Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Renfield" data-source="post: 1186222" data-attributes="member: 13493">Allright, in one of the few games I played I was playing a warpriest of Clangeddin Silverbeard. This dwarf, dubbed Sven Ironstar, did indeed get higher attack and damage bonuses than the groups fighter. Normally he wouldn't know exactly how soon he'd expect combat so he'd wait until they were in combat to cast his first choice spell Bull's Strength. Beind a dwarf he didn't feel the need to worry about Endurance as his Con was already high enough as was. Cat's Grace was relatively useless as he had full-plate and a 12 dex giving him the only bonus to AC from dex he could have. He would then follow this up by casting Magic Vestment first chance he had. Being ninth level this enhanced his AC by +3 bringing his +2 suit to +5 not to mention his large steel shield which was a +2 and brought his AC to 26. Now that may seem high to most but the vast majority of the creatures being thrown at us didn't seem to have a problem with it and when they did the DM brought in monsters and enemies that made touch attacks at which point my AC was 16 (+5 magic bonus and +1 dex bonus). Add Divine Favor and for that combat I have an aditional +3 to attack and damage roles coupled with the +2 (average for bull's str) bonus from bull's strength.Now, by this time three rounds have passed and the other players are thrashing the enemy, so my character rushes in to join the fight. Byt the time combat is over he has to sacrifice quite a few 2nd and 3rd level spell slots for healing (where many of the so-called problem spells dwell) His divine favor is gone. He decides to play it safe and shortly before they enter the next room in this dungeon he cast's Greater Magic Weapon. So now his bonuses are as follows for essentially the rest of the day:26 AC compared to the fighters 25 (+2 Full Plate +2 Shield)+15/+10 to attack with his Shocking Dwarven Waraxe (Damage: 1d10+1d6+9 12-25) vs. +16/+11 of a fighter with 20 Str and weapon proficiency as well as a +1 flaming bastard sword. (Damage: 1d10+1d6+7 9-23) A little less damage a slightly better chance to hit than the cleric. Catch? Cleric had to spend spells to get these bonuses. With these bonuses he feels he's resonably set for the rest of the day and decides it's probably best to save the rest for healing and emergencies. The fighter still has the advantage of feats that give him other goodies for combat wheras the Cleric pretty much focuses on getting his two whacks in at the enemy and that's about it. Then, continuing on through said stereotypical dungeon (granted I didn't originally refer to any such thing >.<) We encounter a wizard and his henchman or his back up grunts. He notices there's a spell caster and a battle hungry dwarf with a great big holy symbol on his shield making the wizard assume the worst and cast Dispell Magic. Roles are made and ouch. I fail. There go all my bonuses whereas mr. Fighter keeps his. All those hard cast spells gone. Now let's look at the scenario:Cleric: +3 bonus from 17 str, +10 bonus from enchanted full plate, +1 from dex, and +1 from shocking waraxe, and a +2 from his Large Steel Shield. This gives him an AC of 23 an attack bonus of +10/+4 and a damage of 1d10+1d6+4 6-20 Whereas the Fighter keeps all his lovely bonuses from before easily outclassing the Cleric now.Of course many variables go into this argument but my general point is that the stat bonus spells aren't too likely to be combined often. Those that are risk losing healing spells and casting spells takes time. Not to mention a lovely Dispell Magic can end any beefed up clerics parade while the fighter remaines at his best. One of the reasons I liked 3.0 is that it was possible to keep clerics from being straight up band-aids. My dwarf had a policy. If you lacked the strength and skill to get through the battle then you didn't deserve his gods healing AKA: no healing during combat. That got a few people pissed and started to curb the cleric in their eyes as a combat force to reckon with who could heal as opposed to a bandaid that could hold his own reasonably well from 2nd edition.As for Ressurection, that can get into the whole "D&D is a Generic Fantasy RPG" thing. At which point apparently generic fantasy means people can be ressurected easily, there is a pantheon of numerous gods, there are apparently numerous planes of existance, and wizards always memorise spells. So if your campaign differs from this 'generic' fantasy style that is why there are house rules. Which I implement many. I never considered Ressurection an unreasonable spell if players were playing in say Forgotten Realms, or Greyhawk, but in my home brewed campaigns I simply inform them that death is more or less permanent and they tend to take it well.As for haste... well that can be debated over and over though I've never had a problem with it. It was rather effective when used against the PC's and rather effective when used by them. D&D has definitely become more of a crunchy bits game and the few imbalances I seen have always been viewed as a touch of twisted realism in that sometimes things aren't always on even ground. Sometimes things aren't fair. Once upon a time in my not too long ago early DMing days: I didn't know the rules too well as third edition had only come out and a player had convinced me that he could cast a spell for every attack he had, I shrugged and managed to deal with it reasonably well in the high level game we were playing and things never got too out of hand, though the PC's did tend to win more with this spellcasters aid... Until I discovered that the spell per attack thing wasn't the case  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />  damn I was gullible  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f621.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":mad:" title="Mad    :mad:"  data-smilie="4"data-shortname=":mad:" /> still can be from time to time <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" /> Either way I guess that sort of imbedded the 'multiple spells aren't that bad' thing in my mind.</blockquote>

Verification