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Belial_the_Leveler
2008-09-04, 06:09 AM
Yeah, yeah, we all know that a wizard can prepare against any challenge. But there are some limitations;

1) The wizard has to prepare spells ahead of time or leave open slots.
2) Open slots take ALOT of time to fill, usually too long to be used in combat or when time presses.
3) There are 4-5 encounters and other challenges for the day. The Wizard can't prepare for all of them.
4) The DM can change his mind about what encounters will be. AFTER the wizard chooses his spells.
5) The encounters can be random.


That being said, here's a question for wizard optimizers out there: can you prepare a 20th level wizard, possibly with Archmage and other PrC levels to outshine the rest of the party for five challenges out of the 13 from the DMG table in the course of a day, challenges that the DM (me) makes out of the SRD?

Outshining the rest of the party means accounting for substantially more than 25% of the group's effectiveness, usually (but not always) in combat.


Rules:

32 point-buy
20th level
Standard wealth, no custom item unless you make it yourself (expending your own XP)

Gate calls creatures like Planar Binding does; you always have to trap the target and negotiate a price.
Changing Shape is limited to SRD creatures.
You can't reduce the cost of any metamagic feat below 1 level increase unless it is already 0 in which case it remains as is.
Powergaming is allowed. Exploiting loopholes such as infinite gate trick, kobold wizards+polymorph and the like isn't. Hence the limitations above.

You compete with 3 other 20th level DM-controlled characters: a noncaster warrior (fighter, paladin, barbarian, monk and the like), a divine caster (cleric, favored soul or druid) and a skill-oriented character (rogue, bard, ranger and similar). The objective is to be more effective in the course of the encounters than the other PCs. For example, if the wizard could KO the demons all by himself in 3 rounds but in the first round he kills one and the other characters kill the others, it doesn't count.

You get the objective of the day and the general area/environment the encounters take place in before you prepare spells. E.g. "thieves have stolen object X, recover it." Then you can prepare your spells and go fulfill the objective. The DM (me) has a fairly good idea of what the encounters will be but random encounters are, well, random.


The purpose of this challenge is to see whether a Schrodiger's Wizard actually is as effective in actual encounters. Since this is not a campaign, the encounters will be mostly numbers.

Starbuck_II
2008-09-04, 06:23 AM
Yeah, yeah, we all know that a wizard can prepare against any challenge. But there are some limitations;

1) The wizard has to prepare spells ahead of time or leave open slots.
2) Open slots take ALOT of time to fill, usually too long to be used in combat or when time presses.
3) There are 4-5 encounters and other challenges for the day. The Wizard can't prepare for all of them.
4) The DM can change his mind about what encounters will be. AFTER the wizard chooses his spells.
5) The encounters can be random.


That being said, here's a question for wizard optimizers out there: can you prepare a 20th level wizard, possibly with Archmage and other PrC levels to outshine the rest of the party for five challenges out of the 13 from the DMG table in the course of a day, challenges that the DM (me) makes out of the SRD?

Outshining the rest of the party means accounting for substantially more than 25% of the group's effectiveness, usually (but not always) in combat.




The purpose of this challenge is to see whether a Schrodiger's Wizard actually is as effective in actual encounters. Since this is not a campaign, the encounters will be mostly numbers.

Sounds fine but let me ask about these limitations:


Gate calls creatures like Planar Binding does; you always have to trap the target and negotiate a price.

So does Gate still cost Exp or doesd it only cost gold/magic items since it works like Planar Binding?
Can you negociate before you Gate them *like have previously worked out details and Gate is just to call them forth*

Hmm, what books allowed for spells? All?

Griffin131
2008-09-04, 06:41 AM
3) There are 4-5 encounters and other challenges for the day. The Wizard can't prepare for all of them.
4) The DM can change his mind about what encounters will be. AFTER the wizard chooses his spells.

Interesting statements. I disagree with 3 and 4 is exactly like saying "You're only effective when I let you be that way."

BobVosh
2008-09-04, 06:48 AM
Is being MvP killing the most enemies, or enabling the destruction of the most enemies.

If it is the first I think you misunderstand the point of a wizard. Maybe Schrodiger's Wizard is just that different from the batman I'm used to.

If it is the second, how will it be judged.

kamikasei
2008-09-04, 07:11 AM
4) The DM can change his mind about what encounters will be. AFTER the wizard chooses his spells.

This sounds rather more like Schrodinger's encounter than Scrodinger's wizard to me. Through the actions of the Quantum DM, the obstacles to be overcome are only set after the wizard has chosen his spells, and are entangled so as to always be what he's least able to handle?

More seriously, sure, the DM can choose what will make up the encounters. But part of a wizard's power is in the ability to look ahead via divinations, see what the challenge is, and prepare for it. If the game world warps itself beyond verisimiltude in order to screw the wizard, that doesn't seem to prove much to me.

Emperor Tippy
2008-09-04, 07:19 AM
3 and 4 are crap, it just makes it Schrödinger's Challenge. So are your house rules. If you want a challenge to prove or disprove a RAW point then you play by the RAW, not the RAW with houserules.

Granted, it's not like it matters particuarly much anyways. It's easy enough for an Incantatrix to stack enough persistent buff's to laugh in the face of anything you care to send at them.

JupiterPaladin
2008-09-04, 08:18 AM
Then imagine that another more powerful Batman Wizard is the BBEG of this event and he is the one sending the encounters at you. I think what the OP is really going for is:

"Can Batman still be Batman if he prepares for situation X and ends up in situation Y every time?"

I think that in and of itself should be a good challenge to prove the real strength of Batman Wizards. It really should not be that hard, especially for you Tippy. :smallwink:

lord_khaine
2008-09-04, 08:27 AM
More seriously, sure, the DM can choose what will make up the encounters. But part of a wizard's power is in the ability to look ahead via divinations, see what the challenge is, and prepare for it. If the game world warps itself beyond verisimiltude in order to screw the wizard, that doesn't seem to prove much to me.


im not sure i quite agree on the part about divination, most of the BBEG my casters have fought have defendet themself against scrying to such a degree we only got a general idea about what we were up against, and in the ambushes and random encounters there wasnt time to prepare for the battle.

and i disagree about the house rules, for a start the biggest limitation on using gate, the loss of xp, wont have the same impact in a test like this, so it only makes sense to fix it.

as for shapechange, all groups dont use the same monster books, so i can see the idea behind limiting it to the one book you can be more or less sure everyone is using.

Koalita
2008-09-04, 08:46 AM
The objective is to be more effective in the course of the encounters than the other PCs. For example, if the wizard could KO the demons all by himself in 3 rounds but in the first round he kills one and the other characters kill the others, it doesn't count.

What if you enable your party to kill those 3 demons? You know, being batman is not about just killing things like a blaster or a BSF.

Emperor Tippy
2008-09-04, 08:53 AM
im not sure i quite agree on the part about divination, most of the BBEG my casters have fought have defendet themself against scrying to such a degree we only got a general idea about what we were up against, and in the ambushes and random encounters there wasnt time to prepare for the battle.
Then your players aren't using divinations right. There is no way to defend against Contact Other Planes.


and i disagree about the house rules, for a start the biggest limitation on using gate, the loss of xp, wont have the same impact in a test like this, so it only makes sense to fix it.
No, it makes gate worthless. The point of gate is to bring something in for 1 battle and not have to worry about convincing it or anything else. The OP made gate worthless with his houserule.


as for shapechange, all groups dont use the same monster books, so i can see the idea behind limiting it to the one book you can be more or less sure everyone is using.
He is just doing it because he doesn't want to deal with all the possibilities it opens up. Unless he is willing to confine all challenges to the SRD only, if so you may have a point. If not its because he wants to shape the challenge to give him the result he is after.

arguskos
2008-09-04, 09:02 AM
challenges that the DM (me) makes out of the SRD?


He is just doing it because he doesn't want to deal with all the possibilities it opens up. Unless he is willing to confine all challenges to the SRD only, if so you may have a point. If not its because he wants to shape the challenge to give him the result he is after.
He is making all challenges SRD only, so making polymorph SRD only seems fair enough.

-argus

hamishspence
2008-09-04, 09:05 AM
I'm guessing mindrape on gated creaures for infinite loyalty isn't allowed either (would be more than a little cheesy if it was)

Thinker
2008-09-04, 09:09 AM
I basically agree with Tippy. I can understand not allowing every DnD book, but the OP would be better served explicitly listing what books are allowed or disallowed. I would also see the sense in saying "gated creatures cannot gate in more than x additional creatures."

Perhaps the best way to do this would be to have the challenging DM (Belial) create a list of challenges and send that to an objective moderator; the details need to be informative, but not explicitly laid out and utilizing only the aforementioned resources. At the same time have the challengers submit wizards that can handle general situations and then before every set of 4 encounters tell the wizard a basic outline of the scenario and allow adjustments to the prepared spell-lists. Based on time-allowed for the scenario allow the wizards to divine all they want, but also allow there to be some time-sensitive problems.

AstralFire
2008-09-04, 09:15 AM
Haven't similar challenges been done before? Multiple times? With the end result being that Schrodinger's Wizard is a bit more powerful than the actual Batman Wizard, yet not to the point that the Wizard loses any ground in relative standing?

Akimbo
2008-09-04, 09:29 AM
Actually nearly this exact challenge was presented by a former Poster, Ramos, who mysteriously disappeared just after I posted my actions in the round that would have finished his pet creature.

He was of course a friend of Belial.

And the houserules for this are quite limiting:

1) Gate allows you to do things without negotiating or trapping, that's why it's Gate.

2) I note the specific rule about metamagic, looks like it was specifically designed to stop Incantatrix moves with Arcane Thesis. And that is frankly, bull crap. You might as well just Ban Arcane Thesis, after admitting that you any Wizard that uses it is going to win this challenge easily and you can't think of any way of stopping them.

3) As regards 4) That's fine, but I don't have to tell you my spells prepared, to prevent cheating, since Schroedinger's challenge is clearly your goal.

Not that it matters because you are already going to be designing creatures with an AC of -12 that use immediate actions to dodge my spells and run right into the Melee's full power attack full attack.

But I will completely trounce the challenge with Nalthain, who has since become much much more powerful then previously.

Normally Nalthain start Neutral, but as I see his story progressing I feel he becomes more evil. This doesn't really have any mechanical effects other then allowing you to use any Angels along with Demons and Devils.

EDIT: And how do you want me to generate my d4 HD?

Thinker
2008-09-04, 10:06 AM
Do you have a link to Nalthain? I don't think I've seen him before.

Akimbo
2008-09-04, 10:14 AM
Do you have a link to Nalthain? I don't think I've seen him before.

I will, unfortunately one day RPG web profiler was acting up and deleted everything below the BAB line on the character sheet (IE feats/spells/WBL/class features, so everything that takes time to do) since then I've used exclusively mythweavers, but Nalathin is primarily played IRL, so I didn't want to redo his character sheet.

Doing it now, will have him up. For the purposes of this challenge I will tell you both what level his spells really are using the rules, and what level Belial wants to make them because he can't handle the rules.

Zeful
2008-09-04, 10:25 AM
Then your players aren't using divinations right. There is no way to defend against Contact Other Planes.

How is COP so effective when you can only ask questions answerable with yes/no/maybe, and there's a chance of the entity outright lying to you?

Belial_the_Leveler
2008-09-04, 10:26 AM
For people who shout "RAW" here is a list of perfectly normal "RAW" challenges:

A) Solar in its home plane. Chain Gate other Solars. AMF on a solar. Half the others Wish the Wizard in their presence through SLAs. Wizard rolls a 1 and comes. AMFed solar takes a step ahead (readied action) and AMFs the wizard. The other Solars' readied action fills the wizard with arrows. That's CR 23 BTW.
B) Titan. CR 21.
C) Wurm Black Dragon. 2 Improved Metamagic Epic Feats. Arcane Thesis: any orb spell. All the other feats are Awakened Spell Resistance for a SR of 40. The polymorphed to a fly dragon with its insane hide check of +46 follows the wizard at 200 ft away. When the wizard tries to cast a buff, the dragon casts an orb. The wizard casts celerity. The dragon casts celerity and casts an orb. That's CR 20 BTW.
D) Lich 18. CR 20
E) Balor. With several hundred dominated monsters under its control. CR 20


For those that don't insist on abusing loopholes in the rules, I can make a list of 5 premade encounters, confirm it to somebody then we play them out.

valadil
2008-09-04, 10:31 AM
How well the wizard performs may depend a lot on how much divination is required to figure how which spells to memorize. If it's one spell per combat, okay, the wizard can afford five spells. If it's 5 to analyze each combat, the wizard is down 25 spells for the day without even spending anything on the combat itself. A level 20 wizard will have 40 a day, not counting bonus spells (which will probably bring him closer to 60 a day). Seems to me that the way to challenge this wizard is to come up with encounters that will take more divinations, so they can burn through his slots and leave him empty for the 4th and 5th fights.

(That said, I'm not that well versed in divination and I'm not sure how many divination spells the GM could reasonably require before the wizard figures out what to prepare.)

Akimbo
2008-09-04, 10:40 AM
C) Wurm Black Dragon. 2 Improved Metamagic Epic Feats. Arcane Thesis: any orb spell. All the other feats are Awakened Spell Resistance for a SR of 40. The polymorphed to a fly dragon with its insane hide check of +46 follows the wizard at 200 ft away. When the wizard tries to cast a buff, the dragon casts an orb. The wizard casts celerity. The dragon casts celerity and casts an orb. That's CR 20 BTW.

Yes, chain gating Solars is exactly the same as Arcane Thesis. And yes, I have no problem with other creatures taking Arcane Thesis.

If the Solars use Wish/Chain Gate, then I already used Chain Gate + Mindrape on Greater Prismatic Wyrms who are equally as optimized as anything you can come up with and always have readied actions to Gate me back if I should disappear/Time Stop, Greater Planeshift, find me, and kill all the Solars. Of course then it just becomes an infinite recursive War of Greater Prysmatic Dragons with readied actions.

I'm not actually objecting to limiting Gate abuse, I just wonder why you can't let someone spend 5000XP to Gate something in in combat.

As for Arcane Thesis, I am perfectly fine with Arcane Thesis dragons, in fact, that CR 20 Wurm Black Dragon is the exact encounter that Ramos used, that I easily crushed.

Though he did cheat in the sense that he avoided wasting actions on casting Orb spells that do nothing to me, even though the Dragon actually had no way of knowing that fact.

Also, HIDE DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY. Unless you are telling me that the Dragon has Hide in Plain Sight, then he needs some form of concealment to hide, and unless he has Darkstalker he is susceptible to blindsense, and even if he has Darkstalker, Mindsight still detects him. Of course, Ramos ran off when I pointed out all the flaws in his plan.

Also, just so you know, Polymorph: "You can’t cause a subject to assume a form smaller than Fine." So that would have to be Polymorph Any Object (making it a retard incapable of casting it's spells) or Shapechange (which it can't cast).

But nice try.

But as I said, I fully intend to play by your Gate and metamagic rules, I'm just going to inform the interested poster what spell level the spells are under the actual rules.

hamishspence
2008-09-04, 10:47 AM
Prismatic dragons are Not extraplanar so cannot be gated. closest equivalent would be the epic spells that summon red dragons, powered up.

streakster
2008-09-04, 11:03 AM
For people who shout "RAW" here is a list of perfectly normal "RAW" challenges:

A) Solar in its home plane. Chain Gate other Solars. AMF on a solar. Half the others Wish the Wizard in their presence through SLAs. Wizard rolls a 1 and comes. AMFed solar takes a step ahead (readied action) and AMFs the wizard. The other Solars' readied action fills the wizard with arrows. That's CR 23 BTW.
B) Titan. CR 21.
C) Wurm Black Dragon. 2 Improved Metamagic Epic Feats. Arcane Thesis: any orb spell. All the other feats are Awakened Spell Resistance for a SR of 40. The polymorphed to a fly dragon with its insane hide check of +46 follows the wizard at 200 ft away. When the wizard tries to cast a buff, the dragon casts an orb. The wizard casts celerity. The dragon casts celerity and casts an orb. That's CR 20 BTW.
D) Lich 18. CR 20
E) Balor. With several hundred dominated monsters under its control. CR 20


For those that don't insist on abusing loopholes in the rules, I can make a list of 5 premade encounters, confirm it to somebody then we play them out.
Tiny friend, no one is trying to use loopholes. They object, I suspect, to the fact that you weaken them. If you nerf the Wizard, by not letting him use Gate as it is written, or limit them to the SRD, then you are not testing the Wizard. You are testing a weaker version of the Wizard. And if you must rule away some of the power of the Wizard to win, then that itself is proof of the power of wizards, no?:smallbiggrin:

Thinker
2008-09-04, 11:05 AM
For people who shout "RAW" here is a list of perfectly normal "RAW" challenges:

A) Solar in its home plane. Chain Gate other Solars. AMF on a solar. Half the others Wish the Wizard in their presence through SLAs. Wizard rolls a 1 and comes. AMFed solar takes a step ahead (readied action) and AMFs the wizard. The other Solars' readied action fills the wizard with arrows. That's CR 23 BTW.
B) Titan. CR 21.
C) Wurm Black Dragon. 2 Improved Metamagic Epic Feats. Arcane Thesis: any orb spell. All the other feats are Awakened Spell Resistance for a SR of 40. The polymorphed to a fly dragon with its insane hide check of +46 follows the wizard at 200 ft away. When the wizard tries to cast a buff, the dragon casts an orb. The wizard casts celerity. The dragon casts celerity and casts an orb. That's CR 20 BTW.
D) Lich 18. CR 20
E) Balor. With several hundred dominated monsters under its control. CR 20


For those that don't insist on abusing loopholes in the rules, I can make a list of 5 premade encounters, confirm it to somebody then we play them out.

Even if the wizard fails to defeat these challenges, has the rest of the party succeeded in doing so? Your criteria of > 1/4 of the challenge seems to mean that the wizard could fail the encounter and still have destroyed half of it, while the rest of the party TPK's and still pass your scenario.

Belial_the_Leveler
2008-09-04, 11:08 AM
OK, here are answers to details/rules oriented questions:


Tiny friend, no one is trying to use loopholes. They object, I suspect, to the fact that you weaken them. If you nerf the Wizard, by not letting him use Gate as it is written, or limit them to the SRD, then you are not testing the Wizard. You are testing a weaker version of the Wizard. And if you must rule away some of the power of the Wizard to win, then that itself is proof of the power of wizards, no?
That's a very good argument. I'll not limit the wizard then-but loopholes and cheese will be met by loopholes and cheese.

Monsters are from the SRD and can't have classes unless they're the BBEG but they can be tweaked with feats/treasure from other sources, especially the books referring to them (e.g. undead and libris mortis). Your base class has to be wizard. Items, Spells, PrCs and Feats can be from any non-campaign specific book but not the dragon magazines.

Effectiveness of a class depends on defeating and enabling the defeat of enemies. A buff that gives the fighter +10% damage and +20% chance to hit in that encounter will mean that 22% of the fighter's effectiveness goes to wizard. A buff that doubles the damage means half that effectiveness goes to wizard. Also, an ability that disables a monster completely, allowing it to be killed easily counts as killing it. A debuff that eats half the monster's effectiveness accounts for half the monster.

Divinations can be used to guess encounters in advance. Note however that the question "Will I face dragons today" is not the same as knowing you'll face a red dragon that masquerades as a black via alter self and nondetection but projects the illusion of a green...

You can use the full Shapechange/Gate if you want but abusing a spell means you'll get SB else abusing it in return.

Encounters will be prearranged by me. I'm building them even now. Someone that wants to see them

@Akimbo: I don't remember that fight very well but I don't remember Ramos changing that dragon into a Fine creature. Because if he did, +16 bonus from size, -20 penalty from distance of 200 ft, you'd have to make a DC 36 spot check to even see him at all if he wasn't hiding. As for detecting a dragon, go ahead. There are hundreds of insects, lizards and other stuff in a forested area. Choose which one is the dragon...

hamishspence
2008-09-04, 11:09 AM
interesting question: given that ordering a controlled minion to do something "obviously suicidal" tends to allow a will save, should same principle apply to players who order their gated creature to "let me cast this next spell on you"? Should creature get a Sense Motive first, and a will save to resist order?

Given that personality death is not that different from real death, by some theories.

Emperor Tippy
2008-09-04, 11:11 AM
Prismatic dragons are Not extraplanar so cannot be gated. closest equivalent would be the epic spells that summon red dragons, powered up.

They are extraplanar to some plane. No one ever said you were gating them in from the prime material.

Kesnit
2008-09-04, 11:11 AM
3 and 4 are crap, it just makes it Schrödinger's Challenge. So are your house rules. If you want a challenge to prove or disprove a RAW point then you play by the RAW, not the RAW with houserules.

Random encounters, rolled on a table in the DMG, are RAW.

hamishspence
2008-09-04, 11:15 AM
Gate only allows you to summon creatures non-extraplanar. Yes, even if you are on another plane, whether you are yourself extraplanar or not. Because it explicitly states in the spell description: an extraplanar creature. Devils can't gate in dragons when in Nine Hells, so why should players get to do it?

hamishspence
2008-09-04, 11:22 AM
Now there is no rule barring Fiendish prismatic dragons, but the existence of any creature with a template, outside of listed summonable ones, is DM's discretion. Similarly, the presence of any non-extraplanar creature on a plane that it is not native to.

If I was to say "there might be colossus somewhere in the Nine Hells, therefore its extraplanar, therefore I can Gate it": i'd be laughed at.

An extraplanar creature does not mean, always, a creature with the Extraplanar subtype, when it has been gained temporartily through leaving the material plane.

Starbuck_II
2008-09-04, 12:34 PM
An extraplanar creature does not mean, always, a creature with the Extraplanar subtype, when it has been gained temporartily through leaving the material plane.

Wait, but that is what it means... you just said explanar doesn't mean extraplanar...

Crow
2008-09-04, 12:43 PM
A bunch of people are seriously misunderstanding the intent of this challenge, and what it is intended to prove. While a worthy endeavour, Belial, you'll never get what you asked for.

Akimbo
2008-09-04, 02:24 PM
1) Regarding Gate: Yes you can Gate Prismatic Dragons, or Collossusi or whatever else. That is how the spell works. You can Gate anything that is not native to the plane you are on. Read the spell. That is why it is called Gate Cheese.

2) As regards my previous bought with Ramos: 1) My Wizard easily makes DC 36 Spot checks, and he only turned the Dragon into a Fly later in the fight, and then claimed that I could not detect the fly, while within 55ft of it, despite Blindsense and Mindsight (which by the way, makes differentiating dragons from flies very easy.)

So the rules Ramos broke before running away (that I am 100% sure of, he did also have it cast at least two spells and take a move action during a single twinned celerity, something that is actually impossible) are:

1) Polymorphing into an object smaller then Fine.
2) completely ignoring my Mindsight and Blindsense.

As for multiple creatures, I was never informed of any creatures, and I was flying several hundred feat in the air. So yeah, if he does not tell me about the insects they do not exist (which means I beat his Dragon, because it did not register on my Mindsight even though it should have, and therefore does not exist.)

3) As regards the current challenge:
a) issues that need clarification:
1. Ring of Spellbattle, states "Once per day, if you identify the spell in this manner, you may counter that spell as if with dispel magic or change the target..." Do you rule this as being a dispel check using the spell dispel magic at CL 14 (the CL of the item), an automatic countering of the effect (IE that spell fails without any check), or countering that spell with Greater Dispel Magic (no RAW support, but more likely the intent then countering with Dispel Magic, since the CL is 14 higher then the Dispel Magic cap.)
2. How optimized/what sort of party teammates are there?
3. The scoring system would be nice, in regards to: what if I purposefully let my teammates die, and the solo all the encounters, how would that be scored. (I don't actually intend to throw away valuable resources, but I'd like to know anyway, and it relates to the question of scoring.) How about if the encounters are so pathetic that actual effectiveness doesn't even matter, like however many CR 1/4 Kobolds, that I might not want to expend resources on. (I'd actually just Shapechange into a Dragon and breath on them, but it's a party member might be able to do better expending actual resources, like a Druid casting Control Winds.)
4. How do you want me to generate my d4 HD?

Frosty
2008-09-04, 03:23 PM
I think the conclusion is pretty fore-gone. Without banning the cheesiest spells and PrC and feats, Wizards can defeat anything. This is why Gate/Mindrape/Shapeshift does not exist in my world, and I also don't allow most CL boosters. I have to ban a lot of things in order to challenge the wizard.

Mushroom Ninja
2008-09-04, 04:15 PM
What is this "mindrape" people keep talking about?

shadow_archmagi
2008-09-04, 04:26 PM
If I was to say "there might be colossus somewhere in the Nine Hells, therefore its extraplanar, therefore I can Gate it": i'd be laughed at.


Actually, there is a precedent; Rincewind.

Zeful
2008-09-04, 04:35 PM
What is this "mindrape" people keep talking about?

9th level spell from BOVD. You can erase and rewrite the target's mind if they fail the saving throw. It has a medium range.

Sinfire Titan
2008-09-04, 04:43 PM
Yeah, yeah, we all know that a wizard can prepare against any challenge. But there are some limitations;

1) The wizard has to prepare spells ahead of time or leave open slots.
2) Open slots take ALOT of time to fill, usually too long to be used in combat or when time presses.
3) There are 4-5 encounters and other challenges for the day. The Wizard can't prepare for all of them.
4) The DM can change his mind about what encounters will be. AFTER the wizard chooses his spells.
5) The encounters can be random.


That being said, here's a question for wizard optimizers out there: can you prepare a 20th level wizard, possibly with Archmage and other PrC levels to outshine the rest of the party for five challenges out of the 13 from the DMG table in the course of a day, challenges that the DM (me) makes out of the SRD?

Outshining the rest of the party means accounting for substantially more than 25% of the group's effectiveness, usually (but not always) in combat.




The purpose of this challenge is to see whether a Schrodiger's Wizard actually is as effective in actual encounters. Since this is not a campaign, the encounters will be mostly numbers.

Cool, I can blow this entire thing out of the water. Necropolitan Gnome Wizard 3/Master Specialist 6/Shadowcraft Mage 10/ Tainted Scholar 1. Maxed Int and Wis, nothing else matters. Feats are all PrC requirements, Earth Spell, Arcane Thesis (Silent Image), Arcane Disciple (Luck Domain), Heighten Spell, Residual Metamagic, and Echoing Spell. Variants are Focused Specialist and Gnome Wizard sub level #1.

Step 1: Prepare every specialist spell slot as Silent Image, heightened to the right levels.
Step 2: Wait for first encounter.
Step 3: During first encounter, cast a Silent Image that has been heightened to 10th level, but takes up a 9th level spell slot. Shadowcraft Mage kicks in, the spell now acts as a Shadow Conjuration or Shadow Evocation spell that has the ability to duplicate any Evocation spell lower than 10th level.
Step 4: Using that Silent Image, duplicate the effects of a Miracle spell as appropriate for the encounter at hand, as determined by the caster (me). Exact effects will vary.
Step 5: Use Residual Metamagic to apply Heighten Spell to an Echoed Silent Image. Use that one to duplicate Miracle again.
Step 6: After that Silent Image, use Residual Metamagic to apply Echoing Spell to a Heightened Silent Image. Recast it as Miracle.
Step 7: Repeat steps 5 and 6 until out of viable spell slots. Begin blasting.
Step 8: After encounter ends, rest for one hour.

What happens: As you can see, I'm using the Shadow Miracle trick to turn every spell I have into Miracle. What you don't realize is that every other spell except my first one is affected by Echoing Spell, which makes the spell come back after one hour's time. When that happens, any spells that come back are prepared again the exact same way they had been cast (any metamagic feats that applied to them when they were cast are applied to them when they are reprepared by Echoing Spell). This means that Residual Metamagic just made my 2nd level Echoing Silent Image into a 2nd level Echoing Heightened (to 10th level) Silent Image. Now it is permanently like this until I rest for the day.

This means that every Silent Image I cast except the 1st one of the day and any 0 and 1st level versions of it are now Heightened to 10th level and affected by Echoing Spell. Every hour I get the spell back after casting it (albeit with a -4 penalty to CL). This only stops when one of three circumstances happens:

1: My CL drops below the minimum required for that spell (17th for 9th, 3rd for 2nd). Arcane Thesis, Earth Spell, and several other effects have raised my CL by 13 total, thus this will take a while.

2: I die. Not likely.

3: I reprepare my spells for the next day.

Also, all of my spells have insane Save DCs thanks to Tainted Scholar and the Undead type. Nothing can make those DCs without a 20. I can freely choose what spells I want to prepare other than Silent Image, and thus have a veritable arsenal of spells prepared. This is not counting the 24 Shadow Miracles I have prepared, all of which recur themselves after being cast.

Now, it is possible to beat this character, but no one in the same party will even bother trying to be better than someone who can cast Miracle 25 times a day and still have spells prepared one hour later (all but two of those 25 spells recover themselves). I can safely say that no character can outshine a party more than this one does.

Frosty
2008-09-04, 05:01 PM
Where is Echoing Spell from? I am very interested.

Sinfire Titan
2008-09-04, 05:15 PM
Where is Echoing Spell from? I am very interested.

Secrets of Xen'Dirk.

Bonus fun: Prepare any 4th-8th level Bonus Spells as Twinned Echoing Silent Images to get 2 spells back when your hour has passed.

Jack_Simth
2008-09-04, 05:15 PM
Then your players aren't using divinations right. There is no way to defend against Contact Other Planes.

A couple of things about that...

1) Despite whether it may or may not seem reasonable, Contact Other Plane is still a Divination spell that's gathering information. If you're trying to use it to gather information about a particular creature, it is, RAW, foiled by mind blank - as ridiculous as it sounds. Especially as the Contact Other Plane spell includes the line "On rare occasions, this divination may be blocked by an act of certain deities or forces." (Emphasis added). Is a spell considered a force of some kind? If so, Mind Blank technically applies, as it is a force that blocks divinations. Fun bit: It's the DM that answers the question "Is a spell considered a force of some kind?" rather than the player. If the DM says Mind Blank stops Contact Other Plane, then it does, and it's still within the bounds of RAW. Potentially, Nondetection does as well.
2) In character, you don't know the results of the % roll. At 20th, you're asking, at most (assuming you don't have caster level boosters in play), ten questions per casting. It is also not specified in the spell who rolls the percentile, or whether the percentile is rolled on a per-question or per-casting basis. You don't know whether or not you have a correct answer.
3) Taking ten technically only applies to skills; Contact Other Plane requires an ability check. You may be able to re-cast and try again, but eventually, you'll fail the Intelligence check, and be in a pickle for a while. If you're abusing your familiar by way of using Share Spells to avoid the, there's notes that there are powers out there that get annoyed when familiars are abused in the Core books - you can lose access to your familiar doing this, even with a somewhat kind interpretation. On the plus side, Ability checks also do not have that pesky 1 = auto-fail rule; you can arrange to be certain of passing without too much work.
4) "Irrelevant" is a perfectly RAW-valid true answer. No note is made in the spell description for if "Irrelevant" is judged by the caster asking the question, or the being giving the answer - which means it's up to the DM when the spell is interpreted as written. What's to say that the Greater Outer Deity you contacted cares about your upcoming random encounters? It may very well be irrelevant to the Greater Outer Deity's goals; that may be the answer you get - repeatedly, if the DM doesn't like you.

If the DM is feeling adversarial, there are plenty of very, very easy counters to the Contact Other Plane spell.

Also, my favorite "counter" for the Schroedinger's Wizard?
A monstrous Schroedinger's Wizard. See, by the CR "rules", such as they are, "non-associated" class-levels count as 1/2 CR each until class levels exceed racial hit dice - and it includes a brief definition of associated and non-associated. Interestingly, Wizard levels are non-associated for the vast majority of creatures. A young Black Dragon is CR 5 with 10 racial hit dice, and is intelligent enough to advance by class when needed. Give him 20 class levels, and he's technically CR 20. Likewise, a Young Blue is CR 6 with 12 racial hit dice - +20 class levels = CR 20, if they're not associated. A Young Green is CR 5 with 11 hit dice - twenty class levels puts him at CR 19.5. A Very Young Red is CR 5 with 10 RHD, same as the Young Black. A Juvenile White is CR 6 with 12 hit dice, again. A Wyrmling Bronze is CR 3 with 6 RHD; A Very Young Silver is CR 5 with 10 RHD (and a +4 Int bonus).

I clone your build, and add a lot of racial hit dice with feats and skill points on top of it. Can you consistently defeat a souped-up version of yourself, played intelligently? Mind you, that doesn't prove anything at all about the Wizard, but it's somewhat satisfying at times.

Collin152
2008-09-04, 05:39 PM
What is this "mindrape" people keep talking about?

Mindrape senses! Tingling!
it's the answer to any problem. You learn everything in the targets head, you rewire their brain to your liking. Instantaneously, as a standard action. It's like Programmed Amnesia, but oh so much better.

Belial_the_Leveler
2008-09-04, 06:02 PM
@Akimbo: Check your PMs. Ring of Spell Battle automatically counters a spell. Teammates will be limited to three classes total including PrCs unless you use more. As for feat/spell optimisation, they'll be good at what they're supposed to do (fighter: high defence plus damage, cleric: healing/buffs/some offence, skillmonkey: jack of all trades) but won't be intruding on non-class roles. E.g. cleric won't be buffed up to do meele, skillmonkey won't be doing too much spellcasting, fighter won't have many skills and so on.
If you let your teammates die, you probably won't be able to complete your goals. I won't say you'll surely die in an encounter; you might be forced to retreat, you might end up in a stalemate against an enemy you haven't prepared for and so on. Dying will be much more probable though, especially against BBEG fights. IF you succeed (and that's a very big if) you'd get full points. But it is a big IF if horrible cheese is not used.

@SinFire Titan: You're Undead. You can't have a taint score. Besides:

You don’t so much cast a miracle as request one. You state what you would like to have happen and request that your deity (or the power you pray to for spells) intercede. In any event, a request that is out of line with the deity’s (or alignment’s) nature is refused.
So, what deity or power is your undead , tainted wizard worshipping to grant him spells? Don't have one? Tough luck, your Miracles have no effect.
In any case, one 8th level cleric spell or 7th level spell of any other type per round that isn't metamagicked won't be doing much to your enemies either.

Gate:
Yes, you can use Gate to call a prismatic dragon. Technically. In reality, you can't. Nonepic PCs won't be familiar with epic creatures. A Prismatic dragon that doesn't want to be called can use Celerity and Dimension Anchor himself-and then will be pissed and Gate you back to repay the favor.
Collossi have magic immunity.
Abominations count as deities and can come through the gate, eat you, and go back for a nap.
"Advanced Balor" is not a kind of creature. "Balor" is a kind of creature. So if you don't know the name of a specific advanced Balor, you can't call him. Even if you do, unique creatures can't be controlled. So no advanced versions of normal creatures either.


Secrets of Xen'Dirk.
Campaign world specific material so does not apply. Seriously, Eberron?

Eldritch_Ent
2008-09-04, 06:05 PM
I'm betting 3 to 1 this will turn into another of those "The Wizard isn't as good when he's horribly gimped, see?" things... Either way, if there was an undead shadowcaster chaining Miracles, I'm sure Wee-Jas, Vecna, or Erythnull (Possibly even Olidammara) would be amused enough to grant the power needed.

Of course, a Deity doesn't have to, considering this is a caster using illusion to mimic the effects. It's not an actual miracle, it's just an incredibly convincing facsimile.

Belial_the_Leveler
2008-09-04, 06:14 PM
Horribly gimped? You call not calling Prismatic Dragons, Chaining Miracles and the like horribly gimped?


So far, I haven't seen a single build that works in a campaign, only attempts at cheese and complaining when said cheese is not allowed-not to mention that aforementioned cheese (all three attempts so far) have pretty viable reasons not to work by RAW.

Eldritch_Ent
2008-09-04, 06:18 PM
It may not be that way yet, but all of these eventually seem to degrade into arguments that a Wizard is defeatable when spellbookless, alone, and going to the bathroom...

I'm hoping it won't for this one, actually, because I'd love to see one of these things go through, but I'm just saying that's how they've all gone before...

Sinfire Titan
2008-09-04, 06:22 PM
@SinFire Titan: You're Undead. You can't have a taint score. Besides:

So, what deity or power is your undead , tainted wizard worshipping to grant him spells? Don't have one? Tough luck, your Miracles have no effect.
In any case, one 8th level cleric spell or 7th level spell of any other type per round that isn't metamagicked won't be doing much to your enemies either


Undead can have a Taint score as of Heroes of Horror. They can have an unlimited one at that. Its well known. Secondly, those are not miracles, but Shadow Evocation spells duplicating the effects of a Miracle. It doesn't care if the god doesn't want to, it is going to duplicate the effect no matter what.:smalltongue: And Olidamara, god of Trickery. And any 8th level Cleric Spell or any 7th level Arcane spell is actually very potent. Not to mention I still have spells prepared.


Campaign world specific material so does not apply. Seriously, Eberron?

You never said I couldn't in the OP.

Sinfire Titan
2008-09-04, 06:24 PM
Horribly gimped? You call not calling Prismatic Dragons, Chaining Miracles and the like horribly gimped?


So far, I haven't seen a single build that works in a campaign, only attempts at cheese and complaining when said cheese is not allowed-not to mention that aforementioned cheese (all three attempts so far) have pretty viable reasons not to work by RAW.

You asked for builds that overshadow other party members. That includes broken ones.

Flickerdart
2008-09-04, 06:26 PM
You know, I'm almost certain Belial is going to "find" a reason why every single combo or build come up with isn't allowed, until the Wizard only has a single Ray of Frost remaining, at which point rocks fall and he dies. Rocks are a below-CR encounter, after all.

Belial_the_Leveler
2008-09-04, 06:37 PM
Undead and evil outsiders automatically have an effective corruption score equal to 1/2 charisma +1 for undead, +2 for outsiders. Their taint is fixed. Also, gaining more taint depends on the DM using sites/objects/creatures with taint. So you only have as much as the DM allows you to, unlike wealth and XP where the tables say you should get that much.

Crow
2008-09-04, 06:37 PM
Every time one of these comes up, the pro-batman folks cry about how the challenge isn't fair and we never see the build or the challenge.

I say we just scrap the whole thing now and call it what it is. Theory. In theory, the wizard is immortal. Always has been, always will be. Basically, unless it happens at a game table, it's all conjecture.

And as far as changing the challenges after the wizard is "built", I don't see a problem with this. If the wizard is supposed to be invulnerable and undefeatable, it shouldn't matter. Instead of whining about it, rise to the challenge and do it if you're going to, otherwise forget about it.

AstralFire
2008-09-04, 06:38 PM
Every time one of these comes up, the pro-batman folks cry about how the challenge isn't fair and we never see the build or the challenge.

I say we just scrap the whole thing now and call it what it is. Theory. In theory, the wizard is immortal. Always has been, always will be. Basically, unless it happens at a game table, it's all conjecture.

Crow?

We've already got one build on the table. And someone is building another. And I've seen these challenges answered before.

Crow
2008-09-04, 06:41 PM
Crow?

We've already got one build on the table. And someone is building another. And I've seen these challenges answered before.

Yeah, but if a build utilizes "cheese" that is open to interpritation, we will never get anywhere. It will still always be theory. One of these challenges pops up every couple of months, usually after the obligatory "Fighters Suck" thread. It never went anywhere then, and it won't go anywhere now.

Belial_the_Leveler
2008-09-04, 06:43 PM
As long as the reasons for not allowing certain builds are RAW then said builds are illegal. E.g. the reason you can't have infinite taint with undead is that undead have fixed taint. The reason you can't Gate advanced creatures is that you can only Gate kinds of creatures, not specify a creature of certain HD. The reason the miracles fail if they are outside the deity's alignment is because the spell says so.


As for the interpretation thingy, using a twinned, empowered Orb of Fire mastered to sonic isn't open to interpretation. Using Miracle is because the miracle itself is open to interpretation. (btw, the effect of miracle is
"You state what you would like to have happen and request that your deity (or the power you pray to for spells) intercede.")

Frosty
2008-09-04, 06:43 PM
These build are are all so fun to read upon. It's too bad I'll never actually ge tto play one because no DM (myself included) would allow such broken-ness.

All we prove here is that WoTC didn't play-test enough and that there are some stupidly broken combos in 3.5.

I'd actually like to see a single level 20 build defeat a Phane without using Superior Invisibility or Darkstalker.

AstralFire
2008-09-04, 06:46 PM
Yeah, but if a build utilizes "cheese" that is open to interpritation, we will never get anywhere. It will still always be theory.

I have yet to see any build of note that cannot be skewered somewhere with an easy nod at interpretation/RAI/etc. The point is rarely to ultimately demonstrate that this will be done in a game; the point is to demonstrate how easily, say, 33-75% of it can be done in a game. I have played in no games where any class reaches their pure theoretical strength.

But then again processor benchmarks do not make up 95% of what a computer is used for. Does this make them significantly less useful?

tyckspoon
2008-09-04, 06:46 PM
So far, I haven't seen a single build that works in a campaign, only attempts at cheese and complaining when said cheese is not allowed-not to mention that aforementioned cheese (all three attempts so far) have pretty viable reasons not to work by RAW.

:smallconfused:

A Shadowcraft Mage doesn't work in a campaign? That's all Sinfire's build is up until 20th level; a straight-up gnomish illusion specialist. It doesn't need the undead+tainted scholar combo to be effective, either; that's just there to abuse the tainted spellcasting rule and guarantee the spells will beat stuff. The build should more than pull its weight if you replace the last level with another level of Master Specialist or even basic Wizard.


Undead and evil outsiders automatically have an effective corruption score equal to 1/2 charisma +1 for undead, +2 for outsiders. Their taint is fixed. Also, gaining more taint depends on the DM using sites/objects/creatures with taint. So you only have as much as the DM allows you to, unlike wealth and XP where the tables say you should get that much.

Tainted scholars get taint for casting. I'm assuming Sinfire was using the UA version, since the Heroes of Horror taint system splits it into two kinds of taint, and that version of the Tainted Scholar only gets depravity by casting while his save DCs are run off corruption.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-09-04, 06:48 PM
The reason the miracles fail if they are outside the deity's alignment is because the spell says so.Except there is no Deity. A Killer Gnome build works by making illusions of spells that are more real than the real spell. A successful will save makes the spell only a % of it's effectiveness, but usually 9th level spells are 120%+ after a save. The Miracles aren't calling on a Deity for power, they're just made out of pure shadow stuff that the Gnome is so competent with that he can emulate the ultimate Cleric spell. RAW-legal, RAI-legal. If you declare it broken, you should just admit the challenge is fixed anyways.

Stupendous_Man
2008-09-04, 06:49 PM
the definition of a broken build is that it overshadows the party or makes them obsolete.

if you don't allow broken builds, you won't get the wizard your looking for.

although you might still be able to solo things all day with a strong build and the riht spells....

Belial_the_Leveler
2008-09-04, 06:50 PM
A Shadowcraft Mage doesn't work in a campaign? That's all Sinfire's build is up until 20th level; a straight-up gnomish illusion specialist. It doesn't need the undead+tainted scholar combo to be effective, either; that's just there to abuse the tainted spellcasting rule and guarantee the spells will beat stuff. The build should more than pull its weight if you replace the last level with another level of Master Specialist or even basic Wizard.

Shadowcraft mage works. The undead thingy, the taint and the miracles against his deity's portofolio do not because the rules say they don't. If he had a normal shadowcraft mage and didn't try to abuse miracle (which the spell itself says might not work), I would have no problems.

Sinfire Titan
2008-09-04, 06:50 PM
As long as the reasons for not allowing certain builds are RAW then said builds are illegal. E.g. the reason you can't have infinite taint with undead is that undead have fixed taint. The reason you can't Gate advanced creatures is that you can only Gate kinds of creatures, not specify a creature of certain HD. The reason the miracles fail if they are outside the deity's alignment is because the spell says so.

Undead Taint is not set in stone, they just automatically have that much taint to begin with.


They automatically
have effective corruption and depravity scores equal
to one-half their Charisma score, +1 for undead or +2 for
outsiders

It never says that they can't gain any more than that, only that they start with that much. And if I really need to, I can drop Tainted Scholar and Necropolitan entirely for another level of Master Specialist.

And as for the Miracles, you never ask for anything but spells and effects that will help keep yourself alive. CN deities don't really have problems with granting such effects, and it isn't even them who grants the Miracle (its a Shadow Evocation mimicking the effects of Miracle).

Frosty
2008-09-04, 06:51 PM
My DM would probably also declare the shadow miracles still call upon a deity. I see it as a reasonable house-rule that I myself would probably adopt should I even allow the cheese that is Shadowcraft mage, but it's still a houserule.

AstralFire
2008-09-04, 06:52 PM
Shadowcraft mage works. The undead thingy, the taint and the miracles against his deity's portofolio do not because the rules say they don't. If he had a normal shadowcraft mage and didn't try to abuse miracle (which the spell itself says might not work), I would have no problems.


You state what you would like to have happen and request that your deity (or the power you pray to for spells) intercede.

Wizards 'pray' to their spellbooks or the weave. That is the closest it gets. Shutting off the weave applies to any spell.

Crow
2008-09-04, 06:53 PM
But then again processor benchmarks do not make up 95% of what a computer is used for. Does this make them significantly less useful?

They're only useful if you have a use for them, which most people don't.

AlterForm
2008-09-04, 06:53 PM
Worship the concept of "Kicking Ass and Chewing Bubblegum" then. Or some other random concept like "Awesomeness" or "The Multiverse."

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-09-04, 06:53 PM
Shadowcraft mage works. The undead thingy, the taint and the miracles against his deity's portofolio do not because the rules say they don't. If he had a normal shadowcraft mage and didn't try to abuse miracle (which the spell itself says might not work), I would have no problems.He's not abusing Miracle. He's abusing 10th level illusion spells that really, really look like Miracles. Incredibly. Massively. They look more like Miracles than most Miracles. Not god involved.

In fact, if I ever play an Epic game, I'm playing a Beguiler Killer Gnome that uses the fact that he can cast Miracle to prove there are no true Gods. :smallamused:

Crow
2008-09-04, 06:54 PM
My DM would probably also declare the shadow miracles still call upon a deity. I see it as a reasonable house-rule that I myself would probably adopt should I even allow the cheese that is Shadowcraft mage, but it's still a houserule.

I would see it similarly, as the wizard basically "faking" a call to the Diety.

Akimbo
2008-09-04, 06:55 PM
Hell, as Belial can attest to, these challenges have been answered before.

As for the Miracles, I'd take it for granted that any such character would worship Vecna, who would of course grant such Miracles.

Frosty
2008-09-04, 06:56 PM
I would see it similarly, as the wizard basically "faking" a call to the Diety.

I'd have the deity answer the call a few times, and then start getting pissed off :smallbiggrin:

AstralFire
2008-09-04, 06:56 PM
They're only useful if you have a use for them, which most people don't.

Anyone throwing down a gauntlet about this clearly does.


I'd have the deity answer the call a few times, and then start getting pissed off :smallbiggrin:

I'd personally tell the PC to pick up his damn dice and stop cheesing at my table, since that is a violation of the only real rule zero - the agreement between my PCs and me that the game will remain fun for as many involved as possible.

Unless I got into my head to be like my friend Jon and run campaigns that are purely about optimizing as much as possible, but those are too much mathwork for me to be fun.

Belial_the_Leveler
2008-09-04, 06:56 PM
Except there is no Deity. A Killer Gnome build works by making illusions of spells that are more real than the real spell. A successful will save makes the spell only a % of it's effectiveness, but usually 9th level spells are 120%+ after a save. The Miracles aren't calling on a Deity for power, they're just made out of pure shadow stuff that the Gnome is so competent with that he can emulate the ultimate Cleric spell. RAW-legal, RAI-legal. If you declare it broken, you should just admit the challenge is fixed anyways.

The problem is, the only thing Miracle does is ask a deity to interfere on your behalf. Ok, your illusionist replicated that request. If there is no deity, you get nothing. I suppose he could worship a certain deity (and then the miracle would be limited to the deity's nature) but if he doesn't, nothing happens.

AstralFire
2008-09-04, 06:59 PM
The problem is, the only thing Miracle does is ask a deity to interfere on your behalf. Ok, your illusionist replicated that request. If there is no deity, you get nothing. I suppose he could worship a certain deity (and then the miracle would be limited to the deity's nature) but if he doesn't, nothing happens.

Did you ignore the quote I pulled right out of the SRD? It says the power the caster prays to for spells. The Wizard prays to none, and the closest analogues are their spellbook and the entire Weave.

AlterForm
2008-09-04, 07:00 PM
The rules call for the wizard to be more effective than his party. Can he eliminate his party from the equation somehow (thereby reducing their effectiveness to 0), fire off a Ray of Frost, and call himself the victor?

Crow
2008-09-04, 07:01 PM
Did you ignore the quote I pulled right out of the SRD? It says the power the caster prays to for spells. The Wizard prays to none, and the closest analogues are their spellbook and the entire Weave.

Here comes the interpritation war again...seriously guys....

Is "The Weave" a sentient force capable of analyzing a request and deciding to grant it or not? Is your spellbook? Does the wizard "pray" for his spells?

AstralFire
2008-09-04, 07:01 PM
The rules call for the wizard to be more effective than his party. Can he eliminate his party from the equation somehow (thereby reducing their effectiveness to 0), fire off a Ray of Frost, and call himself the victor?

This is why I like you.

Deth Muncher
2008-09-04, 07:03 PM
Worship the concept of "Kicking Ass and Chewing Bubblegum" then. Or some other random concept like "Awesomeness" or "The Multiverse."

Incedentally, there already is a god of awesome. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4120905&postcount=118)

Perhaps he's the "only" thing that can help?

Hehe, puns.

Rei_Jin
2008-09-04, 07:06 PM
The SRD states that either their deity, or the power that they pray to for spells. If the wizard HAS no deity, then they can't use Miracle. If you don't pray for spells, then you can't use that part of it. It just doesn't work. It's like saying that you can either buy a sword from a blacksmith or you can make one yourself. If you don't know how to make the sword, then it's not an option.

I don't see what's wrong with Belial's limitations, all he's trying to do is get someone to make a legitimate, non-exploit driven wizard, and then prove the power of it. If you feel you need to use exploits to prove how powerful a wizard is, then you're just proving that the wizard is not all powerful without them.

FMArthur
2008-09-04, 07:09 PM
The rules call for the wizard to be more effective than his party. Can he eliminate his party from the equation somehow (thereby reducing their effectiveness to 0), fire off a Ray of Frost, and call himself the victor?

Uh, when you do that, you're being useful to precisely 25% of your 4-man party. The other 3 characters are less than satsified with your performance. The wizard is emulating a game with other people, so one of the goals of a party of PCs is to keep the party alive and able to do things. If they suck, the wizard needs to babysit them. He doesn't just fly away because he's awesome, he has to basically overshadow them despite their full freedom of action or else the test means nothing.

chiasaur11
2008-09-04, 07:12 PM
Worship the concept of "Kicking Ass and Chewing Bubblegum" then. Or some other random concept like "Awesomeness" or "The Multiverse."

Or clown puppets.

It has documented evidence to its effectiveness!

AstralFire
2008-09-04, 07:19 PM
The SRD states that either their deity, or the power that they pray to for spells. If the wizard HAS no deity, then they can't use Miracle. If you don't pray for spells, then you can't use that part of it. It just doesn't work. It's like saying that you can either buy a sword from a blacksmith or you can make one yourself. If you don't know how to make the sword, then it's not an option.

Except that Miracle isn't off-limits to being Shadowed as it is a normal 9th level spell and obeys all other 9th level spell rules. It is a reasonable house rule and very probably RAI - I would rule it such (well, actually, I usually BAN Miracle and Wish, but if I allowed them, I would rule this way) - but not RAW. It should have been a Universal spell, but by its very nature as Evocation, "Evocation spells manipulate energy or tap an unseen source of power to produce a desired end." It's getting the energy elsewhere.

If nothing else, picking up any of the good-evil neutral gods that have magic in their portfolio and a love of power for its own sake largely rectifies the issue.


I don't see what's wrong with Belial's limitations, all he's trying to do is get someone to make a legitimate, non-exploit driven wizard, and then prove the power of it. If you feel you need to use exploits to prove how powerful a wizard is, then you're just proving that the wizard is not all powerful without them.

Issue: You're going to have to systematically go through basically every single trick and eliminate them one by one. Why is that?

"I don't know what pornography is, but I know it when I see it."

Didn't fly in the rules of law. It's too vague and if you have to have one person systematically saying "that is an exploit" and "that is not an exploit", you have gotten to the point where you are dependent solely on that person. Not the law/rules. You will run into a sense that the person is abusing their authority to make sure that they cannot be challenged and you're already seeing that right here. I'm really not sure what needs to be proven in that kind of a case that the mere existence of AoE save-or-suck spells as a standard action from a safe distance doesn't already prove.

Akimbo
2008-09-04, 07:22 PM
Nalthain the awesome: Here (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheets/view.php?id=79693).

Spells are not done yet, still working.

Belial HP?

arguskos
2008-09-04, 07:25 PM
Hey Akimbo, where is the Mindsight feat from? I'm just curious, since I saw it on Nalthain.

-argus

Sinfire Titan
2008-09-04, 07:31 PM
Hey Akimbo, where is the Mindsight feat from? I'm just curious, since I saw it on Nalthain.

-argus

Lords of Madness, in the Toschair (SP?) section.

Akimbo
2008-09-04, 07:32 PM
What he said.

Shosuro Ishii
2008-09-04, 07:40 PM
So basically, you're preforming a thought experiment to prove at a high level spellcaster alone will not outshine the rest of the party, but everytime some one proposes the use of another though experiment that you feel is 'cheese' you immediatly create a convaluted explination as to why it cannot be used in your thought experiment.

Congratulations, you have proven that in a study biased against spellcasters, that spellcasters will fail. I'll alert stockholm:smallsmile:.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-09-04, 07:40 PM
I'm going to be controversial here and make a Sorcerer, not Chaos shuffle anything, and make someone that is still massively good. Just to prove the OP wrong.

Eldritch_Ent
2008-09-04, 07:41 PM
I still maintain the Shadow Miracle isn't actually a Miracle, it's just using Illusion magic in a way that resembles one. In fact, it's more Miracle-ish than a miracle itself.

Really, I think this quote explains it well-
"Things that look like things often look more like things than things. Well-known fact."
- Esme Weatherwax, Wyrd Sisters

Rei_Jin
2008-09-04, 07:41 PM
The main problem with the Shadow Evocation/Miracle trick, is that it relies on getting level 10 spells at level 20. That's impossible with the build that you've got.

I've had a look through what the classes and feats you've listed give you, and unless I've missed something pretty badly, you can't do it.

Wizards have ruled that Arcane Thesis can't reduce the level of a spell, they can only reduce the cost of the metamagic feat to a minimum of +0. You can't get level 10 spells before level 21 unless you pull out the Races of the Dragon book.

So the combo doesn't work there. If I'm wrong, show me how, please. I'd like to know what I missed.

tyckspoon
2008-09-04, 07:46 PM
The main problem with the Shadow Evocation/Miracle trick, is that it relies on getting level 10 spells at level 20. That's impossible with the build that you've got.


Earth Spell (http://realmshelps.dandello.net/cgi-bin/feats.pl?Earth_Spell,all)- adds a free level when you Heighten a spell, does not cap. So if you Heighten something to 9th Earth Spell bumps it to 10.

Flickerdart
2008-09-04, 07:49 PM
Nalthain the awesome: Here (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheets/view.php?id=79693).

Spells are not done yet, still working.

Belial HP?
Belial, if you're even willing to pretend this is supposed to be fair, give the man his hit points so he can wipe the floor with your party three ways til Sunday.

Oh, and for fairness? Someone else roll up the Cleric and memorize his spells. If the Wizard doesn't know what's coming, neither should this fellow.

AKA_Bait
2008-09-04, 07:50 PM
Akimbo: I think I must have missed something. How is it that you have a vow of poverty and a whole bunch of stuff?


Oh, and for fairness? Someone else roll up the Cleric and memorize his spells. If the Wizard doesn't know what's coming, neither should this fellow.

Agreed. If one of the theoretical PC party members is in total ignorance of what they might be facing, then so should all of them be.

Rei_Jin
2008-09-04, 07:53 PM
*Checks the link*

*Frowns*

*Checks the book*

*Frowns some more*

Stupid Wizards of the Coast. Why do they have to do such dumb things? And I though the Versatile Spellcasting feat was bad.

Stupendous_Man
2008-09-04, 07:56 PM
i could play a fighter

Shosuro Ishii
2008-09-04, 07:58 PM
Another thing you have to realize, is that these are all optimized, super powerful one turn infinite combo wizards that people are playing. In a party of 4, I'm pretty sure I could take my sorcerer/Dread Witch up to 20 and with a little optimization help be more powerful than the rest of the party and still fit the theme of the character.

Basically, you're making the wizard kind of have to think about being omnipotent, as opposed to just being cheesed out with rules loopholes.

Akimbo
2008-09-04, 08:01 PM
1) Wizards has never ruled that Arcane Thesis cannot decrease a 0 to a -1 anywhere, but that doesn't matter for this competition because it has been ruled that things don't go to -1 for the purpose of this challenge.

2) Guys, take it a little easy on Belial, he genuinely wants to do this, and I'm glad because other then my IRL campaign with Nalthain I hardly ever get a chance, he initially had some rules for Gate, but changed his minid: You don't cheese, I don't cheese. So presumably it works as written just with his interpretation of unique creature.

Which reminds me, have you changed the rules for Arcane Thesis back as well? Or is that still capped at not going to -1 for a +0 adjustment? If it is reverted I've got some changes to make.

Also, he totally said Shadowcraft Mage is allowed, just not Miracle, and while I point to Mr. Vecna as the source of all the Miracles I won't be casting (seeing as I don't cast them, but if I did, Vecna's a nice guy like that.) He's still allowing shadowcraft mage, so clearly he's not nerfbatting like crazy.

Crow
2008-09-04, 08:03 PM
Is there a time limit to complete the challenge? If not, it's going to be narcolepsy all over again. But if he can nova 4-5 times per day, good for him.

Akimbo
2008-09-04, 08:06 PM
Akimbo: I think I must have missed something. How is it that you have a vow of poverty and a whole bunch of stuff?

Vow of Poverty was Chaos Shuffled away. This Nalthain varies slightly based on the challenge rules and the fact that he starts at level 20. The real one Chaos Shuffled Vow of Poverty earlier, and the order he took a lot of feats was different (Words of Creation was as soon as he qualified). But I don't think Belial will mind be stretching the shuffle till later for a few extra feats, since it's still within the rules, just not what the character did in his previous life.

Flickerdart
2008-09-04, 08:06 PM
Is there a time limit to complete the challenge? If not, it's going to be narcolepsy all over again. But if he can nova 4-5 times per day, good for him.
Elan Wizard. Enemies die of natural causes. :smallbiggrin:

Let's assume a standard dungeon crawl, to make this fair. Those usually run without time limits.

Akimbo
2008-09-04, 08:07 PM
Is there a time limit to complete the challenge? If not, it's going to be narcolepsy all over again. But if he can nova 4-5 times per day, good for him.

Well I imagine that he's going to have 4-5 encounters in one day, IE 24 hours, and not allow time plane tricks. But I have a Fortifying Bedroll, just in case (I don't plan on needing it) so if it comes down to it I should be able to reprepare spells once.

Rei_Jin
2008-09-04, 08:12 PM
1) Wizards has never ruled that Arcane Thesis cannot decrease a 0 to a -1 anywhere, but that doesn't matter for this competition because it has been ruled that things don't go to -1 for the purpose of this challenge.

Actually, they have. Read THIS (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4ask/20080514a)

They've also ruled that you can't use multiple Nightsticks, and a few other interesting things. Check the archives sometime, they've answered a lot of interesting questions.

AKA_Bait
2008-09-04, 08:20 PM
Vow of Poverty was Chaos Shuffled away. This Nalthain varies slightly based on the challenge rules and the fact that he starts at level 20. The real one Chaos Shuffled Vow of Poverty earlier, and the order he took a lot of feats was different (Words of Creation was as soon as he qualified). But I don't think Belial will mind be stretching the shuffle till later for a few extra feats, since it's still within the rules, just not what the character did in his previous life.

Ah, that's what it is. I'm not familiar with Chaos shuffle. Where is it from and what does it do exactly?

AstralFire
2008-09-04, 08:23 PM
Ah, that's what it is. I'm not familiar with Chaos shuffle. Where is it from and what does it do exactly?

It's a combination of two spells from one of the dark books, I think Fiendish Codex II or something. It's basically Psychic Reformation only it doesn't require you to meet any prerequisites and any feat your character gets from ANYTHING - including like, Elven bonus feats - is subject. One of the most crazy things to come out of the optimization juggernaut.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-09-04, 08:24 PM
Actually, they have. Read THIS (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4ask/20080514a)

They've also ruled that you can't use multiple Nightsticks, and a few other interesting things. Check the archives sometime, they've answered a lot of interesting questions.FAQ IS NOT RAW!

Sinfire Titan
2008-09-04, 08:24 PM
It's a combination of two spells from one of the dark books, I think Fiendish Codex II or something. It's basically Psychic Reformation only it doesn't require you to meet any prerequisites and any feat your character gets from ANYTHING - including like, Elven bonus feats - is subject. One of the most crazy things to come out of the optimization juggernaut.

FC1, not 2. 2 was Nine Hells, and they wouldn't touch DCFS with a pointy stick.

Rei_Jin
2008-09-04, 08:26 PM
....

Another rules exploit. Wow you guys really are going all out to break this thing, aren't you?

The spells are Embrace the Dark Chaos, and Shun the Dark Chaos. They're in Fiendish Codex I, and if abused they allow a character to swap all his feats for other feats, regardless of how he got them. For example, a fighter could have a wizard cast Chaos Shuffle on him so that he could swap his fighter bonus feats for other feats that he normally couldn't take as his fighter bonus feats.

It costs XP to cast, and you need to cast both spells once swap a single feat. But it can be done, and many DMs will ban those spells because of the fact that it IS an exploit. Of course, others will argue that it's a legitimate tactic, and more power to them. But I haven't yet seen a DM allow a player to do such a thing, especially seeing it's normally used to take feats that the player doesn't have a lot of choice about, and reset them to something more useful.

There are legitimate uses for it, but generally it's abused as all hell.

Crow
2008-09-04, 08:27 PM
FAQ IS NOT RAW!

That's only the case when it disagrees with the CharOp boards.

Also, rather than just saying level 20, why don't we set an XP amount?

Akimbo
2008-09-04, 08:29 PM
Actually, they have. Read THIS (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4ask/20080514a)

They've also ruled that you can't use multiple Nightsticks, and a few other interesting things. Check the archives sometime, they've answered a lot of interesting questions.

Oh that's cute. The "Sage." A man who has admitted publicly that he makes rulings based on what he feels "should" be the case, without even referencing the actual text sometimes.

I'll believe that over the actual text and the errata which explicitly allowed what had already been common practice.

EDIT: Oh even better. That's exactly what the errata says, and it still allows negative as per the following:

I cast a Energy Substituted Empowered Orb of Fire, this is a 5th level spell.

THat's how it's been used ever since the errata, no one has tried to cast level 2 Fireballs for a while.

Rei_Jin
2008-09-04, 08:30 PM
FAQ IS NOT RAW!

I MUST PUT THINGS IN CAPS SO THAT PEOPLE WILL LISTEN TO ME!

Seriously though, if you won't listen to the people who make the game when they advise of something, then you might as well make your own rules and yell at everyone who disagrees with you.

Stupendous_Man
2008-09-04, 08:30 PM
I MUST PUT THINGS IN CAPS SO THAT PEOPLE WILL LISTEN TO ME!

Seriously though, if you won't listen to the people who make the game when they advise of something, then you might as well make your own rules and yell at everyone who disagrees with you.

so what do we do when the faq contradicts itself?

Akimbo
2008-09-04, 08:34 PM
so what do we do when the faq contradicts itself?

Makes his own rules and yells at everyone who disagrees with him, just like he's doing now.

Because of course, that doesn't even say that meta effects can't be reduced to negative, it just says, as the errata does, that you can't cast a level 3 Black Tentacles.

tyckspoon
2008-09-04, 08:35 PM
Actually, they have. Read THIS (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4ask/20080514a)

They've also ruled that you can't use multiple Nightsticks, and a few other interesting things. Check the archives sometime, they've answered a lot of interesting questions.

"A spell may not be reduced below its original slot" =/= "Metamagics may not be reduced to a -1 adjustment." The Arcane Thesis errata and that answer both state the first while allowing the latter, so you can still use +0 base adjustment metamagics (rendered -1 by Arcane Thesis) to offset more expensive metamagic.

Edit: Hah. Ninja'd, naturally, while I was trying to find the actual errata. And failed. Yay me.

Sinfire Titan
2008-09-04, 08:35 PM
so what do we do when the faq contradicts itself?

Blame the editors, pick the one that works best, and if it still doesn't work come up with our own idea.

Tormsskull
2008-09-04, 08:36 PM
But I haven't yet seen a DM allow a player to do such a thing, especially seeing it's normally used to take feats that the player doesn't have a lot of choice about, and reset them to something more useful.

Looks to me like this experiment is done via community discussing, arguing, etc. There is not an actual DM in this experiment.

Now, if anyone tried to actually do this in a real game, that's a different story.

Crow
2008-09-04, 08:40 PM
Looks to me like this experiment is done via community discussing, arguing, etc. There is not an actual DM in this experiment.

Now, if anyone tried to actually do this in a real game, that's a different story.

That is why, as I said earlier, this is nothing but theory. Nobody will ever come to an agreement as to what a "reasonable DM" would allow, and when you're talking about a game that is meant to be run by a DM, you need to take the DM into account.

AstralFire
2008-09-04, 08:41 PM
That is why, as I said earlier, this is nothing but theory. Nobody will ever come to an agreement as to what a "reasonable DM" would allow, and when you're talking about a game that is meant to be run by a DM, you need to take the DM into account.

And that's where my earlier statement about benchmarks comes in.

Rei_Jin
2008-09-04, 08:41 PM
Then I guess you need to redefine some things. For example, when we talk about the power of X (whether it be a PrC, a base class, race, spell, feat, etc) are we talking about it in pure terms of how badly we can abuse it, or how it would work/be permitted in a real game with a real DM?

If you want to talk about a wizard in isolation, where you can play with and exploit all the loop-holes, then sure, it's impossible to kill him without resorting to the same tricks.

If you want to talk about a wizard in a game, then there are a lot more restrictions that come into effect. Most sane DMs will slap a player down if they try to use the exploits there, thus significantly reducing the power of said wizard. Note that I never said the wizard wasn't still powerful, I simply said that he doesn't hit the "I WIN D&D" button now.

Crow
2008-09-04, 08:42 PM
And that's where my earlier statement about benchmarks comes in.

But nobody here cares about anybody else' benchmark. Nobody will come to 100% agreement as to where that benchmark should be.

AstralFire
2008-09-04, 08:43 PM
Then I guess you need to redefine some things. For example, when we talk about the power of X (whether it be a PrC, a base class, race, spell, feat, etc) are we talking about it in pure terms of how badly we can abuse it, or how it would work/be permitted in a real game with a real DM?

If you want to talk about a wizard in isolation, where you can play with and exploit all the loop-holes, then sure, it's impossible to kill him without resorting to the same tricks.

If you want to talk about a wizard in a game, then there are a lot more restrictions that come into effect. Most sane DMs will slap a player down if they try to use the exploits there, thus significantly reducing the power of said wizard. Note that I never said the wizard wasn't still powerful, I simply said that he doesn't hit the "I WIN D&D" button now.

Yes, but the simple fact is, the more of those places you have to hit, the more powerful the class is - even practically. Ubercharger builds and Diplomancers can get completely derailed by one or two quick decisions from the DM and are often rendered worthless. Most of these spellcaster builds have multiple lynchpins and even if they're all removed, they're fully competent normal casters.


But nobody here cares about anybody else' benchmark. Nobody will come to 100% agreement as to where that benchmark should be.

That's completely irrelevant if the point is to determine relative performance rankings, which it usually is.

Thinker
2008-09-04, 08:47 PM
Then I guess you need to redefine some things. For example, when we talk about the power of X (whether it be a PrC, a base class, race, spell, feat, etc) are we talking about it in pure terms of how badly we can abuse it, or how it would work/be permitted in a real game with a real DM?

If you want to talk about a wizard in isolation, where you can play with and exploit all the loop-holes, then sure, it's impossible to kill him without resorting to the same tricks.

If you want to talk about a wizard in a game, then there are a lot more restrictions that come into effect. Most sane DMs will slap a player down if they try to use the exploits there, thus significantly reducing the power of said wizard. Note that I never said the wizard wasn't still powerful, I simply said that he doesn't hit the "I WIN D&D" button now.

I hate the phrase "most sane DMs". It implies that a) if you don't agree with what the poster says, you must be a bad DM or b) that if you are allowed to do it you have a bad DM. Myself and my entire group never restricted things. We had several race/class combos that others might ban or find powerful, but we had fun with. We had Hulking Hurlers, Batman Wizards, Solo Sorcerers, and more. We still had fun. This was with multiple people rotating as DM from time to time.

Crow
2008-09-04, 08:48 PM
That's completely irrelevant if the point is to determine relative performance rankings, which it usually is.

Are you talking about "reasonable DM" benchmarks? Because if so, it's not irrelevant at all. Unless you have a benchmark which will be accepted by everyone else on this board. Which you don't.

Tormsskull
2008-09-04, 08:50 PM
Then I guess you need to redefine some things. For example, when we talk about the power of X (whether it be a PrC, a base class, race, spell, feat, etc) are we talking about it in pure terms of how badly we can abuse it, or how it would work/be permitted in a real game with a real DM?

For this challenge it doesn't really matter at this point. If whoever 'wins' the challenge says something like "Well, this proves that" then you just sigh/laugh/whatever depending on mood, and exit that thread.

AstralFire
2008-09-04, 08:52 PM
Are you talking about "reasonable DM" benchmarks? Because if so, it's not irrelevant at all. Unless you have a benchmark which will be accepted by everyone else on this board. Which you don't.

You're missing my point.

Given that the majority of these benchmark results point in the same ways, the fact that none of the conditions of the test agree with each other or even with the average DM is a non-issue. The fact that the majority of the results -do- is more important.

Similarly, the majority of computer benchmarks do not agree with one another perfectly, tasking the hardware in different ways, with set-ups that the common user doesn't have at home. They still, however, allow for a rough delineation of performance, and in fact are valued simply because they are aggregate. So these threads, while not individually significant, do add to something of note.

Akimbo
2008-09-04, 08:56 PM
I hate the phrase "most sane DMs". It implies that a) if you don't agree with what the poster says, you must be a bad DM or b) that if you are allowed to do it you have a bad DM. Myself and my entire group never restricted things. We had several race/class combos that others might ban or find powerful, but we had fun with. We had Hulking Hurlers, Batman Wizards, Solo Sorcerers, and more. We still had fun. This was with multiple people rotating as DM from time to time.

Indeed, Nathain not only Chaos Shuffled his racial bonus feats, but even his Vow of Poverty feats after he took a new direction in life (obviously we were using some houserules on spellbooks and VoP before then.)

Crow
2008-09-04, 08:56 PM
You're completely missing my point.

Given that the majority of these benchmark results point in the same ways, the fact that none of the conditions of the test agree with each other or even with the average DM is a non-issue. The fact that the majority of the results -do- is more important.

You're completely missing mine.

The problem is that your results are up to the DM as well...

Rei_Jin
2008-09-04, 08:57 PM
I hate the phrase "most sane DMs". It implies that a) if you don't agree with what the poster says, you must be a bad DM or b) that if you are allowed to do it you have a bad DM. Myself and my entire group never restricted things. We had several race/class combos that others might ban or find powerful, but we had fun with. We had Hulking Hurlers, Batman Wizards, Solo Sorcerers, and more. We still had fun. This was with multiple people rotating as DM from time to time.

But are you playing with the standard D&D mindset (that assumed by the core books) or are you playing high-powered optimisation? There is a difference.

It is completely impossible to agree on a benchmark for anything unless you are starting from a hard-line base. In computer games it's not such an issue, as the environment, inputs, and outputs are all restrained. In a pen and paper, tabletop environment, anything can happen.

So, there needs to be a lot of restrictions put in place so that the rules can be agreed upon. For example...


What world will the challenge occur in?
What books are permitted for the challenge?
Must the character be realistic in its build, or can it be completely off the rails (a Troll Saint, for example)?
How much of the characters gold can be spent on a single item?
How much Experience and Gold does the character have?
What are the multi-classing restrictions, if any?
Is the character going to be part of an iconic party?
Are there any variant rules in place in this world?
Are variants/alternate class abilities permitted?
Are the rules under RAW, or RAI?


And so on

AstralFire
2008-09-04, 08:58 PM
You're completely missing mine.

The problem is that your results are up to the DM as well...

In a given situation, sure. That's completely indisputable. That doesn't change the fact that they point to the majority of the power balance in the majority of games. The more conditions under which it can succeed, via 'exploit' or even sheer DM favoritism, still adds to its average power. Whoever has the biggest selection of favorable conditions 'wins', as far as ranking goes.

Crow
2008-09-04, 09:06 PM
In a given situation, sure. That's completely indisputable. That doesn't change the fact that they point to the majority of the power balance in the majority of games. The more conditions under which it can succeed, via 'exploit' or even sheer DM favoritism, still adds to its average power. Whoever has the biggest selection of favorable conditions 'wins', as far as ranking goes.

The bottom line is again, that it is all the results are still theory in the end. Every result will have relevance within this thread only. I don't think anybody here is disputing that the Wizard is potentially the most powerful class. This thread is not the only place a wizard is played. Nobody is going to walk away from this thread enlightened, and it's certainly not going to prevent another thread just like it from popping up in a couple months. I understand what you're saying. Maybe we need some wizards rolled up at at various levels of optimization or something.

But if you guys can come up with a baseline, I'll admit that I'm wrong and be the first to give you a golf clap.

AstralFire
2008-09-04, 09:08 PM
The bottom line is again, that it is all the results are still theory in the end. I don't think anybody here is disputing that the Wizard is potentially the most powerful class. Nobody is going to walk away from this thread enlightened, and it's certainly not going to prevent another thread just like it from popping up in a couple months.

Well, there's a reason I neither create nor actually attempt to challenge any of these threads. I just don't have enough interest in optimization, beyond a certain point it bores me utterly.

These threads do, however, give me more information that is useful to know, particularly as someone interested in game design. It adds to the aggregate knowledge of the readers, and that is enough utility for me. As a whole, they do tell us who is more powerful - practically. Though each of these is a theoretical thing, a DM trying to limit a player in search of power is acting reactively, which inherently gives a player more option freedom. As a result, you may find that a wizard is weaker here, stronger there, but he will be stronger more often than not, simply because swatting all of the flies is very hard to do if your player is bent on being a fly - and the wizard gives him a lot of chances to do it in a single build.

Jack_Simth
2008-09-04, 11:02 PM
But if you guys can come up with a baseline, I'll admit that I'm wrong and be the first to give you a golf clap.
...

I can come up with a baseline challenge readily enough, although using it to fill a power tier is a lot harder. If I had the time and energy to actually run it, rules would be as follows:

Build rules:

DMG, PHB, and MM only. Just the three core books.
Reason: The goal is to test the balance of the class in question, not the balance of additional books. If I find a spell, feat, skill, item, and/or PrC combination that renders a character literally invulnerable while still being able to act, that says nothing in particular about the base class in question; it says something about what happens when you draw on multiple sources that may or may not be well playtested and may or may not be designed with each other in mind; nothing more. The point of the test is to check the power of the class, not the power of a specific "trick" or of any specific book.
No multiclassing, no PrC's; just pure-classed characters.
Reason: The goal is to test the balance of the class in question, not the specific build. If the Druid benefits overly much from a one-level dip in Monk, I don't care; we're not trying to test the balance of every single class combination, but the balance of the base class in question.
Make the build to 20th, but also include the same character at 15th, 10th, 5th, and 1st - and it must be a progressive character (PHB II retraining rules are not permitted, although the Sorcerer's normal replacing a known spell at certain levels, as outlined in the PHB, is permitted for the Sorcerer). All five need to be run through level-appropriet gauntlets.
Reason: Not all play is at 20th level. To get a good idea of the power curve of the classes, they need to be tested at several different levels.
You get Wealth by Level, independent at each level tested (1st, 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th), following the 40/20 rule (that is, your most expensive item can be worth more than 40% of Wealth By Level, and no other item can be worth more the 20% of Wealth By Level).
Reason: We need to make a nod to the fact that the game is designed to be progressive, and played up through several levels.
25 point buy, level-based boosts as normal.
Reason: It's a normal, if slightly low-powered, point buy. Rolls will vary a lot based on individuals, and can't really be checked or accounted for. If someone rolls all 18's, of course their character is going to mechanically rock the house - that's not interesting when gauging the relative power of the classes, however.


House rules:

The limitations on what Summoned creatures will do are also applied to Called creatures unless a payment of wealth equal to 1,000 gp times the squared CR of the creature is made to the creature. That is, no free Wishes from Planar Binding an Efreeti, no chain-gating Solars, and so on (and yes, you need a payment of 100,000 gp in wealth to use it's 1/day grant three wishes to a mortal for you, as the Efreeti is CR 10). You can still Call in a combatant for a single battle with Gate, if you like.
Reason: Everyone's familiar with the LE Candle of Invocation free wish infinite loop. Everyone's familiar with the infinite chained Solars loop (also doable by the Candle of Invocation, but that's a different color). We're not here to test the balance of known exploits and "tricks". We're here to test the balance of individual classes.
Called creatures are at most involved in a single encounter, and they will wait no more than one hour for that encounter to happen. If you need to have your Greater Planar Bound Pit Fiend involved in two fights, you'll need to Call him twice.
Reason: A Sorcerer-20 built for it can quite readily Call three to six really powerful outsiders with Greater Planar Binding on any given day. Your ability to keep a small army of creatures individually as powerful as yourself (in theory, at least) on hand is not interesting to this exercise. For reference, by way of Moment of Prescience, a Sorcerer could reliably Planar Bind three Pit Fiends quite easily on any given day (six base spell slots of each level - I'm assuming half of the Pit Fiends make their saves/beat the Charisma check somehow). If the deal is for six plus six plus six days of military service (18 days of battles at whatever rate they crop up), then that's 54 Pit Fiends on hand at any given time, after a bit of warm-up - enough to overwhelm basically any level-appropriate encounter by way of Brute Force and Overwhelming Odds. We're not trying to answer the question "what's the best flavor of cheese given the limitations" we're trying to compare class power.
Spells from items, monster's spell-like or Su abilities do not provide any "extra" XP above and beyond what the base spell would do - that is, you cannot use an Efreeti's Wish spell-like ability to produce a magic item, as that would cost XP above and beyond the standard 5,000 for a Wish spell. Reason: No spending 100,000 gp to hire an Efreeti to give you three +5 Tomes or Manuals. We want to keep things effectively at Wealth-By-Level.
Wish and Miracle do safe-list items only.
Reason: DM's and players vary widely on their ability to twist/lawyer their Wishes and Miracles. That's not adjucatable in a fair manner for this sort of thing. Hence, safe Wishes and standard Miracles only when either is cast.


The Party:

The class to be tested is accompanied by four poorly-built NPC's of the same level. One Fighter, one Cleric, one Wizard, and one Rogue. These characters are stock DMG NPC's (using the equipment, feat, and skill selection from the 3.0 DMG, if the 3.5 DMG does not include a listing for such).
The Cleric prepares nothing but the most immediately effective Conjouration(Healing) spell available for his spell slots. He has a single domain, Healing, which he fills with Conjouration (Healing) spells. If he's specifically told to do so, he will prepare non-personal buffs, defensive spells, and "day after" spells for the party, and will cast them when told to do so if nobody is currently injured. He will not do debuffs, save or lose, summons, or other spells. The Cleric follows a good-aligned deity, and does not carry any expensive spell components (you may, however, buy expensive spell components for his use out of your own wealth). This Clerics actions are determined by the Cleric; his behavior is as follows: In combat, his first priority is healing the party member most injured (measured by % of total hp) - he will use his most effective available healing spell regardless of the extent of the injury (in character, he doesn't know how bad it really is). If nobody is currently injured, he will obey instructions given. If nobody is injured and no instructions are given, he will attempt to move into melee range and attack the nearest opponent. Outside combat, he heals anyone who is injured, using the lowest-level healing spell he has available to take care of injuries with the least resource cost (there's time to take it easy). If nobody is injured, and no combat is occurring, he hangs out in the background and follows instructions.
The Wizard is a generalist, and (unlike the other NPCS) has no equipment, but has any spell components and focuses he needs for his own use (no, you can't use them), and has access to every spell in the PHB that he could cast (no, you can't use his spellbook). By default, he prepares only Instantaneous direct-damage evocation spells (Ray of Frost at 0th, Burning Hands, Magic Missle, or Shocking Grasp at 1st, Scorching Ray at 2nd, and so on, up to Meteor Swarm at 9th level). If specifically told to do so, he will prepare nonpersonal buff spells (such as Polymorph, Bull's Strength, Bear's Endurance, and so on) and "utility" spells (such as Knock, Levitate, Spider Climb, et cetera), and will cast them when you tell him to do so - provided they cost no XP (and he will never cast any spells that cost him XP). He will NEVER leave a spell slot open for preparation later, even if you tell him to do so. All his feats are spent on Spell Mastery. In combat, unless he's told to do otherwise, he will simply zap the most dangerous-looking opponent with the strongest direct-damage spell he has currently available. Every round. If he's specifically told to cast a particular spell, he will do that instead. If he is out of direct-damage spells, he will pull out a mundane light crossbow and fire normal bolts at the most dangerous-looking opponent.
Reason: When comparing the power of characters, we must make a nod to the fact that D&D is a group game. However, we don't really want them to overshadow, so they are weak characters. DMG NPC's make for a constant, if dull, base.


The gauntlet:

A large series of level-appropriate encounters to be built, which are known in advance and can be taken on in any order and at nearly any pace (order and pace selected by the player). There is a minimum of 60 minutes getting from one encounter to another (there's non-roleplayed stuff between - maybe the party rogue is being really careful about traps, maybe you have to navigate a lot of maze, whatever - there's a 60 minute gap separating encounters; 10 minute/level buffs might last for three or four encounters at 20t level; 1 minute/level buffs will wear off by the next combat; 1 hour/level buffs will probably last you the entire day). The player can call "new day" to refresh daily abilities and spells at any time combat is not occurring. This does, however, push things to the next day.

If the player, or any NPC dies during an encounter, there is an immediate three day "side quest" to get the fallen character raised (as per True Resurrection), that is not roleplayed, costs no resources, and garners no XP. You cannot continue the main quest with a fallen comrade, but if you have the materials for Raise Dead, Resurrection, or True Resurrection handy, you may instead have the Cleric cast that spell (if it is available to the cleric). If you purchase a scroll of Raise Dead, Resurrection, or True Resurrection, the party cleric can use that scroll without a roll. Do note, however, that any party member that loses a level due to coming back from the dead stays down a level for the duration of that level test.

XP and treasure are not given for encounters. We don't want to deal with that dynamic aspect. However, you can obtain 5% of wealth by level (capping at wealth by level - you cannot have more than standard wealth by level at any given time) for the level of the challenge by taking 1 day on a "side quest" that is not roleplayed, costs no resources, and garners no XP.

If the player determines a given encounter cannot be overcome with available resources, there is a 10 day period of non-roleplayed work whereby the party finds an "alternate route"

The gauntlet is to be run with level-appropriate challenges of all types at levels 1, 5, 10, 15, and 20.


Scoring:

Time. The tested class (the fifth member) is ranked by how long it takes to complete the gauntlet. Is Bardic Music's +2/+2 attack/damage usable nearly at whim better for the party than a save or suck wizard? Is the Sorcerer a better 5th member than a Barbarian? This is how we determine this. The party of four could theoretically eventually handle everything on it's own. No one member is strictly necessary to a party. But it does give us a means by which to gauge relative power. There are two seperate time measurements, tracked seperate:

1) Combat time. How many rounds of actual combat occurred?
2) Campaign time. How many days passed?

Akimbo
2008-09-05, 12:01 AM
So in other words you would advocate using a PB no one uses, limiting it to fewer sources then everyone uses, more characters then normal, no PrCs even though everyone uses them, change all the rules, make it so that utility spells and smart choices don't allow you to use buffs longer and hope to hell that the fact that you are off on nearly every single aspect it is possible to be off on somehow works out to being perfectly in tune with what you want to test?

See, when I want to add 3+3 I add 3+3, instead of taking the square root, adding those, and then squaring it.

As I understand it, that usually gives a different answer.

Frosty
2008-09-05, 12:32 AM
25 pt=buy is perfectly valid, if less common. Not using PrCs though and only limiting ot Core makes the test less applicable to the practical gaming community at large though.

Sinfire Titan
2008-09-05, 12:43 AM
25 pt=buy is perfectly valid, if less common. Not using PrCs though and only limiting ot Core makes the test less applicable to the practical gaming community at large though.

Rope Trick+Astral Projection=Core Broken. Infinite WBL, no jokes about it. Not to mention you can recover the spells any number of times via Pearls of Power once you've cast Astral Projection.

Sholos
2008-09-05, 03:27 AM
I think it's a fine challenge. Limiting it to what everyone will have on hand is a good idea. It makes it valid for everyone. Saying no multiclassing is also a good idea if we actually want to check the power of a class. Are you saying that you can't build this?

Frosty
2008-09-05, 03:31 AM
Most people don't play pure wizard though. Which is why a test testing only Wizard 20 won't be of much help to everyone else out there. Not that Wizard 20 is weak in any sense of the word. I'm sure he can do it, but it's not what most people experience.

Belial_the_Leveler
2008-09-05, 04:37 AM
Huh, I sleep for 6 hours an there are 2 and a half pages of new posts. Go figure.

@Rei Jin: The Sage is known to be wrong, make horrible rulings that are contradicting (on some occasions, self-contradicting) and the Customer Support is even worse. I've checked myself by asking the same question twice; I got two different answers. So, I won't be using them.

@Akimbo: Using average HP or even 75% HP, you still get only 1 HP per HD due to your constitution penalty. So don't roll; just write down 20 HP for your character. If your constitution increases due to buffs, just add the extra HP. As for your Vow of Poverty, the limitation on magic items reads
you may not use any magic item of any sort though you may benefit from magic items used on your behalf and
you may not borrow a cloak of resistance or any other magic item even for one round So it doesn't matter when you took the Vow or even if you shuffled it in. As long as you have the feat and its benefits, you can't have magic items. Last but not least, you should fill up your spells known (not memorised, known).
EDIT: You can't chain rays or ranged touch attack spells. And, to my knowledge, you can't be immune to disjunction pre-epic, only very, very resistant to it.

@Jack_Smith: Pretty much unacceptable. Why? Because less than 10% of the players play strictly core. For those that don't only play core, the PrCs and other spells are part of the wizard and thus need to be tested.

@Crow: This challenge is theoretical only as far as its lack of fluff and a campaign background is concerned. The combats will be run with numbers, as in a normal game. The intent of the thread is not to prove that a wizard is not the potentially strongest member of the party in higher levels (he is) but to prove that a wizard in actual campaign situations isn't nearly as powerful, compared to other members of the party, as theoretical optimisation displays him.


What world will the challenge occur in? Irrelevant. Possible environments are the same in every world and non-campaign specific rules and sources are the same as well. Only campaign-specific rules and sources might change, in which case any differences are due to them, not the wizard class.

What books are permitted for the challenge? Anything non campaign-specific. In some cases I'll allow a very often used PrC from them but that's it.

Must the character be realistic in its build, or can it be completely off the rails (a Troll Saint, for example)? Troll Saint has racial HD and LA of +13. If you want to play a 7th level wizard in a 20th level game be my guest. Note however that unusual races only prove the power of such races, not the wizard.

How much of the characters gold can be spent on a single item? An item with more than 200.000 gp cost, unless specifically mentioned otherwise, counts as Epic and has a 10x price modifier; it is thus unaffordable. This means that an 20th level character can, at most, spend 27% of his wealth on a single item.

How much Experience and Gold does the character have? Standard gold for that level, 20th level XP exactly. XP and items from battles later become available.

What are the multi-classing restrictions, if any? None. But the other members can be as optimised as you are.

Is the character going to be part of an iconic party? No on the iconic, yes on the party. I'll build a decent meeler, divine caster and generalist and post them here before any combat occurs.

Are there any variant rules in place in this world? Not that I know of.

Are variants/alternate class abilities permitted? Case by case. If an alternate ability/class is from Arcana Unearthed or Dragon then no. If from PHB 2 then yes.

Are the rules under RAW, or RAI? RAW. Wherever rules are contested (and ONLY when they are contested) RAI. If you use serious cheese (e.g. stronger than most uses of shapechange), the least you can do is make sure it is completely legal.

Jack_Simth
2008-09-05, 06:28 AM
@Jack_Smith: Pretty much unacceptable. Why? Because less than 10% of the players play strictly core. For those that don't only play core, the PrCs and other spells are part of the wizard and thus need to be tested.

Snip


Note however that unusual races only prove the power of such races, not the wizard.
You just paraphrased a couple of my reason fields, applying it to race rather than the PrC's, feats, and spells.

The base arguments most often used for Wizards being overpowered usually refers to aspects of the base wizard class - namely, their casting and spell-acquisition mechanics.

The test can later be expanded to include other items (feats, PrC's, spells, items, and so on) - but the first thing needed is a baseline. Once you have the baseline power of the Wizard, then you can add other items, and test again - and when you do that, you get the relative balance of the PrC/feat/item/spell/and so on compared to the baseline. You can then build a listing of what is and is not overpowered relative to Core.

Most people don't play pure wizard though. Which is why a test testing only Wizard 20 won't be of much help to everyone else out there. Not that Wizard 20 is weak in any sense of the word. I'm sure he can do it, but it's not what most people experience.
No, but the point is to test the class, not any particular build. Why do I care if you find a splatbook out there that does the Psion's Timeless Body as a spell, and then you use the Incantatrix's free metamagic ability to apply Persistent Spell to it? Of course that'll be broken as all get out. But that's not the Wizard as a class being broken - that's the combination of Persistent Spell, the Incantatrix's free metamagic, and Timeless Body being broken. That says nothing about the wizard class.


I think it's a fine challenge. Limiting it to what everyone will have on hand is a good idea. It makes it valid for everyone. Saying no multiclassing is also a good idea if we actually want to check the power of a class. Are you saying that you can't build this?
Nice to see at least one person agrees it should be relevant.


25 pt=buy is perfectly valid, if less common. Not using PrCs though and only limiting ot Core makes the test less applicable to the practical gaming community at large though.
As I put in the Reason field for that aspect:
"Reason: The goal is to test the balance of the class in question, not the balance of additional books. If I find a spell, feat, skill, item, and/or PrC combination that renders a character literally invulnerable while still being able to act, that says nothing in particular about the base class in question; it says something about what happens when you draw on multiple sources that may or may not be well playtested and may or may not be designed with each other in mind; nothing more. The point of the test is to check the power of the class, not the power of a specific "trick" or of any specific book."
Core only gives a baseline. Once you have that baseline, you can then go back and include some splatbooks and see if the overpowered-nature of the Wizard is due to the Wizard himself, or the addition of splatbooks.

So in other words you would advocate using a PB no one uses, limiting it to fewer sources then everyone uses, more characters then normal, no PrCs even though everyone uses them, change all the rules, make it so that utility spells and smart choices don't allow you to use buffs longer and hope to hell that the fact that you are off on nearly every single aspect it is possible to be off on somehow works out to being perfectly in tune with what you want to test?

See, when I want to add 3+3 I add 3+3, instead of taking the square root, adding those, and then squaring it.

As I understand it, that usually gives a different answer.


So in other words you would advocate using a PB no one uses, limiting it to fewer sources then everyone uses, more characters then normal, no PrCs even though everyone uses them, change all the rules, make it so that utility spells and smart choices don't allow you to use buffs longer and hope to hell that the fact that you are off on nearly every single aspect it is possible to be off on somehow works out to being perfectly in tune with what you want to test?

See, when I want to add 3+3 I add 3+3, instead of taking the square root, adding those, and then squaring it.

As I understand it, that usually gives a different answer.
I notice you're responding just to the listed test rules, but not the listed reasoning behind them. Why?

Fri
2008-09-05, 06:46 AM
..It's been 5 pages?

I just want to see the wizard in action! Sigh. I want to see an attempt on a wizard that's 'truly prepared for anything'... But I got another long winded debate on wizard or something...

namo
2008-09-05, 06:53 AM
Good luck to everyone trying their hand at that.

Having seen previous incarnations of it, I have to mention that Belial, however well-meaning he is, games the CR system by optimizing monsters and pretending they're not any more dangerous (recall the Tarrasque thread from not long back ? Do the same for all monsters.) That makes the challenges TPK-worthy for "normal" builds (yes, normal is subjective) which is a big incitation to use cheese like Northain does. In turn, Northain and its ilk are impossible to challenge with conventional critters so it's a self-reinforcing trend.

In the end it's not even a benchmark - it's a Theoretical Op one-shot. I'd be interested in seeing the challenge restricted to core (with core PrCs though - why not ?), with unmodified monsters.

edit: and a higher PB, and less restrictive rules than Jack_Simth (why no specialist wizards ?)...


The rules call for the wizard to be more effective than his party. Can he eliminate his party from the equation somehow (thereby reducing their effectiveness to 0), fire off a Ray of Frost, and call himself the victor?

I have to admit, I lol'ed at that. :smallbiggrin:

Akimbo
2008-09-05, 06:57 AM
@Akimbo: Using average HP or even 75% HP, you still get only 1 HP per HD due to your constitution penalty. So don't roll; just write down 20 HP for your character. If your constitution increases due to buffs, just add the extra HP.

No, Faerie Mysteries Innate allows me to use my Int mod in place of my Con mod for HP. So my rolls actually do determine my HP total. I'll just assume all 1s if you want though.


As for your Vow of Poverty, the limitation on magic items reads and So it doesn't matter when you took the Vow or even if you shuffled it in. As long as you have the feat and its benefits, you can't have magic items. Last but not least, you should fill up your spells known (not memorised, known).

I don't have Vow of Poverty, or it's benefits. That is precisely the point. I took it at level 1. And then shuffled all it's feats and then it out for other feats.

I no longer have Vow of Poverty, or benefit from it.

I will fill up my spells known, but I have not yet filled up my spells prepared either, and I'm going to do that first.


EDIT: You can't chain rays or ranged touch attack spells. And, to my knowledge, you can't be immune to disjunction pre-epic, only very, very resistant to it.

The spellblade enhancement allows me to choose a single spell, which then does not effect me or my equipment, and is absorbed by the weapon. I can then cast it as a free action the next round, or allow it to dissipate.

Chain spell says: "Any spell that specifies a single target and has a range greater then touch may be chained."

I heavily prefer the interpretation that spells which create an effect of ray are included in that. But very well.


I notice you're responding just to the listed test rules, but not the listed reasoning behind them. Why?

What on earth do you mean by "reasoning behind them." As far as I can tell your reasoning is that you hope all the ways your test fail to test anything that is actually played cancel out.

Starbuck_II
2008-09-05, 07:24 AM
.

The Party:

The class to be tested is accompanied by four poorly-built NPC's of the same level. One Fighter, one Cleric, one Wizard, and one Rogue. These characters are stock DMG NPC's (using the equipment, feat, and skill selection from the 3.0 DMG, if the 3.5 DMG does not include a listing for such).
The Cleric prepares nothing but the most immediately effective Conjouration(Healing) spell available for his spell slots. He has a single domain, Healing, which he fills with Conjouration (Healing) spells. If he's specifically told to do so, he will prepare non-personal buffs, defensive spells, and "day after" spells for the party, and will cast them when told to do so if nobody is currently injured. He will not do debuffs, save or lose, summons, or other spells. The Cleric follows a good-aligned deity, and does not carry any expensive spell components (you may, however, buy expensive spell components for his use out of your own wealth). This Clerics actions are determined by the Cleric; his behavior is as follows: In combat, his first priority is healing the party member most injured (measured by % of total hp) - he will use his most effective available healing spell regardless of the extent of the injury (in character, he doesn't know how bad it really is). If nobody is currently injured, he will obey instructions given. If nobody is injured and no instructions are given, he will attempt to move into melee range and attack the nearest opponent. Outside combat, he heals anyone who is injured, using the lowest-level healing spell he has available to take care of injuries with the least resource cost (there's time to take it easy). If nobody is injured, and no combat is occurring, he hangs out in the background and follows instructions.
The Wizard is a generalist, and (unlike the other NPCS) has no equipment, but has any spell components and focuses he needs for his own use (no, you can't use them), and has access to every spell in the PHB that he could cast (no, you can't use his spellbook). By default, he prepares only Instantaneous direct-damage evocation spells (Ray of Frost at 0th, Burning Hands, Magic Missle, or Shocking Grasp at 1st, Scorching Ray at 2nd, and so on, up to Meteor Swarm at 9th level). If specifically told to do so, he will prepare nonpersonal buff spells (such as Polymorph, Bull's Strength, Bear's Endurance, and so on) and "utility" spells (such as Knock, Levitate, Spider Climb, et cetera), and will cast them when you tell him to do so - provided they cost no XP (and he will never cast any spells that cost him XP). He will NEVER leave a spell slot open for preparation later, even if you tell him to do so. All his feats are spent on Spell Mastery. In combat, unless he's told to do otherwise, he will simply zap the most dangerous-looking opponent with the strongest direct-damage spell he has currently available. Every round. If he's specifically told to cast a particular spell, he will do that instead. If he is out of direct-damage spells, he will pull out a mundane light crossbow and fire normal bolts at the most dangerous-looking opponent.
Reason: When comparing the power of characters, we must make a nod to the fact that D&D is a group game. However, we don't really want them to overshadow, so they are weak characters. DMG NPC's make for a constant, if dull, base.



Can we use Item Creation Feats to reduce costs of magic items raising Wealth per level by a small percent? (afer all if everyone hads 9000 gp, but you use those feats you have 13000-18000 gp worth of stuff in as real game.)
This is a very important question because the less this tests acts like a real game the less useable the information would become.

You didn't decribe the fighter or Rogue. Does the Rogue flank or something else every round?

Does the Fighter fight in melee if he can or range (the DMG has both weapons).
Also the NPCs aren't finished in the DMG: they have Gear + X amount of gold.

Can we decide what they spentthe extra gold on (Potions, better items, exta)?

Akimbo
2008-09-05, 08:22 AM
Okay, spells prepared and known completed. Please don't look those over too carefully Belial (anyone else wants to keep me in line go ahead). It's too much work to keep the separate, so just don't Schroedinger the challenges.

Still waiting on HP: Anyone know how Temp HP works with Power word spells? I guess it really doesn't matter unless there is a power word spell I haven't heard of.

Have 264+19d4+50 Temp.

Starbuck_II
2008-09-05, 10:30 AM
Okay, spells prepared and known completed. Please don't look those over too carefully Belial (anyone else wants to keep me in line go ahead). It's too much work to keep the separate, so just don't Schroedinger the challenges.

Still waiting on HP: Anyone know how Temp HP works with Power word spells? I guess it really doesn't matter unless there is a power word spell I haven't heard of.

Have 264+19d4+50 Temp.

Power Word counts Temp + regular so you are fine I guess.

Frosty
2008-09-05, 10:35 AM
Jack Smith: The whole point is, there's nothing about the wizard's class features which make it overpowered. It's ALL about the spells. We *are* trying to prove that there are spells out so horrifyingly overpowered that it makes the game trivial.

As for PrCs, I can sort of understand. We would be proving that the Incantatrix is overpowered, not the Wizard. But this only applies to some PrCs as most PrCs don't offer as much benefit.

Belial_the_Leveler
2008-09-05, 12:31 PM
@Akimbo:
Faerie Mysteries Initiate (it's "initiate" not "innate") is from Dragon Magazine-stuff from there are not allowed. Even if it were allowed, you don't have another companion with the feat so you can get the bonuses.

On your character, there's a possibility I'm missing some things so correct me if I'm wrong:


On your save bonuses: superior resistance adds up to +5 resistance bonus to saves. Your ioun stone adds another +1 and your luck bonus another +1. That's +7 magic, +9 for reflex saves due to Foresight. In the misc modifiers (bonuses from feats and class abilities) the bonuses of +8/+11/+8 simply don't add up. In the temp department, I don't see anything that gives you +9 bonuses.
Since you're adding up the separate bonuses anyway so you can put them in the temp/magic/misc fields, just write the separate bonuses in your notes along with the bonus types (e.g. superior resistance: +5 resistance bonus to saves) so I can see how you got those insane bonuses to saves.

On your shapechange: Please write down what you shapechange into.

On your active spells: The challenge starts without any active buffs. Treat it as the beginning of the campaign. After you prepare spells for the first time, you can tell me what spells you prepare and what spells you cast. After that, you can rest and prepare spells again if you want. Besides, I want to see how, exactly, you pull off 8 persistent spells of 5th level and higher.
NOTE: No, I won't cheat and have a monster appear while you're without buffs. You'll be given time to cast spells but you still have to do it IC.
NOTE 2: You'll prepare spells AFTER I am done posting the challenges to an impartial observer. To keep things fair, that is.

On caster level: As with the saves, I count +1 Archmage, +1 Ring, +1 tattoo, +1 ioun stone. All the other bonuses are to caster level checks or spell resistance checks and don't apply to spell duration/effects or difficulty to dispel. Correct me if I'm wrong.


On resting:
If a wizard has cast spells recently, the drain on her resources reduces her capacity to prepare new spells. When she prepares spells for the coming day, all the spells she has cast within the last 8 hours count against her daily limit. So it doesn't matter if you can rest in one hour: you still need 8 full hours to regain spells. Add to that the 1 hour you need to prepare spells and you need fully 9 hours to regain spells, fortifying bedroll or no fortifying bedroll. People tend to forget that.

The other 3 companions will be posted within the hour (hopefully)

Frosty
2008-09-05, 12:40 PM
Superior Resistances grants +6 to all saves, not +5.

Akimbo
2008-09-05, 12:47 PM
@Akimbo:
Faerie Mysteries Initiate (it's "initiate" not "innate") is from Dragon Magazine-stuff from there are not allowed. Even if it were allowed, you don't have another companion with the feat so you can get the bonuses.

You do the ritual once at level 1 and it remains that way until you do it again. If I can find and buy all my items and spells, I can find someone with the feat to do the ritual with me.


On your save bonuses: superior resistance adds up to +5 resistance bonus to saves. Your ioun stone adds another +1 and your luck bonus another +1. That's +7 magic, +9 for reflex saves due to Foresight. In the misc modifiers (bonuses from feats and class abilities) the bonuses of +8/+11/+8 simply don't add up. In the temp department, I don't see anything that gives you +9 bonuses.
Since you're adding up the separate bonuses anyway so you can put them in the temp/magic/misc fields, just write the separate bonuses in your notes along with the bonus types (e.g. superior resistance: +5 resistance bonus to saves) so I can see how you got those insane bonuses to saves.

Yeah, there weren't enough slots for all my bonuses, but for starters, Superior Resistance is +6, and the +9 Is from insightful Divination, which is in the Temporary category because it will be expended if used.

I'll total them up sorted by type after this post.


On your shapechange: Please write down what you shapechange into.

It's currently a Elder Air Elemental, meant to write that down somewhere.


On your active spells: The challenge starts without any active buffs. Treat it as the beginning of the campaign. After you prepare spells for the first time, you can tell me what spells you prepare and what spells you cast. After that, you can rest and prepare spells again if you want. Besides, I want to see how, exactly, you pull off 8 persistent spells of 5th level and higher.
NOTE: No, I won't cheat and have a monster appear while you're without buffs. You'll be given time to cast spells but you still have to do it IC.
NOTE 2: You'll prepare spells AFTER I am done posting the challenges to an impartial observer. To keep things fair, that is.

Every other day I cast those spells before resting. If I don't have something specific to do, then I just go ahead and rest, memorize them, cast, and then rememorize them. There is not a single second in my life since reaching level 17 that I would not have had all those spells active.


On caster level: As with the saves, I count +1 Archmage, +1 Ring, +1 tattoo, +1 ioun stone. All the other bonuses are to caster level checks or spell resistance checks and don't apply to spell duration/effects or difficulty to dispel. Correct me if I'm wrong.

That would be my Tome of the Stilled Tongue, which subtracts 20HP and gives me +1 CL. And all my buffs were cast under the effects of a UMDed Bead of Karma, adding a further +4.


On resting: So it doesn't matter if you can rest in one hour: you still need 8 full hours to regain spells. Add to that the 1 hour you need to prepare spells and you need fully 9 hours to regain spells, fortifying bedroll or no fortifying bedroll. People tend to forget that.

It will only take me one hour to regain spell, and I will regain all slots that were cast more then eight hours ago. I don't intend to cast all my spells in eight hours.

Emperor Tippy
2008-09-05, 12:51 PM
@Akimbo:
Faerie Mysteries Initiate (it's "initiate" not "innate") is from Dragon Magazine-stuff from there are not allowed. Even if it were allowed, you don't have another companion with the feat so you can get the bonuses.
You didn't ban dragon in the OP. As for another companion, how do you know he doesn't have one? His Familiar could be one if he was so inclined.


On your character, there's a possibility I'm missing some things so correct me if I'm wrong:

On your save bonuses: superior resistance adds up to +5 resistance bonus to saves. Your ioun stone adds another +1 and your luck bonus another +1. That's +7 magic, +9 for reflex saves due to Foresight. In the misc modifiers (bonuses from feats and class abilities) the bonuses of +8/+11/+8 simply don't add up. In the temp department, I don't see anything that gives you +9 bonuses.
Since you're adding up the separate bonuses anyway so you can put them in the temp/magic/misc fields, just write the separate bonuses in your notes along with the bonus types (e.g. superior resistance: +5 resistance bonus to saves) so I can see how you got those insane bonuses to saves.
Superior Resistance is +6


On your shapechange: Please write down what you shapechange into.
He can change it as a free action every round. So whatever the hell he feels like at the time works just fine.


On your active spells: The challenge starts without any active buffs. Treat it as the beginning of the campaign. After you prepare spells for the first time, you can tell me what spells you prepare and what spells you cast. After that, you can rest and prepare spells again if you want. Besides, I want to see how, exactly, you pull off 8 persistent spells of 5th level and higher.
NOTE: No, I won't cheat and have a monster appear while you're without buffs. You'll be given time to cast spells but you still have to do it IC.
NOTE 2: You'll prepare spells AFTER I am done posting the challenges to an impartial observer. To keep things fair, that is.
Then he casts shapechange, turns into a golem, greater teleports to the moon, casts MMM, enters it, and then buffs up. It's not like he is going to do anything else so it's really irrelevant.


On caster level: As with the saves, I count +1 Archmage, +1 Ring, +1 tattoo, +1 ioun stone. All the other bonuses are to caster level checks or spell resistance checks and don't apply to spell duration/effects or difficulty to dispel. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Bead of Karma.


On resting: So it doesn't matter if you can rest in one hour: you still need 8 full hours to regain spells. Add to that the 1 hour you need to prepare spells and you need fully 9 hours to regain spells, fortifying bedroll or no fortifying bedroll. People tend to forget that.

The other 3 companions will be posted within the hour (hopefully)

Um no. Fortifying bedroll makes it so you only have to rest an hour to regain spells. And then an hour to prepare spells. So 2 hours, not 9. Read the actual abilities.

Now, why in the world is Akimbo letting you DM this? All you should be doing is running the monsters, you and he should have a separate person actually making all rulings.

Akimbo
2008-09-05, 01:02 PM
Bonuses to all saves:

+6 Resistance (Superior Resistance) +4 Morale (Greater Heroism) +1 Luck (Luck Stone) +1 Competence (Ioun Stone) +5 Enhancement (Spellstrike Weapon)=

+17 to all saves (Maybe I'm missing something, maybe I counted something twice the first time, either way one point isn't that likely to come into play).

Reflex gets +1 from Haste, +2 from Foresight.

+9 Temp is if I choose to expend my Insightful Divination. EDIT: Oh, and True Believer gives +3 to one save a day.

I changed the Temp Mod to 0 so that you could see the unmodified ones. I'll just have to remember to use it if it comes up.

Akimbo
2008-09-05, 01:06 PM
Now, why in the world is Akimbo letting you DM this? All you should be doing is running the monsters, you and he should have a separate person actually making all rulings.

Actually, I totally agree with this. I'm not a very trusting person, and last time I did this I had serious concerns about the DM using DM knowledge on the monsters, not intentionally, but still. That would solve the problem.

However, if we can't get an impartial DM to agree to do it, that we can both agree on, then I'll just keep running it as is.

Of course, whoever DMs needs to take Belial's word on how things should start/whatever.

Mushroom Ninja
2008-09-05, 01:21 PM
Actually, I totally agree with this. I'm not a very trusting person, and last time I did this I had serious concerns about the DM using DM knowledge on the monsters, not intentionally, but still. That would solve the problem.

However, if we can't get an impartial DM to agree to do it, that we can both agree on, then I'll just keep running it as is.

Of course, whoever DMs needs to take Belial's word on how things should start/whatever.

It should work as long as there is a neutral 3rd party moderating.

Emperor Tippy
2008-09-05, 01:26 PM
It should work as long as there is a neutral 3rd party moderating.

But they can't agree on a neutral 3rd party who is willing to do it. About the only real neutral 3rd party with a good enough understanding of the RAW to run this would be Lord Silvanos and he has said before that he has no interest in running such things.

Frosty
2008-09-05, 01:27 PM
I'd offer, but I am not confident on my knowledge of every esoteric cheese spell/item/feat out there, so I'll just watch.

Sholos
2008-09-05, 02:28 PM
I'd offer, but I am not confident on my knowledge of every esoteric cheese spell/item/feat out there, so I'll just watch.

Same. Which is kinda why I liked the Core only challenge. Everyone here should know that given enough splatbooks (or even just certain key ones) you can make a horribly broken "wizard". Restricting it to Core makes it an actual challenge to the Wizard class, and makes it simplicity itself to find someone who can moderate.

Emperor Tippy
2008-09-05, 02:44 PM
Same. Which is kinda why I liked the Core only challenge. Everyone here should know that given enough splatbooks (or even just certain key ones) you can make a horribly broken "wizard". Restricting it to Core makes it an actual challenge to the Wizard class, and makes it simplicity itself to find someone who can moderate.

No it doesn't. Even core only there are only about a dozen or so people I would trust to moderate. Few people understand the rules well enough, even fewer are capable of putting aside their biases and moderating fairly.

Those who can do both generally already have access to all the relevant books anyways.

Crow
2008-09-05, 02:45 PM
Why don't we do a core challenge and a splatbook challenge?

Frosty
2008-09-05, 02:48 PM
I'm pretty decent on core rules knowledge, but still confident enough to adjudicate. I'm very interested in the outcome of this, and I want someone whos i competent to judge.

Belial_the_Leveler
2008-09-05, 02:56 PM
Come on, guys. You get your facts right please. And if you find a DM that can find these mistakes and willing to check everything so they work, I can send him the challenges and he can run them:



+6 Resistance (Superior Resistance) +4 Morale (Greater Heroism) +1 Luck (Luck Stone) +1 Competence (Ioun Stone) +5 Enhancement (Spellstrike Weapon)
Yeah, I thought as much. You can't have Morale bonuses because you're Mind Blanked (they're mind-affecting). Spellstrike Weapon only applies the bonus to spells and spell-like abilities, not all your saves. Make a note in your sheet about saves vs spells and spell-like abilities but don't add it to all saves. And Insightful Divination applies once, IF you cast Foresight.
So, +8 to all your saves, not +17


Um no. Fortifying bedroll makes it so you only have to rest an hour to regain spells. And then an hour to prepare spells. So 2 hours, not 9. Read the actual abilities.

Come on Tippy. The description of Fortifying Bedroll itself says spells cast in the last 8 hours count against your limit. So, 9 hours to renew spells.

On Shapechange: Be careful using that. Shapechanging to an elder air elemental means you can't wear your clothes or armor (such as your robe) because clothing and armor does not resize. Since you don't have pockets, where are you putting your spell component pouch, wands/rods, extra weapons and the like? I suggest you get a belt of many pockets or something. Plus, you lose all your supernatural abilities. How many Incantatrix, Archmage or Mindbender abilities are supernatural? Better check it out.

Emperor Tippy
2008-09-05, 03:00 PM
Why don't we do a core challenge and a splatbook challenge?

Frankly because core is boring as can be. Add in the fact that people always come up with tons of arbitrary restrictions to put on the wizard and it gets even more boring.

Really, you are going to be a grey elf wizard 7/ loremaster 8/ archmage 5 with Spell Penetration, Greater Spell Penetration, Spell Focus x2, Greater Spell Focus, Quicken Spell, Skill Focus (Spell Craft), 2 other metamagic's, Skill Focus Knowledge.

You are going to have Shapechange up and prolly be an Elder Air Elemental.

You will of course have Astral Projection up and use it to get free wishes so that you have +5 to every ability score.

The only variation will be in your chosen attack method, and there won't even be very much there. Item's will mostly end up being Rod's.

Emperor Tippy
2008-09-05, 03:03 PM
Come on, guys. You get your facts right please. And if you find a DM that can find these mistakes and willing to check everything so they work, I can send him the challenges and he can run them:



Yeah, I thought as much. You can't have Morale bonuses because you're Mind Blanked (they're mind-affecting). Spellstrike Weapon only applies the bonus to spells and spell-like abilities, not all your saves. Make a note in your sheet about saves vs spells and spell-like abilities but don't add it to all saves. And Insightful Divination applies once, IF you cast Foresight.
So, +8 to all your saves, not +17
You can have a moral bonus, so long as you get it before you cast Mind Blank. Order of operations it important.


Come on Tippy. The description of Fortifying Bedroll itself says spells cast in the last 8 hours count against your limit. So, 9 hours to renew spells.
I never said differently. You said that you would have to rest for 9 hours. You don't.

Akimbo
2008-09-05, 03:17 PM
Yeah, I thought as much. You can't have Morale bonuses because you're Mind Blanked (they're mind-affecting). Spellstrike Weapon only applies the bonus to spells and spell-like abilities, not all your saves. Make a note in your sheet about saves vs spells and spell-like abilities but don't add it to all saves. And Insightful Divination applies once, IF you cast Foresight.
So, +8 to all your saves, not +17

1) Yes I can have moral bonuses, since I cast Greater Heroism before Mindblank.

2) Fine, I'll seperate it even more even though I already pointed out where each bonus comes from.

3) And I did cast Foresight.



On Shapechange: Be careful using that. Shapechanging to an elder air elemental means you can't wear your clothes or armor (such as your robe) because clothing and armor does not resize. Since you don't have pockets, where are you putting your spell component pouch, wands/rods, extra weapons and the like? I suggest you get a belt of many pockets or something. Plus, you lose all your supernatural abilities. How many Incantatrix, Archmage or Mindbender abilities are supernatural? Better check it out.

1) "When an article of magic clothing or jewelry is discovered, most of the time size shouldn’t be an issue. Many magic garments are made to be easily adjustable, or they adjust themselves magically to the wearer. Size should not keep characters of various kinds from using magic items. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/magicItemBasics.htm)"

2) What do you think a Bag of Holding and a Belt of Battle are if not places to store my things?

3) Only Arcane Reach is (Su) for Archmage, and all of my abilities except for Seize Concentration and Snatch Spell are used previously.

Of course, technically, I could Shapechange into myself, reuse all those abilities, then shapechange to something else, back to me, reuse abilities, ect. But I'm not going to do that.

Believe it or not, I am keeping track, but since only one spell that I have is even going to be Arcane Reached, and Seize Concentration and Snatch Spell are of limited in combat use, seeing as they take standard actions and don't even work very well against the kinds of spells casters that actually scare me (ones with high CL) I'm not terribly worried.

EDIT: Still haven't told me how to roll HP.

Eldariel
2008-09-05, 03:29 PM
If necessary and I'm considered neutral, I could act as an arbiter.

Sholos
2008-09-05, 03:31 PM
Frankly because core is boring as can be. Add in the fact that people always come up with tons of arbitrary restrictions to put on the wizard and it gets even more boring.

Really, you are going to be a grey elf wizard 7/ loremaster 8/ archmage 5 with Spell Penetration, Greater Spell Penetration, Spell Focus x2, Greater Spell Focus, Quicken Spell, Skill Focus (Spell Craft), 2 other metamagic's, Skill Focus Knowledge.

You are going to have Shapechange up and prolly be an Elder Air Elemental.

You will of course have Astral Projection up and use it to get free wishes so that you have +5 to every ability score.

The only variation will be in your chosen attack method, and there won't even be very much there. Item's will mostly end up being Rod's.

Boring or not, it gives us a baseline to work from. And how does Astral Projection get you free wishes?

Akimbo
2008-09-05, 03:33 PM
Boring or not, it gives us a baseline to work from. And how does Astral Projection get you free wishes?

Scrolls of Wish would work, since items including consumables get duplicated.

Or perhaps he just used Planar Binding for that.

fractic
2008-09-05, 03:34 PM
Boring or not, it gives us a baseline to work from. And how does Astral Projection get you free wishes?

I don't know what trick Tippy was referring too you can duplicate your equipment with astral projection. Effectively you get as much money as you want. I suppose you could use that money to buy wishes.

Arbitrarity
2008-09-05, 03:34 PM
A morale bonus represents the effects of greater hope, courage, and determination (or hopelessness, cowardice, and despair in the case of a morale penalty). Multiple morale bonuses on the same character do not stack. Only the highest morale bonus applies. Nonintelligent creatures (creatures with an Intelligence of 0 or no Intelligence at all) cannot benefit from morale bonuses.
From SRD. Why can't mind blanked creatures get morale bonuses?

Oh, the SPELL is mind-affecting?

A creature can voluntarily forego a saving throw and willingly accept a spell’s result. Even a character with a special resistance to magic can suppress this quality.
Specifically, elves are mentioned as being able to be willingly affected by sleep spells, for example, in the PHB.
Therefore, I'm confused.

Akimbo
2008-09-05, 03:34 PM
If necessary and I'm considered neutral, I could act as an arbiter.

Do you consider yourself versed enough on RAW to know all the crazy crap that Belial and I are going to pull?

I may be worried about DM knowledge affecting choices, but I'm a lot more worried about a DM having no idea what to do in a situation.

Akimbo
2008-09-05, 03:36 PM
Specifically, elves are mentioned as being able to be willingly affected by sleep spells, for example, in the PHB.
Therefore, I'm confused.

That passage reads like it's mostly addressing SR. But if they actually have an Elven example, could you tell me what page?

Frosty
2008-09-05, 03:38 PM
I don't know any DM who actually allows Astral Projection to do that. It's along the same lines as 1d2 Infinite damage crusader or Pun Pun, even if it's not quit as bad. Infinite money can buy you whatever item you want...even Epic ones. It's pretty dumb.

Arbitrarity
2008-09-05, 03:47 PM
That passage reads like it's mostly addressing SR. But if they actually have an Elven example, could you tell me what page?

Page 177, chapter 10 (Magic) under Saving Throw, Voluntarily giving up a saving throw.

Note that my PHB is a bit newer, and has incorporated Errata (I.e. 25 HD shapechange limit): Your PHB may vary.
Even a character with a special resistance to magic (for example, an elf's resistance to sleep effects) can suppress this quality.
Copied out of the book.

Emperor Tippy
2008-09-05, 03:55 PM
I don't know any DM who actually allows Astral Projection to do that. It's along the same lines as 1d2 Infinite damage crusader or Pun Pun, even if it's not quit as bad. Infinite money can buy you whatever item you want...even Epic ones. It's pretty dumb.

I also don't know of any DM who allows you to do it. Doesn't mean you can't do it though. Just like nothing is stopping you from gating in an Effertie, using 1 of it's wishes to wish up a scroll of gate, and using the other 2 to wish up +5 tome's. Repeat 3 times for +5 to all stats.

Nothing is stopping you from getting unlimited money in any number of ways.

Take Iron Golem production for example. You can buy an Iron Golem manual for 35,000 GP. You can buy an Iron Golem body for 10,000 GP. That is 45,000 GP. You can sell an Iron Golem for 75,000 GP.

Or just using Wall of Iron.

Frosty
2008-09-05, 04:07 PM
Well the point is you can't do it because the DM won't let you. Without a DM there is no game. Even in a test such as this there is still a DM.

I mean, Pun-Pun is legal by RAW as well. Does it mean anything in actual games or even balance threads? not really. Because it's not ACTUALLY done.

Eldariel
2008-09-05, 04:08 PM
Do you consider yourself versed enough on RAW to know all the crazy crap that Belial and I are going to pull?

I may be worried about DM knowledge affecting choices, but I'm a lot more worried about a DM having no idea what to do in a situation.

Very probably. I've got all the reference sources handy and I've frequented the CO boards for years, so I'm quite familiar with the RAW. Just to clarify, is the intent to run this strictly by RAW or by RAW with the nerfs and limitations presented earlier?

Frosty
2008-09-05, 04:08 PM
Very probably. I've got all the reference sources handy and I've frequented the CO boards for years, so I'm quite familiar with the RAW. Just to clarify, is the intent to run this strictly by RAW or by RAW with the nerfs and limitations presented earlier?

Which limitations. I've seen multiple presented.

Emperor Tippy
2008-09-05, 04:11 PM
Well the point is you can't do it because the DM won't let you. Without a DM there is no game. Even in a test such as this there is still a DM.

I mean, Pun-Pun is legal by RAW as well. Does it mean anything in actual games or even balance threads? not really. Because it's not ACTUALLY done.

There is a world of difference between Pun-Pun and wish abuse.

Frosty
2008-09-05, 04:16 PM
Yes there is, but both are still on the side of the line that says "Not gonna happen in an actual game."

fractic
2008-09-05, 04:17 PM
Yes there is, but both are still on the side of the line that says "Not gonna happen in an actual game."

Well yes. But there is no objective way to draw the line. That's why we don't draw it at all.

Akimbo
2008-09-05, 04:17 PM
Very probably. I've got all the reference sources handy and I've frequented the CO boards for years, so I'm quite familiar with the RAW. Just to clarify, is the intent to run this strictly by RAW or by RAW with the nerfs and limitations presented earlier?

I think gate was allowed to call a creature and forcing service for CL rounds, but the statement was "any cheese will be met with more cheese." I haven't heard anything about changing the limitations on metamagic, which is fine because I'm still more useful then the average character in combat by a significant margin, being both a Wizard, and a Wizard using meta reducers (even if they don't go below 0.)

Personally, I just didn't memorize Gate or put it in my spellbook. Or Wish/Planar Binding ect.

So I would prefer if the challenges didn't actually require that sort of thing, seeing as I could have Gate in my Spellbook and Alacritous Cognition it over if I really needed to talk to some punk on another Plane.

But generally, yeah, I just want to leave them out so it doesn't become an issue.

Also, I would like to request any changes to the Clerics spell list involving at the very least core spells. Assuming it is something I could actually convince the guy to do mem in the first place. Assuming we are a party.

I'm mostly thinking about Planeshift, he should have at least, maybe a Greater Planeshift.

Frosty
2008-09-05, 04:20 PM
Well yes. But there is no objective way to draw the line. That's why we don't draw it at all.

There can be majority concensus though. Or esle there is nothing stopping Akimbo from building Pun Pun, for example, in this challenge. It doesn't prove anything about wizard. All we're proving is that the Astral Projection Spell, or Wish, or Gate, or Efreeti or whatever are badly written and bloody stupid.

Of course, if that's what we're trying to prove in the first place, then by all means go ahead, but I think all of us already know that they're stupid.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-09-05, 04:26 PM
There can be majority concensus though. Or esle there is nothing stopping Akimbo from building Pun Pun, for example, in this challenge. It doesn't prove anything about wizard. All we're proving is that the Astral Projection Spell, or Wish, or Gate, or Efreeti or whatever are badly written and bloody stupid.

Of course, if that's what we're trying to prove in the first place, then by all means go ahead, but I think all of us already know that they're stupid.The problem is, though, at what point does it go from "Spells are broken" to "the Wizard is broken"? I mean, the Druid is broken, but primarily because Wildshape is broken(as well as some spells, the Animal Companion, and the Planar Shepard PrC). If you ban or nerf all of those, the Druid isn't broken, but a test under those circumstances proves nothing anyways. Where's the line?

Frosty
2008-09-05, 04:34 PM
We can try to get a general concensus from somewhere. There comes a point when challenges become pointless because you have infinite money. I definitely draw the line at anything that can be abused for infinite anything.

Now, in a test like this, even though I personally dislike Shapechange and don't allow it in my games for example, I respect the fact that many people do allow it, so it's perfectly valid in a test.

Perhaps we shouldn't advertise this as a test for wizards. Tests only test a particular BUILD. After this test, we can safely say that a Wizard/Mindbender/Incantatrix is definitely broken, for example. Not all wizards will have metamagic reducers because not all DMs allow them. Many DMs don't allow Incantatrix at all. Just like how they don't allow Planar Shepherd. The test is perfectly valid, but it doesn't prove a thing about wizards in general. It proves that Wizard + Incantatrix = stupidly broken.

Emperor Tippy
2008-09-05, 04:38 PM
Again, what makes a class as opposed to a specific ability or spell broken?

Wizards as a class aren't broken. They have the ability to cast spells that are broken but they aren't broken. Now compare to a druid, which has 3 broken class features (broken spells, animal companion, and wildshape). You can balance a wizard by removing spell's, you need to put in significantly more effort to balance a druid.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-09-05, 04:38 PM
But if a Wizard class feature, such as spells, is broken, how does that not make a Wizard broken? If the core of the class isn't allowable in the challenge, why play at all?

Frosty
2008-09-05, 04:41 PM
Again, what makes a class as opposed to a specific ability or spell broken?

Wizards as a class aren't broken. They have the ability to cast spells that are broken but they aren't broken. Now compare to a druid, which has 3 broken class features (broken spells, animal companion, and wildshape). You can balance a wizard by removing spell's, you need to put in significantly more effort to balance a druid.

I agree. The spellcasting ability isn't broken at all. In the games I run I find it very much easier to balance Wizards than to balance Druids. I personally approve every single spell the player wishes to learn, and I haven't run into too much trouble with wizards yet. With a Druid, I'd probably have to enforce the Shapechange variant, *and* look at spells. With Wizards, just getting rid of broken spells will do the trick.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-09-05, 04:44 PM
I agree. The spellcasting ability isn't broken at all. In the games I run I find it very much easier to balance Wizards than to balance Druids. I personally approve every single spell the player wishes to learn, and I haven't run into too much trouble with wizards yet. With a Druid, I'd probably have to enforce the Shapechange variant, *and* look at spells. With Wizards, just getting rid of broken spells will do the trick.But from looking at the discussion so far, roughly a third of the core 9th level spells are being changed/banned. How do you think this test will prove anything if you need to put down that many restrictions?

Emperor Tippy
2008-09-05, 04:49 PM
But from looking at the discussion so far, roughly a third of the core 9th level spells are being changed/banned. How do you think this test will prove anything if you need to put down that many restrictions?

Agreed. One of the reason I am opposed to almost all restrictions for challenges like this.

Frosty
2008-09-05, 04:53 PM
I already agree that with the most broken spells wizards can completely obliterate any challenge they want. That doesn't tell me anything I don't already know. I'm interested in how broken Wizards are under a set of restricted that most DMs use, since I'm always looking to tweak my houserules to make it as fun as possibly without allowing broken-ness. Put it another way: How much does the DM have to nerf/ban in order to have wizards NOT utterly dominate in the campaign?

Coming to agreements about what the average DM will allow is the tough part.

fractic
2008-09-05, 04:57 PM
Coming to agreements about what the average DM will allow is the question.

But it's a question impossible to answer. Even if it's just core there are a ton of topics that have to be declared broken or not broken. We'd need to get the opinion of a lot of DM's to get a representative result. That's a allready a problem.

Now consider that if we'd start a poll to see if X is considered broken we will not just get yes and no answers. We'd also get yes, if Y is also allowed or yes, unless some detail is changed.

Supposing we find a way around that issue aswell. Now what's a majority? 51%? In that case we could upset 49% that's a lot. So how about 66%? 80? It's arbitrary again.

People won't seriously mention pun-pun in such a challenge because it doesn't prove a point that's everybody doesn't know allready.

Emperor Tippy
2008-09-05, 04:58 PM
If you want to see if a set of house rules make a wizard balanced that is one thing. The problem is people create these challenges, put tons of restrictions on the wizard, and then when the wizard loses said rigged challenge the creator claims that wizards aren't all they're cracked up to be.

As for house rules, most DM's don't ban Shapechange, or gate, or change Astral Projection, or Incantatrix, or Druids, or most of the other broken stuff. Why? Because it never becomes a problem. The players who realize the brokenness rarely use it and the vast majority of players never realize it. You have to realize that most of the D&D community never visits forums like this or the WotC boards. They don't realize that if you stack a ton of things just right you can make Cindy, yes it's obvious if you think about it but it rarely occurs to anyone to think about it.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-09-05, 04:58 PM
I already agree that with the most broken spells wizards can completely obliterate any challenge they want. That doesn't tell me anything I don't already know. I'm interested in how broken Wizards are under a set of restricted that most DMs use, since I'm always looking to tweak my houserules to make it as fun as possibly without allowing broken-ness. Put it another way: How much does the DM have to nerf/ban in order to have wizards NOT utterly dominate in the campaign?

Coming to agreements about what the average DM will allow is the tough part.So far, the following 9th level spells from Core have been either nerfed or complained about. Gate
Astral Projection
Foresight
Shapechange
Time Stop
Wish25% of the core Wizard spells of 9th level. Just admit the class is broken, stop blaming individual spells.

Jack_Simth
2008-09-05, 05:09 PM
edit: and a higher PB, and less restrictive rules than Jack_Simth (why no specialist wizards ?)...
You misunderstand; the class to be tested is a 5th member, and may be a specialist (if you want to test the strength of a particular type of specialist wizard); it's the provided NPC wizard is a generalist.

What on earth do you mean by "reasoning behind them." As far as I can tell your reasoning is that you hope all the ways your test fail to test anything that is actually played cancel out.
Every single item on the build limitation and house-rules sections included a "Reasoning:" section immediately following the specific build limitation or house rule.




Can we use Item Creation Feats to reduce costs of magic items raising Wealth per level by a small percent? (afer all if everyone hads 9000 gp, but you use those feats you have 13000-18000 gp worth of stuff in as real game.)
This is a very important question because the less this tests acts like a real game the less useable the information would become.

Tell you what; you start with the minimum XP needed for the level tested. You can craft in advance, but you're spending XP to do so as normal. And it's your XP you're spending, and your wealth your spending - not the accompanying NPC's.


You didn't decribe the fighter or Rogue. Does the Rogue flank or something else every round?

Does the Fighter fight in melee if he can or range (the DMG has both weapons).

The Fighter and rogue do what you tell them to during a battle, provided it's not overly stupid (e.g., "move there, attack that with your sword" is fine, but "stand still while I cast Programmed Amnesia on you by way of this scroll of limited wish" is not).


Also the NPCs aren't finished in the DMG: they have Gear + X amount of gold.

Can we decide what they spentthe extra gold on (Potions, better items, exta)?
Anything not specified in the 3.5 equipment listing for the accompanying NPC's uses the 3.0 equipment listing for that section. For instance, the 3.5 DMG listing for the NPC Fighter lists a Melee weapon with it's enhancement bonus - the type of weapon is not specified - so you look at the 3.0 DMG - where it specifies a Bastard Sword. The 3.0 DMG is a lot more thorough about equipment on the NPC's, although it's a slightly annoying read to determine what, exactly, the NPC is carrying/using.

The accompanying NPC builds are fixed across all tests of the same level.


Jack Smith: The whole point is, there's nothing about the wizard's class features which make it overpowered. It's ALL about the spells. We *are* trying to prove that there are spells out so horrifyingly overpowered that it makes the game trivial.

Yes, but not all sources are permitted in all games. Core is mostly unaltered in the majority of games; it's as close to a common denominator as you're going to get. The initial test is for a baseline comparison. Once you have a baseline to compare things to, you can go back and re-test with other stuff thrown in. You then have a somewhat objective measuring stick for exactly how broken other stuff is. You can measure both combat rounds ("man, that Celerity giving a third attack spell in a round cut all but one fight down to 1 round! That cut my combat time in half!") and days ("Wow, that echoing spell metamagic feat let me just annhiliate everything with Enervation without exhausting myself! I only had to rest twice vs. 8 times without it!"). If you don't run the Core test first to establish a baseline, you have nothing solid to compare to when you say "this spell is overpowered" - you're giving a fuzzy "feels right" guesstimate. With the Core baseline, you can say "this spell made a difference of X combat rounds and Y days in the test campaign" - you're giving an empirical measurement that is not only very difficult to contradict, but if done "right" initially, can later be cited, linked, and referenced.


As for PrCs, I can sort of understand. We would be proving that the Incantatrix is overpowered, not the Wizard. But this only applies to some PrCs as most PrCs don't offer as much benefit.No, but most PrC's offer more benefit than the base class does. If you run the baseline test with a pure-classed character, with no PrC's, you can then go back and say "the Wizard/Incantatrix was took X less days and Y less combat rounds in the test campaign than was the pure-classed Wizard build". With the pure-classed baseline, you have a method by which to measure exactly how much stronger the Incantatrix makes the Wizard. You can then go back and get a measurement on how much stronger the Loremaster PrC makes the Wizard, and the Archmage, and the Mage of the Arcane Order, and the Red Wizard of Thay, and any other PrC you want to look at.

To do that, though, you must first run a pure-classed baseline for comparison.

Am I making sense?



Take Iron Golem production for example. You can buy an Iron Golem manual for 35,000 GP. You can buy an Iron Golem body for 10,000 GP. That is 45,000 GP. You can sell an Iron Golem for 75,000 GP.
This particular method doesn't necessarily work:

Golem Manual: A golem manual contains information, incantations and magical power that help a character to craft a golem. The instructions therein grant a +5 competence bonus on skill checks made to craft the golem’s body. Each manual also holds the prerequisite spells needed for a specific golem, effectively grants the builder use of the Craft Construct feat during the construction of the golem, and grants the character an increase to her caster level for the purpose of crafting a golem. Any golem built using a golem manual does not cost the creator any XP, since the requisite XP are “contained” in the book and “expended” by the book during the creation process.

The spells included in a golem manual require a spell trigger activation and can be activated only to assist in the construction of a golem. The cost of the book does not include the cost of constructing the golem’s body. Once the golem is finished, the writing in the manual fades and the book is consumed in flames. When the book’s ashes are sprinkled upon the golem, it becomes fully animated.(Emphasis and Emphasis added)
The underlined section says exactly what it does do. The bolded section appears to be what confuses a lot of people.

See, nowhere in the description of the item does it say the book includes the cost of the magical supplies needed for enchantment. There's 70,000 gp worth of materials needed for making an Iron Golem that are not mentioned at all in the description of the Iron Golem Manual. As nearly as I can tell, a LOT of people assume that the enchantment supplies are included as part of the golem manual, based primarily on the note that the book specifies that it doesn't supply one particular aspect which is not related to the magical supplies that are not mentioned.

Emperor Tippy
2008-09-05, 05:12 PM
Gate
Only in combination with other spell's or abilities. Specifically Mind Rape and Wish as an SLA.

Astral Projection
Should be altered so that you don't duplicate your items, any consumables you use under its effects are used for real.

Foresight
Only in combination with Celerity.

Shapechange
I don't like it because of the book keeping involved but again, mostly because of monster abilities.

Time Stop
That was complained about in this thread?

Wish
Only when you can avoid it's XP cost (getting it as an SLA).

Frosty
2008-09-05, 05:12 PM
If you want to see if a set of house rules make a wizard balanced that is one thing. The problem is people create these challenges, put tons of restrictions on the wizard, and then when the wizard loses said rigged challenge the creator claims that wizards aren't all they're cracked up to be.

As for house rules, most DM's don't ban Shapechange, or gate, or change Astral Projection, or Incantatrix, or Druids, or most of the other broken stuff. Why? Because it never becomes a problem. The players who realize the brokenness rarely use it and the vast majority of players never realize it. You have to realize that most of the D&D community never visits forums like this or the WotC boards. They don't realize that if you stack a ton of things just right you can make Cindy, yes it's obvious if you think about it but it rarely occurs to anyone to think about it.

Without role 0 and houserules, a whole crap-ton of 3.5 is broken and stupid. This is why I give RAW-only games as much weight as I give Core-only games to be honest. I never play in those kinds of environments.

I guess you're right but if those DMs do know about these cheese they would probably agree that it has no place in their games. I have been nerfing the cleric in my campaign and he is still very much super hard to kil with normal MM1 creatures with all those DMM Persisted buffs. Anything that can seriously harm the cleric will flat-out destroy the Dragon Shaman in my game.

Sstoopidtallkid: I find Foresight and Timestop acceptable. Celerity is a bigger problem than those two.


Only in combination with other spell's or abilities. Specifically Mind Rape and Wish as an SLA.

Should be altered so that you don't duplicate your items, any consumables you use under its effects are used for real.

Only in combination with Celerity.

I don't like it because of the book keeping involved but again, mostly because of monster abilities.

That was complained about in this thread?

Only when you can avoid it's XP cost (getting it as an SLA).

Quoted for Truth. I don't think Timestop was complained about in this thread. Tippy's points about exactly how they're stupid is spot on.

Belial_the_Leveler
2008-09-05, 06:29 PM
Hey guys, two questions:

1) Is anyone who doesn't want to playtest interested in looking over the first 5 encounters? They are ready. And do you want the SRD creature encounters (but with feats/items/spells from elsewhere) or the non-SRD creature encounters?

2) Does anyone want to submit a build for warrior, divine caster and skill monkey? The NPCs I am making will be delayed until tomorrow at least-something came up tonight.

Frosty
2008-09-05, 06:36 PM
What kinda builds are you looking for? I can quickly throw together a competent (but probably not super optimized) Lockdown Crusader, Buff Cleric, and Beguiler for you.

Belial_the_Leveler
2008-09-05, 07:01 PM
I'm looking for:

1) A meeler that can deal substantial damage or neutralise a strong enemy in one round. Lockdown works as does frenzied berzerker or an archery-focused fighter that deals 300+ damage in a single ranged full attack with a splitting composite bow.

2) Buff cleric is fine. CoDzillas don't require much work on optimisation.

3) No Beguilers. They tend to suck vs immunities and they're effectvely spellcasters. Dunno about making a good skillmonkey though-but we definitely need trapfinding and tracking skills as divinations are not very effective there, especially if you have smart enemies.

Akimbo
2008-09-05, 07:02 PM
Every single item on the build limitation and house-rules sections included a "Reasoning:" section immediately following the specific build limitation or house rule.\

1) Can you get all your stuff in the first time? I hate going back and finding edits that include massive content additions.

2) Your "Readonings": I don't think that feats are part of the class, I don't think spells are part of the class, I don't think class features are part of the class, I don't think items are part of the class, I don't think the Archmage PrC, designed specifically for the Wizard class, or any other PrC is part of the Wizard class, Not all play is at level 20 (I agree here), Some bull crap about item costs that doesn't even make sense or nod to being progressive or anything else, rolls don't show of real balance, so therefore we should have everyone start with all 8s because that makes sense.

Part two: I don't think called creatures are part of the class (really just a subset of "I don't think spells are part of the class")/called creatures are broken, infinite loops are broken.

Part 3: Playing with a team you would never play with ever shows exactly how you would play with a team you would play with.

All your reasoning is the exact thing I addressed. What people actually play is more important then some fictional baseline that doesn't even exist and in fact represented a character in which every single aspect of the character would need to be changed before even a single person would play it in a real game.

Despite the fact that I disagree with every single thing above "The Gauntlet" part of your post, I will happily help make/make encounters for the challenge, if you are actually going to go through with making/running it.

I don't want to DM it, but I'll present encounters, using standard CR (assuming EL of party level, effectively all 4 NPCs make up 3 characters, the testing character is the last one).

Of course don't be surprised when you actually measure characters in "TTTPK" instead of days/rounds completed.

Just need to know how many encounters of each level you want to be able to draw from. (I'll make a pool much larger then whatever you intend to run each character/party through).

namo
2008-09-05, 07:30 PM
I can vouch for Eldariel having good knowledge of rules and tricks. Let him be the arbiter if he wants to. :smallamused:

Akimbo
2008-09-05, 07:40 PM
Well anyone can let me know when things are getting under way, or how many challenges they want at various levels with the Core only TPK challenge, or whatever.

EDIT: and by the way, do you want all encounters for the level 1 party to be CR 1? Or normal variance (If variance I'll only make maybe one encounter of CR=Party level +4, because those are TPKerific as is.)

And Belial, I hope it would go without saying, but after I'm done with this challenge, one way or another, I'd like to see the encounters.

Stupendous_Man
2008-09-05, 07:44 PM
will there be a party involved?

kme
2008-09-05, 07:45 PM
I can be wrong, but i think you should have one 9th and one 5th level spell less. It seems like you used it for high arcana: spell-like ability Time stop.
Also, you swaped many feats that were prerequisites for prestige classes. Now, I'm not sure if it has any bad consequences, but it seems worth pointing out anyway.
Oh, and using Vow of Poverty to get bonus feats. I mean really, was it necessary?

Akimbo
2008-09-05, 07:51 PM
I can be wrong, but i think you should have one 9th and one 5th level spell less. It seems like you used it for high arcana: spell-like ability Time stop.
Also, you swaped many feats that were prerequisites for prestige classes. Now, I'm not sure if it has any bad consequences, but it seems worth pointing out anyway.

I swapped one single feat that was a class pre-req, I kept my skill focus and spell focus. I did this because the rules are incredibly shoddy about that, and I'm a bastard. Certainly some PrCs (Ur-Priest, looking at you) specifically violate their own pre-reqs. I generally speaking feel that unless there is a specific reason that a feat would need to be kept, it's fair game. But of course, I kept Spell and Skill Focus because I'm a sad monkey, and I have plenty of feats.

Of course I put that shuffle right next to the feat and anyone is willing to object, I may or may not listen depending on your evidence/authority/my respect for you as a person.

As for the spells, no, I did take away the spells, that's why 5th level has 3 base instead of 4, and 9th has 4 base instead of 5.

Frosty
2008-09-05, 07:54 PM
I'm looking for:

1) A meeler that can deal substantial damage or neutralise a strong enemy in one round. Lockdown works as does frenzied berzerker or an archery-focused fighter that deals 300+ damage in a single ranged full attack with a splitting composite bow.

2) Buff cleric is fine. CoDzillas don't require much work on optimisation.

3) No Beguilers. They tend to suck vs immunities and they're effectvely spellcasters. Dunno about making a good skillmonkey though-but we definitely need trapfinding and tracking skills as divinations are not very effective there, especially if you have smart enemies.

Beguilers do have some limitations, but you're looking for a skill monkey right? Beguilers make better skillmonkeys than Rogues due to the fact they usually get more skill points. A beguiler also gets Trapfinding, and can take Track as a feat if you need it, although he may wish to multiclass into Ranger for one level (and get the Track feat for free!).

Yeah Immunities do tend to hurt Beguilers. They're not Wizards. Some things actually limit them. So what? In my own playtime both as a DM and as a player, I have yet to see an entire encounter where the Beguiler's Enchantment AND Illusion spells are worthless (remember, mindless undead and golems get tricks by illusions rather easily) *and* where the Beguiler's buffs were worthless.

Seriously. Haste is almost always good. Displacement is better than AC in most cases. And hell, how many monsters are immune to SOLID FOG? And you know what, Beguilers get Advanced Learning for a reason. The Shadow Conjuration and Evocation lines and really help shore up the weak spots of a Beguiler. I can probably count on one hand the number of situations where a Beguiler is hosed but a rogue is not. They are Rogues + Spellcasting - Sneak Attack.

I understand it's your challenge, but I'm just trying to give you the best options possible. another good choice for Skillmonkey is a Factotum.

Jack_Simth
2008-09-05, 08:04 PM
1) Can you get all your stuff in the first time? I hate going back and finding edits that include massive content additions.



Double Posting
Posting twice in a row is generally frowned upon. If you are responding to multiple points, please use quotes and other post formatting to clarify this. Please use the Edit option to modify information in a post instead of immediately making a new one. If you do accidentally double post, you can delete the extra post under the Edit option.
(Emphasis added)

Not really.



2) Your "Readonings":
So you don't like the idea. Whatever. Have a nice day.

Stupendous_Man
2008-09-05, 08:16 PM
I'm looking for:

1) A meeler that can deal substantial damage or neutralise a strong enemy in one round. Lockdown works as does frenzied berzerker or an archery-focused fighter that deals 300+ damage in a single ranged full attack with a splitting composite bow.


would it be ok if i used a giamonk?

Akimbo
2008-09-05, 08:32 PM
*Rules quote*

1) Yeah, the funny part is you edited it after 2 other posts. So you could have posted again.

2) Do you want encounters or not? Do you want them all CR 1? Or the standard split?

kme
2008-09-05, 08:39 PM
I swapped one single feat that was a class pre-req, I kept my skill focus and spell focus. I did this because the rules are incredibly shoddy about that, and I'm a bastard. Certainly some PrCs (Ur-Priest, looking at you) specifically violate their own pre-reqs. I generally speaking feel that unless there is a specific reason that a feat would need to be kept, it's fair game. But of course, I kept Spell and Skill Focus because I'm a sad monkey, and I have plenty of feats.

Of course I put that shuffle right next to the feat and anyone is willing to object, I may or may not listen depending on your evidence/authority/my respect for you as a person.

As for the spells, no, I did take away the spells, that's why 5th level has 3 base instead of 4, and 9th has 4 base instead of 5.Hmm, I didnt realize that you took elven generalist variant, but shouldn't you still have 2 less base 5th level slots for arcane power and SLA (unless I'm missing something again).
I checked Embrace the dark chaos spell. In its description it says that if you loose you prerequisites for PrC after swaping, you loose abilities of that PrC. Not that it matters really since its only one feat (my mistake in previous post), but meh.
Another interesting thing. Wouldn't casting of Embrace the dark Chaos count as evil act, and make you loose your exalted feats? Or does it say that you only loose bonuses from those feats? But since it could be said that bonus feats are the bonuses from Vow of poverty, it should probably be up to DM to decide.

Edit: Or maybe you could atone after each swap?

Akimbo
2008-09-05, 08:45 PM
Hmm, I didnt realize that you took elven generalist variant, but shouldn't you still have 2 less base 5th level slots for arcane power and SLA (unless I'm missing something again).
I checked Embrace the dark chaos spell. In its description it says that if you loose you prerequisites for PrC after swaping, you loose abilities of that PrC. Not that it matters really since its only one feat (my mistake in previous post), but meh.
Another interesting thing. Wouldn't casting of Embrace the dark Chaos count as evil act, and make you loose your exalted feats? Or does it say that you only loose bonuses from those feats? But since it could be said that bonus feats are the bonuses from Vow of poverty, it should probably be up to DM to decide.

Edit: Or maybe you could atone after each swap?

Embrace is not an evil act, can be cast on you unwillingly, and has no effect on Exalted Status.

And yes, I did not calculate both SLA and Arcane Power, thanks for the catch.

Jack_Simth
2008-09-05, 09:06 PM
1) Yeah, the funny part is you edited it after 2 other posts. So you could have posted again.

That *one* of quite a few, yes.


2) Do you want encounters or not? Do you want them all CR 1? Or the standard split?
You phrase your words with what I perceive as mixed sarcasm and semi-veiled insults. I cannot work with you effectively while remaining civil. I much prefer to remain civil, so I will not work with you. Have a nice day.

Akimbo
2008-09-05, 09:10 PM
You phrase your words with what I perceive as mixed sarcasm and semi-veiled insults. I cannot work with you effectively while remaining civil. I much prefer to remain civil, so I will not work with you. Have a nice day.

I don't intend to work with anyone, I'm just generating encounters. I'll send them to you if I finish a level and feel like it.

I decided to go with the split as per DMG percentages. 20 encounters of each level.

Oh, and if you are seeing veiled insults you are misinterpreting my posts. I have only open insults.

Belial_the_Leveler
2008-09-05, 09:40 PM
I'd forgotten the Beguiler's trapfinding. He's OK then. At least one of the five first encounters is a skill challenge that becomes very, very difficult without a skillmonkey.

The first five encounters are: skill challenge (CR 20), minion fight (CR 16), small group (CR 21), large group (CR 22) and BBEG (CR 25). Whoever wants to see them can ask.

Frosty
2008-09-05, 10:17 PM
When do you want the build by? I'm kinda tired tonight. Well, not much to do with Beguiler except choose the right Advanced learning and feats.

Sholos
2008-09-05, 11:25 PM
If this does get started, could a link get put into this thread? I'd like to watch this challenge.

Stupendous_Man
2008-09-05, 11:34 PM
hm. i don't think they'll get along long enough to do anything.

Crow
2008-09-05, 11:38 PM
hm. i don't think they'll get along long enough to do anything.

What ever would give you that idea? :smallwink: Surely not the countless times this has been tried in the past and met with failure...

Though I will be pleasantly surprised if something does actually come of it.

busterswd
2008-09-06, 07:03 AM
This challenge as set up wouldn't work; as some people have pointed out, there will always be some "Schrodingers" aspect to the DM side.

You'd need at least 3 parties for this to work.

#1, An actual, impartial DM with knowledge of how to work the encounters to their fullest. Not the OP, due to partiality.

#2, Someone playing the Schrodinger wizard.

#3, Someone playing the Schrodinger party. Could be the OP, but only if he didn't make the encounters himself.

2 and 3 submit their builds to 1 in PM; 1 posts them both so people are aware of what the setup is, then presents the encounters and judges what is legal as they both fight them off.

Flickerdart
2008-09-06, 10:01 AM
Er, the whole point of this challenge is that the wizard isn't Schroedinger's, and neither is anyone else. So you can't callthem a Schroedinger's Wizard or Party.

busterswd
2008-09-06, 11:28 AM
Er, the whole point of this challenge is that the wizard isn't Schroedinger's, and neither is anyone else. So you can't callthem a Schroedinger's Wizard or Party.

Ah, I thought he was using Schroedinger in reference to having a wizard who was supposed to be able to be anything (ie: the cat is in a dead AND alive state) rather than a Wizard who was able to pick his spells depending on the situation.

Either way, you'd need an impartial party to make sure the participants wouldn't be altered.

fractic
2008-09-06, 11:36 AM
Ah, I thought he was using Schroedinger in reference to having a wizard who was supposed to be able to be anything (ie: the cat is in a dead AND alive state) rather than a Wizard who was able to pick his spells depending on the situation.

The Schroedinger reference comes from the fact that in discussions about wizards arguments in favor of the wizard seem to boil down to "The wizards cast spells X,Y and Z". So his spell slots behave just like Schroedingers cat. You don't know what spell is prepared until it's cast.

The OP wanted to see a single build and spell list to see if it would really match up to all the discussion.

busterswd
2008-09-06, 01:23 PM
The Schroedinger reference comes from the fact that in discussions about wizards arguments in favor of the wizard seem to boil down to "The wizards cast spells X,Y and Z". So his spell slots behave just like Schroedingers cat. You don't know what spell is prepared until it's cast.

The OP wanted to see a single build and spell list to see if it would really match up to all the discussion.

See, I had the impression that the theoretical cat had the properties of being alive and dead at the same time, and when translated to the wizard, would mean a wizard with all the properties of a well made wizard (ie: a wizard whose current spell setup could cover any situation). I didn't take it a step further and realize that like the cat, the wizard is implied to be impossible.

fractic
2008-09-06, 01:27 PM
I didn't take it a step further and realize that like the cat, the wizard is implied to be impossible.

I wouldn't really say impossible. Of course it's not possible for a wizard to prepare all of the tricks that get mentioned in discussions simultaneously. But the claim is that a wizard should always be prepared enough to deal with everything has some merit.

Belial_the_Leveler
2008-09-06, 04:13 PM
And that's my point exactly. I've made a set of challenges with set stats for the monsters, set situations in set environments. The challenges are parts of a working campaign, too. As long as the following is true, then the wizard shouldn't overshadow the rest of the party:

a) No Dragon Magazin stuff
b) No campaign-specific stuff except for PrCs and feats required to take them. (For example, Incantatrix is fine. A certain kobold is not)
c) Character must be made in a vacuum. Any actions other than character creation have to be done within the campaign because time is a resource. Yes, you could assume you've spent several weeks to put a masterplan into action. But during that time your enemies could be assumed to have spent time putting their masterplans into action unopposed. And given that opposing their masterplans is the campaign goal, you just failed.
d) No infinite loops or rules exploits to get infinite or more of of anything without paying for it normally. These stuff will fail automatically. Includes gaining more treasure than WBL, more Xp than you should have, Chain Gate, Crusader Infinite damage, manipulate form, eating the brains of others for profit, infinite time or more actions by exploiting time traits and similar stuff.

Stupendous_Man
2008-09-06, 04:14 PM
so far, whos in B's challenge?

Crow
2008-09-06, 07:33 PM
A note on the camapign material restriction; Should a single build be able to use material from two different campaign settings? i.e. A wizard with both a FR PrC and an Eberron PrC?

Akimbo
2008-09-06, 07:41 PM
Belial: As regards C) Please tell me how the situation begins (IE where I am/what I'm doing before dealing with any challenges.)

As written I apparently am not allowed to have put on any of my items, obtained them, prepared spells, gained XP from level 1, or expended my +5 Tome of Intellect or Mind or whatever it's called.


A note on the camapign material restriction; Should a single build be able to use material from two different campaign settings? i.e. A wizard with both a FR PrC and an Eberron PrC?

Are there any Eberron Wizard PrCs worth taking?

Crow
2008-09-06, 07:59 PM
Are there any Eberron Wizard PrCs worth taking?

Well not just PrC's (that was just an example), but feats and such as well.

It's just a question.

Belial_the_Leveler
2008-09-08, 12:03 PM
@Akimbo: items of course are part of character creation. In any case, time is given in the challenge to do preparation. See below.


Other Characters:
Warrior: http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheets/view.php?id=79886 complete
Divine Caster: http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheets/view.php?id=79887 feats undone
Skillmonkey: Sth came up, no time to complete the sheet the past 2 days. Sb please make one? Otherwise, wait for a few more hours.


Start
The PC and the rest of the group start at the Citadel of Light, a massive castle of white marble at the top of a mountain, the home of an ancient brotherhood of lorekeepers, researchers, oracles and mystics that has hoarded up treasures and obscure knowledge for countless generations. The group wakes up after a night of restful sleep to find the castle in chaos and the entire brotherhood in uproar. They soon learn that a powerful artifact the brotherhood has kept for more than five millenia to help empower the defences of the citadel is missing, stolen in the middle of the night. Archmage Aramis, an immensely powerful wizard offers the group or individual who can recover it a reward of two million gold pieces and truthful answers to twenty questions concerning locations, inhabitants and objects of the material world, no matter how obscure, as long as they refer to events that transpired in the past 7.000 years (his lifetime). Aramis himself cannot leave the citadel now that the artifact is missing because he must shore up the defences with his magic but he has three pieces of info for the PCs: the artifact was stolen by members of the brotherhood itself, demons are involved and the artifact is currently at the outskirts of the Great Forest. He informs the group that his powers of hindsight might enable him to know exactly what happened in the past few hours by reviewing the past moment by moment but this would take too much time and the thieves would be long gone.

That's the beginning. You got 9 hours to cast spells, rest and prepare new spells. You may prepare spells either before or after you hear of the situation-your choice. Sb prepare spells for the cleric. I can't; I know what's in the encounters so it wouldn't be fair.


Encounters: At least 2 people have the first 5 encounters other than me. The encounters also have been toned down after their first incarnation. Once you're done with the memorising/casting of spells, we'll begin.

Akimbo
2008-09-08, 12:39 PM
Very well:

Since my character was in a place he believed to be a safe place, he would have his normal everyday spell set up, which consists of all his buff spells, extended as appropriate, and some additional Conjuration spells for his convenience.

After he hears about the problem, he will cast Lay of the Land, and then Divination, after that he will begin his buff routine:

Divination: Will I be likely to require Teleportation or Planar Travel to obtain the artifact [insert clarification of which artifact here] within the next day?

(I have Phantom Steeds, so that should probably be kept in mind.)

Buffs
Round 1: Activate Bead of Karma
Round 2-23: Cast Extended Hoard Gullet All spell shared with Familiar.
Create Magic Tattoo +1 CL version
Heart of Air
Heart of Water
Greater Magic Weapon (on Dagger)
Heart of Earth
Dragonsight
Heart of Fire
Greater Anticipate Teleport (not shared with familiar)
Cloak of the the Sea
Superior Resistance
Detect Scrying
Elemental Body Fire
Elemental Body Water (Using Rod of Greater Extend)
Elemental Body Earth (Using Rod of Greater Extend)
Elemental Body Air (Using Rod of Greater Extend)
Non-Detection
Deeper Darkvision
Phantom Steed (x2) (Twinned with Instant Metamagic)
Phantom Steed (x2) (Not extended)
Round 24: Cast Divine Insight use on Foresight check.
Round 25: Cast Greater Heroism
Round 26: Use Metamagic Effect to Persist.
Round 27: Cast Mindblank
Round 28-54: Cast and Persist:
Greater Blink
Ray Deflection
True Seeing
As the Frost
Energy Immunity Acid (Extended)
Energy Immunity Sonic (Extended)
Energy Immunity Electricity (Not Extended)
Kiss of Draconic Defiance
Ironguard
Ghostform
Superior Invisibility
Veil of Undeath
Foresight
Round 55-58: Cast and Persist:
Shapechange
Greater Dimensional Jumper
Swift Regain 9th level slot left open
Round 59-60: Absorption, the Persist.

Shapechange into Elder Air Elemental.

All spellcraft checks are auto succeed except Foresight, which I must roll a 3 or higher on: nevermind, forgot a spell, auto succeed on all checks.

Time spent: 9 hours, 10 minutes, and 63 rounds.

streakster
2008-09-08, 12:56 PM
Rolls do not work in this forum.

AKA_Bait
2008-09-08, 01:21 PM
Rolls do not work in this forum.

Indeed. Because I am quite curious as to how this will play out, I went ahead and made a thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=90402)over in the Die Rolls forum in which folks can post for this.

Frosty
2008-09-08, 01:24 PM
How many spell slots did you actually use up for buffing? Holy moly.

Akimbo
2008-09-08, 01:30 PM
How many spell slots did you actually use up for buffing? Holy moly.

Well, all of them is the best I can say.

After all the buffs, the four Phantom Steeds, the single Divination, and the Lay of the Land I have the following spells left:

lvl 1: 7
lvl 2: 7
lvl 3-9: 0.\

I make sure to use everything I can.

When I wake up the following morning, prepare spells and then use metamagic effects to extend the previously persisted spells. This part will actually require checks, but I have 17 of them for some number of spells less then 17. I'll figure it out in a second.

Douglas
2008-09-08, 01:32 PM
Round 57-58: Cast with Instant Metamagic Persist:
Shapechange
Greater Dimensional Jumper
Instant Metamagic doesn't work that way thanks to errata.


Page 63: Incantatrix Prestige Class
Please add the following sentence to the end of the
Instant Metamagic class feature description:
The incantatrix cannot use this ability if the
metamagicked spell would normally use a spell slot of a
higher level than she can cast.

Edit: Also, Haste cannot be persisted. Its range of Close is neither personal nor fixed.

Akimbo
2008-09-08, 01:36 PM
Instant Metamagic doesn't work that way thanks to errata.

Very well, then I'll just use my Instants to Twin the two Extended Phantom Steeds and I'll make two more auto Successes on Persisting those spells.

AKA_Bait
2008-09-08, 01:38 PM
How many spell slots did you actually use up for buffing? Holy moly.

I'm with you on the holies and the molies. Given that Douglas is right about the eratta, I'm wondering how our superbuffed friend will actually kill things.

Douglas
2008-09-08, 01:38 PM
Just to make sure you notice: Note the edit in my previous post.

And now for some good news for you: No need to bother with Persist on Energy Immunity. Its normal duration is 24 hours, so Persistent Spell is pointless on it.

Frosty
2008-09-08, 01:40 PM
Well, all of them is the best I can say.

After all the buffs, the four Phantom Steeds, the single Divination, and the Lay of the Land I have the following spells left:

lvl 1: 7
lvl 2: 7
lvl 3-9: 0.\

I make sure to use everything I can.

When I wake up the following morning, prepare spells and then use metamagic effects to extend the previously persisted spells. This part will actually require checks, but I have 17 of them for some number of spells less then 17. I'll figure it out in a second.

It seems like a lot of power of Schroedinger's wizard comes from the Persist Metamagic (and to a lesser extend, Contingency and Celerity).

If a Wizard did not have access to Incantatrix (the game I'm playing my DM won't allow it, so I'll need to find another way to be Schroedinger), and the Persist Metamagic is also banned, and so are the Contingency and Celerity spells, then what would you do instead? Would your mentality and build be completely different? You're likely to win initiative, but it's not guaranteed. You're not invincible because your buffs aren't on 24/7.

Akimbo
2008-09-08, 01:41 PM
Just to make sure you notice: Note the edit in my previous post.

And now for some good news for you: No need to bother with Persist on Energy Immunity. Its normal duration is 24 hours, so Persistent Spell is pointless on it.

I think I was using an older book version that's 1/round per level. Great, switch all those meta effects to extends and this is even more fun. But it's really spell slots that is the big limiter, not uses of meta-effect.

Falrin
2008-09-08, 01:43 PM
Can we ask GIA to submit a solo monk on this? ;)


Maybe better leave him out of this.

Douglas
2008-09-08, 01:44 PM
Also, that round 1 is supposed to be activating a bead of karma, not a pearl of power, right?

Akimbo
2008-09-08, 01:44 PM
It seems like a lot of power of Schroedinger's wizard comes from the Persist Metamagic (and to a lesser extend, Contingency and Celerity).

If a Wizard did not have access to Incantatrix (the game I'm playing my DM won't allow it, so I'll need to find another way to be Schroedinger), and the Persist Metamagic is also banned, and so are the Contingency and Celerity spells, then what would you do instead? Would your mentality and build be completely different? You're likely to win initiative, but it's not guaranteed. You're not invincible because your buffs aren't on 24/7.

Very few of my buffs are persisted, and many of them aren't really that important (Dimensional Jumper). The only thing that Persist does is make me nearly undetectable by most enemies (significantly less useful when with a party, so not really needed) and Shapechange/Foresight/Viel of Undeath (largely negated by Shapechange and lower level spells), which a single Extended spell of any of those lasts 8 hours, so just prepare 2 of Shapechange and Foresight and you are good to go. (Extend with a Rod if no Incantatrix.)

Honestly, having Energy Immunity be 24 hours is new one on me, and totally awesome.

mostlyharmful
2008-09-08, 01:58 PM
It seems like a lot of power of Schroedinger's wizard comes from the Persist Metamagic (and to a lesser extend, Contingency and Celerity).

Enough CL boosts and Rods of Greater Extend work well enough for the nucleus of the build, which doesn't necessitate pre-adventure-day buffs, just a combo that most high level mages will have for most trips out of their trapped sanctums.

1.) Since Mindblank and Anticipate Teleport, Greater, Contingency and the Energy immunities are all day long buffs you can have them all without persist.
2.) With Astral Projection, Craft contingencies and mutual pacts with outsiders you don't get time constraints so they should always be up.
3.) With Hour/Level buffs like Superior Invis a high enough CL will take you well past the 6-8 hour mark most adventurers need into all day buffs and toughen against dispels, extend rods mostly unnecessary but what the hey, they're cheap
4.) The only buffs you'll need Bead of Karma + Tatoo + Ring of Arcane Might + Ioun Stone + Rods of Extend are the 10mins/Lvl and per Min buffs such as shapechange and Ghostform. Use those and it'll be up for all the time you'll need in most situations you aren't hiding/hanging out in a MMM. With the added benefit that most things you're level CR won't be able to touch them.

The only ones you dont get are the per turn buffs like Ironguard. And they're mostly the cream on top of the build and not the core of it anyway.

Akimbo
2008-09-08, 02:02 PM
Okay, as per my rolls in the roll thread, I used 8 metamagic effects to extend the six spells that I did not autosucceed the next morning. I also used 8 more to extend the ones that do.

This means that of the listed buffs: all with a duration of hours per level have (assuming that all my casting put together takes 1 hour (it takes less, though we still have Cleric casting time left)) a remaining duration of 48 hours. And all the buffs that I persisted or that have natural durations of 24 hours have 38 hours remaining on them.

I have 2 uses of Instant Metamagic, and 1 use of Metamagic effect left.

I also have 17 uses of Cooperative metamagic that might come into play with the Cleric's spells.

So does anyone who doesn't know the challenge willing to take up the gauntlet and prepare spells for the Cleric/Blackguard?

Keep in mind that I could Persist up to 17 spells that either one casts.

Douglas
2008-09-08, 02:12 PM
Sadly, I cannot in good conscience volunteer my services in that regard, as I am one of those privileged with information about the 5 encounters. I will therefore restrict any further comments on the subject to the legality of proposed setups.

Edit: Now that I've actually looked at the cleric's sheet, one problem immediately jumped out at me: the primary benefit of the Monk's Belt is not compatible with the buckler.

AKA_Bait
2008-09-08, 03:02 PM
So does anyone who doesn't know the challenge willing to take up the gauntlet and prepare spells for the Cleric/Blackguard?


Humm. I'd be willing, but I'm not a superoptimizer and I have not seen the sheet. I play a cleric-eske character in a very high level campaign but I have purposefully avoided going CoDzilla with it, so if the character is built along those lines I wouldn't be the ideal player for it.

If no one else is willing I can do it, but it might lessen the integrity of the 'test'.

Akimbo
2008-09-08, 04:45 PM
Oh, and I rolled my Absorption roll, and got got a 4. So that's ten levels to absorb in the next 14 hours.

As for the spells. I can help out with that when I have time. But I don't have the time to do that right just now.

lord_khaine
2008-09-08, 05:19 PM
i could have picked spells for the cleric, but its a bit of a problem with him not having any feats, as i was planning on using some metamagic feats as well.

Akimbo
2008-09-08, 05:24 PM
i could have picked spells for the cleric, but its a bit of a problem with him not having any feats, as i was planning on using some metamagic feats as well.

Well I guess you could pick feats too.

lord_khaine
2008-09-09, 02:36 AM
Well I guess you could pick feats too.

i thought whoever was going to play the cleric would want to do that, since atm i can only give him feats from the Core Book, but then the eventual player can allways change them i guess.

feats(8): Quicken spell, spell penetration, Craft magic arms and armor, Extend spell, empower spell, spell focus Evocation, greater spell penetration, Heighten spell.

Spells.
lv 1. Divine Favor, 2
Doom, 2
Remove fear, 2

lv 2. Silence
restoration, 2
Augury, 2
Align Weapon

lv 3. Daylight
Remove Blindness
Speak with dead
Stone shape
Dispel magic, 2

lv 4. Air walk
Dismissal
Magic weapon, greater
Restoration, 2
Dimensional anchor

lv 5. Wall of stone
True seeing
Spell resistance, 2
Plane Shift
Flame strike

lv 6. Banishment
Greater Dispel magic
Heal, 2
harm

lv 7. Destruction
Holy Word, 2
Ressurection
Heightend Sanctuary

lv 8. Emp, Blade barrier
Planar ally, greater
Emp, Bolt of glory, 2
Quickend Divine power

lv 9. Energy Drain
Mass heal
Implosion, 2
Miracle

Belial_the_Leveler
2008-09-09, 03:35 AM
@lord_khaine:
I changed the cleric to a cleric/contemplative. A few bonus immunities, SR, 2 bonus domains and no aging penalties so he can get the aging bonuses for free.

As for feats, not a bad selection. I'll complement it with Divine Metamagic. How many nightsticks can one buy with 64.000 gp? :smalltongue:

AlterForm
2008-09-09, 07:43 AM
@lord_khaine:
I changed the cleric to a cleric/contemplative. A few bonus immunities, SR, 2 bonus domains and no aging penalties so he can get the aging bonuses for free.

As for feats, not a bad selection. I'll complement it with Divine Metamagic. How many nightsticks can one buy with 64.000 gp? :smalltongue:

Enough to qualify as cheese?