Just Plain Broken

[Rystil Arden]

Making all sorts of basic mistakes (like not knowing how the Cheater of Mystra worked), on the other hand, is an indication of lack of rules knowledge.

Please stop saying this when it is not true. I would request that you please look back over my posts. when did I ever say I was talking about the 'Cheater of Mystra' build from WotC optimisation? On the other hand 'Dweomercheater', the term I was using, is a name used by some for the PrC in general.

 

[IanB]

Please stop saying this when it is not true. I would request that you please look back over my posts. when did I ever say I was talking about the 'Cheater of Mystra' build from WotC optimisation? On the other hand 'Dweomercheater', the term I was using, is a name used by some for the PrC in general.

I can back him up that 'dweomercheater' is indeed used generally on these forums to refer to the prestige class itself, not any specific build.

 

[Moon-Lancer]

I'd say the Warblade.

It's one weakness is that it ain't usually that great at range.

Other than that, it's Fighter+++.

really they have no range except for weapons that are already melee weapons they also don't have heavy armor proficiency or tower shield proficiency. not quite a fighter+++. More like a barbarians equal.

I'd also say the Warforged.

They don't have to manage resources and they're immune to what a lot of peasants and PC's fear in an environment or adversary (poisons, energy drain, disease, drowning, starvation, exhaustion, etc.). Don't send them up against necromancers, jungles, or deserts.

Other than that, it's Dwarf+++.

If warfoged don't heal naturally and heal spells only have half effect. Unless they have a reliable source of repair spells, they die quicker then any other race. They also have crummy ac unless they take a feat. That makes up for alot of their immunities. they get shafted in languages, and they take 2 negative stats for 1 positive.

They are pretty balanced in play.

 

[Cameron]

Yeah, Wish. Wish and miracle both. heck let's make a list of problem spells!

-Polymorph (any except baleful, really, unless errata has been implemented)
-Wish/Miracle/etc
-Time stop

Not a fan of the shadow conjuration and evocation spells, especially evocation. Not that they're game breaking at all, just that they really damage certain schools of magic and increase the already fairly grotesque power of illusion.

Polymorph is OK if you disallow metagaming. If there are no such things (as far as anyone knows) as dragons in your campaign setting, for example, Polymorphing into a dragon should be a no-no. Shapechange is the biggest problem in that line of spells. Supernatural abilities are nasty. But broken??

Wish/Miracle is OK if you use it to duplicate spells or increase stats or any of the "can be reversed only by Wish, Miracle, etc." situations.

Time Stop... Well, that one is generally what I put into the WMD category. If the PCs start using it, so will the bad guys. Sort of like MDJ. Powerful, but kept in check by MAD. I still won't call it broken.

Gate is potentially a show-stopper. Of course, there is nothing stopping the bad guys from doing it either (probably more likely if the PCs are invading his lair).

Thing is, spells are a bad indicator of broken. Whatever the PCs can come up with, so can the bad guy. Feats-class combos, on the other hand, are pretty unique. That's where I believe any "broken" thing should be aimed at.

 

[Cameron]

If wish is so useless, why would you need to pervert wishes?

I'm genuinely curious. Most people seem to think wish is nice & strong, merely too expensive to cast on a regular basis. If it would need to be free for you to consider it even worth preparing, I wonder what you'd consider a strong 9th level spell?

-- N

For the dweomerkeeper if the PC decides to destroy the economy using Wishes.

A strong spell? There isn't any. As I said, I don't believe most things are broken. I believe some are strong, but manageable or requires a high opportunity cost. The only thing that I would think is broken is Planar Shepherd because it actually uses the same mechanic as the Sahrukh that allows Pun-Pun to occur, and the Sahrukh itself.

I have DM'd anything goes campaigns. It is not as bad as people make it out to be.

 

[Cameron]

I can back him up that 'dweomercheater' is indeed used generally on these forums to refer to the prestige class itself, not any specific build.

That term comes from the guy that came up with the build. He called it the Cheater of Mystra, and it was a build that abused Dweomerkeeper and the Initiate of Mystra feat to enable casting spells in an AMS, effectively making the PC immune to most high level attacks while allowing him to let loose with his high level spells.

As I said, without the Initiate feat, Dweomerkeeper is strong, but hardly broken. I'd consider Incantrix to be a bit stronger than Dweomerkeeper, or Rainbow Servant.

 

[Slife]

Wish, if anything, costs a little too much. It would be nice if the duplicating spells option didn't cost XP.

 

[Arkhandus]

Oh, please. That was in no way a personal attack. "Please be familiar with the rules before you call them broken" is a perfectly reasonable request. "You're an ignorant moron if you don't even know XYZ" is a personal attack. Note that I did NOT use the second. It's also a request I'm going to make again, because again you show that you do not understand the rules you're basing your examples off of.

Yes, they are personal attacks. Just because Cameron veils them in a thin veneer of trying to argue that Rystil or others who disagree with him are inexperienced, if you actually pay attention to what he's saying it's that anyone who disagrees with him is obviously an inexperienced fool who has no idea what they're talking about. It oozes from every rebuttal he makes, for those of us who don't just gloss it over. He insults Rystil rather than arguing rationally, and continues to just re-iterate his stance that he's always right and there's no way anything can be broken unless he says it is. It's immature behavior and insulting.

Two: You also MUST use Leaping Dragon Stance to even have a shot at making the Jump check against anything above size Large (unless playing something like a thri-kreen, which is obviously munchkin in this regard), which means you can't use any of the stances that actually, you know, help you. LDS basically reads "you now have a chance to actually pull off all those jump-check-required Tiger Claw maneuvers".

So what? If you're auto-stunning the enemy with that attack, and still doing decent (not great, but very decent) damage, I'm not seeing any problem with that, since your enemy is spending that time just standing there like a drooling idiot as you wail on him. And with the bit of psionics dipping I mentioned, you can easily be doing +4d6 damage with Greater Psionic Weapon each time, which will help make up for the lack of a truly-damage-boosting stance.

Free? Since when is making a DC80+ jump check "free"?

I'll just assume your eyes glossed over when I pointed out, approximately 2 pages ago (man this has grown overly long), a build (and a simpler, 2nd one a short ways beneath that post) that can make a DC 80+ Jump check at 10th-level or later even when rolling a natural 1 on the d20 for his/her Jump check. And I wasn't even using a Thri-Kreen.

 

[Arkhandus]

re: Broken

I guess my view on Broken is how easy or how obvious the optimization path is. Sticking with SDS, since we rarely use psionics in our campaign, we never saw that exploit. We knew about the thrikeen and the effect of the Jump spell but since nobody uses XPH, SDS seemed balanced. Now we're going to have to keep that in mind....

Whereas something like the Planar Shephard's Time tricks are kinda hard to miss since the PrC EXPLICITLY mentions them.....

You don't need psionics at all to exploit Swooping Dragon Strike. I don't know how you'd get that idea. It's just easier/quicker when you have psionics mixed in. I didn't even go into non-core, non-psionic races like half-ogres or other strong ones that will get more on a Jump check than a human would. It would certainly take a few more levels to abuse SDS quite as thoroughly without Xeph or Thri-Kreen and without Mental Leap or Speed of Thought, but it's still doable. Of course without those psionics you just might be limited to SDSing critters of Large size and smaller, I haven't bothered figuring out the Jump DC to get over a Huge or bigger critter yet.

 

[Arkhandus]

As for the Dragon and SDS , er, even that psionic-powered build is going to have a devil of a time passing that check...A Colossal Dragon would have a DC easily in the 200s.

Oh yes, and I'm sure 13th-level PCs face Colossal Dragons all the time. :\ Their most common enemies, I'm sure. -_-

/sarcasm

(point being, that isn't exactly a common threat that Joe Adventurer is gonna have to face on a regular basis; occasional inability to use a trick does not equate to that trick being useless or weak)