so I think my GM is annoyed with my new Pc [Archive]

Fizban

2016-10-12, 04:59 AM

Feh. The overall objective power level of a thing doesn't have that much to do with how combo-y it is. Tons of incredibly powerful builds don't use any stacking trickery or obscure sources at all.
And I'd say the same thing to them.

Also, champions of ruin doesn't seem not intended for players at all. To quote the book itself, "Champions of Ruin provides players and Dungeon Masters..."
Fair enough, I haven't read the book in detail so I stand corrected. I generally assume books about evil characters are mainly DM use, and find it amusing how many favorite char-op toys are found in those same books.

Moreover, while dead eye was printed in dragon magazine, it was also printed in dragon magazine compendium, which is rather solidly first party. And if one was simply an update of the other, they would have said so somewhere, cause they update things all the time. Point is, this is a bad metric, and its application here has some holes in it.
Dragon Compendium also has the Sha'ir, a class that can cast any sor/wiz spell it's ever seen without even the fig leaf of needing to scribe it in a spellbook. Some decent, some broken, some terrible, but the main point is:

... What?

Deadeye and crossbow sniper aren't even similar except that they both add dex to damage. They don't have the same requirements, they weren't made by the same team, and they don't do the same things. I have no idea where you go that they were the same thing.
Both require weapon focus and BAB +1, the focus I'm not surprised by but BAB+1 seems a little suspicious. The benefit of Dead Eye is to add your dex to damage. The first benefit of Crossbow Sniper is adding half your dex to damage.

I wouldn't mind seeing one or the other, but both at the same time is where it becomes a problem. People usually write their feats or abilities so they're good enough to work on their own, with the intent being that you only have to take that feat once. When you write things in a vaccum, as most of 3.5 was and especially when you bring dragon mag into it, you end up with people writing similar feats multiple times, feats that were meant to be strong enough on their own that you can now take twice. This is not intentional. I'm sure whoever wrote Dead Eye did not think people needed dex and 1/2 to damage, nor did the person writing Crossbow Sniper, otherwise they'd have written their feats that way in the first place. And then you'd stack both of them anyway. Deadeye+Crossbow Sniper isn't the worst part, but if it weren't a significant chunk of damage people wouldn't be telling him to use it.

And splitting isn't broken or even over-powered. Doubling your attacks only seems extreme on paper until you remember that it's bows and crossbows only. If you don't have precision damage, the damage is pitiful on such weapons unless you spend gobs of resources on getting it up to snuff with even the minimums that WotC designers expected. Even with precision damage you -still- have to deal with DR for every single arrow or bolt.
The "it's not broken if you use it wrong" argument? Doubling your attacks is doubling your attacks, and contrary to what is apparently popular belief, ranged weapon builds don't need Splitting to work. Splitting literally doubles their damage*, if you take something usable and double it's output what do you get? It's the same price as a Speed weapon, except Speed gives only one extra attack and doesn't stack with Haste while Splitting doubles every single attack. Splitting is an insane increase in power level for a ranged build, second only to Valorous as an insane change in power level for a charge build.

The DM used a foe with 78 hp and he dealt 230 damage in a round. It is blindingly obvious that this build was overpowered for this table. As would be a pouncing shocktrooper ubercharger, as would probably be a mailman. News flash: some groups get on just fine without maximum char-op, and this is what happens when you suddenly double the damage the DM could have expected. If the forum tells you to use a bunch of stuff you've never heard of before that makes your character twice as powerful or more, that's a sign you need to stop and think about things.

*Well technically you'd need to compare it to an alternate +3's worth of properties, but the base weapon+feats is probably already matching/beating that before the skirmish shows up.

Swaoeaeieu

2016-10-12, 05:41 AM

6 attacks worth 230 dmg? so i am guessing this is around 6-8 th level?
why does the boss only have 78 hp? that sounds super low for a bossfight at that level.

eggynack

2016-10-12, 06:34 AM

And I'd say the same thing to them.
Say what to whom now? There's not really a single great criteria that defines a powerful build, so saying someone shouldn't do such and such a thing isn't particularly helpful in the big picture.

Fair enough, I haven't read the book in detail so I stand corrected. I generally assume books about evil characters are mainly DM use, and find it amusing how many favorite char-op toys are found in those same books.
There're powerful things all over the place, really, if you know where to look. Some great things are evil themed, but there're great good themed things too, and good things with no such category whatsoever.

Dragon Compendium also has the Sha'ir, a class that can cast any sor/wiz spell it's ever seen without even the fig leaf of needing to scribe it in a spellbook. Some decent, some broken, some terrible, but the main point is:
That's kinda my point. Saying, "Ya shouldn'ta chosen a thing out of dragon compendium, and that's where ya went wrong," is illogical.

Darrin

2016-10-12, 08:20 AM

The reason I think He was annoyed was the fact that
during the first round of combat, I got six shots off (Half being from my splitting hand cross bow)

The DM is the one that gave you the splitting crossbow, so if he's going through any butthurt about it... wait, only half were from the splitting crossbow? Where'd the other three hits come from?

Since the game just started, I'm guessing the DM hadn't had a chance to adjust his encounters to accommodate the optimization level of the players. But the real question here isn't how many hound archons you were able to vaporize, but what was the power level of the other players?

If the rest of the PCs can dish out 230 damage per round, then the DM has a much more general problem than just you. The DM just needs to adjust his encounters up to handle the optimization level of the entire group.

If you're the only PC that can dish out that kind of damage... then you're going to completely overshadow the other PCs, and they are likely to feel frustrated and useless. This is a much bigger problem, and most of the solutions are going to involve nerfing your PC in a blatant and dramatic way. So either you need to get the rest of the PCs optimized up to your level, or we need to rebuild your PC into something that maybe helps spotlight other PCs rather than draw so much attention to itself. Maybe a crossbow-based Bardsader with Dragonfire Inspiration?

I feel might have to tone my pc down

Switching to a more leisurely Scout 4/Ranger 16 would probably retain most of the crunch of your build and keep the same flavor.

That's kinda my point. Saying, "Ya shouldn'ta chosen a thing out of dragon compendium, and that's where ya went wrong," is illogical.

The PC in question has an unmodified Dex of 34, so adding x1.5 Dex bonus on damage is probably a big chunk of that 230 DPR. But even if he took out Dead Eye, the DPR is still going to be plenty high enough to vaporize a few hound archons.

Before we can give any useful advice, I think we need to know what the rest of the party is packing. How many players? What are their builds? Are any of them decent optimizers?

Crake

2016-10-12, 08:29 AM

6 attacks worth 230 dmg? so i am guessing this is around 6-8 th level?
why does the boss only have 78 hp? that sounds super low for a bossfight at that level.

For a boss who is equal level as the party with a smattering of minions 78 hp is about right. It wasn't a boss monster, it was a boss NPC. For a GM who is likely using standard DMG metrics for his campaign, an 8th level, say... cleric, with 14 con, assuming the elite array, and we'll say, give him +2 con for extra hp, so he gets on average 7.5 hp per level, with 11 at 1st level. A level 10 boss therefore would have 78.5hp, rounded down, makes it spot on.

My guess would also probably be something like, 21AC from +2 fullplate and 1 dex, probably +3 AC from shield of faith, and maybe a +2 heavy shield for a final AC of 25. Considering that the OP has 34 dex, +1 weapon focus and likely a +1 crossbow (with splitting), that would make it so he's getting something like +14 to hit before even taking into account bab. If we assume 8th level, that's +20 to hit vs AC 25, gaining +4 after the first miss if I remember the build correctly, so after the first miss, 4/6 of the attacks would be automatic hits short of rolling a 1, dealing 1d8+19 damage before adding in precision damage. As you can see, this is a biiit out of line with what would be considered a 'standard' boss.

The DM is quite clearly running the game at the DMG assumed level of optimization, which is to say, practically none.

Swaoeaeieu

2016-10-12, 08:45 AM

For a boss who is equal level as the party with a smattering of minions 78 hp is about right. It wasn't a boss monster, it was a boss NPC. For a GM who is likely using standard DMG metrics for his campaign, an 8th level, say... cleric, with 14 con, assuming the elite array, and we'll say, give him +2 con for extra hp, so he gets on average 7.5 hp per level, with 11 at 1st level. A level 10 boss therefore would have 78.5hp, rounded down, makes it spot on.

My guess would also probably be something like, 21AC from +2 fullplate and 1 dex, probably +3 AC from shield of faith, and maybe a +2 heavy shield for a final AC of 25. Considering that the OP has 34 dex, +1 weapon focus and likely a +1 crossbow (with splitting), that would make it so he's getting something like +14 to hit before even taking into account bab. If we assume 8th level, that's +20 to hit vs AC 25, gaining +4 after the first miss if I remember the build correctly, so after the first miss, 4/6 of the attacks would be automatic hits short of rolling a 1, dealing 1d8+19 damage before adding in precision damage. As you can see, this is a biiit out of line with what would be considered a 'standard' boss.

The DM is quite clearly running the game at the DMG assumed level of optimization, which is to say, practically none.

very solidly true, well put. It is just that in campaigns i play in or DM we often use ''NPC health'' or "boss health" were if there are less enemies, they get a little more. A bossfight for instance, if it has a classlevel around the pc's does not get average health but max health. A boss often has a 4 or 5v1 situation going against him. so i just assumed he would get a bit more hp to pad it out.

eggynack

2016-10-12, 08:49 AM

The PC in question has an unmodified Dex of 34, so adding x1.5 Dex bonus on damage is probably a big chunk of that 230 DPR. But even if he took out Dead Eye, the DPR is still going to be plenty high enough to vaporize a few hound archons.

I'm mostly just saying, "These are bad metrics." The build may be too powerful, or not too powerful, or whatever, but an important thing to take note of is that you can't really generalize the things that contribute to power here out to the rest of the game. Someone sees a broad category of thing used to a powerful end, and they sometimes assume that anything in that category is categorically problematic. And that's rarely the case. That being said, there are better and worse metrics out there. These particular ones, source obscurity, book type, and even thing stacking, just don't happen to be that strong.

J-H

2016-10-12, 09:00 AM

I don't understand how the PC in question got an epic 34 DEX at level 8 or could afford a +4 crossbow (+1, +3 splitting, over 32,000gp) at level 8.

eggynack

2016-10-12, 09:04 AM

I don't understand how the PC in question got an epic 34 DEX at level 8 or could afford a +4 crossbow (+1, +3 splitting, over 32,000gp) at level 8.
Yeah, that does sound like a lot, actually. This could have less to do with the build, more to do with just having a lot of whatever.

Crake

2016-10-12, 09:06 AM

I don't understand how the PC in question got an epic 34 DEX at level 8 or could afford a +4 crossbow (+1, +3 splitting, over 32,000gp) at level 8.

I have been wondering that myself to be honest

Barstro

2016-10-12, 09:12 AM

If I were the DM, I might be upset at a broken character. But, a character is broken only in relation to other characters.

This character overshadowing everyone else, if true, is a problem that needs to be deal with in game among the players. This happened with my team and the PC's build was altered to deal less damage and become more survivable. Everyone was happy.

This character not really overshadowing everyone else but still being overpowered, it that is the case, can be handled by any intelligent BBEG who now hires mooks with decent DR and other things specifically to stop arrows. As long as there is a legitimate roleplaying reason for the change in tactics, I think it's fine.

EDIT: Or just up the HP of bosses and have fun.

Fizban

2016-10-12, 09:55 AM

These particular ones, source obscurity, book type, and even thing stacking, just don't happen to be that strong.
Source obscurity is the focus I was looking for, and it's pretty dang strong. Every game starts with your core books, you expand from there into other stuff, and the further away you go the less likely it is the DM can just automatically deal with it simply because they're never dealt with it before. Dragon Magazine/Compendium is simply not as common a book to have or see in use. Even if the DM is allowing it on the "more is better" principle, that doesn't mean they actually know what to expect. In this case it was an extra 14 damage per attack. Similarly, Champions of Ruin is a setting specific book focusing on evil characters, even more specific than the BoVD, and is only ever referenced for a few things. If the DM doesn't already know about Splitting -and he won't unless he's been doing the same char-op, then he's got no way of knowing how much damage it's worth.

You seem to focusing on the idea that I'm condemning Dead Eye for being in Dragon Compendium, because dragon mag is bad. Rather, I'm condemning it because it is powerful and obscure, and being from Dragon Compendium should make that obscurity fairly obviouss. As for stacking things that weren't meant to be stacked, the only other metric is if the stacking is breaking the game. We have our answer for that already, his damage seems to be way too high and a significant part of that is from stacking the two suspiciously similar feats. If you want to claim the "oh you can't guess what the designers were thinking" defense in order to do whatever you want, well have fun with that I guess. I know you like your char-op, but I'm just sick of people trying to claim maximum RAW power is ever appropriate when that is very rarely the case.

I've developed a pretty big disdain for a lot of char-op "tricks" over time. A trick is dancing around the rules to do something positive for the game, something you'd houserule anyway if you couldn't dance around it. Many char-op "tricks" are blatantly overpowered nonsense that flagrantly violates the spirit of like, everything,, sometimes even against word of god. Taking advantage of a generous DM's anything goes policy to drag in mechanics they're unfamiliar with so you can be lol strong is just another "trick." So yeah, I'm gonna call it out. If your DM's letting you use anything you want, it's your responsibility to make sure what you're using is on the same power level as the rest of the game.

No offense meant to the OP, you asked for an optimized build and they gave you one, if you'd known how all the parts worked well enough to evaluate them you wouldn't have needed to ask. Dunno how much information was in your previous thread, but unless you posted similar builds for the rest of the party they should have known better.

Darrin

2016-10-12, 10:05 AM

I don't understand how the PC in question got an epic 34 DEX at level 8 or could afford a +4 crossbow (+1, +3 splitting, over 32,000gp) at level 8.

From one of Nosta's previous threads:

My Dm gave me a Boon of a +1 quickloading splitting dark wood hand cross bow

I don't think Nosta ever explained how his ability scores were determined, but the rules for that are largely within the province of the DM's control.

I think the PC is actually ECL 13. He posted the build here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?502861-crossbow-swift-hunter-Help-me-improve-my-build), based mostly on suggestions I made. Looks like the crossbow is probably in the 50K range (+5 weapon), which isn't really unheard of on a 13th level character. WBL is 110K, so that's under half. So far, it sounds to me like the DM doesn't entirely know what he/she is doing.

Nosta

2016-10-12, 11:09 AM

for those wondering how I got a dex of 34 I will Explain
The DM wanted us to be very powerful and gave us and extra 6d6 worth of stat points to put were ever we wanted. so I put a good amount in to dex

though we could trade in 2d6 for a bonus feat

as for my crossbow.
The Dm gave each person a personal Boon. Mine was a +1 quickloading splitting darkwood hand crossbow

we are level 13

My fellow players

are a Warmage-enlighten fist
A flesh warper (not sure his base class)
and A crusader with a str mod of 16

ComaVision

2016-10-12, 11:15 AM

Your games make no sense to me. It seems like you guys are starting a new game every other weak, and always jack up the power (gestalt, epic levels, extra wealth/items/stats) and then are apparently unable to deal with the level of power. Then, presumably, the game falls apart and a new one starts. Am I correct in assuming many of the players in your group do not have a good handle on the rules?

Quertus

2016-10-12, 11:53 AM

I was under the impression that splitting didn't multiply precision - based damage, so the combo might not be as powerful as one might think. Definitely something to look into.

AFB I've never owned this particular book, but I thought splitting had rules like, "if the first arrow hits, the second arrow hits; if the first arrow misses, roll to hit as normal for the second arrow" and "only apply precision damage to the first arrow".

Every game starts with your core books, you expand from there into other stuff,

Almost every game I've ever played - and every game I've ever played that lasted - started with every book published.

Barstro

2016-10-12, 12:12 PM

The DM wanted us to be very powerful and gave us and extra 6d6 worth of stat points to put were ever we wanted. so I put a good amount in to dex

so I recently used a new pc I had some people on this forum help me build...

I Dealt over 230 damage to the leader who only had 78 Hp,

Your DM gave you ridiculous stats. You asked for assistance in making a very powerful build on a character that would have been pretty darn powerful if it were wielding a mundane toothpick. And somehow people are surprised that you took out an enemy that was designed for someone with half your stats and no optimization?

You may certainly play the game how you want, but "Mario with unlimited Super Star power" seems boring to me. Either the enemies need to be seriously buffed, or you need to nerf yourself down to a reasonable power. Now THAT would make for a fun game.

Kelb_Panthera

2016-10-12, 03:53 PM

And I'd say the same thing to them.

Anti-optimization sentiment noted.

Fair enough, I haven't read the book in detail so I stand corrected. I generally assume books about evil characters are mainly DM use, and find it amusing how many favorite char-op toys are found in those same books.

There are almost -no- DM only books and, unless otherwise noted, character building options are available to all qualifying characters. There aren't even that many books that are specifically about evil characters; BoVD (of course), champions of ruin (kinda), exemplars of evil (definitely), and elder evils (again, kinda) are just about everything that comes quickly to mind. It's also a bold presumption that evil, in general, is a DM only thing. You can declare it so for your own game, of couse, and it's a very common declaration at that but it's -not- a default rule.

Dragon Compendium also has the Sha'ir, a class that can cast any sor/wiz spell it's ever seen without even the fig leaf of needing to scribe it in a spellbook. Some decent, some broken, some terrible, but the main point is:

Yeah, paizo has some screwy ideas about game balance. Big surprise. WotC liscensed dragon compendium but they did not produce it, same as the magazines it was compiled from. I don't know why the forum embraced it so readily when they're much more sensible about the magazines.

Both require weapon focus and BAB +1, the focus I'm not surprised by but BAB+1 seems a little suspicious. The benefit of Dead Eye is to add your dex to damage. The first benefit of Crossbow Sniper is adding half your dex to damage.

One requires weapon focus in a ranged weapon of your choice, the other in crossbows specifically; similar, not the same. One adds your full dex to damage, while other only adds half; similar, not the same. One only adds dex to damage, the other does a few things besides; not even similar, much less the same. One was produced by a WotC team, the other by Paizo; you're kidding, right?

I wouldn't mind seeing one or the other, but both at the same time is where it becomes a problem. People usually write their feats or abilities so they're good enough to work on their own, with the intent being that you only have to take that feat once.

Two feats to do what any two-handed weapon gets natively: times and a half your primary stat to damage. This is overpowered to you? You can't even stack it with str because you -have- to use a crossbow.

When you write things in a vaccum, as most of 3.5 was and especially when you bring dragon mag into it, you end up with people writing similar feats multiple times, feats that were meant to be strong enough on their own that you can now take twice. This is not intentional. I'm sure whoever wrote Dead Eye did not think people needed dex and 1/2 to damage, nor did the person writing Crossbow Sniper, otherwise they'd have written their feats that way in the first place. And then you'd stack both of them anyway. Deadeye+Crossbow Sniper isn't the worst part, but if it weren't a significant chunk of damage people wouldn't be telling him to use it.

You're aware that the designers openly acknowledge that they fully intended the game to reward players who go dumpster diving for the best combos, right? It very much -was- intended.

The "it's not broken if you use it wrong" argument? Doubling your attacks is doubling your attacks, and contrary to what is apparently popular belief, ranged weapon builds don't need Splitting to work. Splitting literally doubles their damage*, if you take something usable and double it's output what do you get? It's the same price as a Speed weapon, except Speed gives only one extra attack and doesn't stack with Haste while Splitting doubles every single attack. Splitting is an insane increase in power level for a ranged build, second only to Valorous as an insane change in power level for a charge build.

So not having precision damage if you're a ranged weapon specialist is doing it wrong then? Interesting position. Splitting doesn't double your damage, it double's your attacks. This is only the -potential- to double your damage, unlike valorous. Speed gives you one extra attack on a dramatically more powerful attack unless you've spent significant resources on improving your ranged attacks: see again, two feats to get once and a half your primary stat to damage and no power attack equivalent at all. Treating melee and ranged attacks as being the same is a -dire- mistake. By choosing archery, you're choosing to play catch-up to the melees right from go, on even a fairly basic level of optimization.

The DM used a foe with 78 hp and he dealt 230 damage in a round. It is blindingly obvious that this build was overpowered for this table. As would be a pouncing shocktrooper ubercharger, as would probably be a mailman. News flash: some groups get on just fine without maximum char-op, and this is what happens when you suddenly double the damage the DM could have expected. If the forum tells you to use a bunch of stuff you've never heard of before that makes your character twice as powerful or more, that's a sign you need to stop and think about things.

You're half right here. It's generally not advisable to go way beyond the rest of the party in optimization but the OP has told us that the party he's working with is level 13, a boss with only 78 hp is way under powered. You can just about match that with nothing but raw d10's.

*Well technically you'd need to compare it to an alternate +3's worth of properties, but the base weapon+feats is probably already matching/beating that before the skirmish shows up.

It's fairly strong as far as a +3 weapon abilities go but it's not dramatically more powerful than most and even weaker than some. Valorous is much more powerful and only a +1. Speed is comparable on a melee weapon as far as over-all damage output goes. It's good but hardly over-powered.

Fizban

2016-10-12, 05:51 PM

You can declare it so for your own game, of couse, and it's a very common declaration at that but it's -not- a default rule.
Who said anything about rules?

One requires weapon focus in a ranged weapon of your choice, the other in crossbows specifically; similar, not the same. One adds your full dex to damage, while other only adds half; similar, not the same. One only adds dex to damage, the other does a few things besides; not even similar, much less the same. One was produced by a WotC team, the other by Paizo; you're kidding, right?
You do realize there are plenty of things in books that came straight out of the magazine right? I've only read a few and I was still tripping over stuff I already knew left and right, not excerpts either, stuff that was being presented as new that showed up in WotC books.

Two feats to do what any two-handed weapon gets natively: times and a half your primary stat to damage. This is overpowered to you? You can't even stack it with str because you -have- to use a crossbow.
The classic "melee can do it so ranged should too" fallacy. Ranged combat is objectively superior if all other things are equal because shooting people is safer than standing close enough for them to hit you back, it deals less damage for a reason and every time someone tries to pull that false equivalency it only makes it obvious they have no respect for basic tactics or outdoor battles.

You're aware that the designers openly acknowledge that they fully intended the game to reward players who go dumpster diving for the best combos, right? It very much -was- intended.
There is a difference between leaving trap feats vs expecting combos vs printing the same effect multiple times.

So not having precision damage if you're a ranged weapon specialist is doing it wrong then?
If you're trying to use crossbows then yes. You're the one saying that splitting is weak if you're using a crossbow, but the only reason to use a crossbow is if you rely on precision rather than the more supported normal bow. You specifically suggested a bad build in order to reinforce your point.

Interesting position. Splitting doesn't double your damage, it double's your attacks. This is only the -potential- to double your damage, unlike valorous.
That's not even an argument, go read your sentence again. Do I need to say "average" or "over time" or something? It doesn't matter, two attacks or double damage on one attack, aside from a couple other interactions the total amount of damage is the same, if anything two attacks will deal more damage thanks to bonus dice.

Treating melee and ranged attacks as being the same is a -dire- mistake. By choosing archery, you're choosing to play catch-up to the melees right from go, on even a fairly basic level of optimization.
Yes, it is, except you're the one making the mistake. By choosing archery, you're choosing the ability to shoot a non-archer for multiple rounds before they can get within range, make full attacks when other characters would lose attacks maneuvering across the battlefield, and get damage in even when positioning would simply prohibit a melee character from doing so. But hardcore optimizers ignore all that because they expect none of those issues to be issues, because they're comparing either to magic or to a suite of dips and magic items build to nullify all those things.

You're half right here. It's generally not advisable to go way beyond the rest of the party in optimization but the OP has told us that the party he's working with is level 13, a boss with only 78 hp is way under powered. You can just about match that with nothing but raw d10's.
Maybe in the other thread, Darrin has only speculated it here, and ComaVision's comment makes it clear there's a lot more going on. None of that changes the fact that Splitting and Dead Eye are way more powerful than other similar options.

It's fairly strong as far as a +3 weapon abilities go but it's not dramatically more powerful than most and even weaker than some. Valorous is much more powerful and only a +1. Speed is comparable on a melee weapon as far as over-all damage output goes. It's good but hardly over-powered.
Well your first problem is actually believing that Valorous is okay at +1 when it's obviously not. It might be okay at +3, if it only doubled the damage on the first attack, at which point it would actually be comparable to Speed. Even if Splitting/Speed did deal "the same" damage it wouldn't matter, because melee is supposed to deal more damage, not the same, and Speed isn't a melee weapon ability, it's both. And nothing, straight up nothing should be just doubling people's damage.

Your second problem is the ability to say with a straight face that literally doubling the number of attacks someone can make doesn't double their damage output.

eggynack

2016-10-12, 06:18 PM

Source obscurity is the focus I was looking for, and it's pretty dang strong. Every game starts with your core books, you expand from there into other stuff, and the further away you go the less likely it is the DM can just automatically deal with it simply because they're never dealt with it before. Dragon Magazine/Compendium is simply not as common a book to have or see in use. Even if the DM is allowing it on the "more is better" principle, that doesn't mean they actually know what to expect. In this case it was an extra 14 damage per attack. Similarly, Champions of Ruin is a setting specific book focusing on evil characters, even more specific than the BoVD, and is only ever referenced for a few things. If the DM doesn't already know about Splitting -and he won't unless he's been doing the same char-op, then he's got no way of knowing how much damage it's worth.

You seem to focusing on the idea that I'm condemning Dead Eye for being in Dragon Compendium, because dragon mag is bad. Rather, I'm condemning it because it is powerful and obscure, and being from Dragon Compendium should make that obscurity fairly obviouss.
It's not like we're working with a whole different system here. Dead eye is a pretty straightforward feat. If the DM were to spend any amount of time reading the feat, any amount of effect from source obscurity would likely be erased, because it's so obvious exactly what the feat is doing and what impact it has. And, if the effect only exists when the DM doesn't read the feat, and the effect claimed is that the DM would be reading and understanding these non-obscure feats, then the effect doesn't make sense. This isn't psionics, where there're all these subtleties can slip past you and you basically have to understand a large chunk of an entire book. Or even a really complicated feat, like aberration wild shape or DMM, where the impact comes down to a lot of specific interactions with the system as a whole. It's a feat that gives more damage when you have a lot of dexterity. It doesn't even make sense that this would be difficult for a DM to understand by your argument, because as you point out, crossbow sniper is very similar, and comes from a less obscure source.

As for stacking things that weren't meant to be stacked, the only other metric is if the stacking is breaking the game. We have our answer for that already, his damage seems to be way too high and a significant part of that is from stacking the two suspiciously similar feats. If you want to claim the "oh you can't guess what the designers were thinking" defense in order to do whatever you want, well have fun with that I guess. I know you like your char-op, but I'm just sick of people trying to claim maximum RAW power is ever appropriate when that is very rarely the case.
Doesn't necessarily seem way too high to me. Toss those stats and that level on a reasonably optimized charging build and they'll likely get similar numbers. Really, I think the reason it seemed as bad as it did had a lot more to do with incorrect premises. The numbers here are going to go a lot higher when the level is a lot higher, and when stats are crazy outside of normal bounds. And, while we indeed shouldn't attempt to supplant the already perfectly fine stacking rules with some weird rule about kinda similar things not working together, I was mostly pointing out that stacking isn't necessarily the best path to power. After all, one of the better metrics in the game is versatility, and stacking based builds tend to limit you along that axis.

I've developed a pretty big disdain for a lot of char-op "tricks" over time. A trick is dancing around the rules to do something positive for the game, something you'd houserule anyway if you couldn't dance around it. Many char-op "tricks" are blatantly overpowered nonsense that flagrantly violates the spirit of like, everything,, sometimes even against word of god. Taking advantage of a generous DM's anything goes policy to drag in mechanics they're unfamiliar with so you can be lol strong is just another "trick." So yeah, I'm gonna call it out. If your DM's letting you use anything you want, it's your responsibility to make sure what you're using is on the same power level as the rest of the game.
I just don't see how this is dancing around anything. It's using a feat, and then another feat that has a similar impact. That seems pretty in keeping with the game's nature. We're not drown healing here, or using the save game trick. It's just simple ability score stacking.

No offense meant to the OP, you asked for an optimized build and they gave you one, if you'd known how all the parts worked well enough to evaluate them you wouldn't have needed to ask. Dunno how much information was in your previous thread, but unless you posted similar builds for the rest of the party they should have known better.
What does it even mean to not know how the parts work here? You have a pile of arrows, and those arrows each deal a rather well defined amount of damage. There really isn't that much to decode here.

Kelb_Panthera

2016-10-12, 07:22 PM

Who said anything about rules?

You implied it with the idea that evil is a DM thing when it's not. The books that contain evil material are no more restricted to DM use than any other source. It's a nonsense position. I think the only one that does say "DM's only" is BoVD and I'm pretty sure there was a side-bar or something that even said to ignore that for an evil campaign. The source in question, Champions of Ruin, says no such thing.

You do realize there are plenty of things in books that came straight out of the magazine right? I've only read a few and I was still tripping over stuff I already knew left and right, not excerpts either, stuff that was being presented as new that showed up in WotC books.

After some revision, yes. A couple came from the old WotC message boards too; again, after revision. Doesn't change the fact that dead eye never came from a WotC source. Doesn't change the fact that it's not the same feat as crossbow sniper either. Having similar requirements and a single similar benefit doesn't make them the same thing no matter how much you assert they do.

The classic "melee can do it so ranged should too" fallacy. Ranged combat is objectively superior if all other things are equal because shooting people is safer than standing close enough for them to hit you back, it deals less damage for a reason and every time someone tries to pull that false equivalency it only makes it obvious they have no respect for basic tactics or outdoor battles.

Except at no point do similar degrees of optimization put archery at equal to melee. It's -always- behind. For every feat an archer spends catching up to melee's baseline, melee is spending a feat to surge ahead. For every copper spent doing more damage as a melee, an archer has to spend 5. I'm not saying archery should be equal or ahead of melee, I'm just saying there's no reason to break its legs before it even gets off the line.

There is a difference between leaving trap feats vs expecting combos vs printing the same effect multiple times.

They didn't print the same effect multiple times. "They" didn't even print both feats unless you're considering WotC and Paizo a collective "they." Two feats with a common benefit were printed. If it was the same feat, it'd have the same name, like every other instance of a feat update. Hell, they (WotC) even printed a couple instances of -distinctly- different things with the same name. You're ascribing intent where none exists.

If you're trying to use crossbows then yes. You're the one saying that splitting is weak if you're using a crossbow, but the only reason to use a crossbow is if you rely on precision rather than the more supported normal bow. You specifically suggested a bad build in order to reinforce your point.

And now you're putting words in my mouth. Splitting is not weak under any circumstace. Neither is it excessively powerful. I was pointing out that it's -weaker- without precision damage than with. More attacks is -always- more powerful with precision damage than without. There's nothing wrong with using a crossbow without precision damage. There are other ways to get good damage out of them -unless- the DM is arbitrarily limiting options because they don't fit his idea of how the game -should- work.

That's not even an argument, go read your sentence again. Do I need to say "average" or "over time" or something? It doesn't matter, two attacks or double damage on one attack, aside from a couple other interactions the total amount of damage is the same, if anything two attacks will deal more damage thanks to bonus dice.

Averages mean almost nothing in an actual fight. You -never- do average damage unless your average just happens to fall on a whole number and, even then, it's a coincidence. Averages are useful for placing bets and making estimates, nothing more. Doubling your -average- damage is a whole different kettle of fish from just doubling your actual damage.

Yes, it is, except you're the one making the mistake. By choosing archery, you're choosing the ability to shoot a non-archer for multiple rounds before they can get within range, make full attacks when other characters would lose attacks maneuvering across the battlefield, and get damage in even when positioning would simply prohibit a melee character from doing so.

Unless they have cover, or they catch you by surprise, or the fight simply doesn't start at those distances (which is 90%+ of the time), or they have DR you can't bypass, or they can teleport, or any of a host of other things. It's a nice benefit in theory but it almost never plays out in practice because there's just too many things to get in the way. Most of the time it gives you the advantage of being the first to deal damage and that's about it.

But hardcore optimizers ignore all that because they expect none of those issues to be issues, because they're comparing either to magic or to a suite of dips and magic items build to nullify all those things.

Acknowledging that those advantages conceivably exist doesn't change the fact that they virtually never come up. Enemy NPC's that can specifically counter or alternate builds that match the archer's advantages only exacerbate the problem further.

Maybe in the other thread, Darrin has only speculated it here, and ComaVision's comment makes it clear there's a lot more going on. None of that changes the fact that Splitting and Dead Eye are way more powerful than other similar options.

Ahem,
for those wondering how I got a dex of 34 I will Explain
The DM wanted us to be very powerful and gave us and extra 6d6 worth of stat points to put were ever we wanted. so I put a good amount in to dex

though we could trade in 2d6 for a bonus feat

as for my crossbow.
The Dm gave each person a personal Boon. Mine was a +1 quickloading splitting darkwood hand crossbow

we are level 13

My fellow players

are a Warmage-enlighten fist
A flesh warper (not sure his base class)
and A crusader with a str mod of 16

Bolded for empahasis.

Also, for a normal character, the -combo- of dead eye and crossbow sniper adds ~18 damage per hit, at most. For comparison, that's -equal- to the strength bonus of the exotic foot-bow to which only dead eye could add 12 and, again, that's at -maximum- with ~34 in -both- stats. For further comparison, that's a bit better than half the bonus damage a sneak attack gives. It's just -not- a strong combo.

Well your first problem is actually believing that Valorous is okay at +1 when it's obviously not. It might be okay at +3, if it only doubled the damage on the first attack, at which point it would actually be comparable to Speed. Even if Splitting/Speed did deal "the same" damage it wouldn't matter, because melee is supposed to deal more damage, not the same, and Speed isn't a melee weapon ability, it's both. And nothing, straight up nothing should be just doubling people's damage.

Whether you or I believe valorous is "okay" at +1 or not is irrelevant. It -is- a +1 and it is dramatically more powerful than splitting. That "nothing should be doubling people's damage" is an opinion of yours, not a statement of fact. I'm not going to argue your opinion since that's pointless. Let's stick to the game as it is, shall we?

Your second problem is the ability to say with a straight face that literally doubling the number of attacks someone can make doesn't double their damage output.

I say it because it doesn't. It doubles their average damage, it doubles their potential damage, but it does not simply double the damage they do. A crit doubles damage. A valorous weapon doubles damage. Setting against a charge doubles damage. Using a lance when charging on a mount does double damage. Making twice as many attacks only gives you a chance to do double damage. This is -not- the same thing.

barakaka

2016-10-12, 08:18 PM

It feels to me like this was just a display of miscommunication and the forum's willingness to help people out. It's not a problem with the advice that posters give out. It's just the fact that the party's/DM's level of optimization wasn't properly understood. Nobody needs to be shot over it. Both sides have their own views, and it's everyone's job to bring those together to make something appropriate to the situation.

However, since it went this way, the players and DM are going to be out for blood. Make some sort of change to your character to avoid getting nerfed in a way that makes you not have fun anymore with your swift hunter. You can tone it down by dropping the DEX to damage feats. That'll leave you with a lot less damage, while keeping the swift hunter theme of precise shots that could only be possible with your dipping and dodging around the battlefield. You've still got the DEX to land most of your shots, and that weapon which is a lot less bonkers when you realize that it does not provide double the precision damage.

This lets you personally match your character to the situation by deciding when to move and apply your precision damage. Flavor it as your character being lazy. I wouldn't wanna run all day just so I can fight something and have to run around it the whole time. Yeah, he's got the skills, but a lazy character wouldn't put them to work all the time. Or he feels like he dishes out enough damage without effort.

Now your DM has a clear counter for your character now by adding undead/deathless for you to fight. The Wind Wall spell from the Player's Handbook (and online at:http://www.d20srd.org/) is also a fantastic counter to ranged damage dealers.

The moral of the story is: Bring big guns to the table (heck, you're a hero/villain) but don't overshadow your friends' guns, and let us know exactly what is happening with your players, at your table, and we can help you to match that.

tsj

2016-10-12, 11:32 PM

Zanos

2016-10-13, 02:02 AM

The DM wanted us to be very powerful and gave us and extra 6d6 worth of stat points to put were ever we wanted. so I put a good amount in to dex
The Dm gave each person a personal Boon. Mine was a +1 quickloading splitting darkwood hand crossbow
Well, there's part of your problem.

I will go against the grain on the opinion of "I deal a lot of damage" builds, though. People say damage is bad on these forums, but I've never played at an optimization level where pumping 200-500 damage into an enemy at those levels wouldn't put it down.

So yeah, if your damage output is three times the health of your DMs enemies and you can apply it reliably, you should scale it down. You should probably talk to your DM about his ridiculous hand outs and then complaining the PCs are strong as well.

eggynack

2016-10-13, 02:53 AM

I will go against the grain on the opinion of "I deal a lot of damage" builds, though. People say damage is bad on these forums, but I've never played at an optimization level where pumping 200-500 damage into an enemy at those levels wouldn't put it down.
There's no doubting it's good when it works. It's just that these high damage builds, at least on the mundane side of things, tend to be pretty easy to make not work. You have the baseline obvious reasons for this. Heavy winds (spell and not alike), various forms of cover, miss chance, and so on. On this point, the main reason the mailman is so widely touted is that its method of offense is extremely difficult to stop without a really specific plan. And the reason why casters in general work well is that a single defense is rarely sufficient against their vast array of tools. Then, you have the broader reasons for this, meaning situations where simple murder of between one and several enemies in quick succession isn't that helpful. Situations that demand speedy transport, foes that themselves have this sort of offense which you need to defend against, a quantity of foes that demand effects on mass scale, any sort of foe that's approaching from afar that demands preparation, and any sort of knowledge seeking. I'm not saying that this sort of build isn't good, or that it doesn't have its place. I'm just saying that there's a reason the generally accepted wisdom is the generally accepted wisdom. Because sometimes you can't actually pump that damage into an enemy, and because sometimes doing so isn't sufficient.

Sliver

2016-10-13, 03:09 AM

It's just that these high damage builds, at least on the mundane side of things, tend to be pretty easy to make not work.

You know, I hate the high-damage builds for this reason. As a DM, either they negate an encounter, or I negate them almost entirely. That means that any encounter that I want to make meaningful, I have to design around both negating them in a natural fashion, and to throw in minions so they have something to do. But it quickly becomes obvious that they aren't contributing to the actual fight, purely because I want there to be an actual fight.

Yes, there are several ways around it, but I don't really enjoy designing my encounters around abusing a character's weakness, and it gets old quickly. Not to mention that it could easily hurt other PCs as well, if they aren't as optimized.

It's like the idea of item familiars. If being awesome is balanced around the idea that it can be taken away and make you suck, then it's not balanced. You are making the DM choose when he wants you to not have fun, basically.

But more to the point, the DM gave you superpowers and didn't expect any of you to make a superhero. Or maybe he expected that giving you a lot of power would mean that you don't feel like you have to optimize, allowing you to make weaker builds that would be able to keep up because you are already strong enough.

Regardless, either the game will implode, or you'll talk to your DM and tone it down to a level that kinda resembles your fellow players, though it might be hard with those particular builds to not be too effective. Even without the feat stacking, through your bow and precision damage alone you probably overwhelm your DM.

Fizban

2016-10-13, 03:31 AM

and the effect claimed is that the DM would be reading and understanding these non-obscure feats, then the effect doesn't make sense.
You've lost me there, I'm pretty sure I didn't say the DM had read the feat, you're right that my claim is the opposite. A DM allowing all sources probably has not read all sources, so if you bring a build using something they haven't seen they don't know what to expect. Admittedly that's pretty poor DMing too, you should be checking everything your players build before it hits the table, but most don't seem to bother.

Doesn't necessarily seem way too high to me. Toss those stats and that level on a reasonably optimized charging build and they'll likely get similar numbers.
My point is that to the author of a handbook dedicated to wringing every last drop out of druids, a "reasonably optimized" charging build is grossly overpowered to many tables. What components are you using? I assume it involves pounce and gobs of power attack probably powered by shocktrooper, and once again I think it's pretty obvious that no dev considered that standard.

Really, I think the reason it seemed as bad as it did had a lot more to do with incorrect premises.
Indeed, apparently I missed it.

I just don't see how this is dancing around anything. It's using a feat, and then another feat that has a similar impact. That seems pretty in keeping with the game's nature. We're not drown healing here, or using the save game trick. It's just simple ability score stacking.
I'm going off on a bit of a tangent. The OP's build was neither a harmless dance nor a monstrous char-op "trick," but a third form of annoyance the "slip it past the DM since he's not familiar with it." Which presumably was an accident in this case.

What does it even mean to not know how the parts work here? You have a pile of arrows, and those arrows each deal a rather well defined amount of damage. There really isn't that much to decode here.
If you've slowly put together a build over time you're likely to know how much each part contributed, which were the biggest jumps in power. If someone rattles off a list of stuff you've never heard of and you just do it, you'll have a bunch of big numbers without a real sense of what that means compared to your older unoptimized characters, just that suddenly you have huge numbers. Lots of people just don't instinctively analyze stuff the way you'd need to notice a possible red flag. While it's become clear this example wasn't nearly so dramatic, it's still a thing that can/has/will happen.

I'm not saying archery should be equal or ahead of melee, I'm just saying there's no reason to break its legs before it even gets off the line.
But you are saying it should have 1 1/2 times it's primary stat to damage, when one of the core restrictions on archery is that it doesn't get it's primary stat to damage. Your optimization arms race assumes that for every stride one person in the group makes that every other person will make the same stride. That's not how it actually works. One guy brings in an effect from a book that no one's ever used before, suddenly he jumps ahead of the curve. Now unless everyone else scrambles to find something else to power themselves up, including the DM, that guy is overpowered. Gonna make a crude generalization here and say that a heck of a lot of the time, the guy playing the BSF doesn't want to think much himself, and does not have a "well-optimized" build. Unless that guy suddenly becomes a different guy it's quite likely that the archer player can in fact outdamage him into the ground because you believe that melee is so far ahead.

They didn't print the same effect multiple times. "They" didn't even print both feats unless you're considering WotC and Paizo a collective "they." Two feats with a common benefit were printed. If it was the same feat, it'd have the same name, like every other instance of a feat update. Hell, they (WotC) even printed a couple instances of -distinctly- different things with the same name. You're ascribing intent where none exists.
You're the one claiming it's okay to stack anything you find because the designers wanted people to find wacky combos, as if that means there was some intent that all material could, nay should be combined. You're also maintaining that the two writers has nothing to do with each other, which means that no, those designers could not have intended that their material be combined. So which is it? I say that just because the designers intended people to optimize their builds does not mean they expected everything to combine without potential problems, and that not duplicating and stacking the same feats is one of those acknowledgements.

There's nothing wrong with using a crossbow without precision damage. There are other ways to get good damage out of them -unless- the DM is arbitrarily limiting options because they don't fit his idea of how the game -should- work.
I'd love to see this non-precision crossbow build that is also "well-optimized." I'm guessing maybe Dragonfire Inspiration? Great crossbow stacking size increases?

Averages mean almost nothing in an actual fight. You -never- do average damage unless your average just happens to fall on a whole number and, even then, it's a coincidence. Averages are useful for placing bets and making estimates, nothing more. Doubling your -average- damage is a whole different kettle of fish from just doubling your actual damage.
Okay, so what about that non-splitting single attack? Because either you're assuming it hits every time, in which case Splitting will also hit every time as they use the same attack bonus, or you're assuming some average amount of hit, in which case you're using an average yourself. So which is it? Iterative attacks don't double your damage because they come at an attack penalty. TWF doesn't double damage because it restricts your damage first by requiring light weapons and so on. Haste/Speed doesn't double damage because they only give one attack. Splitting does none of these things: it has no attack penalties, no damage restrictions, no limit on the number of attacks. It doubles your attacks, it deals the same damage, it uses the same bonus, it doubles your damage. You're simply ignoring the fact that sometimes people deal zero damage, and extra attacks resulting in a hit for single damage when you would have missed is lets see, divide by zero. . . that would be [system error] percent more damage. Or on average, you get double damage.

Unless they have cover, or they catch you by surprise, or the fight simply doesn't start at those distances (which is 90%+ of the time), or they have DR you can't bypass, or they can teleport, or any of a host of other things. It's a nice benefit in theory but it almost never plays out in practice because there's just too many things to get in the way. Most of the time it gives you the advantage of being the first to deal damage and that's about it.
Acknowledging that those advantages conceivably exist doesn't change the fact that they virtually never come up. Enemy NPC's that can specifically counter or alternate builds that match the archer's advantages only exacerbate the problem further.
So if they hide in a box instead of fighting, the DM runs 90% of encounters indoors (so no wilderness encounters or heaven forbid an outdoor campaign), most people seem to think DR is a joke and bows can break it more easily before considering that melee has to deal with the same problem (blah blah power attack blah blah you just said you want dex and a half), and there's a hell of a lot of creatures that don't have innate teleport or the treasure to do so, quite likely most of the game. Your argument is: if the DM hoses archers, archers are hosed.

Ahem,

Bolded for empahasis.
My mistake, but in my defense I was responding wall of text to wall of text before work and his post was very small.

Whether you or I believe valorous is "okay" at +1 or not is irrelevant. It -is- a +1 and it is dramatically more powerful than splitting. That "nothing should be doubling people's damage" is an opinion of yours, not a statement of fact. I'm not going to argue your opinion since that's pointless. Let's stick to the game as it is, shall we?
Ah, RAW is God, I must bow before. . . yeah no. Any idiot could tell you that introducing a discrete effect that suddenly doubles damage in a game where all but zero similar effects exist* and every damage progression that's spelled out level by level follows a linear formula with no sudden doublings. I do not care in the slightest that it -is- a +1 and thats "the game as it is." The game has parts that are wrong, which is not surprising because it was written by people, and sometimes people are wrong. Valorous is -not- okay at +1, and if you have nothing else to back up your idea that Splitting is okay at +3, then you are also wrong.

*You're going to say lances (from core where you can't pounce with a lance), Rhino's Rush (a spell from a class that gets very few spells per day and you're probably using a wand chamber from nowhere near that book), Battle Jump (a feat for a monstrous race with HD and LA that again most likely did not consider pounce), anything else?

I say it because it doesn't. It doubles their average damage, it doubles their potential damage, but it does not simply double the damage they do. A crit doubles damage. A valorous weapon doubles damage. Setting against a charge doubles damage. Using a lance when charging on a mount does double damage. Making twice as many attacks only gives you a chance to do double damage. This is -not- the same thing.
See above re: if you can assume Splitting's bonus attack miss, I can assume your non-splitting attacks miss. Let's take two base attacks. You hit one of two, I hit three of four. I guess that means Splitting triples my damage, wow it's even more broken than I thought.

You know, I hate the high-damage builds for this reason. As a DM, either they negate an encounter, or I negate them almost entirely. That means that any encounter that I want to make meaningful, I have to design around both negating them in a natural fashion, and to throw in minions so they have something to do. But it quickly becomes obvious that they aren't contributing to the actual fight, purely because I want there to be an actual fight.

Yes, there are several ways around it, but I don't really enjoy designing my encounters around abusing a character's weakness, and it gets old quickly. Not to mention that it could easily hurt other PCs as well, if they aren't as optimized.

It's like the idea of item familiars. If being awesome is balanced around the idea that it can be taken away and make you suck, then it's not balanced. You are making the DM choose when he wants you to not have fun, basically.
I agree. And once one realizes that those problematically high damage builds almost universally rely on combining effects from different books, it's suddenly really obvious where it all comes from. The only way to have a semblance of fair fight like the game (monster manuals etc.) is to keep an eye on that stuff and cut it off at a point before it becomes a problem. You can allow RAW stacking of stuff as long as you want, there are plenty of tricks to get bad classes to work better, but you should also cut it off before it exceeds the tolerance limits of the rest of the system.

eggynack

2016-10-13, 03:37 AM

You know, I hate the high-damage builds for this reason. As a DM, either they negate an encounter, or I negate them almost entirely. That means that any encounter that I want to make meaningful, I have to design around both negating them in a natural fashion, and to throw in minions so they have something to do. But it quickly becomes obvious that they aren't contributing to the actual fight, purely because I want there to be an actual fight.
Yeah, oddly enough, a highly optimized caster can oftentimes be more party friendly. Their method of enemy disposal usually involves dividing up the encounter, partially neutralizing prime targets, and getting allies to be better at destroying the now weakened foes. It's an incredibly strong strategy, partially because it's so difficult to stop, but it's also not necessarily the sort of strategy one would want to stop. This is one of the many reasons I usually point to casters as a solution when there are player/DM issues going on, because the caster method of awesomeness is way less obviously broken than the arguably much less broken mundane method. It's actually kinda weird how often the answer to these questions is, "Casters are great, be one of them." They simply have so many advantages in this arena.

Zanos

2016-10-13, 03:48 AM

Yeah, oddly enough, a highly optimized caster can oftentimes be more party friendly. Their method of enemy disposal usually involves dividing up the encounter, partially neutralizing prime targets, and getting allies to be better at destroying the now weakened foes. It's an incredibly strong strategy, partially because it's so difficult to stop, but it's also not necessarily the sort of strategy one would want to stop. This is one of the many reasons I usually point to casters as a solution when there are player/DM issues going on, because the caster method of awesomeness is way less obviously broken than the arguably much less broken mundane method. It's actually kinda weird how often the answer to these questions is, "Casters are great, be one of them." They simply have so many advantages in this arena.
"When you do things right, people won't be sure that you have done anything at all."

The most optimal methods of playing a Wizard tend to involve making your party strong and the enemies weak, while intelligent application of area denial and control let you minimize risk to your party. It might be obvious to you that the Fighter would have died three times over in the encounter if you weren't there. He might know it, too. But he felt useful carving through the enemies, and everyone having fun and contributing is the point of the game.

When Archmage Metamagic McFireball blows up the entire encounter in the first round, the disparity is a lot more clear, even if the Wizard in the first scenario could have rather trivially replaced the fighter with a reanimated ogre.

eggynack

2016-10-13, 03:52 AM

You've lost me there, I'm pretty sure I didn't say the DM had read the feat, you're right that my claim is the opposite. A DM allowing all sources probably has not read all sources, so if you bring a build using something they haven't seen they don't know what to expect. Admittedly that's pretty poor DMing too, you should be checking everything your players build before it hits the table, but most don't seem to bother.
But if they're not looking closely at the build, who cares about obscurity? You don't have to read the source to read the feat. Just ask for a citation and you can read the whole thing pretty fast.

My point is that to the author of a handbook dedicated to wringing every last drop out of druids, a "reasonably optimized" charging build is grossly overpowered to many tables. What components are you using? I assume it involves pounce and gobs of power attack probably powered by shocktrooper, and once again I think it's pretty obvious that no dev considered that standard.

Those, maybe a couple of others depending on the situation. But take note of the qualities going into such a build. All the necessary feats and abilities are from sources relatively non-obscure, and while you can do crazy PA stacking, those elements you just noted don't feature much in the way of doubling or tripling down from multiple stacking feats. A lot of druid stuff, incidentally, has those same qualities. Yes, you absolutely can make use of tricks that use several semi-obscure sources in concert, but you can also very much not do that and still be awesome. More awesome than this obscure source and stacking using build. And, in a lot of ways, more difficult to get a handle on. Because even a core druid is going to have a ridiculous number of forms, summons, and spells that the DM would arguably need a handle on. All this to say, obscurity isn't even necessarily a good metric for what a DM will or won't understand.

I'm going off on a bit of a tangent. The OP's build was neither a harmless dance nor a monstrous char-op "trick," but a third form of annoyance the "slip it past the DM since he's not familiar with it." Which presumably was an accident in this case.
I dunno. I feel like that'd put anything in a build that happens to surprise the DM for any reason into that category, and that doesn't seem all that fair to the player. At some point, it's really the DM's responsibility, rather than some sneaky maneuver.

If you've slowly put together a build over time you're likely to know how much each part contributed, which were the biggest jumps in power. If someone rattles off a list of stuff you've never heard of and you just do it, you'll have a bunch of big numbers without a real sense of what that means compared to your older unoptimized characters, just that suddenly you have huge numbers. Lots of people just don't instinctively analyze stuff the way you'd need to notice a possible red flag. While it's become clear this example wasn't nearly so dramatic, it's still a thing that can/has/will happen.
There might be something to that, but it's not like the parts are contributing to a weird whole or something. There's not some weird combo here. This feat makes you deal damage. That feat makes you deal damage. This item makes you get more attacks. The combination is obviously going to deal a bunch of damage. How much damage, maybe less clear, but a back of the envelope calculation doesn't seem that crazy. Like, baseline calculation, this build has, what, a 34 to dexterity (not in the mood to check), and some number of attacks which is presumably on the character sheet. The build is getting 1.5x the dexterity bonus to each hit, so that's +18 damage for each hit, multiplied by the number of attacks. Then you add in the really clear cut scout granted number, as well as weapon damage, and you have a decent upper bound. Make an arbitrary estimate of how many attacks are likely to hit, and you have a middle of the road estimate, and assume only one or two attacks hit for the lower bound. That sounds like about five minutes, maybe ten, if you have the sheet in front of you. I guess he might have just not thought to do it.

Zanos

2016-10-13, 03:58 AM

I agree. And once one realizes that those problematically high damage builds almost universally rely on combining effects from different books, it's suddenly really obvious where it all comes from. The only way to have a semblance of fair fight like the game (monster manuals etc.) is to keep an eye on that stuff and cut it off at a point before it becomes a problem. You can allow RAW stacking of stuff as long as you want, there are plenty of tricks to get bad classes to work better, but you should also cut it off before it exceeds the tolerance limits of the rest of the system.
You can ruin every printed monster in core with just core resources. I mentioned I hated stupid damage builds to start and I stand by that, but I think it's disingenuous to pretend the game becomes less balanced as you add more books when both Fighters and Druids are core.

Thaneus

2016-10-13, 04:16 AM

Why does this threat transforms to a justification for using supplements or not? At least that what i see in the last posts.

CO states his DM gave them this boon and used his valid option to get inspiration and guidance from GitP users to optimize, which they did.
It was already stated in previous posts: Talk to your team (=players and DM).
They will tell you if they feel depressed or corned or anything else, if not, serves them right to stay depressed, you did your part of the job.

Your DM has the power to give this weapon and it might be he followed the valid conclusion ranged combatants in 3.5 need more love because they suck compared to melee.

He can just make you dead on track with an crit-immune DR15 something and you damage hit rock bottom (i assume just 1D6 +10ish is left then -15 DR leaves 0-1 dmg) or just plain old immune to pierce damage (don't know if this exists in 3.5).
Will you complain then? I think not the first time this occurs. But when you are smart you will workout some trick to prevent something like this again (i remember arrowheads with bludgeoning damage but worse range).

My point here is, the DM can workout something too, be it a windwall magic item on the boss or deflect arrow spell. Maybe he is the type who likes to challenge the players and being challenged himself. If he is not, that is unfortunate but then you need to talk to each other even more. We can only assume from your point of view, which is not very sufficient but all we have.

Mordaedil

2016-10-13, 04:30 AM

My way to have fights be memorable and feel like a challenge is by having encounters where the players have to think their way through rather than just straight up roll through the encounter. Have a bad guy that is a little tougher than what they should be able to handle, and if they defeat him normally, that is fine, but I always then also include little things in the encounter to make it easier. Bridges with ropes to cut, pits to push the enemy down, boiling pots of oil hanging over the bad guy, not stuff to kill him outright, but to weaken him to the point where they can deal with the encounter more easily.

Fizban

2016-10-13, 05:08 AM

You can ruin every printed monster in core with just core resources. I mentioned I hated stupid damage builds to start and I stand by that, but I think it's disingenuous to pretend the game becomes less balanced as you add more books when both Fighters and Druids are core.
That'd be why it's a semblance of a fair fight. I'd say it's more disingenuous to claim it doesn't become less balanced, just because casters start out bad doesn't mean they can't get worse. A wizard/incantatrix is obviously more unbalanced than a normal wizard, even if it's just academic because wizards were already broke. And when we're talking about damage builds, core is so much more limited than splats it's not even a comparison.

But if they're not looking closely at the build, who cares about obscurity? You don't have to read the source to read the feat. Just ask for a citation and you can read the whole thing pretty fast. . . That sounds like about five minutes, maybe ten, if you have the sheet in front of you. I guess he might have just not thought to do it.
The player is the one who's supposed to be looking at obscurity in this case: the DM gave them carte blanche, the player took something out of an obscure book and didn't think twice, and if he did to a damage check he didn't give warning. I'm not saying it's difficult, I'm just saying that people don't do it. Assuming that people will be cautious and communicative is often a poor assumption.

And did I ever say not to use splats? My allowed list is "anything you want, including and especially homebrew, subject to DM approval." It's the bit at the end that people want to ignore, DMs not checking their PCs and player's not warning their DM when they've stepped up their game.

ace rooster

2016-10-13, 06:06 AM

As I see it, the game is not about the GM/DM bringing the players close to 0 HP.

The game is not about TPK.

The game is about telling an adventure.

The DM/GM should be happy that your charecter reduces the chance of TPK.

Why do you think high damage characters reduce the chance of TPK? Generally they do not have the defences to match their offence, so when the DM scales up encounters to make them less trivial they will actually be more dangerous. For example; instead of facing a cr 13 young adult red dragon which would die in a round, you will face an adult with an enhancement to con. This makes it more survivable, but it also ups the DC on it's breath weapon by a chunk meaning a TPK is far more likely.

This sort of build makes the DM's life much more difficult, because all enemies have to be custom to avoid either you nuking them, or them nuking you (due to them getting massive offences as a side effect of them getting the required defences in a standard way).

eggynack

2016-10-13, 06:55 AM

That'd be why it's a semblance of a fair fight. I'd say it's more disingenuous to claim it doesn't become less balanced, just because casters start out bad doesn't mean they can't get worse. A wizard/incantatrix is obviously more unbalanced than a normal wizard, even if it's just academic because wizards were already broke. And when we're talking about damage builds, core is so much more limited than splats it's not even a comparison.
But the only balance that ultimately matters is intraparty balance, so if wizards are getting better in a largely academic way, and damage dealers are gaining real and measurable advantages, then balance is increasing.

The player is the one who's supposed to be looking at obscurity in this case: the DM gave them carte blanche, the player took something out of an obscure book and didn't think twice, and if he did to a damage check he didn't give warning.
Why should the player look at obscurity? Again, something being obscure has little to do with power, so the only factor relevant is whether the DM knows about the ability, and again, if the DM is simply not paying much attention to the abilities, then obscurity doesn't matter all that much. He didn't do a damage check of the archer just like he wouldn't have done a damage check for the relatively non-obscure source using charger.

I'm not saying it's difficult, I'm just saying that people don't do it. Assuming that people will be cautious and communicative is often a poor assumption.
Sure. But the thing is, that's not really the fault of the player.

And did I ever say not to use splats? My allowed list is "anything you want, including and especially homebrew, subject to DM approval." It's the bit at the end that people want to ignore, DMs not checking their PCs and player's not warning their DM when they've stepped up their game.
I don't think I said you didn't use splats. And, y'know, if someone just opens up a source list, that's essentially tacit approval of the books being used.

Fizban

2016-10-13, 08:26 AM

But the only balance that ultimately matters is intraparty balance, so if wizards are getting better in a largely academic way, and damage dealers are gaining real and measurable advantages, then balance is increasing.
I think that's a pretty big fallacy actually. The party isn't the only player in the game, what about the DM? The more hardcore the players optimize, the more hardcore the DM has to optimize. You can't just throw mailmen or uberchargers or whatever the uber swift hunter's called against stock monsters and expect everything to be fine. And unlike the players who do it once, the DM has to keep doing it for every single encounter, unless they just keep repeating the same monster build. It's extra work on top of extra work. Eventually you reach a point where the DM has to just fiat stuff in order to make it work, unless they're really just so much better than all four players put together.

Why should the player look at obscurity? Again, something being obscure has little to do with power, so the only factor relevant is whether the DM knows about the ability, and again, if the DM is simply not paying much attention to the abilities, then obscurity doesn't matter all that much.
Do you forget about everything in the player's handbook unless you check it every time? Pretty sure you don't. The DM already knows plenty of stuff without paying attention, probably quite a bit if they think they can just allow everything and not bother checking. Doesn't change the fact that if you pull something they don't actually know it might cause a problem, and the more obscure the source the more likely they won't already know it from past experience. That's what I've been saying and I don't think I can say it any more simply than that.

Sure. But the thing is, that's not really the fault of the player.
It's not the fault of the player that they didn't know how powerful their build was and that it might be disruptive? Yes it is. It's also the fault of the DM, who should have caught it second, but the player had the first opportunity to stop it.

I don't think I said you didn't use splats. And, y'know, if someone just opens up a source list, that's essentially tacit approval of the books being used.
Thaneus implied it. And my whole point is that the people do stupid things like tacitly approving everything without knowing what's actually out there (or rating anything based on a book list, or. . .) It follows from there that maybe the experienced optimizers, who should know better, will excercise some caution when suggesting max power builds just because a poster said the books were allowed. And the posters should actually evaluate what the build's going to do compared to the games they've been playing. And the DMs should pay attention and stop "allowing" all books when they don't know what could happen. And whole lot of people should be communicating and using caution, which as I already said is a fool's bet, which is why it annoys me.

Crake

2016-10-13, 08:31 AM

eggynack

2016-10-13, 09:04 AM

I think that's a pretty big fallacy actually. The party isn't the only player in the game, what about the DM? The more hardcore the players optimize, the more hardcore the DM has to optimize. You can't just throw mailmen or uberchargers or whatever the uber swift hunter's called against stock monsters and expect everything to be fine. And unlike the players who do it once, the DM has to keep doing it for every single encounter, unless they just keep repeating the same monster build. It's extra work on top of extra work. Eventually you reach a point where the DM has to just fiat stuff in order to make it work, unless they're really just so much better than all four players put together.
You could mostly just up the CR though. There's usually a level of beef/power, strictly going by standard monsters or even standard monsters+templates, that this kinda build won't work against. Upping monster quantity helps a lot too, because those builds you mentioned operate off of targeting monsters rather than striking a broad area. Really, if there's a problem with these builds, it's less that they're super powerful and more that they're super swingy. Plans that stop them tend to stop them completely.

Do you forget about everything in the player's handbook unless you check it every time? Pretty sure you don't. The DM already knows plenty of stuff without paying attention, probably quite a bit if they think they can just allow everything and not bother checking. Doesn't change the fact that if you pull something they don't actually know it might cause a problem, and the more obscure the source the more likely they won't already know it from past experience. That's what I've been saying and I don't think I can say it any more simply than that.
But if I'm looking at a character sheet, and one of the things on it is just completely unknown to me, the plan has to be finding out what it is. Even if just by asking the player. If you don't do that, it's hard to say that you're really looking at the thing.

It's not the fault of the player that they didn't know how powerful their build was and that it might be disruptive? Yes it is. It's also the fault of the DM, who should have caught it second, but the player had the first opportunity to stop it.
Practically no build outside of TO is simply powerful in a vacuum. A player thus cannot determine how powerful their build is. Because, whether you agree or not that intraparty balance is the only important factor, it's definitely the most important factor, and a player has limited perspective on that issue.

Thaneus implied it. And my whole point is that the people do stupid things like tacitly approving everything without knowing what's actually out there (or rating anything based on a book list, or. . .) It follows from there that maybe the experienced optimizers, who should know better, will excercise some caution when suggesting max power builds just because a poster said the books were allowed. And the posters should actually evaluate what the build's going to do compared to the games they've been playing. And the DMs should pay attention and stop "allowing" all books when they don't know what could happen. And whole lot of people should be communicating and using caution, which as I already said is a fool's bet, which is why it annoys me.
I don't think that optimizers should generally reduce the power of suggested builds. It's way easier to adapt down than adapt up, simply by taking out some quantity of the powerful things being used. It's like, when someone asks for a metamagic build, what you do is link the mailman. You don't really expect them to use everything up to and including nested arcane fusions, but the underlying concept is what you're asserting they should use, and the listed tools are what they should pick from. And, as I noted above, unless the player has a great deal of knowledge about the expected power level of the campaign, there's really not a lot they can do to determine how many of these tools they should use. Thus, I think it's mostly a DM issue, and one that doesn't really have much to do with book allowance. The issue is simply reading the feat. It's right there. There aren't that many of them. It could be from complete warrior or from some dragon magazine, but if you don't know what it does offhand, then you find out what it does. It's really not that complicated.

Fizban

2016-10-13, 10:26 AM

If you don't do that, it's hard to say that you're really looking at the thing.
You keep saying the DM is looking at the thing, when I'm saying he's not. That's part of the problem.

Practically no build outside of TO is simply powerful in a vacuum. A player thus cannot determine how powerful their build is. Because, whether you agree or not that intraparty balance is the only important factor, it's definitely the most important factor, and a player has limited perspective on that issue.
I am assuming the group has played DnD before, in this group, as it has been mentioned they've played before. One player, if they're paying any attention, should know roughly how well the others perform, or at the very least how well their own last character performed. That is not a vacuum. They know what power level they were playing at before, that doesn't magically disappear, it's the closest possible frame of reference that's not actually building their characters side by side for the new game.

I don't think that optimizers should generally reduce the power of suggested builds. It's way easier to adapt down than adapt up, simply by taking out some quantity of the powerful things being used. It's like, when someone asks for a metamagic build, what you do is link the mailman. You don't really expect them to use everything up to and including nested arcane fusions, but the underlying concept is what you're asserting they should use, and the listed tools are what they should pick from.
That is literally the whole freaking problem right there! You don't expect them to do it, because you know better. They don't know better, and take you at your word. The only difference it that you're talking about linking handbooks, which are actually structured that way. I am not talking about handbooks. I am talking about people straight up saying use this build, followed by a build. And how are they supposed to know what tools to pick from without studying the entire handbook to learn all the tools and how they work? People who ask for a build want a build, an answer, not a book to study (unless of course someone gives a link and they do follow it), and you're expecting them to. . . study the build and deconstruct it into something suitable for their game. To take a simple answer and make more work out of it instead of copying it. An answer they've been assured is totally legal and won't break the game.

And, as I noted above, unless the player has a great deal of knowledge about the expected power level of the campaign, there's really not a lot they can do to determine how many of these tools they should use.
This is only true if the DM is changing power levels, which was true in this case but is not in others, or if it's an inexperienced group in which case the DM is even less likely to know how to handle things and the players are even more responsible for not making a mess of their own bed. If the group is playing as they always have, then they know perfectly well what the expected power level of the campaign is. So you're willing to assume ignorance of things people should know from past experience (like their group's power level or mechanics the DM has used in the past), but it's inconceivable people could have ignorance of things they haven't studied or used before (they must know how those tools work and it's only the power level they don't know about, the DM can't not have read the stuff in that book no one's used before). Backwards.

Thus, I think it's mostly a DM issue, and one that doesn't really have much to do with book allowance. The issue is simply reading the feat. It's right there. There aren't that many of them. It could be from complete warrior or from some dragon magazine, but if you don't know what it does offhand, then you find out what it does. It's really not that complicated.
Spoken as someone who has already mastered the system. There's the oft-quoted line about how learning how to optimize 3.5 characters is comparable to a university minor. There are in fact plenty of players and DMs that have not taken that minor. You can say "it's just one feat" all you want, but if the game is just a game to them they're not going to go looking up everything they don't recognize just because. And it's not "just one feat," it's several feats, and class abilities, and magic items, in combination, not even all included on an attack line. After you look up the pieces you don't know you have to put it together with the pieces you do know, which takes more time. As someone who has already mastered the system you might be able to see parts of it instantly, but expecting everyone else to do so is bogus.

And none of that matters unless the DM is actually checking the sheets, which you should not be assuming. Seriously, have you seen any of Jon_Dahl's threads? The man refuses to look at his player's sheets. He's particularly bad, but come on, if every DM was properly vetting their players' sheets then there would never be any "my DM suddenly thinks my character is overpowered" threads, which we still get for 3.5 even though it's more than a decade old.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. It would be nice if all DMs checked their players' sheets and their encounters and knew everything and looked up everything they didn't and hey they don't. If you're going to suggest things you know perfectly well are too strong for a normal* game, then you'd better make sure you teach them how to use it and not just assume they'll somehow know that it could be too much or their DM will catch it. That's like teaching someone how to pull a trigger without telling them guns are dangerous and expecting someone else to do it for you before something bad happens. Except the other person doesn't know what a gun is either. And then it suddenly goes off in game.

*If you have to blanketly switch to overleveled monsters oruse dedicated countermeasures, it's not normal anymore.

And yes, I know that eggynack is not going around answering threads with flat builds (or at least I generally don't think he is), the point about handbooks is pretty important up there. But as he's the one responding to my tangent with disbelief and regular posts, and I can't type walls of text responding to one person while targeting an ambiguous third, it's written the way it is. If you're confused, replace all those you's up there with you and see if it makes sense. I will also point out that I'm one of the first to say, "DM screwed up and need to read the damn character sheets," but that is in fact the exact opposite of assuming they'll just do it on their own.

eggynack

2016-10-13, 05:40 PM

You keep saying the DM is looking at the thing, when I'm saying he's not. That's part of the problem.]
If he's not looking, then obscurity is irrelevant. If he is looking, then he should really be transcending the obscurity.

I am assuming the group has played DnD before, in this group, as it has been mentioned they've played before. One player, if they're paying any attention, should know roughly how well the others perform, or at the very least how well their own last character performed. That is not a vacuum. They know what power level they were playing at before, that doesn't magically disappear, it's the closest possible frame of reference that's not actually building their characters side by side for the new game.
I don't think it's a safe assumption that the power level here is obvious. There's this boon magic item, big stat bonuses all around, and apparently a history of sporadic power levels relative to enemies.

That is literally the whole freaking problem right there! You don't expect them to do it, because you know better. They don't know better, and take you at your word. The only difference it that you're talking about linking handbooks, which are actually structured that way. I am not talking about handbooks. I am talking about people straight up saying use this build, followed by a build. And how are they supposed to know what tools to pick from without studying the entire handbook to learn all the tools and how they work? People who ask for a build want a build, an answer, not a book to study (unless of course someone gives a link and they do follow it), and you're expecting them to. . . study the build and deconstruct it into something suitable for their game. To take a simple answer and make more work out of it instead of copying it. An answer they've been assured is totally legal and won't break the game.
If a player has limited knowledge of what the power level of a game is, then random forum folk aren't gonna know either.

This is only true if the DM is changing power levels, which was true in this case but is not in others, or if it's an inexperienced group in which case the DM is even less likely to know how to handle things and the players are even more responsible for not making a mess of their own bed. If the group is playing as they always have, then they know perfectly well what the expected power level of the campaign is. So you're willing to assume ignorance of things people should know from past experience (like their group's power level or mechanics the DM has used in the past), but it's inconceivable people could have ignorance of things they haven't studied or used before (they must know how those tools work and it's only the power level they don't know about, the DM can't not have read the stuff in that book no one's used before). Backwards.
It's not necessarily down to the DM changing power levels. If the party is pulling out some higher tier classes this time, or maybe optimizing more than usual, then that'd represent a power shift in just the same way as the DM upping the power level artificially.

Spoken as someone who has already mastered the system. There's the oft-quoted line about how learning how to optimize 3.5 characters is comparable to a university minor. There are in fact plenty of players and DMs that have not taken that minor. You can say "it's just one feat" all you want, but if the game is just a game to them they're not going to go looking up everything they don't recognize just because. And it's not "just one feat," it's several feats, and class abilities, and magic items, in combination, not even all included on an attack line. After you look up the pieces you don't know you have to put it together with the pieces you do know, which takes more time. As someone who has already mastered the system you might be able to see parts of it instantly, but expecting everyone else to do so is bogus.
But it's not like these are the high complexity feats, abilities, and items. I don't think it takes years of system study to identify that, hey, if he's taking this thing that ups damage from dexterity, and that other thing that does the same, then maybe he's trying to up his damage through the medium of dexterity. Because, seriously, you ask me a week or two ago what dead eye does and how powerful it is, and I'll have no frigging idea. I think it's come up once or twice on this forum, and there could be some knowledge vestiges, but I'm not necessarily going to know these things offhand. Sure, I can rely on knowledge more than some, but when I say, "He can look it up," I'm saying it not from on high, but from the perspective of someone who looks things up a whole hell of a lot. Do you have any idea how frequently I've faced a rules question on this forum, had absolutely no idea what the thing the rules question was based on was, let alone what the answer was, checked the books for information of various kinds, and then produced an answer? A lot. Maybe some people have an easily referenceable rule book in their minds, but I look things up and do it a lot, no instantly about it. The level of analysis I'd expect out of this arbitrary DM is far lower.

And none of that matters unless the DM is actually checking the sheets, which you should not be assuming. Seriously, have you seen any of Jon_Dahl's threads? The man refuses to look at his player's sheets. He's particularly bad, but come on, if every DM was properly vetting their players' sheets then there would never be any "my DM suddenly thinks my character is overpowered" threads, which we still get for 3.5 even though it's more than a decade old.
But again, if he's not checking, then who cares about obscurity? If there's never an opportunity to say, "Hey, I dunno what this feat does, I guess I'll assume it's fine," then it doesn't matter.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. It would be nice if all DMs checked their players' sheets and their encounters and knew everything and looked up everything they didn't and hey they don't. If you're going to suggest things you know perfectly well are too strong for a normal* game, then you'd better make sure you teach them how to use it and not just assume they'll somehow know that it could be too much or their DM will catch it. That's like teaching someone how to pull a trigger without telling them guns are dangerous and expecting someone else to do it for you before something bad happens. Except the other person doesn't know what a gun is either. And then it suddenly goes off in game.

*If you have to blanketly switch to overleveled monsters oruse dedicated countermeasures, it's not normal anymore.
I don't think there really is a normal game. Some people play fireball wizards and weapon focus fighters, facing off against monsters with CR prescribed by the books. Some people play god wizards and uberchargers, and need something more powerful to face off against. The idea that there's some perfectly known balance level that forumites were deviating from with known risks doesn't seem all that reflective of reality to me.

And yes, I know that eggynack is not going around answering threads with flat builds (or at least I generally don't think he is), the point about handbooks is pretty important up there. But as he's the one responding to my tangent with disbelief and regular posts, and I can't type walls of text responding to one person while targeting an ambiguous third, it's written the way it is. If you're confused, replace all those you's up there with you and see if it makes sense. I will also point out that I'm one of the first to say, "DM screwed up and need to read the damn character sheets," but that is in fact the exact opposite of assuming they'll just do it on their own.
Depends a bit on the thread. My general tendency is to post a list of applicable build options, y'know, feats, ACF's, spells, and so on, but sometimes a thread wants something a bit more static. And also, sometimes I just have a build in mind. But, in a lot of ways, I think the static build is tantamount to the build option list. Either way, you're getting that list of feats and such. It's just that they happen to be in a different format. To that extent, I think that it has more to do with posting style than with some sort of overarching forum advice ethics.

Fizban

2016-10-13, 08:47 PM

If he's not looking, then obscurity is irrelevant. If he is looking, then he should really be transcending the obscurity.
But again, if he's not checking, then who cares about obscurity? If there's never an opportunity to say, "Hey, I dunno what this feat does, I guess I'll assume it's fine," then it doesn't matter.
How many times to I have to say the player is the one who should be caring about the obscurity? You're putting everything on the DM, I'm saying that the player needs to step up and be part of the solution instead of part of the problem. You're not responding to my point.

I don't think it's a safe assumption that the power level here is obvious. There's this boon magic item, big stat bonuses all around, and apparently a history of sporadic power levels relative to enemies.
Yes, I am aware of that, but I was not aware of that when I started my rant. Now consider the case where they do know, even if they didn't mention it or lack the mastery to articulate it, which is to be expected by people that are asking for help instead of learning on their own.

If a player has limited knowledge of what the power level of a game is, then random forum folk aren't gonna know either.
Which is why you should make conservative suggestions instead of going balls to the wall at the drop of a hat.

Do you have any idea how frequently I've faced a rules question on this forum, had absolutely no idea what the thing the rules question was based on was, let alone what the answer was, checked the books for information of various kinds, and then produced an answer?
Do you realize that the ability to research quickly is a skill, with DnD being a particular field in which you are quite practiced in your research? Lots of people don't have all the books (see also: obscurity), lots of mechanics don't have entire threads about them that'll pop up on a google search, and most importantly, lots of people don't know that they could probably just google it and find out. Which assumes once again that they were even planning on doing so in the first place.

I don't think there really is a normal game. Some people play fireball wizards and weapon focus fighters, facing off against monsters with CR prescribed by the books. Some people play god wizards and uberchargers, and need something more powerful to face off against. The idea that there's some perfectly known balance level that forumites were deviating from with known risks doesn't seem all that reflective of reality to me.
I'm sure there's a fallacy for that, the "well there's technically no such thing as average so we can't actually expect anything" argument. There's no such thing as an average person either, yet society continues making laws based on what is expected of them, everyone weather they admit it or not has an idea of an average person in their head and can rate others in relation to their conceptual average. Refusing to consider it just means throwing away a tool that exists for a reason.

You list people fighting CR appropriate monsters vs god wizards and uberchargers as if they're equal, but in the eyes of the books they are clearly not. The book says a monster is CR X, if your party is beating it more easily than CRX then by definition your party is overpowered compared to what the game expects, period. So which is more useful, pretending there's no such thing as average, or taking the same average the books use as a starting point?

I think that it has more to do with posting style than with some sort of overarching forum advice ethics.
If you poke at people this is probably the more common truth, if you stick around in a thread for more than one post you're gonna end up expanding on the topic and providing more information. But there are some posters that don't, and call it style or negligence it's annoying, especially when they're immediately followed by a bunch of others who go "yeah do that, yeah that's totally legal and not OP at all," who are clearly exercising even less diligence than the person who gave the suggestion.

eggynack

2016-10-13, 09:13 PM

How many times to I have to say the player is the one who should be caring about the obscurity? You're putting everything on the DM, I'm saying that the player needs to step up and be part of the solution instead of part of the problem. You're not responding to my point.
But what you're saying makes no sense. Obscurity literally only matters to the extent that the DM already knows about the build, because if they don't know what's on the sheet, any character choices are equally obscure.

Yes, I am aware of that, but I was not aware of that when I started my rant. Now consider the case where they do know, even if they didn't mention it or lack the mastery to articulate it, which is to be expected by people that are asking for help instead of learning on their own.

Either way, not necessarily a safe assumption. Power level can change, even if it's through something as simple as picking different classes.

Which is why you should make conservative suggestions instead of going balls to the wall at the drop of a hat.
I still tend to think that you're better off saying all of the things and then allowing it to be modified down. Also, not all that convinced this was balls to the wall. It's a relatively efficient archery build. Good at damage, bad at what is likely most other things, capable of being shut down even in combat. Didn't even seemingly make use of that one weird force bow, which may or may not (I assert not, but still) bypass wind effects.

Do you realize that the ability to research quickly is a skill, with DnD being a particular field in which you are quite practiced in your research? Lots of people don't have all the books (see also: obscurity), lots of mechanics don't have entire threads about them that'll pop up on a google search, and most importantly, lots of people don't know that they could probably just google it and find out. Which assumes once again that they were even planning on doing so in the first place.
That googling thing is so easy though. It's what I did. I suppose I do know some folks that're weirdly bad at simple googling. However, whether the DM knows the deal with the feat or not, the player should really be able to point to what it is, making the discovery process relatively trivial.

I'm sure there's a fallacy for that, the "well there's technically no such thing as average so we can't actually expect anything" argument. There's no such thing as an average person either, yet society continues making laws based on what is expected of them, everyone weather they admit it or not has an idea of an average person in their head and can rate others in relation to their conceptual average. Refusing to consider it just means throwing away a tool that exists for a reason.
People have some average in terms of what you'd expect them to do from some moral perspective. That doesn't mean I'd expect people to be anywhere near equally capable, and D&D is perhaps even swingier than reality.

You list people fighting CR appropriate monsters vs god wizards and uberchargers as if they're equal, but in the eyes of the books they are clearly not. The book says a monster is CR X, if your party is beating it more easily than CRX then by definition your party is overpowered compared to what the game expects, period. So which is more useful, pretending there's no such thing as average, or taking the same average the books use as a starting point?

The game's expected average is way too bad of a forecast for it to make serious sense as a global average. The crappy designer created characters, the ones that made just about the worst decisions possible, were expected to beat CR appropriate encounters. Most builds of even decent optimization are going to break that CR mold. And then, of course, there's the fact that CR is a crappy enough metric that crushing high CR encounters doesn't mean all that much. My usual example of this is a completely normal riding dog going up against an armored riding dog that happens to be backed by a druid, which really doesn't take much optimization, but tons of monsters fail to match up CR-wise beyond that. All that means that, even if we say that our theoretical character is evenly matched against some even CR monster, that even CR monster may itself match up evenly against a higher CR monster, meaning that our established even CR character is outperforming your average while maintaining within your average. Which is internally contradictory, of course, meaning that there really isn't such a thing as an average.

If you poke at people this is probably the more common truth, if you stick around in a thread for more than one post you're gonna end up expanding on the topic and providing more information. But there are some posters that don't, and call it style or negligence it's annoying, especially when they're immediately followed by a bunch of others who go "yeah do that, yeah that's totally legal and not OP at all," who are clearly exercising even less diligence than the person who gave the suggestion.
What I meant by style is that I just tend to prefer the array of options style, especially because it matches up well with what I've already got in my handbook. It is, in a lot of ways, easier for me to do. Other people are going to have more experience constructing builds entirely, as opposed to my relative greater experience evaluating individual options, so such a thing is easier for them. What people do afterwards is, I suppose, a different thing, and a thing I don't know about in this case.

ManicOppressive

2016-10-13, 09:16 PM

Not sure I've got a lot new to add to the thread, but I just wanted to chime in and say that if a Swift Hunter is breaking your GM's encounters that's the fault of the encounters, not the Swift Hunter. That's a great class, very powerful, but it's not exactly a difficult character concept to work around.

Kelb_Panthera

2016-10-13, 09:25 PM

If you've slowly put together a build over time you're likely to know how much each part contributed, which were the biggest jumps in power. If someone rattles off a list of stuff you've never heard of and you just do it, you'll have a bunch of big numbers without a real sense of what that means compared to your older unoptimized characters, just that suddenly you have huge numbers. Lots of people just don't instinctively analyze stuff the way you'd need to notice a possible red flag. While it's become clear this example wasn't nearly so dramatic, it's still a thing that can/has/will happen.

Anti build planning, noted.

But you are saying it should have 1 1/2 times it's primary stat to damage, when one of the core restrictions on archery is that it doesn't get it's primary stat to damage. Your optimization arms race assumes that for every stride one person in the group makes that every other person will make the same stride. That's not how it actually works. One guy brings in an effect from a book that no one's ever used before, suddenly he jumps ahead of the curve. Now unless everyone else scrambles to find something else to power themselves up, including the DM, that guy is overpowered. Gonna make a crude generalization here and say that a heck of a lot of the time, the guy playing the BSF doesn't want to think much himself, and does not have a "well-optimized" build. Unless that guy suddenly becomes a different guy it's quite likely that the archer player can in fact outdamage him into the ground because you believe that melee is so far ahead.

I'm not making -any- presumptions about specific play-groups. I'm working from my own extensive knowledge of what can be done in this game by RAW. If -one- person builds a melee and a ranged character with equal knowledge of how to do either, it becomes painfully obvious that there is no point where archery pulls even with melee, much less ahead. Of couse I acknowledge that most players have varying degrees of optimization knowledge with varying focuses for that knowledge. Also, I'd swear the goal-post was a few yards further to the right a moment ago. :smallamused:

As for that comment about "core restrictions," why ever leave core if you want to stick to those restrictions? The whole point of adding more material to the game is to do new things and bypass old restrictions.

Finally, the OP didn't have to show much thought to get where he's at. He just asked an internet forum. What stops the BSF from doing the same and having a leap-pouncing ubercharger handed to him on a silver platter?

You're the one claiming it's okay to stack anything you find because the designers wanted people to find wacky combos, as if that means there was some intent that all material could, nay should be combined. You're also maintaining that the two writers has nothing to do with each other, which means that no, those designers could not have intended that their material be combined. So which is it? I say that just because the designers intended people to optimize their builds does not mean they expected everything to combine without potential problems, and that not duplicating and stacking the same feats is one of those acknowledgements.

It's both.

The overall design philosophy the designers were approaching charcacter building from was to have players be able to dumpster dive for every ounce of advantage they could find. By that metric, dead eye + crossbow sniper is -exactly- what was intended. This was the intention I was highlighting.

Those two specific designers making those two specific feats likely had no idea the other feat existed (don't know off the top of my head which came first) and probably didn't intend for them to stack but -neither- did they intend them not to stack. They had no intent there either way. This is the -absence- of intent that I was highlighting.

I'd love to see this non-precision crossbow build that is also "well-optimized." I'm guessing maybe Dragonfire Inspiration? Great crossbow stacking size increases?

Either of those are good alternatives. Is that not a concession to my point?

Okay, so what about that non-splitting single attack? Because either you're assuming it hits every time, in which case Splitting will also hit every time as they use the same attack bonus, or you're assuming some average amount of hit, in which case you're using an average yourself. So which is it?

I'm not assuming either because you can't. That's the nature of an RNG. Even if I did assume the latter an average number of hits doesn't do average damage. It does X*damage for the attack, where X is the number of hits. However, it's not a given that it -will- hit an average number of times in any given full attack/ greater manyshot volley. If you're making bets on who will win a given fight, those averages are useful for making an informed bet. If you're actually in the fight, they don't matter at all, especially in light of terrain features you can't account for until they actually arise.

Iterative attacks don't double your damage because they come at an attack penalty. TWF doesn't double damage because it restricts your damage first by requiring light weapons and so on. Haste/Speed doesn't double damage because they only give one attack.

This is all true but nobody was saying they were. That said, they all have the potential to double the damage of any given full attack compared to the same full attack without them. Particularly, TWF doubles the number of attacks available (assuming you pay the feat taxes) until your fourth iterative and slides in just under doubling the average damage done.

Splitting does none of these things: it has no attack penalties, no damage restrictions, no limit on the number of attacks. It doubles your attacks, it deals the same damage, it uses the same bonus, it doubles your damage. You're simply ignoring the fact that sometimes people deal zero damage, and extra attacks resulting in a hit for single damage when you would have missed is lets see, divide by zero. . . that would be [system error] percent more damage. Or on average, you get double damage.

I acknowledged that it doubles -average- damage. Averages don't matter in an actual fight, only absolutes. A character fundamentally does a -random- amount of damage and splitting only shifts the weight of where that random value -might- land amongst the existing possibilities while increasing the high extreme on any given full attack/ manyshot volley. You're falling into the classic over-analysis trap of giving averages more weight than they actually hold.

So if they hide in a box instead of fighting, the DM runs 90% of encounters indoors (so no wilderness encounters or heaven forbid an outdoor campaign), most people seem to think DR is a joke and bows can break it more easily before considering that melee has to deal with the same problem (blah blah power attack blah blah you just said you want dex and a half), and there's a hell of a lot of creatures that don't have innate teleport or the treasure to do so, quite likely most of the game. Your argument is: if the DM hoses archers, archers are hosed.

Have you ever heard of a tree? How about a big rock? How about the walls of houses or garden walls? How about a freakin' tower shield? One of the fundamental points of engaging in ranged combat is to be aware and take advantage of cover and it's -everywhere- unless you're in a wide-open, featureless plain. Partial cover takes a big chunk out of long-range accuracy and total cover negates ranged attacks entirely outside of a few special abilities.

As for DR, it is a joke for melee characters outside of TWF'ers. It's a joke because it's trivial to get so much damage into individual attacks on melee builds that 5, 10, or 15 points off the top doesn't really matter much. For most ranged characters and TWF'ers, it's a serious probem because it's 5, 10, or 15 off of -every- hit and they rely on getting lots of hits, much smaller hits than their standard melee counterparts deliver. Yeah, you can carry a bunch of special material arrows or buy one of the DR bypassing enhancments but that's yet another batch of resources overcoming the weakness of the style just to keep up.

Ah, RAW is God, I must bow before. . . yeah no. Any idiot could tell you that introducing a discrete effect that suddenly doubles damage in a game where all but zero similar effects exist*

*You're going to say lances (from core where you can't pounce with a lance), Rhino's Rush (a spell from a class that gets very few spells per day and you're probably using a wand chamber from nowhere near that book), Battle Jump (a feat for a monstrous race with HD and LA that again most likely did not consider pounce), anything else?

I already mentioned lances and setting against the charge. Both core, both double damage. If you want to go outside of core, rhino's rush is a valid option and a paladin can cast it directly with no other resources spent. Pally's are already good chargers even in a core-only (:smallyuk:) setting. So is valorous for any charger. Doublings of -actual- damage values are a thing in a number of places, near doublings even more so. You don't have to like them, you don't have to allow them in your game, but you can't just pretend they don't exist or say that people who do use them are playing the game wrong. That's not your call to make.

As for RAW is law, the reason that's the presumption on forum discussions is because that's the only baseline we have for common understanding. What is or isn't reasonable is a subjective matter and, as such, cannot be the baseline. It is what it is. If you want to discard it, then we* have nothing left to discuss.

*that's a global "we," by the way, as in; without a common baseline we're all just arguing opinion and nobody -can- be right.

and every damage progression that's spelled out level by level follows a linear formula with no sudden doublings. I do not care in the slightest that it -is- a +1 and thats "the game as it is." The game has parts that are wrong, which is not surprising because it was written by people, and sometimes people are wrong. Valorous is -not- okay at +1, and if you have nothing else to back up your idea that Splitting is okay at +3, then you are also wrong.

There are a few places where RAW is objectively wrong. This is not one of them. Drown-healing is objectively wrong, a lot of example characters are objectively wrong (don't follow the rules), being unable to starve to death is objectively wrong. Valorous being a +1 instead of a higher value is just something you don't like. Nobody is here to discuss Fizban's ideal version of D&D.

See above re: if you can assume Splitting's bonus attack miss, I can assume your non-splitting attacks miss. Let's take two base attacks. You hit one of two, I hit three of four. I guess that means Splitting triples my damage, wow it's even more broken than I thought.

Stop assuming crap without context. That's a big part of what's tripping you up. Which do you assume if the enemy's AC puts your chance to hit at 50%? You can't assume either a hit or a miss for the extra attacks. It might double your damage, it might not add any damage at all, most of the time it will fall somewhere in between. What it doubles is your average. That value is great for long-term analysis or for making educated estimates of what you can or can't take on in a fight but its value drops to nothing in the actual fight itself.

Fizban

2016-10-13, 09:33 PM

But what you're saying makes no sense. Obscurity literally only matters to the extent that the DM already knows about the build, because if they don't know what's on the sheet, any character choices are equally obscure.
I have defined and explained this over and over again and you still don't get it. Obscure source=DM has no prior experience=player should warn the DM about their new capabilities. If you can't follow that path I don't know what to do.

That googling thing is so easy though. It's what I did. I suppose I do know some folks that're weirdly bad at simple googling.
Finally you admit the possibility someone lacks a skill you do. There's heck of a lot more than some people that are clueless about looking things up, I would say it's the majority of them in fact. And even if they google for things in real life, that doesn't mean they'll make the connection that they could for DnD. They might even think it'll be easier to look in a forum than just googling it, and then here we are.

However, whether the DM knows the deal with the feat or not, the player should really be able to point to what it is, making the discovery process relatively trivial.
That is what I've been saying, over and over. The player needs to tell the DM what they're doing with this thing the DM hasn't seen before, point it out so the DM knows they should go look it up in case they weren't going to do so on their own.

And then, of course, there's the fact that CR is a crappy enough metric that crushing high CR encounters doesn't mean all that much.
I was expecting that, I think I may have seen you say the same in another thread. CR is not the terrible metric that people claim it is, but if you steadfastly refuse to accept one the core concepts of the game then of course you're never going to be able to expect anything. That's on you, not the game.

Blackhawk748

2016-10-13, 09:43 PM

Heres Ranged characters biggest issue even when outdoors. The Spot distance penalty. For every 10ft between you and your target you take a -1 to your spot. So at 300 feet, a range that most archers can still happily engage at, you're taking a -30 to spot. Have fun seeing the enemy.

eggynack

2016-10-13, 10:35 PM

I have defined and explained this over and over again and you still don't get it. Obscure source=DM has no prior experience=player should warn the DM about their new capabilities. If you can't follow that path I don't know what to do.
I suppose it makes theoretical sense if the "obscure" ability is completely alien to the nature of the game within the smaller source set, because it means that the enemies won't be prepared for that general class of abilities, but this is simple damage stuff, plausibly available within a small book set (perhaps not core, but probably within the approximate sphere of core+completes). And, beyond that, archery itself exists within even core, so it's not like that's new. We're not dealing with non-core action economy shenanigans, which could demand something weird. We're talking about shooting damage filled arrows, a completely obvious plan. And, critically, even if the DM had no idea what was going on beyond that, it definitely seems like they were prepared for an archer.

Finally you admit the possibility someone lacks a skill you do. There's heck of a lot more than some people that are clueless about looking things up, I would say it's the majority of them in fact. And even if they google for things in real life, that doesn't mean they'll make the connection that they could for DnD. They might even think it'll be easier to look in a forum than just googling it, and then here we are.
It's just a weird thing. You literally type in the name of the feat, and then 3.5, and that's the whole process. I don't know what expertise would be missing.

That is what I've been saying, over and over. The player needs to tell the DM what they're doing with this thing the DM hasn't seen before, point it out so the DM knows they should go look it up in case they weren't going to do so on their own.
But it's not the player's responsibility to tell the DM what they do or don't know. If you don't know something, that's the time to ask.

I was expecting that, I think I may have seen you say the same in another thread. CR is not the terrible metric that people claim it is, but if you steadfastly refuse to accept one the core concepts of the game then of course you're never going to be able to expect anything. That's on you, not the game.
People show huge holes in the CR system all the time. I showed you one just now. Does CR tell you literally nothing about the power level of a monster? Absolutely not. But it's not going to work as this sort of average defining mechanic. If you think it will, that's really something you have to prove, and I suspect you'll struggle a lot.

Fizban

2016-10-13, 10:45 PM

Anti build planning, noted.
Heh, it's funny how you keep pegging me as anti- "things I actually encourage."

Also, I'd swear the goal-post was a few yards further to the right a moment ago. :smallamused:
The goal post is "get these people to take some responsibility for their suggestions." The more assumptions you try to hide behind, the more fields I have to put posts on.

Finally, the OP didn't have to show much thought to get where he's at. He just asked an internet forum. What stops the BSF from doing the same and having a leap-pouncing ubercharger handed to him on a silver platter?
You continue to invoke schrodenger's players, ignoring the the logical practice of assuming the worst to instead say that "well maybe the other guy's doing the same thing nyah." If you assume the worst, that no one else at the table is doing this, before giving advice, then you minimize the chance of accidents.

The overall design philosophy the designers were approaching charcacter building from was to have players be able to dumpster dive for every ounce of advantage they could find. By that metric, dead eye + crossbow sniper is -exactly- what was intended. This was the intention I was highlighting.
You're gonna need a pretty hefty quote for that, 'cause all I've ever seen is one (probably actually a forum post referring to one) about them leaving trap feats in the game, not expecting people to dive through a dozen books to accrue maximum power.

This is the -absence- of intent that I was highlighting.
And when you see lack of oversight you assume that you can do whatever you want instead of applying some oversight of your own.

Either of those are good alternatives. Is that not a concession to my point?
They're even more specific builds that have less to do with ranged attacks or crossbows than precision damage. Dragonfire works with literally any weapon, size increases are good for any weapon that starts at d8 or above. My counterpoint is that crossbows suck and anything that helps them helps anything, aside from crossbow specific feats.

I'm not assuming either because you can't. That's the nature of an RNG.
Yes, you are. You are pretending that doubling the damage of a single attack which hasn't hit yet results in more damage than doubling the number of attacks. Either it hasn't hit yet and it's not double damage either, or they're both double damage.

I acknowledged that it doubles -average- damage. Averages don't matter in an actual fight, only absolutes. A character fundamentally does a -random- amount of damage and splitting only shifts the weight of where that random value -might- land amongst the existing possibilities while increasing the high extreme on any given full attack/ manyshot volley. You're falling into the classic over-analysis trap of giving averages more weight than they actually hold.
And the absolute is that Valorous doesn't double damage any more than splitting does by this logic. Basically you like things that change the multiplier without adding more rolls because they look cleaner, you prefer one single die instead of a bell-curve. That's nice, doesn't change the fact that for any useful metric Splitting doubles damage.

Partial cover takes a big chunk out of long-range accuracy and total cover negates ranged attacks entirely outside of a few special abilities.
And requires you to sit there behind cover while being shot which means you lose. Unless there's nice perfectly spaced pieces of cover to leapfrog all the way to the PCs, or everyone has their own personal 50lb tower shield, so. . . archers are being hosed.

As for DR, it is a joke for melee characters outside of TWF'ers. It's a joke because it's trivial to get so much damage into individual attacks on melee builds that 5, 10, or 15 points off the top doesn't really matter much.
Only if your baseline of optimization is so high that this is true, which we already knew it was. If your baseline is not that high, archers have it easier thanks to what you're calling a resource sink.

Doublings of -actual- damage values are a thing in a number of places, near doublings even more so. You don't have to like them, you don't have to allow them in your game, but you can't just pretend they don't exist or say that people who do use them are playing the game wrong. That's not your call to make.
Still ignoring that "actual" damage values can be zero. Neither did I pretend they don't exist, though I did say they're wrong from an obvious game-design standpoint. You say it's not my call because either you trust the nebulous designers to know exactly what they're doing (but then you say they had an an -abscence- of intent), or more likely because you want freedom to do whatever you want and it's easiest to get that by adhering to books that can't change their minds or argue back.

As for RAW is law, the reason that's the presumption on forum discussions is because that's the only baseline we have for common understanding. What is or isn't reasonable is a subjective matter and, as such, cannot be the baseline.
And as I just did with eggynack, I call bs. There has always been a common baseline built into the game: the CR system, and the conglomeration of monsters to go with it. But the RAW hardcore optimizer types all say CR is broken and useless, now why is that? If you actually rated character power and found common ground based on the one thing that the game has for it, their ability to overcome monsters of various challenge ratings as part of a party, then you'd have to admit your characters are overpowered and that you're demanding the rest of the game catch up to them. It's much easier to claim CR is broken by citing the same few badly written monsters over and over again.

Note that I'm not claiming magic items and WBL are broken just because Valorous and Splitting are crazy.

Nobody is here to discuss Fizban's ideal version of D&D.
So your response is that you don't care about game design and refuse to evaluate any rules with flaws greater than pedantry, and anyone who dares to point it out is trying to force their ideal version of DnD on you. Got it.

Stop assuming crap without context. That's a big part of what's tripping you up. Which do you assume if the enemy's AC puts your chance to hit at 50%?
No, you stop assuming crap. I specifically didn't mention accuracy as part of the absurdity of the claim, yet you have shoved it in there, even though you're the one who keep claiming averages don't matter. You just applied accuracy and averages to the idea of double damage because it went against my absurd claim. Hint.

You can't assume either a hit or a miss for the extra attacks.
Neither can you assume a hit or a miss for the extra attacks. You are continually assuming a hit for the primary and then whining about how the secondary could miss.

It might double your damage, it might not add any damage at all, most of the time it will fall somewhere in between. What it doubles is your average. That value is great for long-term analysis or for making educated estimates of what you can or can't take on in a fight but its value drops to nothing in the actual fight itself.
By your logic it is impossible actually evaluate anything because nothing matters until you make an attack and it only matters for that one attack. Either Valorous doubles damage because it doubles damage when you hit, and Splitting doubles damage because twice as many attacks means on average you hit twice as much, or Splitting doesn't double damage because who knows if you hit and Valorous doesn't double damage because who knows if you hit?

Seriously, it's the difference between a smaller and greater number of rolls. It's a flatter curve versus a bell curve. Heck, I can say Splitting is the more useful mechanic, since getting hits for some damage on turns you would have received none for missing with Valorous is better. You don't waste overkill damage on people who are low on hit points. There's all sorts of situational differences in the two, the only useful metric is average damage, and you blatantly refuse to accept it because. . . reasons.

Heres Ranged characters biggest issue even when outdoors. The Spot distance penalty. For every 10ft between you and your target you take a -1 to your spot. So at 300 feet, a range that most archers can still happily engage at, you're taking a -30 to spot. Have fun seeing the enemy.
Common misconception, Spot rolls are only required if creatures are hiding or sufficiently obscured for the DM to require it. Since basic concealment or cover still requires you to choose to hide, that means it takes a more significant amount of concealment, not just the normal amount, to trigger a Spot check for creatures that aren't intentionally hiding.

That said, Spot is absolutely one of the biggest problems with long range, and the one people should actually be citing against ranged characters. Even with max ranks in spot it's possible to get within a round or two of the archer -as long as you have concealment to hide in. Except if you actually check the terrain rules, you'll notice that concealment is not all that common. If you want to sneak up on an archer it has to be an ambush, at which point you're intentionally hosing them again if you do it too often.

Blackhawk748

2016-10-13, 10:50 PM

Common misconception, Spot rolls are only required if creatures are hiding or sufficiently obscured for the DM to require it. Since basic concealment or cover still requires you to choose to hide, that means it takes a more significant amount of concealment, not just the normal amount, to trigger a Spot check for creatures that aren't intentionally hiding.

That said, Spot is absolutely one of the biggest problems with long range, and the one people should actually be citing against ranged characters. Even with max ranks in spot it's possible to get within a round or two of the archer -as long as you have concealment to hide in. Except if you actually check the terrain rules, you'll notice that concealment is not all that common. If you want to sneak up on an archer it has to be an ambush, at which point you're intentionally hosing them again if you do it too often.

Ya, and most things adventurers fight are trying to stay hidden. Hell most animals are gonna try to stay hidden.

Have you ever been in a woods? I mean this as an actual question. Cuz theres an awful lot of cover in your average woods and its pretty hard to see (let alone shoot) more than 200 ft.

Fizban

2016-10-13, 11:07 PM

I suppose it makes theoretical sense if the "obscure" ability is completely alien to the nature of the game within the smaller source set, because it means that the enemies won't be prepared for that general class of abilities, but this is simple damage stuff, plausibly available within a small book set (perhaps not core, but probably within the approximate sphere of core+completes). And, beyond that, archery itself exists within even core, so it's not like that's new. We're not dealing with non-core action economy shenanigans, which could demand something weird. We're talking about shooting damage filled arrows, a completely obvious plan. And, critically, even if the DM had no idea what was going on beyond that, it definitely seems like they were prepared for an archer.
This is why I mentioned the core assumption of archery not getting dex to damage. Even in PHB2, they only give half dex on Crossbow Sniper. The DM was confronted with a build that had an absurdly high dex, and got 1 1/2 times that dex to damage, resulting in at least 10 points more than expected. That's enough to "trivialize" DR as they say.

It's just a weird thing. You literally type in the name of the feat, and then 3.5, and that's the whole process. I don't know what expertise would be missing.
I've been following 3.5 since high school and I didn't start googling dnd stuff for years. Now one might expect that a younger generation will do so more readily, but I'd say it's equally plausible they'll expect answers to be contained in the appropriate places thanks to the compartmentalization of apps and such. Older generation didn't grow up with computers.

But it's not the player's responsibility to tell the DM what they do or don't know. If you don't know something, that's the time to ask.
And I say it is. Communication is required on all sides to make the game the best it can be.

People show huge holes in the CR system all the time. I showed you one just now. Does CR tell you literally nothing about the power level of a monster? Absolutely not. But it's not going to work as this sort of average defining mechanic. If you think it will, that's really something you have to prove, and I suspect you'll struggle a lot.
What hole did you show me? Using the CR system to find a baseline flows from the monsters, not the characters. If your character wrecks level appropriate monsters, that means the character is overpowered compared to the baseline. You say I need to prove that it works, but you're the one who's violating the system default.

There's some back and forth of course, but monsters and player classes evolved alongside each other so you can't really claim that the classes are the center of the balance. PCs are not statted up in books, but monsters are. Monsters are the actual printed baseline, not the classes, or example characters, and certainly not cross-book optimized characters. The "huge holes" people bring up the outliers like Clockwork Horrors and Elemental Weirds, the Valorous and Splittings, which will exist as clear problems in any part of the system. And it's always the same monsters, while the majority work just fine.

Ya, and most things adventurers fight are trying to stay hidden. Hell most animals are gonna try to stay hidden.

Have you ever been in a woods? I mean this as an actual question. Cuz theres an awful lot of cover in your average woods and its pretty hard to see (let alone shoot) more than 200 ft.
Probably not what you'd call actual woods, but I know what you mean. The DMG covers this with maximum spotting distance (3d6*10, 2d8*10, or 2d6*10 for light/medium/dense forests, the average result for light forests is in fact half your example at 100'), but I have also ruled that after a certain distance cover/concealment kick in because it doesn't take many trees to begin obscuring sight. Still only applies to forests, as opposed to plains or hills or mountains, which have their own spotting distances. If you haven't read the terrain rules I'd suggest doing so, they seem pretty dang good to me.

eggynack

2016-10-13, 11:52 PM

This is why I mentioned the core assumption of archery not getting dex to damage. Even in PHB2, they only give half dex on Crossbow Sniper. The DM was confronted with a build that had an absurdly high dex, and got 1 1/2 times that dex to damage, resulting in at least 10 points more than expected. That's enough to "trivialize" DR as they say.
But a big melee build, one far more known, is going to do a very similar thing. It's honestly kinda hard to tell what would or wouldn't trivialize this specific enemy without information about their defenses, but it looks a lot like said enemy was just generically underwhelming, something that would've been defeatable with any number of less obscure things.

I've been following 3.5 since high school and I didn't start googling dnd stuff for years. Now one might expect that a younger generation will do so more readily, but I'd say it's equally plausible they'll expect answers to be contained in the appropriate places thanks to the compartmentalization of apps and such. Older generation didn't grow up with computers.
Fair. Still, the DM asking is continuously a thing.

And I say it is. Communication is required on all sides to make the game the best it can be.
This just doesn't strike me as how communication works, generally speaking. You say, "Hey, here's a character sheet that's within your stated limits. Tell me if there are problems." They say, "Here are problems." It's way way harder to predict what other people's problems with your things will be than it is for the person to just say what the problem is.

What hole did you show me? Using the CR system to find a baseline flows from the monsters, not the characters. If your character wrecks level appropriate monsters, that means the character is overpowered compared to the baseline. You say I need to prove that it works, but you're the one who's violating the system default.

There's some back and forth of course, but monsters and player classes evolved alongside each other so you can't really claim that the classes are the center of the balance. PCs are not statted up in books, but monsters are. Monsters are the actual printed baseline, not the classes, or example characters, and certainly not cross-book optimized characters. The "huge holes" people bring up the outliers like Clockwork Horrors and Elemental Weirds, the Valorous and Splittings, which will exist as clear problems in any part of the system. And it's always the same monsters, while the majority work just fine.
Characters are within the CR system naturally. Still, for more standard CR weirdness, here's a whole thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?450833-Worst-CR-ed-Monsters). That's just the first I found, so I could probably find longer and/or more suitable ones if that one has issues. And yes, a good number of monsters have decent CR'ing, and a lot of the bad ones are outliers, but it's not the best maneuver to measure outliers with a system with a lot of outliers. You just compound the outliers. The way around that, I suppose, would be to pick particular representative monsters that you wouldn't consider poorly CR'd, but then you need yet another measuring and yet another layer of subjectivity to determine which monsters are to be considered "average".

Fizban

2016-10-14, 12:44 AM

This just doesn't strike me as how communication works, generally speaking. You say, "Hey, here's a character sheet that's within your stated limits. Tell me if there are problems." They say, "Here are problems." It's way way harder to predict what other people's problems with your things will be than it is for the person to just say what the problem is.
Passive communication is not as good as active communication.

Characters are within the CR system naturally
Saying NPCs should be CR X doesn't mean they actually are CR X. This is another place where anyone understanding game design could have realized they'd messed up. PCs are built for fighting monsters in groups of four, NPCs are made of the same stuff but weaker (less treasure), monsters are made for fighting groups of four PCs, none of that's going to line up. That rule is another example of the rules being wrong on occasion, a convenient equivalency, and obviously cannot be used as a baseline expectation because NPC builds are just as unknown as PC builds. Monsters are in the books, NPCs are not.

a lot of outliers.
Except there's not a lot. Each book has dozens of monsters, and of those dozens a few will be borked. Multiplied by dozens of books, yes there will be a few dozen outliers. That doesn't mean it's a high percentage, it means you're taking a larger sample. A general thread on the topic is going to pull from any source the posters want to mention, dozens of sources means dozens of examples, doesn't mean even a large fraction have problems. It's either observation or confirmation bias, one of those two, where you only notice what you're looking for.

eggynack

2016-10-14, 01:55 AM

Passive communication is not as good as active communication.
Yeah, but the problem is that it's not clear what should be actively communicated here. Am I supposed to explicitly tell the DM what every single feat in my build does? If not, then should I independently make the determination of which things I think they won't know about? What if I guess wrong what things they do or don't know? Why isn't it just easier for them to make that determination?

Saying NPCs should be CR X doesn't mean they actually are CR X. This is another place where anyone understanding game design could have realized they'd messed up. PCs are built for fighting monsters in groups of four, NPCs are made of the same stuff but weaker (less treasure), monsters are made for fighting groups of four PCs, none of that's going to line up. That rule is another example of the rules being wrong on occasion, a convenient equivalency, and obviously cannot be used as a baseline expectation because NPC builds are just as unknown as PC builds. Monsters are in the books, NPCs are not.
I'm pretty sure they just are CR X. Going strictly by the DMG, "An NPC with a PC class has a challenge rating equal to the NPC's level." And, if the CR system is screwed up in some fashion, then that seems to support my argument.

Except there's not a lot. Each book has dozens of monsters, and of those dozens a few will be borked. Multiplied by dozens of books, yes there will be a few dozen outliers. That doesn't mean it's a high percentage, it means you're taking a larger sample. A general thread on the topic is going to pull from any source the posters want to mention, dozens of sources means dozens of examples, doesn't mean even a large fraction have problems. It's either observation or confirmation bias, one of those two, where you only notice what you're looking for.
I'm really not sure what the actual percentages look like. We pick out some outliers, and those are way off base CR-wise, but a good number might be more subtly weird. Some of this goes back to the tier system, because a lot of monsters have spells, and a good number of other monsters aren't all that well equipped to deal with those spells. That allips beat tarrasques is an extreme example of something present elsewhere, that melee has a hard time with some effects.

Or, we could consider this the exact opposite way. Design some ubercharger, focused wholly on direct melee combat. Just about any melee monster within a few CR is going to fall before such a character, by dint of the extreme damage boosting taking place. Put some flier with a ranged attack into the combat, heck, let's just make it a will-o'-wisp for arguments sake, and said flier will win against the melee character just about every time. So, going purely by CR, this character is too powerful, in that it's beating relatively normal monsters of high CR, and it's too weak, in that it's losing to relatively normal monsters of low CR. Which means that a simple matching by CR isn't sufficient.

Fizban

2016-10-14, 03:49 AM

Yeah, but the problem is that it's not clear what should be actively communicated here. Am I supposed to explicitly tell the DM what every single feat in my build does?
Anything, everything, something more than nothing would be nice. As the player who built the thing (assuming you didn't just copy a build) you already know what it's capable of, why should the DM have to deconstruct it when you could just tell them? "Hey I built this cool archer, he can deal over 200 damage in a single round."

I'm pretty sure they just are CR X. Going strictly by the DMG, "An NPC with a PC class has a challenge rating equal to the NPC's level." And, if the CR system is screwed up in some fashion, then that seems to support my argument.
If you won't accept a common sense rendition, then let's look it up: NPC Challenge Rating is defined on page 37, under experience rewards. Meanwhile the section that defines what challenge rating actually means, is under Encounters, starting on page 48. A quick skim shows that the Encounter section never once refers to NPCs or classes or level, always monsters and CR. NPC challenge rating is defined for experience, but actual challenge rating is defined by monsters.

But wait, you say, NPC challenge rating is defined first and it even says "encounter level" right there! Wrong: they re-ordered the DMG for 3.5, that section's actually in a pretty awkward place. The original had rewards two chapters after encounters, including both experience and treasure, so the book had already defined encounters via monsters before it mentioned what challenge rating NPCs should be. The 3.5 reformatting split the rewards chapter and merged the experience part (which includes CR for NPCs) to the beginning, in a place where it makes little sense, while treasure merged into Adventures right after the encounter and CR definitions. If you won't believe common sense that the book of printed monsters should trump undefined NPCs, or that the rules first defined CR in terms of monsters only, then I guess you're the one defining what CR means.

Or, we could consider this the exact opposite way. Design some ubercharger, focused wholly on direct melee combat. Just about any melee monster within a few CR is going to fall before such a character, by dint of the extreme damage boosting taking place. Put some flier with a ranged attack into the combat, heck, let's just make it a will-o'-wisp for arguments sake, and said flier will win against the melee character just about every time. So, going purely by CR, this character is too powerful, in that it's beating relatively normal monsters of high CR, and it's too weak, in that it's losing to relatively normal monsters of low CR. Which means that a simple matching by CR isn't sufficient.
Or you could remember that DnD is about a party of adventurers and absolutely expects some monsters to completely nullify some characters, that is literally why Golems exist (weather or not they work thanks to whoever invented SR:no attack spells). The Will o' Wisp you've brought up is actually an example of a broken monster, with AC so high normal characters can't hit it, vulnerable only to a mage with See Invisibility and Magic Missile, flight is the least of it's problems (it also has no ranged attack so I don't know why you've brought it up in that context). The more common example is incorporeal undead, Which is why I used "as part of a party" when I was responding to Kelb. People like to harp on about incorporeal undead, forgetting or ignoring the fact that the standard party is supposed to have a cleric (not just divine caster, the default is Cleric specifically), and every cleric starts with Turn or Rebuke Undead. If you have a cleric, you have a chance to drive back a shadow and run for the exit. It's also a CR 3 monster, which means you should be 3rd level and have access to at least one +1 weapon between you if needed.

Picking specific builds and monsters that counter them proves nothing, that's not how CR works. CR is about a party of PCs, where some will be more or less useful against any given foe. If you have one PC who invalidates the rest of the party by winning the fight on their own, that PC is overpowered (unless by chance they burned all their resources doing it, as that would be 25% of the group's resources, suitable for one level appropriate encounter). If the whole party is comprised of characters like this and each is only capable of doing their trick against 25% of monsters then maybe they'd be fine, too bad half of optimization is making sure your build works against everything possible.

Nor is comparing them against a single monster, which is an insufficient sample. So you found one monster the build is bad against, so what? Even assuming it's not an outlier cherry picked for the presentation, there are dozens of other monsters the build is going to melt that you're ignoring because they don't support your point. Most monsters work at their given CR, there is absolutely a baseline that can be drawn from that average if you accept that it works instead of trying to use every little thing to justify char-op being somehow above the system.

eggynack

2016-10-14, 05:56 AM

Anything, everything, something more than nothing would be nice. As the player who built the thing (assuming you didn't just copy a build) you already know what it's capable of, why should the DM have to deconstruct it when you could just tell them? "Hey I built this cool archer, he can deal over 200 damage in a single round."
Maybe. Not sure how much he did or didn't say though, and I'd expect something like, "This build deals large quantities of damage through the medium of arrows," to be more than sufficient. Separately, kinda wondering if that damage total was above average for the build or not. Either way, a simple description of that sort seems satisfactory.

If you won't accept a common sense rendition, then let's look it up: NPC Challenge Rating is defined on page 37, under experience rewards. Meanwhile the section that defines what challenge rating actually means, is under Encounters, starting on page 48. A quick skim shows that the Encounter section never once refers to NPCs or classes or level, always monsters and CR. NPC challenge rating is defined for experience, but actual challenge rating is defined by monsters.

But wait, you say, NPC challenge rating is defined first and it even says "encounter level" right there! Wrong: they re-ordered the DMG for 3.5, that section's actually in a pretty awkward place. The original had rewards two chapters after encounters, including both experience and treasure, so the book had already defined encounters via monsters before it mentioned what challenge rating NPCs should be. The 3.5 reformatting split the rewards chapter and merged the experience part (which includes CR for NPCs) to the beginning, in a place where it makes little sense, while treasure merged into Adventures right after the encounter and CR definitions. If you won't believe common sense that the book of printed monsters should trump undefined NPCs, or that the rules first defined CR in terms of monsters only, then I guess you're the one defining what CR means.
I'm not really sure why it matters where and how they assigned the CR of NPC's with class levels. They did it. But, even if you assert that the monster manual should be the only pertinent source, that source does, in fact, define CR for NPC's by having entries for races with NPC class levels of various kinds. And, beyond that, I don't see much reason why the definition of monster would strictly preclude such NPC's.

Or you could remember that DnD is about a party of adventurers and absolutely expects some monsters to completely nullify some characters, that is literally why Golems exist (weather or not they work thanks to whoever invented SR:no attack spells). The Will o' Wisp you've brought up is actually an example of a broken monster, with AC so high normal characters can't hit it, vulnerable only to a mage with See Invisibility and Magic Missile, flight is the least of it's problems (it also has no ranged attack so I don't know why you've brought it up in that context). The more common example is incorporeal undead, Which is why I used "as part of a party" when I was responding to Kelb. People like to harp on about incorporeal undead, forgetting or ignoring the fact that the standard party is supposed to have a cleric (not just divine caster, the default is Cleric specifically), and every cleric starts with Turn or Rebuke Undead. If you have a cleric, you have a chance to drive back a shadow and run for the exit. It's also a CR 3 monster, which means you should be 3rd level and have access to at least one +1 weapon between you if needed.
I think I mixed up the will-o'-wisp's shock with the lantern archon's light ray. So, that. Lantern archon.

Picking specific builds and monsters that counter them proves nothing, that's not how CR works. CR is about a party of PCs, where some will be more or less useful against any given foe. If you have one PC who invalidates the rest of the party by winning the fight on their own, that PC is overpowered (unless by chance they burned all their resources doing it, as that would be 25% of the group's resources, suitable for one level appropriate encounter). If the whole party is comprised of characters like this and each is only capable of doing their trick against 25% of monsters then maybe they'd be fine, too bad half of optimization is making sure your build works against everything possible.

Nor is comparing them against a single monster, which is an insufficient sample. So you found one monster the build is bad against, so what? Even assuming it's not an outlier cherry picked for the presentation, there are dozens of other monsters the build is going to melt that you're ignoring because they don't support your point. Most monsters work at their given CR, there is absolutely a baseline that can be drawn from that average if you accept that it works instead of trying to use every little thing to justify char-op being somehow above the system.
But then, if a small collection of samples is insufficient, then how is it justified to claim this character is overpowered on the basis of a couple of combats?

Fizban

2016-10-14, 08:36 AM

I'm not really sure why it matters where and how they assigned the CR of NPC's with class levels. They did it. But, even if you assert that the monster manual should be the only pertinent source, that source does, in fact, define CR for NPC's by having entries for races with NPC class levels of various kinds. And, beyond that, I don't see much reason why the definition of monster would strictly preclude such NPC's.
It matters because you're trying to use it to justify the assertion that the CR system is broken, which you are using to justify your assertion that we can't use printed monsters to judge the over/under-effectiveness of PC builds. The Monster Manual does indeed have a few NPCs, in particular 1st level warriors usually at CR 1/2, and a few templated creatures. Later books include more classed NPCs. The point remains that NPCs are being assigned formulaic CRs that don't correspond to their actual builds, while monsters are assigned CRs based on their expected performance against a standard party with their unique abilities. The latter comprises the vast majority of monster entries and is a perfectly usable metric.

I think I mixed up the will-o'-wisp's shock with the lantern archon's light ray. So, that. Lantern archon.
Your ubercharger has strength, yes? Probably at least level 6 if it's got the "uber." Throw a rock or something if you want to contribute while the rest of the party is fighting, if strength and a half breaks DR so easily you should do fine. Lantern Archons are quite flimsy, any alchemical can down them in two hits and a spell from an overleveld caster will assuredly drop them in one. The CR system is not broken because one character is hosed by a certain monster.

But then, if a small collection of samples is insufficient, then how is it justified to claim this character is overpowered on the basis of a couple of combats?
Did you not catch the part where I pointed out there are dozens of other CR appropriate monsters he will also chew through? Pick a level and make a list of all the things an ubercharger can melt vs the things it "can't" vs the things it actually can't. If the things it really actually can't fight against are more than 25%, you might have an argument, but I'm fairly certain they're not. You picked one monster it has trouble against, I submit all the monsters for consideration. Generally one would start with MM1, skip MM2 because it's widely regarded as wonky, then MM3/4/5 (where monsters start getting more optimized) or whichever splat of choice for the campaign.

To be clear, I have long since stopped referring to the OP. I'm talking about how CR is not broken, so there is a baseline for a "normal" game, so you can't pretend that there's no such thing as an overpowered build, so maybe people should pay more attention when making suggestions. I hit a couple revelations in phrasing and cause/effect along the way re: how if hardcore optimizers admitted the CR system wasn't broken they'd have to admit there is a normal game and they're overpowered in comparison.

eggynack

2016-10-14, 09:05 AM

It matters because you're trying to use it to justify the assertion that the CR system is broken, which you are using to justify your assertion that we can't use printed monsters to judge the over/under-effectiveness of PC builds. The Monster Manual does indeed have a few NPCs, in particular 1st level warriors usually at CR 1/2, and a few templated creatures. Later books include more classed NPCs. The point remains that NPCs are being assigned formulaic CRs that don't correspond to their actual builds, while monsters are assigned CRs based on their expected performance against a standard party with their unique abilities. The latter comprises the vast majority of monster entries and is a perfectly usable metric.
I think the problem is that they assumed the system was relatively balanced for some reason, so the CR's were supposed to correspond to builds, because the variance in CR would theoretically be similar to the variance in build. That the system is way less balanced than they assumed is the problem, then. The way I figure it, these things may not wholly represent the CR system, but they act as outliers about as meaningful as any other.

Your ubercharger has strength, yes? Probably at least level 6 if it's got the "uber." Throw a rock or something if you want to contribute while the rest of the party is fighting, if strength and a half breaks DR so easily you should do fine.
Fair enough, I suppose. Rocks make sense. Now I'm vaguely thinking about global average rock distribution, but I guess he could just carry around a rock if he needs a rock. Or, like, five or ten rocks.

Did you not catch the part where I pointed out there are dozens of other CR appropriate monsters he will also chew through? Pick a level and make a list of all the things an ubercharger can melt vs the things it "can't" vs the things it actually can't. If the things it really actually can't fight against are more than 25%, you might have an argument, but I'm fairly certain they're not. You picked one monster it has trouble against, I submit all the monsters for consideration. Generally one would start with MM1, skip MM2 because it's widely regarded as wonky, then MM3/4/5 (where monsters start getting more optimized) or whichever splat of choice for the campaign.

I was mostly saying that the specific situations discussed may have been outliers, which means I was working off of your notion of dozens of other CR appropriate monsters. In any case, I'd generally expect the ubercharger to do quite well against ground pounding melee bruisers, and less well against caster types that have the ability to manipulate the environment and their place in the environment. Uberchargers have trouble with obstacles and such.

To be clear, I have long since stopped referring to the OP. I'm talking about how CR is not broken, so there is a baseline for a "normal" game, so you can't pretend that there's no such thing as an overpowered build, so maybe people should pay more attention when making suggestions. I hit a couple revelations in phrasing and cause/effect along the way re: how if hardcore optimizers admitted the CR system wasn't broken they'd have to admit there is a normal game and they're overpowered in comparison.
I just don't think that being "overpowered" is meaningful except where it fits into intraparty balance. Yes, some builds are better and some are worse, but as long as you have a roughly even power level, things work out pretty well. It's so much more important than any notion of a global average that paying serious consideration to those global averages is kinda weird.

Also, even ignoring the notion of CR variance, as I noted awhile back, the CR meter is set pretty low. Like, returning to the druid example, that was simply a druid making a single perfectly reasonable choice, in the realm of animal companion selection. No combos or high class tricks. And yet, such a character will probably act outside of CR. Same likely goes for an only decently optimized barbarian. Power attack, a good weapon, well assigned stats, and pounce if you're lucky. Point being, if working above CR is what being overpowered is, then everything is overpowered. And, as Syndrome once said, paraphrased, when everyone's overpowered, no one is.

Quertus

2016-10-14, 10:51 AM

The player is the one who's supposed to be looking at obscurity in this case: the DM gave them carte blanche, the player took something out of an obscure book and didn't think twice, and if he did to a damage check he didn't give warning. I'm not saying it's difficult, I'm just saying that people don't do it. Assuming that people will be cautious and communicative is often a poor assumption.

This is a neat idea, and one I've... accidentally implemented from time to time. Actually intentionally communicating when your character is likely to perform differently than usual sounds like a good plan, IMO.

The more hardcore the players optimize, the more hardcore the DM has to optimize. You can't just throw mailmen or uberchargers or whatever the uber swift hunter's called against stock monsters and expect everything to be fine. And unlike the players who do it once, the DM has to keep doing it for every single encounter, unless they just keep repeating the same monster build. It's extra work on top of extra work. Eventually you reach a point where the DM has to just fiat stuff in order to make it work, unless they're really just so much better than all four players put together.

As has already been mentioned, throwing higher CR stock monsters at the party can sometimes solve this problem. But, in general, I agree, 3e is a lot of work for the DM; more so when trying to custom tailor monsters to the party's optimization level (high or low).

Thaneus implied it. And my whole point is that the people do stupid things like tacitly approving everything without knowing what's actually out there (or rating anything based on a book list, or. . .) It follows from there that maybe the experienced optimizers, who should know better, will excercise some caution when suggesting max power builds just because a poster said the books were allowed. And the posters should actually evaluate what the build's going to do compared to the games they've been playing. And the DMs should pay attention and stop "allowing" all books when they don't know what could happen. And whole lot of people should be communicating and using caution, which as I already said is a fool's bet, which is why it annoys me.

See, I think DMs should stop doing stupid things like not allowing all sources. Let me break that down.

First, part of the draw of 3e is how wonderfully many options you have. Outside of point buy, how many systems could let you play a ninja pirate zombie robot? I suspect 3e is such a system.

Second, as far as balance goes, the most broken tier 1 classes, most of the most broken spells, and the commoner are in core. Outside a few edge cases, wouldn't it make the most sense to ban core, and allow everything else? :smallconfused:

Balance is, IMO, best solved not as a statistical issue, but as a social issue. Balance should generally be solved at the level of the social contract, not at the expense of fun options. If you have to line item veto pun pun & drown healing, fine, but don't throw out the baby with the bath water. There's no reason to ban 95%+ of the playable content of the game for fear of a few random outliers.

Also... I've played the tier 1 god wizard in the party with a fighter and a monk. Because I play him as tactically inept, he didn't overshadow his teammates. Heck, I've played such TO things as Tainted Sorcerer or Illithid Savant (not to mention a few of my own builds I've never seen online, and so don't have a convenient name for) without breaking the game.

You keep saying the DM is looking at the thing, when I'm saying he's not. That's part of the problem.

I am assuming the group has played DnD before, in this group, as it has been mentioned they've played before. One player, if they're paying any attention, should know roughly how well the others perform, or at the very least how well their own last character performed. That is not a vacuum. They know what power level they were playing at before, that doesn't magically disappear, it's the closest possible frame of reference that's not actually building their characters side by side for the new game.

That is literally the whole freaking problem right there! You don't expect them to do it, because you know better. They don't know better, and take you at your word. The only difference it that you're talking about linking handbooks, which are actually structured that way. I am not talking about handbooks. I am talking about people straight up saying use this build, followed by a build. And how are they supposed to know what tools to pick from without studying the entire handbook to learn all the tools and how they work? People who ask for a build want a build, an answer, not a book to study (unless of course someone gives a link and they do follow it), and you're expecting them to. . . study the build and deconstruct it into something suitable for their game. To take a simple answer and make more work out of it instead of copying it. An answer they've been assured is totally legal and won't break the game.

This is only true if the DM is changing power levels, which was true in this case but is not in others, or if it's an inexperienced group in which case the DM is even less likely to know how to handle things and the players are even more responsible for not making a mess of their own bed. If the group is playing as they always have, then they know perfectly well what the expected power level of the campaign is. So you're willing to assume ignorance of things people should know from past experience (like their group's power level or mechanics the DM has used in the past), but it's inconceivable people could have ignorance of things they haven't studied or used before (they must know how those tools work and it's only the power level they don't know about, the DM can't not have read the stuff in that book no one's used before). Backwards.

Spoken as someone who has already mastered the system. There's the oft-quoted line about how learning how to optimize 3.5 characters is comparable to a university minor. There are in fact plenty of players and DMs that have not taken that minor. You can say "it's just one feat" all you want, but if the game is just a game to them they're not going to go looking up everything they don't recognize just because. And it's not "just one feat," it's several feats, and class abilities, and magic items, in combination, not even all included on an attack line. After you look up the pieces you don't know you have to put it together with the pieces you do know, which takes more time. As someone who has already mastered the system you might be able to see parts of it instantly, but expecting everyone else to do so is bogus.

And none of that matters unless the DM is actually checking the sheets, which you should not be assuming. Seriously, have you seen any of Jon_Dahl's threads? The man refuses to look at his player's sheets. He's particularly bad, but come on, if every DM was properly vetting their players' sheets then there would never be any "my DM suddenly thinks my character is overpowered" threads, which we still get for 3.5 even though it's more than a decade old.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. It would be nice if all DMs checked their players' sheets and their encounters and knew everything and looked up everything they didn't and hey they don't. If you're going to suggest things you know perfectly well are too strong for a normal* game, then you'd better make sure you teach them how to use it and not just assume they'll somehow know that it could be too much or their DM will catch it. That's like teaching someone how to pull a trigger without telling them guns are dangerous and expecting someone else to do it for you before something bad happens. Except the other person doesn't know what a gun is either. And then it suddenly goes off in game.

*If you have to blanketly switch to overleveled monsters oruse dedicated countermeasures, it's not normal anymore.

And yes, I know that eggynack is not going around answering threads with flat builds (or at least I generally don't think he is), the point about handbooks is pretty important up there. But as he's the one responding to my tangent with disbelief and regular posts, and I can't type walls of text responding to one person while targeting an ambiguous third, it's written the way it is. If you're confused, replace all those you's up there with you and see if it makes sense. I will also point out that I'm one of the first to say, "DM screwed up and need to read the damn character sheets," but that is in fact the exact opposite of assuming they'll just do it on their own.

A lot of questions about whose responsibility what is. I'll get to my take on that in a minute.

First, I want to address the bolded part. I don't know about y'all's sheets, but, in mine, that would have all been included in an attack line. Well, two lines, actually. The first would have read "blah blah splitting crossbow +1", and clearly indicated 6 attacks, grouped on clumps of two, with attack bonus, for 1d8+19 damage. The second line would have indicated xd6 precision damage, which applies to all attacks if conditions are met.

So, unless you are playing with some kind of inferior character sheet (in which case, I suggest you upgrade), it seems disingenuous to claim that this combo is in any way obfuscated from someone who looks at the character sheet.

That having been said, I never look at my players' sheets. Why would i?

If someone comes to the table with this build, and completely overshadows the rest of the party, and the party has a problem with that, then we'll discuss things.

If someone brings a build I don't understand, like the tripping build that let us cakewalk a T-Rex at ~4th level, I'm gonna ask about the rules (in that case, tripping) for my own edification.

If someone seems to be severely over- or under-performing, like the (2e) 15th level fighter who hit for 2 damage, I'll ask about their details to make sure everything's in order.

But, until something comes up, I just build the world; the onus is on the players to build characters that they we will all enjoy.

Mehangel

2016-10-14, 11:01 AM

Thing is, I dont think his character build would be quite so powerful if he did not have a Dexterity score of 34 (un-buffed) at level 8. What would be his damage output if it were 24 (buffed) instead?

Fizban

2016-10-15, 06:18 AM

I think the problem is that they assumed the system was relatively balanced for some reason, so the CR's were supposed to correspond to builds, because the variance in CR would theoretically be similar to the variance in build. That the system is way less balanced than they assumed is the problem, then. The way I figure it, these things may not wholly represent the CR system, but they act as outliers about as meaningful as any other.
So which is it? Either tagging NPCs at CR=level is a core part of the CR system and it's borked, or it's an outlier as meaningful as the others (not meaningful) and does not affect the fact that most monsters have reliable CR.

Fair enough, I suppose. Rocks make sense. Now I'm vaguely thinking about global average rock distribution, but I guess he could just carry around a rock if he needs a rock. Or, like, five or ten rocks.
Or a throwing weapon, or a bow, any sort of ranged option would represent an optimized character rather than a straw barbarian with a forced weakness.

I was mostly saying that the specific situations discussed may have been outliers, which means I was working off of your notion of dozens of other CR appropriate monsters. In any case, I'd generally expect the ubercharger to do quite well against ground pounding melee bruisers, and less well against caster types that have the ability to manipulate the environment and their place in the environment. Uberchargers have trouble with obstacles and such.
Your own words:

Or, we could consider this the exact opposite way. Design some ubercharger, focused wholly on direct melee combat. Just about any melee monster within a few CR is going to fall before such a character, by dint of the extreme damage boosting taking place.
Assume that this nebulous ubercharger is not just "doing well," rather he's already beating CR appropriate monsters single-handedly. You then go on to suggest that just because some monster like a Will o' Wisp or Lantern Archon might invalidate his trick, beating all those other CR appropriate monsters doesn't mean anything and he's not overpowered because CR is broken.

CR is not broken because one type of monster invalidates your build. Unless your build requires 100% of your personal resources to take down one level appropriate target or encounter, your build is overpowered, by definition. Unless at least 25% or more of monsters invalidate your build, you do not count as having a handicapped build, as any given monster is free to invalidate at least one PC while the others pick up the slack, usually by exercising their specialist abilities.

So if you're recognizing the majority of monsters, you should be admitting that an ubercharger which can handle most level appropriate monsters solo is overpowered.

I just don't think that being "overpowered" is meaningful except where it fits into intraparty balance. Yes, some builds are better and some are worse, but as long as you have a roughly even power level, things work out pretty well. It's so much more important than any notion of a global average that paying serious consideration to those global averages is kinda weird.
Why did I start this whole sub-chain? Because hardcore optimizers hide behind the "there is no normal" shield. Bogus. There is a normal, and when suggesting builds that you know are overpowered compared to it you should be upfront about that. You don't have to be precise because there's no real scale for precision without a ton of research, but something like "this build is pretty strong, normal monsters will have a hard time with it," or "this build deals twice the hp of most monsters you'd face at this level," would get the idea across.

Also, even ignoring the notion of CR variance, as I noted awhile back, the CR meter is set pretty low. Like, returning to the druid example, that was simply a druid making a single perfectly reasonable choice, in the realm of animal companion selection. No combos or high class tricks. And yet, such a character will probably act outside of CR. Same likely goes for an only decently optimized barbarian. Power attack, a good weapon, well assigned stats, and pounce if you're lucky. Point being, if working above CR is what being overpowered is, then everything is overpowered.
The monsters aren't overpowered. The players not using overpowered builds are not overpowered. Remember that logical practice is to assume the worst, in this case, assume that the other players are not playing overpowered builds or at least are not increasing their optimization level past where it last was. Damage builds are the simplest and most obviously disruptive of overpowered builds, turning things into as much of a yes/no rocket tag fest as save or die spells do, except requiring an hp save that impacts all other characters (as higher level monsters are more lethal) and coming online much sooner than actual save or dies.

And, Pounce. Oh, Pounce. Thanks to one idiot writing Complete Champion, everyone seems to think move+full attack is anywhere near balanced or standard. The only pouncing the core game ever expects is big cats and people shaped into big cats, anything that's letting you pounce with a two-handed weapon is obviously going to be overpowered when you're combining it with abilities meant for a standing full attack. Even Lion's Charge/Psionic Lion's Charge (and Rhino's Rush) expects you to be a specific caster of a specific class with a limited number of charges of that ability, and it's certainly not a core effect that monsters are going to be balanced against. Because yes, most material is balanced assuming core+maybe it's own book, not every book under the sun.* Deal with it.

*Though later monster manuals obviously do start bringing in some splat material, it's always the weakest and least disruptive. Low level Duskblades and Warmages with bad feats, Ninjas, maybe a Scout or two, and none of them have char-op builds. There is not a single Shocktrooper build in print that I know of, not even in it's own book. Monsters are sometimes updated and/or optmized, a nice example is the Nycaloth: Manual of the Planes has it at 11HD and CR 13, MM3 has it at 14 HD with a +2 weapon for CR 10 (and it is a beast). Doesn't change the fact that PCs are not expected to pounce with two handed weapons or double anything with a simple weapon enhancement.

Casters are in fact supposed to be overpowered, and then sharing their overpowered spellcasting with the rest of the party, but good luck getting any optimizer to admit that's how the game is meant to be played. The so-called God Wizard isn't a power build that's sneaky in it's humility, it's how the game is supposed to work in the first place. Just look at all those buffs and immunities that non-casters need, and the two (and only two) casters assumed to be in the party with tons of spell slots to spare, it's kinda obvious. I actually have a pet idea for draconian balancing measures: slash full casters down to a base of 1 slot per level per day, now when they only use their spells for their own 1/4 of the party's glory, they only have 1/4 of the spells. The other party members will get by either with their own spells if they're all casters, or the power creep'd magic items that let them compensate. It's not a very fun fix though and I'm perfectly capable of/would rather run a higher powered game anyway.

Druids are a known outlier within core itself: from what I've heard, the Druid's playtester never even used Wild Shape. Spontaneous Summon Nature's Ally was added in 3.5, presumably to made Druid players feel better about preparing Cure spells, the same way Spontaneous Cure Spells was added to Clerics in 3.0 so they would feel better about not preparing them. Animal Friendship used to scale ridiculously fast, but was capped by the fact that you had to find Legendary animals from MM2 in order to hold up into higher levels-so they changed it to Animal Companion which lets you scale one animal without special permissions. In short, the Druid was overpowered to begin with and was buffed by the same people that failed to recognize it the first time. Saying a Druid invalidates the CR system isn't any more true than the rest: the standard party is Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, and while I like (nay, demand) classes far from the originals, if those classes react differently it's their fault, not the standard party/monster/CR system.

And, as Syndrome once said, paraphrased, when everyone's overpowered, no one is.
Except the DM's monsters, and anyone who didn't upgrade to the new level of optimization. If the whole party is playing at the same adjusted level, and if the DM can reasonably account for it by using higher CR foes or optimizing them, then yeah there's no problem.

But you don't know any of that. The root of this diversion is that you (or rather the nebulous hardcore optimizers who offend me, but "you" is more aggressive) refuse to consider the possibility that suggesting a maximum power build will massively disrupt a game. You put many blocks and qualifiers in the way, but at the end of the day you're assuming that someone else will do the work of making sure the build will fit in the game, rather than getting more information first or explaining that this build is far above normal (because you conveniently refuse to admit there is a normal).

See, I think DMs should stop doing stupid things like not allowing all sources.
Oh I absolutely agree, the more the merrier, see previous posts. And it's probably rare to have DMs allowing everything without either knowing what it does or looking it up before it hits the table, but it does happen. And using your optimizing powers responsibly means acknowledging that so you don't mess up that poor fool's game.

So, unless you are playing with some kind of inferior character sheet (in which case, I suggest you upgrade), it seems disingenuous to claim that this combo is in any way obfuscated from someone who looks at the character sheet.
Hahaha, oh man, you actually think everyone has legible character sheets. That's likely more detail than I'd try to cram into my own (I'd put it down in the notes or something), and I never stop cramming details onto my sheet. Yet any sheet I see that's not from an experienced optimizer (someone who's extremely familiar with the rules, likes gathering the pieces and putting them together, comfortable filling them in, etc), those sheets are nigh useless. They'll have lists of what abilities are there and maybe part of the damage line is correct but mostly you have to figure it out yourself.

But, until something comes up, I just build the world; the onus is on the players to build characters that they we will all enjoy.
And that's good for you, but some people and some groups aren't so resilient. They expect the game to work the way it always has, if someone shows up with a crazy overpowered build it could ruin a perfectly good session, which could chain into ruining the whole campaign. An unlikely worst-case scenario? Sure, but as I've said a bajillion times, plan for the worst. Or take the blame if it's your fault someone's game got wrecked.

Thing is, I dont think his character build would be quite so powerful if he did not have a Dexterity score of 34 (un-buffed) at level 8. What would be his damage output if it were 24 (buffed) instead?
The OP revealed that they are in fact 13th level further down the first page, it was Geddy2112's 8th level claim that caused a lot of the kerfuffle, and the DM also gave them an insane number of free points to just jack up their stats. If I'd known they were 13th I wouldn't have batted an eye at dropping 78 in a single round, or Hound Archons which are a measly CR 4. 230 damage is still way too much without burning significant limited resources (maximized cl13 orb: 78 damage), but it's a lot more believable at 13th.

eggynack

2016-10-15, 08:43 AM

So which is it? Either tagging NPCs at CR=level is a core part of the CR system and it's borked, or it's an outlier as meaningful as the others (not meaningful) and does not affect the fact that most monsters have reliable CR.
But I don't agree that they're necessarily not meaningful. I think that, when you get some density of outliers, they stop being outliers and start just being a set of data points that you need to account for. Outliers necessarily occur somewhat infrequently.

Or a throwing weapon, or a bow, any sort of ranged option would represent an optimized character rather than a straw barbarian with a forced weakness.
I wouldn't call it too forced a weakness. Melee builds tend to not have any serious ranged stuff at all. Beyond that, kinda thought I was agreeing. Dunno why argument.

Assume that this nebulous ubercharger is not just "doing well," rather he's already beating CR appropriate monsters single-handedly. You then go on to suggest that just because some monster like a Will o' Wisp or Lantern Archon might invalidate his trick, beating all those other CR appropriate monsters doesn't mean anything and he's not overpowered because CR is broken.
Not necessarily a will-o'-wisp type. Any monster that happens to have the ability to stop a charging technique would work, and plenty of the less directly operating monsters can do that. And this build isn't really all that nebulous. The ubercharger is a well defined construct with some admitted variance in the specifics. Say, for the sake of argument, that it's some sort of barbarian 2/fighter 2 taking whirling frenzy, spirit lion totem, and wolf totem, which then applies its feats towards the goals of power attack boosting and guisarme based tripping (cause multiple shticks is nice). Maybe angle the build towards a cleric or warblade dip after that. Those are nice. It's not like what I just said is everything you need to build the thing, but I think it gives an idea of what we're working with.

CR is not broken because one type of monster invalidates your build. Unless your build requires 100% of your personal resources to take down one level appropriate target or encounter, your build is overpowered, by definition. Unless at least 25% or more of monsters invalidate your build, you do not count as having a handicapped build, as any given monster is free to invalidate at least one PC while the others pick up the slack, usually by exercising their specialist abilities.

Not really sure where this definition is, exactly. It'd really be more accurate to say, "Your build is overpowered by the arbitrary definition I'm employing." And, as I noted before, if that's the definition of overpowered, most things are overpowered. I'll give some evidence of that further down.

So if you're recognizing the majority of monsters, you should be admitting that an ubercharger which can handle most level appropriate monsters solo is overpowered.
Most melee monsters. Other monsters could in turn overpower the barbarian.

Why did I start this whole sub-chain? Because hardcore optimizers hide behind the "there is no normal" shield. Bogus. There is a normal, and when suggesting builds that you know are overpowered compared to it you should be upfront about that. You don't have to be precise because there's no real scale for precision without a ton of research, but something like "this build is pretty strong, normal monsters will have a hard time with it," or "this build deals twice the hp of most monsters you'd face at this level," would get the idea across.
I just don't agree. Who really cares how a build does against "normal monsters"? What matters is how a build does against the monsters that the party is balanced against. Because you say "most monsters you'd face at this level", and that could point to monsters a couple of CR above you, or to equal CR monsters, or to lower CR monsters in a low power game.

The monsters aren't overpowered. The players not using overpowered builds are not overpowered. Remember that logical practice is to assume the worst, in this case, assume that the other players are not playing overpowered builds or at least are not increasing their optimization level past where it last was. Damage builds are the simplest and most obviously disruptive of overpowered builds, turning things into as much of a yes/no rocket tag fest as save or die spells do, except requiring an hp save that impacts all other characters (as higher level monsters are more lethal) and coming online much sooner than actual save or dies.
I disagree with your assertion that "Players not using overpowered builds are not overpowered." Or, to be more precise, I think there exist builds that aren't particularly overpowered that would satisfy your definition of overpoweredness. Take a water orc barbarian with a greatsword at first level. Say you have 18 base strength and 14 base constitution, meaning 22 strength and 16 constitution total. Toss it against, say, a crocodile, a reasonable CR 2 foe. The barbarian without rage activated will deal 2d6+9, or 16 damage, with a to-hit bonus of +7, and they have 14 HP. The crocodile deals 12.5 damage a turn with a to-hit bonus of +6. and has 22 HP. Decent advantage for the crocodile, but not that much. Then you add power attack to the build, and rage in the moment, and the barbarian is dealing 2d6+14, or 21 damage, one shy of the crocodile's total HP, and they have a to-hit of +8 alongside essentially 16 HP. In other words, they're likely dealing a higher percentage of the crocodile's HP a turn than the crocodile is dealing to them. So, this relatively low-op barbarian, using only material from the SRD and not even all of it, is using about 100% of its daily resources to beat a foe. Except that foe is of a CR higher, meaning the barbarian is "overpowered". Add pounce, add whirling frenzy, and you get something really damaging, but this is really normal stuff. Good choices made in a standard way. I don't think this is overpowered, and I'd freely recommend it to anyone. You, seemingly, would claim it ludicrously overpowered. I don't think the crocodile fails to be representative of melee monsters either.

And, Pounce. Oh, Pounce. Thanks to one idiot writing Complete Champion, everyone seems to think move+full attack is anywhere near balanced or standard. The only pouncing the core game ever expects is big cats and people shaped into big cats, anything that's letting you pounce with a two-handed weapon is obviously going to be overpowered when you're combining it with abilities meant for a standing full attack. Even Lion's Charge/Psionic Lion's Charge (and Rhino's Rush) expects you to be a specific caster of a specific class with a limited number of charges of that ability, and it's certainly not a core effect that monsters are going to be balanced against. Because yes, most material is balanced assuming core+maybe it's own book, not every book under the sun.* Deal with it.
There are other ways to get free movement. Travel devotion is a classic one. But, one of the big problems with this argument that we're dealing with overpowered stuff here is that, in a pretty big way, we're actually dealing with underpowered stuff. After all, as you point out below, anything with casting is going to relatively overpowered at high levels, and also overpowered at low levels if they're a druid, and that doesn't stop being true when the melee character optimizes.

Casters are in fact supposed to be overpowered, and then sharing their overpowered spellcasting with the rest of the party, but good luck getting any optimizer to admit that's how the game is meant to be played. The so-called God Wizard isn't a power build that's sneaky in it's humility, it's how the game is supposed to work in the first place. Just look at all those buffs and immunities that non-casters need, and the two (and only two) casters assumed to be in the party with tons of spell slots to spare, it's kinda obvious. I actually have a pet idea for draconian balancing measures: slash full casters down to a base of 1 slot per level per day, now when they only use their spells for their own 1/4 of the party's glory, they only have 1/4 of the spells. The other party members will get by either with their own spells if they're all casters, or the power creep'd magic items that let them compensate. It's not a very fun fix though and I'm perfectly capable of/would rather run a higher powered game anyway.
I don't think anything really supports the idea that casters were meant to be super overpowered but in a shared way. So many great spells are "selfish", after all. Druids don't even get that many group buffs, or even single target buffs that can hit a party member. Casting can be friendly if you want it to be, but it doesn't seem like the system makes that prescriptive in any way. And, critically, casters aren't as powerful as the crazy damage builds. They're more powerful. You're essentially assigning casters a special label that allows them to be more powerful than "overpowered" characters without being themselves considered overpowered (because they're still presumably allowed into this standard group, not because they lack the overpowered label beneath that allowed label).

Druids are a known outlier within core itself: from what I've heard, the Druid's playtester never even used Wild Shape. Spontaneous Summon Nature's Ally was added in 3.5, presumably to made Druid players feel better about preparing Cure spells, the same way Spontaneous Cure Spells was added to Clerics in 3.0 so they would feel better about not preparing them. Animal Friendship used to scale ridiculously fast, but was capped by the fact that you had to find Legendary animals from MM2 in order to hold up into higher levels-so they changed it to Animal Companion which lets you scale one animal without special permissions. In short, the Druid was overpowered to begin with and was buffed by the same people that failed to recognize it the first time. Saying a Druid invalidates the CR system isn't any more true than the rest: the standard party is Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, and while I like (nay, demand) classes far from the originals, if those classes react differently it's their fault, not the standard party/monster/CR system.
This is a core class. A standard group was expected to play it. And, indeed, an even marginally optimized druid can beat enemies that are out of their league, CR-wise. Just like clerics often can, and like wizards sometimes can and then can even more than the druid. And still with not much work.

In other words, all three of these casters, by your own admission, are frequently "overpowered" without significant optimization. And the melee classes, as I think I showed, are also frequently "overpowered". So, as I stated earlier, most classes, and the characters that take them, are going to be "overpowered" without all that much in the way of effort. Which all points back to my earlier claim, that CR, because it so frequently low balls, sets just about everyone as overpowered.

Except the DM's monsters, and anyone who didn't upgrade to the new level of optimization. If the whole party is playing at the same adjusted level, and if the DM can reasonably account for it by using higher CR foes or optimizing them, then yeah there's no problem.

But you don't know any of that. The root of this diversion is that you (or rather the nebulous hardcore optimizers who offend me, but "you" is more aggressive) refuse to consider the possibility that suggesting a maximum power build will massively disrupt a game. You put many blocks and qualifiers in the way, but at the end of the day you're assuming that someone else will do the work of making sure the build will fit in the game, rather than getting more information first or explaining that this build is far above normal (because you conveniently refuse to admit there is a normal).
But the DM can know that. That's why they're the responsible party, because they alone have the overarching knowledge of everyone's power, and the authority to act on that knowledge. The playground doesn't know, and the player knows more but not everything, but the DM does know everything if they want to.

Hahaha, oh man, you actually think everyone has legible character sheets. That's likely more detail than I'd try to cram into my own (I'd put it down in the notes or something), and I never stop cramming details onto my sheet. Yet any sheet I see that's not from an experienced optimizer (someone who's extremely familiar with the rules, likes gathering the pieces and putting them together, comfortable filling them in, etc), those sheets are nigh useless. They'll have lists of what abilities are there and maybe part of the damage line is correct but mostly you have to figure it out yourself.
I just use mythweavers. It's nice.

Manyasone

2016-10-15, 04:10 PM

What I wonder is, if this character is level 13, how on earth did he qualify for deadeye, which requires 14BAB?

Fizban

2016-10-15, 05:53 PM

But I don't agree that they're necessarily not meaningful. I think that, when you get some density of outliers, they stop being outliers and start just being a set of data points that you need to account for. Outliers necessarily occur somewhat infrequently.
And what percentage is that? Probably less than what we'd actually find since it's already a chaotic system, but I don't expect DnD to hold pretty to normal statistics.

I wouldn't call it too forced a weakness. Melee builds tend to not have any serious ranged stuff at all. Beyond that, kinda thought I was agreeing. Dunno why argument.
You stuck on the rocks.

The ubercharger is a well defined construct with some admitted variance in the specifics.
So are we evaluating it at level 4, or 6, or 8, or what? I already checked the CR 6 monsters in comparison to Will o' Wisp: more than 50% had no defenses against ubercharging and plenty more would have dropped if they stopped to make a melee attack.

Not really sure where this definition is, exactly. It'd really be more accurate to say, "Your build is overpowered by the arbitrary definition I'm employing." And, as I noted before, if that's the definition of overpowered, most things are overpowered. I'll give some evidence of that further down.
DMG, page 49: "An Encounter with an Encounter Level (EL) equal to the PC's level is one that should expend about 20% of their resources."

It is and has always been the definition. I'm rounding a bit and using 25% since one character is 25% of the party. The bit about monsters immune to your gimmick is reverse engineered from the fact that there are plenty of core monsters that nullify gimmicks, making it obvious that it's 100% acceptable.

Most melee monsters. Other monsters could in turn overpower the barbarian.
And you know perfectly well that most monsters are melee. Unless there's very large number of melee monsters that can actually overpower the ubercharger, the number of monsters than can overpower it are going to be in the minority at best.

I just don't agree. Who really cares how a build does against "normal monsters"? What matters is how a build does against the monsters that the party is balanced against. Because you say "most monsters you'd face at this level", and that could point to monsters a couple of CR above you, or to equal CR monsters, or to lower CR monsters in a low power game.
Well clearly I care, any DM that expects to run normal monsters by CR cares, any DM that wants to run a module without heavily modifying it cares, and it turns out those are people that exist. And when people actually use "most monsters you'd face at this level," they do in fact go to the appropriate MM and pull several samples of popular monsters to compare to the build, that's how you do it.

Take a water orc barbarian with a greatsword at first level.
First level, the one known as "russian roulette," does not invalidate the rest of the system. Also, you've already taken a nothing but upside variant.

I don't think this is overpowered, and I'd freely recommend it to anyone. You, seemingly, would claim it ludicrously overpowered. I don't think the crocodile fails to be representative of melee monsters either.
Not until it adds the whirling frenzy (another variant with nothing but upside), and pounce. I don't expect 1st level CR to work any more than 1st level play in general.

Travel devotion is a classic one.
From the same book, possibly even by the same idiot.

I don't think anything really supports the idea that casters were meant to be super overpowered but in a shared way.
If you ignore the evidence and history then there's nothing left for me to convince you with.

This is a core class. A standard group was expected to play it.
See above.

In other words, all three of these casters, by your own admission, are frequently "overpowered" without significant optimization. And the melee classes, as I think I showed, are also frequently "overpowered". So, as I stated earlier, most classes, and the characters that take them, are going to be "overpowered" without all that much in the way of effort. Which all points back to my earlier claim, that CR, because it so frequently low balls, sets just about everyone as overpowered.
You have refused to accept the standard party model that CR was built around, and also took 1st level as a balancing point.

But the DM can know that. That's why they're the responsible party, because they alone have the overarching knowledge of everyone's power, and the authority to act on that knowledge. The playground doesn't know, and the player knows more but not everything, but the DM does know everything if they want to.
So you agree that you're putting it all the other party and washing your hands of any responsibility. That's nice, I'd like people to meet a higher standard but I don't actually expect it to happen.

I just use mythweavers. It's nice.
So do I, so did the examples I mentioned.

Ualaa

2016-10-16, 04:19 AM

As a DM, I don't really care how optimized an individual character is. You might be doing 40 damage per round, on average. You might be doing 290 damage per round, on average. One or the other doesn't make all that much of a difference, in a vacuum.

If everyone else in the party is in the 250-300 damage a round region, then 290 damage per round is very reasonable. If most of the party is doing 50 damage and your guy is consistently doing 290 damage then I do have an issue.

It isn't really that hard to create something that provides a challenge for an even level of optimization. It is a monumental pain to challenge a disparity in the player's capabilities. If you push the much more optimized guy, then everyone else does jack... or possibly gets wiped out in a round or two. Alternatively, if you balance against guys who are at power level 15 (on a 1-100 scale), the guy who is at power level 75 (on the same scale) almost automatically hit, and possibly one shots anything that is hit.

As a player, I like to take a concept that is interesting (that's the most important consideration, because if it is not interesting I won't enjoy it) and then to optimize it to a decent but not necessarily theoretical maximum level, as numerous builds are on these boards. I have a player who at 14th level hits for three of his swings in a typical round, and does fifty or so per hit. I have another player who hits for thirty or so, and with higher accuracy and flurry of blows hits pretty consistently four or so times and sometimes gets six hits in (haste, ki whatever). If I were to be in a group with this set of players, I see 120 to 180 damage in a round as fairly typical, and if I were to do 150-200 that's a fair range. Or alternatively, if I were to do 100, but have higher defenses by say +8 AC or the equivalent... that is also a fair build in relation to the other guys. I won't overshadow them, but I will still enjoy what I'm doing because I'm not useless in relation to them, nor are they useless in relation to me. In short, everyone is going to have fun.

It doesn't matter what your power level is, as long as it is similar to the other players in the group. If you're 25% better in one regard and 10% worse in another, you're close enough. If you're 50% better on both offense and defense than the next best, and maybe twice as good (100% better) than others in your group, that won't be fun for you nor your friends.

eggynack

2016-10-16, 05:42 AM

What I wonder is, if this character is level 13, how on earth did he qualify for deadeye, which requires 14BAB?
Looks like it requires BAB +1 to me.

And what percentage is that? Probably less than what we'd actually find since it's already a chaotic system, but I don't expect DnD to hold pretty to normal statistics.
Offhand, 5%, maybe? That'd put the super powered monsters within two standard deviations, on a bell curve, so it's within not-outlier territory, I think. Maybe 10%, if you're high balling it. Two standard deviations is, in a sense, normally abnormal.

You stuck on the rocks.
Yeah, cause you said rocks. They were your rocks. If you really wanted non-rocks, you coulda just put non-rocks in your argument.

So are we evaluating it at level 4, or 6, or 8, or what? I already checked the CR 6 monsters in comparison to Will o' Wisp: more than 50% had no defenses against ubercharging and plenty more would have dropped if they stopped to make a melee attack.
I actually participated in this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?282709-Warrior-vs-Monk-vs-Barbarian) awhile back where I stuck together a reasonably optimized barbarian and threw it at various melee beasts, and did it at a number of levels. Should be useful for this. Also, as I noted in that thread, bat swarms. Those are crazy hard for a low level barbarian to take out. Not sure how much that means, but it's vaguely interesting.

DMG, page 49: "An Encounter with an Encounter Level (EL) equal to the PC's level is one that should expend about 20% of their resources."

It is and has always been the definition. I'm rounding a bit and using 25% since one character is 25% of the party. The bit about monsters immune to your gimmick is reverse engineered from the fact that there are plenty of core monsters that nullify gimmicks, making it obvious that it's 100% acceptable.
That really seems to be defining the power level of encounters rather than monsters. Seems to me that such a system would allow modifying the standard EL to suit what the party actually looks like, as opposed to broadly labeling anything above that limit overpowered. In other words, if the monster isn't causing that much resource loss, then that text would imply a flaw in the monster rather than a flaw in the characters.

And you know perfectly well that most monsters are melee. Unless there's very large number of melee monsters that can actually overpower the ubercharger, the number of monsters than can overpower it are going to be in the minority at best.
Melee monsters tend to be the majority, but it doesn't look like they're even always the majority. Returning to the OP, because it's a nice semi-stable environment to look at, if we look at CR 13 SRD monsters, then out of 8 monster possibilities, literally none of them are wholly reliant on melee combat, and most have some heavy spell capabilities. So, it depends.

Well clearly I care, any DM that expects to run normal monsters by CR cares, any DM that wants to run a module without heavily modifying it cares, and it turns out those are people that exist. And when people actually use "most monsters you'd face at this level," they do in fact go to the appropriate MM and pull several samples of popular monsters to compare to the build, that's how you do it.
Picking monsters of one CR doesn't seem all that much harder than picking monsters of a different CR. Similarly, picking a higher level module sounds about as difficult as picking a lower level module. More in-depth modification is nice, but not necessary.

First level, the one known as "russian roulette," does not invalidate the rest of the system. Also, you've already taken a nothing but upside variant.
First level is high variance, but I don't think that fact alone changes the matchups. And, yes, I made use of a strong racial choice, but it doesn't seem all that crazy to do so. Dropping the water part of the water orc would probably necessitate dropping strength a little for constitution, in order to avoid the average first turn kill on a successful hit.

I could probably do it at other levels too. I'ma try that barbarian against the first SrD enemy that isn't an allip, the large animated object. Lessee, 24 HP now, and the attack stays the same except that you get either one more to-hit or two more damage. Prolly taking the damage on this one. So, 23 damage a round, subtract about five for wood so 18, meaning you need about three hits. the object is dealing 8.5 a round, so about the same except your to-hit is higher and the AC probably is too. Seems reasonably favorable. I could even dip out of barbarian into fighter or cleric or something. That'd probably make it even more favorable.

Not until it adds the whirling frenzy (another variant with nothing but upside), and pounce. I don't expect 1st level CR to work any more than 1st level play in general. The opposing attack does 16.5 damage
So I could probably add one or the other, thus meaning the arbitrary animated object is being cut into its component material ridiculously fast through the magic of whirling frenzy. Neat, I suppose.

From the same book, possibly even by the same idiot.
Doesn't seem dumb to me. Fighting classes really need these easy movement abilities to remain competitive.

If you ignore the evidence and history then there's nothing left for me to convince you with.
Not ignoring so much as not thinking it clearly shows the intent you think it does. Arguing intent is hard. Also, the overall argument that casters aren't overpowered because they're supposed to be overpowered, while barbarians are overpowered because they're not, rings false to me. Especially because I doubt casters were intended to be as overpowered as they are.

See above.
What evidence/history supports the notion that people weren't supposed to play druids?

You have refused to accept the standard party model that CR was built around, and also took 1st level as a balancing point.
If you're referring to the use of singleton classes as such a refusal, it's your overpoweredness system. If you're referring to the dismissal of these four specific classes, there doesn't seem to be any indication that the CR system was built only around such a specific party.

So you agree that you're putting it all the other party and washing your hands of any responsibility. That's nice, I'd like people to meet a higher standard but I don't actually expect it to happen.
The DM hat is a heavy one to bear, but it's the one that comes with these sorts of responsibility. If they want something in a certain power band, they can say so, or they can even change things up after the fact. For with those chains of responsibility comes the power to bring about this sort of change. Someone can go above and beyond, taking some of the responsibilities off the DM's heavily weighted shoulders, and that's great of them, but that they can do that doesn't set forth some kinda prescriptive standard.

So do I, so did the examples I mentioned.
That's kinda odd. I usually do some pretty robust inclusioning on those sheets, so it's definitely possible to do so.

Manyasone

2016-10-16, 08:39 AM

Well, eggy, I believe earlier in this thread they were saying that he uses a feat from dragon compendium, called dead eye. Requirement of said feat is Dex 17, PBS, WF (ranged weapon) und bab +14. Effects of feat are Dex to damage for WF (requirement) within 30ft. I believe you are talking about deadeye shot, which is PHB2

Fizban

2016-10-16, 08:49 AM

Offhand, 5%, maybe? That'd put the super powered monsters within two standard deviations, on a bell curve, so it's within not-outlier territory, I think. Maybe 10%, if you're high balling it. Two standard deviations is, in a sense, normally abnormal.
Yeah, look at all that proper scientific definition. DnD doesn't have enough of anything to warrant that much precision in measuring, even before you put your extra demands on it. Even if only 50% of the monsters had spot-on CR, that would be enough to say that it worked for any reasonable purposes. You're demanding 90% perfect accuracy? From a game written by dozens of authors over years of real-time before the company started crowdsourcing the playtesting and statistical analysis? Come on.

I actually participated in this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?282709-Warrior-vs-Monk-vs-Barbarian) awhile back where I stuck together a reasonably optimized barbarian and threw it at various melee beasts, and did it at a number of levels. Should be useful for this. Also, as I noted in that thread, bat swarms. Those are crazy hard for a low level barbarian to take out. Not sure how much that means, but it's vaguely interesting.
That thread seems to be about core+SRD only, though later you say you're going to shocktrooper anyway. Skipping to later pages I see that you basically ignored a bunch of monsters, but every one you did was declared a win if the barbarian struck first with what was apparently a pouncing attack. Bit of a trend eh?

That really seems to be defining the power level of encounters rather than monsters. Seems to me that such a system would allow modifying the standard EL to suit what the party actually looks like, as opposed to broadly labeling anything above that limit overpowered. In other words, if the monster isn't causing that much resource loss, then that text would imply a flaw in the monster rather than a flaw in the characters.
Let's walk through from the beginning, again. You say there is no such thing as a baseline for character power level. I say there is, it's called CR. There is no way for the designers to know what your characters are like, and expecting them to know somehow is stupid. But there do happen to be multiple books full of monsters with challenge ratings that actually line up with each other and work just fine for people that aren't trying to maximize their characters. Clearly the designers had an idea of power level in mind when they wrote those, and all you have to do to see it is compare characters to the monsters. We have a definition of CR, we have monsters, we can see if the characters are more powerful than expected if they blatantly disregard CR. It's not that hard to follow, I don't know why you keep getting lost. Yes, it's reverse engineering, because 3.5 was before the internet starting demanding MMO levels of balancing that necessitated the 4e/5e "these are standard monster stat" tables. If you refuse to even look for a baseline then of course you're not going to find one.

If you work from the "PCs are always right" angle and force the monsters to adjust to them then yeah, monsters that aren't draining enough resources are flagged as underpowered themselves, but that only happens if the PCs are always right. It is obviously going to preclude any sort of baseline, because you've already ignored any standardization in favor of customizing the game to the PCs. It works if you've got a specific game with a party of PCs already in play that the DM is trying to adjust for.

If you're looking for a baseline, you work from the printed material that can actually form one: the monsters are right, and builds that win too easily are obviously above that baseline.

Melee monsters tend to be the majority, but it doesn't look like they're even always the majority. Returning to the OP, because it's a nice semi-stable environment to look at, if we look at CR 13 SRD monsters, then out of 8 monster possibilities, literally none of them are wholly reliant on melee combat, and most have some heavy spell capabilities. So, it depends.
You seem to continuously assume that even the slightest hiccup means the ubercharger fails to be overpowered, when you should be assuming the worst- that against any foe that is even mildly interested in melee combat, it gets the charge. That is the player's whole character concept after all, and intentionally hosing them is intentionally hosing them.

Picking monsters of one CR doesn't seem all that much harder than picking monsters of a different CR. Similarly, picking a higher level module sounds about as difficult as picking a lower level module. More in-depth modification is nice, but not necessary.
Not entirely sure what you're saying here, it sounds like: "Meh, it doesn't bother me why should it bother you?" Which is a lot of your arguments so far. Also, assuming that just transposing CRs will be fine: but then when a monster shows up with an ability you can't deal with because it expects level X PCs to have access and you're X-1 because you're "above normal power," you'll complain CR is broken again.

I'ma try that barbarian against the first SrD enemy that isn't an allip, the large animated object. Lessee, 24 HP now, and the attack stays the same except that you get either one more to-hit or two more damage. Prolly taking the damage on this one. So, 23 damage a round, subtract about five for wood so 18, meaning you need about three hits. the object is dealing 8.5 a round, so about the same except your to-hit is higher and the AC probably is too.
Well you haven't defined your dex or point buy, but with normal rage I'm seeing about 14-16, close enough to the object. If it's taking you three rounds, it can deal damage back and deplete some of your resources while the rest of the party gets a chance to pitch in. So you're proved that a core barbarian isn't overpowered, thanks for doing my job? It's a bit of an easy encounter, but animated objects are pretty easy to begin with, and you've chosen the blandest of objects (rather than a grappler or hardness 10+trampler).

Doesn't seem dumb to me. Fighting classes really need these easy movement abilities to remain competitive.
Except they don't. It's only in your world of everything must be optimized that they do, heck the word "competitive" betrays you right there: the PCs are already expected to win, as a team, there is no competition.

Normally there's supposed to be a choice where whoever gets the first attack pays the price of eating a full attack in return, it's a basic tactical choice in the main combat system. The PCs, incapable of pouncing, generally want to hold position and voluntarily take that first single attack in order to get their full attacks, unless it's a pouncing/grappling foe which might prevent them from doing so (and even a grappling foe leaves itself open to sneak full attacks if it does so right next to the rogue). The PCs have bows and magic, so the monsters must come to them, and everyone makes a fight of it. Or in char-op land, the PCs appear out of nowhere and one-round everything, else they get one-rounded themselves.

Not ignoring so much as not thinking it clearly shows the intent you think it does. Arguing intent is hard. Also, the overall argument that casters aren't overpowered because they're supposed to be overpowered, while barbarians are overpowered because they're not, rings false to me. Especially because I doubt casters were intended to be as overpowered as they are.
Not buying it, intent is pretty clear all over the place if you pay attention. The exact 1/4 spells thing is a pet idea, but it's still obvious you're supposed to be spending a lot of those slots on buffs. AC doesn't increase with level, how do you make sure the front line doesn't melt? Shield of Faith, Cat's Grace, Magic Circle, Magic Vestment. How do you increase the Fighter's damage? Bull's Strength. How do you survive dragon breath in a dungeon? Resist Energy/Protection from Energy on every party member. How do you survive accumulated damage from multiple battles? Cure spells. How do you survive incorporeal stat damage undead? Lesser Restoration the damage away. How do you survive dangerous energy draining undead/swarms of stat damage? Death Ward the whole party. How do you survive swarms of dudes? Fireball/Web/whatever. How do you deal with flying foes? Fly on everyone who needs to fly. How do you fight underwater? Water Breathing and Freedom of Movement spam. Every single complaint about the core non-casters is easily solved by having the casters not hog their spells. The party is supposed to work as a team, casters are overpowered/non-casters "useless" when the casters ignore the rest of the team, what's so hard to figure out about it? You'll claim that Divine Favor and Divine Power means Clerics are supposed to buff themselves, but it is known that the Cleric class was intentionally given a bunch of goodies to try and entice people into playing them because they're such a central requirement of the party, not because they were meant to be clericzilla.

Who said I'm calling Barbarians overpowered? I'm calling pounce and shocktrooper and whirling frenzy (and mailmen, etc) overpowered. You proved yourself that a normal barbarian is just fine.

What evidence/history supports the notion that people weren't supposed to play druids?
Oh no, you're putting words in my mouth. I said that the Druid wasn't playtested properly, was mistakenly made even more powerful moving to 3.5, was not part of the standard party used to build the CR system, and thus it's being grossly overpowered has no bearing on weather CR is useful as a measure. You're the one demanding 90% accuracy on every monster with every alternate class including retroactive application of later feats/ACFs/books that literally did not exist when the Monster Manual (or other source) was printed.

If you're referring to the use of singleton classes as such a refusal, it's your overpoweredness system. If you're referring to the dismissal of these four specific classes, there doesn't seem to be any indication that the CR system was built only around such a specific party.
I'm referring to the fact that you expect the system to work perfectly regardless of class, when they didn't build it that way. As for a quote of where exactly it's written, that's a bit more elusive. While I am 100% sure there is an article somewhere that handles it, they didn't go quite so far as to put it word for word in the DMG, probably because they didn't want to make anyone feel bad for playing other classes (a reasonable intent). However, you can still see it if you look: page 50, Difficulty Factors, tells of things that can increase or decrease the difficulty of the encounter. Note the obvious assumption of a baseline in that very statement. The list itself includes such telling lines as: "Undead are much more difficult to fight without a Cleric," "A large force is much more difficult to fight without a wizard or sorcerer," "Locked doors and traps are much more difficult to overcome without a rogue in the party," and "Multiple combat encounters are more difficult to win without a fighter, barbarian, ranger, or paladin in the party." (In case you're wondering, there is one line about Druids: "Encounters involving animals or plants are much more difficult without a druid or ranger in the party.") From the presence of all those factors, it's fairly clear that normal difficulty expects you to have a cleric, a wizard or sorcerer, a rogue, a fighter/barbarian/ranger/paladin, and possibly a druid/ranger if you consider plants and animals a normal hazard-which overlaps with the last category thanks to ranger.

Furthermore and even more basically, let's look at the basic games. Both the 3.0 and 3.5 starter sets give you pre-generated characters. Their classes? Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, Wizard. The 3.0 DMG also had a very nice couple of pages right after the Sample Dungeon called Example of Play, a script of a DM and players going through a couple rooms to show you how the back and forth of playing the game works (unless I've gone blind they removed it from the 3.5 version, which always made me sad). Their characters? Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, Wizard.

But unless I dig up a direct quote from 15 years ago it seems like you're not going to accept what most people recognize as the standard party is in fact the standard party.

The DM hat is a heavy one to bear, but it's the one that comes with these sorts of responsibility.
I'd like it if all DMs would step up to that too, but the reality is that many do not. Really I'm fine agreeing to disagree on this now that I've explained it, again like I said I don't actually expect to get anyone to police themselves. But the CR thing is different.

If they want something in a certain power band, they can say so, or they can even change things up after the fact.
You admit that there are such things as power bands, what is so hard about admitting that there is in fact a default power band? Just because most people prefer to play in a higher power band doesn't mean that CR is broken, doesn't mean that the baseline does not exist. The only reason to refuse is to protect the char-op pride that nothing they do is overpowered because lol CR is broken. Swallow your pride and accept that you play the game at a higher power than the CR system is built on, that you broke it first, and that's okay because you think it's more fun that way (I do too). Stop lying and pretending the system never worked in the first place.

Once you recognize that CR works you can then proceed to note that optimized characters with access to more than a few books will always be higher powered and require similar optimization from the DM, which is what you already do but being less of a butt about it.

That's kinda odd. I usually do some pretty robust inclusioning on those sheets, so it's definitely possible to do so.
Make the fanciest auto-sheet you want but you can't make the player use it. You may have been blessed with tables full serious DnDers for your entire gaming career, but that is far from the norm. I'd take a blind shot and say 50% of the players at most tables aren't up to snuff in one way or another (you would correctly guess that has been my own experience, 2 players who flop and 2 who op). You've got a high end and a low end and most tables aren't all at the same end.