How to deal with people who demand "teamwork"?

[MeimuHakurei]

Killing party members is in no way shape or form equivalent to not buffing the Fighter constantly.

And the party could also have Favoured Souls, Druids, Bards, Rangers, Paladins, Healers, Crusaders, Factotums etc. that can pick up the healing. Heck, even a Rogue can be a healer via UMDing wands.

[Gnaeus]

So you dont see any difference between choices made during character creation or those made during play?

Would you be saying the same thing if instead of a wizard casting fly we were talking about the only cleric in the party who routinely let other PCs die because he would rather buff himself than stabilize his dying companions by using his class feature to spontaneously convert his buffs to cures?

Honestly, in many ways, this is worse for the muggles than the Flight example. Per day flight is probably 9000 market price for pearl of power as cheapest option. There are lots of healing options for under 2kgp. Why didn’t the rogue UMD his wand? Why didn’t the wizard’s familiar pour a potion of clw down his throat? Why didn’t the knight use his healing belt?

IME usually by the time the cleric starts refusing to heal dying PCs you have hit major party dysfunction already. Refusing fly is “sit in the corner and think about the consequences of your actions”. Refusing to stabilize the dying (unless in a very close battle in which more people could die, in which case totally legit to try to win the fight first) is more of a “I hate you please die”. I’ve only really seen it in cases where PC conflict has begun and OOC resolution has failed. Like “I don’t care if your alignment is CN if you burn down that orphanage I’ll never heal you again” or “I don’t care if it says Rogue on your character sheet if you steal from the party again I will loot your corpse.”

[RoboEmperor]

In my mind there is a world of difference between someone who cant do something and someone who can do something but wont.

The fighter could've picked cleric but won't because he doesn't want to cast spells. How is that different than a wizard who could buy, learn, and prepare fly v.s. a wizard who won't because he doesn't want to cast fly?

Everyone can play a spellcaster. The fighter can kill his character and roll in a full support wizard anytime he wants. So forcing the wizard to play a buff bot when he too can turn into a buff bot is selfish. Not forcing the wizard is neutral. Forcing the wizard is selfish. Changing your character to a buff bot is selfless. If you don't want to be selfless then you don't have a right to tell anyone else to be selfless.


Also, it isnt just wizards who have expectations. For example, in my current group the mage frequently gets mad at the fighter for running off to engage the enemy and leaving her alone and without protection.

Telling the mage he shouldnt complain because he chose not to play a fighter is, imo, dumb, as would be telling the fighter that he should have chosen to play a mage if he didnt want to be on guard duty (it cuts both ways afterall).

The scenario is different because in this case we are talking about a fighter and a wizard vying for the same role: beatstick. In your scenario you have the fighter and wizard vying for different roles.

[Talakeal]

Killing party members is in no way shape or form equivalent to not buffing the Fighter constantly.

It is intentionally a far more extreme example. My point is that saying "if I had chosen a different class you wouldnt be asking for my help" isnt really a fair deflection of being asked to help out when you can.

[Talakeal]

The fighter could've picked cleric but won't because he doesn't want to cast spells. How is that different than a wizard who could buy, learn, and prepare fly v.s. a wizard who won't because he doesn't want to cast fly?

Everyone can play a spellcaster. The fighter can kill his character and roll in a full support wizard anytime he wants. So forcing the wizard to play a buff bot when he too can turn into a buff bot is selfish. Not forcing the wizard is neutral. Forcing the wizard is selfish. Changing your character to a buff bot is selfless. If you don't want to be selfless then you don't have a right to tell anyone else to be selfless.

Wait, I thought we were talking about a wizard who already had fly memorized but refused to cast it?




The scenario is different because in this case we are talking about a fighter and a wizard vying for the same role: beatstick. In your scenario you have the fighter and wizard vying for different roles.

Not really, in my example both the fighter and the mage want to be "strikers" but the mage wants the fighter to hang back and protect him at the same time because the mage is fragile and clothy and the fighter is armored and beefy.

[ColorBlindNinja]

It is intentionally a far more extreme example. My point is that saying "if I had chosen a different class you wouldnt be asking for my help" isnt really a fair deflection of being asked to help out when you can.

If the Fighter was optimized, he wouldn't need the Wizard's help to fly at all.

[RoboEmperor]

Wait, I thought we were talking about a wizard who already had fly memorized but refused to cast it?

What? No! We're talking about fighters badgering wizards to give up their shtick to prepare spells they don't want to cast. In the OP's post, a summon monster wizard is being forced to play a full time buff bot with haste and fly instead of SMIII. She doesn't have a problem preparing and casting 1 fly. She has a problem preparing and casting only flies and hastes.

[Talakeal]

If the Fighter was optimized, he wouldn't need the Wizard's help to fly at all.

And if the wizard was optimized he wouldnt have to worry about spell slots or standard actions.


And the party could also have Favoured Souls, Druids, Bards, Rangers, Paladins, Healers, Crusaders, Factotums etc. that can pick up the healing. Heck, even a Rogue can be a healer via UMDing wands.

Maybe the party does have a dedicated healer but for whatever reason they arent available to heal at the moment. Myabe the DMM cleric is the only one who can get to the downed PC jn time, or maybe the secondary healer is the one who is down and soon to be out.

[ColorBlindNinja]

And if the wizard was optimized he wouldnt have to worry about spell slots or standard actions.

So the answer to this conundrum is that the Wizard should start infinite Wish loops?

[Talakeal]

What? No! We're talking about fighters badgering wizards to give up their shtick to prepare spells they don't want to cast. In the OP's post, a summon monster wizard is being forced to play a full time buff bot with haste and fly instead of SMIII. She doesn't have a problem preparing and casting 1 fly. She has a problem preparing and casting only flies and hastes.

Rereading the initial post, I am just seeing a black and white rant, which is why this discussion has gone back and forth for 30 plus pages.

I am seeng the options given as either the fighter gets his own flight via an item or the mage acts as his buff bot twenty four seven with no middle ground.

Clearly these are both unreasonable positions.

[RoboEmperor]

Rereading the initial post, I am just seeing a black and white rant, which is why this discussion has gone back and forth for 30 plus pages.

I am seeng the options given as either the fighter gets his own flight via an item or the mage acts as his buff bot twenty four seven with no middle ground.

Clearly these are both unreasonable positions.

She elaborates in post #3


I'm not talking about people who ask me to prepare a fly spell while we face dragons until he can save up for a flying magic item. I'm talking about people who don't even think about spending money on a flying item and expects you to cast fly on him whenever he wants throughout the entire game along with other buffs like freedom of movement and protection from evil.

[Talakeal]

So the answer to this conundrum is that the Wizard should start infinite Wish loops?

It is if we are treating optimization as a binary.

In my experiance there are plenty of situations where it is unreasonable to expect a fighter to have an item that grants flight; for example most games where a single third level spell slot is a big deal.

[ColorBlindNinja]

It is if we are treating optimization as a binary.

Being able to fly is a really low bar to pass.


In my experiance there are plenty of situations where it is unreasonable to expect a fighter to have an item that grants flight; for example most games where a single third level spell slot is a big deal.

The Amber Amulet of Vermin is 800 gold. More than within the WBL of a 5th level character.

EDIT: Or the Fighter could pick a race that can fly naturally.

EDIT 2: And the Wizard is unlikely to prepare Fly at those levels, since 3rd level spell slots are precious and the spell doesn't last very long.

[Stelio Kontos]

EDIT 2: And the Wizard is unlikely to prepare Fly at those levels, since 3rd level spell slots are precious and the spell doesn't last very long.

... but it lasts at least 5 times as long as the magic item you're pushing as the fighter's solution to the issue, it should be pointed out.

Thinking "fly doesn't last very long so isn't useful" and simultaneously thinking "that one magic item solves all flight issues" just shows you don't understand what you're talking about.

[Florian]

Man I'm disappointed that I missed the rant post. Anyone with a copy, PM it to me?

You didn't miss anything.

[ColorBlindNinja]

... but it lasts at least 5 times as long as the magic item you're pushing as the fighter's solution to the issue, it should be pointed out.

And? The Wizard can fly under her own power, she's the not the issue here.


Thinking "fly doesn't last very long so isn't useful" and simultaneously thinking "that one magic item solves all flight issues" just shows you don't understand what you're talking about.

More strawmen, eh? :smallannoyed:

Fly is not as useful as Slow, Haste or Stinking Cloud. The Wizard would most likely rather prepare one of the those spells and use Alter Self for flight.

I never claimed that the item would "solve all the Fighter's flight problems", I said it'll let him fly.

[Florian]

More strawmen, eh? :smallannoyed:

Nope, not really.

Fly is just the perfect example of what is wrong with this whole discussion, as it a good example of a binary state. Either you can or you can't.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Nope, not really.

:smallannoyed: It is a strawman, because I never claimed that the Amber Amulet of Vermin would solve "all the Fighter's flying problems".

[Kelb_Panthera]

With DMM and Lesser Vigors I'll have to disagree on the attrition. Pure Clerics especially with animals are gonna outlast any mixed party because hp is the bottleneck here and clerics have way too many. And they match DPR with their persistent spells.

Remember that at low level, you only get 1 persistent spell. I won't even bother with the touch range is/isn't "fixed" argument for whether lesser vigor is even a valid spell for persistence.

Since you're only persisting lesser vigor at that level, you're just plain worse at fighting than a dedicated warrior.

By the time you can afford the 15k to persist a second spell, the fighter can afford a devoted spirit amulet to maintain his HP.



Not with Tower Shield and armor. Wizards using reserve feats don't need BAB or initiative so ditch it all for insane AC. Incorporeals will melt to reserve feats though they will get some ability damage off.

Tower shield and armor don't protect against touch attacks or help with grappling either. They -can- help with the touch attacks with certain enhancements but otherwise they don't help anymore than the natural armor. Damn crab has the -option- to start a grapple with a claw attack. He doesn't have to. Bursts don't go through cover, you're in melee with the incorporeals before you can burst them and then you have to be careful with your aim so you don't hit yourself or your allies.


I don't understand this sentence at all. Alter Self is a 2nd level slot so what's this about level 1 slots and level 3 spells?

Sorry, got the spell level wrong (posting in the wee hours of the morning does that). That actually makes the problem worse though. The 3rd level slot is tied up with your reserve feat at level 5 unless you're intentionally tanking your damage by charging the reserve feat with a lower level slot.


Wizards aren't dedicated to one shtick. Just because Dwarven Ancestor is a strategy doesn't mean it's their only strategy. 5 wizards sharing spells makes it 10 different spells learned each level.

If you're only having -one- caster operating on a sustained damage and defense model, you're still looking at a very limited period for the defense and your DPR is trashed. You're right back to relying on -extremely- limited resources to make your damage useful since focus fire doesn't work with only one shooter. You're burning resources far more limited than HP to do a fighter's job worse than him.


Who cares about DPR when you have a day to complete your job. Unless the DPR results in a day of difference it doesn't matter. I'm not disagreeing that reserve feat damage output is low.

You're kidding, right? DPR is how you limit the enemy's ability to burn off your ablative resources; i.e. HP. You have to kill the enemy before they kill you unless you can take them out of the fight some other way and the only other ways you have are by burning spell-slots that are even more limited than the ablative resources (again; hp, ability score points, or whatever else the enemy might damage if you don't stop it.)


Alter Self lasts long so if it's dungeon diving it essentially lasts the entire day. If encounters are spaced throughout the entire day then yeah the wizards are gonna suffer. But you know, animals. Outsider reserve feat costs 0 gp.

Beyond a certain level and with some effort, sure. Fighters can go all day at that level too, likely more easily.

Alter self is a 10 min/cl spell. That's under an hour when you get the dwarven ancestor option. Even if you only call an adventuring day 8 hours (good luck) you're covering less than half of it if you burn all your 2nd level spells.


All-day fallacy in this case means because the Fighter does not have any resource pool, they do not lose in effectiveness. In truth, they only have an effective unlimited resource on offense, but not on defense (which almost any class with healing at low levels is far ahead on) and it disregards the ability of caster classes to use weapons as the Fighter is only significantly ahead on hit chances and damage at higher levels - against a Wizard at Level 1, that's only a +1 to hit and 6 additional HP (The Fighter may have a bonus feat, but so does the Wizard).

A fighter has trouble using a Wand to stay topped off since they're strapped for stats and UMD is a cross-class skill for them. At least the Cleric can use the wands the fighter chooses to buy. In any case, if there's no issue in healing even at low levels, the Wizard team wouldn't be any worse off.

Here's where the caster supremacists show their lack of non-caster knowledge. Wands are one of the cheapest ways to buy HPs... for the whole party. If a fighter wants to keep his own HPs up though, a wand is useless unless he spends resources on making it useable.

I like to pick up the crusader's strike maneuver and martial spirit stance (6k to get a devoted spirit amulet with both if you don't want to use feats) to substantially extend hps in the early levels and the combat vigor feat in later levels (periapt of wisdom, if necessary) both supported with healing belt (literally everyone should have one). If you -want- to use the wands, shape soulmeld for the mage's spectacles and CC ranks are adequate for out of combat use (+8 by level 5 if you have no essentia, 2500gp gets that to 13). There's also the vampiric weapon enchancement.

Of course, in a mixed party, you can, in fact, rely on someone to activate the wand like they rely on you to reliably dish out damage, just like the rest of the team. It's, of course, also possible that -no one- in the mixed party can activate such a device and you -all- need to make use of some of the various methods for healing unless your DM's pacing is so slow that natural healing is a realistic option.


The difference is the wizard team all share universal weaknesses, while the balanced table have their weaknesses spread across the group, so any one weakness in particular being exploited will affect only a portion of the party, as opposed to the whole party.

This guy gets it. All classes have their weaknesses and there are ways to mitigate those weaknesses for all of them but the easiest way is to partner with allies that don't share it.

[Stelio Kontos]

I never claimed that the item would "solve all the Fighter's flight problems", I said it'll let him fly.

C'mon son. When the problem is "how to fly", as you're discussing, that is "all the fighter's problems". This is just crap.

edit to add: If you're attempting the sophistry of "there exists an item that grants flight, therefore, no matter how crappy it is, the fighter should have it so he doesn't ask the wizard for flight", that's somehow even more ridiculous.

Do you at least acknowledge that there are, like, a lot of cases that are covered by even a minimal Fly spell that aren't covered by that particular magic item, and your bringing it up as a solution to someone asking for a flight spell is, at best, far from a complete one?

[ColorBlindNinja]

C'mon son. When the problem is "how to fly", as you're discussing, that is "all the fighter's problems". This is just crap.

No, that's you strawmanning again.


edit to add: If you're attempting the sophistry of "there exists an item that grants flight, therefore, no matter how crappy it is, the fighter should have it so he doesn't ask the wizard for flight", that's somehow even more ridiculous.

I'm not. I already said that it's perfectly fine for the Fighter to ask/need the occasional buff from the Wizard.


Do you at least acknowledge that there are, like, a lot of cases that are covered by even a minimal Fly spell that aren't covered by that particular magic item, and your bringing it up as a solution to someone asking for a flight spell is, at best, far from a complete one?

It was a counter to the claim that a low level Fighter can't afford a magic item that grants flight. That claim is false.

[Stelio Kontos]

It was a counter to the claim that a low level Fighter can't afford a magic item that grants flight. That claim is false.

While the statement above is technically correct, it's not at all useful because the claim is obviously more accurately phrased as "can't reliably afford a magic item that grants consistently useful flight, and still do all the other things one expects someone of that WBL to do".

[ColorBlindNinja]

While the statement above is technically correct, it's not at all useful because the claim is obviously more accurately phrased as "can't reliably afford a magic item that grants consistently useful flight, and still do all the other things one expects someone of that WBL to do".

Goal post moving, to my knowledge, no one ever added that stipulation.

EDIT: And I think the Amber Amulet of Vermin is more useful than you claim.

[Stelio Kontos]

Goal post moving, to my knowledge, no one ever added that stipulation.

EDIT: And I think the Amber Amulet of Vermin is more useful than you claim.

It’s nice as long as you never ever require eleven rounds of flight for any reason. It’s also a few percent of WBL for something that is essentially useless a high percentage of the time, whereas other things that could be invested in are useful more often. Granted of course that when you need it you really need it, but that’s true of a lot of things, and it’s already been amply demonstrated IMO that you can’t afford to cover all of them, at least not at moderate levels.

And no, the goalposts have not moved. You misinterpreting other people’s words for your own rhetorical benefit does not mean that the goal posts are where you say they are. It’s tribially obvious that magic items exist to solve almost any problem, because it’s trivially obvious that there exists magic to solve almost any problem. That was never the question.

[ColorBlindNinja]

It’s nice as long as you never ever require eleven rounds of flight for any reason.

A rare occurrence in combat, I should think.


And no, the goalposts have it moved. You willfully misinterpreting other people’s words for your own rhetorical benefit does not mean that the goal posts are where you say they are.

I am doing no such thing, no such stipulation was made. It is goal post moving.

[Stelio Kontos]

A rare occurrence in combat, I should think.

If one hand waves away all the times when one is wrong, of course one is always right.

At best, you can argue that this has been rare in campaigns you have personally played. I can think of multiple times in campaigns I’ve played where it’s happened. I’ve also played campaigns where flight was never tactically necessary at all. And I didn’t know which was which until after the fact.

I’d suggest that your unique experience here is causing you to (strangely) overvalue that item. Avatarvecna made a similar error much earlier when he handwaved away any underwater combat (and therefore the need to be prepared for it) with a “well I’ve never had to do that”.

If (as you are trying to do) one restricts oneself to only universes where flight is vitally necessary, but never more than ten rounds of it, and you know all this in advance, then hell yes that’s a great item and everyone should get one! But that’s not realistic and not at all useful, because in a real campaign you have no idea what hazards you’ll face and how varied those will be. That’s my point here.

[noob]

If one hand waves away all the times when one is wrong, of course one is always right.

At best, you can argue that this has been rare in campaigns you have personally played. I can think of multiple times in campaigns I’ve played where it’s happened. I’ve also played campaigns where flight was never tactically necessary at all. And I didn’t know which was which until after the fact.

I’d suggest that your unique experience here is causing you to (strangely) overvalue that item. Avatarvecna made a similar error much earlier when he handwaved away any underwater combat (and therefore the need to be prepared for it) with a “well I’ve never had to do that”.

If (as you are trying to do) one restricts oneself to only universes where flight is vitally necessary, but never more than ten rounds of it, and you know all this in advance, then hell yes that’s a great item and everyone should get one! But that’s not realistic and not at all useful, because in a real campaign you have no idea what hazards you’ll face and how varied those will be. That’s my point here.
I have yet to see fights my team does not ends in a reasonable time.
Pure core barbarian deals tons of damage which makes even fights with stuff like titans not last very long.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I have yet to see fights my team does not ends in a reasonable time.

I have. There's also usually more than one fight in a day.


Pure core barbarian deals tons of damage which makes even fights with stuff like titans not last very long.

Gonna go ahead and ask you to back that up. Barbarians are solid damage dealers but "tons" in core only sounds a bit hyperbolic.

[Stelio Kontos]

I have yet to see fights my team does not ends in a reasonable time.
Pure core barbarian deals tons of damage which makes even fights with stuff like titans not last very long.

So?

That “you have yet to see it” does not mean it doesn’t exist. Maybe you should get out more.

[Stelio Kontos]

I have. There's also usually more than one fight in a day.

In fairness, it should be pointed out that this is equally problematic (usually) for the wizard and one fly spell per day.

obviously, the fighter should spend his WBL and his children’s WBL on items that grant permanent flight, or else he’s an incompetent moron.

[noob]

So?

That “you have yet to see it” does not mean it doesn’t exist. Maybe you should get out more.

Basically I think we should maybe theorycraft encounters and check if sir core barbarian is likely to meet encounters it can not end in less than 10 rounds(there was 3 casters casting bcf, heal and low damage around behind the barbarian: they were not exactly optimized).

[Segev]

I don't agree with ColorBlindNinja all the time on this thread, but here, I think he's making the point much more honestly and clearly. Yes, it is rare for fights to go even for 10 rounds, let alone more than that. Yes, the claim he was disproving was that there are no affordable items for a moderately low level fighter to pick up that will let him fly. Yes, changing the claim to "there are no items that grant at-will continual flight that are affordable" is moving the goalposts, and, like complaining that the presented solution lasts only 1 min., is demanding grave overkill for most problems that will be faced.

And when comparing to "I want the wizard to cast fly on me," it isn't that much worse a solution in terms of availability and duration. Yes, the wizard's spell lasts for minutes, not just one, but if you're not using it for more than one combat or one encounter, that's mostly superfluous time. I won't pretend it isn't useful time, but it's not NECESSARY to function effectively.

[Erloas]

It also doesn't take into account that the wasp can only carry 100lbs and fly (light load for str18, wasps aren't quadrapeds)

[ColorBlindNinja]

If one hand waves away all the times when one is wrong, of course one is always right.

Oh the irony.


At best, you can argue that this has been rare in campaigns you have personally played. I can think of multiple times in campaigns I’ve played where it’s happened. I’ve also played campaigns where flight was never tactically necessary at all. And I didn’t know which was which until after the fact.

A fight that lasts 10+ rounds is unusual. Most combat sessions don't last that long.


I’d suggest that your unique experience here is causing you to (strangely) overvalue that item.

It lets the Fighter fly at low levels.


If (as you are trying to do) one restricts oneself to only universes where flight is vitally necessary, but never more than ten rounds of it, and you know all this in advance, then hell yes that’s a great item and everyone should get one! But that’s not realistic and not at all useful, because in a real campaign you have no idea what hazards you’ll face and how varied those will be. That’s my point here.

Then the Fighter can't expect the Wizard to give him flight constantly.


In fairness, it should be pointed out that this is equally problematic (usually) for the wizard and one fly spell per day.

Better hope the Wizard hasn't already used that one flight spell then.

Or you could buy a magic item to let you fly, you know, like I've been saying all along?

Because this has a been another point I've been emphasizing; the Wizard can't always buff you and being 100% reliant on a party member for a vital buff is foolish.


It also doesn't take into account that the wasp can only carry 100lbs and fly (light load for str18, wasps aren't quadrapeds)

You're right, wasps have 6 legs, not 4.

[RoboEmperor]

Giant Wasps are large sized "quadrupeds" so they have a light carry weight of 300lbs not 200lb.

@Kelb_Panthera
I forgot what or why we were arguing but lets just say wizards can replace mundanes, in some situations they're better, in other situations they're worse, and leave it at that.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Giant Wasps are large sized "quadrupeds" so they have a light carry weight of 300lbs not 200lb.

In that case, they should easily be able to carry the Fighter.

[Rater202]

So, I'm gonna admit that I haven't read this whole thread because it kind of got into circles, so I apologize if this has come up, but something to note:

The Original Poster wasn't complaining about other players asking him to prepare one or two buffs(OP said that would be acceptable.)

OP was complaining about other players or the GM demanding that the wizard only prepare buffs and demand that the Wizard exclusively cast buffs on the Fight because that's "teamwork" and called wanting to play a wizard who wasn't a "24/7 buffbot" was being a "T1 Optimizing Munchkin."

At least, this is what's spelled out on the first couple of pages.

Ergo, most of the arguments I saw in this thread aren't actually discussing the point in question. It shouldn't be "you should spare a spell slot or two for buffs" or "here's how you can give him fly while remaining a conjurer."

It should be "this is how to deal with a jackass who demands that you support him exclusively at the expense of everything else because he wants to be the one and only main character of this story but won't even put the effort to get his own buffs."

[Melcar]

So, I'm gonna admit that I haven't read this whole thread because it kind of got into circles, so I apologize if this has come up, but something to note:

The Original Poster wasn't complaining about other players asking him to prepare one or two buffs(OP said that would be acceptable.)

OP was complaining about other players or the GM demanding that the wizard only prepare buffs and demand that the Wizard exclusively cast buffs on the Fight because that's "teamwork" and called wanting to play a wizard who wasn't a "24/7 buffbot" was being a "T1 Optimizing Munchkin."

At least, this is what's spelled out on the first couple of pages.

Ergo, most of the arguments I saw in this thread aren't actually discussing the point in question. It shouldn't be "you should spare a spell slot or two for buffs" or "here's how you can give him fly while remaining a conjurer."

It should be "this is how to deal with a jackass who demands that you support him exclusively at the expense of everything else because he wants to be the one and only main character of this story but won't even put the effort to get his own buffs."

Very well put! Being in a party that demanded a certain playstyle of you with no regards unto your own wishes would make me leave instantly, if there were no discussion available for changing the attitude of the other player and DM... I pointed out that I solved partly the same problem by simply not buffing and a few times had my wizard stay at home... when the player realized his dependency on my buffs he changed a bought items to help him out... and our DM realized that the weakness was gone so he changed tactics...

[Kelb_Panthera]

@Kelb_Panthera
I forgot what or why we were arguing but lets just say wizards can replace mundanes, in some situations they're better, in other situations they're worse, and leave it at that.

That's true enough but only part of the story.

All classes can be replaced if one or more party members is willing to ape their central features and/or distribute their function. Adequately faking one of the other roles -will- take resources away from both filling your own and covering your weaknesses to a noticeable extent. Casters replacing warriors isn't a special case for this.

[RoboEmperor]

That's true enough but only part of the story.

All classes can be replaced if one or more party members is willing to ape their central features and/or distribute their function. Adequately faking one of the other roles -will- take resources away from both filling your own and covering your weaknesses to a noticeable extent. Casters replacing warriors isn't a special case for this.

How about "it's much easier for a wizard to replace a mundane than it is for a mundane to replace a wizard"?

[Crake]

Giant Wasps are large sized "quadrupeds" so they have a light carry weight of 300lbs not 200lb.

@Kelb_Panthera
I forgot what or why we were arguing but lets just say wizards can replace mundanes, in some situations they're better, in other situations they're worse, and leave it at that.


In that case, they should easily be able to carry the Fighter.

Can we stop using the amber amulet as an example of an item that allows flight? Even if the fighter was within the carrying capacity, the creature is mindless. You have no way to communicate wiht it, you can't handle animal it, so, since it functions as if summoned by summon nature's ally it "attacks your opponents to the best of its ability. If you can communicate with the creature, you can direct it not to attack, to attack particular enemies, or to perform other actions". You cannot communicate with it, it is mindless, it is a vermin, so you cannot even perform handle animal functions on it to try and make it do something other than attack your apparent enemies.

Stop telling yourself this item allows the fighter to fly for cheap when it provides no such capability. The cheapest item you have for flight that anyone can use without any special training or abilities is a single use potion of fly for 750gp.

[RoboEmperor]

Can we stop using the amber amulet as an example of an item that allows flight? Even if the fighter was within the carrying capacity, the creature is mindless. You have no way to communicate wiht it, you can't handle animal it, so, since it functions as if summoned by summon nature's ally it "attacks your opponents to the best of its ability. If you can communicate with the creature, you can direct it not to attack, to attack particular enemies, or to perform other actions". You cannot communicate with it, it is mindless, it is a vermin, so you cannot even perform handle animal functions on it to try and make it do something other than attack your apparent enemies.

Stop telling yourself this item allows the fighter to fly for cheap when it provides no such capability. The cheapest item you have for flight that anyone can use without any special training or abilities is a single use potion of fly for 750gp.

That's a good point. I think there's enough leeway to rule lawyer it but, I think you're right here.

Something like

This item summons a giant vermin that appears and obeys your commands for 1 minute

"Specific trumps general, it says they obey your commands so clearly you can communicate with it. Especially considering how everything on that list is mindless"

or something like that.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Can we stop using the amber amulet as an example of an item that allows flight? Even if the fighter was within the carrying capacity, the creature is mindless. You have no way to communicate wiht it, you can't handle animal it, so, since it functions as if summoned by summon nature's ally it "attacks your opponents to the best of its ability. If you can communicate with the creature, you can direct it not to attack, to attack particular enemies, or to perform other actions". You cannot communicate with it, it is mindless, it is a vermin, so you cannot even perform handle animal functions on it to try and make it do something other than attack your apparent enemies.

Stop telling yourself this item allows the fighter to fly for cheap when it provides no such capability. The cheapest item you have for flight that anyone can use without any special training or abilities is a single use potion of fly for 750gp.

Really? Because the Amulet says,



This item summons a giant vermin that appears and obeys your commands for 1 minute...

That tells me you can command it.

EDIT: Swordsaged.

[Crake]

That's a good point. I think there's enough leeway to rule lawyer it but, I think you're right here.

Something like


"Specific trumps general, it says they obey your commands so clearly you can communicate with it. Especially considering how everything on that list is mindless"

or something like that.


Really? Because the Amulet says,



That tells me you can command it.

EDIT: Swordsaged.

You guys are both leaving out the key portion of that line "as if summoned by summon nature's ally". So for it to obey your commands, you still need some way to communicate with it. Vermin can be commanded if you have a class feature, or feat or other such ability that allows you to communicate with them in some way, drow are especially good at this, but generally speaking, you still need to be able to communicate with it to be able to command it, because that is the limitation included in the summon nature's ally spell.

[ColorBlindNinja]

You guys are both leaving out the key portion of that line "as if summoned by summon nature's ally". So for it to obey your commands, you still need some way to communicate with it. Vermin can be commanded if you have a class feature, or feat or other such ability that allows you to communicate with them in some way, drow are especially good at this, but generally speaking, you still need to be able to communicate with it to be able to command it, because that is the limitation included in the summon nature's ally spell.

Specific trumps general, you can command the wasp.

[Crake]

Specific trumps general, you can command the wasp.

It's not specific, it's saying that the command functions as the commanding of a summon nature's ally spell. It is not making a specific ruling, it is deferring ruling to the summon nature's ally spell.

[RoboEmperor]

You guys are both leaving out the key portion of that line "as if summoned by summon nature's ally". So for it to obey your commands, you still need some way to communicate with it. Vermin can be commanded if you have a class feature, or feat or other such ability that allows you to communicate with them in some way, drow are especially good at this, but generally speaking, you still need to be able to communicate with it to be able to command it, because that is the limitation included in the summon nature's ally spell.

I didn't leave it out. I said I think you're right here. But there's enough leeway like there's enough leeway to argue Shades replicates any conjuration spell and not just sor/wiz creation and summoning.

Anyways a DC15 ride check lets you use it as a flying mount with no penalty.

[ColorBlindNinja]

It's not specific, it's saying that the command functions as the commanding of a summon nature's ally spell. It is not making a specific ruling, it is deferring ruling to the summon nature's ally spell.

No, it explicitly says you can command it. I already quoted the text.

EDIT: The "as Summon Nature's Ally" bit could easily be referring to the fact that the bug is summoned, not how its commanded.

[Crake]

I didn't leave it out. I said I think you're right here. But there's enough leeway like there's enough leeway to argue Shades replicates any conjuration spell and not just sor/wiz creation and summoning.

Anyways a DC15 ride check lets you use it as a flying mount with no penalty.

Well, the quote you made did actually leave it out if you look back: "This item summons a giant vermin that appears and obeys your commands for 1 minute" is what you quoted. Also, riding bareback is another -5 to the check, along with a -5 penalty to ride an ill suited mount, so even if we allow the idea that the fighter might still be able to quickly leap on the wasp's back before it moves over to attack it's first enemy:


Control Mount in Battle

As a move action, you can attempt to control a light horse, pony, heavy horse, or other mount not trained for combat riding while in battle. If you fail the Ride check, you can do nothing else in that round. You do not need to roll for warhorses or warponies.

This usage of the ride skill is DC20 normally, so it becomes DC30 bareback on an ill suited mount (again, assuming your DM even allows it to be used as a mount, this is a thought experiment on how you would actually ride the wasp if your DM allowed it). Ride is a dex based skill, so at level 5, with max ranks and 1 dex, a fighter would be able to control the wasp on a natural 20 at best. Additionally, you would need to make a DC15 ride check each time you took damage to avoid falling off the wasp, and a DC20 ride check each round just to be able to attack alongside the wasp.


No, it explicitly says you can command it. I already quoted the text.

EDIT: The "as Summon Nature's Ally" bit could easily be referring to the fact that the bug is summoned, not how its commanded.

That's not how context works. I'm not going to continue arguing this point, because I think it's absurdly clear that the line is referring to how it's commanded seeing as it's in brackets, directly after refering to the creature being commandable. If you refuse to see that, then there's no point carrying on.

[ColorBlindNinja]

That's not how context works. I'm not going to continue arguing this point, because I think it's absurdly clear that the line is referring to how it's commanded seeing as it's in brackets, directly after refering to the creature being commandable. If you refuse to see that, then there's no point carrying on.

Can you prove that?

[RoboEmperor]

This usage of the ride skill is DC20 normally, so it becomes DC30 bareback on an ill suited mount (again, assuming your DM even allows it to be used as a mount, this is a thought experiment on how you would actually ride the wasp if your DM allowed it). Ride is a dex based skill, so at level 5, with max ranks and 1 dex, a fighter would be able to control the wasp on a natural 20 at best. Additionally, you would need to make a DC15 ride check each time you took damage to avoid falling off the wasp, and a DC20 ride check each round just to be able to attack alongside the wasp.

What do you mean thought experiment? All creatures larger than you can be ridden as a mount. There is literally nothing stopping anything from being anyone's mount.

You don't have to control the mount. The mount already attacks the nearest thing it sees. So all you need to do is stay on the mount and keep yourself from falling off. Hence the DC15 Stay in Saddle.

To be clear you have 0 control over the mount. You're just using it as an uncontrollable flying platform that automatically flies into your enemies. So Control Mount in Battle is never used.

[Kelb_Panthera]

How about "it's much easier for a wizard to replace a mundane than it is for a mundane to replace a wizard"?

At barest functional level? No. I don't agree with that.

[Crake]

Can you prove that?

I will let each individual reader decide how to interpret the whole quote, as opposed to the truncated version:

This item summons a giant vermin that appears and obeys your commands for 1 minute (as if summoned by summon nature’s ally).

Summon Nature's ally says:


This spell summons a natural creature. It appears where you designate and acts immediately, on your turn. It attacks your opponents to the best of its ability. If you can communicate with the creature, you can direct it not to attack, to attack particular enemies, or to perform other actions.

So it appears as if summoned by SNA (within range based on CL and acts immediately on your turn) and obeys your commands as SNA (it attacks opponents to the best of it's ability, if you can communicate with the creature, you can direct it to [...] perform other actions).

I guess I lied to myself when I said I wouldn't continue to argue this point, but I'm laying out all the facts for any other reader, so people can view it in it's full context, rather than snippets that paint things in a favourable picture for people's arguments.

[ColorBlindNinja]

I will let each individual reader decide how to interpret the whole quote, as opposed to the truncated version:


Summon Nature's ally says:



So it appears as if summoned by SNA (within range based on CL and acts immediately on your turn) and obeys your commands as SNA (it attacks opponents to the best of it's ability, if you can communicate with the creature, you can direct it to [...] perform other actions).

I guess I lied to myself when I said I wouldn't continue to argue this point, but I'm laying out all the facts for any other reader, so people can view it in it's full context, rather than snippets that paint things in a favourable picture for people's arguments.

So, no, then.

[Cosi]

At barest functional level? No. I don't agree with that.

The Wizard's access to utility magic is something mundanes basically can't replicate at all. Yes, you can UMD things, but that blows through your already-strained WBL at such an absurd rate as to be basically a non-option. It may be difficult for a Wizard to replace a Fighter's endurance (note: it is not), but it is impossible for a Fighter to replicate a Wizard's utility. This is another one of those things where you only get the pro-Fighter answer by engaging in intellectual sleight of hand that counts the things the Wizard has trouble doing as more important than the things the Fighter can't do.

[Crake]

What do you mean thought experiment? All creatures larger than you can be ridden as a mount. There is literally nothing stopping anything from being anyone's mount.

You don't have to control the mount. The mount already attacks the nearest thing it sees. So all you need to do is stay on the mount and keep yourself from falling off. Hence the DC15 Stay in Saddle.

To be clear you have 0 control over the mount. You're just using it as an uncontrollable flying platform that automatically flies into your enemies. So Control Mount in Battle is never used.

The DC15 stay in saddle check needs to be repeated each time the mount decides to "bolt unexpectedly" (arguable, but I would say practically every time it zips from one enemy to the next, ultimately DM dependant), as well as each time you take damage, so on average, you will fall out of the saddle 1/5 times you take damage at level 5. Additionally, as I said, you also need to perform a DC20 ride check to actually be able to attack alongside your mount, which means about 45% of the time, you're missing out on attacking.

This is all also assuming that the fighter didn't trade out ride as a class skill for tumble as a class skill using the urban ACF variant that allows anyone to trade out ride for tumble. Tumble is far and away more useful than ride, and pretty much everyone I know makes the trade if available.

[RoboEmperor]

The DC15 stay in saddle check needs to be repeated each time the mount decides to "bolt unexpectedly" (arguable, but I would say practically every time it zips from one enemy to the next, ultimately DM dependant),

Nope. By RAW that part is restricted to light ponies and the like. Like a donkey or something. Not a bloodthirsty vermin out to murder everything hostile to you.


as well as each time you take damage, so on average, you will fall out of the saddle 1/5 times you take damage at level 5. Additionally, as I said, you also need to perform a DC20 ride check to actually be able to attack alongside your mount, which means about 45% of the time, you're missing out on attacking.

Mounted combat rules are too weird. If an archer is on top of a gargantuan animated house there's no reason why he can't full attack after the gargantuan house moves and slams something. So in this sense you are wrong.

But the rules directly say if you're on a warhorse you need that DC check for the warhorse to make an attack.

I'd say because you can make the mount and rider go on separate initiatives in this case you can full-attack after the wasp rams into something because both you and the Wasp have 0 communication or coordination unlike your warhorse, but w.e. I'll let the DM decide on this confusing ruling since I don't use mounted combat and don't plan on using mounted combat any time soon if ever.


This is all also assuming that the fighter didn't trade out ride as a class skill for tumble as a class skill using the urban ACF variant that allows anyone to trade out ride for tumble. Tumble is far and away more useful than ride, and pretty much everyone I know makes the trade if available.

It's an option. A fighter planning on using amber amulet of vermin for flight needs to dedicate a good deal of skill points into ride especially since the mwk item here can't help you unless your DM is super lenient and lets you summon the wasp into the exotic saddle.

[Crake]

Nope. By RAW that part is restricted to light ponies and the like. Like a donkey or something. Not a bloodthirsty vermin out to murder everything hostile to you.

The ride skill makes no delineation between what sorts of mounts require this check:


Stay in Saddle
You can react instantly to try to avoid falling when your mount rears or bolts unexpectedly or when you take damage. This usage does not take an action.


Mounted combat rules are too weird. If an archer is on top of a gargantuan animated house there's no reason why he can't full attack after the gargantuan house moves and slams something. So in this sense you are wrong.

But the rules directly say if you're on a warhorse you need that DC check for the warhorse to make an attack.

I'd say because you can make the mount and rider go on separate initiatives in this case you can full-attack after the wasp rams into something because both you and the Wasp have 0 communication or coordination unlike your warhorse, but w.e. I'll let the DM decide on this confusing ruling since I don't use mounted combat and don't plan on using mounted combat any time soon if ever.

There's plenty of reason. The house is flailing wildly as it attacks and the archer needs to perform his mount check just to stay upright in his "saddle". That is what the ride check represents, staying in the saddle while the mount attacks. Now in a sense, you're right, the check is to make the mount attack, not to attack when the mount does, but I think it's reasonable to assume that, in the lack of a specific ride check for the reverse, that check would be sensible to apply, as opposed to no check at all. Ultimately, it comes down to DM interpretation, which again makes this item a very unreliable source of flight, not to mention it's riddled with issues even in the case of a permissive DM.


It's an option. A fighter planning on using amber amulet of vermin for flight needs to dedicate a good deal of skill points into ride especially since the mwk item here can't help you unless your DM is super lenient and lets you summon the wasp into the exotic saddle.

I would agree, but in any case, it's a bad option, and shouldn't be used as an example of "look, here's this cheap reliable source of flight". It's unreliable as hell. God forbid your enemy knows what it is, sees you mounted on it, and does something smart like draw the wasp 200+ feet into the air, luring it away, while you have no control over it, only for it to unsummon after 10 rounds and off you go to splatville.

[ColorBlindNinja]

I would agree, but in any case, it's a bad option, and shouldn't be used as an example of "look, here's this cheap reliable source of flight". It's unreliable as hell.

You still haven't shown this. At all.

[Powerdork]

How do I block a thread? Y'all are making the site and yourselves look ever the worse for participating and I'd like to forget y'all exist. Nobody is going to convince anyone, only find minor concessions at best, and everyone comes from a different gaming style, so the advice you have might apply to the other side in niche circumstances, but I swear to you you're better off just devoting your time and effort to making things than trying to show anyone what the real truth of Dungeons & Dragons is.

[ColorBlindNinja]

How do I block a thread? Y'all are making the site and yourselves look ever the worse for participating and I'd like to forget y'all exist. Nobody is going to convince anyone, only find minor concessions at best, and everyone comes from a different gaming style, so the advice you have might apply to the other side in niche circumstances, but I swear to you you're better off just devoting your time and effort to making things than trying to show anyone what the real truth of Dungeons & Dragons is.


https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png


:smalltongue:

[zlefin]

How do I block a thread? Y'all are making the site and yourselves look ever the worse for participating and I'd like to forget y'all exist. Nobody is going to convince anyone, only find minor concessions at best, and everyone comes from a different gaming style, so the advice you have might apply to the other side in niche circumstances, but I swear to you you're better off just devoting your time and effort to making things than trying to show anyone what the real truth of Dungeons & Dragons is.

why don't you just not pay attention to the thread? it's not like you have to read it or anything, and yet you took the time to read and respond to it. also, plenty of people convinced other people of things in the thread.

that said, I don't think there's a way to ignore threads; you can ignore users though, and by the sound of it you might like to try that. you could also ask in the forum issues board, there might be someone there who can give you a more definitive answer on whether there's a way to ignore a thread.

[Florian]

The Wizard's access to utility magic is something mundanes basically can't replicate at all. Yes, you can UMD things, but that blows through your already-strained WBL at such an absurd rate as to be basically a non-option. It may be difficult for a Wizard to replace a Fighter's endurance (note: it is not), but it is impossible for a Fighter to replicate a Wizard's utility. This is another one of those things where you only get the pro-Fighter answer by engaging in intellectual sleight of hand that counts the things the Wizard has trouble doing as more important than the things the Fighter can't do.

I think I mentioned it earlier when the question came up how to model Thor with the PF Fighter.

1) Item Mastery feats allow access to a good deal of utility spells as SLA.
2) There're enough ways to get feats on the fly, from Barroom Brawler, using the Training enhancement, a dip in Brawler and so on.
3) Advanced Weapon/Armor Training comes with a ton of options, including such things as substituting skill ranks with BAB, enhancing your own gear and magic item creation without the need for spells (or XP).

Once you understand how all of this works together, it is rather trivial to access your Fly at 4th and DimDoor at 6th. Let's not go down the rabbit hole of what it means that certain items with the most powerful and flexible spells are relatively cheap and once Gate and Wish are in play, well, game over (It is rather easy when you can ignore the requirements for a Candle or Wish Token). All of that for the minimal investment of one feat and making sure not to pick an archetype that trades A/W Training away.

But, again, you won't really see that on live tables because really, when you want to play a "magical warrior", you go for Magus and Warpriest, not try to turn your Fighter into one, that would destroy the whole idea of playing a badass mundane.

[Quertus]

Also, it isnt just wizards who have expectations. For example, in my current group the mage frequently gets mad at the fighter for running off to engage the enemy and leaving her alone and without protection.

Telling the mage he shouldnt complain because he chose not to play a fighter is, imo, dumb, as would be telling the fighter that he should have chosen to play a mage if he didnt want to be on guard duty (it cuts both ways afterall).

The Mage might be dumb, however, for not packing BFC/summons/guard dogs/whatever to attempt to mitigate the frequent lack of a meat shield.


and everyone comes from a different gaming style, so the advice you have might apply to the other side in niche circumstances,

That right there is reason enough for me. What is it like, in your world? Can I understand it? Can you understand mine (or at least understand that yours isn't the only)? When do my "truths" not apply?

I value learning.

[Talakeal]

She elaborates in post #3

I suppose in light of the third post yes, the fighter player is 100% in the wrong. Still, judging from the way the first post was written I can't help but feel there is more than a little hyperbole and distortion of the actual events.

Still, the point I was originally responding to, that just because someone could have chosen a different class absolves them of any right to complain about lack of balance on the game designers part or lack of teamwork on their allies part is still valid.

As far as the larger issue of exactly what responsibilities you have to your team mates, that is a complex issue that goes both ways, as I have been on both sides of that confrontation. For example, the last couple of times I have tried to play 5E I have tried to play a strict abjurer and been repeatedly told by the other players and the DM that by not being a blaster I am not fulfilling my obligations as a mage.


In that case, they should easily be able to carry the Fighter.

Maybe. I know the last fighter I played was certainly pushing 300 lbs in full gear.

Even so though, are wasps suitable mounts? As a DM I would be very reluctant to allow a player to ride a giant wasp without both the rider and the mount undergoing a lot of specialized training; they don't seem to really be physically or mentally suited for the task.

Heck, just look at how many hoops the Monster Manual demands someone go through before they can ride a griffon, and that is a much more conventional mount than a wasp.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Maybe. I know the last fighter I played was certainly pushing 300 lbs in full gear.

:smalleek: Yikes!


Even so though, are wasps suitable mounts? As a DM I would be very reluctant to allow a player to ride a giant wasp without both the rider and the mount undergoing a lot of specialized training; they don't seem to really be physically or mentally suited for the task.

Heck, just look at how many hoops the Monster Manual demands someone go through before they can ride a griffon, and that is a much more conventional mount than a wasp.

Either quote some rules, or you have no argument.

[Florian]

:smalleek: Yikes!

Sure. Full Plate, Heavy Steel Shield and a Longsword alone have you at 80 lbs. Add the rest of the equipment and the weight of the Fighter himself, that sums up pretty fast.


Either quote some rules, or you have no argument.

http://www.aonprd.com/Skills.aspx?ItemName=Ride

[Erloas]

Either quote some rules, or you have no argument.

Do you have rules to quote supporting that you can ride anything and without penalty? We can be sure the wasp isn't combat trained.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Do you have rules to quote supporting that you can ride anything and without penalty?

The ride rules say nothing to indicate that that isn't so.


We can be sure the wasp isn't combat trained.

How so? It murders whoever you tell it to. That sounds combat trained to me.

[Florian]

How so? It murders whoever you tell it to. That sounds combat trained to me.

Combat trained means that it can cooperate with a rider. I linked you the ride skill a bit above, check the explanation what action are and are not possible depending on prior training of mount and rider.

[RoboEmperor]

Do you have rules to quote supporting that you can ride anything and without penalty? We can be sure the wasp isn't combat trained.

The only penalty is a -5 to ride check for being an unusual mount
Then there is the -5 to ride check for not using a saddle.

So the penalty for riding anything you want is a -10 to the ride check.

You can ride anything that's at least one size category larger than you.

[ColorBlindNinja]

The only penalty is a -5 to ride check for being an unusual mount
Then there is the -5 to ride check for not using a saddle.

So the penalty for riding anything you want is a -10 to the ride check.

You can ride anything that's at least one size category larger than you.

Thanks for quoting that. I thought he was just asking if there was anything in the rules prohibiting you from riding anything you want for some reason. :smallredface:

[Crake]

From the DMG:


Suitable Mounts: You have the final decision on what is or is not a suitable mount. At its most basic level, a mount should have the following characteristics:
• Able and willing to carry its rider in a typical fashion. (A camel is able and willing. A tiger might be capable but may not be willing. A giant might be willing but not truly able.)
• At least one size category larger than the character. Also, a flying mount can carry no more than a light load aloft.
• The mount’s Challenge Rating should be no more than 3 less than the rider’s character level. If the mount can fly, its Challenge Rating should be no more than 4 less than the rider’s character level.
The accompanying tables (one for Medium riders, one for Small riders) provide basic characteristics of creatures that can be used as mounts.

And later on in the same section:


In other cases, such as vermin, you need to make special provisions if you allow the creatures to be used as mounts at all.

So yeah, it's entirely within the DM's purview to say "No, you can't mount a giant wasp".

[ColorBlindNinja]

So yeah, it's entirely within the DM's purview to say "No, you can't mount a giant wasp".

Sure, but I don't see any compelling reason to do so in this case.

EDIT: I mean, give the poor Fighter a bone. :smallfrown:

[Crake]

Sure, but I don't see any compelling reason to do so in this case.

EDIT: I mean, give the poor Fighter a bone. :smallfrown:

Have you ever really thought about what a wasp looks like? Describe to me how a person would feasably mount onto a wasp. How would you stay on without essentially clutching onto it for dear life? How would you swing a sword while mounted on said creature? How would the wasp manage to fly if you're anywhere near it's midsection where it's wings buzz?

All of those questions when answered, at least to me, suggest that a wasp would not be a suitable mount without at the very least some kind of VERY exotic saddle, and some very specific training on the fighter's behalf.

This isn't about giving the fighter a bone, if a player tried to pull using the wasp as a mount at my table, even before this thread, I would have pretty much said "No, you can't use a wasp as a mount". The fact that it's on the list of necessary items makes everyone seem to just accept it without question or thought.

[JNAProductions]

So what would you say the point of the item is?

It's mindless, so you can't communicate it to command with it.
You can't ride it.

So what's the point?

[Crake]

So what would you say the point of the item is?

It's mindless, so you can't communicate it to command with it.
You can't ride it.

So what's the point?

As per the SNA spell, it's automatic action is to attack creatures hostile to you to the best of it's ability.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Have you ever really thought about what a wasp looks like? Describe to me how a person would feasably mount onto a wasp. How would you stay on without essentially clutching onto it for dear life? How would you swing a sword while mounted on said creature? How would the wasp manage to fly if you're anywhere near it's midsection where it's wings buzz?

All of those questions when answered, at least to me, suggest that a wasp would not be a suitable mount without at the very least some kind of VERY exotic saddle, and some very specific training on the fighter's behalf.

This isn't about giving the fighter a bone, if a player tried to pull using the wasp as a mount at my table, even before this thread, I would have pretty much said "No, you can't use a wasp as a mount". The fact that it's on the list of necessary items makes everyone seem to just accept it without question or thought.

Except there aren't any rules for any of this. There is a line about how if it's able and willing, which the wasp is both of those things.

There's a line about "special provisions" for vermin, but no hint what they might be.

This basically falls into the category of "your DM might not allow it."

When we debate RAW, the assumed answer to "will the DM allow it?" is "yes".

[JNAProductions]

As per the SNA spell, it's automatic action is to attack creatures hostile to you to the best of it's ability.

Hold on now-it's mindless. How does it know what's hostile to you?

[Crake]

Except there aren't any rules for any of this. There is a line about how if it's able and willing, which the wasp is both of those things.

There's a line about "special provisions" for vermin, but no hint what they might be.

This basically falls into the category of "your DM might not allow it."

The DM is the ultimate adjudicator of what is "willing" and what is "able". It's not a question of "your DM might not allow it" its a question of "your DM might allow it". It's not a case of "yes until no" it's a case of "no until yes".


When we debate RAW, the assumed answer to "will the DM allow it?" is "yes".

That may be the case when the rules explicitly say something is allowed by default, this is not the case. There is no RAW provision about using a giant wasp as a mount, you require DM approval to do something like that. From what I've seen, RAW arguments rarely, if ever, assume that the DM will allow something that isn't explicitly stated. For example, if you were discussing using a griffon as a mount, we cannot say "The DM might not allow you to get a griffon as a mount", because by the default rules, griffons are usable as mounts, and have stated costs for buying, rearing and training. A wasp does not have such default rules, and thus falls under the DM's purview of "What is considered a plausible mount".

If we're just assuming the DM's going to say yes to everything, then I guess my fighter is shooting laser death beams from his eyes from now on.


Hold on now-it's mindless. How does it know what's hostile to you?

Ask the summon nature's ally spell. How does any summoned creature immeidately know what's hostile an opponent* to you or not. Presumably the spell would take some sort of snapshot of what is considered "an opponent" and feed that information to your summon, because all summons seem to instantly know who your opponents are, at least at the time they are summoned, that seems to just be a function of the spell. Of course, if someone ceases to be an opponent to you, and you want the wasp to STOP attacking, then it becomes an issue.

[Florian]

When we debate RAW, the assumed answer to "will the DM allow it?" is "yes".

Erm, no? When we debate RAW, we assume stuff as written, no house rules, no interpretation. Arguing in good faith would mean being honest enough to admit that there huge amount of stuff that are not covered by RAW or that the RAW sometimes include GM fiat as part of it. The discussion stops when "ask the GM" is the RAW answer. Else it is you who begins with the interpretations.

Edit: For example, we wouldn't have this discussion when creature stat blocks would include simple check boxes for Rideable yes/no, War Trained yes/no and a Price. These are just included in some entries, like the Pegasus.

[Minion #6]

Erm, no? When we debate RAW, we assume stuff as written, no house rules, no interpretation. Arguing in good faith would mean being honest enough to admit that there huge amount of stuff that are not covered by RAW or that the RAW sometimes include GM fiat as part of it. The discussion stops when "ask the GM" is the RAW answer. Else it is you who begins with the interpretations.

I think they're talking more about "will the GM permit me to use [thing]?" as opposed to "will the GM agree with my interpretation of [thing]?". In discussions about RAW, saying that "oh but no GM will ever allow you to use [thing]", where [thing] is rules legal but overpowered, doesn't change anything about [thing]. RAW [thing] works the way it does. As bans (or lack thereof) on specific [thing]s are not in the Rules As Written, it's a different discussion altogether.

[Crake]

I think they're talking more about "will the GM permit me to use [thing]?" as opposed to "will the GM agree with my interpretation of [thing]?". In discussions about RAW, saying that "oh but no GM will ever allow you to use [thing]", where [thing] is rules legal but overpowered, doesn't change anything about [thing]. RAW [thing] works the way it does. As bans (or lack thereof) on specific [thing]s are not in the Rules As Written, it's a different discussion altogether.

Except in your example [thing] is a clearly RAW defined use of said thing, it just so happens that it's probably not RAI, or just exceedingly powerful to the point where most DMs wouldn't use it, like shapechanging into a zodar for free wishes.

In this circustance, it's taking something that is explicitly up to the DM's purview and just assuming that the DM will say yes. As florian said, the RAW discussion ends when it becomes "ask your DM".

[Minion #6]

Except in your example [thing] is a clearly RAW defined use of said thing, it just so happens that it's probably not RAI, or just exceedingly powerful to the point where most DMs wouldn't use it, like shapechanging into a zodar for free wishes.

In this circustance, it's taking something that is explicitly up to the DM's purview and just assuming that the DM will say yes. As florian said, the RAW discussion ends when it becomes "ask your DM".

I actually didn't see what Florian was referring to specifically, I was tackling the point from a more general angle. Now that I look though, I definitely see what you mean.

[Florian]

As bans (or lack thereof) on specific [thing]s are not in the Rules As Written, it's a different discussion altogether.

Actually, they are. But there this rather curious stance to disregard what is written in the DMG/GMG sections about how to run the game, handle problems and create the game world and adventures.

[Fizban]

Actually, they are. But there this rather curious stance to disregard what is written in the DMG/GMG sections about how to run the game, handle problems and create the game world and adventures.
More accurately, the DM never needs to "ban" anything, because whether or not any game element is even being used is up to the DM. People like to call them "bans" because they like to assume all 1st party material is allowed by default, and thus anything that isn't being used has been "banned." Even within a particular book there is no assumption that the DM must use everything, despite the fact that many DMs will allow "all content from [book]" (and then potentially be caught by something they never looked at down the line). In reality, the moment you decide to reference anything other than the core books, you have made an assumption about the DM.

There is no "Rules as Written" interpretation of the interactions of elements from books x/y/z, because the addition of content is already "ask your DM." The most appropriate response to most "RAW interaction" questions is "huh, looks like that could be a problem, you should probably ask the DM if they noticed it," Complaining about anything other than the most directly stated designer intent is basically always a straw man, because you've decided the DM didn't do their job and now you're mad about it.

It gets a lot easier to discuss problems when you're only dealing with any actual problems that occur from the material you are actually, rather than hypothetically, using. During character creation/level up approval, you can easily see what stuff is there, what problems it might cause, and make your rulings. Because none of that actually exists until you allow it.

[Minion #6]

More accurately, the DM never needs to "ban" anything, because whether or not any game element is even being used is up to the DM. People like to call them "bans" because they like to assume all 1st party material is allowed by default, and thus anything that isn't being used has been "banned." Even within a particular book there is no assumption that the DM must use everything, despite the fact that many DMs will allow "all content from [book]" (and then potentially be caught by something they never looked at down the line). In reality, the moment you decide to reference anything other than the core books, you have made an assumption about the DM.

There is no "Rules as Written" interpretation of the interactions of elements from books x/y/z, because the addition of content is already "ask your DM." The most appropriate response to most "RAW interaction" questions is "huh, looks like that could be a problem, you should probably ask the DM if they noticed it," Complaining about anything other than the most directly stated designer intent is basically always a straw man, because you've decided the DM didn't do their job and now you're mad about it.

It gets a lot easier to discuss problems when you're only dealing with any actual problems that occur from the material you are actually, rather than hypothetically, using. During character creation/level up approval, you can easily see what stuff is there, what problems it might cause, and make your rulings. Because none of that actually exists until you allow it.

If you start saying "there's no assumption that the GM will allow everything" then you're not discussing RAW, you're discussing GM fiat. It's disingenuous to suggest otherwise. RAW refers to the rules as they are written, nothing more, nothing less. The ability of a GM to allow or disallow things does not actually change what the text says.

[Cosi]

If you start saying "there's no assumption that the GM will allow everything" then you're not discussing RAW, you're discussing GM fiat. It's disingenuous to suggest otherwise. RAW refers to the rules as they are written, nothing more, nothing less. The ability of a GM to allow or disallow things does not actually change what the text says.

Yes. Fizban is so far into Oberoni-land that it is impossible to have a conversation with him, because he is unwilling to acknowledge that rules actual exist in a way that would allow you to make claims about them. Even if his points were good (they are not), they would be meaningless, because he operates in a framework where making meaningful points about the game is impossible.

[zlefin]

on the wasp, RAW whether it's rideable seems to quite clearly come down to a dm judgement call.
personally, I'd be inclined to say it is rideable. I'm also thinking of that old cartoon who's name I can't remember with the insect theme where they were flying all sorts of stuff; and I'm pretty sure I've seen people mounted in bee-like creatures in some cartoon or another aside from that one.
yes the wings are a bit of an issue, but I'd expect them to be a problem for a pegasus too, which is explicitly rideable.

also from a gamist perspective I'd be inclined to allow it if it's for a fighter that needs it.

[Quertus]

Have you ever really thought about what a wasp looks like? Describe to me how a person would feasably mount onto a wasp. How would you stay on without essentially clutching onto it for dear life? How would you swing a sword while mounted on said creature? How would the wasp manage to fly if you're anywhere near it's midsection where it's wings buzz?


and I'm pretty sure I've seen people mounted in bee-like creatures in some cartoon or another aside from that one.
yes the wings are a bit of an issue, but I'd expect them to be a problem for a pegasus too, which is explicitly rideable.

Wow, zlefin, that's pretty much exactly what I was going to say! If the Fighter can swing his sword past the wings of a Pegasus or giant bat or giant dragonfly or Dragon, and all of them are explicitly able to use their wings and fly with someone hanging around on their midsection, then the wasp is a fine mount, too.

That having been said, "mindless vermin =ask your GM" being RAW is an issue. For that and the physics of the Fighter's manly leg strength, well, that's when I side with another of your comments,


also from a gamist perspective I'd be inclined to allow it if it's for a fighter that needs it.

[Segev]

So, no, then.


You still haven't shown this. At all.

To be fair, while I agree with your position on the wasp being useful as a flying mount for combat purposes, you haven't actually proven your point any better than he's proven his. I can absolutely see his interpretation of the way it's written being a natural one, and you've provided no evidence that it isn't. The ball is in your court, and "you haven't proven what you quoted means what you say it does" isn't batting it back; it's making you look like all you're doing is saying "nuh-uh!" because you know you've lost the argument.


Even accepting the "can't control it because you can't communicate with it" logic, the "stay in saddle" check and designating "your opponents" is sufficient to have it fly you into range of melee. It is friendly to you, even if it's not particularly bright or well-trained, so it's not actively fighting to shake you off. (I mean, the spell is "summon nature's ally," not "summon nature's critter under duress," and nothing in the spell text suggests the creature wouldn't live up to the name of the spell.) No, you can't make it stop attacking your opponents, but you designate your opponents. Even if you can only do so at the moment of summoning, you're worst off situation is that the thing picks the nearest of those targets and goes.


Now, if you want to make that DC 30 "control mount in combat" check with all the penalties, you can talk your DM into the variant summoning rule that lets you call the same wasp each time, and equip it with an exotic saddle to get that down to DC 25, then have 8 ranks and maybe a +1 dex mod (I mean, it's good for init and AC), make the saddle masterwork for +2 more (we're up to +11, now, on your roll), and while you're not taking 10, you probably couldn't in combat, anyway. So, between this, and the fact that it will attack your opponents even if you fail, you're going to be able to pick your target out of a crowd on a 14+ on the d20, or a little under 1/3 the time. And the rest of the time, you're still usefully fighting designated opponents.

If you want it for short-term utility flight, even that's not too bad. On average, it takes about 3 rounds to get it to do what you want, which is well within the 10 rounds you have it summoned.

For a 5th level character using a 900 gp investment, that's not bad at all. Okay, closer to 1000 gp after the exotic saddle.

[Unavenger]

I should also remind everyone that there's a variety of equipment for defeating flying enemies, such as this very reasonably-priced item (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/weapons.htm#javelin) which should run you about 10gp or less for as many as you need for the entire combat. Or, if you're willing to shell out an up-front cost of (STRmod+1)*100gp, there's this new innovation in anti-dragon technology (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/weapons.htm#longbowComposite) that should cost closer to 5sp for each combat you use it for.

[Ashiel]

I should also remind everyone that there's a variety of equipment for defeating flying enemies, such as this very reasonably-priced item (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/weapons.htm#javelin) which should run you about 10gp or less for as many as you need for the entire combat. Or, if you're willing to shell out an up-front cost of (STRmod+1)*100gp, there's this new innovation in anti-dragon technology (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/weapons.htm#longbowComposite) that should cost closer to 5sp for each combat you use it for.
Dear sir or madam,
Your post is wonderful. Thank you for making my day cheerier with a laugh.
Sincerely,
Ashiel

P.S. At your suggestion I have commissioned several of those anti-dragon devices for my favorite band of murder hobos. They report they are quite effective at dealing with other nuisances as well, including but not limited to mind-flayers, goblins across chasms in the Mines of Moria, and most anything made out of meat.

[noob]

I should also remind everyone that there's a variety of equipment for defeating flying enemies, such as this very reasonably-priced item (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/weapons.htm#javelin) which should run you about 10gp or less for as many as you need for the entire combat. Or, if you're willing to shell out an up-front cost of (STRmod+1)*100gp, there's this new innovation in anti-dragon technology (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/weapons.htm#longbowComposite) that should cost closer to 5sp for each combat you use it for.
And if you are ready to pay a lot you can get hank energy bow and murder opponents while spending no money on projectiles and using the ranged equivalent of power attack.

[ColorBlindNinja]

The DM is the ultimate adjudicator of what is "willing" and what is "able". It's not a question of "your DM might not allow it" its a question of "your DM might allow it". It's not a case of "yes until no" it's a case of "no until yes".

Yes it is, that's how RAW debates work.



That may be the case when the rules explicitly say something is allowed by default, this is not the case. There is no RAW provision about using a giant wasp as a mount,

Except the ride rules.


you require DM approval to do something like that. From what I've seen, RAW arguments rarely, if ever, assume that the DM will allow something that isn't explicitly stated. For example, if you were discussing using a griffon as a mount, we cannot say "The DM might not allow you to get a griffon as a mount", because by the default rules, griffons are usable as mounts, and have stated costs for buying, rearing and training. A wasp does not have such default rules, and thus falls under the DM's purview of "What is considered a plausible mount".

You would be wrong.

EDIT: You might be thinking of handbooks, where "the DM might not allow it" becomes a legitimate concern.


If we're just assuming the DM's going to say yes to everything, then I guess my fighter is shooting laser death beams from his eyes from now on.

Strawman.



Of course, if someone ceases to be an opponent to you, and you want the wasp to STOP attacking, then it becomes an issue.

Another edge case.


Erm, no? When we debate RAW, we assume stuff as written, no house rules, no interpretation. Arguing in good faith would mean being honest enough to admit that there huge amount of stuff that are not covered by RAW or that the RAW sometimes include GM fiat as part of it. The discussion stops when "ask the GM" is the RAW answer. Else it is you who begins with the interpretations.

No, that's not the case.


To be fair, while I agree with your position on the wasp being useful as a flying mount for combat purposes, you haven't actually proven your point any better than he's proven his.

The ride skill makes no exceptions for what you can and can't ride.

Crake is quoting a section of the DMG with zero actual rules, they're guidelines and don't even go into much detail.


I can absolutely see his interpretation of the way it's written being a natural one, and you've provided no evidence that it isn't. The ball is in your court, and "you haven't proven what you quoted means what you say it does" isn't batting it back; it's making you look like all you're doing is saying "nuh-uh!" because you know you've lost the argument.

:smallannoyed:



If you attempt to ride a creature that is ill suited as a mount, you take a -5 penalty on your Ride checks.

That's it. That's all the skill says about exotic mounts, and it doesn't even define what qualifies as "ill suited".



Now, if you want to make that DC 30 "control mount in combat" check with all the penalties,

30? Only if you insist that the wasp is "ill suited" to riding. Remember, that's undefined.

EDIT: Worth noting that "not trained in mounted combat" also isn't defined.


you can talk your DM into the variant summoning rule that lets you call the same wasp each time, and equip it with an exotic saddle to get that down to DC 25, then have 8 ranks and maybe a +1 dex mod (I mean, it's good for init and AC), make the saddle masterwork for +2 more (we're up to +11, now, on your roll), and while you're not taking 10, you probably couldn't in combat, anyway. So, between this, and the fact that it will attack your opponents even if you fail, you're going to be able to pick your target out of a crowd on a 14+ on the d20, or a little under 1/3 the time. And the rest of the time, you're still usefully fighting designated opponents.

If you want it for short-term utility flight, even that's not too bad. On average, it takes about 3 rounds to get it to do what you want, which is well within the 10 rounds you have it summoned.

For a 5th level character using a 900 gp investment, that's not bad at all. Okay, closer to 1000 gp after the exotic saddle.

I never claimed it was the best solution, I just said it'll let the Fighter fly.

I originally suggested that the Fighter pick a flying race, but the pro Fighter side complained about that.


And with that, I'm done with this Wasp debate, we're going in circles.

[Segev]

The ride skill makes no exceptions for what you can and can't ride.

Crake is quoting a section of the DMG with zero actual rules, they're guidelines and don't even go into much detail.



:smallannoyed:



That's it. That's all the skill says about exotic mounts, and it doesn't even define what qualifies as "ill suited".You clearly didn't read the post that quoted the rule he was asserting, and are arguing past him. He quoted the Amber Amulet of Vermin's rules about it obeying your commands, and how it references summon nature's ally. This has nothing to do with the rules of whether you can ride it or not, and everything to do with whether you can control it.


30? Only if you insist that the wasp is "ill suited" to riding. Remember, that's undefined.

Yes, I went with the worst possible value for riding DC to control it in combat, because I wanted to examine feasibility.


I never claimed it was the best solution, I just said it'll let the Fighter fly.I actually was agreeing with you that it's a valid solution that achieves the minimum ends required, and for a reasonable cost at that level.

My disagreement with you is over your assertion that quoting the rules on the Amber Amulet and controlling the wasp it summons is not supporting their position that you can't control it (by the magic of the item) without being able to communicate with it. Your response to me on this issue revealed that you are focused on an entirely different rule and were thus arguing past (and apparently not seeing the quote) what was being said.

You are right about the thing you quoted, regarding ride-ability of giant wasps. That just wasn't what I was addressing, nor what the person you were calling out as not having supported his position was citing anything relating to.




And with that, I'm done with this Wasp debate, we're going in circles.No, no, circle dance is a spell; fighters can't cast it!

[ColorBlindNinja]

You clearly didn't read the post that quoted the rule he was asserting, and are arguing past him. He quoted the Amber Amulet of Vermin's rules about it obeying your commands, and how it references summon nature's ally. This has nothing to do with the rules of whether you can ride it or not, and everything to do with whether you can control it.

The amulet states that the wasp follows your commands.

EDIT: Also, my objection to Crake was that he hadn't demonstrated that the amulet isn't viable as a flight item.


Yes, I went with the worst possible value for riding DC to control it in combat, because I wanted to examine feasibility.

I actually was agreeing with you that it's a valid solution that achieves the minimum ends required, and for a reasonable cost at that level.

Very well.


My disagreement with you is over your assertion that quoting the rules on the Amber Amulet and controlling the wasp it summons is not supporting their position that you can't control it (by the magic of the item) without being able to communicate with it. Your response to me on this issue revealed that you are focused on an entirely different rule and were thus arguing past (and apparently not seeing the quote) what was being said.

As I said, the amulet makes an exception and states that you can command the wasp.

EDIT: Even if you can't control it, it'll attack the nearest hostile creature. That still enables the Fighter to ride it and attack whatever the wasp focuses on.


You are right about the thing you quoted, regarding ride-ability of giant wasps. That just wasn't what I was addressing, nor what the person you were calling out as not having supported his position was citing anything relating to.

My apologies, I thought we were taking about the viability of riding the wasp.


No, no, circle dance is a spell; fighters can't cast it!

Clearly, we're dealing with a Fighter using partially charged wands. :smallbiggrin:

[noob]

a really good fighter is indistinguishable from a wizard and have a ton of partially charged wands and scrolls and custom 1 time per day casting items or is plain wishlooping.

[Segev]

The amulet states that the wasp follows your commands.Agreed. IT also says, in parentheses right after, that it is as summon nature's ally. One perfectly reasonable way to read that is as Crake was: the command effect works like SNA's. In that sense, Crake has supported his argument at least as much as you have. I also see how you're reading it, with the parenthetical being about how it's summoned, not about how it's commanded.


EDIT: Also, my objection to Crake was that he hadn't demonstrated that the amulet isn't viable as a flight item.And on that broader point, I agree with you that it is viable for one combat per day where flight is mandatory, and even for one non-combat encounter under most circumstances (though not both, unless they're one right after the other and reasonably fast).



EDIT: Even if you can't control it, it'll attack the nearest hostile creature. That still enables the Fighter to ride it and attack whatever the wasp focuses on.Yep! So if you can't control it, you're at least being brought to your nearest opponent to smack it. And, if you can, you can pick your target(s).


My apologies, I thought we were taking about the viability of riding the wasp.Depends on whether you're defining "viable" as only meaning "can ride it" or as meaning "can ride it usefully." The former seems unambiguous: you can do so as long as you keep your weight below 300 lbs. The latter is arguable, but I would fall on the side that says what you get out of it makes it useful for the level's we're discussing.


Clearly, we're dealing with a Fighter using partially charged wands. :smallbiggrin:I never did understand why that was considered such a mockery-worthy thing to suggest. I'm actually rather amused by the notion of a used magic item shop where a proprietor will buy partially-used wands and the like to resell at cheap. I mean, partially-charged wands are the norm for finding them in loot piles while adventuring!

[ColorBlindNinja]

Agreed. IT also says, in parentheses right after, that it is as summon nature's ally. One perfectly reasonable way to read that is as Crake was: the command effect works like SNA's. In that sense, Crake has supported his argument at least as much as you have. I also see how you're reading it, with the parenthetical being about how it's summoned, not about how it's commanded.

Yes, and I agree that Crake's interpretation isn't unreasonable.


And on that broader point, I agree with you that it is viable for one combat per day where flight is mandatory, and even for one non-combat encounter under most circumstances (though not both, unless they're one right after the other and reasonably fast).

Yep! So if you can't control it, you're at least being brought to your nearest opponent to smack it. And, if you can, you can pick your target(s).

Good to know that someone else agrees with me. :smallsmile:


Depends on whether you're defining "viable" as only meaning "can ride it" or as meaning "can ride it usefully." The former seems unambiguous: you can do so as long as you keep your weight below 300 lbs. The latter is arguable, but I would fall on the side that says what you get out of it makes it useful for the level's we're discussing.

He seemed to be implying that it wasn't a viable method of flight at all.

Crake can feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken.


I never did understand why that was considered such a mockery-worthy thing to suggest.

It's a reference to a very old (2008) thread talking about optimizing Monks by having them carry partially charged wands and use UMD.

[noob]

Yes, and I agree that Crake's interpretation isn't unreasonable.



Good to know that someone else agrees with me. :smallsmile:



He seemed to be implying that it wasn't a viable method of flight at all.

Crake can feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken.



It's a reference to a very old (2008) thread talking about optimizing Monks by having them carry partially charged wands and use UMD.
I think it is not a bad idea to go around with partially charged wands and scrolls.

[Talakeal]

Yes it is, that's how RAW debates work.

Citation needed.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Citation needed.

Citation? We're talking about a common practice in a community.

The general assumption in RAW debates is that if the DM has to give approval for something, the answer is yes.

The only exception to that rule is custom magic items.

[Segev]

It's a reference to a very old (2008) thread talking about optimizing Monks by having them carry partially charged wands and use UMD.

I know; I once went back to read the thread. I get that people were very annoyed at the guy's insistence that monks could be made viable, and ultimately felt that this argument was one of the proofs he was wrong (i.e. that he had to resort to it to make them viable), but I never got the ...

It never seemed reasonable to me to just assert, "Bah, that's unreasonable!" I mean, I get it; it's not typical. And finding bespoke partially-charged wands is an impossibility. But in a practical game, they'll still exist, and asking if he can go shopping to see if anything interesting is in the magic item shop's discount bin would be reasonable, as well. You're not going to get the theorycraft-perfect number of charges you want that way, but the idea that it's so utterly ridiculous that it's worthy of mockery is ... echo-chamber arrogance, it seems to me. "Hoh hoh hoh," they laugh in their best faux British Elite accents. "The peasant thinks that there is no such thing as the luminiferous aether, when all real academics know it must be so! Hoh hoh hoh!"

I get it: he was going against the orthodoxy, and his claims were MUCH stronger than he could back up, but that particular point isn't actually one on which he was particularly wrong, so the fact that it became a punch line is just weird, to me. It only was mocked because it was part of the larger debacle, as far as I can tell, and not based on any (lack of) merit in that particular concept.

Though this is drifting off topic, so I'll drop it here.

[Mechalich]

Citation? We're talking about a common practice in a community.

The general assumption in RAW debates is that if the DM has to give approval for something, the answer is yes.

The thing is, in actual play, if the DM has to give approval for something, the answer is probably no. As such, RAW debates are of extremely limited utility when it comes to what will actually happen at an at average table. Debating what is valid and/or viable by RAW is not especially helpful save for purposes of pure theory. For example, RAW permits infinite wishes, but I struggle to even imagine any scenario in which a GM would permit infinite castings of wish in any actual game. As a consequence, debating what you could do with infinite wishes - which actually has all sorts of gameplay permutations - is a waste of time, because it is not actually going to happen.

You can debate RAW if you want, but it needs to be remembered when doing so that it's purely a theoretical exercise and it's not actually very useful for addressing problems that emerge at a table in actual play - which is what this thread is ultimately about.

[ColorBlindNinja]

The thing is, in actual play, if the DM has to give approval for something, the answer is probably no. As such, RAW debates are of extremely limited utility when it comes to what will actually happen at an at average table. Debating what is valid and/or viable by RAW is not especially helpful save for purposes of pure theory.

And yet, in the absence of an actual table, RAW is all we have. Because no two people will rule the exact same way.

[Erloas]

I think it is missing the point to argue that "fighters have this option by RAW" when it is very clearly, and even written into RAW, entirely up to the DM to allow that particular use. Meaning any given game has maybe a 50/50 chance of it working like that.

Oddly* Pathfinder has a Giant Vulture with a listed cost of 1125gp (combat trained), large and Str 22 (though light is only 173lbs since it is not a quadruped**)

But for this particular case, I would agree that the issue is one the DM created and the DM should solve. It doesn't change the fact that there are plenty of other buffs that may or may not be required, but even then, if 'you're' campaign "requires" something to take part, it is up to 'you' to make sure the players have access to it. Don't throw a bunch of flying threats after the party over and over again if you know quite a bit of the party doesn't have a good way of interacting with the encounter. The same as putting it underwater or on an elemental plane of fire.


*Odd in that 3.5 has no similar creature and it is about 1/5 the price of all the other large flying potential mounts.
**back on the wasp thing, I think "it has 6 legs so it can fly with 3x the weight" is definitely one of those RAW rather than RAI issues. This is a case of that, much stronger, but it can carry about half as much because it has fewer legs even though legs have nothing at all to do with flight. Could the wasp carry more if it is walking? That might make more sense with the extra legs, but there is never that distinction made.

[noob]

I think it is missing the point to argue that "fighters have this option by RAW" when it is very clearly, and even written into RAW, entirely up to the DM to allow that particular use. Meaning any given game has maybe a 50/50 chance of it working like that.

Oddly* Pathfinder has a Giant Vulture with a listed cost of 1125gp (combat trained), large and Str 22 (though light is only 173lbs since it is not a quadruped**)

But for this particular case, I would agree that the issue is one the DM created and the DM should solve. It doesn't change the fact that there are plenty of other buffs that may or may not be required, but even then, if 'you're' campaign "requires" something to take part, it is up to 'you' to make sure the players have access to it. Don't throw a bunch of flying threats after the party over and over again if you know quite a bit of the party doesn't have a good way of interacting with the encounter. The same as putting it underwater or on an elemental plane of fire.


*Odd in that 3.5 has no similar creature and it is about 1/5 the price of all the other large flying potential mounts.
**back on the wasp thing, I think "it has 6 legs so it can fly with 3x the weight" is definitely one of those RAW rather than RAI issues. This is a case of that, much stronger, but it can carry about half as much because it has fewer legs even though legs have nothing at all to do with flight. Could the wasp carry more if it is walking? That might make more sense with the extra legs, but there is never that distinction made.
Nor under boiling water in the plane of fire while needing flight?
I wonder how to create an entire campaign based on that premise?
A huge difficulty is finding monsters that survive under boiling water: it deals scalding damage and so fire immunity and resistance does not helps.
The other huge difficulty is: how do we make flight needed while in boiling water.

[ColorBlindNinja]

A huge difficulty is finding monsters that survive under boiling water: it deals scalding damage and so fire immunity and resistance does not helps.

Citation? I was under the impression it deals fire damage.

[noob]

Citation? I was under the impression it deals fire damage.

Read the section of text about environmental dangers such as falling and boiling water.


Boiling water deals 1d6 points of scalding damage, unless the character is fully immersed, in which case it deals 10d6 points of damage per round of exposure.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/environment.htm

So yes fire elementals going under water dies from the fact they are hot and so makes the water boil which then kills them.
Otherwise they try to avoid water but does not have water vulnerability.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Read the section of text about environmental dangers such as falling and boiling water.

How odd, the White Plume Mountain module has boiling water deal fire damage.

Is scalding damage used anywhere else?

[noob]

How odd, the White Plume Mountain module has boiling water deal fire damage.

Is scalding damage used anywhere else?

Maybe they do not use the water from greyhawk which is the default setting for the three base manuals?
Also I have not seen scalding damage be used anywhere else but it is not the only kind of obscure damage that is introduced in only one book.(city damage comes to my mind)

But it is weird to have water be unable to kill fire elementals and White Plume Mountain's water can not kill fire elementals.

[ColorBlindNinja]

But it is weird to have water be unable to kill fire elementals and White Plume Mountain's water can not kill fire elementals.

Agreed. Very odd.

[Quertus]

Can we add this to the rules dysfunction thread?

"Water cannot harm Fire Elementals, unless it is hot."

Or, in its expanded form, "Water cannot harm Fire Elementals, unless it is hot. Water that had been enchanted to maintain a cool temperature will not harm Fire Elementals; remove that enchantment, heat it up, and the Elementals begin taking Scalding damage, to which they have no resistance/immunity."

[RoboEmperor]

Water outright kills fire elementals. There's a reason why fire elementals cannot cross water unless they can literally step over it. It's in their MM entry.

[noob]

Water outright kills fire elementals. There's a reason why fire elementals cannot cross water unless they can literally step over it. It's in their MM entry.


A fire elemental cannot enter water or any other nonflammable liquid. A body of water is an impassible barrier unless the fire elemental can step or jump over it.

does not kills them: it is just that they can not enter it and it is the only section of text about interaction between fire elemental and water.
It could be interpreted as water being similar to forcewalls for fire elemental or a variety of other ways.

[Talakeal]

Citation? We're talking about a common practice in a community.

The general assumption in RAW debates is that if the DM has to give approval for something, the answer is yes.

The only exception to that rule is custom magic items.


A general practice for resolving RAW debates is not the thing as a forum discussion of table-top strategy.


Also, the RAW isn't really ambiguous here, the RAW says ask your GM if it is a suitable mount, but it not needs to be able to carry the fighter and his gear as a light load which is going to be pretty tough as, by RAW, the wasp is a hexapod not a quadruped.

Now, as far as RAI and RACSD or RAMS, I already said I am not sure if I would allow this combination to work. I probably would, but both the wasp and the fighter would take a -2 circumstance penalty to all rolls while doing so until they had taken time to actually train in this combat style roughly equivalent to those found in the entry for the griffon. But that is not in any way RAW.

But yeah, I agree, the wasp argument should probably die. But hey, at least its a lot nicer than the fighter vs. mage sniping we had going on for the first 30 pages of the threads life, eh?

[RoboEmperor]

does not kills them: it is just that they can not enter it and it is the only section of text about interaction between fire elemental and water.
It could be interpreted as water being similar to forcewalls for fire elemental or a variety of other ways.

So if a fire elemental is on a boat and the boat is burned to smithereens. Does the Fire Elemental walk on water because water is a force wall? Does the Fire Elemental walk over the air?

D&D is written in layman not lawyer-ese or computer code so you can't treat it like lawyer-ese or computer code. They can't cross a body of water because it kills them.

edit: Or vaporize the entire body of water if it's small enough or the elemental is big enough.

[noob]

So if a fire elemental is on a boat and the boat is burned to smithereens. Does the Fire Elemental walk on water because water is a force wall? Does the Fire Elemental walk over the air?

D&D is written in layman not lawyer-ese or computer code so you can't treat it like lawyer-ese or computer code. They can't cross a body of water because it kills them.

except that dying does not prevents from crossing at all not even sightly: even worse it might help at crossing the water.
also I excepted forcewalls from water to be infinitely high and to prevent it from taking a boat in the first place(it says how it have the right to cross and the ways does not includes taking a boat).
Or as I said it could be interpreted in other ways provided they prevent crossing water so it could also just be that the water stops existing or that the fire elemental stops existing before it can cross(which is entirely different from dying).
In all the ways it is specific to crossing or getting in the water so if you throw a bucket of water at the fire elemental it does nothing special since it does not triggers any of the two cases.

[RoboEmperor]

except that dying does not prevents from crossing at all not even sightly: even worse it might help at crossing the water.
also I excepted forcewalls from water to be infinitely high and to prevent it from taking a boat in the first place(it says how it have the right to cross and the ways does not includes taking a boat).


Like other fire elementals, fire monoliths cannot enter water or any other nonflammable liquid, and so cannot cross water unless they can step or jump over it.

So your infinitely high forcewall theory is wrong.

[ColorBlindNinja]

A general practice for resolving RAW debates is not the thing as a forum discussion of table-top strategy.

It's common practice on this forum.



Also, the RAW isn't really ambiguous here, the RAW says ask your GM if it is a suitable mount,

Moot.


but it not needs to be able to carry the fighter and his gear as a light load which is going to be pretty tough as, by RAW, the wasp is a hexapod not a quadruped.

It's not a biped either. So how much can it carry?



But yeah, I agree, the wasp argument should probably die.

There's not much left to discuss on the topic.

[noob]

So your infinitely high forcewall theory is wrong.

Well fire monoliths are not in core so they does not override fire elementals.
So it stays infinitely high firewalls that can only be crossed if the fire elemental either jump or step over it(which are the only two exceptions to the no crossing rule)

A body of water is an impassible barrier unless the fire elemental can step or jump over it. is the rule for regular fire elemental.
The possibility of just having the river never having existed retroactively or other interpretations like that are valid but not the one of the fire elemental just dying since dying does not prevents it from crossing the river.

[Talakeal]

It's common practice on this forum.

Common practice =/= rule and raw debate =/= every discussion.


It's not a biped either. So how much can it carry?

200 lbs at a light load.

Unless I am missing something the encumbrance chart on page 162 of the PhB lists carrying capacity on modifiers for size and for being a quadruped. AFAICT the word "biped" is never used.


Again, that is purely by RAW, which is in this case silly. If going by common sense having more than four legs should not reduce your carrying capacity, and your numbers of legs should have nothing to do with your carrying capacity while flying, but that isn't RAW.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Common practice =/= rule and raw debate =/= every discussion.

It's common practice on this forum.

That is how RAW debates are conducted.


200 lbs at a light load.

Unless I am missing something the encumbrance chart on page 162 of the PhB lists carrying capacity on modifiers for size and for being a quadruped. AFAICT the word "biped" is never used.

You would be wrong.



Bigger and Smaller Creatures
The figures on Table: Carrying Capacity are for Medium bipedal creatures.

Emphasis mine.


Again, that is purely by RAW, which is in this case silly. If going by common sense having more than four legs should not reduce your carrying capacity, and your numbers of legs should have nothing to do with your carrying capacity while flying, but that isn't RAW.

This is a RAW debate.

And in D&D, having more legs means you can carry more weight.

Logically, the wasp should be able to carry more than a quadruped.

[JNAProductions]

Logically, the wasp should be able to carry more than a quadruped.

RAW=/=Logic

By RAW, anything other than a biped or a quadruped has NO defined carry weight, apparently.

[ColorBlindNinja]

RAW=/=Logic

I know, but Talakeal brought up logic.


By RAW, anything other than a biped or a quadruped has NO defined carry weight, apparently.

Fun. :smallsigh:

EDIT: I guess what would make the most sense in this case would be to assume it can carry as much as a quadruped?

[RoboEmperor]

Well fire monoliths are not in core so they does not override fire elementals.
So it stays infinitely high firewalls that can only be crossed if the fire elemental either jump or step over it(which are the only two exceptions to the no crossing rule)
is the rule for regular fire elemental.
The possibility of just having the river never having existed retroactively or other interpretations like that are valid but not the one of the fire elemental just dying since dying does not prevents it from crossing the river.

So if someone bull rushes a fire elmental into a lake, he'd be crushed against an invisible wall.
And if I grow him so he can step over the lake like bracelets of spell sharing + Righteous Might, he will fall into the water when bull rushed and stand up in it because it's no longer a force wall because of his size?

How about Baleful Transposition? I swap the fire elemental with a fighter standing in a large body of water. Is he paralyzed in mid air due to the force walls? Is he shunted off to the nearest non water ground?

[Talakeal]

You would be wrong. Emphasis mine.

To split hairs, I was not wrong as I said it didn't mention biped AFAICT, I missed it when skimming, but I did not go over the whole page with a fine-tooth comb.

But yes, you are correct, the game has no rules for the carrying capacity of any creature that does not have exactly 2 or 4 legs. Giant snakes, beholders, behirs, giant spiders, etc. all bring back a divide by zero error when they attempt to lift something.







I know, but Talakeal brought up logic

And note that I agreed with you, a six legged creature would, if anything, be able to carry more weight than a four legged one, albeit only when walking on the ground, as I don't see how the number of legs a creature possesses would have any impact on its ability to fly.




IEDIT: I guess what would make the most sense in this case would be to assume it can carry as much as a quadruped?

Sense =/= RAW.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Sense =/= RAW.

At this point, there is no RAW to go by.

[Erloas]

At this point, there is no RAW to go by.
This is essentially what I had said too:


And note that I agreed with you, a six legged creature would, if anything, be able to carry more weight than a four legged one, albeit only when walking on the ground, as I don't see how the number of legs a creature possesses would have any impact on its ability to fly.

Increased carrying weight for many legs makes sense if you're using those legs, but it doesn't make sense if you're using wings instead. Maybe if we had bi-winged and quad-winged creatures then we could increase their flight weight accordingly. Of course the only quad winged creature I can think of at the moment is a dragonfly.
Which got me to thinking... I'm not sure it ever actually defines if any creature is a biped or quadruped. Sure we know/assume regular creatures are what they really are, but there are a lot of other creatures that are done in many different ways. Beholder = 0 legs. Dragon... they are just as often on 4 legs as they are on 2, but dragons with 0 legs aren't unheard of either. What about whales, sharks, and fish of all sorts? How much can a combat trained tiger shark carry into combat?

[Crake]

At this point, there is no RAW to go by.

And since there is no RAW to go by, the answer becomes "consult your GM". Thus, you cannot say "this is acceptable by RAW" you can only say "RAW says that this is a GM's decision".

[ColorBlindNinja]

And since there is no RAW to go by, the answer becomes "consult your GM". Thus, you cannot say "this is acceptable by RAW" you can only say "RAW says that this is a GM's decision".

RAW is utterly silent on this issue. Nothing in the rules say, "check with your DM to see how much a wasp can carry".

[JNAProductions]

RAW is utterly silent on this issue. Nothing in the rules say, "check with your DM to see how much a wasp can carry".

So, how would you determine it, by RAW?

You cannot. So if it comes up, you have to ask your DM.

Look, I'm on the side of "Don't hassle the Wizard for buffs," but CBN, you're kinda making a fool of yourself with this.

[ColorBlindNinja]

So, how would you determine it, by RAW?

You don't.


You cannot. So if it comes up, you have to ask your DM.

Which is not the same thing as, "RAW says you ask the DM".


Look, I'm on the side of "Don't hassle the Wizard for buffs," but CBN, you're kinda making a fool of yourself with this.

No, I'm disagreeing with how Crake is phrasing it.

:smallmad:

[JNAProductions]

Provide a different method for it, then.

Because this a situation where we need to resolve how much a Giant Wasp can carry. How do we resolve that, if not "Ask your DM,"?

Or does the game just... Stop? When this happens?

[ColorBlindNinja]

Provide a different method for it, then.

Because this a situation where we need to resolve how much a Giant Wasp can carry. How do we resolve that, if not "Ask your DM,"?

Or does the game just... Stop? When this happens?

You're not listening to what I'm saying.

The rules are silent, they don't say anything.

Yes, you ask your DM.

:smallannoyed:

[Crake]

RAW is utterly silent on this issue. Nothing in the rules say, "check with your DM to see how much a wasp can carry".

RAW isn't silent on the issue. I quoted the section from the DMG that said that the DM is the ultimate arbiter of what is and isn't a viable mount. Just because you chose to ignore it, doesn't make it any less the RAW on the issue.

[ColorBlindNinja]

RAW isn't silent on the issue. I quoted the section from the DMG that said that the DM is the ultimate arbiter of what is and isn't a viable mount. Just because you chose to ignore it, doesn't make it any less the RAW on the issue.

Once again, there are no rules there. Guidelines, yes, but not rules.

EDIT: And that section says nothing about how much six legged creatures can carry.

[Crake]

Once again, there are no rules there. Guidelines, yes, but not rules.

EDIT: And that section says nothing about how much six legged creatures can carry.


Suitable Mounts: You have the final decision on what is or is not a suitable mount.

That seems to me to be pretty absolute as a rule.

[ColorBlindNinja]

That seems to me to be pretty absolute as a rule.

Great, because to me "the DM decides!" isn't a rule at all.

EDIT: Furthermore, as I've said several times, in RAW debates, the assumed answer is "yes".

[Crake]

Great, because to me "the DM decides!" isn't a rule at all.

EDIT: Furthermore, as I've said several times, in RAW debates, the assumed answer is "yes".

Great, I'll assume in raw debates from now on that I can shoot lasers from my eyes, it's not ruled anywhere that I can't, and the assumed answer from the DM is yes.

Honestly, i don't know where you get this idea that in raw debates we assume the DM says yes for things that aren't covered in the rules. I've never once seen that be the case.

[Fizban]

Y'all wanna see a post where I bust the "Oberoni Fallacy"? 'Cause I've got one. But then I looked it up and things got better :smallamused:


Yes. Fizban is so far into Oberoni-land that it is impossible to have a conversation with him,
I mean, I had a whole post restating how the "Oberoni Fallacy" is actually a preference masquerading as a fallacy and a blatant attempt at gatekeeping (as well as generally not making any sense), but I cancelled it when the OP came back with their glorious rage right before it was ready.

Which I was going to post, then spoiler, but have now cut because I found something better:

Bonus round: let's look the actual "Oberoni Fallacy" and how it's used. Here's the actual line that Oberoni uses as the problem example (from first google result):


"There is no inconsistency/loophole/mechanics issue with Rule X, because you can always Rule 0 the inconsistency/loophole/mechanics issue."

Now, this incorrect reply does not in truth agree with or dispute the original statement in any way, shape, or form.
So, I think your problem is that I attacked the sacred cow of "RAW." Because I said:

There is no "Rules as Written" interpretation of the interactions of elements from books x/y/z, because the addition of content is already "ask your DM." The most appropriate response to most "RAW interaction" questions is "huh, looks like that could be a problem, you should probably ask the DM if they noticed it,"
But you know what I'm not saying there? I haven't said that there is no problem when those elements are used together- I've said that it has to go through the DM before there's even a rules question to ask. Because my problem is with your assumption that all mechanics are always in use, that "all RAW content" is a valid default endorsed by the game (because it's not). Oberoni doesn't say anything about sources used (in fact there's no reference to rules interactions at all, just rule X). But you know what's on Oberoni's list of acceptable responses to rules questions?


Several correct replies can be given:


"I agree, there is an inconsistency/loophole/mechanics issue with Rule X."



"huh, looks like that could be a problem, you should probably ask the DM if they noticed it,"

Ha, hahahahaa, haha, nice. So it would seem that it's not so much the "Oberoni Fallacy" that is fallacious, or gatekeeping, but rather that you're applying it incorrectly. Man, I'm so glad I looked that up. Turns out reading the instructions is good (reference to cut part of post).


Though it's not so great either- I've never actually seen someone claim that a rules problem doesn't exist because the DM can fix it. 'Cause yeah, that would be self-contradictory, admitting that there's a problem and then saying there's no problem. No one does that. What they do say, is that many problems are insignificant, because it is the DM's job to fix them (and further they are often so obvious and/or easy to fix that there's little to discuss about them). The Oberoni Fallacy is still basically a straw man in practical use, because you don't need a special named fallacy to point out that someone is being self-contradicting (I do it all the time). But people get mad if you aren't mad about the same things they are, so if one dismisses a problem as insignificant (because DM), some people get mad and start trying to claim fallacies.

Bonus Bonus Round: But wait, that's not what you first tried to use it on-

But further than that, any test that a "class" can fail is in bad faith from the start, because the DM is supposed to be making the game work.
Which. . . is not in contradiction to the Oberoni Fallacy. You see, the Oberoni Fallacy only concerns itself with rules interpretations. It says nothing about "tests," nothing about "all RAW content," nothing about about the whole of a given game. You can't invoke it until there is a rules question to discuss, and that's where the assumptions come in: you set up a "test" that forces a given set of mechanics/rules to happen and cause a problem, and then say anyone who disagrees with the results is Oberoni Fallacy-ing. But I don't disagree with the results or interactions of your "test" where a fighter sucked, I disagree with the "test" in the first place and the claim that it represents actual games, because you set it up to fail when it is the DM's job to not do that.

Is it useful to mechanically check to see if something will produce a fun game, to see what DMs might want to change before it starts? Absolutely. Is it useful to hold up an assumption of "all 1st party content RAW" as an example of anyone's game, of "proof" that something is bad? Nope, not unless you have someone who explicitly says they're running it that way (and even then they really aren't, because there's no way all those mechanics are actually in use simultaneously).

The funny thing is, our main disagreement here can be boiled down to the semantics of when the problem should be recognized and by whom: you want tests that "prove" something is bad so you can (presumably) say what to do to fix them, and I say the test doesn't matter because the DM shouldn't need someone else to "prove" it to them, shoving "proof" in their face will just put their back up, and any pre-existing "test" almost certainly has a flawed or inconsistent methodology compared to a given DM with a given problem (and often to the actual defaults of the game as well).

[ColorBlindNinja]

Great, I'll assume in raw debates from now on that I can shoot lasers from my eyes, it's not ruled anywhere that I can't, and the assumed answer from the DM is yes.

That's not how this works, and I think you know better.

Rules: The DM may allow this.
RAW debate convention: The DM says yes.

Rules: Say nothing what so ever about laser eyes.
Raw debate convention: Nice try.

EDIT: Again, this is a strawman.


Honestly, i don't know where you get this idea that in raw debates we assume the DM says yes for things that aren't covered in the rules. I've never once seen that be the case.

I have seen that assumption stated multiple times, on this very board, no less.

[Unavenger]

To put it another way, if the rules say that you can do thing X, then you can do thing X in circumstance Y unless there's a listed exception for circumstance Y. If the rules are silent on doing thing Z, then you can't do thing Z unless it's a normal thing that we assume people can do. There's a difference between "They've said you can do X, so they don't need to say you can do X where Y" and "They haven't said you can't do Z where Y, so I'm gonna assume you can."

[Talakeal]

Rules: The DM may allow this.
RAW debate convention: The DM says yes.

Rules: Say nothing what so ever about laser eyes.
Raw debate convention: Nice try.

Page 110 of the PHB says that you can change some of your character's class features with DM approval.

If we assume the DM always says yes, why cant I exchange one of my fighter's bonus feats for, say, the basilisk's death gaze?

[Mordaedil]

Page 6 of the DMG:
Often a situation will arise that isn't explicitly covered by the rules. In such a situation, you need to provide guidance as to how it should be resolved. When you come upon a situation that the rules don't seem to cover, consider the following courses of action:

Look to any similar situation that is covered in a rulebook. Try to extrapolate from what you see presented there and apply it to the current circumstance.
If you have to make something up, stick with it for the rest of the campaign.


If you come upon an apparent contradiction in the rules, consider these factors when adjudicating:

A rule found in a rulebook overrules one found in the published adventure, unless the rule presented in the published adventure deals with something specific and limited to the adventure itself.
Choose the rule that you like the best, then stick with that for the rest of the campaign.


DM fiat, for situations like this, is per say, RAW.

[Cosi]

Great, I'll assume in raw debates from now on that I can shoot lasers from my eyes, it's not ruled anywhere that I can't, and the assumed answer from the DM is yes.

You can shoot all the lasers you want from your eyes, but they don't actually do anything unless you have an ability that says they do. If you want to fluff your Sorcerer's scorching ray or your Warlock's Eldritch Blast as an eyeball laser, go ahead. The whole "what if I say I can do a thing that would be really awesome" line of argument in this area is dumb, because it requires you to invent mechanics whole cloth, which is a strawman of the other side.


*snip*

Wow, you actually read the Oberoni fallacy, and you still don't understand that "it's not a problem because your DM has to approve it before it's a problem" is exactly the Oberoni fallacy. Any argument that rests on the premise that rules problems are downstream of bad DMing decisions is the Oberoni fallacy. Until you accept that "what the rules say" is a meaningful question to answer in the evaluation of the quality of the rules -- and you have not done this -- nothing you say in a rules discussion is worth listening to. Again, it's not just that your opinions are bad (though, yes, they are super bad), it's that you refuse to accept premises that are necessary for anyone to care about your opinions at all.

So please, stop wasting everyone's time by posting in arguments that your position makes you fundamentally incapable of contributing to.

[Talakeal]

I know Sage Advice isn't considered RAW around here, but I remember it actually did discuss the issue of what to do when a creature's abilities weren't listed, and the general guideline was to assume that unlisted values were functionally identical to those of a human PC.

[Hackulator]

The Oberoni Fallacy argument is always stupid because it was created by some random dude who was annoyed with one of the core tenets of D&D: that there will always be situation in a game as complex as D&D where the rules run into issues and one of the jobs of the DM is to choose how to deal with those issues. It's not a fallacy, it's just some reference people make that has no real value as an argument but it got popular on the internet so people continue to do it.

[Cosi]

Rejecting the Oberoni fallacy is just saying you'll pay good money for bad products. Yes, rules aren't perfect. That doesn't mean that their flaws are irrelevant. Even if your DM can fix 100% of problems -- and almost no DMs can -- that still takes time. Every minute your DM has to spend thinking about how to correct rules holes is a minute he doesn't get to spend writing a cool adventure. Every minute your DM has to spend checking to see if allowing Stormwrack will make the Monk irrelevant is a minute he doesn't get to spend designing an interesting antagonist. The reason we pay for game rules is because we assume that designers can do a better job than DMs. Good rules are good for everyone, and the Oberoni fallacy is just an argument for bad rules.

[Talakeal]

Rejecting the Oberoni fallacy is just saying you'll pay good money for bad products. Yes, rules aren't perfect. That doesn't mean that their flaws are irrelevant. Even if your DM can fix 100% of problems -- and almost no DMs can -- that still takes time. Every minute your DM has to spend thinking about how to correct rules holes is a minute he doesn't get to spend writing a cool adventure. Every minute your DM has to spend checking to see if allowing Stormwrack will make the Monk irrelevant is a minute he doesn't get to spend designing an interesting antagonist. The reason we pay for game rules is because we assume that designers can do a better job than DMs. Good rules are good for everyone, and the Oberoni fallacy is just an argument for bad rules.

I don't often agree with Cosi, but in this matter I am in 100% agreement.

[Hackulator]

Rejecting the Oberoni fallacy is just saying you'll pay good money for bad products. Yes, rules aren't perfect. That doesn't mean that their flaws are irrelevant. Even if your DM can fix 100% of problems -- and almost no DMs can -- that still takes time. Every minute your DM has to spend thinking about how to correct rules holes is a minute he doesn't get to spend writing a cool adventure. Every minute your DM has to spend checking to see if allowing Stormwrack will make the Monk irrelevant is a minute he doesn't get to spend designing an interesting antagonist. The reason we pay for game rules is because we assume that designers can do a better job than DMs. Good rules are good for everyone, and the Oberoni fallacy is just an argument for bad rules.

I mean, there is no question there are inconsistencies and outright errors in the rules of 3.5 d&d. Are you saying you don't love the game anyway? Are you saying that it is a bad product regardless of the hundreds or thousands of hours of enjoyment it has given you? That seems to make no sense to me, if you didn't love it you wouldn't be spending all this time on a forum talking about it. It is certainly not a perfect product, but honestly nothing is and I think if they actually had tightened the rules up so much there were never any questions most of the people here would end up enjoying the game less, not more.

[Cosi]

I mean, there is no question there are inconsistencies and outright errors in the rules of 3.5 d&d. Are you saying you don't love the game anyway?

That's precisely the word -- anyway. I acknowledge that those flaws exist. I acknowledge that the game would be better if they were fixed. But the game is good enough overall that I'm willing to play even a flawed version of it.

That's an entirely reasonable position. That's the position we take on almost every product. My car, my computer, my house, my food, my clothes, they all have flaws. They all could be better. But I buy them, and like them, because I think that -- on balance -- their merits exceed their flaws.

But that's not the argument the Oberoni fallacy makes. The Oberoni fallacy isn't "the game is still good even though it has flaws". It's "the flaws of the game don't matter because they're really flaws of your DM". Which is nonsense. The DM's job -- the core of their role as one of the people playing the game -- isn't to create the rules of the game. That's the game designer's job. The DM's job is to use the rules to create a compelling setting and story for the players to engage with. And yes, we generally acknowledge that doing so will involve dealing with whatever flaws exist in the rules, but that's not fundamental to the DM's job. It's something they have to do because the tools they have are imperfect.

Saying that it's the DM's responsibility to fix the game is saying you don't care if the game is broken. But you should care. Because fixing the game takes time and effort, and means less time and effort for things that are the DM's responsibility. It means that the way the game functions is obscured before the game starts, which creates conflict when people expect that rules questions will be resolved in different ways. Again, it's not fatal. You can enjoy a flawed game. But you should acknowledge that the flaws are problem with the game, because that allows those flaws to be fixed.

[Fizban]

Wow, you actually read the Oberoni fallacy, and you still don't understand that "it's not a problem because your DM has to approve it before it's a problem" is exactly the Oberoni fallacy.
Well I did figure I should stop taking your word for it and see if Oberoni's own words were as weak of a "fallacy" as you made them sound, but it turns out the actual text is fine. And you don't understand that all the extra baggage you're attaching to it is your own baggage.

Any argument that rests on the premise that rules problems are downstream of bad DMing decisions is the Oberoni fallacy.
Nope, that's not what it says. What it says, is that the phrase "it's not a problem because the DM can fix it" is self contradictory. The fact that you consider everything I say to be an "argument" that "rests upon that premise," is your own bias.

Why don't you restate my argument and directly link it to the form given in the fallacy, instead of trying to dance around it? You'll find that "the DM is responsible for making the game work" cannot be described by the Oberoni Fallacy. The only rule involved is. . . that the DM is responsible for making the game work, as stated in the DMG.

Until you accept that "what the rules say" is a meaningful question to answer in the evaluation of the quality of the rules -- and you have not done this -- nothing you say in a rules discussion is worth listening to. Again, it's not just that your opinions are bad (though, yes, they are super bad), it's that you refuse to accept premises that are necessary for anyone to care about your opinions at all.
And there's the gatekeeping.


Rejecting the Oberoni fallacy is just saying you'll pay good money for bad products.
And there's your real beef- you're mad at DnD for being a "bad" product, because it's not what you wanted it to be.

Yes, rules aren't perfect. That doesn't mean that their flaws are irrelevant.
Who said anything about irrelevant? I literally just made the formal distinction that what most people say (if not in their words, then their obvious intent), is that many of the flaws are insignificant. The only rules that are irrelevant are those that a group is not actually using (which at any given time is actually most of them).

So once again, this is baggage you're attaching, not part of my statement. Probably because your publicly stated bias caused you to miss the point.

Every minute your DM has to spend thinking about how to correct rules holes is a minute he doesn't get to spend writing a cool adventure. Every minute your DM has to spend checking to see if allowing Stormwrack will make the Monk irrelevant is a minute he doesn't get to spend designing an interesting antagonist. The reason we pay for game rules is because we assume that designers can do a better job than DMs. Good rules are good for everyone, and the Oberoni fallacy is just an argument for bad rules.
And that's a whole big pile of opinion, personal preference, and straw manning. In order: the time it takes to correct a rules hole once noticed is only as long or as short as you want it to be, you can also buy adventures (which themselves will say you're supposed to read them beforehand), you've assumed (as usual) that a book must be allowed in full when the DMG never supports this- a DM who wants to pre-allow an entire book has indeed invited more work on themselves when they could have just not done that, and the last is particularly odd- most people pay for game rules because they don't want to write a game, particularly if they want a shared set of rules in nice books that everyone can use. As for expansions, again, there are plenty of books people buy for the fluff rather than the crunch.


But that's not the argument the Oberoni fallacy makes. The Oberoni fallacy isn't "the game is still good even though it has flaws". It's "the flaws of the game don't matter because they're really flaws of your DM". Which is nonsense.
Correct, that is nonsense. That argument isn't anywhere in the text of the Oberoni Fallacy.

That (second) argument does somewhat resemble my actual argument- except you're conflating "game" with "rules," and forcing your straw "flaws don't matter" position in. "Game" can (and often does, and I am using it specifically to) refer to the game as a whole, including the DM, players, and what actual rules and/or rules changes they are using. There is no game without a DM, just a bunch of rules, which is why I draw the distinction.

This thread was originally about "teamwork," which generally became an exercise in who is to blame for "teamwork" problems. This has nothing little to do with the rules, because in order to have teamwork problems you need to have a game, which has a DM and players, and the rules are subordinate to the game. I posted an "argument," which is actually just a direct statement of what is described in the rulebook, in response to your convenient question of "Is it fair if I do X/Y/Z."

What I posted was that the DMG specifically says it is the DM's job to make the game work (and that lots of DMs and posters ignore this in favor of straw RAW arguments).

You claim that this statement is self-contradictory, specifically that it acknowledges a problem in the rules and and ignores it because DM. But it doesn't. My statement quite clearly acknowledges potential problems, in the game, and the fact that the DM is supposed to fix them. If the DM determines that this is due to a rules problem, great, then fix it. I don't care whether you think a rule is bad or not as long as you take responsibility for the fact that by running a game that involves that rule, you have made it your job to fix any problems that come up. If you think it's the rules that make a given fighter and wizard argue about who should be doing what, then great, you know what it is you have to fix. Though personally I'd look at first at the player attitudes, followed by my own encounter design and simpler add-on fixes that don't require rules overhauls mid-game.

This is also a point where you could concede that it's just your reading of "game" as "rules" is what makes you think the Oberoni Fallacy applies. Considering how centrally I used the word "game," that misunderstanding is rather important. I'm not sure I'd say I wasn't clear enough though, since I did make it very clear that Oberoni only makes reference to "rules."

Rejecting the Oberoni fallacy is just saying you'll pay good money for bad products.
Again, the part that annoys you is that I refuse to condemn the "designers" for making a bad product. Which I refuse to do because the "designers" are actually a loose collection of dozens of authors with varying backgrounds and game experience writing mostly independent books over the course of a decade while the desires and expectations of the consumer base were also changing drastically in real time and being amplified by the internet (including plenty of people who weren't even paying customers). So no, I won't condemn any but a very tiny sliver of the rules as objectively bad. Acknowledging the things we like are flawed is good, making it popular to rag on things that we like, but one can also go too far, and I think you put far too much effort into trying to convince people some things (fighters, it's usually fighters) are bad.


The DM's job is to use the rules to create a compelling setting and story for the players to engage with. And yes, we generally acknowledge that doing so will involve dealing with whatever flaws exist in the rules, but that's not fundamental to the DM's job.
Uh, it absolutely is fundamental to the DM's job. You can't use the rules if you don't understand the rules, and if you understand them to be flawed then it is your job to fix them before using them. The DMG explicitly says that the DM needs to be careful about introducing new content and maintaining party balance and making sure the rules don't get in the way of the fun (etc). That is part of the rulebook, just not the explicit statistical type of rules you prefer to focus on. The rule for dealing with flaws in the rules, is for the DM to fix the rules, which is why all of your arguments based on "this tabletop roleplaying game with dozens of potential rulebooks sometimes has flaws that require a person and that's bad," are what is truly nonsensical. DnD is not that type of game, and no matter what marketing may have led you to believe, the DMG said so right up front.

There's two simple analogies: the one where you expect an MMO with dozens of guest programmers which is never allowed to delete content to result in a "balanced" game, and the one where you buy a build-it-yourself cabinet, ignore half the instructions, and get mad when it doesn't look like the picture on the box.

Your claim that it's not a fundamental part of the DM's job to deal with flawed rules is a combination of opinion that contradicts the rulebook (which for the millionth time, explicitly says it is), and a refusal to accept the designers expectations. Obviously they didn't think there would need to be tons of fixes, even if they made it clear that the DM is expected to make the game work where necessary. You base your rhetoric on the idea that there are tons of huge major flaws and it would take forever for the DM to fix them, but that's only true for people that actually have games with those problems. Dnd 3.5 is not a horrible terrible very bad product when used as the designers expected, as the starter kits started, the DMG hinted, and PHB2 stated outright. Flawed components were included, but the actual default gamestyle? Yeah, the DM wouldn't have to do much more with the rules than build the world etc.

Change to a different gametyle, and certain flaws become more apparent and significant. With that gamestyle. The product itself is still fine- I got into DnD specifically because of the game presented to me by the starter set, PHB, and DMG (3.0). Turns out, when you want to play the type of game that the game was designed for, you don't have many problems, and it's a good product. If the product goes against your desired game type, that might indicate you should try a different game- but I do recognize that the desired madcap RAW super spellcaster parallel advancement etc etc things that are possible in 3.5 weren't found in any other game before, or even really since, as Pathfinder did steer away from some bits.

Saying that it's the DM's responsibility to fix the game is saying you don't care if the game is broken.
No, saying it's the DM's responsibility to fix the game means you care about the DM fixing the game. If (if) the game, not the rules you find objectionable but an actual game, is broken and needs to be fixed, then that game is broken. You continue to conflate the rules with the game.

No, I don't care if some of the rules are broken- except I do. Because returning to the words/intent issue, what that phrase actually means is "I find many of those broken rules insignificant." Sure I care that there are broken and flawed rules, I wouldn't have dozens of pages of tweaks and rewrites if I didn't. But I played the game just fine before I wrote those, and I also don't go around trying to convince people that the rules I find broken are the One True Way and anyone who disagrees is incapable of contributing to discussion of them.

That's the real kicker of course- you're not content to just maintain your view that certain rules are big problems: you want to silence anyone who disagrees. By using a minor disagreement on the role of the DM and a mis-applied pop fallacy to to convince other posters to ignore those you disagree with.


Because fixing the game takes time and effort, and means less time and effort for things that are the DM's responsibility. It means that the way the game functions is obscured before the game starts, which creates conflict when people expect that rules questions will be resolved in different ways.
What you have just described, is what is popularly known as "session 0." The part where you actually set up a game instead of just assuming that things will work out. The DMG addresses this beginning on page 10- they don't specifically call for a "session 0," but they do spend a good four pages going over various issues like game style and table rules and game balance and rules additions, which you'll need to come to agreements on.

[Cosi]

Nope, that's not what it says. What it says, is that the phrase "it's not a problem because the DM can fix it" is self contradictory. The fact that you consider everything I say to be an "argument" that "rests upon that premise," is your own bias.

No, it's you making arguments that rest on that premise. Like "for it to be a problem, your DM has to allow it". Which is exactly equivalent to "it's not a problem because the DM can fix it by not allowing it".


And there's the gatekeeping.

It's not gatekeeping to not argue with people whose position is incapable of producing a meaningful argument. It's just not wasting my time. Your position is incapable of doing real rules analysis. Since that's the entire point of discussing the rules, it makes talking to you pointless. That's all on you, and you only think it's "gatekeeping" because you have an agenda -- bad rules and player disempowerment -- that you cannot argue for in a debate that engages with the rules in a meaningful way.


most people pay for game rules because they don't want to write a game, particularly if they want a shared set of rules in nice books that everyone can use.

And that's exactly what you are arguing against. You want DMs to spend time writing rules answers to questions like "are Monks proficient with unarmed strikes" and "what the hell do polymorph and planar binding do". That's what insisting that those things are only problems because your DM allows them to be problems means. If you think that's bad, drop this entire "math doesn't real, problems only exist because the DM allows them" shtick that is all you ever do.


This has nothing little to do with the rules

It has everything to do with the rules. The problem is that the rules for Fighters make them unable to appropriately contribute, and the rules for Wizards do not. Which you would know, if you did not reject every attempt to evaluate the abilities of classes with arguments that math doesn't real.

[Minion #6]

It's not gatekeeping to not argue with people whose position is incapable of producing a meaningful argument. It's just not wasting my time. Your position is incapable of doing real rules analysis. Since that's the entire point of discussing the rules, it makes talking to you pointless. That's all on you, and you only think it's "gatekeeping" because you have an agenda -- bad rules and player disempowerment -- that you cannot argue for in a debate that engages with the rules in a meaningful way.

To build on this, the reason that RAW discussions - that is, purely exegetic interpretation of what the rules text says, not eisegetic projection of meaning onto the rules text - are important is because they are the only thing that can be shared across tables universally. When you or I or anyone else reads the rules, we see the same words on the page. What anyone involved would like them to say could be radically different, but that doesn't matter. The text says what it says and doesn't say what it doesn't say. Without this common reference point there'd be no way to discuss the game at all, any discussion between individuals would be mutually unintelligible.

What Fizban is doing doesn't even reach the level of eisegesis. It's the insistence that there is no real meaning in the rules text, and hence without meaning they cannot be discussed. This lack of meaning supposedly springs from the ability of a GM to change the rule in their own game. This, of course, breaks down when held to the slightest scrutiny. It's the same as claiming that writing a different plot to a novel means that the original plot means nothing and hence cannot be discussed. But the original novel remains, still portraying the same events it always did. Just because alternatives exist does not make the original meaningless.

[Erloas]

Not to get into it too far, but I agree with the general idea that "by default the game will always allow every random bit of content created for D&D in every game" is rather crazy.
I also think that while RAW is important, there are many cases where RAI is very obvious but ignored. And plenty of stupid RAW justifications like "a day doesn't mean a day" that was going on earlier. Where "common usage" of a term is ignored in favor of an undefined interpretation that allows for clearly anti RAI uses because "they didn't actually define this word in this context."

[RoboEmperor]

Not to get into it too far, but I agree with the general idea that "by default the game will always allow every random bit of content created for D&D in every game" is rather crazy.
I also think that while RAW is important, there are many cases where RAI is very obvious but ignored. And plenty of stupid RAW justifications like "a day doesn't mean a day" that was going on earlier. Where "common usage" of a term is ignored in favor of an undefined interpretation that allows for clearly anti RAI uses because "they didn't actually define this word in this context."

I think the best example is Greater Glyph Seal. Instead of it saying it storing spells of 5th level or lower, it says it stores spells of 5th level or HIGHER. Clearly this is a typo by the editors and we must change the word higher to its polar opposite: lower because it is obvious and clear RAI that it was supposed to be lower.

[ColorBlindNinja]

And plenty of stupid RAW justifications like "a day doesn't mean a day" that was going on earlier. Where "common usage" of a term is ignored in favor of an undefined interpretation that allows for clearly anti RAI uses because "they didn't actually define this word in this context."

Except for the rules that explicitly indicate that the 24 hour interpretation of "day" is wrong.

[RoboEmperor]

Except for the rules that explicitly indicate that the 24 hour interpretation of "day" is wrong.

Despite being pro-caster all this thread, I'm gonna have to agree that a day is 24 hours. d&d is written in layman so when it says day, it means from midnight to midnight. d&d is not written for N.A.S.A. scientists where a day could be 100 hours on a different planet.

[Minion #6]

Not to get into it too far, but I agree with the general idea that "by default the game will always allow every random bit of content created for D&D in every game" is rather crazy.
I also think that while RAW is important, there are many cases where RAI is very obvious but ignored. And plenty of stupid RAW justifications like "a day doesn't mean a day" that was going on earlier. Where "common usage" of a term is ignored in favor of an undefined interpretation that allows for clearly anti RAI uses because "they didn't actually define this word in this context."

The problem with RAI is that it's inherently eisegetic - you will read in what you think the designer intended, because you cannot know for sure what they intended. You can have a high degree of confidence, but it still comes down to your judgement. RAI discussion is not rules discussion, it is GM call discussion. Different topics. GM call discussion is actually rather important, of course, but it's not the same thing.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Despite being pro-caster all this thread, I'm gonna have to agree that a day is 24 hours. d&d is written in layman so when it says day, it means from midnight to midnight. d&d is not written for N.A.S.A. scientists where a day could be 100 hours on a different planet.

That isn't what I meant.

A day can mean sunrise to sunset.

It doesn't necessarily equate to 24 hours.

Anecdotal, I know, but I rarely here anyone IRL use the 24 hour usage of "day".

[RoboEmperor]

A day can mean sunrise to sunset.

And sunset to sunrise is another day? That... doesn't make sense.

Or sunset to sunrise is "night"? That means wizards can't cast spells during the night, or prepare spells during the night, or whatever. It's a worse interpretation.

[zlefin]

is there any RAW as to whether they mean solar day or sidereal day?

[ColorBlindNinja]

And sunset to sunrise is another day? That... doesn't make sense.

Or sunset to sunrise is "night"? That means wizards can't cast spells during the night, or prepare spells during the night, or whatever. It's a worse interpretation.

It's moot, because the magic overview text is more specific.


is there any RAW as to whether they mean solar day or sidereal day?

Not to my knowledge.

[RoboEmperor]

is there any RAW as to whether they mean solar day or sidereal day?

considering how in d&d cosmology there is no other "planet" than the material plane...


It's moot, because the magic overview text is more specific.

It never redefined "day"

[HouseRules]

All days use the old definition. All planets are separate "Alternate Prime Material Planes" with their own Solar Day of 24 hours, each hour is 60 minutes, each minute is 60 seconds. And all actions follow the standard relative definitions of 6 seconds per round, 1 minute per turn.

[ColorBlindNinja]

considering how in d&d cosmology there is no other "planet" than the material plane...

Actually, the material plane is canonly like our universe, but infinite in size.



It never redefined "day"

No. And to my knowledge, it's never defined.

[RoboEmperor]

Actually, the material plane is canonly like our universe, but infinite in size.

I thought instead of outer space it's the astral plane and other weird stuff like that.


No. And to my knowledge, it's never defined.

So you go with the layman definition.


Day
Dictionary result for day
/dā/
noun
noun: day; plural noun: days

1.
a period of twenty-four hours as a unit of time, reckoned from one midnight to the next, corresponding to a rotation of the earth on its axis.
synonyms: twenty-four-hour period, full day, twenty-four hours, working day; More

2.
a particular period of the past; an era.
"the laws were very strict in those days"
synonyms: period, time, point in time, age, era, epoch, generation


As HouseRules points out you change the definition of day you change the duration of a ton of spells and other mechanics and the whole thing falls apart. A day in d&d is the same for all mechanical discussions. 24 hours.

[ColorBlindNinja]

I thought instead of outer space it's the astral plane and other weird stuff like that.

No, it's normal space.

[Erloas]

I believe many settings also say essentially "this isn't earth but it still has a 24hour day."

And while the wizard entry says "you must rest 8 hours to prepare spells" it doesn't say that "resting resets the spells per day." It also ignores the fact that no other class can just "rest for 8 hours to get their spells back." Clerics, druids, paladins, and rangers say nothing at all about resting and only says they get the spells per day. You've also got lots of other abilities across many classes that are x/day use, not x/rest, or x/8 hours of sleep. Items too just say use/day, and nothing about rest.

But no matter what, even if it is a different world with a different length of day, be that 18 hours or 36 hours or 150hours, there is still nothing says "resting multiple times in a day will allow you to use "daily use" things (like spell slots, abilities, or items) more times during a day."

[Cosi]

It says you must rest 8 hours to prepare spells.

It then says that when you prepare spells, you get your "daily allotment" (presumably the figures in the class table, modulo various bonus spells), less any spells you cast in the last eight hours.

At no point does it mention any other spells you cast reducing the amount you get from preparing. Not the ones you cast 9 hours ago, not the ones you cast 9 days ago.

There's no rules support for the notion that casting a spell at 3 AM in any way effects the number of spells you get if you prepare spells at 3 PM the same day.

[Erloas]

There is also no rule stating that casting a spell at 11:59 PM counts towards one day and 12:01 AM counts as the same day or the next day. It doesn't say a day ends at the start, middle, or end of resting. If you're going straight RAW then those are spells cast on different days and come out of different daily allotments. Granted that doesn't make a lot of sense, and I think most of us would agree that RAI is that you can start and end the day for "daily use" things "while sleeping for the night." Even if that sleeping for the night starts at 9pm, midnight, or 3am. But I think "I've only been awake for 2 hours but I've already burned through all my daily use things, I'm going to sleep for 8 hours again to start a new day" is clearly not RAI, it isn't supported by RAW either. Nothing in RAW defines a day in any way based on resting (until we get to 5E, where they define recharge based on resting but then explicitly state the DM gets to define the length of time that is)

[HouseRules]

It says you must rest 8 hours to prepare spells.

It then says that when you prepare spells, you get your "daily allotment" (presumably the figures in the class table, modulo various bonus spells), less any spells you cast in the last eight hours.

At no point does it mention any other spells you cast reducing the amount you get from preparing. Not the ones you cast 9 hours ago, not the ones you cast 9 days ago.

There's no rules support for the notion that casting a spell at 3 AM in any way effects the number of spells you get if you prepare spells at 3 PM the same day.

You must rest 8 hours to prepare spells. 15 minutes allow you to prepare 1/4 or less spell slots. 30 minutes allow you to prepare 1/2 or less spell slots. 45 minutes allow you to prepare 3/4 or less spell slots, and 1 hour allow you to prepare more than 3/4 of your spell slots. If you still have spell slots not prepared, you could prepare them, but since a day is not over, it will still be that you do not get another set of spells.

A day is solar day because that is how the ancient world defined day. Only the scientific geeks and what not would try to look at the other definition of day.

When laymen use day, they mean solar day.

Edit: I forgot that there are game masters that would go out there and force every player to eat, ****, breathe, bathe, etc. manually. If a character fail to do the proper needs, they will die.

[Cosi]

There is also no rule stating that casting a spell at 11:59 PM counts towards one day and 12:01 AM counts as the same day or the next day.

Yes there is. The rules define which spells count for particular days (or rather, daily limits, as accounting is not done by 24 hour counts or sunsets or whatever other measure of day). Specifically, the ones you cast in the past eight hours reduce the number of slots you get for preparing right now. So a spell cast at 11:59 PM counts for today if you try to prepare at 7:30 AM and towards yesterday if you try to prepare at 8:30 AM.


Nothing in RAW defines a day in any way based on resting (until we get to 5E, where they define recharge based on resting but then explicitly state the DM gets to define the length of time that is)

Of course not. But nothing in RAW defines spell slot refresh as being related to "day" rather than "resting". Seriously, where does it say anything about it being a new day giving you new spell slots, rather than rest + prepare giving you new spell slots? People keep shouting "Day!" in increasingly outraged tones, but it doesn't seem to be backed up by rules.


but since a day is not over, it will still be that you do not get another set of spells.

Yes, you do. The thing that causes you to get new spells is "preparing spells", not "preparing spells one <however day is defined> <however after is defined> the last time you prepared spells". The number of spells you get from doing that are your daily allotment minus whichever ones you cast in the prior eight hours.

Show me where it says the day has to end (and where those words are defined). It doesn't say that in any of the passages people have cited. It just says "day" and "daily" a bunch, and you've assumed it meant that.

[HouseRules]

Show me where it says the day has to end (and where those words are defined). It doesn't say that in any of the passages people have cited. It just says "day" and "daily" a bunch, and you've assumed it meant that.

Players must always calculate their burden in case they are over weight capacity.
Players must always eat, and failure to eat leads to starvation.
Players must always bathe, or get diseases.
etc

You also need to tell me where the game define a foot, 5 feet, an inch, because the rules says the standard laws of physics and such and such follows the standard laws of physics unless exceptions are defined.

[Erloas]

It is a daily allotment that you must rest before preparing. It is both per day *and* requiring 8 hours of rest.

If you are of course sure that per day refresh items and abilities are done based on resting, not a day, then you should have a very easy time pointing to the RAW that says that. It must be specially stated after all, otherwise it isn't RAW.

[RoboEmperor]

It's very simple. WotC did not expect players to rest more than once a day. So if you try to rest more than once a day the whole thing goes bonkers because WotC did not prepare for that.

[HouseRules]

It's very simple. WotC did not expect players to rest more than once a day. So if you try to rest more than once a day the whole thing goes bonkers because WotC did not prepare for that.

Resting 24 hours a day gives one-and-a-half hit points natural heal. Thus, any extra 8-hour rest should only give 1/4 of the first 8-hour rest.

[Cosi]

Yes, I get that it says day. You've all been saying that for several pages across two threads. And, as someone who reads english, I know that the word "day" appears several times in the text. What I'm asking is where the game defines "day" the way you think it should.

[RoboEmperor]

Yes, I get that it says day. You've all been saying that for several pages across two threads. And, as someone who reads english, I know that the word "day" appears several times in the text. What I'm asking is where the game defines "day" the way you think it should.

If d&d doesn't give you the definition of the word "minute", how do you know it's 60 seconds? It could be a million seconds. You tell me where the game defines "minute" the way you think it should.

See what I did there? If a the game does not define the term, you go to the English dictionary. The English dictionary does not say a day is 8 hour rest, or a period of time that is not 24 hours, etc. The Astronaut dictionary defines day differently as the time it takes for a planet to make a full rotation around its axis, but not the English dictionary.

If D&D does not define something, it's always the English definition.

[HouseRules]

Holmes' Basic: 1 round = 10 seconds.
AD&D: 1 turn = 1 minute = 10 rounds, but rounds are not defined as 6 seconds (in the first few printing).

Surgeon John Eric Holmes made his version of Dungeons and Dragons as an introduction to AD&D, or so was the thought. Yet he had Race as Class.

Are Turns 100 seconds = 1 minute in AD&D?

[Hackulator]

If d&d doesn't give you the definition of the word "minute", how do you know it's 60 seconds? It could be a million seconds. You tell me where the game defines "minute" the way you think it should.

See what I did there? If a the game does not define the term, you go to the English dictionary. The English dictionary does not say a day is 8 hour rest, or a period of time that is not 24 hours, etc. The Astronaut dictionary defines day differently as the time it takes for a planet to make a full rotation around its axis, but not the English dictionary.

If D&D does not define something, it's always the English definition.

No dude, clearly since all English words are not explicitly defined in the context of D&D in the D&D rulebooks they mean whatever I want them to mean.

[Cosi]

Yes, for example, "daily" apparently means "does not follow the outlined rules for recovering spell slots, and instead follows whatever rules people on the internet imagine the usage of the word 'daily' to imply".

[HouseRules]

Yes, for example, "daily" apparently means "does not follow the outlined rules for recovering spell slots, and instead follows whatever rules people on the internet imagine the usage of the word 'daily' to imply".

You cannot have 2 days/day!

[Fizban]

No, it's you making arguments that rest on that premise. Like "for it to be a problem, your DM has to allow it". Which is exactly equivalent to "it's not a problem because the DM can fix it by not allowing it".
And what part of that is a rules argument? What part of that actually falls under the Oberoni Fallacy? You've left "it" completely undefined, what is "it?" Not that those statements are exactly equal btw, they imply different orders of recognition and intent. Which I already identified as one of our primary disagreements, which you failed to respond to. Nor have you responded to the difference between game and rules.

You conflate game problems with rules problems, and game arguments with rules arguments. The Fighter can (and is expected) to be used in a style of game where the Fighter is effective, a type of game which while not always explicit can still be gleaned from the rulebooks and the occasional dash of implicit induction. You made the game problem by ignoring parts of the "rules" that you don't like in favor of complaining about. . . other rules you don't like. The main "rule" you don't like is that Fighters can't do the things you want them to do, which is simply a rejection of the asymmetrical nature of the 3.5 classes that work just fine as intended, as a team.

Which is why your question of "Is X/Y/Z selfish (implying bad teamwork)" was such a good starting point- because your refusal to accept the game's expectations and role of the DM makes you a prime example of the warning signs of a potential responsibility abdicating DM. You probably don't play that way, but you argue that way.

It's not gatekeeping to not argue with people
But that's not what you're doing. You're specifically setting a fake condition based on your personal preference and calling for people to exclude anyone who doesn't meet it. Pretty sure that's the definition of gatekeeping.


Your position is incapable of doing real rules analysis. Since that's the entire point of discussing the rules, it makes talking to you pointless. That's all on you, and you only think it's "gatekeeping" because you have an agenda -- bad rules and player disempowerment -- that you cannot argue for in a debate that engages with the rules in a meaningful way.
Aside from all other other threads in which I've provided pages of meaningful rules analysis that you choose to ignore. There's no analysis to be done here because we aren't actually arguing about rules or math problems though. My statement that you so loathe is specifically about the game as a whole, not analyzing rules, and the rest is just revealing the biases behind your false claims. In fact, your claim that I have an agenda of "player disempowerment" just reveals your own agenda of "player empowerment"- hmm, I wonder if "empowerment" is a factor of personal gamestyle, and which "agenda" goes against that of the writers?

Well I know exactly how that would go anyway- you would claim that x/y/z means the writers intended the game to use x/y/z to the max and were bad for making a broken game, I would restate the obvious that they didn't based on all the rest of the text, and here we'd be again. You with your agenda, me with "mine."

Incidentally my agenda is DM responsibility, at least regarding this thread. I've stated it a dozen times by now.

And that's exactly what you are arguing against. You want DMs to spend time writing rules answers to questions like "are Monks proficient with unarmed strikes" and "what the hell do polymorph and planar binding do".
Repeating the same blatant straw man, if you want to claim time problems you at least need to pick things that would take time to fix. No one has ever seriously had a problem ruling that Monks are proficient with unarmed strikes, and Polymorph does what it says it does (and if you don't want to spend the time using it, you know what to do). Planar Binding lets you bargain with an outsider- are the rules given vague and abusable? Sure, it's actually one of the few rules I might call bad, but the function is in the first line of the spell, and it's only the presumption of attempted player abuse that makes it obvious the PB rules are bad- at which point the DM can make a very easy choice about how much they want to allow.

Most of the oh so terrible problems you complain about are insignificant, because once you enter a game the DM will in fact not need to take very long to wave through them, the fact that the rules may be flawed does not mean the game is bad (the rulebook may or may not be bad, depending on ratios). The problems are only so huge because you make them huge. Your broader dislike of the fighter is more defensible than these straw men (though only because the books aren't as initially explicit about the expected roles as they should be).


It has everything to do with the rules. The problem is that the rules for Fighters make them unable to appropriately contribute, and the rules for Wizards do not. Which you would know, if you did not reject every attempt to evaluate the abilities of classes with arguments that math doesn't real.
No, it doesn't. The writers managed to write and play the game with those rules without having game problems. You are the one who has defined "appropriately contribute" as something that the Fighter cannot do, you rigged the "test" from the start, by putting yourself in the position of DM and making a test they could fail. Tests actually made and run according to the game's expectations will have different results. Which is where we come back to your fundamental stance, that you should be able to make any "test" you want and have everything balanced the way you want it.

Your expectation that the rules should work perfectly for your wildly different gamestyle is is personal desire, and an unrealistic one at that.


Also, I suggest you stop bringing up baggage from other (ancient) threads, especially to fuel direct insults, as both are against the forum rules. Obviously I will not rebut them here.


What Fizban is doing doesn't even reach the level of eisegesis. It's the insistence that there is no real meaning in the rules text, and hence without meaning they cannot be discussed. This lack of meaning supposedly springs from the ability of a GM to change the rule in their own game. This, of course, breaks down when held to the slightest scrutiny. It's the same as claiming that writing a different plot to a novel means that the original plot means nothing and hence cannot be discussed. But the original novel remains, still portraying the same events it always did. Just because alternatives exist does not make the original meaningless.

The problem with RAI is that it's inherently eisegetic - you will read in what you think the designer intended, because you cannot know for sure what they intended. You can have a high degree of confidence, but it still comes down to your judgement. RAI discussion is not rules discussion, it is GM call discussion. Different topics. GM call discussion is actually rather important, of course, but it's not the same thing.

I am curious as to how you have reached this conclusion, because it sounds like you're just agreeing with what Cosi says. I've made the difference between the game and the rules abundantly clear, and the roots of my arguments about the writers intended game should also be clear- you should be calling them eisegetic, but instead made a whole post saying they're not. Care to quote from my own posts and provide your reasoning?

The best I can think of is that you might also go all-in on the "Fighters are bad because RAW" conclusion. The problem is that the further you go from a single discreet rule, the less you can claim you're making a RAW argument. Monks lacking proficiency in unarmed strikes is an obvious RAW issue. Planar Binding having an easily exploitable lack of detail, or Polymorph being cumbersome, are also RAW readings (though they remain insignificant in my estimation). But the argument that Fighters are "bad" (and the presumption that they are the problem with "teamwork") relies on a huge body of rules, so much that you cannot credibly claim you haven't injected your own eisegenic reading, your RAI. That claim is based on the claimant's RAI, which goes against what I find to be the obvious writers RAI. By making a claim that broad the claimant has used their RAI (their gamestyle, etc) and effectively made themselves the DM, while abdicating responsibility for their RAI. It is in fact a different topic, which is what I've been saying.

You could also point out my position that Fighters are fine is my RAI/gamestyle/etc, and you would be right, but I've yet to see anyone prove via citation that the books disagree with it, or that they support the other.

Cosi's general claim that Fighters are the root of all evil (paraphrase/hyperbole) is not RAW, and their attempts to silence anyone who disagrees because RAW/Oberoni Fallacy/etc are gatekeeping. It becomes abundantly clear in every single "challenge" thread just how impossible it is to actually "test" anything based on RAW, because the arguing about what "RAW" they're going to use begins immediately. There is no RAW that supports that viewpoint, only RAI/gamestyle/etc. So no, my statement that "The DM is responsible for making the game work" is not running afoul of RAW or Oberoni or anything else, nor does it diminish my ability to participate in RAW questions, advocate for my RAI readings, or point out that certain gamestyles clash with the writers expectations.

Incidentally, that's a fascinating choice of words there, exegetic/eisegetic, as it seems their definition includes "especially of the Bible/Scripture." Which really encapsulates the way a lot of people commit to their beliefs about DnD.

[thelastorphan]

Have to agree with RoboEmperor. The game does not define day so you look to the dictionary just as you do for many other words in the text. And as some one else pointed out you cant have 2 days per day, that's nonsensical. The tables for classes all say spells per day. With no definition that must revert to basic dictionary terms.

[Cosi]

And Fizban still doesn't understand that "it's not a problem because the DM can not allow it" is exactly the same argument as "it's not a problem because the DM can fix it". Or that his agenda of "DM responsibility" is indistinguishable in practice from a agenda of disempowering players and defending bad rules, in that the positions he adopts are consistently those which disempower players and defend bad rules.

I mean, I could explain in detail why he's wrong, but I don't really want to have to spend more time explaining to someone who I can only assume to be an adult that the number 10 is equal to itself and his protestations to the contrary have never constituted a compelling argument against the fact that Fighters fail to perform to the level the game expects of them. Can someone page me when he's adopted a position that's consistent with reaching any meaningful conclusions about the rules, because having to write this rant every time he spends a page not understanding that he's simply not equipped to talk about the problem is getting tiring.


You cannot have 2 days/day!

No, you can't. But you can rest for 8 hours twice in a day, and that is what allows you to prepare spells. And preparing spells gives you your daily allotment of spells regardless of whether you've previously gotten it today.

Again, where does it say that "daily" is prescriptive? Where is the rules text that says that you don't get your spells again if you've gotten them before? Again, not increasingly outraged repetitions of "day", actual rules.

[thelastorphan]

Find where the rules define day. If they don't we use the dictionary.

[Hackulator]

Find where the rules define day. If they don't we use the dictionary.

Just because I find this both ridiculous and amusing, let's add another wrinkle. The world I created and am currently running exists over multiple planets, some of which have day/night cycles that are different from that of Earth. Is a day 24 hours, or is a day 1 day/night cycle?

[Cosi]

By all means, use the dictionary. But the dictionary doesn't say a damn thing about your "spells per day". The issue is that, taken at face value, the rules for preparing spells allow you to do it as often as you can rest for eight hours, with no regard for days or lack thereof. Which means that it is incumbent on the definition of "daily" to explicitly preclude such a thing. Words that aren't defined as having game meaning don't have game meaning even if you really think they should.

[thelastorphan]

Then what does spells per DAY mean? Why use the word day and not rest. Day is chosen on purpose, it has a real world meaning. The rules do not have to define day any more than hour or minute, anyone who picks up the book should know what many of the words mean. Are you suggesting any term not explicitly defined in the rules text should have its definition discounted? If so the game falls apart. Dictionary definitions impact rules otherwise there would be hundreds more pages of rules documents.

When it comes to other planets with non standard environments that is very much DM territory.

Otherwise give me the rules text definitions for every word in the wizard class description. How many would you consider unnecessary to define?

[HouseRules]

No! Wizard 1 is a requirement for Wizard 2. 8 Hours of rest is a requirement for getting your allotted "spells per day", but you cannot get two days per day.

[JNAProductions]

Then what does spells per DAY mean? Why use the word day and not rest. Day is chosen on purpose, it has a real world meaning. The rules do not have to define day any more than hour or minute, anyone who picks up the book should know what many of the words mean. Are you suggesting any term not explicitly defined in the rules text should have its definition discounted? If so the game falls apart. Dictionary definitions impact rules otherwise there would be hundreds more pages of rules documents.

When it comes to other planets with non standard environments that is very much DM territory.

You can't say "Use laymen's terms" and then simultaneously say that every word is completely precise and needed.

Laymen don't talk like that.

[thelastorphan]

That's basically Cosi's position. If you need to define everything precisely the game falls apart. Cosi is abusing the lack of a rules definition for multiple sets of spells per DAY. I am saying those rules definitions aren't needed if the word is common parlance like Day.

[HouseRules]

Cosi is having 2 days per day.

When there are multiple planets, they are separate alternate prime material planes. That is the only way to balance the game. Otherwise, characters could jump to a planet with shorter day to get their spells back faster. The game also have planes with different times and gravity as well, and there are cheese players that use them.

[Fizban]

"DM responsibility" is indistinguishable in practice from a agenda of disempowering players and defending bad rules, in that the positions he adopts are consistently those which disempower players and defend bad rules.
Nope. You're conflating my preferred gamestyle (and the one the writers intended, based on the evidence), which you disagree with, and the concept of DM responsibility- when they are separate things. A responsible DM who is against "player disempowerment and bad rules" will either select a game tabletop rpg ruleset which does not have rules they think are bad or disempowering, or modify the rules they think are bad, or work around them, it's that simple. Assuming you implement your own suggestions that would make you a responsible DM. I suppose the use of "GM" instead of "DM" would make that initial choice clear, but usually when people decide to DM as in play DnD specifically, it's because they think the rules are good, or good enough, for what they want to do.

Expecting DnD to allow and maintain "balance" for every possible type of game, is unrealistic. That is why there are many tabletop rpg systems. There are in fact systems where people take turns being in charge so no one person is responsible, and even some games where no one is in charge, though those tend to veer far from tabletop rpg and towards boardgame.

Fighters fail to perform to the level the game expects of them.
They fail to perform to the level your game expects of them. Countless other people have played games where Fighters work just fine (even without counting my own checks on the math) but you state your conclusion, based upon your playstyle, your opinion, as objective fact, despite all evidence to the contrary. The very phrase "what the game expects of them" is RAI.

There's about three different things you're trying to claim are all the same. DM responsibility is separate from RAW readings which are separate from the clash of expected vs desired gamestyle. DM responsbility isn't even the same as changing the rules- getting the table to agree everyone should be gishes to meet the power level of your game is exercising DM responsibility. They're linked, because they're all parts of the game, but they can in fact be discussed separately.

[RoboEmperor]

Just know if you change the definition of "day" in "spells per day", you also need to change the definition of day in "1/day", "duration: 1 day", etc. because nowhere does anywhere say the "day"s here have different definitions.

[Mordaedil]

If your players spend 16 hours sleeping a day to regain their spells, you have my explicit permission to end the campaign by having the bad guys win.

[Cosi]

No! Wizard 1 is a requirement for Wizard 2. 8 Hours of rest is a requirement for getting your allotted "spells per day", but you cannot get two days per day.

That's basically Cosi's position. If you need to define everything precisely the game falls apart. Cosi is abusing the lack of a rules definition for multiple sets of spells per DAY. I am saying those rules definitions aren't needed if the word is common parlance like Day.

Just know if you change the definition of "day" in "spells per day", you also need to change the definition of day in "1/day", "duration: 1 day", etc. because nowhere does anywhere say the "day"s here have different definitions.

It's not "changing the definition of "day"", it's pointing out that "day" isn't actually defined. The rules are quite clear that if you prepare spells, you get your daily allotment of spells, minus any slots used in the past eight hours. At no point do those rules make reference to "day" or "daily" as anything other than a description of the spells you're getting. As far as the mechanics are concerned, they might as well be called the "warghbl-y" allotment of spells.

You don't need to define everything precisely, but you do need to define terms with mechanical meaning as having mechanical meaning. I have no problem identifying the eight hours you need to rest of each consisting of 60 minutes which each consist of 10 rounds. All the necessary terms are defined there. But "daily" isn't -- in any text anyone has cited -- defined as carrying any particular weight. What does a "daily" refresh period even mean? Does it mean your ability refreshes 24 hours after you use it? Once per day at a specific time? How do multiple uses of an ability work?

I don't dispute that the wording is confusing, or that it could have been written to enforce a daily limit. But it isn't. It's written with an 8-hour refresh ritual, which sounds a lot like a daily limit, but isn't in practice.

[RoboEmperor]

It's not "changing the definition of "day"", it's pointing out that "day" isn't actually defined. The rules are quite clear that if you prepare spells, you get your daily allotment of spells, minus any slots used in the past eight hours. At no point do those rules make reference to "day" or "daily" as anything other than a description of the spells you're getting. As far as the mechanics are concerned, they might as well be called the "warghbl-y" allotment of spells.

You don't need to define everything precisely, but you do need to define terms with mechanical meaning as having mechanical meaning. I have no problem identifying the eight hours you need to rest of each consisting of 60 minutes which each consist of 10 rounds. All the necessary terms are defined there. But "daily" isn't -- in any text anyone has cited -- defined as carrying any particular weight. What does a "daily" refresh period even mean? Does it mean your ability refreshes 24 hours after you use it? Once per day at a specific time? How do multiple uses of an ability work?

I don't dispute that the wording is confusing, or that it could have been written to enforce a daily limit. But it isn't. It's written with an 8-hour refresh ritual, which sounds a lot like a daily limit, but isn't in practice.

I do understand exactly what you are saying. I do. But in a RAW debate you lose because you can't say "day = until you refresh" because day isn't defined anywhere.

And you can't exactly claim RAI here either since WotC does not want players to rest more than once a day. So RAI is ambiguous.

So as unclear/poorly written the section is, and even though I totally believe 8 hour rests to refresh spells is totally reasonable, you lose the RAW argument.

[Cosi]

I'm not saying "day = until you refresh", I'm saying the passage doesn't define refresh in terms of day at all. It's incumbent on the pro-day people to find some text that applies whatever the reset method is for daily abilities instead of the defined one for Wizard spells, which doesn't track days at all. I'm saying that, as far as I can tell, the term "day" and "daily" is basically fluff text in this particular passage.

[RoboEmperor]

I'm not saying "day = until you refresh", I'm saying the passage doesn't define refresh in terms of day at all. It's incumbent on the pro-day people to find some text that applies whatever the reset method is for daily abilities instead of the defined one for Wizard spells, which doesn't track days at all. I'm saying that, as far as I can tell, the term "day" and "daily" is basically fluff text in this particular passage.

Yeah, so you're arguing RAI. "The RAI here is that day and daily are fluff text". Because you're saying WotC did not intend "day" and "daily" to be taken literally. But you can't win with RAI in this case because RAI is also only 1 rest per day. And Hard RAW you also lose.

[Unavenger]

The trouble is, "Day" isn't actually de facto used in the real world to mean 24 hours. If you wake up at 6AM, go to bed at 8AM 26 hours later, and wake back up at 11AM, you'd be justified in saying that 7AM and 7PM the first time around were the same day, and that they weren't the same day the second time around. You'd also be justified in saying that 6:30 and 7:30 the first time around, 25 hours apart, were the same day. That's how people use the word "Day" in real life. So your daily spells are the ones you get in each rest-intermittent period, because that's what people mean when they say "Day". I've never heard anyone seriously suggest that it'll be tomorrow the next time the clock strikes midnight - it'll be tomorrow when you get up the next morning.

[Cosi]

Yeah, so you're arguing RAI. "The RAI here is that day and daily are fluff text". Because you're saying WotC did not intend "day" and "daily" to be taken literally. But you can't win with RAI in this case because RAI is also only 1 rest per day. And Hard RAW you also lose.

No.

The RAW defines a mechanism for refreshing spells. You rest eight hours, you prepare spells, you get new spells. That process makes no mechanical reference to "day". That means that it is incumbent on the pro-day people to find somewhere where the term "daily" is defined in a way that overrides that mechanism.

Moreover, the game functions substantially more cleanly, and with substantially less unanswered questions if you assume that the rules for when you can prepare spells and what you get from preparing spells exclusively determine when you can prepare spells and what you get from preparing spells. Suppose we accept that "daily" overrides the mechanics, despite no definition being in evidence and that being a blatant violation of the specific/general principle. Now what happens if I prepare spells on Monday, wait until Tuesday to cast them, then try to prepare spells on Tuesday? Oh, right, a big ol' undefined. On the other hand, if we follow the RAW, it gives a clear answer to what behaviors cause you to get less spells when you prepare them. Specifically: casting spells in the last eight hours.

[Talakeal]

I would need to look at the precise wording in the PHB, but I believe Cosi is probsbly right by RAW and RAI.

AFAICT this does mean you get 2-3 times as many spells when you aren't actively adventuring though.

[HouseRules]

There are three primary cultures of when a day start in the real world.

Dust
Midnight
Dawn

A day always starts in the same relative time. Hours use relative hours, not mean hours in the Ancient Era. But by Classical Era, hours use mean hours.

[DarkSoul]

Find where the rules define day. If they don't we use the dictionary.For magical items, it's defined on page 221 of the Magic Item Compendium, last sentence under "Daily Use Items". While not explicitly relating to spell slots, it provides a precedent for the DM at the very least.

Really, it's a DM's call. Cosi's right that you can run through a couple of sets of spell slots in a single day if you nova an encounter or two and rest again, becasue the rules don't say you can't, but that just makes the 15 minute adventuring day problem that much worse. However, going by the MIC reference, your magical items recharge on a solar day cycle so spell slots could logically do the same.

[HouseRules]

For magical items, it's defined on page 221 of the Magic Item Compendium, last sentence under "Daily Use Items". While not explicitly relating to spell slots, it provides a precedent for the DM at the very least.

Really, it's a DM's call. Cosi's right that you can run through a couple of sets of spell slots in a single day if you nova an encounter or two and rest again, because the rules don't say you can't, but that just makes the 15 minute adventuring day problem that much worse. However, going by the MIC reference, your magical items recharge on a solar day cycle so spell slots could logically do the same.

Recharging your spells twice a solar day is two days per day since those spells are spells per day and require a day to go by.

[DarkSoul]

Recharging your spells twice a solar day is two days per day since those spells are spells per day and require a day to go by.You're correct and if anyone tried it in games I run I'd do, and have done, exactly the things I mentioned. Furthermore, I think it's somewhere in the cleric description that they have a specific time each day that they prepare spells, and are unable to do so at any other time. They differentiate other prepared casters by saying that those casters don't have a specific time they have to prepare spells each day, but there's still no indication that daily spell slots can be refreshed more than, well, daily. While Cosi is technically correct, there are enough precedents set in the entirety of the RAW for a DM to say you only get spell slots once per solar day.

It's right there in the rules that clerics only get spells once a day, and daily-use magic items recharge at dawn. Why are wizards and their spell slots special? Oh wait, they're not.

[zlefin]

It's too bad dnd doesn't have thoroughly defined rules like magic does. or at least closer to thoroughly defined.

[thelastorphan]

Cosi keeps saying the rules never use Day. But the table says Spells per Day. Are tables not rules text?

[Unavenger]

Cosi keeps saying the rules never use Day. But the table says Spells per Day. Are tables not rules text?

No, Cosi keeps saying the rules never define day, so we don't know whether it's meant to be a descriptivist "Day" like the one you would actually use or a prescriptivist "Day" like the one that's technically correct.

[Crake]

You're correct and if anyone tried it in games I run I'd do, and have done, exactly the things I mentioned. Furthermore, I think it's somewhere in the cleric description that they have a specific time each day that they prepare spells, and are unable to do so at any other time. They differentiate other prepared casters by saying that those casters don't have a specific time they have to prepare spells each day, but there's still no indication that daily spell slots can be refreshed more than, well, daily. While Cosi is technically correct, there are enough precedents set in the entirety of the RAW for a DM to say you only get spell slots once per solar day.

It's right there in the rules that clerics only get spells once a day, and daily-use magic items recharge at dawn. Why are wizards and their spell slots special? Oh wait, they're not.

It's written under general rules for divine spell preparation, it applies to all prepared divine casters, so druids, paladins and rangers all go by the same rules. It's literally only wizards that are a special case.

[thelastorphan]

No, Cosi keeps saying the rules never define day, so we don't know whether it's meant to be a descriptivist "Day" like the one you would actually use or a prescriptivist "Day" like the one that's technically correct.

So should we discount the precedent set by daily use items and prepared divine casters? Where day means a 24 hour period.

[Unavenger]

So should we discount the precedent set by daily use items and prepared divine casters? Where day means a 24 hour period.

Yes. Also, I can't find where the word "Day" is actually used in magic item overview beyond the stipulation of how much it costs to craft one, but that's irrelevant. Yes, "Once per day" and "A specific time of day" refer to different meanings of the word "Day" and this is as true in common use as in D&D.

[Erloas]

Like other spellcasters, a wizard can cast only a certain number of spells of each spell level per day. Her base daily spell allotment is given on Table: The Wizard (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/sorcererWizard.htm#tableTheWizard). In addition, she receives bonus spells per day if she has a high Intelligence score.
Unlike a bard (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/bard.htm) or sorcerer, a wizard may know any number of spells. She must choose and prepare her spells ahead of time by getting a good night’s sleep and spending 1 hour studying her spellbook. While studying, the wizard decides which spells to prepare.
So actually RAW (unless the SRD changed the wording from the book) it only counts if you sleep at night. So if you pull an all nighter and don't get to bed until 8am you don't get any spells that day.

And there are 3x more references to day in the passage than resting, but you're trying to claim that resting is more supported by RAW than day is? Not even counting that no other spell caster, ability, or item makes *any* reference to resting?
It is an *and* situation. You need a day *and* 8 hours of rest, not just one or the other.

[DarkSoul]

Yes. Also, I can't find where the word "Day" is actually used in magic item overview beyond the stipulation of how much it costs to craft one, but that's irrelevant. Yes, "Once per day" and "A specific time of day" refer to different meanings of the word "Day" and this is as true in common use as in D&D.No. Ignorance is no excuse, especially willful ignorance when I said EXACTLY where the reference to daily magic item charges was printed. If you can't find it after being given book and page, then you didn't look.

[HouseRules]

There are 12 hours of day, 2 hours of twilight, and 10 hours of night. Usually, the 2 hours of twilight are added to night for 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night.

Player characters need to sleep 8 hours in 10 consecutive hours. Only a single 2 hour night watch may disrupt this sleep, otherwise, they do not get the benefits of resting at all. Since characters need to sleep 8 hours in 10 consecutive hours, and 2 hour night watches need to be maintained, a party needs a minimum of 5 characters including familiars, hirelings, etc. that may do night watch. Otherwise, any DM may coup de grace them for the last two hours of their sleep.

6 PM to 7 PM Dust
7 PM to 9 PM First Watch
9 PM to 11 PM Second Watch
11 PM to 1 AM Third Watch
1 AM to 3 AM Fourth Watch
3 AM to 5 AM Fifth Watch
5 AM to 6 AM Dawn
6 AM to 6 PM Day

During the Day, a character may maximally commit 8 hours to crafting and 8 hours to travel, but there are only 12 hours, so players have to compromise their activities.

[Unavenger]

No. Ignorance is no excuse, especially willful ignorance when I said EXACTLY where the reference to daily magic item charges was printed. If you can't find it after being given book and page, then you didn't look.

I didn't bother to look it up as - as I said - it's not relevant. The use of "The time of day" to mean one thing and "Once per day" to mean another thing and "During the day" to mean one thing doesn't preclude the others meaning other things.


There are 12 hours of day, 2 hours of twilight, and 10 hours of night. Usually, the 2 hours of twilight are added to night for 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night.

Player characters need to sleep 8 hours in 10 consecutive hours. Only a single 2 hour night watch may disrupt this sleep, otherwise, they do not get the benefits of resting at all. Since characters need to sleep 8 hours in 10 consecutive hours, and 2 hour night watches need to be maintained, a party needs a minimum of 5 characters including familiars, hirelings, etc. that may do night watch. Otherwise, any DM may coup de grace them for the last two hours of their sleep.

6 PM to 7 PM Dust
7 PM to 9 PM First Watch
9 PM to 11 PM Second Watch
11 PM to 1 AM Third Watch
1 AM to 3 AM Fourth Watch
3 AM to 5 AM Fifth Watch
5 AM to 6 AM Dawn
6 AM to 6 PM Day

During the Day, a character may maximally commit 8 hours to crafting and 8 hours to travel, but there are only 12 hours, so players have to compromise their activities.

I swear that, at this point, you're just saying words that have something to do with the discussion at hand but don't actually mean much, aren't true, and don't answer the question at hand.

[HouseRules]

There is a difference from "teamwork" and demands.

Teamwork involve cooperation, and all cooperation involves some degree of compromise.
Stealing actions and resources from other player is not teamwork.
However, selfish builds are also not teamwork.
Too many DM allow selfish builds from certain groups of players and expect contribution from other group of players.
There are many ways to be a bad DM.
There are many ways to be a DM by RAW and that is horrible because there are many rules in RAW that most players do not want to deal with.

Yes, your character always need to known their encumbrance.
Yes, your character always need to do their daily stuff, from eating, drinking, sleeping, bathing, breathing, etc.

[Segev]

I think the fundamental issue, Fizban and Cosi, is that the disagreement is over just how far the DM has to go to bend a game to make all PCs "relevant" or "work."

Look up, on youtube, "BMX Bandit and Angel Summoner." Then consider how a DM might "make the game work" for both of them.

Fizban, I'm sure you have a pretty good answer. Cosi's answer, I suspect, would be that the BMX Bandit needs a buff.

Cosi's point is that, if the DM has to go so far as to "cheat" by changing the rules, then whatever he has to change the rules for is inherently broken. Fizban, I think you're point, if I understand it, is that DMs should be able to design encounters and games overall such that the fighter's strengths are relevant without having to change the rules.

Where I don't follow you is when you say "challenges" don't answer anything. If the question is, "demonstrate something that can happen in a game where a fighter is just plain a better choice than the wizard," how is that failing to answer anything?

[Erloas]

I think the general idea behind Fizban's posts is that at "reasonable" optimization levels all of the classes work together just fine. That the developers and many other people play in games all the time where wizards and fighters work perfectly fine together. Essentially that the game works fine unless players are actively trying to break it or the DM is ignoring parts of the rules that they don't consider important (food, shelter, light, encumbrance, NPCs acting like real people rather than drones waiting to interact with the PCs, etc. etc.).

Now there is of course a lot of variation in what "reasonable optimization" would be, as well as a huge range of questionable rules interpretations that are required for some things to work or not work.

Having watched said video, it seems more like Cosi's answer would be "the BMX bandit shouldn't exist, he should switch his BMX for angels of his own, then they would work together." Because his solution to "buff" any class is to give them access to spells, or more directly switch them out for a class that has spells instead.

[ColorBlindNinja]

I think the general idea behind Fizban's posts is that at "reasonable" optimization levels all of the classes work together just fine.

And there lies the rub. Reasonable is in the eye of the beholder.

[thelastorphan]

I think Fizban defines it as the optimization level the designers assumed. Played as the designers intended the game is far from the crazy imbalance possible with high and theoretical optimization.

[HouseRules]

Linear Level of Optimization - 2 players is 2x stronger than 1. Formula is n.
Triangular Level of Optimization - 2 players is 3x stronger than 1. Formula is (n^2 + n ) / 2.
Square Level of Optimization - 2 players is 4x stronger than 1. Formula is n^2

The game assume Linear Level of Optimization.

[ColorBlindNinja]

I think Fizban defines it as the optimization level the designers assumed. Played as the designers intended the game is far from the crazy imbalance possible with high and theoretical optimization.


Linear Level of Optimization - 2 players is 2x stronger than 1. Formula is n.
Triangular Level of Optimization - 2 players is 3x stronger than 1. Formula is (n^2 + n ) / 2.
Square Level of Optimization - 2 players is 4x stronger than 1. Formula is n^2

The game assume Linear Level of Optimization.

And given how incompetent WotC is, why should their opinion on how to play the game carry any weight?

[HouseRules]

It carries no weight of course.

Triangular Level is Average Optimization.
Square Level is Practical Optimization - may have lots of rocket tag issue if both sides fight square level of optimization.

Linear Level Party = DM must spread their attacks.
Triangular Level Party = DM must focus fire on Tank Character.
Square Level Party = DM must focus of Tier 1 Characters.

[thelastorphan]

Just because squeezing every advantage out of the game causes some things to break doesn't mean those things are broken at all levels of play. The stress testing of the system by thousands more players of course found problems that WotC never could have with a few dozen testers.

[HouseRules]

But they only play test the Role Playing aspect of the game, not the Combat balance aspect of the game.

[Mildly Inept]

I mean, WAS the imbalance an accident, though? Monte Cook explicitly stated his desire to nerf warriors and buff mages, and it really doesn't take a brain genius to see how powerful high level spells are. Furthermore, splat books released after the core game was released and extensively played by thousands of people made the full casters even stronger relative to martials. Like, you can't tell me it occurred to nobody that the Incantarix or Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil might be stupidly good. The Fighter's justification is that he can keep going all day and the Wizard can't, and they took *that* away from him.

Throw in Monte Cook's quotes about "Ivory Tower" game design and deliberate insertion of trap options, and it's difficult to escape the conclusion that this game was maliciously designed with the intent to punish players with insufficient "systems mastery." Throw in the fact that the way the books are presented and games are marketed explicitly push new players in the wrong direction (sure, Little Timmy, be a Sword and Board Fighter Man! or a Blasty Wizard!) and things look downright diabolical. Paizo doubled down on it in Pathfinder, making most of its pregens downright terrible and arguably making martial-caster disparity even worse despite some welcome upgrades to the Paladin and Ranger.

I think fundamentally, whatever the next 3.X knockoff is (and you know there's gonna be one to soak up the people mad about Pathfinder 2,) has to honestly address these problems if it has any hope of "fixing" the game.

[ColorBlindNinja]

I mean, WAS the imbalance an accident, though? Monte Cook explicitly stated his desire to nerf warriors and buff mages, and it really doesn't take a brain genius to see how powerful high level spells are. Furthermore, splat books released after the core game was released and extensively played by thousands of people made the full casters even stronger relative to martials. Like, you can't tell me it occurred to nobody that the Incantarix or Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil might be stupidly good. The Fighter's justification is that he can keep going all day and the Wizard can't, and they took *that* away from him.

Throw in Monte Cook's quotes about "Ivory Tower" game design and deliberate insertion of trap options, and it's difficult to escape the conclusion that this game was maliciously designed with the intent to punish players with insufficient "systems mastery." Throw in the fact that the way the books are presented and games are marketed explicitly push new players in the wrong direction (sure, Little Timmy, be a Sword and Board Fighter Man! or a Blasty Wizard!) and things look downright diabolical. Paizo doubled down on it in Pathfinder, making most of its pregens downright terrible and arguably making martial-caster disparity even worse despite some welcome upgrades to the Paladin and Ranger.

That's an interesting theory to be sure. But I'm not sure it's borne out by the evidence.

I was reading Arcana Evolved recently (written by Monte Cook) and found a statement that claimed that Magic Missile, was "too good."

Does that sound like a man who understands what makes 3.5's tier 1 classes godlike?

[RoboEmperor]

That's an interesting theory to be sure. But I'm not sure it's borne out by the evidence.

I was reading Arcana Evolved recently (written by Monte Cook) and found a statement that claimed that Magic Missile, was "too good."

Does that sound like a man who understands what makes 3.5's tier 1 classes godlike?

A wand of it at 1st level is too good.

[HouseRules]

Pathfinder lowered the Ceiling of Martial Classes and raised the Floor of Caster classes more then lowered the Ceiling of Caster Classes and raised the Floor of Martial Classes.

All classes have their Ceilings lowered, and all classes have their Floors raised.

Even if Martial Classes have geometric growth (base square root of 2), Caster classes have factorial growth.

[ColorBlindNinja]

A wand of it at 1st level is too good.

He meant the spell in general.

Also, can you afford a wand of MM at level 1?

[RoboEmperor]

He meant the spell in general.

Also, can you afford a wand of MM at level 1?

At the start no but as the first item you save up for? yes. It's only 750gp. I remember killing more than half the creatures we faced with it while the fighter struggled to hit with his +5 or +6 attack against AC 16 or 18 creatures. Them hobgoblins are a ***** to hit. Reliable unmissable damage every round that 2-3 shots everything.

MM cast directly was also decent because it was essentially spending a spell slot to throw several missiles at once rather than one and Web isn't exactly good when you're facing only 1 or 2 enemies already in melee range, and Glitterdust is essentially a save-or-die and some people don't like that. Unlike Fiery Burst there was no save.

But without a wand, yeah MM is crap.

[ColorBlindNinja]

At the start no but as the first item you save up for? yes. It's only 750gp. I remember killing more than half the creatures we faced with it while the fighter struggled to hit with his +5 or +6 attack against AC 16 or 18 creatures. Them hobgoblins are a ***** to hit. Reliable unmissable damage every round that 2-3 shots everything.

MM cast directly was also decent because it was essentially spending a spell slot to throw several missiles at once rather than one and Web isn't exactly good when you're facing enemies already in melee range, and Glitterdust is essentially a save-or-die and some people don't like that. Unlike Fiery Burst there was no save.

True enough.


But without a wand, yeah MM is crap.

Hence my disbelief surrounding Monte Cook calling it "too good."

[HouseRules]

You could spend 1,500 gp for a staff of magic missile at will instead of 750 gp for a wand of 50 charges of magic missiles.

[Mildly Inept]

That's an interesting theory to be sure. But I'm not sure it's borne out by the evidence.

I mean, fair enough, you can argue he didn't fully understand what he did, but the fact remains that he publicly admitted he was a very naughty boy for making 3e inaccessible and penalizing certain build choices on purpose and said he was sorry. And I'm not saying we shouldn't accept the apology; it's just a game, there's no need to hound the guy off the face of the planet. He seems like a nice enough fellow and had some good ideas.

That said, the fact that we're still dealing with the aftermath over a decade and a half later suggests the magnitude of the screwup. Malice and incompetence are not mutually exclusive, and the results have had lasting consequences.

For example, on the Paizo boards there was an infamous thread where a guy suggested maybe inserting "false options" into the game was a bad idea, and Sean K Reynolds' response was basically, "the weak should fear the strong and it's your fault for taking those suboptimal feats."

And like, I agree with him that a trained longbowman should be superior to a trained crossbowman because it's both true to life and rewards elves and classes with martial weapons proficiency. That said, the correct way to do this is to put a little note in the core rulebook noting that crossbows are meant to provide ranged options for non-martial characters instead of making the iconic Ranger a crossbowman, creating a crossbowman fighter specialist in the splats, etc. and then calling people morons for picking up a crossbow. THEY LEARNED IT BY WATCHING YOU, DAD.

To tie this thread back to the original topic, the natural result of this is that some people have a faulty idea of how the game is optimally played (the fighter) and some people have contemptuous loathing of the people who have said faulty ideas (the wizard). The community has been effectively poisoned by the original sin of bad design and presentation.

[RoboEmperor]

You could spend 1,500 gp for a staff of magic missile at will instead of 750 gp for a wand of 50 charges of magic missiles.

Custom magic item?

[ColorBlindNinja]

I mean, fair enough, you can argue he didn't fully understand what he did, but the fact remains that he publicly admitted he was a very naughty boy for making 3e inaccessible and penalizing certain build choices on purpose and said he was sorry.

He implied that he did it on purpose, while I'm more inclined to believe he was trying to save face.


That said, the fact that we're still dealing with the aftermath over a decade and a half later suggests the magnitude of the screwup. Malice and incompetence are not mutually exclusive, and the results have had lasting consequences.

True enough.


For example, on the Paizo boards there was an infamous thread where a guy suggested maybe inserting "false options" into the game was a bad idea, and Sean K Reynolds' response was basically, "the weak should fear the strong and it's your fault for taking those suboptimal feats."

And like, I agree with him that a trained longbowman should be superior to a trained crossbowman because it's both true to life and rewards elves and classes with martial weapons proficiency. That said, the correct way to do this is to put a little note in the core rulebook noting that crossbows are meant to provide ranged options for non-martial characters instead of making the iconic Ranger a crossbowman, creating a crossbowman fighter specialist in the splats, etc. and then calling people morons for picking up a crossbow. THEY LEARNED IT BY WATCHING YOU, DAD.

I'm not convinced that Pazio have more of a clue what they're doing than WotC did.

They maintained that non core classes are generally stronger than core ones. :smallsigh:

[noob]

Custom magic item?

even then he is wrong on the pricing: it is 1800

[HouseRules]

even then he is wrong on the pricing: it is 1800

Forgot the material cost.

Charged (50 charges) = ½ unlimited use base price, reverse it becomes Unlimited = 100 charges for the magic portion of the crafting.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Forgot the material cost.

Charged (50 charges) = ½ unlimited use base price, reverse it becomes Unlimited = 100 charges for the magic portion of the crafting.

Beware of the custom magic item rules, they are a dark, terrifying pit of madness. :smalleek:

[HouseRules]

The formula says the minimum price. DM's are allowed to increase the price from the formulas.

[ColorBlindNinja]

The formula says the minimum price. DM's are allowed to increase the price from the formulas.

If the DM is sane, he/she will go NOPE to the whole custom magic item section.

[HouseRules]

More along the lines of

Spell Level x (Spell Level + Caster Level) x Multiplier

for balance against the quadratic wizards.



Effect Multiplier
Spell Trigger (Per Charge) Charges × 15 gp
Spell Completion (Including Scrolls) Uses × 25 gp
Use-Activated (Including Potions) Uses × 50 gp
X/Day Continuous (caster level/day) X × 200 gp
At-Will Continuous (caster level/day) 5 × 200 gp
X/Day (Spell Trigger) X × 300 gp
At-Will (Spell Trigger) 5 × 300 gp
X/Day Continuous (caster level/hour) or Use-Activated X × 400 gp
At-Will Continuous (caster level/hour) or Use-Activated 5 × 400 gp
X/Day Continuous (caster level/10 minutes) X × 600 gp
At-Will Continuous (caster level/10 minutes) 5 × 600 gp
[tr][td]X/Day Continuous (caster level/minute) X × 800 gp
At-Will Continuous (caster level/minute) 5 × 800 gp
X/Day Continuous (caster level/round) X × 1600 gp
At-Will Continuous (caster level/round) 5 × 1600 gp
Command Word 1 × 1800 gp


X/Day (Spell Trigger) use the ratio (Charged (50 charges) = ½ unlimited use base price)

with special exceptions...

[RoboEmperor]

If the DM is sane, he/she will go NOPE to the whole custom magic item section.

Exactly this. Never seen a DM allow custom magic items. You think out of combat spell shenanigans is bad? You think Artificer's early access due to PrC spellcasting is bad? You haven't seen NOTHING yet. Custom magic items will put all the above to shame.

[Cosi]

Cosi keeps saying the rules never use Day. But the table says Spells per Day. Are tables not rules text?

No, Cosi keeps saying the rules never define day, so we don't know whether it's meant to be a descriptivist "Day" like the one you would actually use or a prescriptivist "Day" like the one that's technically correct.

Unavenger is correct. However, the "but the table says" is not persuasive, because we know that text isn't a set of hard rules. There are effects that allow your spell slots to be used for things that aren't spells (for example, the Archmage's Arcane Fire High Arcana). Therefore, we can conclude that the "spells per day" is descriptive, not prescriptive.


So should we discount the precedent set by daily use items and prepared divine casters? Where day means a 24 hour period.

That's not what it says. Here is the relevant text from the Magic Item Compendium (page 221):


Unless otherwise noted, any item with daily uses regains all of those charges at dawn each day.

The first thing I'll point out is that it says "unless otherwise noted", so it explicitly would not override the rules for Wizards preparing spells even if it was relevant. But it also doesn't say that the charges recover every 24 hours, it says they recover "at dawn each day". That means that you get the charges when dawn happens, not when 24 hours have elapsed. If you go to a plane where it is always night, you can wait 24 hours or 240 hours, you won't get any charges because it won't have been dawn. If you live on a round world and chase the sunrise, you can keep refreshing those charges as often as you want. You can argue that's cheesy or not RAI, but personally I think the idea of adventurers following the sunrise to get more juice out of their magic is pretty cool, though there are balance concerns.

As for divine casters, they also don't have a 24 hour constraint. The relevant SRD page is here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/divineSpells.htm). I think this is the important quote:


However, a divine spellcaster does not require a period of rest to prepare spells. Instead, the character chooses a particular part of the day to pray and receive spells. The time is usually associated with some daily event.

Once again, you'll note no reference to 24 hours. Instead, you recharge at a particular party of the day. If you can set things up so you experience that part of the day more than once in 24 hours, you get spells more than once in 24 hours.


So actually RAW (unless the SRD changed the wording from the book) it only counts if you sleep at night. So if you pull an all nighter and don't get to bed until 8am you don't get any spells that day.

No:


To prepare her daily spells, a wizard must first sleep for 8 hours. The wizard does not have to slumber for every minute of the time, but she must refrain from movement, combat, spellcasting, skill use, conversation, or any other fairly demanding physical or mental task during the rest period. If her rest is interrupted, each interruption adds 1 hour to the total amount of time she has to rest in order to clear her mind, and she must have at least 1 hour of uninterrupted rest immediately prior to preparing her spells. If the character does not need to sleep for some reason, she still must have 8 hours of restful calm before preparing any spells.

No reference to night. No reference to night on the whole page (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/arcaneSpells.htm), in fact.


Having watched said video, it seems more like Cosi's answer would be "the BMX bandit shouldn't exist, he should switch his BMX for angels of his own, then they would work together." Because his solution to "buff" any class is to give them access to spells, or more directly switch them out for a class that has spells instead.

You know, you could ask me. What with me being in this thread, and being totally willing to explain my position at length to anyone who I think is even notionally capable of having a meaningful conversation about it. In any case, that's inaccurate. It's close to accurate in some ways, but it misses some key points.

The problem demonstrated in the Angel Summoner/BMX Bandit video is one arising from characters with incompatible idioms. The things that challenge BMX Bandit (for example: stairs) are a trivial obstacle to Angel Summoner. The things that challenge Angel Summoner (for example: the stars coming right and the dread children of The Black Goat of the Woods with Ten Thousand Young flooding into the world) are instantly fatal for BMX Bandit. That doesn't make BMX Bandit a bad character, and it doesn't make Angel Summoner a good character. But it does mean that if you build Angel Summoner fully expecting that you will participate in a campaign where the ability to summon hosts of angels to smite your foes will be useful, having someone else show up with BMX Bandit means that one if you isn't getting the game you want. Either you have a campaign where BMX stunts are a relevant ability and you don't get to exercise the full effects of your angel summoning, or you get a campaign where there are challenges where your angel summoning is a necessary component of a solution and the guy with a BMX doesn't do anything important.

But I wouldn't say that the BMX Bandit needs to turn into another Angel Summoner to be relevant. He just needs some way to upgrade "rides a BMX" to the idiom Angel Summoner occupies. For example, he could turn into Ghost Rider, who has an idiom compatible with Angel Summoners, but is still at least kind of recognizable as something BMX Bandit might upgrade into. And you can say that you don't think becoming Ghost Rider is compatible with your vision of BMX Bandit, but at that point I submit that it's you who is saying that BMX Bandit isn't an appropriate companion for Angel Summoner.

Finally, as I've said multiple times, the complaint "you just want to give people spells" misses the point, generally in one of two ways. First, it may be that you've defined the kind of abilities that would make someone relevant in a party with a Wizard as inherently being spells, in which case I would again say that the problem you have is one of your own creation. Second, you may observe that I say things like "you could give shadow walk to people with some Shadow Hand maneuvers, and that would be a relevant ability that competes with teleport". And, yes, that's stated in terms of spells. But that's because all, or almost all, the relevant non-combat abilities are specified as spells. So I can either be pointlessly obscurantist and start every post with enough game mechanics to write non-spell alternatives to utility spells, or I can trust that the people reading my posts will realize that the intention behind "give Martial Adepts shadow walk" includes some level of specifying that ability in terms of their classes rather than as a spell.


Just because squeezing every advantage out of the game causes some things to break doesn't mean those things are broken at all levels of play. The stress testing of the system by thousands more players of course found problems that WotC never could have with a few dozen testers.

You're probably overestimating how much broken stuff was found by how few posters. And how much work those posters would have done for free if you let them. There are rules exploits arising from 3.0 -> 3.5 changes that were pointed out for free before those changes ever went to print, but they went to print anyway.


I mean, WAS the imbalance an accident, though?

The imbalance was because they stopped testing, and also because they didn't care. It's not hard to make a balanced system, the parts of 3e that were tested (roughly, E6) are very well balanced in most respects. The issue is that the designers didn't care. My favorite example of this is the changes to wish between 3.0 and 3.5. In 3.0 wish had a 15k GP cap on magic items you could make, meaning that even SLA wish could only provide you with mid-level gear (plus consumables, but those have their own issues). In 3.5, that restriction was lifted, allowing SLA wish to create, at minimum, any printed item. Which is hilariously broken, but seeing as the designers explicitly introduced it, at least arguably RAI.

[Quertus]

If the DM is sane, he/she will go NOPE to the whole custom magic item section.


Exactly this. Never seen a DM allow custom magic items. You think out of combat spell shenanigans is bad? You think Artificer's early access due to PrC spellcasting is bad? You haven't seen NOTHING yet. Custom magic items will put all the above to shame.

And this is why I'm happily insane. Or, as I like to call it, "DM, creator of random artifacts and seemingly arbitrary prices thereon".

What's D&D without an Amulet of Caterpillar Control, or other totally bonkers loot?