High Level Fighter Vs. High Level Barbarian

[MerakSpielman]

You might say that the wand has no "visible" effects...

(Mugly is invisible now)

I would suggest just posting your actions here, in spoiler text if it's not something you want your opponent to see.

I wasb;t sure how specific I needed to be with exactly where you each are, but now that there's an invisible gnome running around, our archer might be taking pot-shots at random squares or something. It looks like I'll have to keep track.

If anybody wants to follow along, what I'm doing is creating an Excel spreadsheet that's 200x200. This represents a 100' square arena, though they are actually in a 200' arena. If you go outside the edges, I'll just insert rows.

What this means is that I have a coordinate system. Starting at the upper left corner, with letters along the top and numbers along the side.

Ghengis is in square A-50, and Mugly was in square CV-50 when he turned invisible, 100' feet away.

Ghengis - your turn.

 

[Endur]

Ghengis urges his horse (named Khan) to trot forward and find the gnome. While the horse is trotting, Ghengis uses Quickdraw to draw his Oathbow and promises to slay his enemy (a free action).

The horse will stop and face the gnome once it locates him through scent (automatically locate him within 5' as a free action).

So we'll trot out to CV 50, and if he is within 5' feet the horse, will point right at the gnome. If not we'll use the horse's remaining 30' of movement (double move 130') to circle around until we find Mr. Mugly.

Once we locate Mr. Mugly, Ghengis will fill his square with arrows.
50% miss chance.
4 attacks (includes all modifiers)
Full Attack: +24/+24/+19/+14
Critical Threat: 19-20/x4

Damage: 1d8 +2 strength + 1 precise shot + 4 greater weapon specialization + 5 oathbow +2d6 oathbow +1 bracers = 1d8+2d6+13
cricital: 4d8 +2d6+52

 

[MerakSpielman]

Question for peanut gallery: Khan's scent ability indeed functions to automatically locate any creature within 5'. However, I am unclear as to whether this information can be communicated to the rider, escpecially since, after a double move, the mount has no actions left for the round. Does anybody have any insights here?

 

[Lamoni]

Question for peanut gallery: Khan's scent ability indeed functions to automatically locate any creature within 5'. However, I am unclear as to whether this information can be communicated to the rider, escpecially since, after a double move, the mount has no actions left for the round. Does anybody have any insights here?

The horse isn't a special mount. Obviously it is a trained warhorse, but were any other tricks mentioned? finding an invisible creature and then somehow pointing them out sounds to me like it would need to be practiced and trained for the horse to know what to do (instead of just following the master's ride command) I mean, how does the horse know the fighter wants to fight the guy rather than just pass him by on his way to bigger prey?

On the other hand, let's say that since the fighter brings his horse to the square where the gnome was previously seen and stops, that it allows the horse to guess with its 1 or 2 intelligence that the fighter is looking for the gnome and it turns to allow the fighter to shoot at it from the side (the fighter's preferred way of shooting his bow). The fighter then realizes that the gnome was spotted, but might think that the horse is facing him rather than putting his side to him for a better shot (it can be hard to shoot close range over the horses head).

I see many problems with this. Especially the statement of... if the gnome wasn't spotted, the horse would continue its movement. I think that the fighter would have to stop the horse (thus ending the movement) to get the horse to do anything with its scent ability. Also, if the scent was allowed, I may allow the fighter to narrow it down to 2-3 squares, but not down to one.

-Just my two cents

 

[The Freak]

Question for peanut gallery: Khan's scent ability indeed functions to automatically locate any creature within 5'. However, I am unclear as to whether this information can be communicated to the rider, escpecially since, after a double move, the mount has no actions left for the round. Does anybody have any insights here?

Hmm... well, it seems to me that if the horse was upset enough about Mugly,
he could give "warning signs" that he was around. On the other hand, the horse was running at the time, which means that they'd be next to Mugly for not enough time to really regisister on the horse's sensors.

In the end, it's the DM's call.

EDIT: plus, as lamoni pointed out, it's not a paladin's warhourse or anything. I don't think that it would really care all that much about a whiff of gnome in the air.

 

[DarkMaster]

Hmm... well, it seems to me that if the horse was upset enough about Mugly,
he could give "warning signs" that he was around. On the other hand, the horse was running at the time, which means that they'd be next to Mugly for not enough time to really regisister on the horse's sensors.

In the end, it's the DM's call.

EDIT: plus, as lamoni pointed out, it's not a paladin's warhourse or anything. I don't think that it would really care all that much about a whiff of gnome in the air.

I think we should go with a more standard type of Barbarian this contest won't prove anything since the Barbarian major ability rage won't be of great use. In my world mugly would never have survive long enough to reach 20. This is a typical example of character created at 20 level. If you want to test a fighter against someone masively relying on UMD then have a rogue or bard.

Sadly I don't have time to prepare a strong barbarian for the concept, hope someone can come up with something more serious.

 

[DarkMaster]

Also if the horse was not trained to scent enemy I would not allow the horse to detect him. I don't see any reason why the horse would want to track the gnome on his own initiative (up to know he has been very peaceful).

Look at dogs, all have the scent ability but only trained ones can effectively used it.

 

[MerakSpielman]

Darkmaster: Perhaps. But they are 12th level, not 20th, and Mugly is a perfectly legal barbarian character. He wouldn't be entirely useless in Melee, so it's a character concept I could see a player possibly going for, if they were bored with the typical barbarian half-orc axe-wielder.

-


OK, I'm reading the description of the Scent ability in the SRD.

[if within 30 feet] The creature detects another creature’s presence but not its specific location. Noting the direction of the scent is a move action. If it moves within 5 feet of the scent’s source, the creature can pinpoint that source.

It seems to be assuming that the creature using scent is first moving to within 30' of a concealed/invisible target, then using a move equivelent action to determine the direction of the target, then moving towards the target, then automatically knowing when the target gets within 5 feet. It doesn't say what to do if the creature with Scent moves to within 5 feet of the target without first having noticed that there is a creature within 30' or used a move-equivelent action to determine its direction.

OFFICIAL DM RULING FOR THIS SITUATION:
For the sake of argument, I'll say that Khan realizes that this is a hostile situation and that Mugly is an enemy. Though the horse is effectively unable to communicate the exact location of Mugly, it can attack the space itself (and then Ghengis will know).

I will allow Khan to pinpoint the location of Mugly if he's within 5' without having taken a move-equivelent action to determine direction, but I will not allow him to communicate this information to Ghengis without an attack (or some other sort of standard action to indicate body-language communication).

 

[MerakSpielman]

So Ghengis and Khan are in CV-50. The square was empty when they arrived.

 

[Endur]

This is all GM discretion, there is nothing in the rulebook one way or the other, however ....

If you think about this from a time perspective, the archer knows that the target is relatively close by to where he vanished (move action to draw the wand, standard action to use it, only leaves a 5' step to move away, since boots of speed no longer give extra actions).

The archer doesn't know exactly where, however,

Once the Mount locates the enemy, the Mount will next start trampling the enemy with the hooves. So once the Mount locates the enemy, the Mount is going to rear and position himself for the most effective trampling position. 1000 lbs. of armored horse vs. 50 lbs of gnome

The Rider knows how the Mount fights in battle, so all the Rider has to do is watch the Mount position himself, and then the Rider knows where to shoot.