Invisible Blade from CW -- almost TPK'd my group.

Gotterdammerung said:
The party had 6 players

They fought the invisible blade, fist of hextor, and spellsword, a cleric7/sorceror3 and a fighter/monk/Weapon Master ... this worked out to be an EL15 battle. (3 CR10 opponents = 13, plus one CR11 opponent = 14 plus one CR12 opponent = 15)

I see an average party level of 10.33 and a size adjusted equivalent party level of 12. You then threw a CR15 at them, not counting ambush modifiers.

Or more directly, you threw 5 ~10th NPCs at 6 ~10th PCs where the NPCs had the advantage and you are surprised your PCs suffered so?
The dice may have favored the Blade and been mean to the Spellsword and WMaster, but it was not an unpredictable result. Without anything special, you'd expect each character to have, at best a 50/50% chance of survival. Less since the players are generally weaker and as they die off the NPCs get to team up.
 

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ambush?

Actually, there was no ambush involved at all. I don't remember saying that this was an ambush scenario, but if I did that's inaccurate. The PC's had evaded being caught by these guys for two long days in a holy city where they were only allowed to wear white holy robes.

When the big encounter finally happened, it was the PC's who tracked down the assassins and assaulted the cathedral where they had set up their lair. Both sides knew that the battle was coming. It just played out that the PC's were caught offf-guard from the getgo by some tactics and enemy abilities they (obviously) didn't prepare for.

The two new folks were players who had not been playing this edition very long. (maybe six months or so) so I think tactically they were at a disadvantage. That said, they enjoyed the game and the encounter very much.

-eric
 

I did a search on these boards, and found the following quote here.

If I were really feeling industrious, I would go look around at WotC's boards to find out where RingXero originally found this quote. :)

sonofapreacherman said:
I just posted this explanation in another thread, but I thought it might be better served here, as per the title of this thread.

The 5-level invisible blade that first appeared in Dragon (and then recently in The Complete Warrior) was edited down from my original 10-level progression. The abilities and text are the same, but there were some additional dagger throwing abilities built into the prestige class (to round it out).

The editors at Dragon had asked me to change the invisible blade prerequisites to reflect their ranged-based abilities, but when they later changed the invisible blade into a 5-level prestige class (and removed the dagger throwing abilities), they likely forgot to change the prerequisites as well.

To use the printed version of the invisible blade as is, simply change the prerequisites feats to:

Weapon Focus (dagger, kukri, or punching dagger) and Weapon Finesse.

I hope that helps.
 

Cheiromancer said:
If I were really feeling industrious, I would go look around at WotC's boards to find out where RingXero originally found this quote. :)

From memory, it's on the Class-Specific Supplements board, in a thread titled something obvious like "Invisible Blade requirements?"

-Hyp.
 

Hypersmurf said:
Cheiromancer said:
If I were really feeling industrious, I would go look around at WotC's boards to find out where RingXero originally found this quote.
From memory, it's on the Class-Specific Supplements board, in a thread titled something obvious like "Invisible Blade requirements?"

-Hyp.

I guess they prune their threads too.... but Sonofapreacherman reposted his explanation here.
 

Blink is better than Blur sometimes because:
- You get that funny +2 to hit since you attack as an invisible creature.
- Even guys who see invisible things still have a puny miss chance against you.

Nail: That ~ +2% of the invis blade when she rolls the dice instead of taking ten is not funny. ;)
It's simply that a die roll has an average result of 10.5, not 10.
 

Nail said:
Interestingly enough, the Invisible Blade here in Hyp's example is actually slightly better off rolling the dice rather than taking 10...her chance of success goes up by ~2%. :)

Not true, regardless of the fact that the average of 1d20 is greater than 10.

If the invisible blade takes 10, the fighter needs to roll a 15. Not a 14 as previously stated, since the 'blade is not setting the DC for the fighter's task, but engaging in an opposed roll, and the rule is that ties in opposed rolls go to the character with the higher skill modifier (in this case, the blade). So if the 'blade gets a total of 25, the fighter needs a 26. There is a 30% chance for the fighter to get a 15 or better.

If the 'blade rolls, then the fighter's d20+11 has to (strictly, since the fighter loses ties) beat the 'blade's d20+15. The chance of a d20+11 being higher then a d20+15 is also 30%.

Let X=fighter's d20 roll.
Let Y=blade's d20 roll.

So P(X+11 > Y+15) = P(X-Y > 4)

Let Y' = 21-Y. Then Y=21-Y' as well. So:

P(X-Y > 4) = P(X-(21-Y') > 4)
= P(X+Y' > 25)

Since Y' and Y have the same 1-to-20 uniform distribution, X+Y' can be viewed as a standard 2d20 roll. The chance of it being greater than 25 is exaclty 120 out of 400, or 30% (left as an exercise to the reader).

This is actually a coincidence. If the fighter had a +10, the 'blade would be better off taking 10 (by 1.25%). If it were +12, he'd be better off rolling the die (by 1%).

We now return you to the actual point of the discussion.
 
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ruleslawyer said:
And no, this is just not that deadly. I'd be much more worried about a straight rogue with blink and a ghost touch weapon, or (heaven forfend) a properly-prepared straight spellcaster.

Unfortunately, a Ghost Touch Weapon isn't going to overcome the miss chance from the blink effect.

Ghost Touch Weapons are corporeal or incorporeal as need be. However, Blinking involves switching between the Ethereal Plane and the Prime.

Nothing in the Ghost Touch enhancement indicates that it is capable of crossing the planar boundaries. Furthermore, since Ghost Touch is not a Force Effect, it can't affect foes in the Ethereal Plane.

--G
 

*sniff* This is so sweet. I just started playing an invisible blade. Always, wanted to play a dagger wielder. Nice to know that I will drive my DM nuts *cackle with insane glee*
And yes, I believe that 1/round is a good rule.
 

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