Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="airwalkrr" data-source="post: 3303173" data-attributes="member: 12460">Until very recently (3.5+splatbook-era), that is exactly what the game was like. Take a look at older editions, even 3.0, and you will see that I am completely right. You misunderstood me. I meant wizards and clerics can only do save-or-die and similar effects (slay living, disintegrate, finger of death, etc.) a couple of times per day. And the average damage for even a 10th level caster is usually about 35 points of damage. It can get higher with maximize, empower, and the like, but saving throws reduce the efficacy of one-hit kills that way. Besides that, casters must ration their spells, using them judiciously. Warriors don't have to ration their swings. Casters are the best at dealing damage, but not forcing save-or-die saves (at least until you hit about 15th level, and most people, meaning 75% or more, don't play that high). I'm gonna call shenanigans. Let's take a look at the monster manual, the baseline for creatures in D&D. (Some will claim that isn't fair since the MM monsters are comparatively weak. But that is for discussions on power creep. I agree with the sentiment that they are relatively weak and typically raise the CR of creatures from other books if they seem more powerful than MM creatures of similar CR.)There are creatures with CRs as high as 13 in the MM that do not have +14 or better to their Fort save (I'm not counting the mind flayer sorcerer as 17 or creatures immune to critical hits). PCs can start regularly dealing out 50+ points of damage in melee far earlier than that. I've seen it done at 7th level. By the time these characters hit 12th or so, they are dealing that much with every hit. If you figure it takes 13.3 encounters with an EL equal to your average character level and then you figure several of those combats will involve multiple opponents, that is probably at least one opponent per level after 13th who will die to a save from massive damage, and far more opponents before then. Many people think the "sweet spot" for D&D is around 9th-10th level, which you can see is born out in <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=186321" target="_blank">this poll</a> which was posted just recently. So unless you deviate from the norm or play with people who refuse to power-game (and let's admit it, almost everyone does it just a little bit), chances are you will see a lot of creatures dying to massive damage saves playing by the rules as written.Yes, let's not use the $1000 worth of books my players have purchased. That sounds like a great idea. [/sarcasm] Sorry, it is difficult to find a group willing to run "core only" games. I do restrict a few things from other books, but only when they are inherently broken. Leap Attack for instance doesn't have to be so bad, but the open-ended Power Attack makes it bad. I have found if I just make a few tweaks to the core rules here and there, I eliminate a large number of problems that arise from using supplement books outside the core rules. So you're saying all encounters start with the PCs and the bad guys already within 5 ft. of each other? I would say you are the one having seriously odd fights, sir. PCs who pull this tactic off invest in a high initiative modifier (not hard), proper skills (also not hard), and massive damage output (easiest of all). When a PC uses it, it happens at the beginning of almost every combat, and usually 1 or 2 more times during the combat as well. Have you ever heard of benign transposition? It's a nifty spell. Check it out. Not broken at all, but horribly abusable with this kind of cheese.</blockquote>

Verification