Very few people, if any, are arguing that a single divination tells you someone's life story. More so that repeated and varied divinations can get you useful information. If your stance is really that the DM is just justified in denying information on a whim to suit his story because the spell didn't specifically say that you get it, just ban the spells and we done with it. Don't use the spells vagueness, intended to allow the DM some leeway, to just invalidate PC choices. Obviously they couldn't cover the details of everything someone could ever divine to be more specific.

There -is- a middle ground between "they give you nothing" and "they give you exactly what you need." People that complain about them often (perhaps hyperbolicly) speak as though it's the latter extreme and people who criticize that outlook, like me, are typically misrepresented as being representative of the former (not saying that was your intent.)

Giving cryptic answers to divination and making decisions about what the gods know within the limits of their purview -is- within the text of the spells and the RAW for the game. I'm not saying that a DM should -never- give useful information to the party but at the same time he's unambiguously -not- obligated to give them all of the information they seek, no questions asked.

Also, let's be real for a sec here. It's simply not possible, no matter what the rules say, for the DM to actually know what's going to happen a -season- in advance (the minimum limit for a greater deity's portfolio sense), in game-time, and it's dodgy as hell to expect him to -know- what will happen in even just a week. Even if you -wanted- to give the party reliable information about the future, you can only give them an educated guess.

For simpler divinations that only inform on the present, information is, of course, subject to change. There's a reason you have to act quickly on sensitive intelligence in the field.



Also, your commentary about the logic gate method of using repeat divination is nonsense. "Haha, have you ever seen a bug in a program?!" Without actually stating where that bug would come from. There isn't the inherent level is complexity that a computer program has, even if your asking a thousand questions. There is much less room for flaw and user error, especially since it's a general assumption that if a player says "I do exactly this, asking these questions, in this way" and you just arbitrarily add an error that didn't exist, your just screwing them.

I live with a programmer. Even the simplest of programs is prone to having to be rewritten several times because of simple human error and divination would represent something akin to a quantum code because of "uncertain" and "short phrase" answers. With divination, you don't know you need to rewrite until you've "run" the program once. That is; you don't know if you've asked the right questions until you act on the information you've gleaned and then it's too late to "rewrite." There's no compiler here, you're writing code to directly control the qbits. Good F'ing luck.


I get that you really don't want this stuff to work, but denying there's a problem by embracing vagueness and DM fiat is not a solution.

DM fiat is creating the problem in the first place. What gods know is exclusively the purview of the DM with guidelines given in D&DG and doing something as incredibly complex as writing freakin' quantum code that's reaching for an unknown result (remember we're talking about fishing for info here) is so prone to human error that it strikes me, frankly, as absurd to even consider relying on it.

I'm not denying the -potential- for a problem but that potential is -grossly- overstated.

[AnachroNinja]

I'll give you that, my apologies for jumping to the conclusion that you were trying to completely invalidate the usage, that is a sadly common thought process unfortunately.

The problem I've always seen for this is that once you start getting *some* information, your ability to continue divining only increases. It probably got lost in the shuffle a while back, but that's why I see divinations as mostly game breaking when you go to the extreme of mass farms of dominated or otherwise controlled clerics or wizards that you use to continually divine information, focusing tighter and tighter until you get what you want.

I'm 100% on board with you that as single casting, or even a couple castings, of divination or commune should not give all the information you want, but when you can bring to bear a hundred or more castings in a day, not only will you get the information, but you'll be able to continuously divine to get updated information as the situation changes due to your foreknowledge.

I'll grant this is a high optimization, almost tippyverse type scenario, but it is possible is what I'm saying.

[icefractal]

The problem I've always seen for this is that once you start getting *some* information, your ability to continue divining only increases.My experience also. It might start out being vague and not very helpful, but once you get any solid detail you can start getting more information on that, and then on the things connected to it, and so forth until you have very precise details of plans and operations. As well as double-checking that info, which minimizes the effects of inaccurate results. And I don't even think you need a vast army of diviners; a small cabal, operating for a couple weeks, can ask a lot of questions.

Where it gets really tricky to run, as a GM, is when both sides start using divination. If the PCs are asking questions about the BBEG, who is completely in the dark, then it's straightforward enough. In the reverse case it's harder, since asking the PCs what their future plans are is usually a tip-off, and they're not necessarily going to be decided on them yet anyway. And if you have people using divinations to see if they're being spied on by divinations, and reacting accordingly ... a gigantic mess.

If I were king of D&D, I think I'd just throw time travel out categorically - no changing the past, no asking questions about the future. You can still get a lot of information by what's happening in the present and past, and it doesn't require the GM to think in four dimensions. :smalltongue:

[Cosi]

If I were king of D&D, I think I'd just throw time travel out categorically - no changing the past, no asking questions about the future. You can still get a lot of information by what's happening in the present and past, and it doesn't require the GM to think in four dimensions. :smalltongue:

Just asking questions about the present does pretty well at forcing four dimensional thinking. "What is Baron McGoatee planning to do next week?" doesn't require access to any future information, it just requires that your enemy has plans.

Actual time travel is one of those things that has a really bad ratio of "warps the game" to "is a thing people expect of the game", so it's probably just not worth the effort to include completely outside how hard it is to run.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I'll give you that, my apologies for jumping to the conclusion that you were trying to completely invalidate the usage, that is a sadly common thought process unfortunately.

The problem I've always seen for this is that once you start getting *some* information, your ability to continue divining only increases. It probably got lost in the shuffle a while back, but that's why I see divinations as mostly game breaking when you go to the extreme of mass farms of dominated or otherwise controlled clerics or wizards that you use to continually divine information, focusing tighter and tighter until you get what you want.

I'm 100% on board with you that as single casting, or even a couple castings, of divination or commune should not give all the information you want, but when you can bring to bear a hundred or more castings in a day, not only will you get the information, but you'll be able to continuously divine to get updated information as the situation changes due to your foreknowledge.

I'll grant this is a high optimization, almost tippyverse type scenario, but it is possible is what I'm saying.


My experience also. It might start out being vague and not very helpful, but once you get any solid detail you can start getting more information on that, and then on the things connected to it, and so forth until you have very precise details of plans and operations. As well as double-checking that info, which minimizes the effects of inaccurate results. And I don't even think you need a vast army of diviners; a small cabal, operating for a couple weeks, can ask a lot of questions.

Where it gets really tricky to run, as a GM, is when both sides start using divination. If the PCs are asking questions about the BBEG, who is completely in the dark, then it's straightforward enough. In the reverse case it's harder, since asking the PCs what their future plans are is usually a tip-off, and they're not necessarily going to be decided on them yet anyway. And if you have people using divinations to see if they're being spied on by divinations, and reacting accordingly ... a gigantic mess.

Here's where information theory hits.

What happens when the information they base their next round of questions on is bad because they made some kind of error in extrapolation or when parsing the data accross the complex system they've built? At best: conflicting information creates confusion and uncertainty. At worst: the bad data isn't caught before further eroneous information is generated and/or acted upon and it becomes actively -worse- than if they'd acted with no information at all.

If you're not generating all the information yourself, there's also the possibility of intentional misinformation being inserted somewhere that the information changes hands, agents being subverted, and so on. The more moving parts a system has, the more opportunity there is for one of them to fail and cause the system to malfunction. Cascading failures can be absolutely catastrophic if/when they occur.


If I were king of D&D, I think I'd just throw time travel out categorically - no changing the past, no asking questions about the future. You can still get a lot of information by what's happening in the present and past, and it doesn't require the GM to think in four dimensions. :smalltongue:

I'm mostly with you. I can handle information being passed backwards from the future since present actions can change the future and render that information less than 100% reliable. Physically going into the past or future and screwing with things is just right out though. *shudder*

[AnachroNinja]

With a proper divination farm you would want to have layers of redundancy to identify those chance mistakes or bad rolls where you get incorrect information. The same caster can only ask a question once, but you can certainly triple check with multiple casters. That's why my example included 100+ casters. My imagination looks at it like a circle of witches combining there power. It's thematically reasonable in my mind at least. Errors are possible, but you can work to reduce them and be sure to get mostly reliable information with sufficient effort and time.

[P.F.]

This is the problem:


Player: Is anyone plotting to kill me?
DM: Yes.
Player: Does his name start with an "A"?
DM: Unclear.
Player: Is there more than one person plotting to kill me?
DM: Yes.
Player: Are there more than two persons plotting to kill me?
DM: Not at this time.
Player: Is one of the persons plotting to kill me more powerful than the other?
DM: Yes.
Player: Does the more powerful one's name start with an "A"?
DM: No
Player: Does the more powerful one's name start with a "B"?
DM: No
Player: Does the more powerful one's name start with a "C"?
DM: No
Player: Does the more powerful one's name start with a "D"?
DM: No
Player: Does the more powerful one's name start with an "E"?
DM: No
Player: Does the more powerful one's name start with an "F"?
DM: No
Player: Does the more powerful one's name start with a "G"?
DM: No
Player: Does the more powerful one's name start with an "H"?
DM: No
Player: Does the more powerful one's name start with an "I"?
DM: No
Player: Does the more powerful one's name start with a "J"?
DM: No
Player: Does the more powerful one's name start with a "K"?
DM: No
Player: Does the more powerful one's name start with an "L"?
DM: No
Player: Does the more powerful one's name start with an "M"?
DM: No
Player: I cast commune again.
DM: How many of these do you have prepared?

[Willie the Duck]

Actual time travel is one of those things that has a really bad ratio of "warps the game" to "is a thing people expect of the game", so it's probably just not worth the effort to include completely outside how hard it is to run.

I think time travel shouldn't be on the list of game-breaking abilities -- not because it doesn't, but because it breaks everything, not just games. Narratives, logic, continuity, etc. Frankly I think all RPGs should hve an assumed extra paragraph in the rules saying "Time Travel: If you include this, it works exactly as the DM/GM needs it to for the story, it does not have to be consistent, and there are no rules for it. Also, if it messes stuff up, you have only yourself to blame."

[Wolfkingleo]

I read the OP and most of the topic replies so pardon if I may repeat something that was already stated by someone.

The aspect of "gamebreak for a DM" is all about personal view and the way that is previous put. Truth is, the DM should be aware of his players abilities (not being known of all of them, but at least have a notion of what a player could do.) and balance the plot and world reaction according. Granted, it is impossible to keep track all the player resources and prepare beforehand scenarios withstanding every simple possibility.

It is all about have a good judgement being a player or being a DM. I do believe that there is not a single handbook to cover how should someone use a spell/ability to surpass a challenge without being abusable, it just need a simple logic to do so, and also the DM should be aware that (maybe) are several other ways to bypass his plothook without doing what (s)he thought be the ONLY solution (sure, it may cause some uneasyness).

Some of these ways may look "cheap" (like the Divination spells way to locate/solve the plothook), it doesn't mean that he should counter it with DM-EX-Machina because "f*** you gamebreakers!", but to improvise a way around it to give the player the satisfaction of solving (part of) the mystery and the same time keep his trumph cards ready for more action without "violating" the metagaming and the magic rules.

TL;DR - Be reasonable, don't be jerk and know the rules, if you need to change anything that really affects the table, try to do it before/after the sessions, discussing the issues with your players. After all it is all about fun and games, until someone lost either of it.




Actual time travel is one of those things that has a really bad ratio of "warps the game" to "is a thing people expect of the game", so it's probably just not worth the effort to include completely outside how hard it is to run.

My current campaign used to have some time travelling elements, it didn't work out because it was a lame excuse from our DM taking in account 2 aspects:

a) He loves Isaac Asimov/Clarke's books and takes their concepts to his heart. (Bad stuff for a Medieval Fantasy setting, still)

b) In the previous campaign another friend (let me call him "Tom" here) of ours decided to play a Chaotic Stupid Barbarian that loved to create a fuss in every town, so since he was already tired of that campaign he put a new (my current) one, where a time traveller (a future version of Tom's current character) reach the past to avert a great catastrophe and used several directions (a bit of railroading) to keep Tom "in line and behaving".

After several sessions, we found out that it was a unecessary drag and our friend was no longer "missbehaving" so he slowly let it out of the script. Also several stupid plotholes, because time plotholes are expected.

Cheers

[Kelb_Panthera]

With a proper divination farm you would want to have layers of redundancy to identify those chance mistakes or bad rolls where you get incorrect information. The same caster can only ask a question once, but you can certainly triple check with multiple casters. That's why my example included 100+ casters. My imagination looks at it like a circle of witches combining there power. It's thematically reasonable in my mind at least. Errors are possible, but you can work to reduce them and be sure to get mostly reliable information with sufficient effort and time.

To be clear, the errors are not just possible in the result of the spell (commune is virtually proof against that by its description, actually) but also in organizing, collating, and forwarding the information gleaned. People misunderstand one another and make mistakes even whent they're super genius intelligent and learned sage wise and mentally linked by a carefully structured telepathic bond network. You can -minimize- the chance of bad information floating to the top but you can't eliminate it entirely.

Also, I repeat that the more steps there are between the information being garnered and you getting it, the more opportunity there is for that information to be tampered with.

I'm -very- familiar with just how powerful information can be and I wouldn't begin to try to downplay that but getting and vetting -good- information is a whole field unto itself and the spells that gather information from "beyond" don't do much to change that other than providing unusual but fairly reliable sources that (and this part is key) are equally accessible to your opposition and can't be burned.

[Fizban]

That would be a useful resource. I'd be willing to contribute if someone wants to get it started.
I feel like I've already got most of the significant spells down (and a thread would pick up the rest), I'm just leery of trying to write a handbook. Even if the spell notes don't have quite enough details to get scrubbed, the other stuff I'd want to post probably does and then it's just wasted effort. And I could just flake out, which would be bad.

Commune has the caster contacting a deity. Don't be of interest to that deity. Seriously, each god has its portfolio and fairly limited ability to know about things within their portfolio, per Deities and Demigods. Only greater deities can even see the future or pick up on happenings that affect individuals rather than groups of their followers/people related to their portfolio. The spell is also limited to "yes," ""no," or "unclear" as an answer unless that would be deliberately confusing. Even then, a more specific answer is an extremely short and terse one.
I am generally assuming any given cleric is worshipping a greater god and any plots involve they and their god's portfolio, because as you say if not then it doesn't matter. Furthermore, while you can avoid portfolio sense to a degree and thus the future sight, interacting with any properly devout follower means coming within range of the god's sight thanks to remote viewing. If you are far enough removed to beat portfolio sense and remote viewing, you're not really setting up an interaction with those NPCs at all.

Of note, however, is this: burning all of your 5th level slots on playing 50 questions with your deity for information that is subject to you asking the -wrong- questions and/or changing because you don't ask 500 questions often enough seems like a way -waste- a lot of time and slots.
True, but the first mistake of most "game-breakers" is that they refuse to put any restrictions or time limits on their players, and this is difficult to counter in an argument since any sort of plot that will limit them needs to be custom based on the PCs and the. . . plot, which means it'd be good to have a more definiitive response.

For active defense, just like divination and augury, keep information close so the enemy doesn't know which questions to ask and keep your plans flexible enough that a foe knowing parts of it isn't a guaranteed foil.
Try years. It goes way beyond just the rules of the game too. Information theory, espionage tactics, politics, a whole hot mess of research into a million and one different things; all kinds of seemingly extraneous knowledge plays into how I view this and similar matters.
This is the sort of stuff that I don't obsessively research, I can go over black powder weapons and airships but playing spy vs spy in my head is no.

Also, quaruts. Lots and lots of quaruts.
For bonus points, use afroakuma's updated (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=4999570&postcount=36) version, for less terribleness.



Level 15: Initiate of Mystra + Persistent Ghostform + Selective[you] Antimagic Field. You are immune to nonmagical and magical effects.
Might as well bring it up here too: anyone got an actual source on why Selective Antimagic Field works the way everyone thinks it does? Unless I've missed or forgotten something, Antimagic Field doesn't block line of effect (Rules Compendium in fact makes it explicit). Making the Antimagic Field not affect you means that it's either almost useless, or completely useless. Even if area spells fail because they can't manifest within your body, targeted spells are 100% functional. I have been seeing this so-called hack for years and it makes me question the ability of every person who mentions it.


And I don't even think you need a vast army of diviners; a small cabal, operating for a couple weeks, can ask a lot of questions.

Where it gets really tricky to run, as a GM, is when both sides start using divination. If the PCs are asking questions about the BBEG, who is completely in the dark, then it's straightforward enough. In the reverse case it's harder, since asking the PCs what their future plans are is usually a tip-off, and they're not necessarily going to be decided on them yet anyway. And if you have people using divinations to see if they're being spied on by divinations, and reacting accordingly ... a gigantic mess.
A better summary of my point than my own.

Here's where information theory hits.

What happens when the information they base their next round of questions on is bad because they made some kind of error in extrapolation or when parsing the data accross the complex system they've built? At best: conflicting information creates confusion and uncertainty. At worst: the bad data isn't caught before further eroneous information is generated and/or acted upon and it becomes actively -worse- than if they'd acted with no information at all.

If you're not generating all the information yourself, there's also the possibility of intentional misinformation being inserted somewhere that the information changes hands, agents being subverted, and so on. The more moving parts a system has, the more opportunity there is for one of them to fail and cause the system to malfunction. Cascading failures can be absolutely catastrophic if/when they occur.

To be clear, the errors are not just possible in the result of the spell (commune is virtually proof against that by its description, actually) but also in organizing, collating, and forwarding the information gleaned. People misunderstand one another and make mistakes even whent they're super genius intelligent and learned sage wise and mentally linked by a carefully structured telepathic bond network. You can -minimize- the chance of bad information floating to the top but you can't eliminate it entirely.

Also, I repeat that the more steps there are between the information being garnered and you getting it, the more opportunity there is for that information to be tampered with.

I'm -very- familiar with just how powerful information can be and I wouldn't begin to try to downplay that but getting and vetting -good- information is a whole field unto itself and the spells that gather information from "beyond" don't do much to change that other than providing unusual but fairly reliable sources that (and this part is key) are equally accessible to your opposition and can't be burned.
And this is the part where I wish to call upon that expertise. The rest of us haven't studied that stuff, we can understand the idea, but when it comes time to run it we've really got no idea how it goes. It's running a game you've never run, played, or seen played before, and with the price of failure potentially being quite high it's much easier to just fall back on fuzzy divination rather than playing the info game the players wanted.

If some information theory/espionage/etc buffs could actually put together examples of the more obvious, and more effective information gathering series within the DnD rules, then we know what to expect and how it should fail, and can adapt it based on what the PCs are doing. Untangle the mess that happens when people divination about divination, and so on.

It's a far more difficult project than just listing significant spells (basically re-writing a textbook through the DnD lens), but considering how many people seem to want the game to be playable in that way, they really should have made a handbook by now (unless there's one I never bothered googling :smalltongue:).

[eggynack]

This is the problem.
Dunno if it matters, but it wouldn't take anywhere close to 25 questions to identify a letter (or less than that, I suppose, because your odds of hitting it get even a lot faster than that). You can just effectively assign numbers to the letters, and then ask whether the number is greater than the number you've selected. So, assuming the first letter is, I dunno, P, then your first question would be whether it's greater than M, which would be a yes. Next you'd ask if it's greater than T, which would be a no. Then you'd ask greater than P, which would be no. Then you'd guess either greater than O, which would be a yes, giving the answer in four guesses. Dunno if that particular splitting is optimal even assuming equal distribution of numbers, because I've only done this when you get three answers, greater, less than, or equal to, but it's close, and you should get answers about that fast every time. Of course, the letters in names do not have an equal distribution, so you could probably get some advantage by not using the traditional numerical assignment, but I dunno what the optimal assignment would be, and I definitely don't know letter frequency distributions as applies to names. Not in reality, and definitely not in a fantasy world, though the former could be researched. My thinking would be that certain letters you find faster than others based on the algorithm, and you'd want more common letters on those spots. One other method of interest could be using strings of letters instead of individual letters. I've been poking around at the numbers, and I think that a single letter takes about five guesses to drop the difference below one, and once you get to strings of four letters, it only takes about 19 guesses, which is marginally more efficient. I haven't done all the math I'd like to on that one though. The results are consistently pretty close together, in any case, and it might be more efficient to go with larger strings just because that way you don't have to deal with pin-pointing, a process possibly made a bit less efficient by the three answers versus two thing.

Anyway, all that being said, you could probably get all the way to the first letter of the most powerful enemy's name in one casting, and then get about two letters each subsequent casting, assuming a baseline CL of 9. A higher CL would obviously mean more letters. It's not a perfect situation, but we're cutting letter questions into something like a third of its former self, and getting results way more consistently. You don't have to cast a billion communes when your foe has a lot of Z's in their name. With that in mind, the capacity to reduce castings that much, I don't think this is as big of a problem as you claim. This plan works for other pinpoint problems too, like determining class or type, though getting the numbering across could be argued to take too much time when the ordering isn't well known.

[Fizban]

Incidentally, I do like the way you'd interpret Commune to shut that stuff down though: "In cases where a one-word answer would be misleading or contrary to the deity’s interests, a short phrase (five words or less) may be given as an answer instead."

So you start your name search chain and on the first question you get "Knock it off bucko," or "Got no time for this," because spoon feeding you names letter by letter is contrary to the deity's interests (which can be circularly reinforced by the fact that the spell doesn't let you ask names, ergo the deity is not interested in giving you names even if it seems like they should be, applies to all similar series of course). Just the snarkiness of having you god directly tell you to knock it off in response to your question amuses me.

[Beheld]

Yes, when I ask Pelor about the Liches that I'm trying to hunt down to cleanse with his Holy Light, it is always against his interests to help me :smallconfused:

[Janthkin]

Incidentally, I do like the way you'd interpret Commune to shut that stuff down though: "In cases where a one-word answer would be misleading or contrary to the deity’s interests, a short phrase (five words or less) may be given as an answer instead."

So you start your name search chain and on the first question you get "Knock it off bucko," or "Got no time for this," because spoon feeding you names letter by letter is contrary to the deity's interests (which can be circularly reinforced by the fact that the spell doesn't let you ask names, ergo the deity is not interested in giving you names even if it seems like they should be, applies to all similar series of course). Just the snarkiness of having you god directly tell you to knock it off in response to your question amuses me.I think of it as a limitation on the direct intervention of deities on the Prime Material. Spells like "Commune" seem like a compromise position, enforced by a deific equivalent of the Geneva Conventions - sure, You can imbue your followers with power, and sure, You can give them cryptic hints and/or answer "yes/no" questions (so long as Your followers are asking via pre-paid calls; no calling collect!), but the ability to directly pass information to Your followers is limited. And if You circumvent those limits, then Your opposition is likely to start cheating as well, and next thing You know, You are up to Your divine neck in interplanar war, with no time to spare for those pesky mortals who rely on You to parcel out some power for their little spells.

[AnachroNinja]

I'll agree kelb on the dangers of bad intelligence. The real hiccup with it as that it becomes a DM fiat situation no matter what. There is no direct way to decide on how successful your followers are at interpreting or how likely they are to make copying errors. I'm not saying it isn't reasonable for problems to crop up, but it can be problematic and lead to confusion and upset players and DMs.

In the end that's a lot of why I feel it's game breaking. There's not a clear enough set of guidelines for how all that should function. It's sort of like creating anti matter in game, it is gonna be a cluster**** one way or another.

[nedz]

I feel a lot of people forget the amount of time it takes to complete a diplomacy roll. It takes a full minute, and if an enemy isn't willing to sit there and listen, it's pretty worthless. That's not dm adjudication or "not broken becuse it can be fixed." It's right there in the skill.
All the smartest Diplomancers are Half Elves because there is a racial feat which allows them to do this as a std action - from level 1.


Dunno if it matters, but it wouldn't take anywhere close to 25 questions to identify a letter (or less than that, I suppose, because your odds of hitting it get even a lot faster than that). You can just effectively assign numbers to the letters, and then ask whether the number is greater than the number you've selected. So, assuming the first letter is, I dunno, P, then your first question would be whether it's greater than M, which would be a yes. Next you'd ask if it's greater than T, which would be a no. Then you'd ask greater than P, which would be no. Then you'd guess either greater than O, which would be a yes, giving the answer in four guesses. Dunno if that particular splitting is optimal even assuming equal distribution of numbers, because I've only done this when you get three answers, greater, less than, or equal to, but it's close, and you should get answers about that fast every time. Of course, the letters in names do not have an equal distribution, so you could probably get some advantage by not using the traditional numerical assignment, but I dunno what the optimal assignment would be, and I definitely don't know letter frequency distributions as applies to names. Not in reality, and definitely not in a fantasy world, though the former could be researched. My thinking would be that certain letters you find faster than others based on the algorithm, and you'd want more common letters on those spots. One other method of interest could be using strings of letters instead of individual letters. I've been poking around at the numbers, and I think that a single letter takes about five guesses to drop the difference below one, and once you get to strings of four letters, it only takes about 19 guesses, which is marginally more efficient. I haven't done all the math I'd like to on that one though. The results are consistently pretty close together, in any case, and it might be more efficient to go with larger strings just because that way you don't have to deal with pin-pointing, a process possibly made a bit less efficient by the three answers versus two thing.
This is called a bisection algorithm and it takes 5 steps per character (25 = 32 > 26, 24 = 16 < 26) but otherwise you are right. How many characters would have enough intelligence and knowledge to be able to do this without metagaming though ? — Oh yes: Wizard.


What breaks games for me is a breakdown of party balance when Timmy's well loved hero, played from level 1 no less, becomes the guy who just carries the bags.

[Segev]

What breaks games for me is a breakdown of party balance when Timmy's well loved hero, played from level 1 no less, becomes the guy who just carries the bags.

Done right, this doesn't happen. Timmy's fighter may not be as versatile as Ben's wizard, but Timmy's fighter still is going to be a properly-played wizard's favorite attack spell. Timmy's fighter will have neat tools and toys, too. I won't pretend there's no disparity; the disparity is huge. But there's no reason for Ben to deliberately overshadow Timmy in areas Timmy is skilled; Ben can instead help Timmy be even more awesome and have his moment to shine shared with Ben's shining aid as his ally.

[Zanos]

Done right, this doesn't happen. Timmy's fighter may not be as versatile as Ben's wizard, but Timmy's fighter still is going to be a properly-played wizard's favorite attack spell. Timmy's fighter will have neat tools and toys, too. I won't pretend there's no disparity; the disparity is huge. But there's no reason for Ben to deliberately overshadow Timmy in areas Timmy is skilled; Ben can instead help Timmy be even more awesome and have his moment to shine shared with Ben's shining aid as his ally.
This has often been my experience in mixed parties. Could the wizard polymorph and buff himself into a combat monster? Sure. But the fighter has better BAB and HD, and the wizard is using his actions to actually be a wizard.

Why turn myself into a melee combatant? Besides, I'm a wizard. Taking and dealing damage in melee combat is what other people are for.

[dascarletm]

This has often been my experience in mixed parties. Could the wizard polymorph and buff himself into a combat monster? Sure. But the fighter has better BAB and HD, and the wizard is using his actions to actually be a wizard.

Why turn myself into a melee combatant? Besides, I'm a wizard. Taking and dealing damage in melee combat is what other people are for.

This is also known as not being a jerk to your friends. :smalltongue:

[Beheld]

I love the idea that the Wizard or Cleric buffing and fighting in melee combat is being a huge jerk, but apparently the Rogue or just playing another fighter is not being a jerk by fighting in melee combat.

I mean, personally, if there are two fighters in the party, of course the one that does more damage is a huge jerk and the group is right to punch him in the face until he conforms.

[Segev]

I love the idea that the Wizard or Cleric buffing and fighting in melee combat is being a huge jerk, but apparently the Rogue or just playing another fighter is not being a jerk by fighting in melee combat.

I mean, personally, if there are two fighters in the party, of course the one that does more damage is a huge jerk and the group is right to punch him in the face until he conforms.

That's not what anybody's said. The jerkish behavior would be stomping all over what the other players' characters do, and doing it so much better that they may as well not be there. Metaphorically (or even literally) reducing them to "the guy who holds the bags."

Being effective isn't jerkish. Not allowing others to have fun and be effective is jerkish.

Besides, it's usually more effective to lavish the buff magics on the guys already spec'd for the role, rather than to use them to make yourself able to overshadow those guys.

[Sayt]

Yes, when I ask Pelor about the Liches that I'm trying to hunt down to cleanse with his Holy Light, it is always against his interests to help me :smallconfused:

That isn't the use-case that's being discussed. In this use case you can ask whether geographic areas are endangered by one or more Liches, and in this case The Burning Hate would obviously be interested in helping you within the confines of the contacting spell.

He isn't necessary interested in a paranoid witch-hunt through the alphabet for someone who might be trying to knock off one of his middlemanagement clerics who can probably take care of themselves.


Also I now of a faintly rediculous mental image of phone banks of Devas* answering phonecalls freon communing clerics in a very boring, beige office pod.

* substitute bearded devils, demons, eladrin, etc to taste.

[dascarletm]

I love the idea that the Wizard or Cleric buffing and fighting in melee combat is being a huge jerk, but apparently the Rogue or just playing another fighter is not being a jerk by fighting in melee combat.

I mean, personally, if there are two fighters in the party, of course the one that does more damage is a huge jerk and the group is right to punch him in the face until he conforms.

I am saying if you intentionally make your friend worthless by overshadowing their shtick when that isn't your shtick, then that is being a jerk.

But no, go ahead and put words in my mouth.

[Segev]

But no, go ahead and put words in my mouth.

Okay, open wide...


http://i.quoteaddicts.com/media/quotes/3/103079-alphabet-soup-thank-you.jpg
You're welcome!

[dascarletm]

Okay, open wide...

You're welcome!

https://cdn.meme.am/instances/400x/53513577.jpg

[AnachroNinja]

At heart Beheld is right. Your friend in this scenario is, for one reason or another, deliberately playing a weak and ineffective class that is not the best way to fill that combat role. You really do not have any obligation to either hold back your effectiveness or aid him in improving his. If you want to be a holy warrior and play a paladin and I want to be a holy warrior and play a cleric, you can't really be mad at me for being a better version of your class and overshadowing you.

Yes, a fighter has a different flavor then a cleric who self buffs or a wizard who polymorphs to beat face. YOU decided that that flavor was worth being less effective in that combat role however. It is the charitable thing to do for me to help you be better rather then just doing it all myself. It is not my job, obligation, or duty however.

What I think Beheld is getting at, and what I agree with, is everyone has the option of using more powerful builds and classes. Don't choose to suck and then blame the guy who didn't.

[Beheld]

That's not what anybody's said. The jerkish behavior would be stomping all over what the other players' characters do, and doing it so much better that they may as well not be there. Metaphorically (or even literally) reducing them to "the guy who holds the bags."

Being effective isn't jerkish. Not allowing others to have fun and be effective is jerkish.

Except that again, when one guy wants to play a character that fights in melee, and the other guy does too, even if one of them is clearly doing it a lot better, no one ever calls that person a jerk. Except of course, if that person has Wizard, Sorcerer, Favored Soul, Cleric, or Druid written on their character sheet, then suddenly they do.

Lots of parties through out the ages have more than one person who fights in melee, and most of the time one of them is clearly better than the other. But if one of those guys picked a class that you don't think should be allowed to fight in melee, then suddenly, he's a jerk.


Besides, it's usually more effective to lavish the buff magics on the guys already spec'd for the role, rather than to use them to make yourself able to overshadow those guys.

Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, in fact, most of the time it isn't. But who cares. If someone wants to buff themselves up and fight in melee, that's a thing they get to do, and you don't get to call them a jerk for doing it. Even if it were sup optimal compared to casting their spells on you (even though it usually isn't).


I am saying if you intentionally make your friend worthless by overshadowing their shtick when that isn't your shtick, then that is being a jerk.

But no, go ahead and put words in my mouth.

Except for you know, the whole part where you decided in advance what everyone else's shtick is, and that anyone who disagrees with you about what their own shtick is you call a jerk. If someone else wants to fight in melee, they are just totally allowed to do that, and it's now their shtick, whether you like it or not, and when you decide that everyone who does that is being a jerk, you are in fact, wrong.

[Segev]

People usually only call the wizard-playing-melee-tank a "jerk" if he's being, well, a jerk about it. If there are clashing roles in the party, that's an OOC issue that needs to be addressed.

I've been on the "more powerful PC" side of that in a strange way. In a Sigil game, I played a PF Paladin. Another player insisted on being a 3.5 Paladin. She very much wanted to be the morally superior and more powerful character, but her choices in build and the way she played made that just not happen. She chose to blame me; apparently, according to her, PF Paladins' version of Smite is actually evil. Because, you see, marking an evil being for death and dealing great amounts of damage to it to make it stop being evil (by making it stop breathing) is inherently a cruel act.

The 3.5 Paladin's smite was just fine, because it was a "real" resource expended for "one mighty blow."

And sadly, that's the LEAST of her twisty logic as to why her PC was morally superior to mine, and mine probably didn't even deserve to be a paladin (largely for not agreeing with her on every issue).

She eventually left the game.

(I offered to help her make her character more mechanically effective; her refusal was partially based on the above argument that what I was suggesting would make her PC more evil. Note: I suggested nothing alignment-wise-evil, unless you agree with her logic above.)

[Beheld]

People usually only call the wizard-playing-melee-tank a "jerk" if he's being, well, a jerk about it. If there are clashing roles in the party, that's an OOC issue that needs to be addressed.

No, people, like on say, message boards, usually just call the Wizard in general a jerk no matter what, even if they wouldn't in a specific game, because of course it's their friend just trying to have a good time. But the Wizard who fights in melee is always someone's friend just trying to have a good time.

There is no such thing as "clashing roles" in a D&D party, because everyone's role is adventurer. If you have a bunch of melee combatants who hit things for lots of damage, that's totally fine, because there is nothing about one person doing damage that makes your damage cease to exist. And if one of those people can also cures status ailments, and teleport, and see invisible things, and cast divination, and no one else can, it's certainly not the case that as punishment for being the only person bringing any out of combat utility, he should be "forced" to cast BC or save or dies instead of stabbing things.

[nedz]

Hmm, well that escalated quickly.

A lot of the comments above are really about playstyle variations within the group.
Some players like the spotlight, some don't.
Some like to lead, others follow.
Many are competitive and blame other players for playing weak characters, whilst others like playing fallible, interesting, characters and regard the competitive players as power gamers.

None of these are right or wrong and none of them were the point I was making. My point was mechanical and linked to the fact that I like running challenging encounters.

[Fizban]

I love the idea that the Wizard or Cleric buffing and fighting in melee combat is being a huge jerk, but apparently the Rogue or just playing another fighter is not being a jerk by fighting in melee combat.


That's not what anybody's said. The jerkish behavior would be stomping all over what the other players' characters do, and doing it so much better that they may as well not be there. Metaphorically (or even literally) reducing them to "the guy who holds the bags."

Being effective isn't jerkish. Not allowing others to have fun and be effective is jerkish.

Besides, it's usually more effective to lavish the buff magics on the guys already spec'd for the role, rather than to use them to make yourself able to overshadow those guys.
Too many threads, forgive me for skipping the rest. I'll sort of jump on with Beheld here: the guy playing a melee Rogue or another Fighter is actually being a huge jerk. What a lot of people don't think about is that there's a finite amount of space on the front line. Too many frontliners and you can't get a clear shot for anyone in the back, you're wasting turns because you needs to move around your ally to attack, and so on. Depends heavily on the size of hallways and foes and such, but one of the more annoying problems I saw was when we had three people all specc'd for melee in Worlds Largest Dungeon: the claw-lock was not happy sitting back and blasting, but the barbarian and half-dragon were always blocking the way so he couldn't do his thing.

If instead everyone plays a versatile character who can attack and have fun at both melee and range, then no matter the positions or initiative everyone gets to play and contribute, making for a more effective party and more fun for everyone. And what classes are good at that. . .

[AnachroNinja]

Many are competitive and blame other players for playing weak characters, whilst others like playing fallible, interesting, characters and regard the competitive players as power gamers.

None of these are right or wrong and none of them were the point I was making. My point was mechanical and linked to the fact that I like running challenging encounters.

Actually no, these people are wrong. That's the whole point. If your judging someone else for how they play their character or what characters they like to play, you're wrong. No one should be judging anyone else. If you want to play a 12 STR fighter for roleplay reasons, that's your prerogative. You don't get too blame others for your poor performance however. By the same token, you can play a wildshape druid who curbstomps everything and laughs about it. You don't get too be mad when the DM ups the challenge or adjusts things to bring you in line, but no one should be angry at you for being as awesome as you want to be.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I'll agree kelb on the dangers of bad intelligence. The real hiccup with it as that it becomes a DM fiat situation no matter what. There is no direct way to decide on how successful your followers are at interpreting or how likely they are to make copying errors. I'm not saying it isn't reasonable for problems to crop up, but it can be problematic and lead to confusion and upset players and DMs.

In the end that's a lot of why I feel it's game breaking. There's not a clear enough set of guidelines for how all that should function. It's sort of like creating anti matter in game, it is gonna be a cluster**** one way or another.

No more so than there being 100s of odd 9th level casters that are dumb/weak/whatever enough to have gotten themselves dominated for info farming in the first place.

Bottom line; -any- answer to these spells is DM fiat, regardless of whether it's what the players are hoping to get or not. Peppering in the odd bit of conflicting information or misinformation if the player has setup the possibility for such things to happen shouldn't be considered any different than if they'd simply asked a learned sage for information and his answer being confusing or misleading. You want to guarantee that info garnered from casting commune is accurate, cast it yoursef.

[dascarletm]

Here's a list of things I've never done, nor promoted doing:


Except for you know, the whole part where you decided in advance what everyone else's shtick is, and that

anyone who disagrees with you about what their own shtick is you call a jerk.

you decide that everyone who does that is being a jerk, you are in fact, wrong.
I think you are projecting some persona to me that I don't have. You're misunderstanding my point and bringing it to somewhere I'm not espousing.

At heart Beheld is right. Your friend in this scenario is, for one reason or another, deliberately playing a weak and ineffective class that is not the best way to fill that combat role. You really do not have any obligation to either hold back your effectiveness or aid him in improving his. If you want to be a holy warrior and play a paladin and I want to be a holy warrior and play a cleric, you can't really be mad at me for being a better version of your class and overshadowing you.

Yes, a fighter has a different flavor then a cleric who self buffs or a wizard who polymorphs to beat face. YOU decided that that flavor was worth being less effective in that combat role however. It is the charitable thing to do for me to help you be better rather then just doing it all myself. It is not my job, obligation, or duty however.
I think we are coming at this thinking of two different scenarios.
(I'm intentionally over-exaggerating these to prove a point)
Scenario A:
P1: I'm going to play the warrior! I'm a fighter with skilll focuss. NOONE ELSE BE A MELEE GUY
P2: I'm a wizard, and I'm going to polymorph into X and wrestle this dragon!
P1: NOOOOO don't dooooo that. I'm the MELEE GUY!
P2: Ummm... okay?

Scenario B:
P1: Ummm I guess I'll be a knight or something, that sounds cool.
P2: LOL knight is a class for scrubs my character is way better than you. You don't contribute to the party noob. Play a better character. You're useless. Look, I'm better than you.
P1: Uhh cool I guess.

I'm not saying you approve of scenario b, I'm saying that there is a time where intentionally making your friend useless in a non-competative game like DnD isn't cool. Not always, but it can happen. If you can't accept that then we just have different world-views and discussing this any further is not worthwhile.

What I think Beheld is getting at, and what I agree with, is everyone has the option of using more powerful builds and classes. Don't choose to suck and then blame the guy who didn't.

Or maybe not...


Basically this:

Hmm, well that escalated quickly.

A lot of the comments above are really about playstyle variations within the group.
Some players like the spotlight, some don't.
Some like to lead, others follow.
Many are competitive and blame other players for playing weak characters, whilst others like playing fallible, interesting, characters and regard the competitive players as power gamers.

None of these are right or wrong and none of them were the point I was making. My point was mechanical and linked to the fact that I like running challenging encounters.


Actually no, these people are wrong. That's the whole point. If your judging someone else for how they play their character or what characters they like to play, you're wrong. No one should be judging anyone else. If you want to play a 12 STR fighter for roleplay reasons, that's your prerogative. You don't get too blame others for your poor performance however. By the same token, you can play a wildshape druid who curbstomps everything and laughs about it. You don't get too be mad when the DM ups the challenge or adjusts things to bring you in line, but no one should be angry at you for being as awesome as you want to be.
As with everything in life there is a give and take. If we take your idea to the extreme I should just crush my little nephew when playing games with him. I know this is just a friendly family game of football, but little CJ I'm not going to pass to you. You want a chance to touch the ball? Maybe you shouldn't be so slow, I can just run it and win. I mean who is he to judge me for being as awesome as I want?

I know this is extreme, but it proves that there is a point in which you shouldn't overshadow someone. Nothing is black and white, but we may disagree.

[AnachroNinja]

I think we are coming at this thinking of two different scenarios.
(I'm intentionally over-exaggerating these to prove a point)
Scenario A:
P1: I'm going to play the warrior! I'm a fighter with skilll focuss. NOONE ELSE BE A MELEE GUY
P2: I'm a wizard, and I'm going to polymorph into X and wrestle this dragon!
P1: NOOOOO don't dooooo that. I'm the MELEE GUY!
P2: Ummm... okay?

Scenario B:
P1: Ummm I guess I'll be a knight or something, that sounds cool.
P2: LOL knight is a class for scrubs my character is way better than you. You don't contribute to the party noob. Play a better character. You're useless. Look, I'm better than you.
P1: Uhh cool I guess.

I'm not saying you approve of scenario b, I'm saying that there is a time where intentionally making your friend useless in a NON-COMPETATIVE GAME like DnD isn't cool. Not always, but it can happen. If you can't accept that then we just have different world-views and discussing this any further is not worthwhile.


Or maybe not...


Basically this:



As with everything in life there is a give and take. If we take your idea to the extreme I should just CRUSH MY LITTLE NEPHEW WHEN PLAYING GAMES WITH HIM.You want a chance to touch the ball? Maybe you shouldn't be so slow, I can just run it and win. I mean who is he to judge me for being as awesome as I want?

I know this is extreme, but it proves that there is a point in which you shouldn't overshadow someone. Nothing is black and white, but we may disagree.

OK, first off, you point out that D&D is not a competitive game, which is correct. Then you use examples of things that are clearly competitive games to make your point. Si there's an obvious disconnect there, but that's not really where I want to focus. Let me quote you from up there....

"Intentionally making your friend useless"

That right there is where the problem here is. No matter how awesome I am, I can't make YOU useless. It's just not possible. My character is my choice, your character is your choice. You are exactly as useful as you choose to be. Making myself less useful so that you APPEAR to be more useful is not my obligation. You are responsible for your character and build choices, not me.

[Zanos]

Except for you know, the whole part where you decided in advance what everyone else's shtick is, and that anyone who disagrees with you about what their own shtick is you call a jerk. If someone else wants to fight in melee, they are just totally allowed to do that, and it's now their shtick, whether you like it or not, and when you decide that everyone who does that is being a jerk, you are in fact, wrong.
I generally play this game with people who's company I enjoy, or at least tolerate. So I'm generally aware that employing certain avenues of unlimited power is going to step on other people's toes. I think it's generally pretty clear that the guy who rolled a straight barbarian and packs a greatsword everywhere intends to fight in melee. Since you actually play the game with people and not black boxes that never communicate, you have a fair idea of what their characters excel at.

Using magic to invalidate their niche when there's many other ways to contribute is not a great way to go about creating a fun table. If you're making a gish or cleric or something where you've established that melee combat is part of your niche, fine. But if your cloud conjuring and fireball slinging wizard hits level 7 and preps polymorph in all of his slots and declares himself the primary melee combatant, that's pretty rude if you have other people who do that on your team.

[dascarletm]

OK, first off, you point out that D&D is not a competitive game, which is correct. Then you use examples of things that are clearly competitive games to make your point. Si there's an obvious disconnect there, but that's not really where I want to focus. Let me quote you from up there....

"Intentionally making your friend useless"

That right there is where the problem here is. No matter how awesome I am, I can't make YOU useless. It's just not possible. My character is my choice, your character is your choice. You are exactly as useful as you choose to be. Making myself less useful so that you APPEAR to be more useful is not my obligation. You are responsible for your character and build choices, not me.

I used a friendly family game of football, since I actually have that experience. A competitive game makes the point even stronger. Substitute it for DnD if you really want.

That mindset doesn't work. People have different levels of system mastery. It isn't your obligation, true, but if you are better than someone at something, you can't just say it's not my fault you suck. Well I mean you can, but it doesn't make it any better. I'm not telling you you are obliged to do anything. You don't have to hold back when playing with people of lesser skill, but you can still be a jerk if you don't in some situations. I hope you can understand that.

I'm not saying you have to do anything, but you can be a jerk if you're a jerk about it.

Imagine this:

"Hey so you kind of are overshadowing my character, I'm kind of new to DnD, and I feel useless."


No matter how awesome I am, I can't make YOU useless. It's just not possible. My character is my choice, your character is your choice. You are exactly as useful as you choose to be. Making myself less useful so that you APPEAR to be more useful is not my obligation. You are responsible for your character and build choices, not me.

"Oh, alright... never-mind."

[Segev]

To be fair, there ARE jerks out there who DO deliberately try to step on other people's schticks. I was in a game with one such person who swapped out characters to try to make something more versatile so that he could "demonstrate" how mages do everything better.

I had built a mage. A mage's mage. A mage who's primary design goal was to be unkillable. He just also happened to be EXTREMELY good at maging.

When this other player's character stomped all over the poor rogues and fighters, but found that his efforts to stomp all over my mage met first with indifference, and then with my mage showing his how it was done when he got in over his head... he ragequit the game. (It was epic level, and I used a twinned quickened sphere of ultimate destruction and a twinned sphere of ultimate destruction to wipe out a foe he'd been having trouble doing anything to, after invisi-stealthing ahead and all but mocking the rogues for not "keeping up.")

So jerks do exist.

[P.F.]

Dunno if it matters, but it wouldn't take anywhere close to 25 questions to identify a letter (or less than that, I suppose, because your odds of hitting it get even a lot faster than that). You can just effectively assign numbers to the letters, and then ask whether the number is greater than the number you've selected. So, assuming the first letter is, I dunno, P, then your first question would be whether it's greater than M, which would be a yes. Next you'd ask if it's greater than T, which would be a no. Then you'd ask greater than P, which would be no. Then you'd guess either greater than O, which would be a yes, giving the answer in four guesses. Dunno if that particular splitting is optimal even assuming equal distribution of numbers, because I've only done this when you get three answers, greater, less than, or equal to, but it's close, and you should get answers about that fast every time. Of course, the letters in names do not have an equal distribution, so you could probably get some advantage by not using the traditional numerical assignment, but I dunno what the optimal assignment would be, and I definitely don't know letter frequency distributions as applies to names. Not in reality, and definitely not in a fantasy world, though the former could be researched. My thinking would be that certain letters you find faster than others based on the algorithm, and you'd want more common letters on those spots. One other method of interest could be using strings of letters instead of individual letters. I've been poking around at the numbers, and I think that a single letter takes about five guesses to drop the difference below one, and once you get to strings of four letters, it only takes about 19 guesses, which is marginally more efficient. I haven't done all the math I'd like to on that one though. The results are consistently pretty close together, in any case, and it might be more efficient to go with larger strings just because that way you don't have to deal with pin-pointing, a process possibly made a bit less efficient by the three answers versus two thing.

Anyway, all that being said, you could probably get all the way to the first letter of the most powerful enemy's name in one casting, and then get about two letters each subsequent casting, assuming a baseline CL of 9. A higher CL would obviously mean more letters. It's not a perfect situation, but we're cutting letter questions into something like a third of its former self, and getting results way more consistently. You don't have to cast a billion communes when your foe has a lot of Z's in their name. With that in mind, the capacity to reduce castings that much, I don't think this is as big of a problem as you claim. This plan works for other pinpoint problems too, like determining class or type, though getting the numbering across could be argued to take too much time when the ordering isn't well known.

I'm not sure I believe that working out a numbering system with your deity is part of the spell. :smallwink: However, regardless of whether I am asking "Starts with an "A"?" or "Starts with "A" thru "M"?", the process is tedious, and more difficult than a game of 20 questions because the need-to-know information will likely involve multiple working parts, rather than a singular "I'm thinking of a ..."

The most effective method is probably alternating between a wizard asking broad indirect questions for pointed (but dubious) answers, and a cleric asking direct questions to verify and/or clarify the wizard's information. I'm not disputing that the process is effective, merely observing that it's time-consuming, both in - and out-of-game.

For reference, the cleric in my example is higher than 9th level.

[Beheld]

Here's a list of things I've never done, nor promoted doing:

I think you are projecting some persona to me that I don't have. You're misunderstanding my point and bringing it to somewhere I'm not espousing.

You say that, but you know:



This has often been my experience in mixed parties. Could the wizard polymorph and buff himself into a combat monster? Sure. But the fighter has better BAB and HD, and the wizard is using his actions to actually be a wizard.

Why turn myself into a melee combatant? Besides, I'm a wizard. Taking and dealing damage in melee combat is what other people are for.

This is also known as not being a jerk to your friends. :smalltongue:

Here is you saying that the Wizard Polymorphing and Buffing himself to fight in combat is being a jerk. Here it is, right here.


Using magic to invalidate their niche when there's many other ways to contribute is not a great way to go about creating a fun table. If you're making a gish or cleric or something where you've established that melee combat is part of your niche, fine. But if your cloud conjuring and fireball slinging wizard hits level 7 and preps polymorph in all of his slots and declares himself the primary melee combatant, that's pretty rude if you have other people who do that on your team.

Again, this is totally wrong. If one guy wants to play a Barbarian, then you can still play a gish or a Cleric, then you can also still play a Wizard who previously didn't melee and now does melee because now your character wants to melee when he didn't before. That is totally acceptable. You can have your character change his mind about all kinds of things, ranging from overall goals to fight methods, to how to beat this one specific Golem that is immune to magic. You can totally just do whatever you damn well please with your character, and if it's okay for you to play a Barbarian that charges, then it is also fine for you to play a Wizard who has never once charged, but decides to do it right now.

[dascarletm]

You say that, but you know:

Here is you saying that the Wizard Polymorphing and Buffing himself to fight in combat is being a jerk. Here it is, right here.


The difference being your invented scenario versus what I had in mind. See:

I think we are coming at this thinking of two different scenarios.
(I'm intentionally over-exaggerating these to prove a point)
Scenario A:
P1: I'm going to play the warrior! I'm a fighter with skilll focuss. NOONE ELSE BE A MELEE GUY
P2: I'm a wizard, and I'm going to polymorph into X and wrestle this dragon!
P1: NOOOOO don't dooooo that. I'm the MELEE GUY!
P2: Ummm... okay?

Scenario B:
P1: Ummm I guess I'll be a knight or something, that sounds cool.
P2: LOL knight is a class for scrubs my character is way better than you. You don't contribute to the party noob. Play a better character. You're useless. Look, I'm better than you.
P1: Uhh cool I guess.


Here is what I quoted from you:

"Except for you know, the whole part where you decided in advance what everyone else's shtick is, and that anyone who disagrees with you about what their own shtick is you call a jerk."

I never decided anything in advance. That was wholly your invention. You invented that. Stop telling me I'm saying things I don't say.

"you decide that everyone who does that is being a jerk, you are in fact, wrong."
Those are different situations. If you can't divorce those two things then we have nothing further to talk about.

[Beheld]

The difference being your invented scenario versus what I had in mind. See:


Here is what I quoted from you:

"Except for you know, the whole part where you decided in advance what everyone else's shtick is, and that anyone who disagrees with you about what their own shtick is you call a jerk."

I never decided anything in advance. That was wholly your invention. You invented that. Stop telling me I'm saying things I don't say.

"you decide that everyone who does that is being a jerk, you are in fact, wrong."
Those are different situations. If you can't divorce those two things then we have nothing further to talk about.

The thing where you made up a lie about what you said 14 posts later does not in fact change what you actually said. You actually said that Wizards buffing up to be combat monsters and then going into melee combat is being a jerk. You said that when you quoted someone who said literally nothing about player attitudes at all, much less presented a stupid caricature like you are now doing.

Look, would it be great if, even without admitting you said the thing you actually said, you unequivocally opposed people saying that Wizards shouldn't be allowed to buff into combat monsters and attack unless they decided to do that in advance at character creation without being jerks? Yes, that would be great, but it isn't going to happen, and we know that, because there is a person saying that right now, and you don't seem to have a problem with it.

But let's be honest, two weeks from now, the next time it comes up, you'll be right back to calling anyone who buffs up to enter combat a jerk just like your original post, because just like your made up lies about how it was really all about the tone of the players wasn't part of anything about your initial post calling people jerks, it isn't actually a part of what you actually think makes people jerks. You get mad when the Wizard enters combat because gosh darn it he has Wizard on his character sheet! Just like Zanos, who is even now still arguing that. Because that's what your real problem is, if someone has Wizard on their character sheet, they are a jerk for fighting in melee to you, and no amount of pretending that there was some magic tone problem in the initial post to get away from what you said is going to make you not say it again in two weeks when there won't be a tone issue then either.

[dascarletm]

The thing where you made up a lie about what you said 14 posts later does not in fact change what you actually said. You actually said that Wizards buffing up to be combat monsters and then going into melee combat is being a jerk. You said that when you quoted someone who said literally nothing about player attitudes at all, much less presented a stupid caricature like you are now doing.

Look, would it be great if, even without admitting you said the thing you actually said, you unequivocally opposed people saying that Wizards shouldn't be allowed to buff into combat monsters and attack unless they decided to do that in advance at character creation without being jerks? Yes, that would be great, but it isn't going to happen, and we know that, because there is a person saying that right now, and you don't seem to have a problem with it.

But let's be honest, two weeks from now, the next time it comes up, you'll be right back to calling anyone who buffs up to enter combat a jerk just like your original post, because just like your made up lies about how it was really all about the tone of the players wasn't part of anything about your initial post calling people jerks, it isn't actually a part of what you actually think makes people jerks. You get mad when the Wizard enters combat because gosh darn it he has Wizard on his character sheet! Just like Zanos, who is even now still arguing that. Because that's what your real problem is, if someone has Wizard on their character sheet, they are a jerk for fighting in melee to you, and no amount of pretending that there was some magic tone problem in the initial post to get away from what you said is going to make you not say it again in two weeks when there won't be a tone issue then either.

I don't actually believe that though, so I'm not sure why you really want me to. In my head I was imagining a scenario similar to the one I said. I have no problem with a wizard being a melee monster. You are building up my persona to something that it isn't.

[AnachroNinja]

It can be difficult to back peddle at times, I'm impressed you do it so well with your foot in your mouth.

More on topic, you every notice how the default assumption is always that other players are jerks? When it's wizards vs fighters, the wizard is a jerk. When someone posts about a player wanting stuff, he is s jerk for wanting it. Everyone always agrees with the wounded party that his adversary is obviously a jerk. It's odd.

[dascarletm]

It can be difficult to back peddle at times, I'm impressed you do it so well with your foot in your mouth.
Sure if you can't see a difference between all times every time wizards Buffing themselves are jerks and sometimes people can do invalidate their friends in game making them feel useless.

More on topic, you every notice how the default assumption is always that other players are jerks? When it's wizards vs fighters, the wizard is a jerk. When someone posts about a player wanting stuff, he is s jerk for wanting it. Everyone always agrees with the wounded party that his adversary is obviously a jerk. It's odd.
Is jerk a trigger word for you guys? Obviously I'm talking about extremes. In the vast majority of cases it isn't a problem, everyone plays and is fine. This is silly.

[AnachroNinja]

Silly is that you got called out for saying people were jerks, then you claimed you never called anyone a jerk and that Beheld was putting words in your mouth, then he quoted you calling wizard players jerks, now your frantically trying to establish that you didn't really mean it in general, just for people who are jerks that happen to play wizards.

All in all its pretty hilarious. At the end of the day, if you mock your fellow players, you're a jerk. If you play a poor character and demand other people give you the chance to shine, you're a jerk. Really if you go out of your way to degrade other people's experience to further your own, you're a jerk.

If you just play the character you want to, you're fine.

[Cerefel]

This discussion is going nowhere helpful. I suggest we put this thread back on track and talk about why some abilities are or aren't overpowered.

[Gnaeus]

Besides, it's usually more effective to lavish the buff magics on the guys already spec'd for the role, rather than to use them to make yourself able to overshadow those guys.

Which is why I find it so funny that Pathfinder, in its quest to tone down broken wizard spells and protect the fighters niche, took the strongest wizard buff spells and made them "personal". Because buffing your fighter is too strong and is not to be allowed, but turning into a giant and smashing face is obviously what wizards are for.

[Zanos]

Again, this is totally wrong. If one guy wants to play a Barbarian, then you can still play a gish or a Cleric, then you can also still play a Wizard who previously didn't melee and now does melee because now your character wants to melee when he didn't before. That is totally acceptable. You can have your character change his mind about all kinds of things, ranging from overall goals to fight methods, to how to beat this one specific Golem that is immune to magic. You can totally just do whatever you damn well please with your character, and if it's okay for you to play a Barbarian that charges, then it is also fine for you to play a Wizard who has never once charged, but decides to do it right now.
Considering you're outlining a scenario where someone relies on tactics in a niche scenario to solve a specific problem, and I outlined a scenario where one player intentionally steps on another's toes when other options are available, their impact is different, yes.

You're also misrepresenting my argument by saying that "I get mad whenever a wizard enters melee." For the record, I almost exclusively play int SAD casters, most of which are wizards. I often play in parties where other people make characters who do melee combat. So yes, because I value the enjoyment of my other party members, I choose not to animate a squad of giants, polymorph into a murdermonster, or otherwise intentionally invalidate their characters. It's possible for me to have fun and contribute without making other people feel useless. You should likewise discuss with your fellow players who is doing what, and the most common question when you're joining a group is "Who is playing what character?"

I also disagree that "playing whatever character you want" is fine. You need to consider both the optimization level of the DM, what they're comfortable with, and the composition of your party. I wouldn't call up my buddy and roll The Wish and the Word in a group where the Fighters have skill focus(basket weaving) and the wizards fight balors with quickened true strikes and longbows. And I wouldn't make a rogue in a group that already had a rogue.

[Beheld]

Considering you're outlining a scenario where someone relies on tactics in a niche scenario to solve a specific problem, and I outlined a scenario where one player intentionally steps on another's toes when other options are available, their impact is different, yes.

You're also misrepresenting my argument by saying that "I get mad whenever a wizard enters melee." For the record, I almost exclusively play int SAD casters, most of which are wizards. I often play in parties where other people make characters who do melee combat. So yes, because I value the enjoyment of my other party members, I choose not to animate a squad of giants, polymorph into a murdermonster, or otherwise intentionally invalidate their characters. It's possible for me to have fun and contribute without making other people feel useless. You should likewise discuss with your fellow players who is doing what, and the most common question when you're joining a group is "Who is playing what character?"

I also disagree that "playing whatever character you want" is fine. You need to consider both the optimization level of the DM, what they're comfortable with, and the composition of your party. I wouldn't call up my buddy and roll The Wish and the Word in a group where the Fighters have skill focus(basket weaving) and the wizards fight balors with quickened true strikes and longbows. And I wouldn't make a rogue in a group that already had a rogue.

1) Who cares if he uses against Hobgolbins instead. This is my entire point. If the player wants to play a character who fights in melee for literally any reason, that is totally fine. Over and over, you invent a weird meaningless exception every time why this one is different, but it really isn't, if the player wants their character to fight in melee, then it's totally fine to do that.

2) Yes, even if someone else is a Barbarian. Even then. Again, no matter how many times you say it, one person fighting in melee does not and in fact, literally cannot, work at cross purposes to someone else fighting in melee. If Bob the Barbarian is in the party, it is totally fine and does not "step on his toes" at all for anyone else to fight in melee for any reason. It does not make them feel useless for you to stab or bite things. Or at least, not unless they are actually useless, in which case, it still doesn't, because they would have felt useless even if you didn't do that.

3) Power levels are not the same thing as character concept. You can play whatever character you want at the power level that the group agrees to, even if that character is a Wizard who melees, even if he's a Wizard who doesn't melee most of the time, but then decides to. Even if everyone else in the party is also a melee damage fighter.

[Illven]

I choose not to animate a squad of giants

I'm playing a dread necromancer in a game with a monk and a rogue. Am I going to be a jerk when I start animating giant bodies? I mean undead is all I do?

[Zanos]

I'm playing a dread necromancer in a game with a monk and a rogue. Am I going to be a jerk when I start animating giant bodies? I mean undead is all I do?
I assume that your party understands that as a dedicated necromancy character, necromancy is kind of your shtick.

But yeah, if the undead you animate are so much more powerful than the monk/rogue that they feel irrelevant, that's pretty clearly a problem that you've created.

[AnachroNinja]

I assume that your party understands that as a dedicated necromancy character, necromancy is kind of your shtick.

But yeah, if the undead you animate are so much more powerful than the monk/rogue that they feel irrelevant, that's pretty clearly a problem that you've created.

How is that not a problem created by the guys who choose to play a worthless class and a limited class, respectively. A DN with powerful undead isn't actually even powerful. Even with extreme shenanigans it's not overbearing.

[Zanos]

How is that not a problem created by the guys who choose to play a worthless class and a limited class, respectively. A DN with powerful undead isn't actually even powerful. Even with extreme shenanigans it's not overbearing.
That depends highly upon how optimized the characters are and what the DM is running. There are tables where Animate Dead is OP and straight Rogue or Monk is pretty viable.

[Illven]

I assume that your party understands that as a dedicated necromancy character, necromancy is kind of your shtick.

But yeah, if the undead you animate are so much more powerful than the monk/rogue that they feel irrelevant, that's pretty clearly a problem that you've created.

And why is it my responsibility to change my class to something weaker (that probably won't have the shtick I want to play I can't really think of a weaker nercomancer then that.) instead of them playing a unarmed swordsage and a beguiler which keeps their shticks.

[Zanos]

And why is it my responsibility to change my class to something weaker (that probably won't have the shtick I want to play I can't really think of a weaker nercomancer then that.) instead of them playing a unarmed swordsage and a beguiler which keeps their shticks.
I assume because the rogue and monk are at least somewhat effective in the environment, so everyone suddenly becoming more powerful creates an burden for the GM to retool all of his encounters with that in mind, if he is even capable of appropriately challenging a more powerful party.

[Zombimode]

I fail to see how big zombies are a substitute for rogues and monks. Are we talking about real games here? Or just theory-crafted games to support a preconceived notion?

[Illven]

I assume because the rogue and monk are at least somewhat effective in the environment, so everyone suddenly becoming more powerful creates an burden for the GM to retool all of his encounters with that in mind, if he is even capable of appropriately challenging a more powerful party.

It's not like I started later then them. Assuming that the GM is capable, why are their classes more important then my concept?

[Beheld]

It's not like I started later then them. Assuming that the GM is capable, why are their classes more important then my concept?

Because it's like when you call the stupid bully kid stupid after he calls you stupid in elementary school. No one cares that he called you stupid, because you obviously aren't, so just get over it. But if you call him stupid, it's true, so you need to learn to be nice to him, because your words can hurt.

It's always the fault of the caster, because the poor Monk just can't help himself :smalleek:

[Name1]

It's kinda funny when you think about it...
How can we tell which class is actually broken? Is it Monks for being so bad? Casters for being so strong? The only way we could properly identify that is by using CRs of their level to look how they compete against them...

If it weren't for CRs being as borked as they are.

[Beheld]

If it weren't for CRs being as borked as they are.

.........

They really aren't.

[Name1]

.........

They really aren't.

I don't know... Some of these Dragons seem quite strong for their CR, and the Allip isn't such a nice fellow either. On the other side, does a fully advanced monsterous kraken really need that high of a CR?

[Beheld]

I don't know... Some of these Dragons seem quite strong for their CR, and the Allip isn't such a nice fellow either. On the other side, does a fully advanced monsterous kraken really need that high of a CR?

Across hundreds and even thousands of monsters, fulfilling many different roles, some of them are going to be "off" in one way or another.

In particular, anything past CR 11, 15 and the most, is basically nonsense, because at level 11 Wizards bind 50 Glabrezu's to adventure for them, and at level 15 they polymorph a legion of rocks into [insert whatever Dragon color would be friends with them].

But for the most part, most things from CR 1-10/14 are very good approximations of challenge. Dragons are particular are stronger than they are supposed to be precisely because they were designed that way, because they are "boss" monsters.

But ultimately, the main point is that picking one or two monsters of every CR as "badly CRed" is inherently evidence for the fact that CR is meaningful and useful. Because a) All those other ones that set the benchmark by which X is badly CRed are well CRed, b) the very fact that you can point to a deviation from a benchmark is evidence that there is a benchmark.

[Sliver]

Dragons are particular are stronger than they are supposed to be precisely because they were designed that way, because they are "boss" monsters.

Why is that something that people simply accept? Just because it's called a "feature", doesn't mean it's not actually a "bug".

Challenge Rating is supposed to tell you how challenging something is. A dragon being more challenging than the CR would indicate isn't a good part of game design. If it's tougher, it should give more XP.

If you are designing an encounter and use the CR to determine if it's appropriate, then you may end up underestimating it. You can't say that the system is fine if you can't use it for what it's meant for, and have to tinker with the numbers for every encounter.

If I design an encounter with CR equal to the party level +4, I expect it to be a close fight, with 50% win-lose rate. But if it's a dragon, it's stronger than that, for some reason, and should actually kill the party unless they are very lucky or clever. But they'll still get the same XP.

Why not have dragons be of appropriate CR and reward players according to the challenge?

[Beheld]

Why is that something that people simply accept? Just because it's called a "feature", doesn't mean it's not actually a "bug".

Challenge Rating is supposed to tell you how challenging something is. A dragon being more challenging than the CR would indicate isn't a good part of game design. If it's tougher, it should give more XP.

If you are designing an encounter and use the CR to determine if it's appropriate, then you may end up underestimating it. You can't say that the system is fine if you can't use it for what it's meant for, and have to tinker with the numbers for every encounter.

If I design an encounter with CR equal to the party level +4, I expect it to be a close fight, with 50% win-lose rate. But if it's a dragon, it's stronger than that, for some reason, and should actually kill the party unless they are very lucky or clever. But they'll still get the same XP.

Why not have dragons be of appropriate CR and reward players according to the challenge?

It's not something that thrills me at night, but since the alternative to the CR system (or CR system +2 to all Dragon CRs) is literally nothing. I personally practice laws, there are a lot of imperfect laws or parts of laws, I don't advocate throwing the whole thing out.

Yes, it's obviously a flaw in the CR system that Dragons are mislabeled, but acknowledgeing that flaw no more makes the CR system useless and terrible than acknowledging that the Adamntium Clockwork Horror is mis-CRed because "it's one of a kind" or that the Catoplas or whatever is mis-CRed just because someone made a mistake.

[Segev]

What makes a player a jerk is when he invalidates others' characters and refuses to work with them to find a way to resolve it. This is typified by the guy who does it on purpose to rub people's noses in how awesome his character is and how worthless their characters are, because most people who wind up doing this on accident will exhibit their non-jerk status by trying to help the others have fun again. Whether this means toning down or changing how he plays his character, or helping them figure out ways to make their characters better, will depend on the group.

I doubt anybody is saying that a wizard who self-buffs is inherently a jerk. But one who does so and refuses to instead buff the fighter (who would do it better) is being a jerk.


And yes, it's possible to be a jerk in the OOC part of the game by playing a weak character and then whining and accusing everybody else of being munchkins or powergamers for not toning things down to their level. Being unwilling to help solve the problem and demanding others comply with your wishes is also jerkish behavior.


Long story short: People are jerks if they refuse to work with each other to find solutions, or deliberately cause these problems for their own abusive aggrandizement. People are not jerks for unwittingly causing problem if they're willing to work with everybody to find solutions.

[Beheld]

What makes a player a jerk is when he invalidates others' characters and refuses to work with them to find a way to resolve it.

I still don't understand why a Druid, Cleric, Gish, Barbarian, and Rogue don't "invalidate" the fighter's character, but for some reason, specificaly a Wizard who sometimes doesn't cast buff spells but sometimes does, that character concept alone "invalidates" a fighter.


I doubt anybody is saying that a wizard who self-buffs is inherently a jerk. But one who does so and refuses to instead buff the fighter (who would do it better) is being a jerk.

Again, this is completely wrong. No one is obligated to play the character you want them to play, if they want to play a Wizard who buffs themselves instead of the fighter that is their choice, it doesn't make them a jerk to play the character they want instead of the character you want them to, even if someone at the table is sad, still they don't have to play the character you want them to.

How does this sentence not cause literally every person on gitp to tell you that you are definitely in the wrong? Every time you say this it's just............. WHY? Why are people not allowed to play the character they want?

PS: No, casting the spells on the Fighter still definitely wouldn't be better. Still. Definitely.


Long story short: People are jerks if they refuse to work with each other to find solutions, or deliberately cause these problems for their own abusive aggrandizement. People are not jerks for unwittingly causing problem if they're willing to work with everybody to find solutions.

So again:

Person A plays a Fighter.
Person B plays a Barbarian: Not Jerk.
Person C plays a Cleric: Not Jerk.
Person D plays a Gish: Not Jerk.
Person E plays a Wizard who sometimes doesn't buff up to enter combat, sometimes does. WHAT A JERK!!

How is Person E less willing to work with everyone else than a self buffing Cleric or a self buffing Gish, or a Barbarian?

[AnachroNinja]

This is my last response to this and my final thoughts on the subject.

Every person is responsible for their own character choices. It's rare that character building is a black box enterprise where you don't know what others are doing. If I build a wizard who self buffs and beats face in melee, no one else in the party is obligated to avoid that role and give me my chance to shine. By the same token, if I choose to play a sword and board fighter, no one else is required to make sure that I'm strong enough to actually do my job, and avoid killing the monsters to quickly so I can feel like I'm helping. I feel like this is a self evident truth.

Yes, it is a good idea to have party members who are at reasonably similar levels of power, though that's not always possible. If you were to say you wanted to play a fighter in the same game as my focused specialist conjuror, I would probably recommend you consider Warblade or something like a leap attack lion totem barbarian. If you feel those don't fit your character and you just really want to play your fighter, I'm not going to change my character to make sure you have your spotlight. Trying to push me to do so would be a jerk move, not allowing me to play my character. It would be no different then if I said you HAD to play a Warblade so your crippled loser character wouldn't hold me back.

There is as weird concept that seems to take hold of people that the player with the weaker build choice is always the one in the right, who should be catered to. It probably has something to do with the bully example mentioned early, where it's easy to blame the guy who's "hogging the spotlight" with his super awesome wizard and just assume he is a power gaming munchkin who won't let anyone else have good fun instead of badwrong cheese fun.

The DM is the one who can tell me my build idea is a bit too strong for his campaign if I'm one shotting his boss monsters. He can also tell people their characters aren't really pulling their weight and they need to step it up. I shouldn't tell fellow players that their characters suck and they're holding me back. They shouldn't tell me that I'm too strong and ruining their fun. Everyone is responsible for themselves. I don't really know what else there is to say about this. Playing a wizard doesn't come with an obligation to help the "less fortunate" who chose inferior build concepts. If you can't play a fighter who holds his own without eating up half my spell slots, maybe you shouldn't be playing a fighter.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I'm playing a dread necromancer in a game with a monk and a rogue. Am I going to be a jerk when I start animating giant bodies? I mean undead is all I do?

It's what you do best, it's not all you do by a long shot. Even that statement is predicated on the idea that you -stay- in dread-necro all the way through without prestiging out or multiclassing. The dread-necro list is solid, if nothing spectacular, with a number of debuffs, attack spells, and even the odd buff so finding something to do outside of putting rotting meat-tanks on the field shouldn't be that hard.

To answer your question, however, not necessarily. You only become a jerk if your lumbering corpses completely invalidate the presence of the monk and rogue, something that -they- should also be able to prevent with their own skills and class features. I should think that the rogue would be all too happy to have extra flanking buddies (even if they do smell a bit) and the monk should be able to compete with most ambulatory cadavers with a good monk build (yes, yes, "good monk build" is an oxymoron :smallsigh:). It really comes down to whether your skill at optimizing undead is better than their ability to optimize their chosen classes or not and the DM's ability to handle the situation (how cooperative he is in giving you good corpses, for example).

[Cosi]

Yes, it is a good idea to have party members who are at reasonably similar levels of power, though that's not always possible. If you were to say you wanted to play a fighter in the same game as my focused specialist conjuror, I would probably recommend you consider Warblade or something like a leap attack lion totem barbarian. If you feel those don't fit your character and you just really want to play your fighter, I'm not going to change my character to make sure you have your spotlight. Trying to push me to do so would be a jerk move, not allowing me to play my character. It would be no different then if I said you HAD to play a Warblade so your crippled loser character wouldn't hold me back.

This is pretty much it, although I would go so far as to say you are being a jerk if you insist on playing a character who can't contribute to the adventures the rest of the party wants to have. This is just another instance of communication before the campaign being important. If the rest of the party is a Sword and Board Fighter, a dagger Rogue, and a Healer, you should not bring your Incantatrix when they ask for an arcane caster. Bring a Warmage instead. By the same token, if the rest of the party is a DMM Cleric, a Beguiler Shadowcraft Mage, and an Incantatrix, you should not bring your Sword and Board Fighter when they ask for a melee character. Bring a Druid instead.


There is as weird concept that seems to take hold of people that the player with the weaker build choice is always the one in the right, who should be catered to. It probably has something to do with the bully example mentioned early, where it's easy to blame the guy who's "hogging the spotlight" with his super awesome wizard and just assume he is a power gaming munchkin who won't let anyone else have good fun instead of badwrong cheese fun.

This is true. Imagine the following scenarios:

1. Someone posts on this board complaining about their gaming group. They just started playing in a new city, and the people they're playing with are playing highly optimized full casters and fully utilizing divination and minionmancy. They feel like this is excessive because their single classed Fighter can't contribute.

2. Someone posts on this board complaining about their gaming group. They just started playing in a new city, and the people they're playing with avoid casters entirely because they think they're "overpowered" and "break the game". They feel this is unfair because they want to play a Wizard.

Despite the fact that the situations are materially the same (one player wants to play the game differently than the rest of the group), I think the Playground is very likely to side with the player in the first case and the group in the second.


You only become a jerk if your lumbering corpses completely invalidate the presence of the monk and rogue, something that -they- should also be able to prevent with their own skills and class features.

At what point does it stop being "you are a jerk for overpowering them" and start being "they are jerks for making useless characters"? What if they really want to play a Commoner and an Expert? Are you then required to play down to the level of NPC classes?

[Kelb_Panthera]

At what point does it stop being "you are a jerk for overpowering them" and start being "they are jerks for making useless characters"? What if they really want to play a Commoner and an Expert? Are you then required to play down to the level of NPC classes?

You seem to have misunderstood me. I didn't say you were a jerk for bringing more power to bear. I said you were a jerk for -invalidating- them and that they -can- prevent that if they know what they're doing. That is, you're a jerk for playing a high-op character in a low-op group. You can -stop- being a jerk by either toning your character down -OR- helping them to build theirs up to speed with yours (if you know how).

D&D is a social game. Putting your character and concept ahead of group cohesion and the fun of the people you're playing with is what makes you a jerk. If you -can't- have fun with a less powerful character -and- they refuse to step up their game, you shouldn't be gaming with them. You have incompatible desires and expectations for the game. If you or they or (more likely) both -can- compromise and still have a good time, you, they, or both of you should.

[Beheld]

You seem to have misunderstood me. I didn't say you were a jerk for bringing more power to bear. I said you were a jerk for -invalidating- them and that they -can- prevent that if they know what they're doing. That is, you're a jerk for playing a high-op character in a low-op group. You can -stop- being a jerk by either toning your character down -OR- helping them to build theirs up to speed with yours (if you know how).

D&D is a social game. Putting your character and concept ahead of group cohesion and the fun of the people you're playing with is what makes you a jerk. If you -can't- have fun with a less powerful character -and- they refuse to step up their game, you shouldn't be gaming with them. You have incompatible desires and expectations for the game. If you or they or (more likely) both -can- compromise and still have a good time, you, they, or both of you should.

I look forward for your vehement denouncement of monk players as jerks going forward... Oh wait, they have a different standard than Wizards don't they. It's like you have two different stanards. A Double of them.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I look forward for your vehement denouncement of monk players as jerks going forward... Oh wait, they have a different standard than Wizards don't they. It's like you have two different stanards. A Double of them.

If it were someone wanting to play a monk next to a planar shepherd druid, a DMM persist cleric, and a StP erudite psion, bet your last dollar I'd be saying the would-be-monk is the one being disruptive -unless- he both understands and is willing to deal with the fact he will contribute somewhere between very littlle and nothing to the group and that he shouldn't expect them to look after him at the expense of their own characters/ good times.

Again: social game, compromise is necessary.

To answer your (obviously rhetorical) question though: yes, they do have a different standard by dint of posing the complete opposite potential problem. It's -highly- unlikely that a monk is going to need to "tone it down" to avoid overshadowing his allies. To judge the class to the same standard would be patently absurd. The -player- on the other hand isn't being handled any differently. Wanting to play something that, because of inherent class capability or differences in optimization skill, is drastically out of line with the rest of the party is disruptive behavior and, being the odd-man-out, it should be asked to adjust.

It's almost like..... One character invalidating others.... And one character invalidating themself.... Are two different things....

[One Step Two]

Again: social game, compromise is necessary.

I agree with you post, but I want to expand on this as well. A few years ago I joined my current gaming group, and they were of the very firm belief that wizards should blast, and very little else. In a group with a Rogue/Barbarian, Fighter, Ranger, Monk and Heal-bot cleric, while I started playing an optimized Wizard. I didn't dump on their choices, or go out of my way to invalidate them in combat. I had spells like Shivering Touch to end boss fights, and freezing fog to combine with Evards black tentacles to end larger ones, and summons in my spell book that would outclass everyone in my group, but they remained there just in case. I played to my group, using debuffs like Grease and Glitterdust, and things like Haste and fire shield on my allies to make them do better.

The one time they complained about me not using enough fireballs, I straight up told the maths of a Single fire ball at 5th level, vs 5 rounds of Hasted fighters was far more advantageous for the dice of damage dealt for a 3rd level spell. They understood my choices, and respected my game mastery. Though it did annoy the GM so much that he made everyone age 1 year per haste I wasn't holding the party's macguffin, but that's a story/rant for another day.

[icefractal]

This is true. Imagine the following scenarios:

1. Someone posts on this board complaining about their gaming group. They just started playing in a new city, and the people they're playing with are playing highly optimized full casters and fully utilizing divination and minionmancy. They feel like this is excessive because their single classed Fighter can't contribute.

2. Someone posts on this board complaining about their gaming group. They just started playing in a new city, and the people they're playing with avoid casters entirely because they think they're "overpowered" and "break the game". They feel this is unfair because they want to play a Wizard.

Despite the fact that the situations are materially the same (one player wants to play the game differently than the rest of the group), I think the Playground is very likely to side with the player in the first case and the group in the second.Really? I'm pretty sure the answers in the first case would have a lot of "Play a Warblade instead", "You just have incompatible play-styles, look for a different group", and "Ask them for help optimizing". Likewise in the second group, you're going to get a mix of "make a different character" and "find a different group".

The tone in the first might be more supportive, because nobody would be accusing them of intentionally being a jerk, but I think the majority of people are going to side with the existing group, either way. There are a few outliers who'll say that all high-power stuff is cheese and terrible, or the reverse who say that the second group is doing it wrong and should welcome anything that's RAW, but not very many.


The only "anti-T1" tendency I've noticed is the assumption that all T1 characters are going to be going nuts with NI loops and Ice Assassin Aleaxes, so therefore anything that could possibly boost them is terrible, and anything that boosts a martial, no matter how much, is always fine. Like - "Greater Teleport, Hypercognition, and Antimagic Field at will, as free-action Ex abilities? Totally reasonable, T1 characters have infinite power after all." Which I think ignores that T1 characters in 99% of campaigns aren't doing those things.

[Willie the Duck]

The only "anti-T1" tendency I've noticed is the assumption that all T1 characters are going to be going nuts with NI loops and Ice Assassin Aleaxes, so therefore anything that could possibly boost them is terrible, and anything that boosts a martial, no matter how much, is always fine. Like - "Greater Teleport, Hypercognition, and Antimagic Field at will, as free-action Ex abilities? Totally reasonable, T1 characters have infinite power after all." Which I think ignores that T1 characters in 99% of campaigns aren't doing those things.

I think a lot of people consider T1 (or however you want to convey using all the potential that the RAW rules allow) consider genuinely absurdist farce that only really matters to make a point about how badly 3e's rules do not live up to their expectations. On some level, I can sympathize. I can handle an abruptly jaunting conjuration specialist Incanatrix laying down Evard's/freezing fog combos, because that's just power. Once you start talking about fell city location bombs cast by ice assassin duplicates sent from wizards hiding on their own demiplane with dominated crafting mages using infinite WBL-breaking effects and Planar grifting infinite wish cycles, I begin to say, "what's the point, except to make a point?" That ignores, I recognize, that that's just the logical extreme of T1, and not the way that everyone plays.

[Mechalich]

Regarding optimization imbalance, it's important to remember that for people who are not veteran 3.X players with familiarity with web-based resources and a lot of synergies, optimization is a lot of extra effort. It also places a lot of extra effort on the GM in most cases as a fully optimized party of Wizard, Cleric, Druid, and Other Druid will absolutely shred level appropriate encounters pulled straight from the monster manual so now the GM has to do extensive prep work to create every new challenging encounter and the line between no challenge and TPK has become razor thin. A lot of people don't want to put that much effort into a hobby like D&D - which shouldn't be surprising considering how much difficulty the average play has simply making it to the game ever session.

3.X D&D has so much optimization variance that it functionally plays as several entirely different games (and the higher you crank the optimization the lower level at which the respective variant breaks), so agreeing to keep a group within a certain optimization range is a part of the fundamental requirement to agree to play the same game. This isn't unique to D&D - there are numerous other games where you can optimize to create a game breaker - but 3.X has a particularly extreme optimization scale and one that can be somewhat harder to spot intuitively, especially for full casters, who can change their optimization level from one day to the next if they really want to by altering their spell list significantly.

The simple fact that, during character creation in 3.X and Pathfinder a GM has to enforce optimization limits - and thereby limit character concepts in order to maintain playability is a major design flaw. Rogue and Monk are base classes in the core, their inability to retain viability even at fairly low levels in even moderately optimized games is a major bug.

[Zanos]

If it were someone wanting to play a monk next to a planar shepherd druid, a DMM persist cleric, and a StP erudite psion, bet your last dollar I'd be saying the would-be-monk is the one being disruptive -unless- he both understands and is willing to deal with the fact he will contribute somewhere between very littlle and nothing to the group and that he shouldn't expect them to look after him at the expense of their own characters/ good times.

Again: social game, compromise is necessary.
I'd actual go a step further, and say that someone rolling an unoptimized character into a very optimized party is doing the entire party a disservice, not just themselves. If the DM expects to run encounters for 4 optimized characters and ends up with 3 and some dead weight, it's very possible that bad times are going to be had by all. Pulling your own weight is just as important as not pulling all the weight.

I also think it's weird that people are assuming I hate T1s for some reason. I've mentioned in the past, and even in this thread I believe, that nearly all my characters are some form of Intelligence based magic person.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I'd actual go a step further, and say that someone rolling an unoptimized character into a very optimized party is doing the entire party a disservice, not just themselves. If the DM expects to run encounters for 4 optimized characters and ends up with 3 and some dead weight, it's very possible that bad times are going to be had by all. Pulling your own weight is just as important as not pulling all the weight.

I also think it's weird that people are assuming I hate T1s for some reason. I've mentioned in the past, and even in this thread I believe, that nearly all my characters are some form of Intelligence based magic person.

Meh, no need to account for dead weight. If he does nothing of note, no big deal. If he surprises everyone and actually contributes to an encounter that was scaled to the rest of the party, hey, good for him but it's not going to be a consistent concern. It's only if he tries to hog the spotlight that his lack of capability failing to justify the spotlight becomes truly disruptive.

Not to say he should get -no- spotlight time, of course, just no more than would be warranted by his contributions and the necessity for group cohesion at the table. It's much easier to adjust for someone way under the group optimization level than someone way above it.

[nedz]

Meh, no need to account for dead weight. If he does nothing of note, no big deal. If he surprises everyone and actually contributes to an encounter that was scaled to the rest of the party, hey, good for him but it's not going to be a consistent concern. It's only if he tries to hog the spotlight that his lack of capability failing to justify the spotlight becomes truly disruptive.

Or you end up with a Tragicomedy, where he provides the necessary 25% comedy - or both. Best on a Ninja - if you like slapstick ?

[P.F.]

1. Someone posts on this board complaining about their gaming group. They just started playing in a new city, and the people they're playing with are playing highly optimized full casters and fully utilizing divination and minionmancy. They feel like this is excessive because their single classed Fighter can't contribute.

2. Someone posts on this board complaining about their gaming group. They just started playing in a new city, and the people they're playing with avoid casters entirely because they think they're "overpowered" and "break the game". They feel this is unfair because they want to play a Wizard.

Despite the fact that the situations are materially the same (one player wants to play the game differently than the rest of the group), I think the Playground is very likely to side with the player in the first case and the group in the second.

My impression was exactly the opposite.

In scenario 1, playgrounders typically suggest that the OP use Tome of Battle/Path of War, or consider playing the aforementioned leap-attack Lion-Totem Barbarian, or why not just play a wild-shape melee-focused Druid, with the caveat that s/he still won't be as powerful as the real T1 casters and the subtle but ever-so-slightly-condescending implication that the OP will come around to their way of thinking once s/he gains more gaming experience and "system mastery."

In scenario 2, people are clearly sympathetic to the OP, offering empathy and encouragement, then suggest ways to beg, wheedle, or cajole the DM into letting him/her play a wizard anyway, linking to Batman and/or God-wizard builds, and admonishing the OP to avoid direct-damage, "flashy," and Save-or-Die spells in favor of party buffs, battlefield control, and Save-or-Suck spells which allow the knuckle-dragging mouthbreathers s/he is playing with to "feel like" they are the ones winning the fight.IMHO YMMV VWPBL of course.

[Zanos]

Interesting. Different people have different opinions on the same topic.

I would not have considered that.

[Segev]

I'm not sure why one would read what I read and assume it is confined to wizards. The wizard is the example here because of the context of the thread. My statement that people who refuse to work out problems are jerks is pretty broad.

It doesn't matter if it's two fighters, one of whom completely overshadows the other, that cause the conflict. If one or both refuse to work together to find a way to let both players have fun, that player is a jerk.

It doesn't matter if the Barbarian is somehow stomping all over the Druid's fun. THe jerk is whoever refuses to try to solve the problem. (Not "whoever won't kowtow to the other." Whoever refuses to even TRY.)

[Beheld]

THe jerk is whoever refuses to try to solve the problem. (Not "whoever won't kowtow to the other." Whoever refuses to even TRY.)

Which is totally consistent with your claim that casting buffs on yourself and fighting in melee is Per Se being a jerk.

[Segev]

Which is totally consistent with your claim that casting buffs on yourself and fighting in melee is Per Se being a jerk.

You know what, Beheld, if you're so determined to willfully misunderstand me that you're going to keep putting words in my mouth, quoting me out of context, and refusing to accept my clarifications without accusing me of contradicting myself, I'll just go ahead and make you a happy man: I'm wrong and you're right.

[Gemini476]

The only "anti-T1" tendency I've noticed is the assumption that all T1 characters are going to be going nuts with NI loops and Ice Assassin Aleaxes, so therefore anything that could possibly boost them is terrible, and anything that boosts a martial, no matter how much, is always fine. Like - "Greater Teleport, Hypercognition, and Antimagic Field at will, as free-action Ex abilities? Totally reasonable, T1 characters have infinite power after all." Which I think ignores that T1 characters in 99% of campaigns aren't doing those things.

...That doesn't seem like it would be that disruptive at high levels, though? Hypercognition is +20 to knowledge checks - assuming no other differences to the Fighter, that probably doesn't even make them as good at knowledge checks as the Wizard. They'll have, what, +12 usually? Vs. +23 ranks and at least +10 Int? Also, hypercognition has the standard divination fuzziness clause.

Greater Teleport at will is similarish - in combat it's not that different from free-action Dimension Door, and as a getaway button it's not that different from 1/day standard action Greater Teleport. The utility use is tremendous, but it's still mostly limited to places in-plane that you know about. It's strong, but at the really high levels not that strong? Gives 'em a niche as a courier, I guess. You need to get really involved in global politics to get the most use out of it, but otherwise it seems weirdly hard to find good uses for it. It lets you be where you want to be immediately, but you need to figure out where you want to be.

At-will AMF is a weird one, mostly because it shuts off all the fighter's magic items - weapons, armor, water-breathing apparatuses, planar survival gear. It shuts off everyone else's as well, but well. Also, you could turn it on to whack with your sword on your turn but if you turn it off to stop enemy spells then during your off-turn you get showed down to non-magical AC and HP and AoO damage.

Overall it's a fairly powerful package, but how overpowered it is depends on the level they get access to it. Also, being free actions is probably overdoing it.

[Fizban]

It lets you be where you want to be immediately, but you need to figure out where you want to be.
As I said in the LA Assignment Thread, if you can't figure out how to massively increase your adventuring ability with at-will Greater Teleport, you're not cut out to be an adventurer. Anyone who tries to tell you that a high level spell usable at-will is somehow not overpowered because a spellcaster can use it a handful of times per day, is running a con.

[Cosi]

Really? I'm pretty sure the answers in the first case would have a lot of "Play a Warblade instead", "You just have incompatible play-styles, look for a different group", and "Ask them for help optimizing". Likewise in the second group, you're going to get a mix of "make a different character" and "find a different group".

Well, presenting those options isn't really a good way of finding out the answer. You'd have to actually do the experiment.


Which I think ignores that T1 characters in 99% of campaigns aren't doing those things.

That's an inherent problem with the Tier System. As presented, the focus is on whether or not you can break the game, not how effective your character actually is. If you want to have a productive conversation about character power, you use a performance benchmark like the SGT. If you want to use rhetorical tricks to lump Wizards and Pun-Pun into the same group so you can ban Wizards, you use a non-empirical measure like the Tiers.


Once you start talking about fell city location bombs cast by ice assassin duplicates sent from wizards hiding on their own demiplane with dominated crafting mages using infinite WBL-breaking effects and Planar grifting infinite wish cycles, I begin to say, "what's the point, except to make a point?" That ignores, I recognize, that that's just the logical extreme of T1, and not the way that everyone plays.

Again, that's the actual definition of T1. It's not "things a Wizard can do", it's "things that can break the game". If T1 was "can play with a Wizard", it would include all of T2 and some of T3 (Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, maybe some others depending on specific build).

[nedz]

Well, presenting those options isn't really a good way of finding out the answer. You'd have to actually do the experiment.
Which is one of the reasons I banned T1 in a game I'm running at the moment.



That's an inherent problem with the Tier System. As presented, the focus is on whether or not you can break the game, not how effective your character actually is. If you want to have a productive conversation about character power, you use a performance benchmark like the SGT. If you want to use rhetorical tricks to lump Wizards and Pun-Pun into the same group so you can ban Wizards, you use a non-empirical measure like the Tiers.
SGT doesn't tell you anything about Player ability, Play-style of the group, Permissiveness of the DM.
These things, and for the first two the range across the group, are more important for balance than almost anything.
DM > Player > Build > Class

[Beheld]

SGT doesn't tell you anything about Player ability, Play-style of the group, Permissiveness of the DM.
These things, and for the first two the range across the group, are more important for balance than almost anything.
DM > Player > Build > Class

The Tiers tell you even less about Player Ability, Play Style of the Group, and DM Permissiveness. A Same Game Test tells you what one person thinks a common group should have for player ability, play style, and DM permissiveness.

It doesn't have a very small margin of error, but the Tiers somehow manage to deny being even JaronK's idea preference or idea of what an average group should be doing. (I mean Iajitsu Focus is a cheesy broken piece of **** when the Rogue uses it, but absolutely on every Factotum totally...) So that's literally zero information at all about Player Ability, Play Style of the Group, and DM Permissiveness.

More importantly, if you are the person running the SGT, then it reflect your groups player ability, play style, and DM Permissiveness. And if you read a SGT, you can see whether or not it accurately mimics your groups player ability, play style, and DM Permissiveness.

But even though the Tier system represents DM permissiveness and play style that almost no one has, and is therefore totally worthless to the vast majority of people, by merely claiming to not have a position, it convinces people that it is in some non-zero way useful to them.