Battlefield Control, am I doing it wrong?

[proselus]

OK so throughout the 3.5 forums we have talks of BFC wizards being so much better than damage dealers. My current groups wizard currently is the wizard version of the mailman (due to a stupid way our DM reads metamagic rules) and in fact we rarely have anyone doing God Wizard stuff. My character is part wizard, and so since many BFC stuff doesn't require saves, I tried my hand at it.

We had a fight with two groups of enemies, and I dropped a freezing fog on the further enemies to keep them out of the fight. We mopped up the closer enemies quickly, and then stood around awaiting the other enemies to emerge. They took the time to self buff heavily, then dropped freedom of movement, and ran right out.

Well now we have much stronger enemies trying to whack us in the face, and they got to choose the time of engagement so how exactly did the freezing fog help? Did I choose the wrong spell? Was it just a matter of bad timing for this fight?

[shuyung]

You have a DM who took it personally.

[OldTrees1]

We mopped up the closer enemies quickly, and then stood around awaiting the other enemies to emerge. They took the time to self buff heavily, then dropped freedom of movement, and ran right out.

Well now we have much stronger enemies trying to whack us in the face, and they got to choose the time of engagement so how exactly did the freezing fog help? Did I choose the wrong spell? Was it just a matter of bad timing for this fight?
Why did you wait? If someone is blinded by a Glitterdust, I would not wait for their vision to clear.


You have a DM who took it personally.
No evidence of that yet. If a monster has unused buff spells and you leave them alone for awhile, they will buff themselves.

[Telok]

Mostly you picked the wrong guys to cast it on. The cold cloud spells are pretty much just blocking line of sight and slowing people down who have to move through them. Don't use them on people who like having time to buff and cast spells.

Evard's black tentacles against stuff that can be grappled and can't teleport. Stinking cloud against weak poison saves. Grease against huge brutes (you can cast it on their weapon to disarm or on an ally as a cheap grapple defense). Fogs against archers, artillery, and people who like charging. Wall of stone (reflex or be trapped in a box) against some casters. Globes of invulnerability and even Leomund's tiny hut are also control in the right situations. Cloudkill against mooks. Wall of fire against undead and cold creatures.

[Demidos]

Use it on archers or melee or other non-spellcasters -- doing so prevents their physical characters from hurting you and ties them up, while you beat up the spellcasters that are now undefended. Since physical types can't typically buff, there's not much of a benefit they get from it. Furthermore, do note you can typically dispel your own spells at will, so you should have still been able to choose the time of engagement.

[mastermisha1]

Sounds like a run of bad luck and targeted enemies that had buffs to cast. In the future, if you find your self waiting on the enemy to engage like that, you could ready an action to cast something that would further ruin their day.

[eggynack]

I mean, you can still cast AoE effects into the fog, and you can target your allies with buffs, so the time your foes had away from you didn't necessarily have to be to their advantage. Also, it seems odd that they had enough FoM to cover every single one of them. That's a lot of castings, and keep in mind that you essentially traded that one casting of freezing fog for a whole lot of theirs. Moreover, they were taking constant if relatively minor damage while hanging out in that fog, and it sounds like they spent a lot of time casting spells, so that's not necessarily an ideal strategy for your opponents. On top of that, your enemies had some way to increase visibility, or the situation made it obvious, determining which side to leave on is non-obvious. And, as yet another aspect, it seems kinda odd that your foes had a crazy number of buffs and yet didn't have those buffs up prior to the fight. This situation where your foes have this degree of ability to convert time into power seems atypical, so you can expect other arbitrary uses of the spell to do at least somewhat better.

I guess what I'm getting at here is that your usage of the spell doesn't seem all that bad, but neither the thing that actually happened, nor the expected outcome of what you did, were all that bad either. You could have followed up on the fog better, but the fact that you managed to cut the actions of your opponents in half during each section of the fight was probably more important than the fact that the second group of enemies was buffed. And there are notable oddities about this situation that make me think that the worst elements of the spell's lack of perfection were atypical.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Sounds like a run of bad luck and targeted enemies that had buffs to cast. In the future, if you find your self waiting on the enemy to engage like that, you could ready an action to cast something that would further ruin their day.
Pretty much this. I think a good 90% of enemies would have absolutely nothing they could do about being stuck in a solid fog-type cloud; just bad luck they were unexpectedly spellcaster-y.

[proselus]

OK so in response to some questions, we waited for them to pop out because most people had no good AOE (lot of mundane in our group) and those who did have AOE were hitting them but the enemies were surviving. They also used my cloud for cover until it hit my turn again and I dispelled it.
As for wrong spell wrong target, yeah most likely. I couldn't tell at the time, but they were cleric monks (whatever that prestige class is called) so all I could see at a distance was "people wearing monk like garb." They did have holy markings but so did everyone we fought, so that wasn't the DM misleading me. What spell would have been better to use in that situation? They were very good at making saves.

[stanprollyright]

You have a DM who took it personally.

This is what I thought too. Not only do they all have buffs and FoM, but they didn't fail any of their concentration checks? They know exactly which direction to exit the cloud? None of them panic and try to leave too soon? And all of this happens before they take significant damage? Seems way too convenient.

There are things you could have done while you were waiting. Buffing/healing your own team, positioning yourselves so that they provoke multiple AoOs when they exit the cloud, casting another spell on top of the fog, surrounding it with a Wall of X or somesuch, summoning a monster to go in after them, etc.


As for wrong spell wrong target, yeah most likely. I couldn't tell at the time, but they were cleric monks (whatever that prestige class is called) so all I could see at a distance was "people wearing monk like garb." They did have holy markings but so did everyone we fought, so that wasn't the DM misleading me. What spell would have been better to use in that situation? They were very good at making saves.

The spell actually did almost everything you could have hoped. It split the bad guys in half and made them waste several rounds and a bunch of spells. Your party just needs to learn how to follow up something like that and use it to your advantage.

[Demidos]

Monks that aren't good at saves and have tons of buffs? Huh. I'm not familiar with that prestige class.

Stinking cloud would have made them nauseated so they'd lose actions even once they made it out of the cloud.

Cloudkill + wall of stone around them would pretty much kill them if they couldnt get out.

[Kelb_Panthera]

It -does- seem a little dodgy that the enemy casters made all their concentration checks -and- reflex saves unless you left them in there for quite a while. Did you actually give them several whole minutes to prepare in there? 'cause if you did, that's your poor tactics.

A quick blast from a wind-generating spell or dispel magic to disperse the fog would have allowed you to hit them hard and fast the moment you were done with the first few and you might even have caught a few of them prone.

[proselus]

Sorry I may not have been clear, I thought they were normal monks, but they were monk cleric hybrids (sacred fist maybe?). So they were making reflex saves very well. Now as for concentration checks, it was a non issue since they were taking a whopping 1d6 points of damage. Our party is level 15, so our opponents are near that. DC 16 is pretty easy for a caster at that level.
They only had a round or two to buff before they ran out. They did not know exactly where we were, but they knew the general direction, and in fact none of them got an attack off upon emerging. One did run the wrong way, but he used my cloud as cover, and it wasn't my turn so I couldn't dispel or gust the cloud away.
As for DM taking it personally, maybe. I don't think so, but I'm close to the issue so idk. He is the type of person to prep everything in advance, and we have been holy word-ing people previously, so enemies preparing freedom of movement is standard for our enemies (this was not the first time).
I suppose it's possible I'm overly worried, and delaying monk clerics for a full round or two was worth 1 spell, since we killed all the other enemies first.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Alright, now the blanks are filling in. Incomplete information had you picking the wrong spell. Simple as that. Although picking a good BFC spell to swing at a sacred fist is a pain. Something aimed at a will save would've probably been a decent bet since it's a poor save, primary ability or no.

However, I'd think the combined ongoing damage and necessary reflex saves would qualify the spell as a whole as a distracting one, pushing the concenration DC up to matching the save DC. No matter, in the end, but a thought I had.

[stanprollyright]

Sorry I may not have been clear, I thought they were normal monks, but they were monk cleric hybrids (sacred fist maybe?). So they were making reflex saves very well. Now as for concentration checks, it was a non issue since they were taking a whopping 1d6 points of damage. Our party is level 15, so our opponents are near that. DC 16 is pretty easy for a caster at that level.
They only had a round or two to buff before they ran out. They did not know exactly where we were, but they knew the general direction, and in fact none of them got an attack off upon emerging. One did run the wrong way, but he used my cloud as cover, and it wasn't my turn so I couldn't dispel or gust the cloud away.
As for DM taking it personally, maybe. I don't think so, but I'm close to the issue so idk. He is the type of person to prep everything in advance, and we have been holy word-ing people previously, so enemies preparing freedom of movement is standard for our enemies (this was not the first time).
I suppose it's possible I'm overly worried, and delaying monk clerics for a full round or two was worth 1 spell, since we killed all the other enemies first.

Oh, I guess I misunderstood the situation. In that case, it seems like it worked out rather well, considering you misread the opposition. My apologies to your DM for my baseless assumptions.


However, I'd think the combined ongoing damage and necessary reflex saves would qualify the spell as a whole as a distracting one, pushing the concenration DC up to matching the save DC. No matter, in the end, but a thought I had.

By my reading you have to make both checks: one with the spell DC, one for damage. The spell has two different effects, both of which would cause concentration checks independently of each other:

If more than one type of distraction is present, make a check for each one; any failed Concentration check indicates that the task is not completed.

If it were me DMing I'd just add the damage to the other DC.

[Zanos]

I mean, fighting two groups of guys together still is probably worse than fighting one group of guys, then the second group of guys with buffs.

If they waited out the entire duration of the fog, that's at least 110d6 cold damage, too. It looks like they only took a couple of rounds to cast buffs though.

[SangoProduction]

This is why you prepare dispel magic.