Game of Death

[clockworkjoe]

One thing archers have against tanks:

Poisoned arrows. Sooner or later the tank will fail a fort savings throw and get nailed by poison. And an archer with followers should have some guys to intercept the tank for a round or two, so he can nail him even more.

 

[Pielorinho]

One thing archers have against tanks:

Poisoned arrows. Sooner or later the tank will fail a fort savings throw and get nailed by poison. And an archer with followers should have some guys to intercept the tank for a round or two, so he can nail him even more.

Well, with a decent tank, it'll be later that the fort save is failed. Take, for example, a Ftr4/Brb2/Tribal Protector 2/Frenzied Berzerker2. You start with a fort save of +13. Add in a 14 con, a cloak of resistance +2, and a potion of endurance, and when this puppy rages, he has a fort save of +20 or +21. And that's not even optimized against poison. If you want to optimize him against poison, give him a periapt of proof against poison, a vial of antitoxin, and the toughness feat, and make him a dwarf (and substitute the dwarven defender PrC for the tribal protector). Now your saves against poison are +32 or +33, +36 or +37 if he's taking a defensive stance.

Coat your arrows with purple worm poison, and the tribal defender stands a 12.5% chance of failing each save. Dragon bile ups that chance to 22.5%. Any other poison gives him a 0% failure chance (or 5% if 1's always fail on saves -- I forget).

Against the dwarven defender described above, there's no poison in the DMG that has a chance of affecting him.

Finally, a tank in a GoD really ought to carry around a vial of antitoxin, and at the first sign that poison is being used, he should drink it. That lowers your chances of successfully poisoning him to 2.5% with dragon bile and 0% with any other poison.

Note that this analysis doesn't even address the issue of hitting a well-designed tank in the first place.

I don't think that poison is TOO great a threat to a tank.

Daniel

 

[Pielorinho]

And incidentally, this tribal protector tank described above is pretty decent in combat: when frenzying, he'll attack at +8/+8/+8/+3. But that's before any strength, weapon focus, or magic kicks in. If he starts with a 20 str (figure gauntlets and an 18 str otherwise), a +2 weapon, and weapon focus, he'll be hitting at +21/+21/+21/+16, if I read all the abilities right. With a spiked chain/weapon focused/weapon specialization, he can do damage of 2d4+19, and get those lovely AoO from the 10' reach. Once he closes with an archer, the archer will probably go down.

Against an enchanter, of course, the tank becomes a docile puppy dog. Everyone has their weakness .

Daniel

 

[Sollir Furryfoot]

Which is where I come in... Then the fighter is now my best friend

 

[clockworkjoe]

Hmm, that's also where the cohort casting mind blank from a scroll comes in...

you know this reminds me of fallout tactics multiplayer. Character creation was the most important element of multiplayer fights in that game and it all boiled down to a few character concepts that were vastly more powerful than any other concepts.

 

[Pielorinho]

I think the point is that any specialty character in a GoD will have an Achilles' Heel. If you shore up all character weaknesses, you'll probably not be especially good at anything, either. Maybe you'll live until the end, but you won't have much fun doing so.

And an archer definitely has weaknesses. I just had to spend an hour in the car, and got to thinking about the tank vs. the archer. In addition to the stuff I mentioned above, what about giving the tank an animated tower shield? Get full cover from teh archer while you approach; at the end of the charge, sunder the bow.

Unless the archer has quickdraw (a pretty unlikely feat for an archer), she'll only get off one shot in her next action (drawing a new bow is at least MEA). If she tries to move away, she'll suffer an AoO from the tank -- an AoO that could be used either to sunder the new bow or to trip the archer.

Next round, the tank has a really nice option: strike at the archer's quiver. It's really unlike to have an AC over 19, and so pretty soon there's gonna be poisoned arrows lying all over the ground.

If you have multiple quivers, the tank can strike at multiple quivers. Once there are no more quivers, that's when the tank turns on the archer's poor defenseless self.

Archers, of course, rock against spellcasters. Spellcasters rock against tanks. And tanks? They own archers, as near as I can tell.

Daniel

 

[clockworkjoe]

Good analysis. So it seems that it boils down to 3 main character concepts:

Spellcasters
Tanks
Archers, either w/ anti magic field or with magic

The archer with magic would own the tank, since he could easily fly with improved invisibility or w dust of disapperance...but the spellcaster would own the magic archer. The anti magic archer owns the spellcaster but the tank owns him.

Kinda like rock paper scissors, huh?

 

[The_lone_gunman]

Please add me to the waiting list, I would like to join this frenzy of battle.


TLG

 

[Pielorinho]

Good analysis. So it seems that it boils down to 3 main character concepts:

Spellcasters
Tanks
Archers, either w/ anti magic field or with magic

The archer with magic would own the tank, since he could easily fly with improved invisibility or w dust of disapperance...but the spellcaster would own the magic archer. The anti magic archer owns the spellcaster but the tank owns him.

Kinda like rock paper scissors, huh?

Interesting -- I'd not really thought about the magic archer. Yeah, a tank would have real trouble against this sort. But at this point, the magic archer is closer to the spellcaster model probably. If you spend your character/gold resources on funky magic abilities, you'll have comparatively less to spend on being the World's Best Archer. Still, it'll wipe up the tank.

The tank, OTOH, doesn't fall to all spellcaster: evokers and transmuters, and to a lesser degree conjurers, will have a hard time hurting the tank too badly. Sure, their fireball can do 35 points of damage -- but that's chump change to a tank.

I wonder if it'd be good on a GoD to have some areas without good lines of sight. As it is, flying characters have a tremendous advantage over nonflying melee characters, so much so that a tank is almost required to have a couple of potions of fly. If the tank could try to get in areas of the map where flying wasn't a huge advantage -- twisty 10' high corridors, for example -- it'd make fly potions less necessary.

It kinda reminds me of Warcraft II (sorry, non-computer-gamers). In that game, ogres (tanks) beat the snot out of archers. Archers (archers) turn mages into swiss cheese. And mages (spellcasters) turn ogres into fuzzy animals. Everything has a strength and a weakness; in a game like warcraft, combined arms tactics are the way to go.

In a GoD, combined arms tactics aren't really such an option unless you use cohorts, so you instead have to balance specializing in one thing real good with shoring up your weaknesses.

I'm looking forward to playing. In fact, I think it would be tremendous fun to have a team GoD sometime. Maybe four players to a side, with a last team standing victory condition?

Daniel

 

[clockworkjoe]

Well, actually the current GoD has pretty good terrain for fighter types.