What notable discrepencies have you noticed in optimization theory and your games?

[Endarire]

Greetings, all!

I've read D&D 3.x and PF forums for about 15 years now - which is about half my physical life - and have noticed that what people have detested or praised in theory has only sometimes been true.

I loved Wizards and have played many of them as GM and PC, but I felt like I only rarely got to play them at levels when their power became legendary. Before then, I often felt frustrated I was wading through the same builds and spells (like grease, web, and haste) over and over and over again only to have my dreams of using level 4 or higher spells dashed when the campaign ended soon, or when I was suddenly left to solo some major creatures in Pathfinder as a Wizard who had no damage spells and needed these things dead to progress. (I'm glad I had some explosives from our party Artificer for me to throw!)

I've also found that Druids were capable and useful, but not the cure-all the boards made them out to be at low levels in a mostly core setting. The GM said the most powerful thing about my character at levels 1-3 was my animal companion (a wolf or a riding dog) because its bite did piercing, blunt, and slashing damage against foes that had DR vs. these.

Our group has found how powerful a properly-built and -prepared Warforged Swordsage5 did against a party of level 2s, most soloing them with the ability to kill them if he so chose. (It was a nonlethal duel.)

One of my friends took to loving Crusaders because of how much damage they could deal, withstand, and heal without much effort and with minimal long rests.

Mind you, this has been our experience (mostly mine, but that also of my group) at levels 1-6. We played one campaign that lasted levels 1-21 and loved it, but most our gaming experience otherwise has been in the level 1-6 range.

We do have counterexamples, such as a Psion blaster who used energy missile to kill so many foes at once that it made one of our GMs (who threatened us with a total party kill) ragequit. He returned, but only after that Psion was retired.

Another counter is being a Fun, Powerful Sorcerer (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=15797.0) in a duo campaign (where the other character was a Druid going for Planar Shepherd of Lamannia) where the GM specifically built the campaign and campaign world for us. We had a variety of GM-run NPCs to help us, especially for story reasons. He (the GM) wanted to grant our desires as players and encouraged us to play wisely, but otherwise play what we wanted. By then I learned the value of blast spells and the need for such as a sometimes solo character.

Counterexample 3: People have mocked reserve feats on casters as being generally suboptimal, but if you build your character around the right way, you could, at least in theory, spam Large Elementals from level 1 (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=17960.0).

[RoboEmperor]

As long as it doesn't destroy the campaign or make you hog all the glory it's fine.

For example, Planar Binding for free minions is fine if your party lacks a fighter, but if there is a fighter and he's weaker than your demon, then you summon demons weaker than the fighter or demons that don't engage in direct combat.

As for your level 9 reserve feat exploit, It doesn't work. You need to have the spell prepared for it to fuel your reserve feat. DMM heighten is applied as the spell is cast.

A lot of TO exploits require specific interpretations or gratuitous rule bending/lawyering and can be utterly destroyed if interpreted the other way. A lot of other TO exploits however, don't.

[Deophaun]

Obviously, if you're primarily ending campaigns at level 7, optimization theory is going to be different. There's a reason E6 exists, and that's because balance starts going out the window after that. Still, level 7 was enough for one of my wizards to take down a level 21 Druid/MoMFs, so...


Counterexample 3: People have mocked reserve feats on casters as being generally suboptimal, but if you build your character around the right way, you could, at least in theory, spam Large Elementals from level 1 (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=17960.0).
"People" on these forums have done a lot of things, including calling Monks OP and Evocation the bestest school ever. Of course, "People" also say monks are garbage and evocation should be the first school you ban. What "people" say is not useful.

The general consensus is that Reserve Feats are useful at low levels, but from an optimization standpoint it's best to trade them out as you go higher (9 or 12).

Also, DMM:Heighten does not help at all with Reserve Feats, as if you're a prepared caster, you must have an appropriate spell prepared (which, you don't as DMM is applied at time of casting, not when preparing), and if you're a spontaneous caster you need an available spell slot in addition to the spell (which DMM doesn't give you). So, in theory, sure; if your DM allows it. But then, in theory I can call Orcus at level 1 as a Commoner. If my DM allows it.

[daremetoidareyo]

Optimization theory on the forums assumes that you can't simply ask for what you want. Real play often disregards Racial hit dice and gives martials better things.

Optimization theory holds that RAW must be applied to the letter. Real games houserule tons of stuff with little negative impact to gameplay.

In real games, if you wanted to exploit stuff to drive at a specific character concept, you may find that the DM actually urges you on and just adapts around your schtick.

[Quertus]

Hmmm... I guess that the only thing I've noticed is that, having developed and played a lot of TO stuff at actual tables, TO need not break a game.

I've also been in a game where the party monk was arguably the MVP.

[J-H]

-Damaging spells are under-rated and very important and helpful.
-Fiery Burst is probably overrated, but it does beat a crossbow.
-Armor Class does matter. The gap between the squishies and the non-squishies is enough that the squishies usually get hit, and the tanks are missed quite frequently.
-Flight isn't a catch-all solution, especially when some of the party doesn't have it, and when people are throwing around strength-draining attacks.

Things that have been proven to my satisfaction:
-Crowd control magic makes a big difference
-Archery stinks without a bunch of optimization
-Chargers do a lot of damage
-Tactical teleportation (anklet of translocation, DDoor) is very valuable
-ToB is great for martials
-Fleshrakers are OP, especially with the blinding spittle feat from Serpent Kingdoms (30' ranged touch to Fort or Blind every round).

[mabriss lethe]

One of the things I've always seen is prep time. Rarely in a proper game do you get much in the way of prep time to build up layers of defenses via spells. The squishies often immediately have to choose between eating a round essentially "doing nothing" to put up defensive spells, or trying to get in a pot shot that could take out an enemy or two. That style of play is pretty common and does make playing an arcane caster much more difficult (especially at lower levels) than theory suggests.

[Fizban]

Magic doesn't matter if they're not in range: a brawler on a flying horse will outshine a summoner wizard easily, if it's a game where a flying horse matters.
Spontaneous blasting is important (not that this should ever have been questioned).
Glitterdust is exactly as ridiculous as it looks.
Spells per day absolutely matter, especially because the non-spellcasters don't actually pay attention to them.
Warlocks deal plenty of damage, when that damage is essentially unstoppable and indefatigable.
Favored Enemy (the entire enemy organization) is in fact ridiculous.
Having a huge weapon and DR instead of AC means you're going to get wrecked, because:
AC matters, especially if you've actually build your build around it (not that this should ever have been questioned either).
Rerolls are great, but they're still rolls.
Black Tentacles isn't nearly as crazy as people think it is, if you're actually fighting monsters.
Just shooting a bow without even applying sneak attack, is in fact more than doing nothing, and that damage will make the enemy fall down sooner.

One that should go without saying, but:
Just because someone on the internet declares a thing balanced doesn't mean it will actually balance with the rest of the party.

Related:
Even if you're not "stepping on anyone's toes" with your omni build/class/whatever because no else is trying to do the things you are, the fact that you do a bunch of things still makes standard builds feel bad since they know they're not as "valuable."

[Florian]

Phew, where to begin?

- Martial classes can hold their own up to the high level range.
- Batman wizards don´t exist and really nobody is interested in what spells you could have after short rest.
- No one is impressed what you could do after fully buffing up, but only 2x/day.
- Spells that bypass encounters are less impressive when the rest of the party actually wants to tackle the encounter
- Grase, Color Spray, Black Tentacles are overrated when going up a colorful mix of monsters.
- Few people play classes that are mechanical powerful but lack a strong archetype or fluff.
- Psionics is too fiddly even for interested players

[remetagross]

I would say downtime.
In one of the campaigns I'm playing, I have this level 12 Wizard with Permanency, because I've read this spell was great. But much to my surprise, I had to wait for several weeks of play before the game slowed down enough for me to have a spare day of utility spells to prepare and whip up the Permanency.

[Kaleph]

Optimization theory comes with a lot of analyses and argumentations, it's hard not to agree with at a theoretical level. The problem is that optimizers tend to make statements which are intended as generally true, while as a matter of fact no campaign is actually general, and thus some of those statements find no confirmation in real-play. I agree for example with most inconsistencies that have been mentioned above, because I've experienced the same in the campaigns I've played.

Regarding the wizard class, for example, I agree with every single point of the analyses that demonstrated it's Tier 1, but there's one conclusion I'd rather Counter: "it outshines and makes obsolete Tier 3 (or lower classes)".

My first Point is that the wizard starts to really make a difference in a medium-to-complex challenges play; when, instead, encounters (not only fights) tend not to stress to the limit the abilities of the PC's, there's normally a mundane solution that perfectly works. Magic will work even better, but it'd be an overkill, that wouldn't make any difference. On the other hand, mundane tends to be at-will and available without preparation, while magic requires a certain amount of planning and micro-management.

The second point is that, in my experience with campaigns filled with low-complexity encounters, the following happens:

If the wizard is not optimized, Barbarian > Wizard. I've even seen disappointed people saying that the wizard is one of the weakest classes in 3.5
If the wizard is actually optimized, Wizard >> Barbarian, but will tend to have a more supporting role, and thus actually enhancing the ability to shine of the other PC's.


Regarding the optimized wizard story, in a campaign @lvl 1-13 I've seen only 3 instances, when the wizard really had to pour all his potential to cope with an encounter, and well, it was really working as described in the optimization theory. The wizard soloed a mini-boss, helped the party out of a prison guarded by dragons, and led the assault to the final boss (plus minions) of the campaign, strong of his silver bullets and a called astral deva. It's lot of stuff, but only 3 times in 13 Levels...

EDIT
Another controversial factor in the optimization theory (and I'm again explicitly referring to the Tier System), is that "high Tier classes will often trigger master's Fiat".
This is tricky. Master's Fiat is in the fist place master-dependand; based on my experience, it tends to happen when he/she tries to do too much railroading. If I pull out a broken effect in a situation where the DM in any case decided that the PC will emerge victorious, it won't really matter to him. In most cases, he will study the ability I used and find a way to counteract it, or investigate if it really works that way or not.
When the ability disrupts a railroading instead, it's likely you'll hear the infamous words "no, you just can't do that".

Funny enough, I've never seen a wizard triggering DM's Fiat. On the other hand, I was unleashing it several times in a campaign with a psionic gish, who was Tier 3, 2 at best. Because, first, you must have the right occasion to "break-the-game". Second, you must do it when it really matters for the campaign's plot. Third, you must have the right resource available (prepped spell, etc.) in order to perform your action. Fourth, the right resource must be available only to you, if you want to outshine lower-Tier classes (otherwise they may as well break the game).
So many conditions must be met, in order to really fulfill the expectations of a world-shared character, that often you simply don't get the chance.

[ComaVision]

Build doesn't mean anything if the player is an idiot. I've seen a Greenbound Druid that never summoned anything because they clearly ripped off some forum source and didn't understand what it did.

The biggest caveat with the theory is that it assumes a forum-level understanding of the game. In my personal experience, nobody has that level of experience.

[Buufreak]

That I have noticed? The level of BS people will tolerate. I tried out T1 wizard, and it devolved into "roll for initiative, buu kills everything, moving on." Nobody was having fun past encounter 3, not even I. I also tried out a way to optimize multi arm fighting. My turns at level 16 took way too long. I tried to use a dice roller to speed it all up, and it wasn't nearly enough. My DM cued up carnival music because of how long this show was taking.

In short, I play with real people, and I find theoretical optimization only works well with theoretical people.

[Quertus]

Black Tentacles isn't nearly as crazy as people think it is, if you're actually fighting monsters.

Only noobs fight monsters - everyone knows PCs carry the best loot. :smalltongue:


Related:
Even if you're not "stepping on anyone's toes" with your omni build/class/whatever because no else is trying to do the things you are, the fact that you do a bunch of things still makes standard builds feel bad since they know they're not as "valuable."

This is an interesting puzzle. So, let's say that there are 1000 "points" worth of tasks that the standard adventuring party needs covered. In a 4-man team, if the other 3 players built "100-point" characters, and the 4th player built a "700-point" character that successfully covers the party's deficiencies... I'm not seeing how to make them not feel bad that their characters are inferior. If, you know, they care about that kind of thing. Because not everyone does.

Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, has a rather small niche: understanding magic theory. Now, he usually steps up, and covers logistics and sage roles, and technically could try to do things like BFC if he were ever in a party that let the monsters live long enough for that to matter. But I never feel upset when others have larger roles than Quertus does.

Armus, my "moody teenager" brilliant tactician, on the other hand, had most of the pie. He was party leader, tactician, face, item crafter, logistics, assassin, toolkit, minionmancer, puzzle solver, scout, jester, and, arguably, moral compass. He was also the undisputed weakest member of the party for most of the campaign*. Because raw power was what most of the other players cared about, Armus rarely caught flack for having almost every other role.

So, if people care about dividing roles evenly, they should build characters who can shoulder an even share of the burden. What do you suggest for parties where the players care, but then build inferior characters?

* eventually, when the party was upper-teens level, we added some new 1st level PCs to the party. There was just no was too make Armus weaker than them**, so he was no longer the undisputed weakest link any more.

** although he tried, by redistributing items like a Staff of the Magi and a Staff of Power to the two 1st level wizards. That was a true test of Armus' authority, getting the two PCs to hand over their prized possessions to the noobs.


That I have noticed? The level of BS people will tolerate. I tried out T1 wizard, and it devolved into "roll for initiative, buu kills everything, moving on." Nobody was having fun past encounter 3, not even I. I also tried out a way to optimize multi arm fighting. My turns at level 16 took way too long. I tried to use a dice roller to speed it all up, and it wasn't nearly enough. My DM cued up carnival music because of how long this show was taking.

In short, I play with real people, and I find theoretical optimization only works well with theoretical people.

I've built custom programs for some of my friend to solve this exact problem. The program already has your stats, just enter the target AC, and it displays the results, including a "total damage dealt", individual damages, and an option to enter a DR to display a second column with those numbers after DR. Didn't slow the game down one bit. Actually, sped it up in some cases, as my program was faster than them doing the math for a single attack. :smalleek:

[Florian]

@Quertus:

I always use a "Session Zero" that includes character building as a team effort. That covers a lot of thing in one go, from roles, to power level, and so on.

[Buufreak]

I've built custom programs for some of my friend to solve this exact problem. The program already has your stats, just enter the target AC, and it displays the results, including a "total damage dealt", individual damages, and an option to enter a DR to display a second column with those numbers after DR. Didn't slow the game down one bit. Actually, sped it up in some cases, as my program was faster than them doing the math for a single attack. :smalleek:

To pseudo quote lolcats, I can has program?

[ATHATH]

But then, in theory I can call Orcus at level 1 as a Commoner. If my DM allows it.
Side-note: This is actually really easy to do- take the Pig-Bonded (Pig-Bound? I forget) flaw. If you ever drop/lose your pig, Orcus appears and flays you alive.

[Quertus]

@Quertus:

I always use a "Session Zero" that includes character building as a team effort. That covers a lot of thing in one go, from roles, to power level, and so on.

I can rarely get anyone to want to put in the effort to discuss what they want any more. In that regard, I'm jealous.

However, I kinda like the old drop-in mentality, where the party doesn't feel artificially tailored. Where you have to think about challenges, and ask how these characters with these abilities are going to solve whatever clearly not tailored challenge the DM throws at them, rather than assuming you can always boringly fill the round hole with your round peg.

I'm not sure what the right my optimal balance of tailoring the party vs being surprised and having to work for my victories is, but it sounds like that would be good to discuss in session 0, too.

[Quertus]

To pseudo quote lolcats, I can has program?

Um... Hmmm.... Maybe?

You probably wouldn't want the hardcoded versions I've made. So, I could make a custom, editable version. But to get it to you? Hmmm... I can see 3 options.

* you could pm me your email, and I could send it to you.
* I could write it as a web page, and either get someone to host it, or PM the code to you, and let you "host" it yourself.
* I could actually practice writing code for phones, write it for the phone, and you could download the app.

Thoughts?

[logic_error]

@OP

You identified the biggest caveat of the optimisation theory. By the time when you are really powerful, the campaign is over, unless you began there in the first place and you had access to the cool stuff right off the bat like magic items and spells out the wazoo. Yes, in a multi-encounter per day situation at low levels you are going to do significant stuff, but never enough to make you feel that you are owning the game. Real gishes like dusk blade or druids are going to rule the roost until level 7 or so. Then its druids and clerics that really shine from here forth. At this level, you will begin to feel that you have a real impact as you can access a few level 4 spells. But once again the Druid with its amazing class features and the Duskblade with its cool signatures is going to do the real cleanup until level 11. The Cleric will now jump out of the heal-bi*ch shadow to also become a real playa. So again you will not feel that you are the king of the hill. It's only at level 11 or so when your might can be unleashed to beat the encounter at round 1. But until then, well, just learn to play the best you can, optimising your strategy to help the party.

[CharonsHelper]

Theory often assumes high levels while I've only played in one campaign that got into the teens, and I'm not sure if any other campaign even hit double digits. So - while I acknowledge caster/martial is an issue, it doesn't get very noticeable until at least level 9 (level 5 spells) and doesn't get too bad until the teens. That being the case - it's rarely been an issue at my table.

[Guizonde]

the biggest discrepancy i noticed? the use of in-combat healing, and the hate-train going on for monks.

i was an rsop, and i used my healing spells as much on my teammates as on my ennemies. funny thing, is that according to the translation of the rsop i found, any casting i did was "good" aligned. you want to humiliate a demon and provoke a free round of attacks on the thing? heal him for 1hp.

second, the monk. a halfling drunk monk, to be exact. dexterity in low orbit, strength as a dump-stat. more than good wisdom, a lot of charisma, and the luckiest rolls i ever saw for hp gains every level. he died a lot prior to my arriving in the party. all of a sudden, when i used a cure moderate wounds during combat, the boss of the day had to spend another 3 turns (and multiple crits) to get rid of that pesky halfling that went from 3hp to 96. that monk was part tank, part scout, part face, part ranger, part uh... monk. sure, he didn't do all that as well as a dedicated class could, but we forgot sometimes what he was specifically (besides a drunk halfling). that was a straight monk 7, too, he lost a level just before going into the prc...

another thing i noticed (and is going off on a tangent) that optimization theory does not take into account is situation. sure, in theory a wizard 20 will bypass anything, and stand a better chance at being able to avoid harm. a flatfooted wizard is toast. this can be for a multitude of reasons. a landslide, falling off a horse, a failed spot check, friendly fire, even. this is true for all classes. i managed to outshine a sorceror in combat because i could move around, unlike him. i was playing a halfling paladin (and had an ungodly amount of points sunk into mounted combat and riding). that paladin became an urban legend in that group, by sheer dint of being a tarpit in a group that needed one. this allows me to segue into point two.
point two, situational utility: let me start off by saying that i know theory excludes practical application. so here's another thing. sometimes, all you want is a hammer. a theoretical jack of all trades like a codzilla or batman wizard tends to be a mid-game bloomer at the earliest. is it useful? of course. in practice, though, you need a hard counter to an antimagic field. that hard counter can be anything, but mostly involves blunt objects to a guilty face. a sneaky rogue backstabbing a guard, a barbarian beating a zombie with another zombie, or even a monk deactivating the antimagic field. a group that has no need for codzilla will resent it when they asked for a ranger. the caveat to "jack of all trades" is "master of none". can a cleric outdamage a fighter? sure, given a sufficiently high level and time to prepare. time is valuable in dnd, and having a dedicated beatstick to free up the cleric is arguably as valuable in situ as having the potential. i'd argue the practical is more valuable, but i've never had that particular experience in person (of a codzilla replacing a martial specialist).

[icefractal]

The simple effectiveness of killing things very fast should not be underestimated. People will say that giant damage numbers don’t really mean anything, no real opponent would care, it has no versatility so it’s easily stoppable, and so forth. In practice, it’s very effective, particularly combined with a higher initiative. If the foes are dead before they can act, you don’t need a way to handle everything they could possible do.

Related - Gunslinger is better than people give it credit for, it just ‘matures’ somewhere between 6th-12th level. Compared to other high-damage characters like an uber-charger, it’s much harder to shut down. High AC, DR, single tough foes, tons of weak foes, foes that are far away, miss chances, single attack negation, even the specifically anti-gun items and spells - they have an answer to all of it. I found that when running a campaign (low double digit levels, IIRC), it required pretty contrived stuff to slow the Gunslinger down - things that were only plausible for foes who had advance warning about him, or particularly strange types of enemies.

Being the face is a massively important role in many (most?) campaigns, whether that means high social skills (if the GM really uses them), or having the right kind of personality and a high Charisma for justification (if not). It’s an area that has a lot of “screen time” and can often achieve in a few minutes of conversation what would otherwise be impossible or require defeating overwhelming opposition. An advantage to Charisma-based classes that often goes unacknowledged.

Solo scouting abilities might work fine mechanically, but are going to face resistance OOC. Few players want to wait around for an hour while a single character monopolizes gameplay by scouting everything alone first.

Any class can suck if the player makes sufficiently poor choices, either in building it or tactics. Not that anyone disagrees with this, but it gets ignored a lot. People will assume that an unoptimized Wizard is still going to be top-tier, and it really isn’t.

That said, Druid really is that good, with halfway decent choices made. You get the AC, which is a contender for MVP by itself for the first few levels. You get good buff spells and decent blasting spells, many of which ignore SR, and if you prepare anything unsuitable you can convert it into a Summon, which are good if you focus on them but even if not they’re a meat-shield. And you get Wildshape, which makes for more staying power than most casters. And if you make bad spell choices, you can fix them the next day at no cost. Just don’t try to be a primary healer, stick to wands.

Over-gearing helps martials more than casters - confirmed. Both the aforementioned Gunslinger, and later a Monk were keeping up with the casters just fine, courtesy of larger than typical WBL (for everyone, not just them). This was with players who optimized their gear choices pretty well though, it probably won’t work if people just go “most expensive sword I can afford, done”.

Casters have to intentionally restrain themselves by somewhere in double-digit levels - also confirmed. Every time I’ve played a caster, there’s come a point when I realized “If I use [spells I already have] in this way, I can faceroll any published opposition and/or simply go NI”, and had to just decide not to do that. Sometimes with non-casters too, but it’s more rare and less likely to be something you could do by accident.

Summon spells are at their strongest in low-op / low-wealth campaigns, and at their weakest in the reverse. Because of the fact that summoned creatures have fixed stats, and while there are feats/items that boost them it makes less of a difference than optimizing/not optimizing a PC. Something I don’t see mentioned much, but it’s a pretty big factor - depending on the campaign, summoner types can range from “MVP, makes all other PCs look like crap” to “Provider of subpar meat-shields that last less than a round”.

[Buufreak]

Um... Hmmm.... Maybe?

You probably wouldn't want the hardcoded versions I've made. So, I could make a custom, editable version. But to get it to you? Hmmm... I can see 3 options.

* you could pm me your email, and I could send it to you.
* I could write it as a web page, and either get someone to host it, or PM the code to you, and let you "host" it yourself.
* I could actually practice writing code for phones, write it for the phone, and you could download the app.

Thoughts?

Uhm... A, final answer. That def sounds like the easiest thing to do.

[Fizban]

This is an interesting puzzle. So, let's say that there are 1000 "points" worth of tasks that the standard adventuring party needs covered. In a 4-man team, if the other 3 players built "100-point" characters, and the 4th player built a "700-point" character that successfully covers the party's deficiencies... I'm not seeing how to make them not feel bad that their characters are inferior. If, you know, they care about that kind of thing. Because not everyone does.

Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, has a rather small niche: understanding magic theory. Now, he usually steps up, and covers logistics and sage roles, and technically could try to do things like BFC if he were ever in a party that let the monsters live long enough for that to matter. But I never feel upset when others have larger roles than Quertus does.

Armus, my "moody teenager" brilliant tactician, on the other hand, had most of the pie. He was party leader, tactician, face, item crafter, logistics, assassin, toolkit, minionmancer, puzzle solver, scout, jester, and, arguably, moral compass. He was also the undisputed weakest member of the party for most of the campaign*. Because raw power was what most of the other players cared about, Armus rarely caught flack for having almost every other role.

So, if people care about dividing roles evenly, they should build characters who can shoulder an even share of the burden. What do you suggest for parties where the players care, but then build inferior characters?
A logical disconnect doesn't require logic: even if they don't care enough to build it and don't directly complain, they can still be annoyed by the fact that someone else always has a response when they don't. In the game I'm referring two there were 4 players: one solid optimizer with an AC tank, one non-optimizer who started with a dirgesinger that he immediately disliked, one non-optimizer who never seemed to have any complaints (but wasn't very invested in the game), and myself running a tightly capped versatile homebrew class from the internet.

The tank could out-tank me spectacularly, but I was still up in melee every combat. I was the only person with serious ranged attacks. The dirgesinger bard didn't like the disabling songs that were the whole point of the build we helped him with, so every time I disabled someone it looked crazy, and while he wanted to jump in and do something for every situation the build simply could not. I had only partial casting with some sudden metamagic, but with no other casters besides a basic wizard for a couple sessions, I was the only person with magic. I had enough stealth/sense skills to defend myself even without the rogue, but he's the only one who didn't seem to mind anything. Every fight opened up with: I throw magic or supernatural attack at them which clears the mooks or 50/50 disables the main target, then pile into melee. The bard wanted to do this, but even though the class I was playing was carefully balanced to not outstrip Wizards or Warblades or Skillmonkeys, it easily crushed a Bard that didn't like their main bard songs, and any magic is better than AC when you aren't fighting big monsters.

The optimizer with the tank clearly became dissatisfied as time went on, because his tanking mattered less and less the more classed NPCs the DM threw at us and the un-optimizer with the bard expressed his dissatisfaction in the second combat when he realized his weapon damage was 1d6+nothing. While I stand fully by the awesomeness of the class I was playing, no one was playing a blaster and the dirgesinger's disabling was more powerful than mine, it is clear that it was still quite overpowered compared to half the builds at the table. I played and optimized a class that let me do something all the time, and those two players knew perfectly well that they couldn't do things a lot of the time, and they clearly didn't like it. The rogue who didn't care about pushing sneak attacks was the only one who didn't seem to have any problems, but like I said he wasn't as invested.

[Jormengand]

Everyone is a lot weaker, except for the few classes which the forum finds it fun to hound on for no real reason (and have invariably never played) who are either about as good or better. Skills actually do things when used by characters who aren't a rogue. The order of which schools of magic are good is nearly reversed (Polymorph is rarely used to turn into anything massively scary, conjuration is generally Summon Beatstick N, abjuration is pretty much everything it was before, fireball is the go-to in combat, and charm person is a SoL), with the exception that necromancy is always mediocre, illusion is always above-average, and divination changes its value massively between opinions and between real games.

[Darth Ultron]

Most of all, I find players that just don't know what they are doing. They read all the handbooks, and made a character and are all set. Yet in the game, they are next to useless. They can, in theory, do x or y, but they will always pick z. Even if the handbook clearly says not to do that. Like they think ''crowd control'' is ''blasting''.

I find they don't have happy times in a normal game that is 50% role play/50% combat. As they have made a pure mechanical, often pure combat only character, they often don't have a fun character. They often get bored if the game play is not pure, endless mechanics. And it is very common for such a player to be unable (or unwilling, I guess) to role play. And they are the worst with the sheet mentality where if the character sheet does not have a spell or ability that says ''break open a door'', the player will think the character ''can't'' do that for some reason.

[noob]

In optimization you do not really ask yourself a lot how do mind blank interact with divination spells(in the adventure I am playing It is mostly about mind blank,divination spells and scry and die and wading in antimagic zones and infiltrating with creatures polymorphed in objects that have magic aura cast on them and other simple stuff)

[Telok]

I find they don't have happy times in a normal game that is 50% role play/50% combat. As they have made a pure mechanical, often pure combat only character, they often don't have a fun character. They often get bored if the game play is not pure, endless mechanics. And it is very common for such a player to be unable (or unwilling, I guess) to role play. And they are the worst with the sheet mentality where if the character sheet does not have a spell or ability that says ''break open a door'', the player will think the character ''can't'' do that for some reason.

So sadly true.

Once, always, and forever: Player > build > class.

Yes a good player with a strong caster class can dominate post 9th level. Yes it can happen by accident. No the 15 str/dex twf human fighter can't compete. No the VoP monk/PrC/template thing you found on the internet that breaks magic items to get SR and save bonuses isn't going to make it.

Once, always, and forever: Player > build > class.

What tends to end up happening is that melee ends up being either ToB or a narrow focus trick build. They can be good at what they do and even at some other things with a bit of work, but they're a simple beat stick unless the player can roleplay them into something more. Casters are often full power classes that the player limits themselves or takes an interesting but sub optimal PrC. Otherwise it's pretty much a half caster of some flavor (gish, warlock, bard) that's exactly as good in the game as the player is. The skill builds are something like the melee or half casters, reliant on a good player to rise above having a single good trick or being just mediocre.

Once, always, and forever: Player > build > class.

[Barbarian Horde]

Everyone is a lot weaker, except for the few classes which the forum finds it fun to hound on for no real reason (and have invariably never played) who are either about as good or better. Skills actually do things when used by characters who aren't a rogue. The order of which schools of magic are good is nearly reversed (Polymorph is rarely used to turn into anything massively scary, conjuration is generally Summon Beatstick N, abjuration is pretty much everything it was before, fireball is the go-to in combat, and charm person is a SoL), with the exception that necromancy is always mediocre, illusion is always above-average, and divination changes its value massively between opinions and between real games.


Doesn't optimizing skills just makes you into a professional banker in game?

[Jormengand]

Doesn't optimizing skills just makes you into a professional banker in game?

If those skills are profession (banker) I guess. I suppose I'm not really quite sure what you mean.

[Telok]

If those skills are profession (banker) I guess. I suppose I'm not really quite sure what you mean.

The real issue with skills is that PCs either get so few or they get such mediocre ones. Frankly even the rogue gets too few skill points for the skills that they are expected to cover.

[Barbarian Horde]

I actually give players 2 points for any profession of their choice sometimes up to level three, but that profession you can't increase. To many players don't use it what so ever in 3.5 because other skills have so much more utility. I said banker because I was thinking that would be the one job that could just really take advantage of the majority of theadventuring skills there.

[Chronikoce]

I guess the biggest discrepancy is one of expectation (experienced by myself and other players at my table).

Builds like batman wizard, codzilla, etc are hyped up as being super powerful and people rarely mention that for they average player they may not be fun to play.

I personally dislike any prepared caster. I know they are stronger but I have little desire to micromanage my daily spells and the party actions. This is complete preference of course, but most TO builds aren't fun to play in the slightest. Either you out in the work and the DM lets your shtick succeed thereby trivializing the encounters or you don't out in the work (or the DM prevents your plans) and your character is useless. Either way, nobody in my group had fun when we tried this.

On the other hand, something about optimization that is definitely true: definitely strive to have party members near the same level of optimization. A long term campaign of mine had a terribly unoptimized factotum in it who felt like he could never contribute (and other players were getting frustrated with essentially escorting an npc). The Paladin was fine so this really was an optimization issue where the factotum player didn't pick a single thing to do well so sucked at everything except knowledge checks.

[Zanos]

Everyone is a lot weaker, except for the few classes which the forum finds it fun to hound on for no real reason (and have invariably never played) who are either about as good or better. Skills actually do things when used by characters who aren't a rogue. The order of which schools of magic are good is nearly reversed (Polymorph is rarely used to turn into anything massively scary, conjuration is generally Summon Beatstick N, abjuration is pretty much everything it was before, fireball is the go-to in combat, and charm person is a SoL), with the exception that necromancy is always mediocre, illusion is always above-average, and divination changes its value massively between opinions and between real games.
I've seen a lot of charm person SoL tables. I'm pretty much convinced nobody has actually read the spell. It's ran as being as good as dominate a lot of the time.

For my own experiences people often CJ about how damage is bad and crowd control buffing and the like are the end all be all while also saying that you should totally play an ubercharger or a mailman because it's "just damagr" and "isn't as disruptive ad a wizard." I have actually had the misfortune of playing with someone who thought that because there was a wizard in the party that 1000 DPR on a single enemy wasn't out of line at level 10.

[Jormengand]

The real issue with skills is that PCs either get so few or they get such mediocre ones. Frankly even the rogue gets too few skill points for the skills that they are expected to cover.

A bog-standard human rogue can max out eleven skills. A bog-standard illumian truenamer can max out eight skills, gets +2 to all int and dex skills, can add 5 to any skill they like near-at-will, can add 10 to knowledge or bluff near-at-will, and can add level/3 to several rogueish skills at will.

Well okay, but what about people who don't generally have a lot of skills? Well, a bog-standard human fighter can max three skills, which changes the number of things that a fighter can do from "One, badly" (fighters suck even more in practical optimisation than forum optimisation IME - they're usually making greatsword swings for 2d6+6 damage tops, or 2d6+8 when they get WS(Greatsword), which doesn't cut it beyond very low levels) to "One, badly and three okay". Climb is actually useful when your wizard isn't throwing extended twinned chained overland flights around like they're going out of fashion, intimidate is intimidate, in case you don't have a face, and craft is always neat, especially if you come across something broken and need to fix it up.

Monk, for all its flaws, gets hide and move silently, diplomacy, and when you realise you're not cut out for adventuring you can always roll perform to make money instead. Again, having skills just multiplies the number of things the monk can do by (number of skills+1).


I've seen a lot of charm person SoL tables. I'm pretty much convinced nobody has actually read the spell. It's ran as being as good as dominate a lot of the time.

I mean, it does basically make the person into your "Trusted friend and ally". That's already pretty good, even if they won't actually do everything you say. But then, wouldn't your "Trusted friend and ally" essentially follow you and fight alongside you? Hell, if your charisma is higher than its charisma, you can probably order it about anyway (if you're a CHA 18 sorcerer and it's a CHA 10 whatever, you can order it 72.5% of the time, which means that you can probably get it to do something in line with your desires). It's not so much that nobody reads the spell, it's that with even a slightly charitable reading of the spell, it's actually exceptionally good. At the very least, it's a "Save or stop fighting me."

[Telonius]

Things that I've noticed optimization theory generally gets right:

- Monks' Flurry of misses really is a thing
- Vow of Poverty is really underpowered
- Grease really is that good
- Shatter really is that useful
- That &*() Crab really is that dangerous
- At low levels, things like Crusader really are pretty strong
- Wands of Lesser Vigor really are that nice. So are Belts of Healing and Anklets of Translocation.

Things where it doesn't really match up:

- Most players are a lot less thorough/a lot more lazy than optimization theory assumes. Druids don't show up with folders full of options, Wizards don't have exactly the right spell for every situation. They generally pick one option and use it; daily swapping out of spells doesn't happen as much as you'd think.
- Players tend to fight the last war. If they get burned by a certain tactic early on, they'll build high defenses against it (even if it's going to become obsolete as a tactic in a few levels). This can prevent them from taking some of the stronger options.
- Delayed gratification is hard. Getting a feature that will be neat and kind of useful for 15 levels is something many players will pick over getting a feature that will be godly for 5.
- Kind of related to that, "Thou shalt not lose caster levels" is something that is not strictly adhered to. 2 or even 3 lost levels don't seem to cramp people's styles. More than that, it starts getting noticeable.

[Zanos]

One other weird thing I've noticed that does happen is that there are a lot of "guide babies", especially on roll20. It isn't uncommon to run into people who blab on and on about batman wizards, and you look at their spell lists and it's all treantmonks recommendations. While his spell advice is legitimately good, some people have no idea why those spells are good, and just kind of flounder in actual play.


I mean, it does basically make the person into your "Trusted friend and ally". That's already pretty good, even if they won't actually do everything you say. But then, wouldn't your "Trusted friend and ally" essentially follow you and fight alongside you? Hell, if your charisma is higher than its charisma, you can probably order it about anyway (if you're a CHA 18 sorcerer and it's a CHA 10 whatever, you can order it 72.5% of the time, which means that you can probably get it to do something in line with your desires). It's not so much that nobody reads the spell, it's that with even a slightly charitable reading of the spell, it's actually exceptionally good. At the very least, it's a "Save or stop fighting me."
It specifically makes them friendly, which has a list of suggested actions that doesn't include fighting for you. They get a +5 bonus on the save for you using it on them in combat. Any act by you or your allies that threatens the creature automatically breaks the spell. Not just attacked, but that threatens them at all.

The opposed charisma function is good, but there's no retries. And you have to actually convince the creature to do what you want, which I always felt was outside the scope of a free action during combat.

[Quertus]

Uhm... A, final answer. That def sounds like the easiest thing to do.

You are absolutely correct. My estimated turnaround time for those options is measured in days, weeks, and months, respectively. In part because I'm rarely at home, alone, in front of a computer.

I was hoping to crank something out last night. I made a quick alpha, then checked it against my old versions. I see now why I always made hard-coded versions - the data entry is a pain.

It'll be obnoxious to enter your attack data for a truly complex character* - which you'll have to do every time you start the program, until I add in a save / load feature.

I'll see if I can come up with a cleaner interface, but I'll have the (no save function) beta to you within a few days** for your feedback***.

* since each attack can have a different number of attacks, different attack bonus(es), different damage type (to overcome DR), etc.
* actual timeframe dependent upon free time in front of a computer.
*** current projection is 3 screens: a "data entry" opening screen, a "damage results" (and DR) screen, and a help screen. Oh, and word of warning: it'll be ugly looking. I'm not an interface guy. :smalltongue:


On the other hand, something about optimization that is definitely true: definitely strive to have party members near the same level of optimization. A long term campaign of mine had a terribly unoptimized factotum in it who felt like he could never contribute (and other players were getting frustrated with essentially escorting an npc). The Paladin was fine so this really was an optimization issue where the factotum player didn't pick a single thing to do well so sucked at everything except knowledge checks.

I usually describe this as, "make sure everybody has a role to play". I should probably amend that to "make sure everybody has a role to play that they'll enjoy playing".

And the definition of "near" - the size of the acceptable range of optimization or ability - can vary from group to group.

[Telok]

A bog-standard human rogue can max out eleven skills....

Well okay, but what about people who don't generally have a lot of skills? Well, a bog-standard human fighter can max three skills...

There's also what the classes are expected to do with their skills and stats. Your rogue has a 14-15 Int score, which isn't unreasonable but point-buy stats are pretty popular so it's not a given either. Any ways there's hide, sneak, spot, listen, search, and disable device as the core expectations of rogue skills. Since those are either opposed or critical rolls they're kept maxxed out. So you have five skills to choose from once you've covered the base role of the class. If the character isn't a 14+ Int human then it's two skills. We haven't even talked about tumble.

The fighter is the classic 'bad skill list' case. Climb, Craft, Handle Animal, Intimidate, Jump, Ride, and Swim. I've never seen handle animal rolled since 3e came out, intimidate is almost exclusively used for interrogating prisoners since it makes people hostile afterwards, ride is a mounted character skill tax, I've never seen craft used outside of spells/magic items since 3e came out. Swim has the double armor check penalty issue and the fact that it's often better to get water breathing, a swim speed, or something similar from magic more easily than it is to offset the penalty. Jump I've seen used a lot, climb much less and that involves static DCs that are almost exclusively under 20. So fighters have jump, climb, and ride/intimidate? Except for intimidate none of them allow for anything special or interesting in actual games and intimidate makes enemies.

D&D characters get very few skills, there are skills that are required to make some classes function at base competency in actual games, and some class skill lists are just bad.

[Jormengand]

There's also what the classes are expected to do with their skills and stats. Your rogue has a 14-15 Int score, which isn't unreasonable but point-buy stats are pretty popular so it's not a given either. Any ways there's hide, sneak, spot, listen, search, and disable device as the core expectations of rogue skills. Since those are either opposed or critical rolls they're kept maxxed out. So you have five skills to choose from once you've covered the base role of the class. If the character isn't a 14+ Int human then it's two skills. We haven't even talked about tumble.

The fighter is the classic 'bad skill list' case. Climb, Craft, Handle Animal, Intimidate, Jump, Ride, and Swim. I've never seen handle animal rolled since 3e came out, intimidate is almost exclusively used for interrogating prisoners since it makes people hostile afterwards, ride is a mounted character skill tax, I've never seen craft used outside of spells/magic items since 3e came out. Swim has the double armor check penalty issue and the fact that it's often better to get water breathing, a swim speed, or something similar from magic more easily than it is to offset the penalty. Jump I've seen used a lot, climb much less and that involves static DCs that are almost exclusively under 20. So fighters have jump, climb, and ride/intimidate? Except for intimidate none of them allow for anything special or interesting in actual games and intimidate makes enemies.

D&D characters get very few skills, there are skills that are required to make some classes function at base competency in actual games, and some class skill lists are just bad.

Well, there is a reason why the answer pertained to how my games played out. I'm pretty sure that I've seen every core skill rolled in games I've played in except for appraise, balance, forgery, speak language (which, of course, you can't actually roll for), and use magic device. And since UMD is pretty much the poster-kid of every class that has it on their list, plus the monk, on the forums that's a pretty major discrepancy.

(Incidentally, I've had people roll appraise in a game I've DMed, just never seen it rolled in games I've played. It comes up all the time in Neverwinter Nights, though...)

[Lord_Gareth]

- Psionics is too fiddly even for interested players

Man I guess my first-time psion player who had not previously played or enjoyed casters must be a demon from another dimension or something. Dude grokked it with minimal guidance and was finding cunning uses for his powers by session 2.

[Florian]

Man I guess my first-time psion player who had not previously played or enjoyed casters must be a demon from another dimension or something. Dude grokked it with minimal guidance and was finding cunning uses for his powers by session 2.

It´s fiddly for the same reasons the "Words of Power" system is fiddly: It needs to be "assembled" at the table and that is more hassle than it is worth. In a sense, it is similar with maneuvers. When you´re actually content with regular attacks and maneuvers, knowing the ins and outs, then they add nothing but an additional layer of rules.

[Lord_Gareth]

It´s fiddly for the same reasons the "Words of Power" system is fiddly: It needs to be "assembled" at the table and that is more hassle than it is worth. In a sense, it is similar with maneuvers. When you´re actually content with regular attacks and maneuvers, knowing the ins and outs, then they add nothing but an additional layer of rules.

Maybe for you. The system's fans aren't under mind control or being blackmailed into buying psionic content, you know. I wouldn't be in business if psionics was as unliked and unpopular as you seem to think it is. So: you keep asserting this idea with no facts to back it up, and I'll go pay my rent later today with my psionics money.

[Florian]

Maybe for you. The system's fans aren't under mind control or being blackmailed into buying psionic content, you know. I wouldn't be in business if psionics was as unliked and unpopular as you seem to think it is. So: you keep asserting this idea with no facts to back it up, and I'll go pay my rent later today with my psionics money.

Ever noticed that there´s a strong convergence between the crowd we talk about here - namely those overrating general NO/TO behavior as normal and your customer base? I think nowhere else are psionics and PoW mentioned as often as on this board.
When it pays your rent, that´s good for you, but not the topic we talk about here, which is the difference between theory craft and practice.

[Lord_Gareth]

Ever noticed that there´s a strong convergence between the crowd we talk about here - namely those overrating general NO/TO behavior as normal and your customer base? I think nowhere else are psionics and PoW mentioned as often as on this board.
When it pays your rent, that´s good for you, but not the topic we talk about here, which is the difference between theory craft and practice.

If Giantitp was the entirety of my customer base, DSP would be bankrupt. The main part of our fans are just normal PF players, who grasp the system intuitively because it is intuitive, amazingly enough. It's almost like power points are a closer match for actual fantasy and sci-fi than memorization or something. Can't imagine how that might have happened.

My own group is low op. I am low op. One of the biggest discrepancies between how we play and how the internet discusses things is that all five of us do character creation with the primary goal of doing as little of it as humanly possible. In a system where character creation is basically a game unto itself, we don't do that, and that's a fair difference.

Broseph at some point you're gonna have to confront that fact that this is a you problem and not a system problem.

[Zanos]

The main part of our fans are just normal PF players
Normal PF players? Now now, let's not spread old wives tales. :smalltongue:

[Cosi]

Broseph at some point you're gonna have to confront that fact that this is a you problem and not a system problem.

No, the fact that the system is unbalanced is absolutely a system problem. If you design a broken game (or broken software, or a broken car, or whatever), you screwed up. If you think it will cost more to fix than you'll make by fixing it, you don't have to fix it. But it is absolutely your fault that it works that way. Now, if you say that, and I insist on wanting it to work some other way, sure, that's on me. But "you made a thing that is broken instead of a thing that is not broken" is always and in all ways a designer level problem.

Can you imagine someone with any other job telling a customer "it's not broken, it's your fault for thinking it should work"? That person would be fired instantly. The fact that game designers think this sort of thing is okay says something about the industry, and it is not a good thing.

[Lord_Gareth]

No, the fact that the system is unbalanced is absolutely a system problem. If you design a broken game (or broken software, or a broken car, or whatever), you screwed up. If you think it will cost more to fix than you'll make by fixing it, you don't have to fix it. But it is absolutely your fault that it works that way. Now, if you say that, and I insist on wanting it to work some other way, sure, that's on me. But "you made a thing that is broken instead of a thing that is not broken" is always and in all ways a designer level problem.

Can you imagine someone with any other job telling a customer "it's not broken, it's your fault for thinking it should work"? That person would be fired instantly. The fact that game designers think this sort of thing is okay says something about the industry, and it is not a good thing.

Yeah, nothing you said here is wrong. If we were talking balance in this conversation that would have been a great thing to bring up, but we're talking whether psionics is A. intuitive and B. popular. The questions of if the mechanics hold together and their balance in comparison with the rest of PF are topics for another thread and had not been brought up at this time.

[Deophaun]

No, the fact that the system is unbalanced is absolutely a system problem.
What does how "fiddly" a system is have to do with it being "unbalanced?" How do you make that leap?

Now incarnum and binding are suddenly unbalanced because they're advanced beyond "I hit it with a stick?"

[Zanos]

I'm not entirely sure that psionics are intuitive what with everyone complaining about psions spending all their PP in one turn to nuke encounters and other various misunderstandings about how their powers work, but psionics are largely a port of a 3.5 system anyway so it's not like that's Gareth's fault.

Also I have to reject the assertion that vancian is "non-intuitive." It's the system 1e used and mana came along later, so complaining that a 3.5 system isn't intuitive because it isn't based on something that didn't exist when it was originally thought up doesn't hold a lot of water.

[Lord_Gareth]

I'm not entirely sure that psionics are intuitive what with everyone complaining about psions spending all their PP in one turn to nuke encounters and other various misunderstandings about how their powers work, but psionics are largely a port of a 3.5 system anyway so it's not like that's Gareth's fault.

Also I have to reject the assertion that vancian is "non-intuitive." It's the system 1e used and mana came along later, so complaining that a 3.5 system isn't intuitive because it isn't based on something that didn't exist when it was originally thought up doesn't hold a lot of water.

Plus, I mean, we did include the big Golden Rule section and explain the PP limits at least twice. We did kinda go out of our way to try and avoid this problem.

[ComaVision]

It's pretty absurd for a designer to get personally offended that someone said that in his own experience people find psionics fiddly.

Some of the people I've played with don't like the fluff of psionics. Don't hit me!

[Florian]

@Lord Gareth:

Just some food for though: Our local D&D license holder did a pretty thorough customer survey and decided to print the 3E/3,5E Psi books in the smaller possible print run. They also skipped BoM, Bo9S and Complete Psionics. That´s how badly accepted both themes are on the local market.
Add the bad rep of the rules based on the feedback from those who already tried them out.

[Euclidodese]

Also I have to reject the assertion that vancian is "non-intuitive." It's the system 1e used and mana came along later.Old =/= intuitive... It's a good system, but 'intuitive' it is most certainly not.

[stanprollyright]

-Player skill > build >> class/tier
-Blasting/straight damage is both fun and effective
-Nobody plays Bards correctly. People get swamped by too many seemingly sub-par options. Round 1: Debuff or Haste. Round 2: Buff/Music. Round 3: Heal/Flank. Round 4 and on: murder. Bonus points: use longspear for AoOs. Obviously this is a generalization and you should be flexible, but the same [offense(spell) -> defense/passive -> offense(attack)] pattern should apply most of the time.
-Monks aren't that bad in practice and their playstyle is intiuitive.
-UMD is overrated. Scrolls and wands are way too expensive to use in every fight. (wands of CLW notwithstanding)
-A couple HP can matter quite a bit
-DR is less of a problem than the boards make it seem
-Archery is boring
-most good "end-game" builds have awful dead levels and power slumps

[Lord_Gareth]

It's pretty absurd for a designer to get personally offended that someone said that in his own experience people find psionics fiddly.

Some of the people I've played with don't like the fluff of psionics. Don't hit me!

This isn't the first time Florian has decided that since he/his group doesn't grok psionics it must be bad and unpopular. It also isn't the first time he's dismissed any statement to the contrary as being an aberration or from 'power gamers'.

(And if you don't like the fluff you can just change it, 's cool. Fluff's mutable.)


Also I have to reject the assertion that vancian is "non-intuitive." It's the system 1e used and mana came along later, so complaining that a 3.5 system isn't intuitive because it isn't based on something that didn't exist when it was originally thought up doesn't hold a lot of water.

Heritage only gets into how intuitive something is to a certain extent. Vancian is intuitive if you've been into D&D for awhile because you already know it (or if you've actually read Jack Vance I guess though his magic system is rather different from what it's become); in the context of fantasy/sci-fi in the 80's forward though, you didn't see a lot or really any of it (except, again, from Mister Vance himself). For a modern audience people are used to mana or cooldowns (in a videogame context) or exhaustion/drain/life force (in a narrative context); the last place I saw spell memorization that wasn't based on D&D or PF was Discworld.


@Lord Gareth:
Just some food for though: Our local D&D license holder did a pretty thorough customer survey and decided to print the 3E/3,5E Psi books in the smaller possible print run. They also skipped BoM, Bo9S and Complete Psionics. That´s how badly accepted both themes are on the local market.
Add the bad rep of the rules based on the feedback from those who already tried them out.

So...your local store, catering to (Berlin? All of Germany?) did a thing about your local market and as a result the entire world is the same?

[logic_error]

What exactly is the problem with Psionics anyway? Its a simple and very elegant system that I found very easy to adapt to.

[icefractal]

Psionics is if anything, a little less fiddly than spellcasting, IMO.
Ok, you can precision-scale every power, but in practice it usually makes sense to either max them or not use them, which means most of your offensive stuff does Ld6 and has the same DC.

And you don't have space-wasting stuff like "exactly the same spell, but it's higher level so it can have a better DC and cap".

Although honestly, both of them carry a lot of extraneous fiddlyness that serves very little balance purpose, and in some cases (metamagic) opens up all kinds of crazy loopholes as a result. I've been meaning to post a cleaned-up spellcaster chassis, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

[Euclidodese]

What exactly is the problem with Psionics anyway? Its a simple and very elegant system that I found very easy to adapt to.Me two...
You have a resource, It's just one resource for all your tricks, but the bigger tricks take up more of the resource... What could be simpler?

[noob]

I like discworld a lot and vancian casting can allow hilarious situations.(I have only conjure marvellous flowers left kind of situation can be awesome)

[legomaster00156]

The #1 discrepancy between TO and PO is a sane GM.

[Kaleph]

The #1 discrepancy between TO and PO is a sane GM.

I can hardly remember agreeing so much to a sentence as in this case.

I think, though, that you go slightly out of topic. I've personally interpreted the OP as referring to the differences between optimization theory and a real campaign. I understood that the critics are to the tier system, I believe, and the assumptions taken for granted in the on-line guides to [X] (which are both aimed to address PO).

[Florian]

So...your local store, catering to (Berlin? All of Germany?) did a thing about your local market and as a result the entire world is the same?

It might blow your mind, but people generally seem to prefer to play in their native language.
So, local rpg/hobby games company generally make license deals to localize and market interesting foreign-language rpgs and their 3pp if those also look promising. Well, those companies are no small fry and generally have a good grasp on their customers and the local market.
It´s a good guess that when a company like Amigo or Ulisses contacts are 3pp or Indie, they see potential in it, as well as when those companies decide to disregard some products from an existing license (as an example, they won´t do the Iron Gods and Strange Aeons APs)

So, when the license holder for D&D decides to not really support some stuff, and the current licence holder for PF hasn't´t contacted you, go figure.

[Manyasone]

It might blow your mind, but people generally seem to prefer to play in their native language.
So, local rpg/hobby games company generally make license deals to localize and market interesting foreign-language rpgs and their 3pp if those also look promising. Well, those companies are no small fry and generally have a good grasp on their customers and the local market.
It´s a good guess that when a company like Amigo or Ulisses contacts are 3pp or Indie, they see potential in it, as well as when those companies decide to disregard some products from an existing license (as an example, they won´t do the Iron Gods and Strange Aeons APs)

So, when the license holder for D&D decides to not really support some stuff, and the current licence holder for PF hasn't´t contacted you, go figure.
Flor, question? I take it you're German. They really do that? Make deals to print paizo/wotc products in german? I find it weird as hell, I mean I get playing in native language, most of our sessions are in Dutch or dutchified english. But books in dutch? Never going to happen. Not enough demand

[Florian]

Flor, question? I take it you're German. They really do that? Make deals to print paizo/wotc products in german? I find it weird as hell, I mean I get playing in native language, most of our sessions are in Dutch or dutchified english. But books in dutch? Never going to happen. Not enough demand

Full translation and support, along with a localized SRD. We even get small fry like Dogs in the Vineyard, Fate or Swords & Wizardry, along with french, italian or danish games.

[remetagross]

For what it's worth, WotC products distributed in France are fully translated. Manyasone, I'd say that here, the Netherlands is the exception rather than the rule: a combination of a small population and a nationwide high level of Exotic Language Proficiency (English).

[Zombulian]

Build doesn't mean anything if the player is someone without system mastery. I've seen a Greenbound Druid that never summoned anything because they clearly ripped off some forum source and didn't understand what it did.

The biggest caveat with the theory is that it assumes a forum-level understanding of the game. In my personal experience, nobody has that level of experience.

Fixed it a bit, but this is a problem I've seen appear several times. A cleverly played simple character can be a lot more effective than a complex and powerful character that someone doesn't know how to apply properly. Saying this from personal as well as observational experience.

[Manyasone]

For what it's worth, WotC products distributed in France are fully translated. Manyasone, I'd say that here, the Netherlands is the exception rather than the rule: a combination of a small population and a nationwide high level of Exotic Language Proficiency (English).

Huh. Well, i'm a bit out of the loop ever since 4th edition to be honest. Ever since that edition I haven't touched anything wotc/hasbro created.

[Pex]

That the Tier System is bunk.

The fighter players are loving the game and have no issues whatsoever being in the party with a wizard or druid. They succeed on saving throws a reasonable amount of times. They don't resent it when a particular feat isn't useful for a particular encounter. They just use the feat the next time.

The spellcasters do not have the answer for everything. They don't always have the right spell at the moment it would be useful. Even if they did monsters sometimes make their saving throws, so while it was a brilliant idea it doesn't work at that particular time. Spellcasters enjoy casting buff spells on the warriors.

Healing in combat is a useful tactic. It is successful in preventing party members from dropping so they can do their big thing to save the day. In my particular instance I had played a Pathfinder Oracle of Life specifically designed to be a healbot and was the balm with combat healing. The rest of the party was able to focus more on offense because they knew I had their back for healing, removing afflictions, and my signature buff spell of Blessing of Fervor. The DM was forced to react with tougher encounters because we were bowling through. One time a player specifically kept track and noted I effectively tripled the party's hit points in a tough encounter and not one PC dropped.

[icefractal]

Healing in combat is a useful tactic. It is successful in preventing party members from dropping so they can do their big thing to save the day. In my particular instance I had played a Pathfinder Oracle of Life specifically designed to be a healbot and was the balm with combat healing.Well, TBF, a Life Oracle (or PF Cleric) is better at in-combat healing than almost anything in 3.5, which is where I think the idea of "don't heal in combat" comes from.

Healing everyone in the party at once, with a resource that primarily exists for that purpose - and as a move action and/or carrying other benefits with the right feats - pretty nice. Heal one person if you can move next to them and spend a spell slot to do it, not as nice. Although Heal (the spell) has always been worth using in the right circumstances.



Wizards don't have exactly the right spell for every situation. They generally pick one option and use it; daily swapping out of spells doesn't happen as much as you'd think. True that. And it's not even a matter of being lazy most of the time, it's simply that without advance information on what you'll be facing, there's seldom a solid reason to switch from your general purpose load-out.

Depending on the campaign, you might end up with a few different sets - dungeon, urban, planar, downtime, for example. But the type of situation often referred to when discussing Wizards, where you spend several days divining stuff before every day of actual adventuring and therefore have spells precision-tailored to each opponent - I've pretty much never seen that be the case.

However, leaving a few slots open is a pretty common practice. So if the situation can wait 15 minutes, a Wizard might indeed have exactly the right spell for it. At higher level anyway - at low level those scribing costs add up and spellbook versatility is going to be limited.

[Jormengand]

I have to say, the main thing that is the same in my experience is the majority of the tiers. The wizard really can do practically anything, the barbarian really does do damage and nothing else, the monk and the fighter really do deal (awful) damage and nothing else. (2d6+2+1.5STR)*(some number between zero and four, generally nearer the zero end than the four end) just doesn't cut it at high levels. Neither does (2d10+2+STR)*(some number between zero and five, generally a lot nearer the zero end than the five end). (2d6+2+1.5(STR+4)*(some number between zero and four, generally somewhere in the middle of the range) comes a little closer. Angry battle cleric, of course, is (3d6+5+1.5(STR+5)*(some number between zero and four, generally a lot nearer the four end). Angry wizard is somewhere between (24d6/2) and 32d6. Angry rogue is either (11d6+str)*(some number between zero and three, usually nearer zero)+(11d6+str/2)*(some number between zero and three, usually nearer zero) or the same only with 1d6 instead of 11d6, depending on the circumstances. The standard martial classes stand no real chance against spellcasters or even lucky rogues in any game I've actually seen played.

Also, no-one uses power attack in real games because they can never hit if they do. Getting the extra 40 damage on each attack is a nice meme, but a nudist wizard with no spells active has a high enough AC that you might miss on your first attack.

[Fizban]

Well, TBF, a Life Oracle (or PF Cleric) is better at in-combat healing than almost anything in 3.5, which is where I think the idea of "don't heal in combat" comes from.

Healing everyone in the party at once, with a resource that primarily exists for that purpose - and as a move action and/or carrying other benefits with the right feats - pretty nice. Heal one person if you can move next to them and spend a spell slot to do it, not as nice. Although Heal (the spell) has always been worth using in the right circumstances.
A dedicated healing build in 3.5 works just fine for most of the game, but I feel like most people don't know how to actually build one. No move action mass healing, but there are 2nd and 3rd level swift action and mass heals that can be buffed up to a respectable amount with just a couple feats, and you can use Shield Other to shuffle damage around if you need to.

[Elkad]

I personally dislike any prepared caster. I know they are stronger but I have little desire to micromanage my daily spells and the party actions.

And I'm the opposite. I love prepared casting. So much I've never even played a primary spontaneous caster. Picking the right spells each day (and acquiring them in the first place) is a whole mini-game.


Wizards don't have exactly the right spell for every situation. They generally pick one option and use it; daily swapping out of spells doesn't happen as much as you'd think.

I really do change my spells every day (or at least 50% of them - including mixing up my in-combat defensive buffs). Even if I'm in what (appears to be) the same terrain/situation multiple days in a row, they still get changed. Say we are overlanding across plains and hills. Today, I've got a bunch of ground-targeted stuff, some short-range blasting, and some stuff to buff the BSF, but he doesn't have flight yet. If we meet Displacer Beasts, I'm in great shape. If we meet Manticores, my list looks useless. How can I fix that? (Even if fixing means "get the hell out of here").

So that's a second mini-game. I guessed wrong, how do I MacGyver my way out?

[Florian]

@Jormengand:

I´ve got to ask: What kind of martial builds have you experienced so far and at what level? Discounting the usual lull between levels 3 and 6, I´ve rarely seen a martial build that can´t take down anything it reaches in 2 turns.

(My personal record is one-shotting Baphomet with an Barbarian.)

[remetagross]

For one, I'm playing with a ECL 12 Barbarian Werewolf leap attacker that, so far, has proven unable to kill anything in two turns or less.

[Florian]

For one, I'm playing with a ECL 12 Barbarian Werewolf leap attacker that, so far, has proven unable to kill anything in two turns or less.

Hm. That´s 3.5E, right?

Edit: Martial classes in PF are really powerful and bordering on the overkill level of effectiveness.

Edit 2: The closest equivalent would be a Ragebred Beast Totem AM BARBARIAN build and it would be a disappointment auf you´d perform below dealing 150 damage.

[Chronikoce]

Edit: Martial classes in PF are really powerful and bordering on the overkill level of effectiveness.


I can vouch for this. PF paladin deals impressive amount of damage but isn't particularly exciting to play.

[Florian]

I can vouch for this. PF paladin deals impressive amount of damage but isn't particularly exciting to play.

That is actually the funny part. People go on and on about how exciting it is to turn a pair of regular scissors into a deadly weapon, ignoring that the other guy already has a 12-gauge combat shotgun.
Martial classes excel at combat and no self-buffed full caster comes near that level of performance.
To see what happens if you can teleport your buffed-up Fighter to the Balor is the fun part.

[Jormengand]

@Jormengand:

I´ve got to ask: What kind of martial builds have you experienced so far and at what level? Discounting the usual lull between levels 3 and 6, I´ve rarely seen a martial build that can´t take down anything it reaches in 2 turns.

(My personal record is one-shotting Baphomet with an Barbarian.)

Let's look at a core fighter. He's called Steve. Hi there Steve.

Steve probably has 18 strength, going up to 23 (29 with item) by level 20. At level 20, he gets 19 feats total. Let's say they include every last feat that buffs attack and damage rolls. Let's also assume he has a +5 speed weapon with some kind of swanky damage bonus on it. I vaguely remember that a pit fiend is a CR 20 encounter, so let's dump Steve in front of one. Cripes.

The first problem Steve has is that he can't reach the pit fiend, so it's free to fly around and throw at-will fireballs at him until he goes away, and its DR is enough to stop any attempt to plink it with a longbow from being successful. The second problem is that it has a higher grapple bonus than Steve, so it can just grapple, pin and constrict Steve. The third problem is that it is immeasurably better then Steve in combat.

With his strength bonus of +9, his +5 weapon, his 20 base attack bonus and his two feats that buff attack rolls, he has a +36 to hit on his first attack and a +21 on his last. He therefore needs a 4,9,14 and 19 to hit, but we decided he has a speed weapon, so it's 4,4,9,14 and 19.

But that's assuming he gets in. Suppose he charges the pit fiend, he immediately takes an attack of opportunity which almost inevitably hits him for 2d8+13 damage. He also needs to take a DC 27 will save against fear. Suppose he emerges largely unscathed, he deals a grand total of a single attack to the pit fiend, for 2d6+7 nonlethal damage, on the basis that whatever weapon he's wielding isn't a silver holy avenger, and whatever energy type he's dealing does the square root of not very much against the pit fiend. If he power attacks, he introduces a chance that he might miss for a possible extra bit of damage. In any case, it's a fraction of the pit fiend's maximum health.

The pit fiend then lashes out again. At best, Steve is wearing +5 full plate and an amulet of natural armour. There is no real chance that he has an AC above 30, so the creature hits on a 2 with every single attack it makes. This means he takes an additional ((19/20)*(2(2d8+13)+2(2d6+6)+(4d6+6)+(2d8+6))= 100 damage (rounding up), out of his (10+19d10+20(6))=235 hit points, assuming he has con 16+6. He then loses another ((20+40)/2)=30 hit points if he fails a fortitude save against poison (assuming he has a cloak of resistance, this is unlikely though). The pit fiend also blasts him with a quickened SLA fireball, knocking off a chunk more of his hit points and dealing no damage to the fiend itself.

Steve then finally gets a chance at his long-awaited full attack action, and deals (17/20+17/20+12/20+7/20+2/20)*(2d6+7)=39 damage (rounding up) to the pit fiend. Power attacking for 5 deals 41 damage rounding up, power attacking for 10 deals 31, and I'm not going to check each number individually but the maximum average damage he can deal (not that he knows any of this with his complete lack of K(Planes)) is maybe 50. Incidentally, if he'd been a barbarian, then power attacking for 5 while raging would have dealt 75 nonlethal damage on average. He'd also have more hit points. This at the very least drastically increases the chance that he could knock out the pit fiend, make a coup de grace which for some reason still forces a fort-or-die even if the damage it deals is nonlethal, and then die the moment his rage ran out and he lost 80 hit points.

I am, incidentally, not taking into account critical hits. Well, yes, the fighters crits are better than the pit fiend's, partly because they're 4 times as likely and partly because he needs them against the DR. But fine, we know that 4/20 of the fighter's hits are critical and any hit which is critical deals 2d6+27 extra damage, which is 2.42 times as much. So the fighter actually does about half as much damage again as it says on the tin. Maybe about 75 per round. That's three rounds making full attacks against a pit fiend which is trying, and succeeding, to eat your face.

Thought for the day: the pit fiend's power attack is probably more useful than Steve's.

But, yeah, the most fighty fighter that can be made in core still can't actually face up to an encounter which is fighting him on his terms and shouldn't be.

But what about low levels? Well, a second-level fighter will still have a bad day trying to fight an ape, whose first move is probably to grapple the poor sod into the ground and claw his face off. A fourth level fighter squaring off against a minotaur is pretty much a joke, as the damn thing deals more damage and has more hit points than you. And so on. Fighters have no purpose except fighting and aren't even good at it.

And don't get me started on monks.

[Florian]

Weird. Your "Steve" was build and played by someone who doesn´t understand Fighters,
Edit: This read like pure comedy for people with experience on that.

[Jormengand]

Weird. Your "Steve" was build and played by someone who doesn´t understand Fighters,
Edit: This read like pure comedy for people with experience on that.

Well, fine: build me a level 20 core fighter that can take on a pit fiend. I'll be sitting here drinking ninth-level spells while I wait.

[Kaleph]

Well, fine: build me a level 20 core fighter that can take on a pit fiend. I'll be sitting here drinking ninth-level spells while I wait.

I assume that a CR20 monster isn't meant as a challenge for a solo 20-lvl fighter, but for a party. I also assume that simulating a fight at lvl 20 is captious. There are also other levels that matter more.
Also, the core-only mechanics limit somehow the melee-PC, since later splatbooks tried (they failed, but at least they tried) to limit the distance bwn mundane and arcane.

To summarize, although I see your point here, I believe that the chosen example is twisted in a way, that tends to utterly belittle martial characters.

[Morty]

I thought this was a thread about how optimization doesn't apply to regular games as much as it seems? Building a fighter to take on a level-appropriate threat, as opposed to a casually-built one being capable of it, seems like a contradiction.

[logic_error]

I assume that a CR20 monster isn't meant as a challenge for a solo 20-lvl fighter, but for a party. I also assume that simulating a fight at lvl 20 is captious. There are also other levels that matter more.
Also, the core-only mechanics limit somehow the melee-PC, since later splatbooks tried (they failed, but at least they tried) to limit the distance bwn mundane and arcane.

To summarize, although I see your point here, I believe that the chosen example is twisted in a way, that tends to utterly belittle martial characters.
Hi.

How about Cleric, wizard, druid, duskblade, psion, psychic warrior etc?

Getting the point?

Only fighters monks rangers rogues suck at combat at level 20. Rangers and rogues suck less with right items.

[Jormengand]

I assume that a CR20 monster isn't meant as a challenge for a solo 20-lvl fighter, but for a party. I also assume that simulating a fight at lvl 20 is captious. There are also other levels that matter more.
Also, the core-only mechanics limit somehow the melee-PC, since later splatbooks tried (they failed, but at least they tried) to limit the distance bwn mundane and arcane.

To summarize, although I see your point here, I believe that the chosen example is twisted in a way, that tends to utterly belittle martial characters.

A party of 4 20th-level fighters should have a 50% chance to be able to take on an EL 24 encounter consistent of four pit fiends. (EL=APL+4). Similarly, 4 2nd-level fighters and 4 apes, yadda yadda. As it happens, actually having a 4v4 helps the pit fiends more than the fighters due to their area of effect attacks. That, and I'm pretty sure almost every 3.5 game I've played IRL has been core only or essentially core only.


I thought this was a thread about how optimization doesn't apply to regular games as much as it seems? Building a fighter to take on a level-appropriate threat, as opposed to a casually-built one being capable of it, seems like a contradiction.

I'm being deliberately generous.

[logic_error]

I thought this was a thread about how optimization doesn't apply to regular games as much as it seems? Building a fighter to take on a level-appropriate threat, as opposed to a casually-built one being capable of it, seems like a contradiction.

I think the general idea is that OT is not entirely off, especially about some classes like Monks or Fighters. But it exaggerates the effectiveness of certain classes too much at low levels. What is surprising is that the classes like Psion or Druid that can dominate the game at ALL level of play get less love than Wizards who only really come into their own at level 10+.

[Kaleph]

Hi.

How about Cleric, wizard, druid, duskblade, psion, psychic warrior etc?

Getting the point?

Only fighters monks rangers rogues suck at combat at level 20. Rangers and rogues suck less with right items.

Yes, as I said, I get the point. I find the example a bit too simplicistic, and built to demonstrate that fighters suck.
Fighters suck. I agree. But not to the extent shown/not on the basis of this CR20 fight.

I posted in this thread some days ago, and if you read my point, it's not my aim to demonstrate that the tier-system (or any other optimisation theory assumption) is wrong. It's perfectly consistent with ist own hypotheses. But in a real game there are parameters that these assumptions cannot consider: Players, DM, Challenges, Setting, Campaign, Gamestyle...
The inclusion of these parameters in the equation bring me to the conclusions that:

The wizard is still über, but it requires some game skill, level of optimization, micromanagement which is often unproportionate to the average challenge level. Unoptimized he's underwhelming at least.
When optimized, my wizard still need a party (I'm talking about levels 5-13, typically). When properly challenged, he shines. When not, his potential is an overkill.
More often than one would think, mundane abilities (melee or skill usage) are an adequate tool to cope with adverse situations.


As a consequence, the only point where I disagree with the Tier System, is that in my experience Tier 1 doesn't necessary outshine Tier 3 or lower.

Also, and this is somehow marginal to our current discussion, seldomly a master has used Fiat against a wizard in the campaigns I've played. On the other Hand, sometimes I've seen one-trick-melee-ponies being outright banned, because they were forcing the master to "play against them".



A party of 4 20th-level fighters should have a 50% chance to be able to take on an EL 24 encounter consistent of four pit fiends. (EL=APL+4). Similarly, 4 2nd-level fighters and 4 apes, yadda yadda. As it happens, actually having a 4v4 helps the pit fiends more than the fighters due to their area of effect attacks. That, and I'm pretty sure almost every 3.5 game I've played IRL has been core only or essentially core only.

Probably we're focusing on different aspects of the OP, since again I find your examples not completely appropriate. The 4-Ftr vs 4-monsters situation isn't really fitting, since I've meant a real party with 4 different chars.
What I want to demonstrate is that, at average levels, all gamestyles (Magic-, skill- and melee-based) have still a role to fulfill, and there are classes/builds available, that allow a character to implement this role and still have an impact in the campaign.

[logic_error]

For sure, a bad DM is the greatest evil of D&D. A good DM can make even a bad player shine by helping him get on track. But a bad DM can encourage bad gameplay. Unfortunately, it's not just the dynamics between DM and Players but also the splatbooks that don't make it easy. Complete Mage for example, to me at least, is just cheese for an already versatile spellcaster class. Complete Warrior on the other hand only helps make your fighter even more pigeonholed that it is.

A good DM can and again I admit it's my opinion *should* simply ban some sources while making the gameplay overall conducive to all players. But, that becomes harder and harder in the game as it goes towards the dreaded level 10, where the rift between the caster classes and the non-caster ones becomes just too large.

Should that mean that all games be restricted to level 10? Or should it mean that the games come with a disclaimer about the rift? You decide.

[Jormengand]

Probably we're focusing on different aspects of the OP, since again I find your examples not completely appropriate. The 4-Ftr vs 4-monsters situation isn't really fitting, since I've meant a real party with 4 different chars.
What I want to demonstrate is that, at average levels, all gamestyles (Magic-, skill- and melee-based) have still a role to fulfill, and there are classes/builds available, that allow a character to implement this role and still have an impact in the campaign.

If you put a fighter and three real characters in a party, the fighter will not have a level-appropriate contribution to the encounter. There is no real way in which a fighter can assist a wizard, a cleric and a druid in defeating four pit fiends: the fighter's contribution is negligible at best. The fact that the fighter cannot deal appreciable damage to a pit fiend makes this evident. Even more damning is the fact that wizard/wizard/wizard/wizard, cleric/cleric/cleric/cleric, druid/druid/druid/druid and sorcerer/sorcerer/sorcerer/sorcerer are all perfectly reasonable and effective parties. Yes, it's a team game, but the fighter needs to be able to contribute to that team effort rather than letting a wizard do it.

[Kaleph]

If you put a fighter and three real characters in a party, the fighter will not have a level-appropriate contribution to the encounter. There is no real way in which a fighter can assist a wizard, a cleric and a druid in defeating four pit fiends: the fighter's contribution is negligible at best. The fact that the fighter cannot deal appreciable damage to a pit fiend makes this evident. Even more damning is the fact that wizard/wizard/wizard/wizard, cleric/cleric/cleric/cleric, druid/druid/druid/druid and sorcerer/sorcerer/sorcerer/sorcerer are all perfectly reasonable and effective parties. Yes, it's a team game, but the fighter needs to be able to contribute to that team effort rather than letting a wizard do it.

I mostly agree, but I'll explain you why I found your example not fitting the thread. As far as I understood, your Steve was meant as an answer to the question "can a well-built melee character get rid of many foes within 2 rounds?". I find that your example doesn't really answer the question, since:

A fighter is not necessarily representative of any "well-built melee character"
A lvl 20 encouter is not representative of a real campaign
Limiting the available resources to core simply demonstrate that (under the other conditions at point 1 and 2) core is exceedingly unbalance.


EDIT
Also, honestly as a master I'd discourage a wizard/wizard/wizard/wizard party. A very odd campaign would come out; for sure, it would be exciting if all player + master are interested in the planning/strategic aspect, but they won't be able to be prepared in all situations, expecially at low levels.

EDIT/2
On the other hand, druid/druid/druid/druid is perfectly playable.
The reason why I favor druid upon all other classes, is that it has available all three gamestyles that I mentioned before (magic-, skill- and melee-based). It combines factually a tier-2, a tier-4 and a tier-5 character all in one class.

[Anthrowhale]

Let's look at a core fighter. He's called Steve. Hi there Steve.


Suppose Steve is an Orc (Str+4) with a +5(Inherent) bonus so Strength changes to 38 (+14 bonus). If Steve runs around in a Mithril Chain Shirt(+5 enhance) and uses a Mithril Heavy Shield(+5 enhance) with a Dexterity of 22=12+4(inherent)+6(enhance), a ring of deflection+5, defending+5 on the weapon, and an item of natural armor+5(enhance) then AC=47. Add a Ring of Evasion, Fire Resistance to the armor and spells Delay Poison, Mindblank (shoring up the will save), Phantom Steed (fly 240'(average)), and Statue (hardness 8) cast by friendly party members. Add a composite longbow. The Pit Fiend now misses 85% of the time and has damage roughly halved against the hardness when it hits. The Pit Fiend can of course dispel, but that requires valuable actions in combat. Overall, it's not such an obviously lop-sided fight.

[Rhyltran]

A party of 4 20th-level fighters should have a 50% chance to be able to take on an EL 24 encounter consistent of four pit fiends. (EL=APL+4). Similarly, 4 2nd-level fighters and 4 apes, yadda yadda. As it happens, actually having a 4v4 helps the pit fiends more than the fighters due to their area of effect attacks. That, and I'm pretty sure almost every 3.5 game I've played IRL has been core only or essentially core only.



I'm being deliberately generous.

I agree with you when it comes to core but from my own opinion I send my condolences for Core only (I wouldn't be able to enjoy it.) I have an entire book shelf devoted to 3.5/pathfinder and that core fighter's full round attack doesn't even breach half the damage our monks will be doing by level 12, let alone level 20, from a single punch.

Back on topic with this thread:

- Casters are really as powerful as players make them out to be
- Monks/Scouts/Fighters actually can contribute to damage
- Skills do matter quite a bit
- Druids are Gods Among Men even moreso than Wizards
- Scouts with splitting are scary
- Not optimization but evil/good can function on the same team but there's usually a lot of drama
- The animal companion does not replace the party barbarian
- Campaigns typically don't make it past level 16. So players build as if 16 is the end goal.

[Jormengand]

Suppose Steve is an Orc (Str+4) with a +5(Inherent) bonus so Strength changes to 38 (+14 bonus). If Steve runs around in a Mithril Chain Shirt(+5 enhance) and uses a Mithril Heavy Shield(+5 enhance) with a Dexterity of 22=12+4(inherent)+6(enhance), a ring of deflection+5, defending+5 on the weapon, and an item of natural armor+5(enhance) then AC=47. Add a Ring of Evasion, Fire Resistance to the armor and spells Delay Poison, Mindblank (shoring up the will save), Phantom Steed (fly 240'(average)), and Statue (hardness 8) cast by friendly party members. Add a composite longbow. The Pit Fiend now misses 85% of the time and has damage roughly halved against the hardness when it hits. The Pit Fiend can of course dispel, but that requires valuable actions in combat. Overall, it's not such an obviously lop-sided fight.

Yes, of course a fighter can be made competent by applying sufficient wizard, but that's more "The wizard is so competent that they can make a fighter powerful" than "The fighter is powerful because a wizard can cast spells on them". How the hell Steve is using a longbow and shield I won't ask in the second instance.

[Rhyltran]

Yes, of course a fighter can be made competent by applying sufficient wizard, but that's more "The wizard is so competent that they can make a fighter powerful" than "The fighter is powerful because a wizard can cast spells on them". How the hell Steve is using a longbow and shield I won't ask in the second instance.

Well, the shield could be animated but that wasn't listed.

[Anthrowhale]

Yes, of course a fighter can be made competent by applying sufficient wizard, but that's more "The wizard is so competent that they can make a fighter powerful" than "The fighter is powerful because a wizard can cast spells on them". How the hell Steve is using a longbow and shield I won't ask in the second instance.

Your description of Steve was a bit muddled if the point is that a core fighter 20 without magic is inadequate for a Pit Fiend. If your point is that a core fighter 20 with magic is inadequate I don't think the point has been made. The game does assume wealth by level and some cooperation amongst party members.

[Jormengand]

Your description of Steve was a bit muddled if the point is that a core fighter 20 without magic is inadequate for a Pit Fiend. If your point is that a core fighter 20 with magic is inadequate I don't think the point has been made. The game does assume wealth by level and some cooperation amongst party members.

The thing is, that most of what you're descriping Steve the Second as doing could just as easily be done by a warrior or honestly even a commoner. Yes, you can be a buff-pony. Anyone can be a buff-pony. That says far more about the nature of the buffs than it does about the base creature. Sure, I can polymorph my rat familiar into a 12-headed cryohydra and have it breathe in the general direction of the enemy, whom haveth a bad day, but that says more about polymorph than the overpowered nature of rats. In fact, the wizard is usually better off buffing the wizard because she gets a two-for-one deal on spells than the fighter where she doesn't.

You'll notice that Steve the First was wielding a flaming frost speed greatsword +5, using full plate +5, a cloak of resistance +5, an amulet of health +6, and a belt of giant strength +6, costing 324,000. If we say that it was actually heavy fortification full plate, hence ignoring the enemy's critical hits, that's 399,000. Spending the majority of your WBL just to be mediocre at your one and only job is not a good look.

[CharonsHelper]

I'll jump in and say that in 3.x, any martial (not just fighter) who doesn't bounce around and have half a dozen prestige classes by level 20 is a sub-par character.

Not that that totally fixes martial/caster disparity (which isn't bad until 13+ anyway - where most people don't play anyway) but it certainly makes them far more potent than a warrior.

[Jormengand]

Another thing that I notice in real games is that caster-martial disparity happens immediately, not at level 7, 10, 13 or anything else like that. Even at low levels the wizard has options the fighter just doesn't.

[Florian]

@Jormengard:

Absolutely: No. And in context of this thread: I´ve seen more martial characters reach overkill levels than necessary. That´re that type of player complaining that they don´t necessarily want to play killing machines, which end up really spending everything on the killing, just to make sure.

[Jormengand]

@Jormengard:

Absolutely: No.

What a compelling and well-reasoned point.

[logic_error]

Another thing that I notice in real games is that caster-martial disparity happens immediately, not at level 7, 10, 13 or anything else like that. Even at low levels the wizard has options the fighter just doesn't.


You need fighters as meatshields and actual damage dealers until level 8-9. Then you can ditch them hence forth. This is only true for a wizard. Druids can do this from level 3.

[Kaleph]

@ Jormengard:

Your arguments have a certain internal coherence, but again I have to Highlight, that I don't see how showing that 4 lvl 20 Ftr cannot (under your restrictive conditions) take down 4 Pit fiends demonstrates that a martial-based character is useless in a real campaign.

A +4-CR encounter =/= a typical encounter (it would be captious as to demonstrate that 4 levl 1 wizards cannot take down some specific CR 5 monster)
A full fighter =/= the ultimate exemplar of melee-based characters I can imagine
Lvl 20 =/= the focus of the tier system (lvl 3-13)
A party made of 4 fighters =/= the representation of the typical game dynamics


Similar considerations may apply also to the other explanations of yours. I think we all see your point, that the fighter class was the disappointment of 3rd edition, but insisting on flawed examples is challenging our ability to understand.

[Florian]

What a compelling and well-reasoned point.

We could throw character sheets at one another and start to analyze them.

[Jormengand]

@ Jormengard:

Your arguments have a certain internal coherence, but again I have to Highlight, that I don't see how showing that 4 lvl 20 Ftr cannot (under your restrictive conditions) take down 4 Pit fiends demonstrates that a martial-based character is useless in a real campaign.

A +4-CR encounter =/= a typical encounter (it would be captious as to demonstrate that 4 levl 1 wizards cannot take down some specific CR 5 monster)
A full fighter =/= the ultimate exemplar of melee-based characters I can imagine
Lvl 20 =/= the focus of the tier system (lvl 3-13)
A party made of 4 fighters =/= the representation of the typical game dynamics


Similar considerations may apply also to the other explanations of yours. I think we all see your point, that the fighter class was the disappointment of 3rd edition, but insisting on flawed examples is challenging our ability to understand.

I chose a CR=APL+4 encounter because it's the kind of encounter that the party should have a 50% success rate against and this is made explicit. I chose a fighter because fighter was the class in question, but none of the core PrCs give the fighter anything particularly powerful except for spellcasting. I chose level 20 because a claim was made that the fighter worked at high levels, but I also pointed out that it also sucks at low levels by comparing it to an ape. Finally, I am not actually suggesting that four fighters are a normal party. What I am suggesting is that the fact that a fighter deals negligible damage and cannot really tank damage either (mainly because monsters can just move past the fighter with relative impunity) implies that it isn't good at its job. If you can make me, say, a level X fighter where X is any level beyond about 1 which can actually contribute meaningfully to encounters which it should be able to contribute to meaningfully, then fine, but at the moment you're just disputing my examples without offering any actual response to them.

[Anthrowhale]

The thing is, that most of what you're descriping Steve the Second as doing could just as easily be done by a warrior or honestly even a commoner.

I'm skeptical about a Commoner as the -10 to hit really matters.



Yes, you can be a buff-pony. Anyone can be a buff-pony.


The number of buff spells here (4) is minor so I'm assuming that you are referring to the upgraded magic items which are more significant anyways.



Spending the majority of your WBL just to be mediocre at your one and only job is not a good look.

This isn't convincing to me---failure at a primary task when 90% of WBL is used as wisely as possible is convincing.

[ComaVision]

I've seen spells dominate low level play but not to the exclusion of everyone else. For example, I've seen groups of enemies clash against the melee PCs and all get hit by a Sleep or Color Spray but things would've been far more dangerous without that melee PC buffer.

There is just not much melee can do at low levels that's comparable to a well placed Sleep or Color Spray though.

[Jormengand]

No, I'm talking about the buffs, not the items. The items don't let you get into combat with the thing in the first instance or not run away screaming. Again, with a single fourth-level spell, I can create a familiar which deals more damage by breathing than a fighter will ever deal by attacking. If you're wasting spells on the fighter, then you're doing it wrong. The fighter is not a worthwhile investment of spells.

[Florian]

No, I'm talking about the buffs, not the items. The items don't let you get into combat with the thing in the first instance or not run away screaming. Again, with a single fourth-level spell, I can create a familiar which deals more damage by breathing than a fighter will ever deal by attacking. If you're wasting spells on the fighter, then you're doing it wrong. The fighter is not a worthwhile investment of spells.

Again: Show, don´t tell.

[Kaleph]

I chose a CR=APL+4 encounter because it's the kind of encounter that the party should have a 50% success rate against and this is made explicit. I chose a fighter because fighter was the class in question, but none of the core PrCs give the fighter anything particularly powerful except for spellcasting. I chose level 20 because a claim was made that the fighter worked at high levels, but I also pointed out that it also sucks at low levels by comparing it to an ape. Finally, I am not actually suggesting that four fighters are a normal party. What I am suggesting is that the fact that a fighter deals negligible damage and cannot really tank damage either (mainly because monsters can just move past the fighter with relative impunity) implies that it isn't good at its job. If you can make me, say, a level X fighter where X is any level beyond about 1 which can actually contribute meaningfully to encounters which it should be able to contribute to meaningfully, then fine, but at the moment you're just disputing my examples without offering any actual response to them.

Sorry, I must have overlooked some previous post, since I was referring to the specific one, where the poor Steve was created: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?525322-What-notable-discrepencies-have-you-noticed-in-optimization-theory-and-your-games/page3

As you see, reading only this exchange of opinions, your example, although per se correct, is not necessarily matching the question. That's all.

Coming to your legitimate request for a counter-example, just consider 4 20-lvl Ftr against 4 20-lvl PNC Ftr. Ehi, they'll win 90% of the times! The fighter is overpowered! YUHU!

You mean I'm captious as well? :smallsmile:

[Jormengand]

Again: Show, don´t tell.

I already did. You're the one who's complaining about my numbers without having any actual numbers of your own. And I repeat my challenge to make a fighter of level X, where X is greater than about 1, who can actually defeat CR X enemies or meaningfully contribute to the defeat of CR X+4 encounters.

[logic_error]

I already did. You're the one who's complaining about my numbers without having any actual numbers of your own. And I repeat my challenge to make a fighter of level X, where X is greater than about 1, who can actually defeat CR X enemies or meaningfully contribute to the defeat of CR X+4 encounters.

Don't fight the strawman. Fighter X can not beat CR X for X>1. But A wizard can't either until level 9.

[Florian]

Don't fight the strawman. Fighter X can not beat CR X for X>1. But A wizard can't either until level 9.

No strawman intended. I´m just honestly curious because I´ve seen enough martials overperform ii my time.

[Pex]

I can vouch for this. PF paladin deals impressive amount of damage but isn't particularly exciting to play.

Speak for yourself.

I find the Pathfinder Paladin to be great fun. Pathfinder offers new interesting spells, the ability to create your own temporary magic weapon, and at higher levels you can turn your whole party into "paladins" to smite the BBEG to smithereens.

[Quertus]

Also, no-one uses power attack in real games because they can never hit if they do. Getting the extra 40 damage on each attack is a nice meme, but a nudist wizard with no spells active has a high enough AC that you might miss on your first attack.

The nudist ooze, otoh, with its mighty single digit AC, that you encounter in real games that aren't comparisons of fighter vs wizard, but real fighter + wizard + party vs monsters, just screams Power Attack.


Let's look at a core fighter. He's called Steve. Hi there Steve.

Steve probably has 18 strength, going up to 23 (29 with item) by level 20. At level 20, he gets 19 feats total. Let's say they include every last feat that buffs attack and damage rolls. Let's also assume he has a +5 speed weapon with some kind of swanky damage bonus on it. I vaguely remember that a pit fiend is a CR 20 encounter, so let's dump Steve in front of one. Cripes.

The first problem Steve has is that he can't reach the pit fiend, so it's free to fly around and throw at-will fireballs at him until he goes away, and its DR is enough to stop any attempt to plink it with a longbow from being successful. The second problem is that it has a higher grapple bonus than Steve, so it can just grapple, pin and constrict Steve. The third problem is that it is immeasurably better then Steve in combat.

With his strength bonus of +9, his +5 weapon, his 20 base attack bonus and his two feats that buff attack rolls, he has a +36 to hit on his first attack and a +21 on his last. He therefore needs a 4,9,14 and 19 to hit, but we decided he has a speed weapon, so it's 4,4,9,14 and 19.

But that's assuming he gets in. Suppose he charges the pit fiend, he immediately takes an attack of opportunity which almost inevitably hits him for 2d8+13 damage. He also needs to take a DC 27 will save against fear. Suppose he emerges largely unscathed, he deals a grand total of a single attack to the pit fiend, for 2d6+7 nonlethal damage, on the basis that whatever weapon he's wielding isn't a silver holy avenger, and whatever energy type he's dealing does the square root of not very much against the pit fiend. If he power attacks, he introduces a chance that he might miss for a possible extra bit of damage. In any case, it's a fraction of the pit fiend's maximum health.

The pit fiend then lashes out again. At best, Steve is wearing +5 full plate and an amulet of natural armour. There is no real chance that he has an AC above 30, so the creature hits on a 2 with every single attack it makes. This means he takes an additional ((19/20)*(2(2d8+13)+2(2d6+6)+(4d6+6)+(2d8+6))= 100 damage (rounding up), out of his (10+19d10+20(6))=235 hit points, assuming he has con 16+6. He then loses another ((20+40)/2)=30 hit points if he fails a fortitude save against poison (assuming he has a cloak of resistance, this is unlikely though). The pit fiend also blasts him with a quickened SLA fireball, knocking off a chunk more of his hit points and dealing no damage to the fiend itself.

Steve then finally gets a chance at his long-awaited full attack action, and deals (17/20+17/20+12/20+7/20+2/20)*(2d6+7)=39 damage (rounding up) to the pit fiend. Power attacking for 5 deals 41 damage rounding up, power attacking for 10 deals 31, and I'm not going to check each number individually but the maximum average damage he can deal (not that he knows any of this with his complete lack of K(Planes)) is maybe 50. Incidentally, if he'd been a barbarian, then power attacking for 5 while raging would have dealt 75 nonlethal damage on average. He'd also have more hit points. This at the very least drastically increases the chance that he could knock out the pit fiend, make a coup de grace which for some reason still forces a fort-or-die even if the damage it deals is nonlethal, and then die the moment his rage ran out and he lost 80 hit points.

I am, incidentally, not taking into account critical hits. Well, yes, the fighters crits are better than the pit fiend's, partly because they're 4 times as likely and partly because he needs them against the DR. But fine, we know that 4/20 of the fighter's hits are critical and any hit which is critical deals 2d6+27 extra damage, which is 2.42 times as much. So the fighter actually does about half as much damage again as it says on the tin. Maybe about 75 per round. That's three rounds making full attacks against a pit fiend which is trying, and succeeding, to eat your face.

Thought for the day: the pit fiend's power attack is probably more useful than Steve's.

But, yeah, the most fighty fighter that can be made in core still can't actually face up to an encounter which is fighting him on his terms and shouldn't be.

But what about low levels? Well, a second-level fighter will still have a bad day trying to fight an ape, whose first move is probably to grapple the poor sod into the ground and claw his face off. A fourth level fighter squaring off against a minotaur is pretty much a joke, as the damn thing deals more damage and has more hit points than you. And so on. Fighters have no purpose except fighting and aren't even good at it.

And don't get me started on monks.

Oooh, I like this game. Let's talk about an actual 3.0 fighter, Gregory.

Now, Gregory wasn't my character, but here's what I remember of his encounters with Pit Fiends.

First, he has 18 + 5 (levels) + 6(item) + 5(wish) = 34 strength.

Second, he is wielding a Falchion with a base +1 enchantment, enhanced to +5 via Greater Magic Weapon.

His feats include Improved Crit, and Great Cleave.

The other buffs that matter are Mind Blank and Haste.

So, he sees a Pit Fiend on the ground. Gregory probably wins initiative. The Pit Fiend doesn't have Combat Reflexes, so no AoO, and Mind Blank protects from the fear aura. He makes a partial charge, attacking at, say +20(BAB) + 12(str) + 5(wpn) + 1(WF) + 2(charge) = +40 to hit, against the poor fiend's AC 30.

And then he full attacks at +38/+33/+28/+23.

Now, he could easily afford to power attack, but he doesn't have the knowledge skills to know that. So he may only be hitting for 1d8(wpn) + 5(enchantment) + 18(str) + 2(WS) is about 30 points of damage per attack, which would only kill it and it's average 123 HP before it gets to go if he hits with all 5 attacks. Had he power attacked, he almost certainly would have killed it.

Oh, remember that Falchion? It is actually a Keen Vorpal Falchion +1(+5). So, that's crit and behead the doomed fiend on a 12-20.

Now, to finish just how pathetic the poor Pit Fiend is, let's point out that it's flight, fireballs, and even death throws are largely negated by a Winged Cloak of Protection +5, Gloves of Dex +6, and a Ring of Evasion.

The one thing I don't know for sure is whether he had a hard counter - like a Ring of Freedom of Movement - for the grapple. Good thing he is in a party.

And, speaking of his party, don't get me started on the monk. She was able to kill so many Pit Fiends in one round, that their own Death Throws killed most of them for her.

[Jormengand]

The nudist ooze, otoh, with its mighty single digit AC, that you encounter in real games that aren't comparisons of fighter vs wizard, but real fighter + wizard + party vs monsters, just screams Power Attack.

I am glad to say that I have never encountered an ooze.


(wish) Greater Magic Weapon. The other buffs that matter are Mind Blank and Haste. Mind Blank

Ignoring all of the mistakes you made in your calculations, [insert standard gripe about wizard spells being good doesn't mean that fighters are good here].

[AvatarVecna]

The nudist ooze, otoh, with its mighty single digit AC, that you encounter in real games that aren't comparisons of fighter vs wizard, but real fighter + wizard + party vs monsters, just screams Power Attack.



Oooh, I like this game. Let's talk about an actual 3.0 fighter, Gregory.

Now, Gregory wasn't my character, but here's what I remember of his encounters with Pit Fiends.

First, he has 18 + 5 (levels) + 6(item) + 5(wish) = 34 strength.

Second, he is wielding a Falchion with a base +1 enchantment, enhanced to +5 via Greater Magic Weapon.

His feats include Improved Crit, and Great Cleave.

The other buffs that matter are Mind Blank and Haste.

So, he sees a Pit Fiend on the ground. Gregory probably wins initiative. The Pit Fiend doesn't have Combat Reflexes, so no AoO, and Mind Blank protects from the fear aura. He makes a partial charge, attacking at, say +20(BAB) + 12(str) + 5(wpn) + 1(WF) + 2(charge) = +40 to hit, against the poor fiend's AC 30.

And then he full attacks at +38/+33/+28/+23.

Now, he could easily afford to power attack, but he doesn't have the knowledge skills to know that. So he may only be hitting for 1d8(wpn) + 5(enchantment) + 18(str) + 2(WS) is about 30 points of damage per attack, which would only kill it and it's average 123 HP before it gets to go if he hits with all 5 attacks. Had he power attacked, he almost certainly would have killed it.

Oh, remember that Falchion? It is actually a Keen Vorpal Falchion +1(+5). So, that's crit and behead the doomed fiend on a 12-20.

Now, to finish just how pathetic the poor Pit Fiend is, let's point out that it's flight, fireballs, and even death throws are largely negated by a Winged Cloak of Protection +5, Gloves of Dex +6, and a Ring of Evasion.

The one thing I don't know for sure is whether he had a hard counter - like a Ring of Freedom of Movement - for the grapple. Good thing he is in a party.

And, speaking of his party, don't get me started on the monk. She was able to kill so many Pit Fiends in one round, that their own Death Throws killed most of them for her.

I like how you're combining 3.0 crit-threat extending stuff with Vorpal, are pretending that lacking Combat Reflexes means the Pit Fiend gets no AoO ever, are assuming that you win initiative, are assuming the Pit Fiend doesn't fly away or do anything on its turn between your charge and your full attack, and are still admitting that you'd probably get ganked hard if you didn't have a friendly wizard giving you a bunch of buffs.

[logic_error]

No strawman intended. I´m just honestly curious because I´ve seen enough martials overperform ii my time.

Oh yeah? My claim is that NO single character, not even a druid, can effectively take on all CR2 table encounters alone. So there. I am going all in. A CR X encounter is supposed to be for a party not a single character.

The real issue here and please remember that this is what we are really discussing, is that Casters and half casters *can* solo the CR X encounter after and/or till a certain threshhold. Fighters can't. Even worse, these half casters and casters can actually *melee* it in some cases, such as Druids and Clerics. Which is a problem for a class that supposed to be good at fighting.

[Jormengand]

Oh yeah? My claim is that NO single character, not even a druid, can effectively take on all CR2 table encounters alone. So there. I am going all in. A CR X encounter is supposed to be for a party not a single character.

But they can have a good go.

A second-level druid is carting around a CR 1 wolf, meaning that if the druid herself can take on a CR 1 wolf, which she can (in particular by whacking it with a huge +1 stick until it goes away) then she can face off an EL 2 encounter. More convincingly, if she's fighting a CR 2 ape, she can relatively trivially throw will-save-or-be-my-friend spells at it until it becomes her trusted friend and ally.

Similarly, incidentally, a sorcerer can force the ape to save or be unconscious, blinded and stunned long enough for a few coups de grace. They easily manage to get to the 50% chance to survive the encounter that the CR system assumes. Where the fighter never really had a chance, the sorcerer at least has one.

Incidentally, only EL=APL+5 or more encounters are regarded as those where "The PCs should run. If they don't, they will probably lose". This makes sense, because the party's own EL=APL+4. A single creature's CR (and EL by extension) is their own level. A character really should be able to face off against a creature whose CR equals their ECL, assuming that character isn't reliant on buffing allies.

[Quertus]

I am glad to say that I have never encountered an ooze.

Ignoring all of the mistakes you made in your calculations, .

Core only? No oozes? I am sorry that your experiences are not representative of the full scope of the game. I hope you get to enjoy all the breadth 3e has to offer some day.

And, I know I typed hurriedly from my phone, without a charter sheet in front of me, but I just double-checked, and my math looks right. Care to explain?

The party wizard in said real party (which happens to be Core Only, because that's all there was back in Y2K) wasn't carrying a Keen Vorpal weapon, didn't have Improved Critical, and it just wouldn't have been as effective for him to self buff as to buff the fighter.

EDIT:

I like how you're combining 3.0 crit-threat extending stuff with Vorpal, are pretending that lacking Combat Reflexes means the Pit Fiend gets no AoO ever, are assuming that you win initiative, are assuming the Pit Fiend doesn't fly away or do anything on its turn between your charge and your full attack, and are [I]still admitting that you'd probably get ganked hard if you didn't have a friendly wizard giving you a bunch of buffs.

Why thank you. I'm glad you like the real party I was in, where the time in question I'm recounting, the real fighter did win initiative over the real Pit Fiend, who was quite doomed.

And I'm sorry if you don't know how 3.0 Haste worked. Instead of giving you an extra attack, it gave you a bonus partial action, which you could use to, say, take a partial charge, followed up by a full attack with your normal turn. So, no, there was nothing between the partial charge and the full attack.

[JNAProductions]

Core only? No oozes? I am sorry that your experiences are not representative of the full scope of the game. I hope you get to enjoy all the breadth 3e has to offer some day.

And, I know I typed hurriedly from my phone, without a charter sheet in front of me, but I just double-checked, and my math looks right. Care to explain?

The party wizard in said real party (which happens to be Core Only, because that's all there was back in Y2K) wasn't carrying a Keen Vorpal weapon, didn't have Improved Critical, and it just wouldn't have been as effective for him to self buff as to buff the fighter.

Is Banishment 3.5? Because I feel like that'd work pretty well against a Pit Fiend.

Also, +12 Init on the Pit Fiend, so why do you assume he'll win the Initiative?

[Jormengand]

The party wizard in said real party (which happens to be Core Only, because that's all there was back in Y2K) wasn't carrying a Keen Vorpal weapon, didn't have Improved Critical, and it just wouldn't have been as effective for him to self buff as to buff the fighter.

Well, there are ways of dealing more damage than that fighter, such as by polymorphing yourself and your familiar into 12-headed cryohydras and causing everything in a certain direction to have 72d6 points' worth of A Very Bad Time, for example. Not effective against resist cold (then again, the amount of damage you're dealing isn't very effective against something with DR 15, 10 more AC than you think it has, nigh-on double the HP you said, and which has enough initiative that it barely needs to roll to go first and has therefore most likely squashed you or flown away - that, or pit fiends are just better in 3.5, which in case you haven't noticed is the edition I for one am talking about), but still probably more effective than hitting it with a stick.

[JNAProductions]

Link to the Pit Fiend on the SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/devil.htm#pitFiend)

[Quertus]

Is Banishment 3.5? Because I feel like that'd work pretty well against a Pit Fiend.

Also, +12 Init on the Pit Fiend, so why do you assume he'll win the Initiative?

Original 3.0 Pit Fiend, back in Y2K, had only a +5 initiative.


Well, there are ways of dealing more damage than that fighter, such as by polymorphing yourself and your familiar into 12-headed cryohydras and causing everything in a certain direction to have 72d6 points' worth of A Very Bad Time, for example. Not effective against resist cold (then again, the amount of damage you're dealing isn't very effective against something with DR 15, 10 more AC than you think it has, nigh-on double the HP you said, and which has enough initiative that it barely needs to roll to go first and has therefore most likely squashed you or flown away - that, or pit fiends are just better in 3.5, which in case you haven't noticed is the edition I for one am talking about), but still probably more effective than hitting it with a stick.

Sure, but I don't have any experience with Real parties taking on Real Pit Fiends in 3.5. I can only talk theoretical at that point.

And the real wizard in question didn't have a familiar. Or Assume Supernatural Ability (Hydra Breath).

[JNAProductions]

Original 3.0 Pit Fiend, back in Y2K, had only a +5 initiative.

Sure, but I don't have any experience with Real parties taking on Real Pit Fiends in 3.5. I can only talk theoretical at that point.

And the real wizard in question didn't have a familiar. Or Assume Supernatural Ability (Hydra Breath).

What was Greg's Init score? Because, assuming 15 Dex to start, +4 item, and +5 wish, he's only looking at +7. That's a 58% chance to win, sure...

But that's also a 42% chance that the Pit Fiend wins, and then just flys up. In which case Greg is dead meat.

[Jormengand]

Sure, but I don't have any experience with Real parties taking on Real Pit Fiends in 3.5. I can only talk theoretical at that point.

And the real wizard in question didn't have a familiar. Or Assume Supernatural Ability (Hydra Breath).

Well fine, but you do look immensely silly coming into the middle of a discussion of the 3.5 fighter and banging on about how great your 3.0 fighter was because they had a wizard buffing them.

You don't need ASA, when you can use PAO, which is like polymorph except that it actually turns you into the thing in question rather than just giving you its form. Not that it matters, really.

[AvatarVecna]

Oh yeah? My claim is that NO single character, not even a druid, can effectively take on all CR2 table encounters alone. So there. I am going all in. A CR X encounter is supposed to be for a party not a single character.

The real issue here and please remember that this is what we are really discussing, is that Casters and half casters *can* solo the CR X encounter after and/or till a certain threshhold. Fighters can't. Even worse, these half casters and casters can actually *melee* it in some cases, such as Druids and Clerics. Which is a problem for a class that supposed to be good at fighting.

Encounter Calculator (http://www.d20srd.org/extras/d20encountercalculator/) for reference.


X
Encounter


1
Very Difficult


2
Very Difficult


3
Very Difficult


4
Very Difficult


5
Very Difficult


6
Very Difficult


7
Very Difficult


8
Very Difficult


9
Very Difficult


10
Overwhelming


11
Very Difficult


12
Very Difficult


13
Very Difficult


14
Very Difficult


15
Very Difficult


16
Overwhelming


17
Overwhelming


18
Overwhelming


19
Very Difficult


20
Very Difficult



"Overwhelming" is defined as "you should run away, or prepare to get curbstomped", whereas Very Difficult is "there's a significant chance that you're about to die". Keep in mind that generally speaking, "Very Difficult" is around the point where it's an even match. A pair of identical characters fighting each other at any level (be they wizard, druid, fighter, whatever), should both have an equal chance to win, which is what's being attempted to simulate. Fighter 2 against an Ape is a bad fight for the Fighter, but less of a bad fight for a Barbarian 2 I think. Of course, it's almost a non-fight for a Druid, and is much easier for a Sorcerer or Wizard, which is part of the point of the discrepancy. Fighter X and Rogue X and Druid X are all supposedly just as threatening as each other, and stand an equal chance in a fight, but realistically that's not the case. Heck, part of the problem isn't even the numbers themselves, it's just that Fighter and its ilk go about combat in a particular manner: Attack bonus vs AC, damage vs HP. Creatures with crap saves and basically no immunities, but super-high AC and HP would be difficult for a Fighter to take on, whereas wizards will target their crap saves; creatures with stellar saves, a handful of immunities, but crap AC and HP will get stomped by the Fighter, and the Wizard will toss some high-level ranged touch attacks at them for massive damage too. It can get bad for martials in the high levels, though, since monster designers start assuming magic will be available to level the playing field a bit...

[Lazymancer]

I actually give players 2 points for any profession of their choice sometimes up to level three, but that profession you can't increase. To many players don't use it what so ever in 3.5 because other skills have so much more utility. I said banker because I was thinking that would be the one job that could just really take advantage of the majority of theadventuring skills there.
It's not about utility. Before skills could be used, you need a shared understanding of how those skills will be used. Unless you are willing to stop the game and have a long discussion about use of new skills, any use of unknown skills will boil down to giving GM control over your PC. Which is something no player is interested in, unless they've run out of other options.




I've seen a lot of charm person SoL tables. I'm pretty much convinced nobody has actually read the spell. It's ran as being as good as dominate a lot of the time.
It might be legacy thing. Charm was far more powerful during earlier editions.

For example (yes, first level spell):

Charm Person Range: 120'
Duration: See below
This spell can be used on any human, or human-like creature (such as bugbears, gnolls, gnomes, goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds, lizard men, ogres, pixies, or sprites). It will not affect undead, nor creatures larger than an ogre. If the victim fails to make a saving throw vs. Spells, the victim will believe that the spell caster is its "best friend" and will try to defend the caster against any threat (real or imagined). If the caster speaks a language that the charmed creature understands, commands may be given to the victim. Any commands given will usually be obeyed, except that orders against its nature (alignment and habits) may be resisted, and an order to kill itself will be refused. Creatures with above average intelligence (a score of 13-18) may make a new saving throw each day. Creatures with average intelligence (a score of 9-12, which includes the monsters listed above) may save again once per week, and creatures with below average intelligence (a score of 3-8) may save again once each month.

[Zanos]

I think that it falls apart more and more as you gain levels. Especially with minionmancy. A level 3 Death master with 12 HD worth of animated servants is going to be able to "solo" a lot of CR 3 encounters.


It might be legacy thing. Charm was far more powerful during earlier editions.
Wow is that still a firs-


For example (yes, first level spell):
That is hilarious. Apparently an army of charmed ogres at level 1 was a thing in Basic?

[CharonsHelper]

Another thing that I notice in real games is that caster-martial disparity happens immediately, not at level 7, 10, 13 or anything else like that. Even at low levels the wizard has options the fighter just doesn't.

And at very low levels martials have options that the wizard doesn't.

Like not dying to that first arrow and using a weapon semi-competently.

(I'm not saying that there isn't caster/martial disparity - but not until 5 at all, and not much until 9.)

[Quertus]

What was Greg's Init score? Because, assuming 15 Dex to start, +4 item, and +5 wish, he's only looking at +7. That's a 58% chance to win, sure...

But that's also a 42% chance that the Pit Fiend wins, and then just flys up. In which case Greg is dead meat.

In which case, Gregory flies up there, or the rest of the party kills it?

D&D is a team game, and Gregory was more than capable of pulling his weight. Especially against the Pit Fiend we encountered. That was my point.


Well fine, but you do look immensely silly coming into the middle of a discussion of the 3.5 fighter and banging on about how great your 3.0 fighter was because they had a wizard buffing them.

You don't need ASA, when you can use PAO, which is like polymorph except that it actually turns you into the thing in question rather than just giving you its form. Not that it matters, really.

Hey, if someone wants to put up a modern fighter, more power to them. But fighters, IME, didn't used to need a babysitter, even in high-level play.

And I'd rather use my 8th level slots to keep the fighter in the battle, and not fleeing, or dominated and attacking me, thanks.

EDIT: speaking of tactics, could the party wizard have done something useful, and counter spelled the Pit Fiend's fireball?

[JNAProductions]

Hey, if someone wants to put up a modern fighter, more power to them. But fighters, IME, didn't used to need a babysitter, even in high-level play.


The other buffs that matter are Mind Blank and Haste.

What was that about not needing a babysitter?

[Jormengand]

And at very low levels martials have options that the wizard doesn't.

Like not dying to that first arrow and using a weapon semi-competently.

(I'm not saying that there isn't caster/martial disparity - but not until 5 at all, and not much until 9.)

An arrow definitively does not do enough damage to kill a wizard, and will rarely so much as stagger her. She loses half her hit points, then puts the unfortunate archer in question to sleep, picks up a random stick as an improvised greatclub and damn the proficiency I have auto-crits, and whacks the offending fool straight through the skull.

(Incidentally, I think I'm getting close to a bingo (http://imgur.com/jNT6Ce6). Keep it up, guys!)

[CharonsHelper]

An arrow definitively does not do enough damage to kill a wizard, and will rarely so much as stagger her. She loses half her hit points, then puts the unfortunate archer in question to sleep, picks up a random stick as an improvised greatclub and damn the proficiency I have auto-crits, and whacks the offending fool straight through the skull.

Lol - of course it does.

And Schrodinger's Wizard strikes again. Combined with a lack of math and rules knowledge.

1. If you're talking 3.x, a level 1 wizard has 6 HP at most for level 1. Even without a composite longbow, you have a 1/4 of being knocked out and bleeding, with an additional 1/8 of not being able to cast anything or become knocked out and bleeding. The Pathfinder wizard will do a bit better.

2. Sleep takes a full round action to cast. If you survive the arrow and start casting Sleep, the archer laughs at you and shoots you again, and EVEN IF you survive the 2nd arrow (unlikely) you'll probably fail the Concentration check and lose the spell.

3. You're assuming that your foe

a. Is vulnerable to Sleep (a LOT of things can't be put to sleep - like the classic elvish archer)
b. Fails his save (he's got a better chance of passing than a wizard does of surviving two arrows at level 1)
c. Has no friends willing to poke him and wake him up before you spend multiple rounds to walk up and perform a coup de grace

[Arbane]

Also, no-one uses power attack in real games because they can never hit if they do. Getting the extra 40 damage on each attack is a nice meme, but a nudist wizard with no spells active has a high enough AC that you might miss on your first attack.

Nobody, reportin' for duty! Playing a buff/battle Oracle (Pathfinder, obvs.) with a rather nice magic sword - I don't miss often enough that the extra +6 PA damage isn't worth it.

[JNAProductions]

Lol - of course it does.

And Schrodinger's Wizard strikes again. Combined with a lack of math and rules knowledge.

1. If you're talking 3.x, a level 1 wizard has 6 HP at most for level 1. Even without a composite longbow, you have a 1/4 of being knocked out and bleeding. The Pathfinder wizard will do a bit better.

2. Sleep takes a full round action to cast. If you survive the arrow and start casting Sleep, the archer laughs at you and shoots you again, and EVEN IF you survive the 2nd arrow (unlikely) you'll probably fail the Concentration check and lose the spell.

3. You're assuming that your foe

a. Is vulnerable to Sleep (a LOT of things can't be put to sleep - like the classic elvish archer)
b. Fails his save (he's got a better chance of passing than a wizard does of surviving two arrows at level 1)
c. Has no friends willing to poke him and wake him up before you spend multiple rounds to walk up and perform a coup de grace

Actually, at most they have 12-20 Con, 4 HP from class, and Toughness.

Realistically they have 6. That's far from their max.

With a Composite Longbow against a 14 Dex Wizard, you have a (Assuming +6 to hit) 75% chance of hitting, followed by 37.5% chance of knocking them to 0. So overall, that's about a 1 in 4 chance of knocking the Wizard down in one go. The Wizard then casts Color Spray-DC 15, against a Will save of +2, let's say, for a 60% chance of being Unconscious for 2d4 rounds. (Even if they're an Elf, they're still stunned and blinded.)

Oh, and as for C? If the archer has friends, why doesn't the Wizard?

[Arbane]

Come to think of it, my team's Monk has been a very effective mook-threshing machine. We're only level 9, though, and haven't fought many opponents with DR yet.

[Chronikoce]

Guys...

This thread is about discrepancy between theoretical optimization and actual play. I was under the impression it was not meant to be used as yet another chance to argue theoretical optimization levels as there are plenty of those already.


Speak for yourself.

I find the Pathfinder Paladin to be great fun. Pathfinder offers new interesting spells, the ability to create your own temporary magic weapon, and at higher levels you can turn your whole party into "paladins" to smite the BBEG to smithereens.

Fair enough, my memory of these events is about 2 years old and to be fair I wasn't the Paladin's player. So it's very possible that I misconstrued the players comments as non enjoyment. Thinking back, he did continue as straight paladin and enjoyed the game so perhaps my original statement was too bold.

[CharonsHelper]

Actually, at most they have 12-20 Con, 4 HP from class, and Toughness.

Realistically they have 6. That's far from their max.

With a Composite Longbow against a 14 Dex Wizard, you have a (Assuming +6 to hit) 75% chance of hitting, followed by 37.5% chance of knocking them to 0. So overall, that's about a 1 in 4 chance of knocking the Wizard down in one go. The Wizard then casts Color Spray-DC 15, against a Will save of +2, let's say, for a 60% chance of being Unconscious for 2d4 rounds. (Even if they're an Elf, they're still stunned and blinded.)

Oh, and as for C? If the archer has friends, why doesn't the Wizard?

Yes - technically they could take Toughness. (but if their Con is higher than 14 - their Int will be lower) But that's for a non-composite longbow. A composite longbow would do a couple more points of damage, making the change of knocking them to 0 much higher. (In addition - even without the composite bow they're actually at just about 31% chance when you include critical chance.)

Why is an archer getting close enough to the wizard to cast Color Spray? If the wizard is that close, you would need to add +1 to hit & damage from Point Blank Shot. Without a composite longbow, that increases the chance of dropping them to 0 up to 42.5%. And of course - all of that is assuming that they aren't a human fighter with Rapid-Shot.

Either that or they wouldn't bother with the bow at all, and they'd charge them with a greatsword, having (assuming a mere 16 STR) an 80% chance of knocking the wizard to 0 or lower.

[yellowrocket]

To get this thread back to to vs play, my players don't care to optimize in a traditional sense. Level 5, wizard, paladin and 2 sorcerers. They figured out that they didn't hit often or hard enough in melee to not buff the paladin. So their go to was enlarge person and bulls strength on the paladin.

[JNAProductions]

Yes - technically they could take Toughness. (but if their Con is higher than 14 - their Int will be lower) But that's for a non-composite longbow. A composite longbow would do a couple more points of damage, making the change of knocking them to 0 much higher. (In addition - even without the composite bow they're actually at just about 31% chance when you include critical chance.)

Why is an archer getting close enough to the wizard to cast Color Spray? If the wizard is that close, you would need to add +1 to hit & damage from Point Blank Shot. Without a composite longbow, that increases the chance of dropping them to 0 up to 42.5%. And of course - all of that is assuming that they aren't a human fighter with Rapid-Shot.

Either that or they wouldn't bother with the bow at all, and they'd charge them with a greatsword, having (assuming a mere 16 STR) an 80% chance of knocking the wizard to 0 or lower.

Oh, I know Toughness is crap. But the point is, their MAX is far greater than 6. 6 is, honestly, to be expected.

Can they AFFORD a composite longbow at level 1? It costs a LOT of money.

And true-but if they're at a distance (which they might not be, depending on terrain) then Sleep will do just fine. Because, apparently, they're now human.

Additionally, this is all core-only. Add in other options, like Abrupt Jaunt, and the chance drops to somewhere around 0 of them taking a Wizard out in one turn.

Lastly, I'd like to say this-Schrodinger's Wizard is primarily spell choice. I do agree that a Wizard is unlikely to have the perfect spell every time in every game, even for a very good player-casting that many divinations is boring. But general purpose spells will usually do just fine, and Schrodinger's FIGHTER requires you to shuffle stats around, pick different races, different feats, different equipment choices... The Wizard just picks a new set of spells.

[Oathstone]

Against wizard/sorcerer, who are unlikely to have 150 hit points, pit fiend will use power word stun and bang them to death even harder than 20 level fighter. No real challenge for PF.

Back to thread:
- wizards/clerics at low levels suck at dungeon crawling, they have to spread their spells for 4-6 fights per day, which means they have 1-2 spells per combat
- animal companion is strong in terms of raw power but it is usually the first combatant do die in battle.

[JNAProductions]

Against wizard/sorcerer, who are unlikely to have 150 hit points, pit fiend will use power word stun and bang them to death even harder than 20 level fighter. No real challenge for PF.

Range 70'. Also 52 HP (Hit Dice) + 100 (Con, starts at 14, +5 Wish, +2 Item) means the Wizard can get over 150 without too much trouble.

[Oathstone]

+5 from wish is like "it never happens because its 25000 XP", or wizard is level 18.

[JNAProductions]

+5 from wish is like "it never happens because its 25000 XP", or wizard is level 18.

Fair enough. +5 from Wish not guaranteed. Then again, it's still a mere 70' range. The Wizard has a LOT of options for dealing with a Pit Fiend before it closes the distance.

[Zanos]

14 base, a +6 enhancement item, and some temporary HP from false life could easibly be in play, though. +6 items are cheap compared to a +5 from wish. Also the wizard can polymorph or shapechange into something with very high base con.

Or they could just cast mind blank to be immune to power word spells, since that's pretty much a stock defence at those levels.

[Cosi]

+5 from wish is like "it never happens because its 25000 XP", or wizard is level 18.

Or two sixth level spell slots. You've been able to cast greater planar binding for ten levels at this point, you should have gotten your hands on two Efreet by this point.

[Oathstone]

Looks like wizard starts to spend lots of his resources to defend from pit fiend's at-will attack.

[Zanos]

Looks like wizard starts to spend lots of his resources to defend from pit fiend's at-will attack.
Having a +6 con item by the point you're facing CR 20 threats isn't unusual. In fact, most characters probably are going to want it by that point. And mind blank provides immunities to a ton of stuff and lasts 24 hours, I cast it every day on every wizard I have that can cast 8th level spells.

[logic_error]

Arguing around level 20 wizards.:amused:

[RedWarlock]

All this level-20-wizard argument is missing the point, when I'm betting 98% of games never make it to 20. 95% probably never break 15.

[Zanos]

Arguing around level 20 wizards.:amused:


All this level-20-wizard argument is missing the point, when I'm betting 98% of games never make it to 20. 95% probably never break 15.
I didn't say anything about the wizard being level 20, and I didn't bring up the pit fiend(a CR 20 threat) as a measuring stick either.

[CharonsHelper]

Oh, I know Toughness is crap. But the point is, their MAX is far greater than 6. 6 is, honestly, to be expected.

True - unless they're an elf. Maybe 7hp in 3.x if they're a gnome or dwarf.


Can they AFFORD a composite longbow at level 1? It costs a LOT of money.

That's why I didn't use it in my % numbers. You couldn't afford one at character creation, but you probably can at some point before you hit level 2.


And true-but if they're at a distance (which they might not be, depending on terrain) then Sleep will do just fine. Because, apparently, they're now human.

If they try Sleep, they again run into the problem of it taking a full round to cast. (I'm actually amazed by how many people miss that.) You start it in round 1 and it goes off at the beginning of round 2 - between which the wizard will become a pincushion.


Additionally, this is all core-only. Add in other options, like Abrupt Jaunt, and the chance drops to somewhere around 0 of them taking a Wizard out in one turn.

Abrupt Jaunt has no effect against the archer unless you're popping behind cover. It would only stop the melee charge if he were able to get out of charge range. Remember - the charge is a single action which includes both the movement and the attack. An immediate action still can go on another's turn, but it can't split another action.

But really, while Abrupt Jaunt is a stupidly good use of level 1 spell slots for a high level caster (there's a reason Pathfinder never imported it), having a level 1 wizard have Abrupt Jaunt is about the most blatant Schrodinger's Wizard ever. No level 1 wizard is going to burn one of their two level 1 spells per day on it.


Lastly, I'd like to say this-Schrodinger's Wizard is primarily spell choice. I do agree that a Wizard is unlikely to have the perfect spell every time in every game, even for a very good player-casting that many divinations is boring. But general purpose spells will usually do just fine, and Schrodinger's FIGHTER requires you to shuffle stats around, pick different races, different feats, different equipment choices... The Wizard just picks a new set of spells.

I never used different builds/races. I gave the numbers for any martial with a longbow, and then I pointed out various potential additional advantages they might have. Any +1 BAB 16STR with a greatsword would have that 80% of popping a 6hp wizard. If I'd been playing Schrodinger half as much as your wizard is, I'd have given him Weapon Focus and 20STR to bump it up to 95%.

[Zanos]

Abrupt jaunt doesn't cost spell slots, it has a separate pool of uses.

[JNAProductions]

I never used different builds/races. I gave the numbers for any martial with a longbow, and then I pointed out various potential additional advantages they might have. Any +1 BAB 16STR with a greatsword would have that 80% of popping a 6hp wizard. If I'd been playing Schrodinger half as much as your wizard is, I'd have given him Weapon Focus and 20STR to bump it up to 95%.

Okay, so what's their stat spread look like? 16 Str, at least 16 Dex (and even then, I assumed a +4 Dex bonus-+4 Dex, +1 BAB, +1 Point Blank Shot gives you the +6 I had listed), so what about Con? You also said they're likely to pass their Will save, so they HAVE to have good Wisdom.

[Anthrowhale]

Well, there are ways of dealing more damage than that fighter, such as by polymorphing yourself and your familiar into 12-headed cryohydras and causing everything in a certain direction to have 72d6 points' worth of A Very Bad Time, for example.

You do realize this means you can't cast spells, are nearly immobile, and lose many of your beneficial items, right? There are many circumstances where this is a suicide tactic.

Anyways, I'm not convinced that a well-designed core Fighter 20 with modest cooperation from core spellcasters can't take on core CR 20 monsters. Maybe there are better ways for a spellcaster to spend 5% of their spells/day but I don't think that has been demonstrated. The above certainly seems like a far more niche tactic.

[CharonsHelper]

You also said they're likely to pass their Will save, so they HAVE to have good Wisdom.

No I didn't. Please don't strawman me.

Unless they're an elf against Sleep, if the wizard gets the spell of the fighter will probably go down, around 60-70% chance. (Though if it's Sleep, it's really easy to be woken up by a buddy. I mean - it takes a spell & a full round action to cast, but only a standard to get rid of.) If they're a dwarf it drops to about 50%.

I'm just dubious of them getting that spell off consistently, because they either need to get really close without dying first (Color Spray) or it takes a full round (Sleep) during which they'll be hit and either die or lose the spell.

[Quertus]

Guys...

This thread is about discrepancy between theoretical optimization and actual play. I was under the impression it was not meant to be used as yet another chance to argue theoretical optimization levels as there are plenty of those already.

This. Thus far, AFAIK, I'm the only one who had been true to the thread, and describing results of an actual fighter in actual play against an actual Pit Fiend.

My experience is, actual fighter pulls his weight.

Anyone else have an actual experience of an actual fighter against an actual Pit Fiend in an actual game?


What was that about not needing a babysitter?

Clearly, we are defining that word differently. Just like a rogue benefits from someone to flank with, a fighter benefits from a good party and teamwork.

[Chronikoce]

I've played in games with monks, fighters, and barbarians that all enjoyed their class and contributed to the party. I've also played in games where the wizard was useless.

The party working together and facing well designed encounters is more important in my experience than arbitrarily decided theoretical combats.

[sleepy hedgehog]

From my experiences:
Spellcasters usually follow a theme. Which severely reduces their godlike effectiveness.
Noone ever uses divination spells. They aren't that exciting, even if it meant you knew what you should prepare in your other slots.
Rarely do people use summons, or things like dominate person, even though they are strong. Since no one wants to slow turns down even more by getting allies.
As others have said, hitting things really hard, is very effective. However, reflect for 1/2 spells tend to be ineffective, due to the number of enemies with high dex.

I think, in my groups, given 2 choice between awesome and effective, people nearly always choose awesome.

[logic_error]

I didn't say anything about the wizard being level 20, and I didn't bring up the pit fiend(a CR 20 threat) as a measuring stick either.

I was not talking at you. Rather to the other guy who was arguing how Wizard 20 is still vulnerable. You are right all the time BTW. How do you manage that?

As for the rest arguing that Wizards are weak at level 1.

That's a strawman. Of course, they are. Anyone making the argument that Wizard levels early are unbeatable is a fool.

Once again, the real argument is that Casters are better than Fighters in general and not specifically at low levels.

[CharonsHelper]

That's a strawman. Of course, they are. Anyone making the argument that Wizard levels early are unbeatable is a fool.

Once again, the real argument is that Casters are better than Fighters in general and not specifically at low levels.

Well - it wasn't really a strawman considering that I made a statement that caster/martial didn't exist at all until 5ish, and not significant until 9ish (not THAT bad until 13ish), and then people jumped and said I was wrong - wizards were always better because of Sleep. Which - as you say - is foolish.

That's the only reason that I proved through my 1v1 example that the fighter would win a duel.

I in no way meant it to prove that caster/martial disparity never exists. (Though - as I've only played one campaign into the teens, it hasn't been a major issue at my table.)

[The_Jette]

I was not talking at you. Rather to the other guy who was arguing how Wizard 20 is still vulnerable. You are right all the time BTW. How do you manage that?

As for the rest arguing that Wizards are weak at level 1.

That's a strawman. Of course, they are. Anyone making the argument that Wizard levels early are unbeatable is a fool.

Once again, the real argument is that Casters are better than Fighters in general and not specifically at low levels.

A first level fighter is arguably better than a first level Wizard. But, he's on par with a first level cleric. Why? Because the cleric can heal, making up for the lack of hp. The first level wizard has two spells, maybe three. Those are going to run out FAST. Then, he has a sling, or dagger, to rely on. A level one fighter has better hit points, better armor (since if one of the Wizard's spells is Mage Armor, it still only lasts one hour), and a weapon that will deal decent damage every round until he falls unconscious. Can a level one Wizard built for the exact fighter, there'd be a decent chance he'd win. Hit the fighter with sleep, or something similar, and coup de gras the next turn before he wakes up. But, the fighter could make his saving throw, get initiative, etc. The idea that the wizard is better because this specific wizard beats this specific fighter in this particular situation is silly.

[CharonsHelper]

Hit the fighter with sleep, or something similar, and coup de gras the next turn before he wakes up.

Again - Sleep is a full round to use. It's basically worthless in a duel.

[ryu]

Again - Sleep is a full round to use. It's basically worthless in a duel.

Sleep at long range, color spray at close. Then just nonchalantly behead the fighter with the scythe you carry around specifically to deal with helpless opponents.

Take abrupt jaunt for safety. Oh or you want a different method that doesn't involve rendering you unconscious or stunned? Power word pain. Or simple fell-drain sonic snap with nerveskitter and a hummingbird familiar to win initiative. That way kills you without even rolling dice by the way.

[CharonsHelper]

Sleep at long range, color spray at close.

Against Sleep the martial goes around a corner and/or shoots you full of arrows before it goes off the following turn. Good luck surviving getting close enough to use color spray and hopefully they don't get the 30-40% chance of passing the save.

[ryu]

Against Sleep the martial goes around a corner and/or shoots you full of arrows before it goes off the following turn. Good luck surviving getting close enough to use color spray and hopefully they don't get the 30-40% chance of passing the save.

And if there isn't a convenient corner for you to hide behind? Or if the battlefield holds equal opportunities and suddenly the wizard also has cover and is actively favored for having more options at range than you? Or if abrupt jaunt means you have to make five saves in a row against color spray or die? The fighter is not favored in this fight. Not even slightly.

[Chronikoce]

Here is one that I've noticed is different than TO

AC optimization isn't as useless as everyone makes it sounds. I play a lvl 4 Wizard gish in an AOW campaign and with alter self active my AC is 29 depending on other spells I have active. This usually results in me never getting hit during encounters.

But on the other hand, agreeing with TO

Ignoring saves to boost AC is bad. Every time I need to make a will save (mine isn't particularly good atm) I am deeply worried that I will end up getting charmed in some way that causes me to turn against my party.

Finally I will again place for a plea that we get back on topic and quit the useless TO argument about fighter vs wizards.

[CharonsHelper]

And if there isn't a convenient corner for you to hide behind?

Hence in what you quoted "and/or shoots you full of arrows before it goes off the following turn." Yay blatant straw-man!


Or if the battlefield holds equal opportunities and suddenly the wizard also has cover and is actively favored for having more options at range than you?

What options? This theoretical fight is at level 1. You have two spells for the whole freakin' day. Going behind full cover for the wizard just leads to the martial's turn coming up, going around the cover, and shooting/stabbing him.

He doesn't even need cover. As soon as the wizard starts casting sleep the martial can just run away and be out of range when Sleep fizzles with its 110ft range. Really - an open field is the worst option for a wizard in this fight as the martial can just pepper him at long range.


Or if abrupt jaunt means you have to make five saves in a row against color spray or die? The fighter is not favored in this fight. Not even slightly.

What are you even talking about? Five saves? You only need one save against Color Spray. Do you even know 3.x rules?

Abrupt Jaunt only moves you 10 feet. Your range is still far less with Color Spray than a charge with a melee weapon.

I'm starting to think that you really don't know the rules very well and/or are bad at math.

[ryu]

Hence in what you quoted "and/or shoots you full of arrows before it goes off the following turn." Yay blatant straw-man!



What options? This theoretical fight is at level 1. You have two spells for the whole freakin' day. Going behind full cover for the wizard just leads to the martial's turn coming up, going around the cover, and shooting/stabbing him.

He doesn't even need cover. As soon as the wizard starts casting sleep the martial can just run away and be out of range when Sleep fizzles with its 110ft range. Really - an open field is the worst option for a wizard in this fight as the martial can just pepper him at long range.



What are you even talking about? Five saves? You only need one save against Color Spray. Do you even know 3.x rules?

Abrupt Jaunt only moves you 10 feet. Your range is still far less with Color Spray than a charge with a melee weapon.

I'm starting to think that you really don't know the rules very well and/or are bad at math.

Abrupt jaunt is the ultimate screw you to melee attackers. They enter attack range, get ported away from, wizard gets a turn, assuming the fighter saves the cycle starts again. This can happen up to five times at level one meaning five saves minimum for a melee combatant. Six if initiative swings that way. Further you are aware of how bonus spell slots for casters and especially wizards work right? Any caster not made by a hack has significantly more than two spells.

[Guizonde]

Speak for yourself.

I find the Pathfinder Paladin to be great fun. Pathfinder offers new interesting spells, the ability to create your own temporary magic weapon, and at higher levels you can turn your whole party into "paladins" to smite the BBEG to smithereens.

same here! unfortunately, my dm wasn't on the same wave-length as me regarding "lethal joke characters". turns out that building a tarpit that multiplied the staying power of the group wasn't what he expected at all, or found funny. halflings are completely overpowered in pathfinder (bless the little suckers), and that made a sub-par build truly frighteningly efficient. oh, yeah, the dm never wants to hear the words "barded war pony" or "neon pink mohawk" together ever again. at least he did give me a pony, even if i asked for an ostrich. if you're playing a paladin as "loyal stupid", i've no idea fluff-wise how in the 9 hells your character hit level 5, let alone 2. dude is the most frightening martial there is (in fluff): a smart one is frightening. a smart beatstick enjoying a patron deity's favor practically gives you plot armor! also, ain't no rule (and it's encouraged in the fluff, too) against a pal' getting the help of less morally-bound characters to do his dirty work for the greater good. they're not dumb, their code only applies to them. granted, that makes you flirt the line, so don't abuse it, but it's in the class description. it's a silly meme of the pal' being an idiot sandwich who'll knock on the bbeg's trapped door to warn them instead of sneaking into a lair.


I've played in games with monks, fighters, and barbarians that all enjoyed their class and contributed to the party. I've also played in games where the wizard was useless.

The party working together and facing well designed encounters is more important in my experience than arbitrarily decided theoretical combats.

i only saw one fighter in action, and the player wasn't too fond of pen and paper in the first place. it was lackluster. i've no doubt that it can be a fun class, but it does take some interest in the game to be more fun than just "advance, hit".
barbarians are awesome. no question there. the best i found i could offer them were free attacks of opportunity (using the tarpit pal' from above, specifically). if it wasn't for the fact the player was cursed by systematically failing his will saves, he'd have been declared a war criminal by the hague tribunal for genocide against gnolls.
i played with a monk that was the most awesome little tank that could. among his feats of arms were regularly overshadowing a wizard 7 in usefulness, and managing to not only overshadow, but render moot, a sorceror. granted, said sorceror was unoptimized by any standard (let alone the group's standards), but come on. you've not built a good sorceror when at sorc 6/dragon disciple 1 you're getting worse results in combat than a monk, and when a rogue 5/ wizard 2 casts more appropriate spells at the appropriate time than you are. he also regularly matched an elven rogue in sneaking, and outdrank a dwarven cleric. twice (i'm not proud of that one, but the dm did allow me "sobriety" as a cantrip after that. more useful than you think).

monks, like paladins, are mad characters. that means that they can't do everything unless you rolled straight 18's. so instead of griping about that, spec them. take a hit to your pride and find your niche in the group. my pal's dump stat was strength. she had dex and charisma in low orbit, and that made her a tarpit more than capable of buffing the team and annoying enemies at the same time. (you don't care too much at low level about aoo's when you've got 28+ ac and more hp than any 2 other team members).
my friend's monk went a different route. his dump stat was strength as well, so he went with "dakka". flurry of blows may suck in theory, but in practice, you're happy about getting 5-6 rolls to attack per turn (without getting into aoo's). he averaged a lot of hits, believe it or not. either through luck of the dice or build, i don't know. he never looked at my sheet, i never looked at his beyond the physical description. he was our 17kg molotov cocktail. tiny, full of booze, and with a fiery temper.

as an aside, the feat "more lay on hands" is really worth it for either spot-healing or strangling undead. i'd say the same is true for "more turn undead", but i used more lay on hands than i did turn undead (burning light is a laser beam. turn undead is a tongue lashing. not exactly a hard choice).

[Florian]

i only saw one fighter in action, and the player wasn't too fond of pen and paper in the first place. it was lackluster.

Huh, weird, playing a Punkadin seems to be more common than I´d have guessed.

I´ve seen a good number of Fighters by now and the difference in effectiveness is startling.

On the low end of the spectrum is the "Bruenor Wannabe"-type, the axe´n´board dwarf build around all the obvious feats, with no eye for synergy.

The mid levels are the one-trick ponies, people who´ve actually learned how to create synergies but limit that only on their character and immediate power.

The high tier is occupied by people with actual tactical acumen basing their Fighter around martial battlefield control, are prepared to receive buffs and leave the damage to the glass canons. Not that they don´t dish out the hurt, but that´s an en passant thing that happens because their style of BFC works.

[logic_error]

BTW I find that healing gets a lot less love in these forums. Sure, HP damage is best avoided than healed, but it happens anyway. Then whatchyugunnado? Heal it of course. The cleric is a sure way to get those four encounters a day going on.

[Florian]

BTW I find that healing gets a lot less love in these forums. Sure, HP damage is best avoided than healed, but it happens anyway. Then whatchyugunnado? Heal it of course. The cleric is a sure way to get those four encounters a day going on.

This is a tough topic to handle. D20 doesn´t feature a "death spiral", so raw healing is not as important as it is in other systems, as a character functions well until the last hp.
It´s more important to handle anything that can actually negatively impact (combat) effectiveness, like ability damage and drain, curses, etc.
And here we are again with the Cleric, the class that can handle all of that well and early. Now it´d be easy to say: "use a scroll". But the really nasty stuff also needs a caster level check, so if you´d not build a Cyphermage, you´ll actually want to use spell slots for this.

[Guizonde]

Huh, weird, playing a Punkadin seems to be more common than I´d have guessed.

I´ve seen a good number of Fighters by now and the difference in effectiveness is startling.

On the low end of the spectrum is the "Bruenor Wannabe"-type, the axe´n´board dwarf build around all the obvious feats, with no eye for synergy.

The mid levels are the one-trick ponies, people who´ve actually learned how to create synergies but limit that only on their character and immediate power.

The high tier is occupied by people with actual tactical acumen basing their Fighter around martial battlefield control, are prepared to receive buffs and leave the damage to the glass canons. Not that they don´t dish out the hurt, but that´s an en passant thing that happens because their style of BFC works.

well, when you're barely over 3ft tall, you need a way to ease your party's spot checks to find you in a crowd. a foot-tall neon pink mohawk is a way (according to my then-dm, not the best). i think that halfling topped out at 1,03m without the 'hawk or shoes. i rolled for her size and came up at the maximum. with that character, i wasn't worried about stealth. i was worried about not being seen enough to make sure i got the ire of all the bad guys. the dm did allow me to taunt, but it had no hard and tight mechanics we could find like it does in nwn or pf (i just learned earlier this morning). plus, my insult-slinging and off-the-cuff putdowns became legendary with that group.

regarding the fighter, when the player inevitably fell asleep, the dm npc'd his character, and it was night and day in fights: flanking, cleaving, sundering, provoking aoo's, area denial, the works. same character, same feats, just a different player. i simply don't count that as having seen a player play a fighter, on account of the character being npc'd. what i remember most about that is how versatile a fighter can be in a fight.

when you talk about synergy, are you talking from a mechanics perspective, a group perspective, or a mix of both? the fighter was sword and board (with a greatsword as fallback), and not exactly optimized (according to general forum ideology), but he fit really well in the group's battles, complementing the rogue's sneak attacks by kiting enemies, counting on the monk's better movement to create pincers, and generally drawing incoming fire while the wizard blasted away and i kept everyone at full hp. well, when the dm played him, at any rate. otherwise, he just drew incoming fire and hit things pretty hard. he fell out of the campaign after 6-7 sessions due to lack of interest.

another thing i noticed: dm's always underestimate blunt weapons. maybe it's the general tendency to take a sword or a sharp weapon, but so far, i've played with 7 dm's who forgot the rule regarding blunt instruments. morgentsterns are piercing and blunt, poleaxes are all 3, and it may be my joy at hitting something with a blunt object, but when a dm tells you the skeleton takes half-damage and you remind him you're using a consecrated masterwork mace, his reaction is priceless.
one day, i'll build a barbarian who uses trees and treebranches as greatclubs. subtlety can look the other way (druids and rangers too, while they're at it)

[Florian]

when you talk about synergy, are you talking from a mechanics perspective, a group perspective, or a mix of both?

A mix of both.

Fighter is maybe one of the least newbe-friendly classes because you need a very good understanding of how the combat system works, learn to gauge your chance at success and know what the other classes can do in regard to them buffing you and you supporting them (or at least not standing in their way).

You also must work with the difference between "mechanical" tanking and "incentive" tanking, a thing a lot of people seem to have problems with.

As for blunt weapons, the two of us recently talked about a standard weapon load-out for a 08/15 fantasy warrior. Overspecialization or building around a certain archetype often leads to Fighters that can´t beat basic DR types.

[emeraldstreak]

Love it when newbies talk arenas.

[CharonsHelper]

Abrupt jaunt is the ultimate screw you to melee attackers. They enter attack range, get ported away from, wizard gets a turn, assuming the fighter saves the cycle starts again. This can happen up to five times at level one meaning five saves minimum for a melee combatant. Six if initiative swings that way. Further you are aware of how bonus spell slots for casters and especially wizards work right? Any caster not made by a hack has significantly more than two spells.

1. It can't interrupt a charge because of it being a single action.

2. It doesn't help against archers.

3. Wizards at level 1 only have 2 level 1 spells. 3 if they're a specialist.

4. It doesn't help the first round if the fighter wins initiative. You can't do an immediate action if you're still flat-footed.

[Lazymancer]

3. Wizards at level 1 only have 2 level 1 spells. 3 if they're a specialist.

Up to 5 spells are possible: 1 class, +2 from Int 20, +1 from specialist/domain/Elf Generalist, +1 recallable via spell-clutch ability of Imaskari.

[Florian]

Up to 5 spells are possible: 1 class, +2 from Int 20, +1 from specialist/domain/Elf Generalist, +1 recallable via spell-clutch ability of Imaskari.

Possible, yes, feasible, no. The necessary PB allocation to Int will leave you pretty vulnerable.

[Lazymancer]

That is hilarious. Apparently an army of charmed ogres at level 1 was a thing in Basic?
Nope. You got only one spell at first level. Both slot and known.

But - yes. Getting an ogre or a high-level fighter was what any experienced Wizard Magic-User wanted. One of the canonic examples was about some first-level PC meeting 4th-level Fighter NPC, charming him, and having it easy for quite a bit.

[Sewercop]

I have noticed a few things in my time.

-Most people have no clue how to play a wizard,cleric, fullcasters like they are discussed on forums.
So most of the time they are not a problem at all. In the hands of an experienced player with a good
understanding of the rules and mechanics on the other hand... That is a gms nightmare.

-Druids are kings, but often fall short because people that play them dont understand wildshape properly,
underuse or dont bother to use the companion and finds the spells less blasty than they like.
Again, in the hands of an experienced player.. a gms nightmare

-Fighters tend to attract mobs, even thou it is clear they pose no real threat. Almost all gms tend to
just let monsters attack them instead of the casters for no reason. So dont bother optimizing for that.
Gms let you have that ability no matter what, almost all the time.

-Melee gets banned so often when it smacks high damage, it is ridiculous and funny. Tob users, chargers, etc
Banned and nerfed.

Things that almost never work at a table.
-Being a caster with suck spells, or just die spells. If there is a lonely boss you might as well piss in the wind.
Odds are your spells will always be saved against. And if there are no saves, tantrums and groups argue for
hours. If the group survives, nerf hammer hits hard.

-Melee with one kill damage, just expect the nerf hammer.

-Skills and this one is almost worse than the rest imo. No matter what your skill is, it will never work when you
need it to. Hit the 50+ or 80+ on knowledges, you dont know jack **** about the monster.
No matter what you do, skills that can solve a mystery or plot will never work. And it is so blatant and offensive
towards the few players building towards skills. Outside of diplomacy etc, who uses that ****? If you have spot 10
or 100 doesnt matter. You will see jack **** if the gm decide so.

and on and on and on
Grease functions once, then many gms have guys with balance
Flight, forget it, the dragon lands and fights anyway
Will saves? will never target the fighter

This is what ive learned
If you optimize, make it almost invisible to see. If it is visible you are nerfed.
Fighters do suck balls, only gm fiat makes it work. Which goes for almost all mundanes.

All this said :) I do enjoy the game. But I prefer to gm

[ryu]

Possible, yes, feasible, no. The necessary PB allocation to Int will leave you pretty vulnerable.

To what precisely? We only have three total stats we care about at all, and standard point-buy can get you two full 18s or an 18 a 16 and a not bad tertiary. If we're going necropolitan soon con becomes a good dump stat. If we aren't planing to make use of touch attacks dex becomes an optional dump stat. All of this combined with the fact that with abrupt jaunt INT is a better defense than either of those two stats in most situations. This is also factoring in that higher int allows you to afford things like nerveskitter in the coming levels, along with more defensive buffs. So no, a non 18 int is NEVER a thing in point-buy. If we're really to make a thing of it take faerie mysteries initiate, then necropolitan and have more HP than the fighter.

[Florian]

Yes, yes, ryu. You do this, you do that, become god... after surviving stepping into a bear trap.

Edit: Stow your power tripping and accept that most Wizards make it beyond level 1 because gms have the good grace to simply not just kill them off.

[ryu]

Yes, yes, ryu. You do this, you do that, become god... after surviving stepping into a bear trap.

Edit: Stow your power tripping and accept that most Wizards make it beyond level 1 because gms have the good grace to simply not just kill them off.

Oh MOST wizards aren't good at life. That's true. That doesn't mean you don't have a bevy of tools to survive early levels handily that most people don't bother with.

[Florian]

Oh MOST wizards aren't good at life. That's true. That doesn't mean you don't have a bevy of tools to survive early levels handily that most people don't bother with.

No, you don´t. That´s kidding yourself. And this is the difference between actual game and the dueling situation.

[ryu]

No, you don´t. That´s kidding yourself. And this is the difference between actual game and the dueling situation.

Considering I have actually done exactly this with regularity while playing I'm gonna have to stop you right there. Tier 1 tables exist.

[Florian]

Considering I have actually done exactly this with regularity while playing I'm gonna have to stop you right there. Tier 1 tables exist.

Because the gm lets you. You know, the hard part of gm´ing and knowing your stuff is to actually not provoke an TPK with every encounter.

[AvatarVecna]

Because the gm lets you. You know, the hard part of gm´ing and knowing your stuff is to actually not provoke an TPK with every encounter.

"The game rules are balanced because the DM doesn't have to follow the rules" isn't a strong argument.

EDIT: A bit more seriously, while the DM can of course provoke a TPK fairly easily, especially in the early levels, and while wizards and their ilk are hardly invulnerable in the early (or even mid) game, the fact remains that the wizard has more defensive tools than the fighter does. The fact that the DM can make those tools irrelevant is a pointless argument, because the DM can make anything irrelevant. Saying the wizard's stuff is balanced against the fighter's stuff because the DM can change up the enemies abilities to deal with the wizard's tricks is like saying that the Fighter's unarmored AC is balanced against the Monk's unarmored AC because the DM can increase the enemies to-hit bonus depending on who they're attacking: it's technically correct, but comes loaded with a lot of slippery slopes I'd rather a DM not be tempted towards.

[ryu]

Because the gm lets you. You know, the hard part of gm´ing and knowing your stuff is to actually not provoke an TPK with every encounter.

Yeah. He does. You know what else? He's allowed and expected to also make use of many of the same tricks. Gameplay is actually legitimately complex even from from level one and gets downright heavy as levels progress. It's a game about people with complex abilities fighting for resources, glory, and some other third thing that will vary based on general party alignment. This is as opposed to a game about hitting hapless mooks with sticks until shiny things fall out.

[Florian]

"The game rules are balanced because the DM doesn't have to follow the rules" isn't a strong argument.

EDIT: A bit more seriously, while the DM can of course provoke a TPK fairly easily, especially in the early levels, and while wizards and their ilk are hardly invulnerable in the early (or even mid) game, the fact remains that the wizard has more defensive tools than the fighter does. The fact that the DM can make those tools irrelevant is a pointless argument, because the DM can make anything irrelevant. Saying the wizard's stuff is balanced against the fighter's stuff because the DM can change up the enemies abilities to deal with the wizard's tricks is like saying that the Fighter's unarmored AC is balanced against the Monk's unarmored AC because the DM can increase the enemies to-hit bonus depending on who they're attacking: it's technically correct, but comes loaded with a lot of slippery slopes I'd rather a DM not be tempted towards.

Now you´re evading. I´m pointing out that when it comes to rules mastery vs. rules mastery and staying inside the boundaries of the rules, trying to get into an arms race against the gm is a futile thing.

[ryu]

Now you´re evading. I´m pointing out that when it comes to rules mastery vs. rules mastery and staying inside the boundaries of the rules, trying to get into an arms race against the gm is a futile thing.

And the reverse case is to point out just how silly that statement is in the context of this conversation. You don't get to claim that wizards are squishy compared to fighters then demand the hypothetical DM intervene every time a competent wizard makes any fighter you build look like they're made of glass. Wizards aren't squishy. They're one of the hardest to kill classes in the game.

[icefractal]

To what precisely? We only have three total stats we care about at all, and standard point-buy can get you two full 18s or an 18 a 16 and a not bad tertiary.lolwut?
18,16,12,10,8,8 is 32pb. Standard for some groups, not others. Stats like 18,16,14,10,10,8 would be 36pb, above what most groups use.

With 25pb you can't do it at all, and with 28pb your 'decent' tertiary is a 10 (all others are 8).

Also, being a Necropolitan isn't relevant at 1st level, and dumping Dex drops your init, which is pretty important.

Also also - dammit, I got sucked into a theoretical Wizard discussion on even a thread about the opposite.

[ryu]

lolwut?
18,16,12,10,8,8 is 32pb. Standard for some groups, not others. Stats like 18,16,14,10,10,8 would be 36pb, above what most groups use.

With 25pb you can't do it at all, and with 28pb your 'decent' tertiary is a 10 (all others are 8).

Also, being a Necropolitan isn't relevant at 1st level, and dumping Dex drops your init, which is pretty important.

Also also - dammit, I got sucked into a theoretical Wizard discussion on even a thread about the opposite.

I just went to the calculator and, no, the standard calculator allows 18 16 14 and all others 8 at 32 PB. Why on earth would I want a forth stat to be up to 10? And similarly 32 point buy can indeed get you two 18s and all else 8s. Right on the standard myth weavers version everyone uses.

[Firechanter]

The single biggest discrepancy I have noticed (time and again) is the reliance on and availability of Buffs.
I.e., in OT you often get "then you pile on buffs X, Y, Z, and you're good to go".

In actual play, game pacing often prohibits the timely application of short- and mid-duration buffs. You may know _that_ an encounter is coming, but there's no way of telling whether it will be initiated in 1 minute or 30. And very often, you get no warning at all. Sometimes you have _one_ round available to prepare before Initiative is rolled, and very often not even that.

--

That said, I have to say that apart from that, a large portion of common Optimization wisdom is accurate. If anything, Psionics seems to be underrated in terms of power and versatility. In particular, I have experienced that playing a T3 (or lower) Martial character is just occupational therapy from around level 7 onward when even a single halfway-optimized T2+ Caster is around.

[Florian]

@ryu

Blah blah blah without substance.

You know why I respect Firechanter without us seeing eye to eye on a majority of topics? Because we went though the basics.

@Firechanter: Braubeviale is coming up again this year. If things work out, I´ll be there as an exhibitor with a booth. We should talk, because I´ll stay at Erlangen and we´ll finally find out what to do with a smooth voice. You get my meaning.

[Pex]

Anyway, another thing.

Fire damage is never irrelevant. Certainly there are cases where the monster fought is resistant or immune to fire. In that case the PC who uses fire uses something else and doesn't resent it. In another combat the monster is not resistant or immune to fire, so it's fire time again. The player is never frustrated or upset.

[JustIgnoreMe]

Nope. You got only one spell at first level. Both slot and known.

But - yes. Getting an ogre or a high-level fighter was what any experienced Wizard Magic-User wanted. One of the canonic examples was about some first-level PC meeting 4th-level Fighter NPC, charming him, and having it easy for quite a bit.

If I remember right, the idea was that Charm lasted so long on those of low Int (like Ogres) that at one casting per day you could easily get a whole army together before they ever got another save. You could, in theory, have 28 ogres before even one got a second save, and if it made it it's still surrounded by 27 others who are loyal to the Magic User.

[Lazymancer]

Noone ever uses divination spells. They aren't that exciting, even if it meant you knew what you should prepare in your other slots.
Plenty exciting if you've ever fried your brain for three weeks despite failing only on 1-2 and using re-roll (no, you can't take 10, whatever CharOp thinks).

Imo, the main problem is that GMs usually frown on using divinations (for one reason or another). Specifically Divination answers tend to be as incomprehensible as possible (because puzzles are always interesting!) - I literally can't remember when was the last time GM did not go for the "cryptic" answer (unless it was a plot hook) - which is why I rely on Commune or Contact Other Plane, despite all the drawbacks (and that might've turned into self-fulfilling prophecy, since I don't cast Divination ...).



Possible, yes, feasible, no. The necessary PB allocation to Int will leave you pretty vulnerable.
Goalposts, put them back. I was pointing out factually wrong statement. Casting 4-5 spells at 1st level is possible and hardly unheard of.



lolwut?
18,16,12,10,8,8 is 32pb. Standard for some groups, not others. Stats like 18,16,14,10,10,8 would be 36pb, above what most groups use.

With 25pb you can't do it at all, and with 28pb your 'decent' tertiary is a 10 (all others are 8).
Actually, SAD 28 PB is 18, 14, 14, 8, 8, 8.

Gray Elf gets 16 Dex and 12 Con.
Deep Imaskari - 12 Dex and 14 Con.
Lesser Tiefling - 16 Dex and 14 Con.

With 32 you can upgrade to 16/16 for Tiefling, 16/14 for Elf, and 14/14 for Imaskari. Quite respectable, IMO. Not that I'd recommend it (not without some additional factors), but hardly unplayable.

Seriously, what / are you all even arguing about? It's as if Wizard with two spells somehow makes Fighter a good class.




EDIT: A bit more seriously, while the DM can of course provoke a TPK fairly easily, especially in the early levels, and while wizards and their ilk are hardly invulnerable in the early (or even mid) game, the fact remains that the wizard has more defensive tools than the fighter does. The fact that the DM can make those tools irrelevant is a pointless argument, because the DM can make anything irrelevant.
There is also a sad fact that many people don't think. Consequently, automatic HP+AC boosts are often more useful than the Wizard's toolbox.

Another sad fact is that hysterical railroading (when you are always reacting, always running out of time, always facing some threat you cannot ignore) is all too common.

[Lazymancer]

If I remember right, Charm lasted so long on those of low Int (like Ogres) that at one per day you could easily get a whole army together.
I posted the spell. It's one saving throw per month. The problem is that you hardly ever can arrange for Ogres to be met on individual basis.

[JustIgnoreMe]

I posted the spell. It's one saving throw per month. The problem is that you hardly ever can arrange for Ogres to be met on individual basis.
Can't remember the issue, but I think there was a Dragon article that suggested the "army of ogres" trick. The line "Magic missile? I though this guy was meant to be tough?" sticks in my head for some reason.

=edit= Issue 200, "the Colour of Magic" mentions it in passing.

[Guizonde]

A mix of both.

Fighter is maybe one of the least newbe-friendly classes because you need a very good understanding of how the combat system works, learn to gauge your chance at success and know what the other classes can do in regard to them buffing you and you supporting them (or at least not standing in their way).

You also must work with the difference between "mechanical" tanking and "incentive" tanking, a thing a lot of people seem to have problems with.

As for blunt weapons, the two of us recently talked about a standard weapon load-out for a 08/15 fantasy warrior. Overspecialization or building around a certain archetype often leads to Fighters that can´t beat basic DR types.

no argument there. you clearly know the system better than i do, and so far on the forum i've noticed mostly the mechanical side taking over rather than baiting or playing it. dnd does encourage that vision of the game. i found that a battle-map did help to visualize how combat worked. do you have any experience with that? that said, i'm still flabbergasted at the overcomplexity of dnd. might be i'm more familiar with d100.

one lesson i learned very early on: always pack a backup weapon. more if you can. i loved the dwarven war-axe that could deal piercing and slashing combined with a heavy mace. two weapons, 3 kinds of damage before adding effects. plus, chances are sooner rather than later you'll get hit by a sunder or similar effect, so rather than getting permanently disarmed, draw your backup. of course, then we get into the golf-bag can of worms (a golf bag filled with different situational weapons of all kinds waiting just the right moment).

[Zanos]

You are right all the time BTW. How do you manage that?
Simple, I post in these forums pseudo-obsessively, and I deflect all criticism with sarcastic jabs. Sorely tempted to sig that, though. :smallwink:

[Lans]

And true-but if they're at a distance (which they might not be, depending on terrain) then Sleep will do just fine. Because, apparently, they're now human.



Sleep is defeated by a back pack full of chicken.


I chose a CR=APL+4 encounter because it's the kind of encounter that the party should have a 50% success rate against and this is made explicit. I chose a fighter because fighter was the class in question, but none of the core PrCs give the fighter anything particularly powerful except for spellcasting. I chose level 20 because a claim was made that the fighter worked at high levels, but I also pointed out that it also sucks at low levels by comparing it to an ape. Finally, I am not actually suggesting that four fighters are a normal party. What I am suggesting is that the fact that a fighter deals negligible damage and cannot really tank damage either (mainly because monsters can just move past the fighter with relative impunity) implies that it isn't good at its job. If you can make me, say, a level X fighter where X is any level beyond about 1 which can actually contribute meaningfully to encounters which it should be able to contribute to meaningfully, then fine, but at the moment you're just disputing my examples without offering any actual response to them.

A big problem with your argument is that you are arguing core fighter when the statement has no modifier.



Well, fine: build me a level 20 core fighter that can take on a pit fiend. I'll be sitting here drinking ninth-level spells while I wait.

https://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=1223270





But what about low levels? Well, a second-level fighter will still have a bad day trying to fight an ape, whose first move is probably to grapple the poor sod into the ground and claw his face off. A fourth level fighter squaring off against a minotaur is pretty much a joke, as the damn thing deals more damage and has more hit points than you. And so on. Fighters have no purpose except fighting and aren't even good at it.
.



Vs the ape if the fighter has combat reflexes it should do well against the ape with your suggested strategy with the attack of opportunity negating the apes grapple attempt, with the fighter having additional options if it wins initiative.

[Florian]

@Lans:

Personally, I´d prefer a Fetchling dimensional assault build using plain old sword´n´board and a sprinkle of Spellsunder and Cut From The Air.
It is immensely gratifying to counter nearly any spell with an AoO, right after teleport/plane shift pouncing directly to your target, no matter where it is.
It´s also pure (comedy) gold to be able to attack buffs/contingency/SU abilities, sunder them and cleave right thru to the caster/creature. An often overlooked feature of Fighters, Barbarians and Brawlers.

Edit: And agreed, the ape will eat an AoO and possibly a readied action as well, in PF most likely a Dirty Trick to blind it.


no argument there. you clearly know the system better than i do, and so far on the forum i've noticed mostly the mechanical side taking over rather than baiting or playing it. dnd does encourage that vision of the game. i found that a battle-map did help to visualize how combat worked. do you have any experience with that? that said, i'm still flabbergasted at the overcomplexity of dnd. might be i'm more familiar with d100.

D&D/PF always looks complex because the tons of options available and because the internet is full of trash spewing "truths" about how the game is to be played.
Unlike d100 (or other "roll under" games), part of the fun/challenge is keeping up with the expected performance as you level up, as a character is never really "finished". That said, play long enough and you tend to recognize wheat from chaff and the available options get drastically reduced.

As for the battlemap, I always use one as it´s hard to get AoO, positioning and so on right without it.
I went to a gastronomy supplier and bought a roll of those cheap paper table cloth (with squares), so I can draw or scrawl on the whole table if necessary, along with notes on initiative order, hp and so on.

[Dimers]

My experience is, actual fighter pulls his weight.

Anyone else have an actual experience of an actual fighter against an actual Pit Fiend in an actual game?

Pit Fiend, no, but high-level fighters against ((high-level creatures that aren't mere beatsticks)), yes. The results have been disappointing but not awful. The cleric vastly outshone them and the psion was fundamentally changing how the battle worked; the fighter ... did okay damage.

And that's to say nothing of the broader issue, that theory matches experience very well in terms of overall party contribution. In battle, fighter deals okay damage. Out of battle, fighter relies on player's RPing skills to accomplish anything significant.

Theory matches experience in terms of the importance of WBL and how it should be spent, and in terms of keeping the party around the same tier for maximal enjoyment.

Where my experience doesn't match theory:

Magic Mart isn't often available, loot distribution agreements are wonky, and downtime can't happen often. This means equipment loadouts are always short of the ideal.
Classes that emphasize Int somehow manage to derive little benefit from skills.
Healing and debuff-removal during combat are frequently important.
Players' aversion to loss makes for suboptimal use of abilities.
Players' desire for wackiness makes for suboptimal use of abilities.
Players' RPing makes for suboptimal use of abilities.
Warlock is banned as OP unreasonably often.
Encumbrance is important far more often in reality than in theory.

[Florian]

Anyone else have an actual experience of an actual fighter against an actual Pit Fiend in an actual game?

Let´s see. IIRC the most high-powered enemies I´ve seen in actual use where the demon lords Baphomet and Deskari in Mythic game, a Balor in non-mythic and a group consisting of a Void Yai, Oracle 20, Ninja 20 and Samurai 20, supported by a ghost wizard 16.

Baphomet was prolly the most disappointing fight, being butchered by a Barbarian in one charge, the Balor fell victim to an archer Oradin and the group found out that a dedicated combat maneuver specialist Fighter adept at setting up chained AoOs manages to take down one per round.

(The Barbarian was pre Courageous and Spirited Charge nerf, so STR/CON were around 60 at that time while raging. Due to a discussion here, I revisited this character and updated it to the actual PF rules, it´ll still end up with STR/CON of 45 at that point, still far into overkill territory.)

Edit: Pro tipp - Should you ever have a dedicated Brute Style Fighter around, do not, under any circumstances, go into more detailed description on what it does, beyond "Hulk Smash!", else you leave PG-rated territory fast.

Edit 2: Same holds true for a dedicated Intimidate/Coup de Grace Slayer. The moment pulling out someones spine and skull and showing off with that becomes a standard tactic, we´ve reached Predator-levels of gruesome that we might actually not go to deep into.

[emeraldstreak]

Anyone else have an actual experience of an actual fighter against an actual Pit Fiend in an actual game?


The final boss (some custom elder evil) in a 1->20 campaign we played was spawning pit fiends as adds. Party was fighter/ranger/ranger/unoptimized bard.

[Guizonde]

@Lans:
As for the battlemap, I always use one as it´s hard to get AoO, positioning and so on right without it.
I went to a gastronomy supplier and bought a roll of those cheap paper table cloth (with squares), so I can draw or scrawl on the whole table if necessary, along with notes on initiative order, hp and so on.

i'm gonna do that. i struggled with a3 paper, loose-leaf, even a couple of "washable" in-name-only battlemaps before. a giant scroll table cloth will be perfect. thanks for the advice.

[Florian]

i'm gonna do that. i struggled with a3 paper, loose-leaf, even a couple of "washable" in-name-only battlemaps before. a giant scroll table cloth will be perfect. thanks for the advice.

I know that situation quite well. My Ex wife worked as a graphic designer in an advertisement company, so we had an Epson A3+ printer at home (and some gorgeous minis). We had some Chesex mats, as well as a Paizo mat and that simply can´t beat the simplicity of using your table cloth to do it.

[Jormengand]

Sleep is defeated by a back pack full of chicken.

Because everyone has one of them.


https://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=1223270


Tailor-made and still dies horribly, especially if the pit fiend moves at all near it. Neat?

[Florian]

*Sigh*

Jormengand, killing a Pit Fiend, Balor or Dragon is easy. If you want, I can provide you sample builds that can do it without breaking a sweat or spending any major resource.
Killing is easy for a martial class, so is overkill, the main question is what you do outside of killing.

[Manyasone]

@Firechanter: Braubeviale is coming up again this year. If things work out, I´ll be there as an exhibitor with a booth. We should talk, because I´ll stay at Erlangen and we´ll finally find out what to do with a smooth voice. You get my meaning.
You a homebrewer? That's awesome. I just started learning to make wine

Check out the derailment. It's ok. I drive trains

[Jormengand]

*Sigh*

Jormengand, killing a Pit Fiend, Balor or Dragon is easy. If you want, I can provide you sample builds that can do it without breaking a sweat or spending any major resource.
Killing is easy for a martial class, so is overkill, the main question is what you do outside of killing.

If it's so easy, why is it that your tailor-made build, WITH NATURAL EIGHTEENS IN ALL STATS, which is specifically designed to kill a pit fiend, gets trip-locked if it tries to move or murdered if it doesn't, starting in the surprise round, which the pit fiend gets because it may be awful at hiding, but not so awful that Steve III's dumb ass actually has a chance of seeing it before it murders him. Sure, you have more initiative than it does, cute. Pity it made a partial charge in the surprise round and smashed your weapon, or ran up and grappled you, or just keeps swapping between quickened fireball-invisibility-move until you go away.

Here's what you think happens:

The valiant Steve III journeyeth to the hells and confronteth the bale and terrible pit fiend. Lo and behold, he winneth initiative with his higher bonus! With his arrows which - by sheerest coincidence - are made of a particular special material, yea, have three enchantments on them specifically to make them good against pit fiends, he shooteth the pit fiend six times in ye face! Long live the pit fiend, the pit fiend is dead!

Here's what happens.

Steve III, who by some miracle has survived the first nineteen levels of fighter, is wandering around the hells like a chump. He thinks he just failed a spot check. He definitely just failed a listen check. Suddenly there's a pit fiend on his face, who claws him for a bunch of damage, having emerged from behind a rock 80 feet away (it can safely power attack for 8, but it doesn't know that because it doesn't have knowledge local - it probably plays it relatively safe and "Only" deals 22 damage to the fighter with 174 hit points). Surprise round over, Steve III wins initiative, which he uses to drop anything he holds and flee at top speed from the pit fiend, as well as any other dangers he encounters, along a random path.

If by some miracle he does pass his will save, then he unloads against the pit fiend. We'll assume the pit fiend doesn't do anything clever with his attack of opportunity like make an improved grab attack, so you unload on the pit fiend for ((19/20+19/20+19/20+18/20+13/20+8/20)*45)=216 damage. The pit fiend is exceptionally miffed, and retaliates for (19/20*(2(2d8+13)+2(2d6+6)+(4d6+6)+(2d8+6)))=105 damage, plus a fireball, then decides it's had enough, and improved grabs the offending fighter, gives him a squeeze, and slowly kills him.

Alternatively, it decides "Screw this", quickened fireballs him in the butt, turns invisible, and decides to wander off up to 40 feet in whatever direction. Have fun guessing which. Alternatively it quickened fireballs some more of your hit points off, then Power Word: Stuns you. Or it Mass Hold Monsters you. It has so many things it can do to you that you have no defence against that I'm getting a little bored listing them. If you want, we can run a real 1v1 fight, fighter vs pit fiend (though I want a listed race and skills, and preferably a real point buy statline). I'm afraid that I won't be able to play it as intelligently as the pit fiend itself would, because its intelligence bonus is twice as big as mine so it's quite a lot smarter.

[AvatarVecna]

Because everyone has one of them.

Score another win for the humble commoner!

[Florian]

You a homebrewer? That's awesome. I just started learning to make wine

Check out the derailment. It's ok. I drive trains

I wouldn't call it "homebrewing". I got my hands on a WW2-era bomber manufacturing plant and I´m right in the middle of renovating it. My partners and me have ordered a 50hl sudhaus with Krones and a 10hl pot still with Miyake, along with a 12-4-12 automatic bottling line. That´s major league production capability.

Meanwhile, we use small-scale equipment to test our intending products. That means that I´m broke most of the time due to dept, but have to drink a case of beer and bottle of whiskey each day.

[Florian]

Jormendgard, you didn't keep up with martial development in PF, right? Go on out and say that your comments are centered on 3,5E and we´re fine, I´d agree with you. Beyond that? No.

Edit: If you don´t have a clue what the whole Cut From The Air feat line means, say so and we can talk about it.

[Rhyltran]

Jormendgard, you didn't keep up with martial development in PF, right? Go on out and say that your comments are centered on 3,5E and we´re fine, I´d agree with you. Beyond that? No.

In Jormendgand's defense they said nothing of the sort. Jormen plays 3.5 and mostly core. So this is already stated. Unless I'm getting mixed up with someone else..

[Jormengand]

In his defense he said nothing of the sort. He plays 3.5 and mostly core. He already stated this.

Pronouns notwithstanding, basically this. While a fighter - with straight 18s and specifically tailored arrows, need I remind everyone - may be able to take out a pit fiend in Pathfinder (though I doubt they actually do in real games with any regularity), and might be able to with 3.5 splats (though they definitely don't in real games with any regularity), they definitely can't without that help.

[Rhyltran]

Pronouns notwithstanding, basically this. While a fighter - with straight 18s and specifically tailored arrows, need I remind everyone - may be able to take out a pit fiend in Pathfinder (though I doubt they actually do in real games with any regularity), and might be able to with 3.5 splats (though they definitely don't in real games with any regularity), they definitely can't without that help.

Edited my post as I didn't mean to offend.

[Florian]

In his defense he said nothing of the sort. He plays 3.5 and mostly core. He already stated this.

With limited perspective, refrain from giving broad-spektrum answers is all I say.


Pronouns notwithstanding, basically this. While a fighter - with straight 18s and specifically tailored arrows, need I remind everyone - may be able to take out a pit fiend in Pathfinder (though I doubt they actually do in real games with any regularity), and might be able to with 3.5 splats (though they definitely don't in real games with any regularity), they definitely can't without that help.

Ok, let´s try to find a common ground here. The power of a PF martial comes from being able to counter spells with ease.

[logic_error]

Seriously, guys? Defending fighter 20? What next, Monk 20? I mean come on! WoTWC made bad balancing. Why is that so hard to accept?

[Florian]

Seriously, guys? Defending fighter 20? What next, Monk 20? I mean come on! WoTWC made bad balancing. Why is that so hard to accept?

Confront a PF Unchained Monk going Brutal Style an we talk again.

[logic_error]

No idea how PF works. Never played it.

[noob]

Confront a PF Unchained Monk going Brutal Style an we talk again.

He spoke of wotc
Pathfinder is not wotc content.

[Manyasone]

I wouldn't call it "homebrewing". I got my hands on a WW2-era bomber manufacturing plant and I´m right in the middle of renovating it. My partners and me have ordered a 50hl sudhaus with Krones and a 10hl pot still with Miyake, along with a 12-4-12 automatic bottling line. That´s major league production capability.

Meanwhile, we use small-scale equipment to test our intending products. That means that I´m broke most of the time due to dept, but have to drink a case of beer and bottle of whiskey each day.

All sorts of interesting, mate. Don't forget your western neighbour should you export :smallbiggrin:

[Florian]

No idea how PF works. Never played it.

A well build PF martial will power thru defenses and just kill you. Sounds like a platitude, but the options are there and you generally use them.

@noob:

In a general discussion, you actually have to point that out which didn't´t happen.

[Lazymancer]

Confront a PF Unchained Monk going Brutal Style an we talk again.
Can you make a sheet of this Monk?

Not as a part of measurement contest, it's just I'm kinda iffy on Pathfinder (too much info - I've spent quite some time coming to terms with the fact that the only way to counter Scry&Fry requires some obscure regional feat).

[HammeredWharf]

Jormendgard, you didn't keep up with martial development in PF, right? Go on out and say that your comments are centered on 3,5E and we´re fine, I´d agree with you. Beyond that? No.

Edit: If you don´t have a clue what the whole Cut From The Air feat line means, say so and we can talk about it.

I know this wasn't aimed at me, but what's the deal with Cut From The Air? I've seen it mentioned a few times in PF vs. 3.5e discussions as one of the things that make melee good in PF, but it's very similar to 3.5 Warblade's Wall of Blades, except it requires two feats to work against spells and doesn't work against melee attacks. To me it looks like of the ingredients of the Schrödinger's Fighter: the guy who just happens to have all the feats he needs to deal with a particular situation. After all, it's not something that's useful in all situations. For example, it doesn't help you defend against a Pit Fiend's fireballs.

The big issue of mid- and high-level mundane characters in 3.5e is that they're guys who can do a couple of things well and are surrounded by guys who can do dozens of things well. After reading PF's rules for a while I didn't feel that it addressed this as well as Tome of Battle did, but admittedly I've not spent that much time on it.

[Jormengand]

Jormendgard, you didn't keep up with martial development in PF, right? Go on out and say that your comments are centered on 3,5E and we´re fine, I´d agree with you. Beyond that? No.

Edit: If you don´t have a clue what the whole Cut From The Air feat line means, say so and we can talk about it.


With limited perspective, refrain from giving broad-spektrum answers is all I say.



Ok, let´s try to find a common ground here. The power of a PF martial comes from being able to counter spells with ease.
A well build PF martial will power thru defenses and just kill you. Sounds like a platitude, but the options are there and you generally use them.

@noob:

In a general discussion, you actually have to point that out which didn't´t happen.

Oh, I get it! You just straight up don't understand what words mean!

Fine, build me a PF fighter. Let's have some fun.

[Rhyltran]

Seriously, guys? Defending fighter 20? What next, Monk 20? I mean come on! WoTWC made bad balancing. Why is that so hard to accept?

Monk is my pet class and I still wouldn't try to defend Monk 20. Pathfinder's unchain monk is certainly better but I'm speaking of 3.5 here.

[Tuvarkz]

Oh, I get it! You just straight up don't understand what words mean!

Fine, build me a PF fighter. Let's have some fun.

https://pastebin.com/YA3rRptE
Here we go, Eobard Love, The Spellbane (also known with a different name in the site where it was first linked to, not mine)

vs

http://www.archivesofnethys.com/MonsterDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Pit%20Fiend

Numbers say Eobard has overwhelming advantage in this matchup.

[remetagross]

Wow. I know nothing of PF, and I just discovered how massive the power spike martials got from 3.5 was.

[Jormengand]

https://pastebin.com/YA3rRptE
Here we go, Eobard Love, The Spellbane (also known with a different name in the site where it was first linked to, not mine)

vs

http://www.archivesofnethys.com/MonsterDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Pit%20Fiend

Numbers say Eobard has overwhelming advantage in this matchup.

Right, so you're saying that's the kind of standard level of optimisation you would expect from fighters in real games?

[remetagross]

Right, so you're saying that's the kind of standard level of optimisation you would expect from fighters in real games?

To be fair, I t think that a Fighter with half that optimiszation still beats the Pit Fiend to pulp. Besides, you did not ask for a particularly unoptimised build, if I remember correctly - just one build that could do the trick.

[JNAProductions]

How do you craft the items yourself?

Also, how does this guy beat a Quickened Dimensional Anchor (Level 8 Spell) followed by Forcecage (Level 7 Spell) followed by Haboob (Level 3 Spell)?

It deals 12.5 damage on average for each round, and you're locked down for 20 minutes. Minus one round, since Haboob is cast the following round, but that's still 2,487.5 damage.

Now, if I were to get cheesier, Dimensional Lock affects an area, meaning the Wizard doesn't even have to hit touch AC, but honestly, with only 27 Touch AC, I'm pretty sure you can be hit without much trouble.

Edit: Ah, this was to fight a Pit Fiend. Oki.

[Tuvarkz]

Right, so you're saying that's the kind of standard level of optimisation you would expect from fighters in real games?

Eh, I wouldn't likely see a Fighter in the games I join (considering as default I'll skip any recruitment that doesn't do PoW), but martials?
Defensive wise, I'd maybe expect the AC but not the saves nor HP.
Offensive power wise, yes, I'd expect a level 20 martial to be able to ORKO a CR 20 threat (And maybe more, I remember edge cases of 900 DPR or something at 20 against adequate CR foes?).

Also, what remetagross said. This is just basically the ultimate optimized cookie cutter Fighter, and it could afford to be toned way down and still have anywhere from considerable advantage to 50/50 chances against the Pit Fiend.

EDIT: To be specific, outside of the first four-five levels, generally I see DMs forgo sticking to CR. Although then, again, I only play with online groups from places where people tend to have more knowledge on the game.

[AvatarVecna]

To be fair, I t think that a Fighter with half that optimiszation still beats the Pit Fiend to pulp. Besides, you did not ask for a particularly unoptimised build, if I remember correctly - just one build that could do the trick.

In fairness, they also kinda asked for a Core build originally, since in their experience that's what mostly gets actually played. Of course, that's 3.5; if I was issuing a similar challenge for PF, I'd probably say Core only; technically, PFS is probably played way more often than Core-only, and allows a lot more material, but IIRC PFS also stops at like lvl 13 or something. That being said, I'm pretty sure PF Fighters, even with some pretty sharp limits on what material they're allowed, could still kick a Pit Fiend's ass; even if nothing else, PF Fighter will have more WBL than 3.5 Fighter, without costs going up.

EDIT: For what it's worth, pre-errata I built a lvl 20 firearms focused character that dual-wielded double-barreled pistols, and had enough DPR to ORKO basically anything in the bestiary (with the exception of the top three fiends) and still had enough gold left over for some pretty standard defense stuff. Of course, they did basically nothing other than shoot things, and I've no doubt there's things some of those epic monsters could've done to them if the Gunslinger screwed up and they got to act, but still.

[Lans]

Because everyone has one of them. Well obviously not, just the people that want one.




Tailor-made and still dies horribly, especially if the pit fiend moves at all near it. Neat?

You asked for a core fighter that could kill the pit fiend this can in a lot of situations. You never stated 50/50 or usually, or under what scenarios. Its not even a real character, just a thought excercise.

If you want to change the goal posts you can.

[Florian]

I know this wasn't aimed at me, but what's the deal with Cut From The Air? I've seen it mentioned a few times in PF vs. 3.5e discussions as one of the things that make melee good in PF, but it's very similar to 3.5 Warblade's Wall of Blades, except it requires two feats to work against spells and doesn't work against melee attacks. To me it looks like of the ingredients of the Schrödinger's Fighter: the guy who just happens to have all the feats he needs to deal with a particular situation. After all, it's not something that's useful in all situations. For example, it doesn't help you defend against a Pit Fiend's fireballs.

The big issue of mid- and high-level mundane characters in 3.5e is that they're guys who can do a couple of things well and are surrounded by guys who can do dozens of things well. After reading PF's rules for a while I didn't feel that it addressed this as well as Tome of Battle did, but admittedly I've not spent that much time on it.

It´s mentioned because it´s an example how it can look when using "mundane" mechanics to interact with spells.
I like the term "Schrödinger´s Fighter". Right now we do happen to deal with builds that are centered around having "floating feats" that can be re-assigned at a whim, based on Martial Flexibility or Barroom Brawler. So that´s actually a thing. The common use is to alternate between Style feat chains and activating Equipment Trick feat, so you can access Teleport and other stuff like that.

@Jormendgard:

You either overestimate magic or underestimate martials. Tuvarkz here is right in pointing out the raw damage potential that will end encounters of any kind. I could provide you with a Varisian Freestyle Fighter/Dreadnaught Barbarian build, but I guess you won´t be able to make head or tails on it because it is centered around flexibility and chosing counters on the fly.

[Jormengand]

You asked for a core fighter that could kill the pit fiend this can in a lot of situations. You never stated 50/50 or usually, or under what scenarios. Its not even a real character, just a thought excercise.

If you want to change the goal posts you can.

A commoner with a silver spork can, technically, kill a pit fiend. The pit fiend just has to be both dumb and unlucky. Similarly, Steve III can, technically, kill a pit fiend, but there's such a thing as intellectual honesty and that includes taking the actual meanings of things rather than the literal meanings of things. Context and connotations are your friend. Put simply, Steve III cannot kill the pit fiend if it is played to its intelligence, or if it rolls decently, or if Steve III's stats are reduced to those of a real character. No-one really has straight 18s, or carries arrows whose sole purpose in life is to be used to kill a pit fiend.

A PF fighter requires TO to defeat pit fiends reliably. A 3.5 core fighter requires TO to stand the slightest chance against a lobotomised pit fiend. I have never, in any type of game I've seen actually played, whether 3.5 or PF, core or otherwise, seen a fighter that can contribute meaningfully to any encounters of an appropriate level beyond about 5th level tops.

[noob]

Fighter solution against a pit fiend:
Pick up a staff of gate then gate pit fiend or solar or whatever.

[logic_error]

That too might require access to UMD.

[noob]

You can do without it being class skill but it is a bit harder.
But you are level 20 so you probably can.
And it is way less silly than this whole "18 to all stats and arrows with 3 particular enchantments that are worth more than scrolls of gate"

[Florian]

That too might require access to UMD.

It´s just a trait to make it into a class skill with a bonus to it (Dangerously Curious). Even then I don´t know why you´d use it, having access to Calling Feathers and a Candle of Invocation, which, incidentally, takes only two feats for a martial to craft.

(And yes, you reach the point that you carry a fully charged Luck Blade as a back-up weapon because you can create them, you´re playing in a different league)

[Lans]

A commoner with a silver spork can, technically, kill a pit fiend. The pit fiend just has to be both dumb and unlucky. Similarly, Steve III can, technically, kill a pit fiend, but there's such a thing as intellectual honesty and that includes taking the actual meanings of things rather than the literal meanings of things. Context and connotations are your friend. Put simply, Steve III cannot kill the pit fiend if it is played to its intelligence, or if it rolls decently, or if Steve III's stats are reduced to those of a real character. No-one really has straight 18s, or carries arrows whose sole purpose in life is to be used to kill a pit fiend.
.

The straight 18s don't really matter, its not a real character. Ill change it to the stats that I did roll, for real character that I played would of had. I took your statement to mean have a ~10-20% chance in a completely neutral starting point, and for it to be mostly fighter levels. If that wasn't what you meant then you should of been more clear.

All he needs is to be in the right place, at the right time, with a little bit of luck.

Maybe he's standing next toj an orphanage the pit fiend just fire stormed, maybe he comes upon the pit fiend torchering a noblemen. Maybe the pit fiend just randomly teleported 30 feet infront of him after being chased out of his lair by a cleric/wizard/rogue/druid adventuring party. Maybe they were both kidnapped and dumped into a fighting arena

Edit- In 3.0 I think the pit fiend was only CR 16

[Arbane]

...And the thread about why optimization <> actual play is now filled with optimization arguments. WHAT FUN.

[Jormengand]

The straight 18s don't really matter, its not a real character. Ill change it to the stats that I did roll, for real character that I played would of had. I took your statement to mean have a ~10-20% chance in a completely neutral starting point, and for it to be mostly fighter levels. If that wasn't what you meant then you should of been more clear.

Well, at the moment, Steve III has a zero chance, to any reasonable degree of rounding, to defeat a pit fiend who wasn't dropped on his head as a baby. So there's that. And as has been repeatedly noted, he's not in any way a realistic character who would actually be played, tailor-made as he is to fight pit fiends, and only pit fiends.

[Florian]

WHAT FUN.

Blame discussion culture. As long as people want to gain tangible "truths", it will always degrade to that point.


Well, at the moment, Steve III has a zero chance, to any reasonable degree of rounding, to defeat a pit fiend who wasn't dropped on his head as a baby. So there's that. And as has been repeatedly noted, he's not in any way a realistic character who would actually be played, tailor-made as he is to fight pit fiends, and only pit fiends.

You only need three feats, Step Up, Step Up And Strike and Dimensional Step Up on Steve III to do the job. These are neither uncommon nor tailor-made on mid to high level martials.

[Jormengand]

Given the two of those feats are useless against a pit fiend who has no reason to escape from you and one of them doesn't appear to exist is from a splat that I've never even HEARD OF, I count this as further evidence that you don't really know what words are or what they're used for.