Is a 6/10 spelling casting warmage rainbow servant worth it?

[redking]

My intention with this post is not to re-litigate text vs table, or whether rainbow servant should be 10/10 and not 6/10, but whether we can make a 6/10 warmage rainbow servant work. For those that do not know, rainbow servant has this capstone ability.


Cleric Spell Access: A 10th-level rainbow servant can learn and cast spells from the cleric list, even if they don't appear on the lists of any spellcasting class he has. Such spells are cast as divine spells if they don't appear on the sorcerer/wizard or bard spell lists. This class feature grants access to the spells, but not extra spells per day. The 10th-level rainbow servant can likewise read scrolls with cleric spells on them and use wands and staffs that contain cleric spells.

The consensus on this is that this capstone ability grants spontaneous access to the full cleric spell list for fixed caster like the warmage.

At 10/10 spellcasting progression, this is considered Tier 0. All of the handbooks assume this spellcasting progression. Can we make 6/10 spellcasting progression work? No tricks. No early entries.

[flappeercraft]

All things considered spontaneous cleric 8ths seems pretty good but I assume you want 9ths. I can see a case for the use of Versatile Spellcaster if we go through some hoops to get miracle as a spell known and then use it to spontaneously cast miracle and then in turn sanctum versions of 9th level cleric spells.

Getting miracle as a spell known is weird but could be done via heighten spell, earth spell, and sanctum spell to be able to cast effectively 10th level spells and then taking Extra Spell (Miracle). This would let you know it, albeit be unable to cast it normally. However Versatile Spellcaster should work from there.

[Zanos]

When you finish the class with no tricks and get the capstone, you're an ECL 16 character casting 6th level spells. Single classed spontaneous characters are casting 8ths and in one level will be on 9ths, while you will still have 6ths. Can you make that workable? I guess, but it's not very good.

[redking]

Getting miracle as a spell known is weird but could be done via heighten spell, earth spell, and sanctum spell to be able to cast effectively 10th level spells and then taking Extra Spell (Miracle). This would let you know it, albeit be unable to cast it normally. However Versatile Spellcaster should work from there.

This would fall under "no tricks". Any DM allowing that would allow 10/10.

[Troacctid]

It's basically just a mystic theurge at that point, except without the dual casting, because your campaign is going to be over before you ever unlock the capstone. So, yeah, it's pretty bad.

For the record, the 10/10 casting version averages out to Tier 2. The capstone carries very little weight because of how late it comes online; the majority of the class's power comes from providing extra utility (via the 1st- and 4th-level abilities) to an already-strong base class at a low opportunity cost.

[AvatarVecna]

We could argue if it was worth it should the capstone come into play at lvl 1. But level 10? No. As part of being a warmage, you're already half a spell level behind, and access to your whole list is of debatable value when your list is so typecast. Your CL, max spell level, and spells/day fall behind drastically, with only very limited domain access to show for it. Right from the very first level, you will begin falling even further behind than you already were playing warmage in the first place, with very little gained to show for it. Up until you get the capstone, you are actively letting your team down by playing a warmage even worse than it already was to begin with.

[pabelfly]

If you wanted to expand Warmage's spell list, a one-level dip for the Good domain might be worth it. You lose one spell level, but getting in doesn't cost you any feats unlike most classes that expand your spell list, and you were probably investing in Knowledge (Arcana) anyway.

Otherwise, I'd echo the sentiment that if you want divine and arcane casting, Mystic Theurge is probably the more practical solution in this situation.

[Biggus]

It's basically just a mystic theurge at that point, except without the dual casting, because your campaign is going to be over before you ever unlock the capstone. So, yeah, it's pretty bad.


Except that a significant minority of people do play to level 16 and beyond. There was a thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?655413-Curiosity-How-often-do-people-ACTUALLY-play-from-1-20&highlight=longest+played+characters) about it a few months ago (you posted in it).

I'm not saying that playing at high levels is super common, but it's not so rare as to be irrelevant to the discussion.

[H_H_F_F]

At 20? Sure. But for most of your career, you'll be struggling.

I'd say a warmage getting some domain access / other means of spell list expansion, would be superior for most of your career, and a contender even at 20 with the right domains.

[RandomPeasant]

When you finish the class with no tricks and get the capstone, you're an ECL 16 character casting 6th level spells. Single classed spontaneous characters are casting 8ths and in one level will be on 9ths, while you will still have 6ths. Can you make that workable? I guess, but it's not very good.

Not to mention you lose casting before you finish. At 10th level, at least you've got full spontaneous Cleric casting to show for being down four levels of progression. But you've lost three levels of progression already by 7th, and at that point all you have to show for it is three domains, none of which is hugely powerful. Even full-progression Rainbow Servant is extremely backloaded, partial-progression is just a miserable slog (and this is true even if you continue playing for a while after getting the capstone).

The only saving grace is that Warmage is not exact a high-power option to begin with, so you're not loosing as a much as if you took a 6/10 casting class as a Beguiler or a Wizard or something, but even then you could just be a Mage of the Arcane Order.

[AvatarVecna]

Except that a significant minority of people do play to level 16 and beyond. There was a thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?655413-Curiosity-How-often-do-people-ACTUALLY-play-from-1-20&highlight=longest+played+characters) about it a few months ago (you posted in it).

I'm not saying that playing at high levels is super common, but it's not so rare as to be irrelevant to the discussion.

Assuming all levels see an equal amount of play, if you are Tier 3 from lvl 1-15 and Tier 0 from lvl 16-20, you are averaging Tier 2.25 (low T2). This number gets worse if higher levels are less common than lower levels; how much worse depends on how much less common, but even without any weighting, the numbers already don't favor the build.

We can argue about how much each level range is represented, but we don't have to. The fact remains that if you're only broken for a quarter of the game, and you're fine (even relatively weak) for the other 3/4ths of it, you're not actually all that broken. Barbarian does that, just in reverse. Artificer has been broken from level one.


Even full-progression Rainbow Servant is extremely backloaded, partial-progression is just a miserable slog (and this is true even if you continue playing for a while after getting the capstone).

*nodnod*

If rainbow servant was a 9/9 class and the last level of it didn't exist, it'd be a slight upgrade but would change basically nothing about how Warmage actually operates, and nobody would get hung up on the table/text distinction. Access to some eh domains, some limited flight abilities, a couple at-will divinations. Whoooooo cares.

[Telonius]

Warmage's role is mostly on the blasty end. If you want a Cleric/Blasty character, Eldritch Disciple would probably serve you a lot better. No worrying about spell slots for your blasting, flight isn't limited to minutes/day (assuming you take Fell Flight), and you can get 9th-level casting without any hoops to jump through.

[Crake]

Assuming all levels see an equal amount of play, if you are Tier 3 from lvl 1-15

I don't think I'd call a warmage losing up to 3 levels of spellcasting tier 3. Warmage alone is tier 4, so losing progression probably puts you at 4.5ish. Also, spending more than 3/4s of your levels playing basically a worse version of your base class is pretty disheartening. I would probably better recommend coordinating with your DM some sort of rebuild as you hit level 16, and just go from straight warmage, into rainbow servant 10, with some fluff around sacrificing some of your arcane power in exchange for a divine blessing or something.

[Troacctid]

The tier list puts the most weight on mid-levels, followed by low levels, with high levels at a distant third. This is because campaigns spend the most time in the middle ranges. Starting at low levels is common enough, but you tend to level out of them quickly, and if you imagine your build's power level as a conglomerate of race, class, feats, items, and so on, low levels are where your class is the least relevant in relation to those other factors. On the flip side, high levels often end up being out of the campaign's scope entirely, as we see in the link Biggus posted. WotC has also done market research on this topic, and they came to similar conclusions, which is why most of their official adventure paths nowadays stop at level 10 or 15—if it goes on much longer than that, they know most groups will probably never make it to the end.

Realistically, the warmage is more like Tier 3 from level 1–5, Tier 2 from level 6–16, and Tier 3 from level 17–20. The combat-focused spell list really shines in the midgame, where the warmage does a good job of matching the sorcerer on power level, and advanced/eclectic learning preserves momentum as the base warmage list starts slowing down. This means that the midgame focus of the tier list actually favors warmage quite a bit already.

[RandomPeasant]

There is no universe where the Warmage is T2 at mid levels. The Beguiler and Dread Necromancer are T2 because they get good combat spells and also utility and long-term power options. The Warmage gets at best okay combat spells and also nothing. You are better than a Sorcerer who is trying to be a Warmage, but a Sorcerer who is trying to be a Warmage is just really bad on its own terms.

[AvatarVecna]

I don't think I'd call a warmage losing up to 3 levels of spellcasting tier 3. Warmage alone is tier 4, so losing progression probably puts you at 4.5ish. Also, spending more than 3/4s of your levels playing basically a worse version of your base class is pretty disheartening. I would probably better recommend coordinating with your DM some sort of rebuild as you hit level 16, and just go from straight warmage, into rainbow servant 10, with some fluff around sacrificing some of your arcane power in exchange for a divine blessing or something.

This is in response to the discussion about the retiering project, which per Troacctid judged warmage in general to be T2 and judged the warmage/RS build to be T2 overall under the 10/10 assumption. The build as a whole is obviously a good deal worse if it loses three caster levels on an already underwhelming full caster, but that not really what the tangent was discussing.

[Troacctid]

There is no universe where the Warmage is T2 at mid levels. The Beguiler and Dread Necromancer are T2 because they get good combat spells and also utility and long-term power options. The Warmage gets at best okay combat spells and also nothing. You are better than a Sorcerer who is trying to be a Warmage, but a Sorcerer who is trying to be a Warmage is just really bad on its own terms.
The set of guidelines that puts warmage in T2 is pretty easy to arrive at, honestly. If you just assume that combat is the most important part of the game—a very reasonable assumption, based on how adventures normally go—then you're most of the way there already. If you also take into account equivalent optimization when comparing the warmage against the tier benchmark of sorcerer, warmage is harder to screw up at low-op and still has list expanders and/or mail delivery to keep it plenty competitive at high-op.

[Rebel7284]

Can we make 6/10 spellcasting progression work?

Yes


No tricks. No early entries.

No

You need a huge power boost to balance out being 5 levels behind a Wizard, and everything on that power level would likely be considered a trick.

Sure it would be nifty on a Beholder Mage or, more reasonably, Divine Crusader + Uncanny Forethought, but the regular Warmage is just too far behind.

[RandomPeasant]

This is in response to the discussion about the retiering project, which per Troacctid judged warmage in general to be T2 and judged the warmage/RS build to be T2 overall under the 10/10 assumption. The build as a whole is obviously a good deal worse if it loses three caster levels on an already underwhelming full caster, but that not really what the tangent was discussing.

The only thing I understand less than "the Warmage is T2" is "the Warmage is T2 and also the Rainbow Warsnake is T2".


The set of guidelines that puts warmage in T2 is pretty easy to arrive at, honestly. If you just assume that combat is the most important part of the game—a very reasonable assumption, based on how adventures normally go—then you're most of the way there already.

No, you're none of the way there. The Warblade is good at combat. It is, rightly, T3. Because that's where "good at combat" lands you. And the Warmage is not even particularly good at combat. It can't go all day like an Ubercharger, and its spells aren't good off the bat like the Sorcerer or Beguiler or Dread Necromancer. The one niche it has is AoE damage, but friendly fire means it's not even great at that. You really want wings of flurry, but that's Sorcerer-only so you can't even get it with Advanced Learning.


If you also take into account equivalent optimization when comparing the warmage against the tier benchmark of sorcerer, warmage is harder to screw up at low-op and still has list expanders and/or mail delivery to keep it plenty competitive at high-op.

The theoretical floor of the Sorcerer is much lower than the Warmage, but the practical floor is about the same. Yes, someone could learn fire trap as their first 2nd level spell or guards and wards as their first 6th, but in practice even new players don't do that. So what you have is "Warmage" versus "limited selection of Warmage spells, but also maybe spells that blow the Warmage out of the water". A new player might pick cone of cold as a 10th level Sorcerer and be a strictly-worse Warmage. But they also might pick magic jar and be a way better Warmage -- and it's not like having six orb spells lets you flex all that much over the guy who has one to compensate.

As far as the optimization goes, "you can do a mailman" is not really the win you think it is. When good casters optimize, they get things like Shadowcraft Mage, Initiate of Mystra, Ancestral Relic (Runestaff), Aberration Wild Shape, or DMM: Persistent. Not "I can be an Ubercharger as long as my slots last". The list-expansion is better, but Warmage is worse at the same tricks than Beguiler and probably worse overall than the Sorcerer.

[AvatarVecna]

The only thing I understand less than "the Warmage is T2" is "the Warmage is T2 and also the Rainbow Warsnake is T2".

I mistyped, warmage is T3 not T2. But rainbow warsnake is average T2. If you don't understand that being T3 for 15 levels and T0 for 5 means you're averaging low T2, you might need to go back to grade school and ask a teacher to explain how averages work.

[Troacctid]

No, you're none of the way there. The Warblade is good at combat. It is, rightly, T3. Because that's where "good at combat" lands you. And the Warmage is not even particularly good at combat. It can't go all day like an Ubercharger, and its spells aren't good off the bat like the Sorcerer or Beguiler or Dread Necromancer. The one niche it has is AoE damage, but friendly fire means it's not even great at that. You really want wings of flurry, but that's Sorcerer-only so you can't even get it with Advanced Learning.
The degree to which you are good at combat matters, because being really, really good at fighting without any additional investment means that you can instead invest in whatever else you want, either becoming good at things other than fighting, or just getting even better at fighting, or a mix of both. Warmage's floor as a striker at mid levels is mostly better than warblade's, since its spell slots are so plentiful, and having access to both ranged damage and AoE damage shouldn't be understated; it's a big upgrade over being limited to melee damage only. Warmage's ceiling is also a lot higher by virtue of being a full caster who can interact with the whole overpowered spellcasting subsystem. (Native access to the sorcerer/wizard spell list doesn't hurt either.)


The theoretical floor of the Sorcerer is much lower than the Warmage, but the practical floor is about the same. Yes, someone could learn fire trap as their first 2nd level spell or guards and wards as their first 6th, but in practice even new players don't do that. So what you have is "Warmage" versus "limited selection of Warmage spells, but also maybe spells that blow the Warmage out of the water". A new player might pick cone of cold as a 10th level Sorcerer and be a strictly-worse Warmage. But they also might pick magic jar and be a way better Warmage -- and it's not like having six orb spells lets you flex all that much over the guy who has one to compensate.

As far as the optimization goes, "you can do a mailman" is not really the win you think it is. When good casters optimize, they get things like Shadowcraft Mage, Initiate of Mystra, Ancestral Relic (Runestaff), Aberration Wild Shape, or DMM: Persistent. Not "I can be an Ubercharger as long as my slots last". The list-expansion is better, but Warmage is worse at the same tricks than Beguiler and probably worse overall than the Sorcerer.
Sorcerers are most advantaged over warmages at high levels, where they have access to a lot of broken spells that are hard for warmages to get, but if high levels don't receive as much weight in the tier rankings, that really weakens the sorcerer's best edge, because at low-op, I feel pretty confident in saying that the average low-op warmage is going to outperform the average low-op sorcerer without much trouble. It also helps a lot that warmages just, like, get some of the best sorcerer spells in core, like, automatically.

Beguiler is probably better than both of them most of the time, but that speaks more to beguiler being great than anything else.

Also, magic jar, really? That's your example? Instead of being a worse version of a warmage, the sorcerer is going to be a worse version of a dread necromancer, and that's a happy ending for the sorcerer? It's not even a particularly amazing combat spell. It takes two rounds to do anything and then it gives them a save to negate. I mean, it's fine, I guess, but if you're that high on save-or-lose spells, like...warmage gets those too. I would definitely not put magic jar above all warmage 5ths combined.

[Crake]

I mistyped, warmage is T3 not T2. But rainbow warsnake is average T2. If you don't understand that being T3 for 15 levels and T0 for 5 means you're averaging low T2, you might need to go back to grade school and ask a teacher to explain how averages work.

T3 I could MAYBE get behind, but not necessarily. T4 is defined as "can do one thing REALLY well, but can't do anything else", which i think is almost perfectly descriptive of warmage. It does combat. That's it. And not even combat, it does killing people. And at the expense of losing 4 caster levels, it would definitely start to fall out of tier 3 if it was there after the first lost level. I also wouldn't put it at t0 from level 15 onward, because at level 15 it's rocking 6th level spells. Sure, it has spontaneous access to the entire cleric list up to 6th level, but so does a chameleon with versatile spellcaster, and they have spontaneous access to ALL divine spells, not just cleric ones, while ALSO having access to all arcane spells in the form of a spellbook they can add a new spell to literally every day, and they can access BOTH.

It would be questionable if it ever reaches t0 sub-epic, considering it lacks the ability to reach those pivotal level 9 spells, it only gets 8th level spells at level 19, which is probably around where we'd consider it maybe eeking into t1 territory, but at that point, full casters have been throwing around their highest level spells for 2 levels already.

[pabelfly]

Warmage being at Tier 4 doesn't make sense. Tier 4 is for the Barbarian who charges and attacks each turn. It's a decent strategy, until you have an encounter where charging won't work, which can be surprisingly common.

Warmage, meanwhile, might be a blaster, but its spell list has answers to all sorts of combat situations that a typical Barabarian won't be able to, and for enemies that are difficult for casters to deal with without any sort of optimization.

Saying "it's just good at combat, Tier 4" is not taking into account other classes rated at T4 and how favourably it stacks up to those classes.

[Crake]

Warmage being at Tier 4 doesn't make sense. Tier 4 is for the Barbarian who charges and attacks each turn. It's a decent strategy, until you have an encounter where charging won't work, which can be surprisingly common.

Warmage, meanwhile, might be a blaster, but its spell list has answers to all sorts of combat situations that a typical Barabarian won't be able to, and for enemies that are difficult for casters to deal with without any sort of optimization.

Saying "it's just good at combat, Tier 4" is not taking into account other classes rated at T4 and how favourably it stacks up to those classes.

That would be a case of barbarian being low tier 4, while warmage is high tier 4, maybe. It doesn't change the fact that warmage has little to nothing available to them outside of combat, and with this build specifically, they don't even get access to advanced/eclectic learning to open up their spell list to some of the more broadly useful utility spells, because those class features are lost by taking rainbow servant.

The fact is, haivng 20 different blasting options at each level is rarely going to be functionally different than having 1 or 2 at each level, and a class like a beguiler could replicate that by just UMDing a runestaff that they got with ancestral relic or item familiar.

Plus you also need to again, take into account the fact that you're losing 4 caster levels over the 6-15 progression, which will further reduce your tier, so they probably go from high tier 4 to low tier 4, possibly even tier 5.

[Chronos]

A T4 barbarian isn't only good at charging. That might be their most powerful option, but they can also do fairly well if they start the turn next to their opponent, and even if they're not built for it, they'll be decent at grappling, too. There will still be situations where their effectiveness is greatly reduced, but then, that's true of the warmage, too. And the situations where the warmage is hampered can be very common, like "allies adjacent to the enemies". That takes out their AoE options, and gives the enemy cover (and a chance to hit allies) against anything with a ranged attack roll, and once you've eliminated AoE and ranged attack rolls, there's precious little left on the Warmage list.

[pabelfly]

A T4 barbarian isn't only good at charging. That might be their most powerful option, but they can also do fairly well if they start the turn next to their opponent, and even if they're not built for it, they'll be decent at grappling, too. There will still be situations where their effectiveness is greatly reduced, but then, that's true of the warmage, too. And the situations where the warmage is hampered can be very common, like "allies adjacent to the enemies". That takes out their AoE options, and gives the enemy cover (and a chance to hit allies) against anything with a ranged attack roll, and once you've eliminated AoE and ranged attack rolls, there's precious little left on the Warmage list.

An ally being in the road could equally apply to a Barbarian as a Warmage. Worse, actually, because the Warmage can just move to a different square and the opponent loses cover, while Barbarian would prefer to charge in a straight line and reach their enemy in one turn, limiting options that much more for them.

[Thunder999]

It's definitely still worth it, warmage 9ths are truly terrible.

[RandomPeasant]

I mistyped, warmage is T3 not T2. But rainbow warsnake is average T2. If you don't understand that being T3 for 15 levels and T0 for 5 means you're averaging low T2, you might need to go back to grade school and ask a teacher to explain how averages work.

I get that logic, but Troacctid is in this very thread explaining her belief that the regular Warmage is T2.


The degree to which you are good at combat matters, because being really, really good at fighting without any additional investment means that you can instead invest in whatever else you want, either becoming good at things other than fighting, or just getting even better at fighting, or a mix of both.

Yes, this is why classes like the Beguiler or Wizard are good. But simply casting fireball or orb of cold does not make you "really, really good at fighting". Those spells deal d6/level damage. That means you usually kill a same-level Wizard if they have 10 CON. Given that most monsters have a HD larger than a d4, a CON higher than 10, or more than one HD per CR, I'm not exactly impressed.


Warmage's floor as a striker at mid levels is mostly better than warblade's, since its spell slots are so plentiful, and having access to both ranged damage and AoE damage shouldn't be understated

And the Warblade's access to Diamond Mind save-replacers, white raven tactics, and iron heart surge shouldn't be understated either.


I feel pretty confident in saying that the average low-op warmage is going to outperform the average low-op sorcerer without much trouble.

The question is how do you weight that average? Obviously a 8th level Warmage is better than a 8th level Sorcerer who picks black tentacles as their one spell. But that margin isn't huge. Conversely, a Sorcerer who picks polymorph is pretty massively better than an 8th level Warmage, and it's not like a player who isn't optimizing much will never pick polymorph. Beyond that, the low-op Sorcerer is not T2 either.


It also helps a lot that warmages just, like, get some of the best sorcerer spells in core, like, automatically.

Let's not get ahead of our skis here. They usually get one pretty good Sorcerer spell per level. But that's not true at all levels, and none of the spells they get are the best at their level, even Core-only.


Also, magic jar, really? That's your example? Instead of being a worse version of a warmage, the sorcerer is going to be a worse version of a dread necromancer, and that's a happy ending for the sorcerer?

I'm not really sure what the implication of this argument is supposed to be, because it only really makes sense if you think the Dread Necromancer is worse than the Warmage. Yes, a lot of good Sorcerers are worse Beguilers or Dread Necromancers. That's because those classes are really good, and genuinely do get wide varieties of top-tier Sorcerer/Wizard spells at each level.

Stepping away from strictly tier-system questions for a second, the Sorcerer is simply caught in an awkward place where the Wizard is better at having a variety of magic and the Beguiler/DN are better at having specialized magic. The only real reason to play one is if you're fond of one of the Sorcerer-only options and your DM won't let you get it off-list.


It's not even a particularly amazing combat spell. It takes two rounds to do anything and then it gives them a save to negate.

I, personally, would not feel the need to cast the spell with an hours/level duration in combat to use it in combat, but maybe that's a personal preference thing. And, yes, it gives them a save to negate. But would you care to explain what it does when they fail that save? Because personally I find the effect rather more impressive than anything the Warmage gets short of finger of death.


T3 I could MAYBE get behind, but not necessarily. T4 is defined as "can do one thing REALLY well, but can't do anything else", which i think is almost perfectly descriptive of warmage. It does combat.

I will say that if you're putting the Warblade in T3, and I think you should, it's wrong not to stick the Warmage there as well. Troacctid's point about combat being important is true, it's just that "combat" can't get you to T2 when T2 classes are natively good at combat as well and natively get other stuff.


It would be questionable if it ever reaches t0 sub-epic, considering it lacks the ability to reach those pivotal level 9 spells, it only gets 8th level spells at level 19, which is probably around where we'd consider it maybe eeking into t1 territory, but at that point, full casters have been throwing around their highest level spells for 2 levels already.

I think you would be able to get them through Versatile Spellcaster, but I do largely agree that what you're doing at 19th level isn't really relevant. Plus, there's the question of comparable optimization. If you're doing Rainbow Warsnake + Versatile Spellcaster, you're probably not competing with a straight Cleric for power. Is Versatile Spellcaster-ing out 9ths better than a Dweomerkeeper with 4/day Supernatural Spell? Probably not, especially when you consider that character got their trick (Supernatural limited wish) online before you even got your capstone.


Warmage being at Tier 4 doesn't make sense. Tier 4 is for the Barbarian who charges and attacks each turn. It's a decent strategy, until you have an encounter where charging won't work, which can be surprisingly common.

And the Warmage has a decent strategy until you have a day with a lot of encounters (and, no, this is not the common weakness of casters, all the T1 and T2 classes have options for minions or long-duration buffs if they need sustain).


Warmage, meanwhile, might be a blaster, but its spell list has answers to all sorts of combat situations that a typical Barabarian won't be able to, and for enemies that are difficult for casters to deal with without any sort of optimization.

I would love to know what spells you think those are.


It's definitely still worth it, warmage 9ths are truly terrible.

Eh, this is a bad take. Warmage 9ths aren't great by the standard of 9th level spells, but by the standards of Warmages it's a pretty good level. implosion, wail of the banshee, weird, and prismatic sphere are all combat spells other classes feel good about casting, and elemental swarm does finally give you some utility. You just don't get any of the really gonzo stuff other classes do like dominate monster or shapechange.

[pabelfly]

And the Warmage has a decent strategy until you have a day with a lot of encounters (and, no, this is not the common weakness of casters, all the T1 and T2 classes have options for minions or long-duration buffs if they need sustain).

In the specific circumstances where,
a) it's going to be a day with a bunch of extra encounters
b) the caster is somehow aware of this in advance, and gets to prepare a specific spell list to take advantage of that, and
c) the DM is willing to challenge the casters in the party with managing spells and spell slots but won't alter that challenge according to the player's build and choice of spells,

Then, yes, that caster will do better than the warmage.


I would love to know what spells you think those are.

So, general combat situations:
Warmage has easy answers to problems like mooks and swarms, while Barbarian doesn't.
Warmage can deal with enemies that can't be reached with melee with no investment (flying enemies, swimming enemies and so forth), while only specific builds can do that for Barbarian. Or they can spend a bunch of money.

For mage-unfriendly-enemies:
Warmage can pick from their choice of elemental blasting spells as required to get around specific immunities and elemental resistances
Warmage has options like Orb spells to deal with SR:Yes enemies

I think the fact that Warmage gets to answer a lot more problems in combat than Barbarian for less resources spent makes Warmage a solid Tier 3. Not sure I agree with T2, but I think T3 is fair.

[RandomPeasant]

it's going to be a day with a bunch of extra encounters

This is a red herring. Of course the ability to handle a circumstance is only relevant if that circumstance arises. You might as well say that the Warmage knowing fireball only matters if you encounter groups of enemies.


the caster is somehow aware of this in advance, and gets to prepare a specific spell list to take advantage of that, and

You don't need to know in advance that this particular day is going to require you to deal with a lot of encounters to have minions up, because one of the big things that makes minions good is that they last for multiple days. You could vary your buff routine from day to day, but in practice a lot of Clerics will rock up with their DMM buffstack every day because that's just good.


the DM is willing to challenge the casters in the party with managing spells and spell slots but won't alter that challenge according to the player's build and choice of spells,

This is also a red herring. Yes, the DM could just tune things up even more to deal with minions and long-duration buffs. But if the Warmage loses in that situation, that's just another way of saying it isn't good.


Warmage has easy answers to problems like mooks and swarms, while Barbarian doesn't.

The Warmage is better at dealing with mooks, but not by some huge margin. At 10th level, your blasting spells deal an average of 35 damage. That's not enough to OHKO even non-bruiser CR 6 enemies like Babaus or Lamias.


Warmage can deal with enemies that can't be reached with melee with no investment (flying enemies, swimming enemies and so forth), while only specific builds can do that for Barbarian. Or they can spend a bunch of money.

This is the Warmage's biggest advantage, but their mediocre baseline damage (and short range on a lot of their spells) means there's a limit to how much this really matters. Could you, in theory, bring down a dragon without it needing to land? Sure. But also it's got pretty good odds to breath weapon you to death or run you out of spells first. It's got a giant CON mod and d12 HD, after all.


Warmage can pick from their choice of elemental blasting spells as required to get around specific immunities and elemental resistances

This is not an advantage. This is getting yourself out of the situation you put yourself in by opting to use blasting spells instead of non-damaging spells. The Beguiler doesn't need to "pick from their choice of elemental blasting spells" because charm monster doesn't check energy resistance.


Warmage has options like Orb spells to deal with SR:Yes enemies

I mean orbs effect SR:Yes enemies, but again you're dealing some seriously mediocre damage. You could, theoretically, kill an Iron Golem with orbs, but it would take three of them and you can also just ignore it by sticking it in a box with silent image.

[Troacctid]

The question is how do you weight that average? Obviously a 8th level Warmage is better than a 8th level Sorcerer who picks black tentacles as their one spell. But that margin isn't huge. Conversely, a Sorcerer who picks polymorph is pretty massively better than an 8th level Warmage, and it's not like a player who isn't optimizing much will never pick polymorph. Beyond that, the low-op Sorcerer is not T2 either.
Polymorphing is good, but it's not that good. And even if you think it is that good, warmages get access to it only three levels later.


I, personally, would not feel the need to cast the spell with an hours/level duration in combat to use it in combat, but maybe that's a personal preference thing. And, yes, it gives them a save to negate. But would you care to explain what it does when they fail that save? Because personally I find the effect rather more impressive than anything the Warmage gets short of finger of death.
Are you just gonna spend the whole session roleplaying as a pet rock until combat starts? I'm pretty sure you're blind, deaf, and mute while you're in the gemstone. And when you do possess someone, the spell picks the target at random. What is the plan here and how is it better than just dealing 100 damage to them?


This is not an advantage. This is getting yourself out of the situation you put yourself in by opting to use blasting spells instead of non-damaging spells. The Beguiler doesn't need to "pick from their choice of elemental blasting spells" because charm monster doesn't check energy resistance.
Ah yes, because as we know, no enemy ever has any special resistance against charm spells!


An ally being in the road could equally apply to a Barbarian as a Warmage. Worse, actually, because the Warmage can just move to a different square and the opponent loses cover, while Barbarian would prefer to charge in a straight line and reach their enemy in one turn, limiting options that much more for them.
The warmage can also just cast a line or a cone spell instead. It's a lot easier to avoid friendly fire when you've effectively got built-in Sculpt Spell functionality.

[Crake]

Polymorphing is good, but it's not that good.

Polymorphing is that good if your encounter is "not combat", because it gives you a whole slew of options to deal with noncombat encounters that warmages lack completely.


And even if you think it is that good, warmages get access to it only three levels later.

In the context of this thread, you ain't getting that. You traded those features away for rainbow servant. Also keep in mind, even if you COULD somehow get access to eclectic learning, with the lost caster levels of rainbow servant, it's not 3 levels later, it's 5 levels later, by which point the sorcerer and wizard are casting 6th level spells, while you're scrambling to get a decent 4th level one.

[H_H_F_F]

While you're scrambling to get a decent 4th level one.

To be fair, Black Tentacles is a good spell, and the orbs can be optimized to be pretty nasty. I agree with your general point, but I think it helps clarity if we don't use too much hyperbole here. Black Tentacles is more than decent, it's just that polymorph is one of the best spells in the entirety of 3.5.

[Troacctid]

Polymorphing is that good if your encounter is "not combat", because it gives you a whole slew of options to deal with noncombat encounters that warmages lack completely.

In the context of this thread, you ain't getting that. You traded those features away for rainbow servant.
Eh, you can get most of the noncombat functionality with alter self, which both the single-class warmage and the rainbow servant warmage could have already had since level 6 if they wanted it (and the sorcerer could have had it since level 4).

[Crake]

Eh, you can get most of the noncombat functionality with alter self, which both the single-class warmage and the rainbow servant warmage could have already had since level 6 if they wanted it (and the sorcerer could have had it since level 4).

Right, but you're just deflecting the point.


To be fair, Black Tentacles is a good spell, and the orbs can be optimized to be pretty nasty. I agree with your general point, but I think it helps clarity if we don't use too much hyperbole here. Black Tentacles is more than decent, it's just that polymorph is one of the best spells in the entirety of 3.5.

Sure, but the point is kinda that black tentacles, as good as it might be, does nothing to expand the utility of what a sorcerer can do beyond it's one main focus, aka combat. It can't break tier 4 if it's only good at it's one thing and has no value outside of it.

[Troacctid]

Right, but you're just deflecting the point.
"Oh, but polymorph gives the sorcerer noncombat utility that the warmage can't match!" "But the warmage has been able to match that noncombat utility for multiple levels." "That's not the point!"

Okay, so what is the point?


Sure, but the point is kinda that black tentacles, as good as it might be, does nothing to expand the utility of what a sorcerer can do beyond it's one main focus, aka combat. It can't break tier 4 if it's only good at it's one thing and has no value outside of it.
Because as we all know, D&D consists of two things, combat and noncombat, and if you're only good at one of those things, you're Tier 4. Am I getting this right? :smalltongue:

[Crake]

"Oh, but polymorph gives the sorcerer noncombat utility that the warmage can't match!" "But the warmage has been able to match that noncombat utility for multiple levels." "That's not the point!"

Okay, so what is the point?

Polymorph isn't the only noncombat spell in the game? There's 9 spell levels? Alter self can only get you so far, especially considering it's self only (polymorph isn't), limited to your own creature type (polymorph isn't), and doesn't change your ability scores (polymorph does). The point is that for every spell level, the warmage is behind, and with this build specifically, it falls FURTHER behind as levels go up.



Because as we all know, D&D consists of two things, combat and noncombat, and if you're only good at one of those things, you're Tier 4. Am I getting this right? :smalltongue:

Yes. That's not the gotcha you think it is. If you're ONLY good at combat (or more specifically in this case, dealing damage) and can't add anything of value that an untrained character could in any other given circumstance, then yes, you're tier 4 at best.

[Darg]

You don't need to know in advance that this particular day is going to require you to deal with a lot of encounters to have minions up, because one of the big things that makes minions good is that they last for multiple days. You could vary your buff routine from day to day, but in practice a lot of Clerics will rock up with their DMM buffstack every day because that's just good.

Sure, however keep in mind that by RAW each character in your party you bring into encounters reduces the amount of xp you receive. Which might be worth it depending on the encounter and/or DM style. If you don't want that, summons typically only last rounds/level.

[H_H_F_F]

Yes. That's not the gotcha you think it is. If you're ONLY good at combat (or more specifically in this case, dealing damage) and can't add anything of value that an untrained character could in any other given circumstance, then yes, you're tier 4 at best.

Come on, the warmage natively has plenty of spells that don't do damage. Accuracy, sleet storm, prismatic ray, the aforementioned black tentacles - and that's just off the top of my head, and it's not like I remember the list back and forth. Metamagic and other feats add more options - and unlike many spellcasters, warmage can always cast the right spell for the job.

It's not tier 4, unless you're willing to radically expand the concept of "one thing" and downgrade half of tier 3.

[pabelfly]

To save myself quote-responding to RandomPeasant, I'll just respond here:

The difference between Warmage and blasting Sorcerer is that Warmage knows all their spells the level they get them. Let's say it's level 8. Sorcerer has all the 4th-level spells to pick from but only gets one of them for that whole level. While Warmage's spell list is much tighter, they can access all their 4th-level spells at once, and can pick the spell that's appropriate for the encounter.

Saying that blaster casters only work off d6/level damage, that fireball will only do 35 damage, etc... any blaster caster will put some of their build resources into boosting damage output, the same way a battlefield control caster will boost their caster level, save DCs and so forth. That seems self-evident to me. Given how potent the options are for boosting damage, the question isn't being able to do enough damage, but rather, finding the right amount of damage that won't overshadow other players or annoy the DM.

[Crake]

Come on, the warmage natively has plenty of spells that don't do damage. Accuracy, sleet storm, prismatic ray, the aforementioned black tentacles - and that's just off the top of my head, and it's not like I remember the list back and forth. Metamagic and other feats add more options - and unlike many spellcasters, warmage can always cast the right spell for the job.

It's not tier 4, unless you're willing to radically expand the concept of "one thing" and downgrade half of tier 3.

Well, that's why I said I could maybe understand bumping it up to super low tier 3, but it's DEFINITELY not tier 2.

Also, again, in the context of this thread, you need to remember that, not only is it a warmage, but it's a warmage with 4 lost caster levels. Even if it was tier 3 to begin with, it definitely falls to tier 4 at the very most throughout it's progression.

[RandomPeasant]

Polymorphing is good, but it's not that good. And even if you think it is that good, warmages get access to it only three levels later.

polymorph is, in fact, that good. And, yes, the Warmage gets access to it three levels later and out of a higher level slot. But at that point the Sorcerer can just have magic jar and be ahead again.


Are you just gonna spend the whole session roleplaying as a pet rock until combat starts? I'm pretty sure you're blind, deaf, and mute while you're in the gemstone. And when you do possess someone, the spell picks the target at random. What is the plan here and how is it better than just dealing 100 damage to them?

No, you spend the session roleplaying as the first dude you possess. Seriously, have you never seen someone use magic jar? And, no, I don't think the 35 damage you get out of cone of cold at 10th level is better. Do you ever see Sorcerers learning cone of cold of their own accord?


Ah yes, because as we know, no enemy ever has any special resistance against charm spells!

Sure, some of them do. For those guys you have charmed minions who can hit them. That's what happens when you cast good spells: they provide you with a lasting advantage that makes you T2.


The warmage can also just cast a line or a cone spell instead. It's a lot easier to avoid friendly fire when you've effectively got built-in Sculpt Spell functionality.

That's even less true than the idea that you have built-in Energy Substitution. You absolutely do not have access to lines and bursts and cones at every level, or at least not ones that don't suck at that level (or, sure, cast a 10d6 lightning bolt at 15th level, that'll get you to T2).


To be fair, Black Tentacles is a good spell, and the orbs can be optimized to be pretty nasty. I agree with your general point, but I think it helps clarity if we don't use too much hyperbole here. Black Tentacles is more than decent, it's just that polymorph is one of the best spells in the entirety of 3.5.

The orbs can be optimized to be nasty, but the thing that makes casters good is that you don't need to optimize them to be good. You know what you need to do for planar binding to be broken? Learn planar binding.


The difference between Warmage and blasting Sorcerer is that Warmage knows all their spells the level they get them.

I would not compare a Warmage to a blasting Sorcerer, except to say that a blasting-focused Sorcerer does not get to T2 either. I will say that if we're talking about a highly-optimized mailman build, there is an argument the Sorcerer is better again. Tools like celerity and arcane fusion are important for that build, and Warmages have a much harder time getting them.


Saying that blaster casters only work off d6/level damage, that fireball will only do 35 damage, etc... any blaster caster will put some of their build resources into boosting damage output, the same way a battlefield control caster will boost their caster level, save DCs and so forth.

Again, this is a weakness of the Warmage. Yes, you can optimize your damage until it is lethal. But the good spells just are lethal. There's no optimization you have to do to make it so that magic jar lets you take people over, that's just the effect magic jar has. You can optimize it, and that will make it better, but you can also invest in other stuff and have an effect that's good enough. And if you do optimize, that optimization is stuff like CL boosting with holy word, and the results are insane rather than "pretty good".


Given how potent the options are for boosting damage, the question isn't being able to do enough damage, but rather, finding the right amount of damage that won't overshadow other players or annoy the DM.

The thing is this is true of all the ways of boosting damage. You can make an Ubercharger that redmists everything it hits. You can make a Rogue that shreds people. You can make a CoDZilla that stacks enough buffs to trivialize many encounters. And the advantage all those things have is that when they do damage the damage costs them no marginal resources.

[H_H_F_F]

The orbs can be optimized to be nasty, but the thing that makes casters good is that you don't need to optimize them to be good. You know what you need to do for planar binding to be broken? Learn planar binding.

I'm not arguing that warmage is in any way, shape or form on the same playing field as a sorcerer. I'm just saying one shouldn't overstate the case by calling polymorph "decent" and pretending like the warmage is on the same footing as a hexblade.

[Troacctid]

To save myself quote-responding to RandomPeasant, I'll just respond here:

The difference between Warmage and blasting Sorcerer is that Warmage knows all their spells the level they get them. Let's say it's level 8. Sorcerer has all the 4th-level spells to pick from but only gets one of them for that whole level. While Warmage's spell list is much tighter, they can access all their 4th-level spells at once, and can pick the spell that's appropriate for the encounter.

Saying that blaster casters only work off d6/level damage, that fireball will only do 35 damage, etc... any blaster caster will put some of their build resources into boosting damage output, the same way a battlefield control caster will boost their caster level, save DCs and so forth. That seems self-evident to me. Given how potent the options are for boosting damage, the question isn't being able to do enough damage, but rather, finding the right amount of damage that won't overshadow other players or annoy the DM.
Yeah, and even if you don't put any resources into boosting damage, it's somewhat misleading to say that fireball does 35 damage at level 10. I mean, first of all, obviously for a warmage you're doing an extra +2ish from warmage edge. Secondly, you have to be in really desperate straits to be casting fireball against only one enemy, so your 37 damage is more like what you're doing on a miss, and a hit will regularly deal over 100 damage, and that's if you don't invest at all into feats or items or anything. Thirdly, 1d6/level isn't really the gold standard for the warmage list's base damage by the time you're past level 10. Your standard actions should either be doing 1d10/level, 1d6/level per target, 1d6/level plus a nasty status condition, or (1d8 + 1/level) * 8. Or, if it's against a boss fight, 1.5 times that with Sudden Empower. Again, that's with no feats, no items, no prestige classes, just your basic single-class warmage who spent all her feats boosting her skills and learning how to teleport.

[Crake]

just your basic single-class warmage who spent all her feats boosting her skills and learning how to teleport.

Do we keep forgetting the context of this thread? You're not single classed, you're 1-10 levels deep in a 4 caster level loss prestige class that offers almost nothing of real value until it's capstone.

[Chronos]

Quoth pabelfly:

While Warmage's spell list is much tighter, they can access all their 4th-level spells at once, and can pick the spell that's appropriate for the encounter.
If any of your spells is appropriate for the encounter. What spell is appropriate for when your party's barbarian and rogue are already flanking the target? What spell is appropriate for when you're trying to convince the duke to recall his army to defend the town? What spell is appropriate for when you're trying to determine the identity of the BBEG who's been manipulating events against you from the shadows? Sorcerers can have spells that help in these situations. Warmages, mostly, don't.

[Troacctid]

Do we keep forgetting the context of this thread? You're not single classed, you're 1-10 levels deep in a 4 caster level loss prestige class that offers almost nothing of real value until it's capstone.
Yes, Crake, we get it, we're talking about the underlying baseline for comparison. Keep up.


If any of your spells is appropriate for the encounter. What spell is appropriate for when your party's barbarian and rogue are already flanking the target? What spell is appropriate for when you're trying to convince the duke to recall his army to defend the town? What spell is appropriate for when you're trying to determine the identity of the BBEG who's been manipulating events against you from the shadows? Sorcerers can have spells that help in these situations. Warmages, mostly, don't.
1. The appropriate 4th-level warmage spell for this would be orb of fire/cold. Blinding or dazing the enemy while they're flanked by two melee characters should end the fight very effectively.
2. This is probably just a Diplomacy check (or a Forgery check if you're feeling spicy), so the ideal spell is one that gives a large bonus to a skill check. A good use case for voice of the dragon if you have it, but also, you don't really need a spell at all—you can just make the check—and Intimidate (a class skill for warmages) can sub in for Diplomacy in a pinch. Personally, I say screw the nobility, I'd rather defend the town myself. Seven Samurai it up.
3. How is that an encounter? Is your BBEG just actual Rumpelstiltskin? What you're describing is the premise for a whole campaign arc. Play through the adventure, kick in enough doors, and you'll find out their identity eventually. You can cast divination spells if you want (spellcasting services for this purpose are very affordable even for non-casters), but it's not like they're going to work (imagine predicating the adventure around the BBEG's identity being a secret and not giving them countermeasures against basic divinations), and, like, you can also just...not know who the bad guy is, and let the DM have their twist, and then win anyway because you turned the enemy's head into chunky salsa. Sequence-breaking just means you get less XP.

[Beni-Kujaku]

If you start the campaign at ECL 16, then I think 6/10 Rainbow Warsnake competitive and around T2 in power. You lose a lot in pure destructive power, but the cleric spell list is vast enough and has enough specific counters in it that spontaneous access to the whole list can balance that (assuming you have encyclopedic knowledge of all published spells). But before that you lose a lot and are generally weaker than a pure Warmage.

[Crake]

Yes, Crake, we get it, we're talking about the underlying baseline for comparison. Keep up.

Kinda irrelevant to discuss when the often cited eclectic learning feature used to claim that warmage has better access to offlist spells is notably absent post level 6, meaning you don't get anything over 2nd level spells off list. Even the sudden metamagic feats noted aren't there for the actual build in question. The domains you get out of it aren't exactly amazing either.

The claim was "The build is t3 up until level 16", which is just straight up not true, regardless of whether you think warmage as a base is t3 or t4, or in your case apparently t2

[RandomPeasant]

I'm not arguing that warmage is in any way, shape or form on the same playing field as a sorcerer.

You're not, but someone in this thread very much is.


Yeah, and even if you don't put any resources into boosting damage, it's somewhat misleading to say that fireball does 35 damage at level 10. I mean, first of all, obviously for a warmage you're doing an extra +2ish from warmage edge.

I, wow, I stand corrected, it does 37 damage. That makes it way more effective at killing things with 58 HP. Case closed everyone! We can all go home, Troacctid proved the Warmage is T2!


Secondly, you have to be in really desperate straits to be casting fireball against only one enemy, so your 37 damage is more like what you're doing on a miss

Your single-target spells also scale at d6 per level. This dance where you say "oh but of course fireball is only to be used against multiple targets" like it means anything is tiring.


(1d8 + 1/level) * 8

You are going to get off the holly berry bombs mode of fire seeds on an enemy approximately never.


Again, that's with no feats, no items, no prestige classes, just your basic single-class warmage who spent all her feats boosting her skills and learning how to teleport.

How many feats, items, or prestige classes does it take a Sorcerer to cast magic jar? How many does it take a Beguiler to cast dominate person? How many does it take a Dread Necromancer to cast lesser planar binding?

This, fundamentally, is why the Warmage is not T2. T2 classes don't need investment to have powerful tools. They just have powerful tools, and if they invest they can have either a larger variety of powerful tools or some insane tools. The Warmage is stuck investing in doing damage at a rate that is not any better than the rate you get as a class that does not spend limited resources to do its damage. It's better than the Barbarian, but it's not better than the Warblade.


The appropriate 4th-level warmage spell for this would be orb of fire/cold. Blinding or dazing the enemy while they're flanked by two melee characters should end the fight very effectively.

What if they're flanking just one of several enemies? The whole thing the Warmage is supposed to be good at is AoE damage, but your options here are "hope all the other enemies are in a line with that one that doesn't go through your party members", which will happen approximately never. And even then you'll deal crap damage at a lot of levels.


This is probably just a Diplomacy check (or a Forgery check if you're feeling spicy), so the ideal spell is one that gives a large bonus to a skill check. A good use case for voice of the dragon if you have it, but also, you don't really need a spell at all—you can just make the check—and Intimidate (a class skill for warmages) can sub in for Diplomacy in a pinch. Personally, I say screw the nobility, I'd rather defend the town myself. Seven Samurai it up.

This is just more words for "I would fail the encounter".


How is that an encounter?

I dunno, but contact other plane is pretty good for solving it. Seems like an advantage for a Sorcerer who can learn it, or a Beguiler who can UMD a Runestaff to cast it.


Sequence-breaking just means you get less XP.

No it doesn't. It means you get more rewards. You get XP for doing combats. If you skip the combats against mooks with regular loot and only do the ones against BBEGs with extra loot, you get the same amount of XP per hour of game time and also you get more boss drops. This is rad, and the ability to do it is why you don't want to be on rails.


If you start the campaign at ECL 16, then I think 6/10 Rainbow Warsnake competitive and around T2 in power. You lose a lot in pure destructive power, but the cleric spell list is vast enough and has enough specific counters in it that spontaneous access to the whole list can balance that (assuming you have encyclopedic knowledge of all published spells). But before that you lose a lot and are generally weaker than a pure Warmage.

I'm not convinced this is true at all, but it's almost certainly not true if you think other characters are going to optimize at all. It's not a one-to-one comparison because the Cleric is T1, but is a partial-casting Rainbow Warsnake even close to competitive with a Cleric/Dweomerkeeper? What about a Sorcerer who uses Ancestral Relic (Runestaff) to have whatever Runestaff he wants every day (or potentially more often, depending how you think the interaction works)? What about a Beguiler who's gotten the full Shadowcraft Mage combo online? All these characters have full casting progression, and while they don't have the same flexibility the Warsnake does, they still have quite a bit of flexibility and a lot more raw power.

[Beni-Kujaku]

I'm not convinced this is true at all, but it's almost certainly not true if you think other characters are going to optimize at all. It's not a one-to-one comparison because the Cleric is T1, but is a partial-casting Rainbow Warsnake even close to competitive with a Cleric/Dweomerkeeper? What about a Sorcerer who uses Ancestral Relic (Runestaff) to have whatever Runestaff he wants every day (or potentially more often, depending how you think the interaction works)? What about a Beguiler who's gotten the full Shadowcraft Mage combo online? All these characters have full casting progression, and while they don't have the same flexibility the Warsnake does, they still have quite a bit of flexibility and a lot more raw power.

I mean, yeah, obviously it's not at the level of a cleric/dweomerkeeper. That's the difference between an optimized T1 and a low-to-mid T2... That's like saying a straight sorcerer isn't comparable to a wizard/incantatrix. There's a reason why shadowcraft mage is considered a "+2" PrC, I don't think anybody would say that a Beguiler/SCM would still be T3. And I don't understand your point with the runestaff. Not only is it very unclear you can change an ancestral runestaff for free (the examples only include adding abilities and the flavor is "awakening spirits", not changing them), it's something that is also accessible to the warmage, so it's not really an advantage for the sorcerer, and it also defeats the purpose and versatility of the warsnake since you only get the spells when you prepare or ready your spells for the day.

[H_H_F_F]

You're not, but someone in this thread very much is.


Maybe, but the part I was replying to was in response to me ptotesting the claim that warmage has no access to decent spells. It's not all burning hands and Mordenkanien's sword.

I think that the attempts to downgrade warmage to tier 4 are just as misguided as putting it alongside the sorcerer. In what sense is a warblade tier 3 if (even a slugging behind) warmage is tier 4? The warmage covers more areas of play, can do more in combat, and has significantly superior versatility.

Tangential to that (and not in response to you directly), I think the whole "6/10" thing needs to be broken down. We're talking about a character that's a straight warmage 1-6, a level behind 7-9, two levels behind 10-12, and three levels behind 13-15. They're only 4 behind at the level we all agree they're very powerful, and they're 2 spell levels behind only at levels 13 and 15 beforehand. Each of the bad levels grants them some advantages.

Is it a superior choice to other methods of spell list expansion? Like I said, I doubt it is.

But let's look at level 11 - supposedly way past the point warmage/servant would be tier 4, and just 5 levels away from ascension. We have a character with permanent flight, spontaneously casting any spells from the warmage spell list up to 5th level. That's mainly damage spells that can always be counted on to avoid resistance, capitalize on vulnerability, target the appropriate save / touch AC, and be maximized for efficiency against many enemies, few, or 1 - but it's also ability damage spells, defensive spells, buffs for friends, crowd control, debuffs and death effects. In addition, they have the same spontaneous access to Aid, protection from evil, magic circle against evil, dispel evil, obscuring mist, gaseous form, airwalk, and a few other more limited-use spells that can still be pulled in the appropriate situation.

Is this akin to a sorcerer casting polymorph and planar binding? of course not.

Is this somehow a full tier below a swordsage 11? Come on.

[Troacctid]

You are going to get off the holly berry bombs mode of fire seeds on an enemy approximately never.
I mean, it's super easy, actually? You cast the spell as a pre-buff (10 min/level duration is plenty), then in combat, you walk up to the enemy as a move action, drop the bombs next to them as a free action, and then kaboom as a standard action. It doesn't always work so great if the enemy is a big ol' AoO monster of some kind, but that's fine, you can get the bruisers in other ways.


How many feats, items, or prestige classes does it take a Sorcerer to cast magic jar? How many does it take a Beguiler to cast dominate person? How many does it take a Dread Necromancer to cast lesser planar binding?

[...]

T2 classes don't need investment to have powerful tools. They just have powerful tools, and if they invest they can have either a larger variety of powerful tools or some insane tools.
I'm glad we agree.

As it happens, for most of the mid-levels, warmages have tools of a comparable power level to the sorcerer given a comparable level of investment. Sorcerers become advantaged eventually at high levels. In a tier list that emphasizes mid-levels and puts very little weight on high levels, the two classes should rank pretty similarly.


What if they're flanking just one of several enemies? The whole thing the Warmage is supposed to be good at is AoE damage, but your options here are "hope all the other enemies are in a line with that one that doesn't go through your party members", which will happen approximately never. And even then you'll deal crap damage at a lot of levels.
Honestly, I assumed the premise of the question was "But what if I can't easily avoid friendly fire?" and it was implied that the only enemy was surrounded by allies. But you're right, I guess there could be other enemies too. If there's one other enemy, I'd probably try to catch them both in a line spell instead. That's usually doable. If there's two other enemies, hit both of them and assume my friends have the third handled. If it's a larger group of enemies, either hit them all with damage or just BFC them out of the fight to deal with later. And there are other options too, like melee spells, ring-shaped spells, and clever use of three-dimensional spell geometry. The warmage spell list has the flexibility to make these kinds of pivots as the situation demands.

(And for warmages that do invest a little in blasting, if this situation occurs regularly with your party composition, you can get Sculpt Spell in a rod for like 3k gold, NBD.)


This is just more words for "I would fail the encounter".
I mean, is the goal to convince the duke to protect the village, or is the goal to protect the village? It seems like the warmage has pretty reasonable paths for both.


No it doesn't. It means you get more rewards. You get XP for doing combats. If you skip the combats against mooks with regular loot and only do the ones against BBEGs with extra loot, you get the same amount of XP per hour of game time and also you get more boss drops. This is rad, and the ability to do it is why you don't want to be on rails.
Is it rad? Is it actually better loot/XP per hour? Those are two different questions, and both of them depend on the adventure, the DM, and the playstyle of the group, among other things. Regardless, of the two, my money is on kicking in the door as the more effective strategy, because the divination spells are just going to be blocked by anti-divination magic if you use them against a BBEG. Either that or they'll just say "WooOoOoOoo, to find the answers you seek, go to the quest place and do the quest thing, woooOOooOoo!" and you'll end up kicking in the door anyway, except you'll think it was your idea.

[Chronos]

If you don't figure out who the BBEG is, they're going to keep on manipulating things, and eventually kill off the party. Wizards, clerics, sorcerers, and beguilers all have tools to help figure it out. Warmages, at best, have tools for surviving a bit longer while the other party members figure it out. And if, by figuring things out, you manage to avoid a whole bunch of encounters? RAW, you get the XP from a whole bunch of encounters.

[Zanos]

I don't think the tier system is linear. A build that is tier 5 from 1-10 and tier 1 from 11-20 does not average out to tier 3. It averages out to being horribly inappropriate for the game that it's in for half of its lifespan. I don't agree that warmage is tier 2 or that casting 6th level cleric spells at level 16 is tier 0 unless we're using a very odd definition of it, but in any case describing the build based on an "average" of its supposed tiers is not really accurate or helpful.

[Daisy]

If you don't figure out who the BBEG is, they're going to keep on manipulating things, and eventually kill off the party.

That's a bit of a stretch. It all depends on your DM. I've been playing D&D on-and-off for 40 years (well, 38) with a variety of DMs and I've never once been in a situation where a lack of magical means to identify a BBEG has caused any issue other than making their eventual identification take a little longer. Personally I've never invested in divination because my various DMs have never bothered making scenarios where it's required.

Whilst I enjoy the RP side of things as much as the combat, it's been my personal experience that combat makes up 90% of adventuring. Tiering exercises are all very well but I've never found them particularly applicable. Just my personal findings, mind. Everyone has a different experience.

[Troacctid]

If you don't figure out who the BBEG is, they're going to keep on manipulating things, and eventually kill off the party. Wizards, clerics, sorcerers, and beguilers all have tools to help figure it out. Warmages, at best, have tools for surviving a bit longer while the other party members figure it out. And if, by figuring things out, you manage to avoid a whole bunch of encounters? RAW, you get the XP from a whole bunch of encounters.
Eventually kill off the party how, exactly? By attacking them with a series of level-appropriate challenges, occasionally punctuated by traps, puzzles, and/or miniboss fights, each of which provides xp and loot when defeated? Oh no, please don't throw me in the briar patch, BBEG! :smalltongue:

[Elenian]

Eventually kill off the party how, exactly? By attacking them with a series of level-appropriate challenges, occasionally punctuated by traps, puzzles, and/or miniboss fights, each of which provides xp and loot when defeated? Oh no, please don't throw me in the briar patch, BBEG! :smalltongue:

This way madness lies. Like... yes in some sense many plot-circumnavigating effects like divination, teleportation, mind control, large scale minionmancy, etc, are not as powerful in practice because good gameplay either relies on an agreement not to abuse them or takes them into account from the outset. But these sorts of meta considerations pretty quickly short-circuit any abstract discussion of things like class balance. Eg:

All classes are equally good because good DMs will provide fun and balanced challenges no matter what. Actually, commoner is the best class in the game because the DM is likely to overcorrect the difficulty downward.

[Chronos]

Quoth Daisy:

I've been playing D&D on-and-off for 40 years (well, 38) with a variety of DMs and I've never once been in a situation where a lack of magical means to identify a BBEG has caused any issue other than making their eventual identification take a little longer.
Who said anything about magical means, specifically? There are nonmagical ways to get information, and some classes are good at those. If you eventually identified the BBEG, then it was because someone in the party used the tools at their disposal. But not the warmage, because they don't have the appropriate tools.

[Crake]

Is this somehow a full tier below a swordsage 11? Come on.

A swordsage has competitive damage output with a warmage, while having good skills for noncombat encounters, and utility maneuvers such as tactical teleportation, save replacers, invisibility, flight, and blindsense, all usable all day. Warmage’s utility can maybe compare, but for every spell cast, thats damage output lost

[Darg]

But not the warmage, because they don't have the appropriate tools.

The warmage is a charisma based caster. Their gather information rolls should be decent without investment. Once you get pointed in the right direction intimidation can be used to open some metaphorical doors. Warmage has the necessary tools to do what must be done.

[RandomPeasant]

I mean, yeah, obviously it's not at the level of a cleric/dweomerkeeper. That's the difference between an optimized T1 and a low-to-mid T2

But the Rainbow Warsnake is also optimized. Its optimization is just less effective. If 6/10 Rainbow Warsnake is T2, we should expect that the gap between it and Cleric/Dweomerkeeper is smaller than the one between Warmage and Cleric. Does that really seem like it's the case when, at 13th level, the Warmage has lost three levels of casting and the Cleric/Dweomerkeeper gets Supernatural Spell + limited wish (and they can even get it multiple times per day if they grab Domain Spontaneity, though in that hypothetical it seems fair to credit the Warsnake Versatile Spellcaster).


Not only is it very unclear you can change an ancestral runestaff for free

No it's not. You pay the difference between costs. The difference between two costs that are the same is zero. What is unclear is whether there's a floor of one day spent meditating on holy ground, but even there it's less that it's unclear and more that if it works the other way you get to cast spontaneously off your whole class list and that's just kind of game-destroying. "What happens if the new form is cheaper than the old form" is unclear, but you can mostly avoid situations where that would happen.


it's something that is also accessible to the warmage

You're going to want to check the fine print on Runestaffs. It specifically works "as long as that spell also appears on the wielder's class spell list". The Warmage could take cross-class UMD, but at that point we're talking about something that has nothing to do with anything the Warmage offers you.


I mean, it's super easy, actually? You cast the spell as a pre-buff (10 min/level duration is plenty), then in combat, you walk up to the enemy as a move action, drop the bombs next to them as a free action, and then kaboom as a standard action.

Brilliant! I'll drop the thing that does damage in a 5ft radius burst within 5ft of me! That'll show those fools playing Beguilers and Sorcerers, with their fancy T2 tricks like "casting spells in a way you can survive".


As it happens, for most of the mid-levels, warmages have tools of a comparable power level to the sorcerer given a comparable level of investment.

This is just not true. Nothing the Warmage gets at 4th is comparable to polymorph. Nothing the Warmage gets at 5th is comparable to magic jar. Nothing the Warmage gets at 6th is comparable to planar binding. The Warmage is as good as a bad Sorcerer, but a bad Sorcerer is not T2 either. Frankly, the Beguiler is a better standard for T2, because it's T2 at every level of optimization and the Sorcerer just isn't. If your Sorcerer is learning fireball and orb of cold, you'd be better off with a Warblade. A Warmage beats that Sorcerer too, but not by enough of a margin to be higher-tier.


The warmage spell list has the flexibility to make these kinds of pivots as the situation demands.

To a degree, sure. But you can't throw out a line of cold or a cone of acid. And it's not like a blaster Sorcerer has no flexibility either. They, unlike a Warmage, can learn wings of flurry which has uncapped scaling and a rider effect and does AoE damage without friendly fire and has the type that gets the least resistances while also doing d6s. And most Sorcerers won't even take it because they have better things to do with 4th level spells known.


I mean, is the goal to convince the duke to protect the village, or is the goal to protect the village? It seems like the warmage has pretty reasonable paths for both.

The goal is to convince the duke. You're getting distracted by the scenery. The Warmage's options for persuading him are "make an Intimidate check" (which, oh boy, not a great way of relating to an authority figure you're asking for a favor) and "hope he has a problem he needs combat'd in exchange". The Beguiler just pops glibness and spins whatever yarn they want. More to the point, the two options the Warmage has are the same ones the Barbarian has.


Wizards, clerics, sorcerers, and beguilers all have tools to help figure it out.

This is the crux of it. Troacctid's arguments all amount to "the scenario is window-dressing, your DM will resolve it down to a level-appropriate combat and you can just win that". But what if the game doesn't work that way? What if your DM expects you to do the legwork, and has the encounter set up to be more than you can handle if you don't? Well, the Warmage loses. The Beguiler and Sorcerer don't, which makes them meaningfully better than the Warmage, in a way that is reflected by their being T2 while it is T3.


I don't think the tier system is linear.

It's an overfitting issue. Most classes are at roughly the same tier for the whole game. There are some exceptions at very low levels (where the Artificer sucks because it can't make UMD checks at the Incarnate owns because essentia scaling is weird), but mostly a class that is really good at 1st level is really good at 20th level and a class that really sucks at 20th level at least sorta sucks at 1st level. So the tier system treats tier as level-invariant, and then people back-figure explanations for that and those explanations end up giving you bad results in edge cases (the Mystic Ranger is an example of this at a base-class level).


This way madness lies.

Yeah. Troacctid's argument here is like one step removed from "if you play a Commoner you'll get Commoner-appropriate adventures, so it doesn't matter if you play a Commoner". The fact is that the Beguiler, the Dread Necromancer, and the Sorcerer all can play the game in ways the Warmage just can't. You can prefer to play the game in the ways Warmages can, but it's simply true that they are limited in a way T2 classes aren't. That's why they aren't T2.


The warmage is a charisma based caster. Their gather information rolls should be decent without investment. Once you get pointed in the right direction intimidation can be used to open some metaphorical doors. Warmage has the necessary tools to do what must be done.

I have just one question: do Warmages get Gather Information as a class skill?

[Troacctid]

Brilliant! I'll drop the thing that does damage in a 5ft radius burst within 5ft of me! That'll show those fools playing Beguilers and Sorcerers, with their fancy T2 tricks like "casting spells in a way you can survive".
You don't drop it and stop, you drop it as a free action during your movement and keep going. This is why I mentioned that the tactic gets a lot worse against enemies with good AoOs (unless you can catch them flat-footed, or tumble past them, or fly over them, or have total concealment against them). Other arcane casters really hate it, though! If that evil sorcerer didn't take any energy resistance effects, they're gonna have a bad time.

The other basic way to use holly berries is if you start your turn in melee with an enemy for whatever reason, you can drop the berries, five-foot step out of range, and then activate them. You don't normally want to be in melee, but with the way the spell works, you can hand the berries to an ally who does want to be in melee and coordinate with them to make the drop-off for you.


This is just not true. Nothing the Warmage gets at 4th is comparable to polymorph. Nothing the Warmage gets at 5th is comparable to magic jar. Nothing the Warmage gets at 6th is comparable to planar binding. The Warmage is as good as a bad Sorcerer, but a bad Sorcerer is not T2 either. Frankly, the Beguiler is a better standard for T2, because it's T2 at every level of optimization and the Sorcerer just isn't. If your Sorcerer is learning fireball and orb of cold, you'd be better off with a Warblade. A Warmage beats that Sorcerer too, but not by enough of a margin to be higher-tier.
You say it's not true, I say it is true. I guess we're at an impasse.


To a degree, sure. But you can't throw out a line of cold or a cone of acid. And it's not like a blaster Sorcerer has no flexibility either. They, unlike a Warmage, can learn wings of flurry which has uncapped scaling and a rider effect and does AoE damage without friendly fire and has the type that gets the least resistances while also doing d6s. And most Sorcerers won't even take it because they have better things to do with 4th level spells known.
It's too bad that they're not taking it. They'd compare a lot better against the warmage if they did. Great spell, very busted.


This is the crux of it. Troacctid's arguments all amount to "the scenario is window-dressing, your DM will resolve it down to a level-appropriate combat and you can just win that". But what if the game doesn't work that way? What if your DM expects you to do the legwork, and has the encounter set up to be more than you can handle if you don't? Well, the Warmage loses. The Beguiler and Sorcerer don't, which makes them meaningfully better than the Warmage, in a way that is reflected by their being T2 while it is T3.

Yeah. Troacctid's argument here is like one step removed from "if you play a Commoner you'll get Commoner-appropriate adventures, so it doesn't matter if you play a Commoner". The fact is that the Beguiler, the Dread Necromancer, and the Sorcerer all can play the game in ways the Warmage just can't. You can prefer to play the game in the ways Warmages can, but it's simply true that they are limited in a way T2 classes aren't. That's why they aren't T2.
The tier list assumes that adventures will include a normal variety of different encounter types and difficulties, with combat encounters being more common than interaction or exploration encounters. It's not exactly arbitrary and inscrutable. There are hundreds of published adventures that you can look to as references for typical problems you might be asked to solve and what the expected solutions might be. If we're going to run Same Game Tests, I say go pull something out of Dungeon Magazine and we can all go through it together and compare how various builds would contribute to it.

[RandomPeasant]

You don't drop it and stop, you drop it as a free action during your movement and keep going.

Oh, I get it, you're an Ubercharger except your range is lower, you need more space to maneuver, you have a crap hit die, you can't wear heavy armor, your targets get saves and energy resistance, and you spend spell slots on it. Once again, I am awed by the T2-ness of the tactics you arrive at.


Other arcane casters really hate it, though!

No they don't. This a 12th level tactic. A Sorcerer can just have overland flight and not care because even if you picked up something to give you flight he is immune to holly berry bombs in any room with a 10ft ceiling. A Beguiler or Dread Necromancer is standing behind a wall of minions that will AoO you to death, and probably riding a flying minion themselves.


The other basic way to use holly berries is if you start your turn in melee with an enemy for whatever reason

As a character with a d6 hit die, the colloquial term for this is "being dead".


you can hand the berries to an ally who does want to be in melee and coordinate with them to make the drop-off for you.

The thing about allies who want to be in melee is that they often want to stay in melee once they get there. I agree that holly berry bombs are pretty cool if you get some expendable minions, but as a Warmage you don't. Might grab Arcane Disciple (Fire) on my next Dread Necromancer, though.


You say it's not true, I say it is true. I guess we're at an impasse.

No, you're just wrong. It's not like I'm arguing for some obscure position here, I doubt you could find one other person on this forum who thinks polymorph does not knock the socks off anything else you could do with a 4th level slot, so I'm perfectly happy to leave you playing worse characters than you could be and move on with my life.


It's too bad that they're not taking it. They'd compare a lot better against the warmage if they did. Great spell, very busted.

And yet, the Sorcerer has plenty of options that are even better. Almost like it lives in a qualitatively different power range than the Warmage.


The tier list assumes that adventures will include a normal variety of different encounter types and difficulties, with combat encounters being more common than interaction or exploration encounters.

No, it doesn't. The whole point of the tier system (rather than the Same Game Test) is that, by using subjective analysis, it more readily lends itself to answering questions about relative power among characters who are not playing the same game. If you just wanted to do combat benchmarks, you could get objective data and spare yourself the debates.

That said, this doesn't really help you either way. It's not like the Warmage is some shining star in combat encounters. It's not really dramatically better than the Warblade, and the Warblade is T3. That's the hurdle it needs to clear before it even gets to argue with the Beguiler's charm monster, the Dread Necromancer's planar binding, and the Sorcerer's polymorph. And even once it's done bickering with them it has to show an advantage in combat to make up for those classes dramatic non-combat advantages (and, if we're rubber-banding to level-appropriate, that's damned hard to do).


If we're going to run Same Game Tests, I say go pull something out of Dungeon Magazine and we can all go through it together and compare how various builds would contribute to it.

No need to do that, the original (https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/The_Same_Game_Test_(DnD_Guideline)) is on the web for free. Looking over the 10th level list, the only things that seem troubling for a Beguiler are the dragon, the necromancer, and the shadows. And none of those are exactly great matchups for the Warmage, because the dragon outranges your orbs, the necromancer specializes in a school that targets your bad save, and the shadows only need like three hits to kill you. On the other side, the fire giant is just going to ignore you, the vrock can shrug off and/or outrange most of your spells, and the magical runes are an auto-loss.

[Darg]

I have just one question: do Warmages get Gather Information as a class skill?

Irrelevant. Gather information DCs are low, warmage is a charisma based caster, and the skill can be used untrained. No skill technically needs to have full investment to be useful and gather information is one just like that. You can take 10 and 20 with the skill if needed or desired and others can add an aid another bonus to the roll.

It's nearly impossible to completely fail at using the skill.

[H_H_F_F]

A swordsage has competitive damage output with a warmage, while having good skills for noncombat encounters, and utility maneuvers such as tactical teleportation, save replacers, invisibility, flight, and blindsense, all usable all day. Warmage’s utility can maybe compare, but for every spell cast, thats damage output lost

8 readied maneuvers, and a full round to charge/change them. 16 total known. That's way more significant opportunity loss both on the tactical level and the Char building level than a warmage's limited spells per day, that aren't at all that limited. This feels like radically overvaluing "at will" (sort of like WoTC always did).

The warmage in question gets eclectic learning at 6. That opens up (significantly better) invisibility, or anything else that seems worthwhile.

I feel like you're radically overselling some stuff here. As mentioned, cloak of deception doesn't even approach invisibility's power, and is hard to take seriously as an example of out of combat utility. Calling searing charge "flight" feels almost dishonest, and hearing the air is vey limited and comes with a huge opportunity cost.

But yeah, there's a couple of things that swordsgae can do and my example warmage can't. There are is a wider array of things, in my opinion, that said warmage can do and the swordsage can't. The swirdsage can charge something in the air, the warmage has permanent flight and can cast air walk on the entire party. It's a whole different level of out of combat utility.

Even if you happen to think that all the examples I've given amount to less than the swordsage (disagree) it's hard for me to see how they're clearly not within the same order of mahnitude, with sorcerers and barbarians clearly playing a whole other game than these two.

[Troacctid]

My experience with initiators and warmages from both the DM side and the player side has been that actually, mid- to high-level warmages are significantly more dangerous in combat than mid- to high-level initiators. They have a similar damage output, except that initiators are all melee, don't scale up with multiple targets, don't have any BFC to speak of ("tripping one guy" doesn't really qualify), and don't have access to the optimization vectors available to full casters (which lowers their ceiling). Also, once you get past low levels, their average DPR doesn't scale as well as a warmage's. Initiators are good at defense, but c'mon, tell me with a straight face that a melee tank (especially one without any feat or magic item investment) is as effective at defending the party as a BFC mage.

Also, as far as spell slots go, it might be a concern if warmages needed their highest-level slots to put out damage, but warmages aren't psions. They still get full scaling out of their lower-level slots. You can save your 4ths for enemies with spell resistance, save your 5ths for nova power, and still match a swordsage in average DPR with your 2nds and 3rds.

In fairness, initiators do tend to outperform warmages at low levels without much effort, but those are also the levels where they tend to outperform clerics, so YMMV on how much weight that should get.

[Chronos]

Beguiler is a heck of a lot better than Warmage, but it's still not Tier 2. They're very good at what they do, but they have a tough time against enemies with good Will saves, and an even tougher time against enemies that are immune to mind-effecting but aren't idiots. What makes a sorcerer Tier 2, where a beguiler isn't, is that they can take a variety of spells, that work well in very different situations, so that in any given situation they have something that can work well. Beguilers have things that work well in most situations, but not all, and there's little they can do to expand that.

That said, a beguiler is definitely better than a sorcerer at low levels, before the sorcerer has a chance to diversify, because they have all of the spells that a low-level sorcerer would be picking and choosing between. Make a first level sorcerer, and you're likely going to want to pick any two of Sleep, Color Spray, Charm Person, or Silent Image. And the beguiler doesn't have to pick, because they get all of those and then some.

[Crake]

This feels like radically overvaluing "at will" (sort of like WoTC always did).

No, my premise was, given we rate a swordsage/initiator’s output as roughly equal to that of a warmage, the initiator’s ability to go all day does become a contributing factor to determining who is on top.

And sure, a warmage can get invis at level 6 (as a third level spell, and spending their only utility spell on it), but swordsage gets cloak at level 3, which is, by the way, greater invisibility, so they can do anything they want and it will stay up, and its just one of a dozen tools in their kit.

[Troacctid]

No, my premise was, given we rate a swordsage/initiator’s output as roughly equal to that of a warmage, the initiator’s ability to go all day does become a contributing factor to determining who is on top.

And sure, a warmage can get invis at level 6 (as a third level spell, and spending their only utility spell on it), but swordsage gets cloak at level 3, which is, by the way, greater invisibility, so they can do anything they want and it will stay up, and its just one of a dozen tools in their kit.
Warmages have enough ammunition in their quiver to go all day too, once you get past low levels. There aren't generally enough encounters in a day to really run a sorcerer-type out of spell slots.

I like Cloak of Deception, and I've even taken it on warmages before, but it's also only for 1 round, so it's more accurate to say that you can do anything you want and it won't stay up.

[Crake]

Warmages have enough ammunition in their quiver to go all day too, once you get past low levels. There aren't generally enough encounters in a day to really run a sorcerer-type out of spell slots.

Not in my experience, its almost always the casters who are the limiting factor in a party’s progress. Most combats I’ve experienced tend to go on for 10+ rounds, and then multiple of those per day. To me, those apparently typical 1-2 round encounters that people on this forum speak of are entirely foreign, and sound like frankly rather poor encounter design.

[Troacctid]

Not in my experience, its almost always the casters who are the limiting factor in a party’s progress. Most combats I’ve experienced tend to go on for 10+ rounds, and then multiple of those per day. To me, those apparently typical 1-2 round encounters that people on this forum speak of are entirely foreign, and sound like frankly rather poor encounter design.
I've DM'd for parties like that, and it tends to happen either because the encounter is deliberately designed to be a longer setpiece battle with, like, waves of enemies and environmental hazards and stuff; or because the party didn't pack enough DPR in their kits (or they packed the wrong kind of DPR) to actually finish the enemies off. The latter isn't usually a problem for warmages, and the former isn't likely to happen twice in one day.

[Crake]

I've DM'd for parties like that, and it tends to happen either because the encounter is deliberately designed to be a longer setpiece battle with, like, waves of enemies and environmental hazards and stuff; or because the party didn't pack enough DPR in their kits (or they packed the wrong kind of DPR) to actually finish the enemies off. The latter isn't usually a problem for warmages, and the former isn't likely to happen twice in one day.

Its generally the former for me, and generally yes, they do happen more than once in my experience, because generally speaking, unless youre playing encounters like a computer game, a dungeon/encampment will oftentimes have an ecosystem that causes single fight encounters to be practically impossible, and unless the party is retreating after every foray, they will generally get back to back big fights. And its almost always the caster who has to call for the party to pull back so they can recover.

[RandomPeasant]

Irrelevant. Gather information DCs are low, warmage is a charisma based caster, and the skill can be used untrained.

So the Warmage is good because it can make checks that it does not require any investment to make successfully? Do you also consider the Aristocrat good?


Also, once you get past low levels, their average DPR doesn't scale as well as a warmage's.

It seems like maybe the people you play with are just not very good at building martials. The Warmage does not scale faster than an ubercharger. Especially not while making use of their casting for anything but Warmage spells.


Initiators are good at defense, but c'mon, tell me with a straight face that a melee tank (especially one without any feat or magic item investment) is as effective at defending the party as a BFC mage.

The Warmage is a BFC dabbler at best. No wall of stone, no solid fog, no wall of force. black tentacles and acid fog are nice, but they don't fill the niche on their own.

Conversely, the Warblade can have the save-replacers, white raven tactics, and iron heart surge by 5th level. At that point he can just go full ubercharger and ignore SoDs while granting extra actions every combat, or multiple times in a protracted fight.


Beguiler is a heck of a lot better than Warmage, but it's still not Tier 2. They're very good at what they do, but they have a tough time against enemies with good Will saves, and an even tougher time against enemies that are immune to mind-effecting but aren't idiots.

We're going to have this argument too? Yes, the Beguiler is absolutely T2. Because it doesn't matter if this enemy is immune to [Mind-Affecting]. You fought another one earlier, and that one wasn't, and now it's on your side. The Beguiler's access to very potent minionmancy effects gets it into T2, unless the DM just never supplies you with level-appropriate adversaries that you can charm. And if you're warping the game that much, you're T2 anyway.

The Sorcerer also doesn't really have more niche coverage. Yeah, they can pick from a wider range of spells, but they learn way less of them. At 10th level, a Sorcerer gets one 5th, two 4ths, three 3rds, and some 2nd and lower level spells that aren't doing much. The Beguiler gets dominate person, greater invisibility, solid fog, haste, glibness, and major image. That's as many spells as the Sorcerer does, all covering different niches, and the Beguiler still has a bunch of other stuff, much of which is quite good.


That said, a beguiler is definitely better than a sorcerer at low levels, before the sorcerer has a chance to diversify, because they have all of the spells that a low-level sorcerer would be picking and choosing between. Make a first level sorcerer, and you're likely going to want to pick any two of Sleep, Color Spray, Charm Person, or Silent Image. And the beguiler doesn't have to pick, because they get all of those and then some.

The thing is this is true all the way up through at least 8th. Grabbing sleep into glitterdust into haste into charm monster is a perfectly respectable Sorcerer, and it's a strictly worse Beguiler. Even if you grab polymorph you're stacking that up against charm monster and greater invisibility and solid fog. Plus a whole bunch of minor spells.

The basic deal with the Beguiler (and to an extent the Dread Necromancer, though that one is a bit weirder) is that they are just better Sorcerers for the first ~half of the game and then pretty good Sorcerers for the remainder of it. That's more than enough to get to T2, especially because they are also qualitatively different from the classes in T3. The Beguiler and the Dread Necromancer can play the game in ways the Warmages, Crusaders, and Totemists of the world can't. That's what makes them T2.


And sure, a warmage can get invis at level 6 (as a third level spell, and spending their only utility spell on it)

It's pretty funny seeing people talk about the Warmage "getting invisibility" or "getting teleport" like we don't all realize they cast those spells at a level up and there's a bunch of conflicts between the different options that get floated.


Its generally the former for me, and generally yes, they do happen more than once in my experience, because generally speaking, unless youre playing encounters like a computer game, a dungeon/encampment will oftentimes have an ecosystem that causes single fight encounters to be practically impossible, and unless the party is retreating after every foray, they will generally get back to back big fights. And its almost always the caster who has to call for the party to pull back so they can recover.

It's really just handwaving the situations where the Warmage is good as likely and the ones where the Warblade is good as unlikely. Which is especially bizarre as we're also handwaving the things that Beguilers or Sorcerers are better than Warmages at as unlikely. Troacctid appears to expect to be taken on an amusement park ride designed for Warmages, and then observing this makes Warmages good. Which, sure, but it doesn't really tell us much.

As I see it, there's three issues here:

1. Is the Warmage better than the Warblade at combat?

So far, it seems like probably not. It has some advantages (range, AoE), but also some disadvantages (much less durable, much less sustainable, no WRT/IHS).

2. Is the Warmage comparable to the Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, and Sorcerer at combat?

I just can't see this being true at all. All those classes have access to minionmancy effects the Warmage doesn't get, meaning they simply run over it. orb of fire compares unfavorably to fear, and that's without considering the Dread Necromancer can cast fear through their zombie entourage.

3. Is the Warmage far enough ahead of the Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, and Sorcerer in combat to make up for its total lack of non-combat abilities?

This is just laughable. The pro-Warmage side is suggesting things like "untrained Gather Information checks" or "resolve all social situations with Intimidate". Or handwaving everything outside combat as unimportant, like we were talking about 4e instead of 3e.

[H_H_F_F]

No, my premise was, given we rate a swordsage/initiator’s output as roughly equal to that of a warmage, the initiator’s ability to go all day does become a contributing factor to determining who is on top.

And sure, a warmage can get invis at level 6 (as a third level spell, and spending their only utility spell on it), but swordsage gets cloak at level 3, which is, by the way, greater invisibility, so they can do anything they want and it will stay up, and its just one of a dozen tools in their kit.

Come on. We're arguing details right now. If you truly believe that swordsage has the edge over the warmage/servant because of sustainability, and they're otherwise roughly the same, you can't say the warmage/servant is tier 4. I'm not interested in debating whether the moment maneuvers are overall better than spontaneous protection from evil / magic circle; that'd highly depend on our experience in our different tables.

As I already said, you can think swordsage is better. That's fine. There's a difference between seeing it as better, and claiming that the dispelling, flying, air walk casting, abjuration having, debuffing, buffing spontaneous caster is essentially on the same footing as a Zhentarim fighter.

I'm bringing you back to the point: leave aside whether potential access to any 2nd level wizard spell at a third level slot is better or worse utility than access to utility maneuvers.

It's simply inconceivable to say the warmage presented above is only good at one thing, and they're still obviously good at that one thing. They're tier 3. There's no real case for anything else, in my opinion.



It's pretty funny seeing people talk about the Warmage "getting invisibility" or "getting teleport" like we don't all realize they cast those spells at a level up and there's a bunch of conflicts between the different options that get floated.


Hey, I'm the "people" Crake was talking to, I absolutely acknowledged the opportunity cost, my point still stands, and while I'm sure you're not doing this on purpose (as this discussion has obviously winded a lot with many participants) this is the second time you quoted a response made to my point and went ahead to strawman my position without actually considering it or replying to it.



More generally, I feel like this argument got a bit bitter and dogmatic. People are insisting either that a warmage/servant is akin to a sorcerer, or that it's akin to a barbarian. It's obviously neither. We can discuss all day how much worse the combat-only-one-turn flight of swordsage is when compared to wings, or how worth it sleet storm is. Not the point, doesn't matter.

It's not in the same playing field as a sorcerer, and it's not on the same playing field as a barbarian. Very, very obviously. It is, very obviously, on the same scale as a warblade, a bard, a duskblade, as a psychic warrior. Some of them may be better, others worse - but it's the same playing field.

[Crake]

Come on. We're arguing details right now. If you truly believe that swordsage has the edge over the warmage/servant because of sustainability, and they're otherwise roughly the same, you can't say the warmage/servant is tier 4. I'm not interested in debating whether the moment maneuvers are overall better than spontaneous protection from evil / magic circle; that'd highly depend on our experience in our different tables.

I think the real factor in whether it is tier 3 or 4 depends on how detrimental you consider the loss of caster levels to be. You do get more utility, but you lose sustain in return, thanks to the lost levels, which is why i hesitate to bump it to 3

[H_H_F_F]

I think the real factor in whether it is tier 3 or 4 depends on how detrimental you consider the loss of caster levels to be. You do get more utility, but you lose sustain in return, thanks to the lost levels, which is why i hesitate to bump it to 3

I specifically used an example when the warmage is already a level behind (should've made the 12/12 comparison, though, not 11/11. My bad.)

The spells per day are still plenty, the versatility is still impressive, the damage is still up there.

In the comparison to straight warmage 12, the rainbow warsnake with table advancement has 5 rather than 6 4th level spells, 3 rather than 5 5th level, and no 6ths obviously. It's not that significant in terms of sustain.

But again, I don't think the argument should be over the comparison to warmage 12. It should be about the comparison to psion 12 (no sensible argument, in my opinion), barbarian 12 (no sensible argument, in my opinion) and warblade / paychic warrior / bard / etc (arguments).

It's not barbarian. It's not a zhentarim fighter. It's not playing the same freaking game.

[Troacctid]

So the Warmage is good because it can make checks that it does not require any investment to make successfully? Do you also consider the Aristocrat good?
If the encounter can be solved with a Gather Information check at normal Gather Information DCs, honestly, that doesn't say much about the class's power level, it's just an easy encounter. That's like "You are traveling through the woods and a fast-moving river crosses your path. What do you do?" levels of difficulty.


It seems like maybe the people you play with are just not very good at building martials. The Warmage does not scale faster than an ubercharger. Especially not while making use of their casting for anything but Warmage spells.

[...]

Conversely, the Warblade can have the save-replacers, white raven tactics, and iron heart surge by 5th level. At that point he can just go full ubercharger and ignore SoDs while granting extra actions every combat, or multiple times in a protracted fight.
If you're not investing feats and magic items into the strategy, then your charge at 5th level is doing, what, something like +12 to hit for 2d6+21 damage? Masterwork greatsword, 19 Strength, Leading the Charge, Battle Leader's Charge? Compared to the warmage, who at that level is doing 5d8+Int damage with a DC 16 save for half and only very limited AoE potential? Sure, I mean, that's pretty good for the warblade, at level 5, in the range where I already conceded that warblades keep pace with and typically outperform warmages. I mean, the warmage still pulls ahead in the DPR comparison if there are two enemies to hit instead of one, but we can still call this one a win for the warblade.


The Warmage is a BFC dabbler at best. No wall of stone, no solid fog, no wall of force. black tentacles and acid fog are nice, but they don't fill the niche on their own.
Don't forget stinking cloud, sleet storm, wall of fire, blade barrier, and (eventually) prismatic wall! And wall of force is basically the default advanced learning pick for level 11; you can have it if you think it's important.


It's pretty funny seeing people talk about the Warmage "getting invisibility" or "getting teleport" like we don't all realize they cast those spells at a level up and there's a bunch of conflicts between the different options that get floated.
Like, I respect this argument, I do, and I'm actually trying to talk about the default options only without assuming anything else, but also, I do think if we're going to talk about the sorcerer "getting polymorph," then surely doing the same for the warmage is fair game. Or if we're going to have people say, "Warmages are missing this one key type of spell that if they had it, they could be as good as sorcerers, but they don't have it!" then we should be able to say, "Well, if that's what the warmage needs, let me just point right over here to this ability they have that lets them learn off-list spells," because, I mean, that's a reasonable response, right?


It's really just handwaving the situations where the Warmage is good as likely and the ones where the Warblade is good as unlikely. Which is especially bizarre as we're also handwaving the things that Beguilers or Sorcerers are better than Warmages at as unlikely. Troacctid appears to expect to be taken on an amusement park ride designed for Warmages, and then observing this makes Warmages good. Which, sure, but it doesn't really tell us much.
Look, when you DM enough pre-made adventure modules, you start to notice certain patterns in how adventures are structured.

[Crake]

Like, I respect this argument, I do, and I'm actually trying to talk about the default options only without assuming anything else, but also, I do think if we're going to talk about the sorcerer "getting polymorph," then surely doing the same for the warmage is fair game. Or if we're going to have people say, "Warmages are missing this one key type of spell that if they had it, they could be as good as sorcerers, but they don't have it!" then we should be able to say, "Well, if that's what the warmage needs, let me just point right over here to this ability they have that lets them learn off-list spells," because, I mean, that's a reasonable response, right?

The difference is that warmages get less than a handful of off-list spells, and the SUPER off-list spells eat up a spell level one above what they normally are, so the main difference is that the sorcerer can get one major blast spell for each spell level (using energy substitution to avoid the pitfalls of energy resistances/immunities), and then spend ALL the rest of their spells on those utility spells, wheras for warmages, it's the complete opposite, where they have an overabundance of blasting spells, and lack the ability to pick more than a couple of versatility spells.

Not to mention that sorcerers can innately use wands and scrolls of any sorc/wiz spells, wheras warmages are forced to take crossclass (or find a way to make it class) UMD checks just to have that same access.

Point is, it's not about any ONE spell.

[RandomPeasant]

It's simply inconceivable to say the warmage presented above is only good at one thing, and they're still obviously good at that one thing. They're tier 3. There's no real case for anything else, in my opinion.

I dunno. You're good once you get the capstone (I think if we're considering exclusively 16th and up, 6/10 Rainbow Warsnake is T3), but you're hurting before then. At 13th level, you're casting 5th level spells, and your CL is 10. This makes you a lot worse at your standard Warmage tricks.

Plus, as you've optimized by picking up Rainbow Servant, presumably the T4 has optimized too. The obvious choice is Leadership, as it also represents an attempt to broaden capabilities. I think an Adept cohort is fair, as that's a T5 class, so it shouldn't overshadow the PC. But it gives quite a bit of utility (in addition to the inherent utility of followers). At 13th level it'll be 11th level, getting animate dead, lightning bolt, and a whole range of utility and healing spells (plus, when you tick up to 14th, it'll get polymorph). I think the combination of a charger and that level of magic is pretty competitive with a 10th level Warmage with some domains, which is effectively what the Rainbow Servant is at this point.


Hey, I'm the "people" Crake was talking to, I absolutely acknowledged the opportunity cost

You're the person Crake was talking to you, but there is another person in the thread suggesting different choices for Eclectic Learning. That's why I responded to him and said "people" rather than responding to you directly.


I think the real factor in whether it is tier 3 or 4 depends on how detrimental you consider the loss of caster levels to be. You do get more utility, but you lose sustain in return, thanks to the lost levels, which is why i hesitate to bump it to 3

You also lose power. d6/level is shaky when you get all the levels, it's pretty bad when you're down multiple CLs. Plus, the additional utility is pretty marginal before the capstone. As a 12th level character, I would really rather be able to cast acid fog than aid.


If you're not investing feats and magic items into the strategy, then your charge at 5th level is doing, what, something like +12 to hit for 2d6+21 damage?

If you're not investing feats or items, you should be using bonecrusher (which means you don't get the Fort save-replacer at 5th, but you don't really need that one), which means you deal 6d6 base and don't need to move up in a straight line. But this dance you do about "not investing feats and items" is missing the point. Yes, the Warmage's numbers also go up if they do that. But they don't go up faster.

This is the difference between a T2 and a T3. A Beguiler that hasn't invested anything special in dominate person has dominate person, which wins fights and gives permanent allies. A Warmage who hasn't invested anything special in cone of cold has something that doesn't even kill chaff monsters reliably. The fact that the Warmage can invest resources to make cone of cold good doesn't really matter, because when the Beguiler invests build resources they get to be a Shadowcraft Mage or have an Ancestral Relic Runestaff.


Don't forget stinking cloud, sleet storm, wall of fire, blade barrier, and (eventually) prismatic wall! And wall of force is basically the default advanced learning pick for level 11; you can have it if you think it's important.

I thought we were learning voice of the dragon with Eclectic Learning at 11th so that we had something vaguely relevant outside combat. And, no, blade barrier is not good BFC. wall of fire is better, but it's worse than black tentacles at the same level. prismatic wall is a fair point, but I was mostly talking about a mid-level range.


Like, I respect this argument, I do, and I'm actually trying to talk about the default options only without assuming anything else, but also, I do think if we're going to talk about the sorcerer "getting polymorph," then surely doing the same for the warmage is fair game.

Sure, you could get polymorph. But at that point the Sorcerer would also have magic jar, and in one level they'd get planar binding.


"Well, if that's what the warmage needs, let me just point right over here to this ability they have that lets them learn off-list spells," because, I mean, that's a reasonable response, right?

No. Because that ability just... isn't very good. Eclectic Learning gets you a total of four spells, and really it's three spells because there's no 0th level spell that's worth casting as a 1st level spell. And they're all later and more expensive than the Sorcerer gets them. Just saying "the class has an ability to do a thing" doesn't mean anything, because you have to do a thing well for your ability to do that thing to matter. I'm not trying to argue the Warmage doesn't have advantages over the Warblade because the Warblade could own a longbow or take Cleave.


Look, when you DM enough pre-made adventure modules, you start to notice certain patterns in how adventures are structured.

You mean "in ways that are incredibly easy to sequence-break if you have abilities that do that"?


the main difference is that the sorcerer can get one major blast spell for each spell level

Or just learn wings of flurry and have 99% of their blasting needs covered. As a 10th level Sorcerer, your 5th through 3rd spell selection could be something like magic jar, polymorph, wings of flurry, haste, major image, and great thunderclap. That matches up to the Warmage really well, even as it's pretty disappointing in comparison to the Beguiler or Dread Necromancer.

[H_H_F_F]

I dunno. You're good once you get the capstone (I think if we're considering exclusively 16th and up, 6/10 Rainbow Warsnake is T3), but you're hurting before then. At 13th level, you're casting 5th level spells, and your CL is 10. This makes you a lot worse at your standard Warmage tricks.

Plus, as you've optimized by picking up Rainbow Servant, presumably the T4 has optimized too. The obvious choice is Leadership, as it also represents an attempt to broaden capabilities. I think an Adept cohort is fair, as that's a T5 class, so it shouldn't overshadow the PC. But it gives quite a bit of utility (in addition to the inherent utility of followers). At 13th level it'll be 11th level, getting animate dead, lightning bolt, and a whole range of utility and healing spells (plus, when you tick up to 14th, it'll get polymorph). I think the combination of a charger and that level of magic is pretty competitive with a 10th level Warmage with some domains, which is effectively what the Rainbow Servant is at this point.


In my opinion, leadership is just an impossible argument to make. You're talking about "not overshadowing the PCs" and "optimizing" simultaneously.

But sure, let's say leadership is in. You can take it to. It's one feat, and you're significantly less feat starved than the barbarian. Heck, tale wild cohort while you're at it, and some leader feats. If the barb+adept is about equivalent to the warsnake, then the warsnake+leadership+wild cohort is sure as hell outclassing the barbarian.

But again, "tier 4s can get versatility through leadership" is just a ridiculous argument to me. A barbarian with an adept will absolutely overshadow a barbarian without one, outclass them completely. The fact that they wouldn't do so to the warsnake is just further evidence that they're not the same tier.

[Gnaeus]

Just popping in to say that Zhentarim Fighter (Bottom 4) and Swordsage (mid 3) shouldn't really be our debate points. You can be better than a Zhent and still 4. Worse than a SS and 3. So for purpose of figuring out Warmage/RS....

The border classes are roughly
T3: Duskblade: 3.34
Lurk: 3.4
Psychic Rogue: 3.4
Wild Shape Ranger: 3.47

T4: Incarnate: 3.5
Factotum: 3.51
Wild Monk: 3.51

Also, sorry for the note, but Warmage is T2. 2.2, so bottomish of t2, worse than Beguiler and Sorcerer or DN, better than Spirit Shaman or Mystic Ranger. If you think it isn't, that isn't your opinion, it is wrong. Warmage is T2 and T2 is Warmage, definitionally. When you refer to Tier 2, you are referring to "that group of classes ranging from Spirit Shaman to Generic Spellcaster, including Warmage". Saying Warmage is T3 or 4 is like saying a pickup truck is a stapler. That isn't what those words mean. Tier 3 means "that group of classes ranging from Wild Shape Ranger to Wilder, not including Warmage". The community decided what those words meant like 4 years ago. We had like 22 threads on it. If you think for some reason those standards have changed I would think that "Re: Is a 6/10 spelling casting warmage rainbow servant worth it?" is not where those definitions would be revised.

[H_H_F_F]

Just popping in to say that Zhentarim Fighter (Bottom 4) and Swordsage (mid 3) shouldn't really be our debate points. You can be better than a Zhent and still 4. Worse than a SS and 3. So for purpose of figuring out Warmage/RS....

The border classes are roughly
T3: Duskblade: 3.34
Lurk: 3.4
Psychic Rogue: 3.4
Wild Shape Ranger: 3.47

T4: Incarnate: 3.5
Factotum: 3.51
Wild Monk: 3.51

Also, sorry for the note, but Warmage is T2. 2.2, so bottomish of t2, worse than Beguiler and Sorcerer, better than Spirit Shaman or Mystic Ranger. If you think it isn't, that isn't your opinion, it is wrong. Warmage is T2 and T2 is Warmage, definitionally. When you refer to Tier 2, you are referring to "that group of classes ranging from Spirit Shaman to Generic Spellcaster, including Warmage". Saying Warmage is T3 or 4 is like saying a pickup truck is a stapler. That isn't what those words mean. The community decided what those words meant like 4 years ago. If you think for some reason those standards have changed I would think that "Re: Is a 6/10 spelling casting warmage rainbow servant worth it?" is not where those definitions would be revised.

The tier list goes back to 2011, if I'm not mistaken, and is a description of capabilities. This community had a discussion on where, in their opinion, different classes belong. Is this class or that "Capable of doing absolutely everything, often better than classes that specialize in that thing", and therefor tier 1? Or is it more "Has as much raw power as the Tier 1 classes, but can't pull off nearly as many tricks", and therefore tier 2?

People voiced their opinions, and their opinion were averaged out to give us the aggregate community opinion on which class belonged where.

There's nothing definitional about this concept. If I define "the top mother****ing snake" as the snake that "has the best combination of visual appeal and deadliness", and a bunch of people on a snake sureddit mostly agreed that the Cobra best suited this description, it doesn't at all means that the cobra is definitionally "the top mother****ing snake", and that anyone who disagreed was wrong. Compare and contrast to saying Black Adders are "the top mother****ing snake" because there's a TV show named after them. That'd be definitionally wrong, because being the top mother****ing snake isn't about that, it's about visual appeal and deadliness.

[Gnaeus]

The tier list goes back to 2011, if I'm not mistaken, and is a description of capabilities. This community had a discussion on where, in their opinion, different classes belong. Is this class or that "Capable of doing absolutely everything, often better than classes that specialize in that thing", and therefor tier 1? Or is it more "Has as much raw power as the Tier 1 classes, but can't pull off nearly as many tricks", and therefore tier 2?

People voiced their opinions, and their opinion were averaged out to give us the aggregate community opinion on which class belonged where.

There's nothing definitional about this concept. If I define "the top mother****ing snake" as the snake that "has the best combination of visual appeal and deadliness", and a bunch of people on a snake sureddit mostly agreed that the Cobra best suited this description, it doesn't at all means that the cobra is definitionally "the top mother****ing snake", and that anyone who disagreed was wrong. Compare and contrast to saying Black Adders are "the top mother****ing snake" because there's a TV show named after them. That'd be definitionally wrong, because being the top mother****ing snake isn't about that, it's about visual appeal and deadliness.

JaronK wrote a tier list before that. Which was then revised. JaronK made up some after the fact descriptive categories which didn't even include a bunch of these classes and which included a LOT of definitional baggage which has since then been junked. I was involved in many of those original discussions, which weren't very rigorous because it was a one man one vote system in which JaronK was the man. If you like the JaronK system, Beguiler and Dread Necro are tier 3, by the only criteria that mattered, which was that JaronK said they were. (and I respect JaronK, his system was better than what we had before, which was nothing, but while I have my own opinions about where a few classes fall I wouldn't want to go back to it). I was involved in the ORIGINAL debate that DN and Beguiler were T2. JaronK overruled, and I wrote the original definition of why Beguiler is T3 because I didn't want someone else to mess it up. And to set your wayback machine and bring the whole thing full circle, the reason JaronK said Beguiler was T3 was that every beguiler he had seen was a shadowcraft mage so he assumed the class sucked without list expansion, and because the original definitions pretty much assumed your character had their WBL randomly generated and couldn't buy items. And there was all this weird emphasis on campaign nukes because he thought that was important.

Community definition is the only thing definitional about the concept. Tier 3, or tier 2 are in and of themselves meaningless concepts. When you call something a Tier 2, you mean, it is a "Thing this group agreed means tier 2" And that is set. You can debate all day about whether or not a warmage is an artichoke or an eggplant, but that would be meaningless. The only meaning for what a "Tier 2" is is what we agreed Tier 2 is. The only meaning for what a Tier 3 is is what we agreed Tier 3 is. The only thing Tier 2 means is "that group of classes ranging from Spirit Shaman to Generic Spellcaster, including Warmage". Warmage is tier 3 is logically equal to Warmage is artichoke. It is a contrary to fact statement. It cannot be disproven without redefining what a warmage or an artichoke is. If you are in education, or manufacturing, Tier 1, 2, 3 mean totally different things, which are only of value based on their definitions in THOSE groups.


If I define "the top mother****ing snake" as the snake that "has the best combination of visual appeal and deadliness", and a bunch of people on a snake sureddit mostly agreed that the Cobra best suited this description, it doesn't at all means that the cobra is definitionally "the top mother****ing snake", and that anyone who disagreed was wrong. Compare and contrast to saying Black Adders are "the top mother****ing snake" because there's a TV show named after them. That'd be definitionally wrong, because being the top mother****ing snake isn't about that, it's about visual appeal and deadliness.

But that isn't what is happening here. We are ON the subredit in question, and this group has defined those terms. And we are using them in a discussion based on what this group defined them on, which is a measure of comparative power and utility. Using any other definition than the one set by consensus on THIS forum is absolutely needlessly complicated, kind of arrogant, and kind of deceptive. Deceptive in that we have a definition of what those mean and when you argue something else it makes the definition of tier not mean what most of us understand it to mean. Arrogant in that we hashed out all these arguments in detail in those threads, and just because your opinion lost you are trying to argue something different in a thread with 1/10 the traffic. We, all of us, the group, decided what the tiers meant. You can agree, or you can talk about the eggplant.

[Chronos]

Last I checked, Dread Necromancer and Beguiler were the classes used to define Tier 3, and there was debate over whether Warmage was 3 or 4.

Quoth RandomPeasant:

We're going to have this argument too? Yes, the Beguiler is absolutely T2. Because it doesn't matter if this enemy is immune to [Mind-Affecting]. You fought another one earlier, and that one wasn't, and now it's on your side. The Beguiler's access to very potent minionmancy effects gets it into T2, unless the DM just never supplies you with level-appropriate adversaries that you can charm. And if you're warping the game that much, you're T2 anyway.

If you're facing an ancient crypt full of undead, it doesn't mean that your DM hates your beguiler. That's just a fairly unremarkable setting for a D&D adventure. And sure, the beguiler won't have a problem with the skeletons and zombies, but then, nobody has much of a problem with skeletons and zombies. The wights, ghouls, shadows, wraiths, vampires, and lich, though, are going to be tricky. The beguiler will still be able to contribute versus those, but they definitely won't have the Right Tool for the Job.

And I think you're overstating the value of charmed minions. If it's literally just Charm, then they regard you as a trusted friend, but there's a difference between "trusted friend" and "willing to put my life on hold on a moment's notice to go gallivanting across the globe doing dangerous things". You can probably get them to help you out in the same dungeon or the like, but then you're likely to get into the situation where the enemies in the next encounter are also their friends, and they're likely to spend the combat trying to make peace instead of fighting. And if you're instead talking about Domination, then you're either waiting until double-digit levels to get just humanoids, or until level 18 to get other creature types.

Also, with charmed or dominated minions, you're one Dispel Magic away from suddenly facing a hard encounter plus the minions you were hoping to use to resolve that encounter, all at once. Everyone else's minions are either unaffected by Dispel Magic, or at worst go poof and aren't fighting on either side.

[Gnaeus]

Last I checked, Dread Necromancer and Beguiler were the classes used to define Tier 3, and there was debate over whether Warmage was 3 or 4.

If you're facing an ancient crypt full of undead, it doesn't mean that your DM hates your beguiler. That's just a fairly unremarkable setting for a D&D adventure. And sure, the beguiler won't have a problem with the skeletons and zombies, but then, nobody has much of a problem with skeletons and zombies. The wights, ghouls, shadows, wraiths, vampires, and lich, though, are going to be tricky. The beguiler will still be able to contribute versus those, but they definitely won't have the Right Tool for the Job.

And I think you're overstating the value of charmed minions. If it's literally just Charm, then they regard you as a trusted friend, but there's a difference between "trusted friend" and "willing to put my life on hold on a moment's notice to go gallivanting across the globe doing dangerous things". You can probably get them to help you out in the same dungeon or the like, but then you're likely to get into the situation where the enemies in the next encounter are also their friends, and they're likely to spend the combat trying to make peace instead of fighting. And if you're instead talking about Domination, then you're either waiting until double-digit levels to get just humanoids, or until level 18 to get other creature types.

Also, with charmed or dominated minions, you're one Dispel Magic away from suddenly facing a hard encounter plus the minions you were hoping to use to resolve that encounter, all at once. Everyone else's minions are either unaffected by Dispel Magic, or at worst go poof and aren't fighting on either side.


https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?600635-Why-each-class-is-in-its-tier-2019-update!

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?515849-Retiering-the-Classes-Beguiler-Dread-Necromancer-and-Warmage
That was essentially the 2011 definition. Determined by executive fiat. We argued for about a year on like 22 threads 3 years ago, there were like 80 running votes and moved on. I would be happy to restate my arguments with JaronK from 2011. But not on this thread. Regardless, Community consensus is that Beguiler is not only T2, but solidly in the middle of T2, 2.0 actually.

[H_H_F_F]

JaronK wrote a tier list before that. Which was then revised. JaronK made up some after the fact descriptive categories which didn't even include a bunch of these classes and which included a LOT of definitional baggage which has since then been junked. I was involved in many of those original discussions, which weren't very rigorous because it was a one man one vote system in which JaronK was the man. If you like the JaronK system, Beguiler and Dread Necro are tier 3, by the only criteria that mattered, which was that JaronK said they were. (and I respect JaronK, his system was better than what we had before, which was nothing, but while I have my own opinions about where a few classes fall I wouldn't want to go back to it). I was involved in the ORIGINAL debate that DN and Beguiler were T2. JaronK overruled, and I wrote the original definition of why Beguiler is T3 because I didn't want someone else to mess it up. And to set your wayback machine and bring the whole thing full circle, the reason JaronK said Beguiler was T3 was that every beguiler he had seen was a shadowcraft mage so he assumed the class sucked without list expansion, and because the original definitions pretty much assumed your character had their WBL randomly generated and couldn't buy items. And there was all this weird emphasis on campaign nukes because he thought that was important.

Community definition is the only thing definitional about the concept. Tier 3, or tier 2 are in and of themselves meaningless concepts. When you call something a Tier 2, you mean, it is a "Thing this group agreed means tier 2" And that is set. You can debate all day about whether or not a warmage is an artichoke or an eggplant, but that would be meaningless. The only meaning for what a "Tier 2" is is what we agreed Tier 2 is. The only meaning for what a Tier 3 is is what we agreed Tier 3 is. The only thing Tier 2 means is "that group of classes ranging from Spirit Shaman to Generic Spellcaster, including Warmage". Warmage is tier 3 is logically equal to Warmage is artichoke. It is a contrary to fact statement. It cannot be disproven without redefining what a warmage or an artichoke is. If you are in education, or manufacturing, Tier 1, 2, 3 mean totally different things, which are only of value based on their definitions in THOSE groups.



But that isn't what is happening here. We are ON the subredit in question, and this group has defined those terms. And we are using them in a discussion based on what this group defined them on, which is a measure of comparative power and utility. Using any other definition than the one set by consensus on THIS forum is absolutely needlessly complicated, kind of arrogant, and kind of deceptive. Deceptive in that we have a definition of what those mean and when you argue something else it makes the definition of tier not mean what most of us understand it to mean. Arrogant in that we hashed out all these arguments in detail in those threads, and just because your opinion lost you are trying to argue something different in a thread with 1/10 the traffic. We, all of us, the group, decided what the tiers meant. You can agree, or you can talk about the eggplant.

Thanks for the history lesson! I wasn't familiar with a lot of the discussions leading up to the tier definitions.

And yet, I feel that my point stands. The discussion wasn't arbitrary; it was about power and utility. Thinking that other people are wrong about how much power and utility a class offers isn't definitionally wrong, and I think your later points sort of acknowledge this - being arrogant and being "definitionally wrong" isn't the same thing.

Deceptiveness seems like a harsh judgement to me simply for rehashing an old discussion, and it seems to presume some intent to do it secretly in this little thread rather than just the natural course of discourse taking its place, though arrogance is of course fair - as always, when one goes against a consensus, and especially when one is not wholly familiar with the arguments of many of those disagreeing with him.

[Gnaeus]

Thanks for the history lesson! I wasn't familiar with a lot of the discussions leading up to the tier definitions.

And yet, I feel that my point stands. The discussion wasn't arbitrary; it was about power and utility. Thinking that other people are wrong about how much power and utility a class offers isn't definitionally wrong, and I think your later points sort of acknowledge this - being arrogant and being "definitionally wrong" isn't the same thing.

Deceptiveness seems like a harsh judgement to me simply for rehashing an old discussion, and it seems to presume some intent to do it secretly in this little thread rather than just the natural course of discourse taking its place, though arrogance is of course fair - as always, when one goes against a consensus, and especially when one is not wholly familiar with the arguments of many of those disagreeing with him.

I was writing this while you were writing but just going to cut paste it down to here.

And the other reason why the community rating is all that makes sense is that the tiers are really trying to rate class effectiveness across different play environments. There isn't a right or wrong answer. Maybe, at your table, Warmage < Spirit Shaman but at mine Spirit Shaman < Warmage. Because of hundreds of play assumptions or optimization levels or interpretations etc. 30 people, with 30 play assumptions, are certainly going to give a better cross view of class utility at a range of tables than 5, or JaronK, even if JaronK is a super genius. So whether or not I think fighter should be T5, (and I very much do) my table opinions aren't better than 10 other peoples and I can recognize that in a tier discussion I have to put on my adult pants and recognize that fighter is T4. Despite the fact that my opinions are clearly better, I am wrong. I failed to convince people of them. Or maybe my opinions aren't better. Or maybe my opinions are 100% correct for what I saw but the table where I played a spirit shaman was an outlier because of the DM or the party composition. I think spirit shaman is a dog with fleas. I voted. I lost. Maybe the real difference between beguiler at T3 and T2 is whether you are playing in a game with a magic mart for them to use a bunch of wands, so the 20 of us with magic marts overruled the 10 without. I'm just REALLY, REALLY opposed to relitigating these same arguments every time when we had good, substantive discussions with a lot of participation only a few years ago. We will not get a better analysis than community rating. We have that. We talked a lot about comparative optimization and equipment and level ranges and all that. So unless someone really thinks there is value to be gained in restarting those 22 threads, we know where Warmage is. 2.2

[redking]

Is it agreed that the Rainbow Warsnake is powerful in epic? For example, Warmage 14, Rainbow Servant 10 with practiced spellcaster to get the caster level up to 24.

[AvatarVecna]

Is it agreed that the Rainbow Warsnake is powerful in epic? For example, Warmage 14, Rainbow Servant 10 with practiced spellcaster to get the caster level up to 24.

The answer really depends on the kind of game being played, moreso than a lot of other stuff. Like, in a lot of games, that's probably pretty good. Spontaneous casting from an enormous list full of good spells with no CL loss? That's pretty nice even by epic standards. You'll be playing on easy mode with basically any answer to a given problem at your fingertips.

However, from a certain perspective...Warmage 11/Rainbow Servant 10 under this interpretation is 21 HD and is only casting 8th lvl spells, so they can't take Epic Spellcasting yet. It'll catch back up at 24 HD, at which point it's not really any better off than anyone else, because everybody is equally capable of breaking the game via free instantaneous custom mechanics.

[Crake]

The answer really depends on the kind of game being played, moreso than a lot of other stuff. Like, in a lot of games, that's probably pretty good. Spontaneous casting from an enormous list full of good spells with no CL loss? That's pretty nice even by epic standards. You'll be playing on easy mode with basically any answer to a given problem at your fingertips.

However, from a certain perspective...Warmage 11/Rainbow Servant 10 under this interpretation is 21 HD and is only casting 8th lvl spells, so they can't take Epic Spellcasting yet. It'll catch back up at 24 HD, at which point it's not really any better off than anyone else, because everybody is equally capable of breaking the game via free instantaneous custom mechanics.

Yeah, we dont talk about epic for just these reasons :P

[RandomPeasant]

In my opinion, leadership is just an impossible argument to make. You're talking about "not overshadowing the PCs" and "optimizing" simultaneously.

The point is that getting a cohort higher-tier than you doesn't really tell you anything about tiering. A T1 down two levels is better than a T4 or even T3.


But sure, let's say leadership is in. You can take it to. It's one feat, and you're significantly less feat starved than the barbarian.

The Warmage is not any less feat-starved then the Barbarian. Optimizing damage is always feat-intensive. More the the point, the goal is to control for optimization. If taking Leadership is better for the Warmage than 6/10 Rainbow Servant is (and I would agree that that is the case), that's just another argument 6/10 Rainbow Servant isn't very good.


The community decided what those words meant like 4 years ago. We had like 22 threads on it. If you think for some reason those standards have changed I would think that "Re: Is a 6/10 spelling casting warmage rainbow servant worth it?" is not where those definitions would be revised.

So unless someone really thinks there is value to be gained in restarting those 22 threads, we know where Warmage is. 2.2

Except the community didn't decide the Warmage was T2. The community decided the Warmage was T3:


Warmage: Tier three.

And here's a link to the spreadsheet. (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Hj9_9PQg6tXACUWZY_Egm2R9Gtvg9nXRTPfGYnAfh9w/edit)

I'm all for listening to community consensus, but I'm less enthusiastic about listening to what appears to have been an after-the-fact edit with no additional discussion. Troacctid seems to have updated the summary thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?600635-Why-each-class-is-in-its-tier-2019-update!) in 2023, but neither that thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?600635-Why-each-class-is-in-its-tier-2019-update!/page15) nor the one for the fixed-list casters (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?515849-Retiering-the-Classes-Beguiler-Dread-Necromancer-and-Warmage/page7) have any posts from 2023. So as far as I can tell, the 2.2 ranking for the Warmage is just "what Troacctid thinks", and no more community-based than the original rankings from JaronK's lists.


Last I checked, Dread Necromancer and Beguiler were the classes used to define Tier 3, and there was debate over whether Warmage was 3 or 4.

The retiering thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?515849-Retiering-the-Classes-Beguiler-Dread-Necromancer-and-Warmage) for the classes in question has them pretty cleanly in T2.

There's also the problem that, if you're using JaronK's original definitions, the Beguiler and Dread Necromancer in T3 super don't make sense, because charm person/monster, dominate person/monster, and planar binding are all perfectly capable of breaking the game, which means they need to be T2.


If you're facing an ancient crypt full of undead, it doesn't mean that your DM hates your beguiler.

That's missing the point. I didn't say one adventure like that meant the DM hated your Beguiler. I said having all the adventures be like that is the DM hating your Beguiler. You're telling me a campaign with nothing but undead -- no demons, no necromancers, no nothing -- is a standard environment? Because if all you get is a chance to recruit the necromantic BBEG every adventure, that's still rad.

That said, the Beguiler is far from useless even if they haven't had a chance to pick up any minions. Illusions are instant wins against mindless undead, and even non-mindless ones have no special defenses. haste is a very strong party buff, and gets stronger if someone else has minions. Beguilers even get the occasional non-[Mind Affecting] combat spell like solid fog or greater dispel magic. Finally, you're likely to really, really want a skillmonkey in this sort of adventure, as these ancient crypts are usually trapped and almost always locked. The Beguiler is easily the best class in the game for that. So, sure, the Beguiler is not on the top of their game against an ancient crypt full of undead, but they're a long way from useless, and that's with what they get from their class baseline.


And I think you're overstating the value of charmed minions. If it's literally just Charm, then they regard you as a trusted friend, but there's a difference between "trusted friend" and "willing to put my life on hold on a moment's notice to go gallivanting across the globe doing dangerous things".

Yes, that difference is a DC 20 Diplomacy check (the DC to go from charm's Friendly to Helpful), which the Beguiler can make at 2nd level.


That was essentially the 2011 definition. Determined by executive fiat. We argued for about a year on like 22 threads 3 years ago, there were like 80 running votes and moved on. I would be happy to restate my arguments with JaronK from 2011. But not on this thread. Regardless, Community consensus is that Beguiler is not only T2, but solidly in the middle of T2, 2.0 actually.

Also I think even if you stick in JaronK's original tiers on top of the community votes, it doesn't change the rankings for anything.


The answer really depends on the kind of game being played, moreso than a lot of other stuff. Like, in a lot of games, that's probably pretty good. Spontaneous casting from an enormous list full of good spells with no CL loss? That's pretty nice even by epic standards. You'll be playing on easy mode with basically any answer to a given problem at your fingertips.

Yeah, that's the problem with asking "is this good in Epic" is that, more than any other environment, power levels in Epic games are just wildly inconsistent and dependent on what exactly your table allows. Certainly the fact that casting advancement caps out makes 6/10 Rainbow Servant a lot less bad, but I just cannot begin to guess what a "standard" Epic game looks at to try to give a useful answer.

[Anthrowhale]

That said, the Beguiler is far from useless even if they haven't had a chance to pick up any minions. Illusions are instant wins against mindless undead, and even non-mindless ones have no special defenses. haste is a very strong party buff, and gets stronger if someone else has minions. Beguilers even get the occasional non-[Mind Affecting] combat spell like solid fog or greater dispel magic. Finally, you're likely to really, really want a skillmonkey in this sort of adventure, as these ancient crypts are usually trapped and almost always locked. The Beguiler is easily the best class in the game for that. So, sure, the Beguiler is not on the top of their game against an ancient crypt full of undead, but they're a long way from useless, and that's with what they get from their class baseline.

A Beguiler has two other tricks which add to this:
(1) Beguiler's access Glibness a level earlier than a Bard. Glibness works perfectly well vs. intelligent undead.
(2) Full casting+use magic device access sets up taking Channel Charge at ECL9. Thereafter, a Beguiler can effectively access spells from any list with one level of extra cost.

W.r.t. skillmonkey, a Cloistered Cleric with the right domains has somewhat less broad skill access but a better ability to spike skill checks with skill enhancing spells.

[RandomPeasant]

I think the better trick with UMD is probably Ancestral Relic (Runestaff), but it's true that they have options there as well. And there are certainly other options for skillmonkey-ing in T1 and T2 (the Artificer gets trapfinding, for instance), but the Beguiler is pretty clearly the best at it, with 6 base skill points, a reason to invest in INT, all the skills you'd want natively, and spontaneous access to various spells that enhance the role of the skillmonkey.

[Anthrowhale]

...And there are certainly other options for skillmonkey-ing in T1 and T2 (the Artificer gets trapfinding, for instance), but the Beguiler is pretty clearly the best at it, with 6 base skill points, a reason to invest in INT, all the skills you'd want natively, and spontaneous access to various spells that enhance the role of the skillmonkey.
It's a quantity vs. quality tradeoff. The Beguiler is better at making lots of skill checks across many skills. The Cloistered Cleric can make fewer very difficult skill checks between Guidance of the Avatar(+20 competence), Divine Insight (+15 insight), Surge of Fortune (natural 20 at will). With 23 skill ranks and a modest stat bonus that's passing DC 80 checks reliably at ECL20.

[Darg]

Yes, that difference is a DC 20 Diplomacy check (the DC to go from charm's Friendly to Helpful), which the Beguiler can make at 2nd level.

Good luck taking a minute (10 full-round actions) in the middle of a fight to persuade them to change their attitude. Not to mention even if you are a trusted friend, that doesn't mean the other party members are considered to be.

[RandomPeasant]

It's a quantity vs. quality tradeoff. The Beguiler is better at making lots of skill checks across many skills. The Cloistered Cleric can make fewer very difficult skill checks between Guidance of the Avatar(+20 competence), Divine Insight (+15 insight), Surge of Fortune (natural 20 at will). With 23 skill ranks and a modest stat bonus that's passing DC 80 checks reliably at ECL20.

Not really. The Beguiler can get those too if it wants at 20th level. The Cleric is just kinda worse. You're stuck making significant resource commitments at both the build level (no one would take the skillmonkey domains if they weren't planning to be a skillmonkey) and during play (preparing all those skill boosters costs you, especially at low levels). Conversely, the Beguiler just gets all its stuff for free. You can make do with a skillmonkey Cleric, and maybe you need to if you're really constrained on party slots, but in general you're better off letting the Cleric do Cleric stuff and the Beguiler do Beguiler stuff.


Good luck taking a minute (10 full-round actions) in the middle of a fight to persuade them to change their attitude. Not to mention even if you are a trusted friend, that doesn't mean the other party members are considered to be.

The thing about charm person is that if you've hit a person with it you're no longer fighting them. "Diplomacy doesn't work for anyone else" is pretty typical of the sorts of knots people tie themselves in trying to deny that something plainly broken is broken. I mean, think about the implications outside this exact situation for one second. "The party face talks the guard/bouncer/duke/contact into doing what the PCs want" is, like, the number one use for a party face, and your position is that doing that doesn't work for anyone else. You've just destroyed Diplomacy in order to save it!

[Chronos]

Beguilers are plenty good at skillmonkeying (which I agree would be quite useful in the typical crypt), but they're clearly not the best at it: That honor goes to the factotum.

And if we're just going by "has access to game-breaking tricks", then even the rogue is Tier 2, because a rogue can diplomance. Not as well as a bard, beguiler, or some optimized multiclasses, but still well enough to break the game. Tier 2 isn't about having a game-breaking trick; it's about having access to a variety of them.

[Darg]

The thing about charm person is that if you've hit a person with it you're no longer fighting them. "Diplomacy doesn't work for anyone else" is pretty typical of the sorts of knots people tie themselves in trying to deny that something plainly broken is broken. I mean, think about the implications outside this exact situation for one second. "The party face talks the guard/bouncer/duke/contact into doing what the PCs want" is, like, the number one use for a party face, and your position is that doing that doesn't work for anyone else. You've just destroyed Diplomacy in order to save it!

Again, the thing about charm person is that the caster is the one regarded as a friend. If the guard/bouncer wouldn't normally let friends/friends of friends in when asked then they won't without an order and opposed charisma check. There's a limit to the "free" benefits afforded to friends regardless of how good of friends you are and the more outrageous the persuasion is the higher the DC climbs. The table of DCs for influencing NPC attitude is just that: for attitude. It's not a table for determining persuasion attempt DCs. That's fully in the realm of DM territory and the rules don't even bother trying to set DCs for it. That said, I don't think anyone is going to say that persuading a guard/bouncer necessarily should be hard, but persuading a king to abdicate and hand you the crown shouldn't even be possible without mitigating circumstances or god-like DCs.

[Crake]

Again, the thing about charm person is that the caster is the one regarded as a friend. If the guard/bouncer wouldn't normally let friends/friends of friends in when asked then they won't without an order and opposed charisma check. There's a limit to the "free" benefits afforded to friends regardless of how good of friends you are and the more outrageous the persuasion is the higher the DC climbs. The table of DCs for influencing NPC attitude is just that: for attitude. It's not a table for determining persuasion attempt DCs. That's fully in the realm of DM territory and the rules don't even bother trying to set DCs for it. That said, I don't think anyone is going to say that persuading a guard/bouncer necessarily should be hard, but persuading a king to abdicate and hand you the crown shouldn't even be possible without mitigating circumstances or god-like DCs.

Charm person specifies that its a simple opposed charisma check to make the target do something it wouldnt normally do, so your bouncer example, even if they wouldnt normally let friends/friends of friends in, you beat that opposed cha check, and theyre compelled to do so

[Darg]

Charm person specifies that its a simple opposed charisma check to make the target do something it wouldnt normally do, so your bouncer example, even if they wouldnt normally let friends/friends of friends in, you beat that opposed cha check, and theyre compelled to do so

It's a charm effect, not a compulsion effect. They can still say no. The order can't be obviously harmful. If a bouncer is filtering for a private affair off a list and was told to let no one in without an invitation, they won't just let you in with an order and no invitation. You'd need to persuade them to let you in. If it's just general club bouncing where letting you in wouldn't be obviously harmful to them the order would work. In combat you can't order them to hurt their friends, but you can order them to stop attacking.

[Crake]

It's a charm effect, not a compulsion effect. They can still say no. The order can't be obviously harmful. If a bouncer is filtering for a private affair off a list and was told to let no one in without an invitation, they won't just let you in with an order and no invitation. You'd need to persuade them to let you in. If it's just general club bouncing where letting you in wouldn't be obviously harmful to them the order would work. In combat you can't order them to hurt their friends, but you can order them to stop attacking.

The cha check IS to persuade them. It makes them do something they wouldn't normally do.

When i used the word compelled there, it wasnt a dnd keyword effect, it was the normal definition of it.

[Anthrowhale]

The Beguiler can get those too if it wants at 20th level.

Yeah, I guess that was my point earlier.

But switching to the other end, the cleric can leverage a +20 competence bonus at ECL3 via Guidance of the Avatar. I don't see a way for a Beguiler to manage similar?

[RandomPeasant]

Beguilers are plenty good at skillmonkeying (which I agree would be quite useful in the typical crypt), but they're clearly not the best at it: That honor goes to the factotum.

The Factotum is a good skillmonkey, but it is still worse than the Beguiler. Your big tricks are that you can have any skills you want (who cares, the Beguiler has all the skills you do want), the ability to get a really big bonus once per day (this is generally worse than what the Cleric can do, though at a lower opportunity cost), and the ability to stack your INT modifier on physical skills (neat, but not breaking the bank when it's CHA-based skills you really want to stack). The Beguiler has a wide variety of spells they can pull out as often as they need to that dramatically enhance their effectiveness in the role of a skillmonkey. glibness is like what the Factotum does, except it lasts for an hour or more and it is a larger bonus than they produce at 20th level.


And if we're just going by "has access to game-breaking tricks", then even the rogue is Tier 2, because a rogue can diplomance. Not as well as a bard, beguiler, or some optimized multiclasses, but still well enough to break the game. Tier 2 isn't about having a game-breaking trick; it's about having access to a variety of them.

No, having a wide variety of game-breakers is T1. The whole T1/T2 distinction is supposed to be "versatility" (which, of course, is also weird given that spontaneous v prepared casting is not exactly a linear increase in versatility). And it's not like charm + Diplomacy is the only tool the Beguiler has to break the game either. They get UMD (which has direct synergy with casting thanks to Runestaffs), native access to dominate effects, and an Advanced Learning that can pick up ice assassin and mindrape. The Rogue, in contrast, gets to do Diplomancy with DCs that are over 30 points higher, since they don't have access to charm effects.


Again, the thing about charm person is that the caster is the one regarded as a friend.

What do you imagine happening when someone makes a Diplomacy check after casting charm person. Hell, how do you imagine this spell working in combat? Does charm person only function for solo adventurers in your world?


It's not a table for determining persuasion attempt DCs. That's fully in the realm of DM territory and the rules don't even bother trying to set DCs for it.

This is just you inventing a new, non-broken, set of Diplomacy rules because you think RAW Diplomacy is broken. Which, to be fair, it is, but we sort of need to talk about the published rules to have a useful conversation here.


But switching to the other end, the cleric can leverage a +20 competence bonus at ECL3 via Guidance of the Avatar. I don't see a way for a Beguiler to manage similar?

The Cleric's disadvantage at that level is that, as a prepared caster, they have to have guidance of the avatar whether they end up wanting it or not. When the Beguiler gets knock, they can decide whether they want to use knock or detect thoughts or invisibility or glitterdust for each slot on an ad hoc basis. The Sorcerer's spontaneous casting is so insultingly bad that it's lead a lot of people for forget that spontaneous casting is really good if you have a meaningful variety of spells at each level.

[Thunder999]

I think we all agree it's not worth it for the first 9 levels of the PrC, which don't do much.

I feel like the rest of it really depends on your level. A 16th level warmage who only has 6th level spells is pretty weak, yet at level 20 you're only losing a single level of spells, and it's a level that's not very impressive for the Warmage list.

[Crake]

and it's a level that's not very impressive for the Warmage list.

Yeah, but is IS pretty impressive for the cleric list.

[RandomPeasant]

Again, I disagree that 9th is a particularly bad level for the Warmage. wail of the banshee, weird, prismatic sphere, and implosion are all spells other casters are perfectly happy to use. The Warmage just doesn't get any of the absolutely insane spells other classes get at 9th level like gate or mindrape. But compared to what they get at levels like 2nd or 5th? It looks pretty damn good.

The bigger issue is that "it can do a cool thing at 20th" is just not a compelling argument for a build. The Truenamer gets gate at 20th level, that doesn't make it not trash. 6/10 Rainbow Warsnake is spending resources to be behind a regular Warmage from when you lose the first level of casting until you get the capstone. That's a bad deal for almost every campaign, even if you are probably back to parity once you get the capstone (especially since there are things you can do to be ahead of straight Warmage the whole time).

[Chronos]

Quoth RandomPeasant:

The Factotum is a good skillmonkey, but it is still worse than the Beguiler. Your big tricks are that you can have any skills you want (who cares, the Beguiler has all the skills you do want), the ability to get a really big bonus once per day (this is generally worse than what the Cleric can do, though at a lower opportunity cost), and the ability to stack your INT modifier on physical skills (neat, but not breaking the bank when it's CHA-based skills you really want to stack).
The context was dealing with a dungeon full of undead, for which it is, in fact, the physical skills you're interested in. And the factotum also has access to spells, drawn from a much larger and more diverse list than the beguiler. The beguiler is better than the factotum specifically at social skills, because their limited and specific spell list is geared heavily towards that, but even there, they're still not the best. The best diplomancer starts with a level each of marshal, warlock, and binder.

[RandomPeasant]

The context was dealing with a dungeon full of undead, for which it is, in fact, the physical skills you're interested in. And the factotum also has access to spells, drawn from a much larger and more diverse list than the beguiler. The beguiler is better than the factotum specifically at social skills, because their limited and specific spell list is geared heavily towards that, but even there, they're still not the best. The best diplomancer starts with a level each of marshal, warlock, and binder.

No, the most important skills for dungeon delving are Search and Disable Device, which both key off of INT. Open Lock is DEX-based, but the Beguiler getting knock more than makes up for the Factotum having a modestly larger bonus. The Factotum has access to the whole Sorcerer/Wizard list, but at a massively reduced progression and with a tiny number of spells per day. And you have to prepare in advance. Finally, the existence of a better multiclass build doesn't make the Beguiler not the best skillmonkey class, and that build isn't even clearly better at Diplomancy (charm is really good there), and much worse at overall skillmonkeying.

[Thunder999]

Again, I disagree that 9th is a particularly bad level for the Warmage. wail of the banshee, weird, prismatic sphere, and implosion are all spells other casters are perfectly happy to use. The Warmage just doesn't get any of the absolutely insane spells other classes get at 9th level like gate or mindrape. But compared to what they get at levels like 2nd or 5th? It looks pretty damn good.

The bigger issue is that "it can do a cool thing at 20th" is just not a compelling argument for a build. The Truenamer gets gate at 20th level, that doesn't make it not trash. 6/10 Rainbow Warsnake is spending resources to be behind a regular Warmage from when you lose the first level of casting until you get the capstone. That's a bad deal for almost every campaign, even if you are probably back to parity once you get the capstone (especially since there are things you can do to be ahead of straight Warmage the whole time).

I'd rather have every 8th level and under cleric spell than any of those, it's just 3 flavours of fort save or die and a durable wall.

I agree I'd probably never play one outside of a game that started at 20+, which are definitely rarer than games where text trumps table.

[H_H_F_F]

I agree I'd probably never play one outside of a game that started at 20+, which are definitely rarer than games where text trumps table.

That has not at all been my experience. Interesting.

[RandomPeasant]

I'd rather have every 8th level and under cleric spell than any of those, it's just 3 flavours of fort save or die and a durable wall.

Well, sure, but the claim I was objecting to is that 9th is "not very impressive for the Warmage list", which is just not true. It's certainly worse than a lot of other things you could be doing, but that's down to Warmage just not being particularly powerful.

[Darg]

The cha check IS to persuade them. It makes them do something they wouldn't normally do.

When i used the word compelled there, it wasnt a dnd keyword effect, it was the normal definition of it.

Except an opposed charisma check is something you could already do to persuade someone. You didn't need the spell to tell you you could do it. What the spell does is allow you to do it in a reasonable time frame without circumstantial modifiers.


What do you imagine happening when someone makes a Diplomacy check after casting charm person. Hell, how do you imagine this spell working in combat? Does charm person only function for solo adventurers in your world?

The target treats the caster as a friend. They won't immediately abandon duty or aggression toward your party members, but they will probably try to reason with you stop your foolishness; unless they're the type to beat you up to get you to see reason that is. The way you made it sound is as if the target was immediately a non-threat for the party which is simply not the case.


This is just you inventing a new, non-broken, set of Diplomacy rules because you think RAW Diplomacy is broken. Which, to be fair, it is, but we sort of need to talk about the published rules to have a useful conversation here.

The empirical information is right there in the PHB. The table is only for influencing attitudes. The rules do not say that the table is for persuasion attempts, period. RAW is RAW. The lack of a rule that says the table is for persuading or anything other than influencing attitudes means it isn't for anything other than that. Heck, the book even says that they are just basic DCs, implying that all of the DCs presented aren't as high as they could be.

[Crake]

Except an opposed charisma check is something you could already do to persuade someone. You didn't need the spell to tell you you could do it. What the spell does is allow you to do it in a reasonable time frame without circumstantial modifiers.

The spell literally says:

"You can try to give the subject orders, but you must win an opposed Charisma check to convince it to do anything it wouldn’t ordinarily do. (Retries are not allowed.) An affected creature never obeys suicidal or obviously harmful orders, but it might be convinced that something very dangerous is worth doing."

So yes, with a successful opposed charisma check, you could definitely convince that bouncer to let you into the king's feast without a pass.

[Chronos]

Well there we go then. Something that would get the guard fired is obviously harmful, so to do that, you need to convince him that it'd be worth doing. Which would probably require a separate Bluff check.

[Crake]

Well there we go then. Something that would get the guard fired is obviously harmful, so to do that, you need to convince him that it'd be worth doing. Which would probably require a separate Bluff check.

I dont think POSSIBLY getting fired counts as obviously harmful, but then, I always work from one degree of separation. For me, the act itself must be directly harmful, not have some POTENTIAL for harm MAYBE if they get caught, while having no reason at the time to expect you to do anything that would result in them getting in trouble.

For me, obviously harmful would be “dip your arm in that boiling hot water to retrieve the key at the bottom”. It has obviously harmful consequences, that come directly from the order itself.

[redking]

I dont think POSSIBLY getting fired counts as obviously harmful

Allowing an infiltrator into the king's palace is called treason and carriers the death penalty. You'd better believe that the subject of the spell would consider it harmful.

[Crake]

Allowing an infiltrator into the king's palace is called treason and carriers the death penalty. You'd better believe that the subject of the spell would consider it harmful.

Allowing a FRIEND into a party, wouldn't be treason in their mind.

Would be a different story if you were trying to get into the kings private chambers, but for a party, and specifically just for letting them into the front door, not a backstage area or the vip lounge, definitely not grounds for treason.

[Darg]

I dont think POSSIBLY getting fired counts as obviously harmful, but then, I always work from one degree of separation. For me, the act itself must be directly harmful, not have some POTENTIAL for harm MAYBE if they get caught, while having no reason at the time to expect you to do anything that would result in them getting in trouble.

For me, obviously harmful would be “dip your arm in that boiling hot water to retrieve the key at the bottom”. It has obviously harmful consequences, that come directly from the order itself.

It's not a compulsion effect. I think of it as them doing their best to help you within their capacity. As in they aren't going to just let you in just because you are a friend if it isn't something they are allowed to do. If you convince them that letting you in is a greater deed than keeping you out then all good. Like a guard letting you into the kings bed chamber. Maybe you convince them that you literally just saw an assassin enter the balcony window and they open the door to check it out. They don't think twice about why you are there and because they think you are a friend it's easier to bluff your way in.

[redking]

It's not a compulsion effect. I think of it as them doing their best to help you within their capacity. As in they aren't going to just let you in just because you are a friend if it isn't something they are allowed to do. If you convince them that letting you in is a greater deed than keeping you out then all good. Like a guard letting you into the kings bed chamber. Maybe you convince them that you literally just saw an assassin enter the balcony window and they open the door to check it out. They don't think twice about why you are there and because they think you are a friend it's easier to bluff your way in.

My friend works with critical server infrastructure. There was a problem with it before and it was investigated by Parliament, for example. Even though I have known my friend for 30 years, he is not going to take me into the secure facility for my own wellbeing, and his own too. Charm Person is not a bypass for the rational brain.

[Crake]

Charm Person is not a bypass for the rational brain.

I disagree. Its well within scope and trope for magical charms to make people do irrational things they wouldnt normally do, hell thats WHY theres a DC25 sense motive check to detect a charm on someone, they arent acting normally. At least in this case, theres some defense to be had against it, in the form of the opposed charisma check.

[redking]

I disagree. Its well within scope and trope for magical charms to make people do irrational things they wouldnt normally do, hell thats WHY theres a DC25 sense motive check to detect a charm on someone, they arent acting normally. At least in this case, theres some defense to be had against it, in the form of the opposed charisma check.

Not more than what a friend would do. For example, some people have claimed that "charm person = r-pe". This is very wrong. This only works if the person subject to the charm normally has sex with friends just for being friends. Otherwise it doesn't work in that case at all.

[Crake]

Not more than what a friend would do. For example, some people have claimed that "charm person = r-pe". This is very wrong. This only works if the person subject to the charm normally has sex with friends just for being friends. Otherwise it doesn't work in that case at all.

“You can try to give the subject orders, but you must win an opposed Charisma check to convince it to do anything it wouldn’t ordinarily do.”

Sex is just an opposed charisma check away even for people who wouldnt normally have sex with just friends.

[RandomPeasant]

charm person doesn't allow to command someone to do something "obviously harmful", but it does, with the opposed CHA check, allow you to convince them to do things that are merely "very dangerous". I think you probably can't use charm person to force a guard to let you into the king's study when the king is in there (because there's obvious harm in getting immediately caught breaking the rules), but you can use it for that in general because at that point the action is only harmful if the guard gets caught, and if "this could potentially harm me" overrides charm person it becomes trivial to structure things so that charm person never does anything.

[Crake]

charm person doesn't allow to command someone to do something "obviously harmful", but it does, with the opposed CHA check, allow you to convince them to do things that are merely "very dangerous". I think you probably can't use charm person to force a guard to let you into the king's study when the king is in there (because there's obvious harm in getting immediately caught breaking the rules), but you can use it for that in general because at that point the action is only harmful if the guard gets caught, and if "this could potentially harm me" overrides charm person it becomes trivial to structure things so that charm person never does anything.

Yup, agreed, this is in line with my one degree of separation rule on adjudicating effects.

[Thunder999]

A Charmed Person does anything they would for a friend by default, no check required.
The Opposed Charisma Check lets you make them do more, it's only limited by that suicidal or obviously harmful clause, and even then you can still make them do something risky, it just needs to be possible for them to emergy unharmed.

For the secure facility example, it's merely risky rather than obviously harmful if there's a chance you/they won't actually be caught.

Obviously harmful things that stop it outright would be stuff like running through a Wall of Fire.

[Crake]

Obviously harmful things that stop it outright would be stuff like running through a Wall of Fire.

This one’s not a great example, since creatures and characters of sufficient level would possibly jump through a wall of fire for good reason without being charmed, its damage isnt exactly exceptional. But otherwise, yes, I agree with this 100%