[Magic Item] Thumb Ring of Might

[KarinsDad]

Since metamagiced spells pretty much suck for Sorcerers (as they take a full round action to cast for them), I'm not sure where you get the idea that Sorcerers are "metamagic specialists". I have never seen a Sorcerer cast a metamagiced spell, the cost in actions is just too high.

Are you on drugs?

Sorcerers are the best core class in the game for metamagic. Bards are second best.

A full round spell is NOT a one round spell.

The only limitation full round spells have is that you have to take up a full round action, hence, you are limited to 5 foot moves. But, the spell goes off right away. That is hardly a limitation at all. Especially with the Concentration skill available.

When people post inane stuff like this, it just makes the rest of their credibility seem even more suspect.

And the last sentence is what makes it not that useful. You have to have the right situation, and the damage is concentrated all at once. Sure that can be useful, but in many cases, your opponents aren't going to bunch up in nice clusters for you as they approach, especially without having your allies intemixed with them.

Yup. Pros and Cons. GMW is limited to a little extra damage per round. Fireball is limited to more damage, but not every combat.

Course, it helps if your party prepares for Fireball with Rings of Fire Resistance, etc.

In my experience, an focused archer character almost never misses. For example, the last such character I saw in play:

BAB +10
Dexterity +3
Gloves of Dexterity +2
Bracers of Archery +2
Magic Bow +1
GMW Arrows +3
Weapon Focus +1
Point Blank Shot (if within 30 feet) +1

For a total of +21, +22 if within 30 feet. This becomes +19/+19/+14 using Rapid Shot, better within 30 feet. Compare that to the typical ACs of most CR 10 opponents (for example, a Fire Giant, CR10 Leneraran Hydra or Retriever) and you will find that an archer's shots will almost always hit, frequently only missing on a 1 for his first two shots, and hitting well over 75% of the time on his third.

Yup. You can soup up any character.

But, how long does the uber archer survive? Any intelligent encounter will have opponents whose first target is the guy in the back hitting with arrows nearly every time for massive amounts of damage.

Just like intelligent encounters will have opponents whose first target is the guy who just Fireballed them.

Or, do you randomly roll who a given opponent attacks?

Lots of fireball damage is usually wasted. Against fodder type opponents lots of its damage is completely wasted: say some ogres accompanying that giant your are fighting, or a gang of harpies supporting some demon or something. In those cases, lots of the fireball damage is going to be wasted.

Again, are you on drugs?

Ogres have 26 hit points. For the 9th level example above, yes, 31 is average damage. But, you can roll low.

Harpies have 31 hit points.

First off, mid-level arcane casters rarely cast Fireball against first or second level opponents since the Fighter types can often wade through those. But, Fireball is perfect for the -2 Hit Dice cannon fodder that you encounter at mid levels.

Secondly, you do not care if it is overkill since it affects multiple opponents in one action and it takes them out completely, typically before they are even damaged by other characters.

But, with arrows, you care a little more since any simple melee weapon from the party wizard can take out a single opponent with 2 hit points.

It's rare that you cast Fireball on 5 opponents who are all seriously damaged. It happens, but is not the status quo.

Further, the spread of a plain fireball isn't that great. A 20 foot radius is just not that big. Frequently you can get no more than two opponents in the area, maybe three if you get lucky. This is not such a huge advantage that it offsets the archer's ability to selectively inflict damage.

Whatever. A 20 foot radius is 10 spaces, so upwards of 10 opponents. You even state that it is two or three opponents and forget that 15 or 31 points of damage against 2 or 3 opponents is 30 to 93 points of damage in 1 round compared to the archer's maximum extra 45 points of damage in 5 rounds.

In a game, I would Fireball my entire party including myself if they were attacked by 20 Stirges already in their midst where the threat of the opposition is greater than the threat of the Fireball. Archers could be in dire straits in such a circumstance since Concentration does not prevent AoOs for missile weapons.

Actually, in many cases, the Wizard shifts the battle towards victory a little bit, and doesn't concentrate his damage enough to take out any single opponents. This is a problem, since eliminating threats early is a huge advantage. The ability concentrate or spread damage is a huge advantage. Archers can do this. A wizard with a bunch of fireballs in his pocket can't.

Your Wizards must not use Web, or Magic Missile, or Slow, or Melf's Acid Arrow, or a wide variety of other spells that can shift the course of battle by taking out one (or more) opponents.

However, we are discussing a Wizard in a party with an Archer. Yes, the archer can kill one opponent per round by putting 3 arrows in him. But, the Wizard could Fireball multiple opponents allowing the archer in the same round to kill two or three opponents by finishing them off.

Plus, all of the arrows in the world are only going to piss a Dragon off. They have too many hit points for the archer tactics to work quickly enough. But, a Slow spell will help more if it works. Not saying that it will work, but the gain if it does is big.

No, because the Wizard's damage is spread over many opponents, while the archer can concentrate his or spread it out. I know that when the last party I saw was confronted with lots of giants, the group quickly figured out that fireball and lightning bolt were virtually useless, but that concentrated archery fire was extremely effective.

Yes, it can be if it were just an archer against giants or just a wizard against giants. But less than 9 extra points of damage per round compared to team efforts such as Slow on the big giant, or Haste on your Fighter so that he can take out one opponent and move and attack the next in the same round is questionable.

Yes, it is concentrated damage. But, it is not end all be all tactics.

Well, to put it bluntly, you don't know what you are talking about, primarily because you haven't worked through the problem.

Sigh.

I never once said that Fireball is superior across the board to GMW. I said that when you can use Fireball, it kicks butt over GMW.

Against a dragon's Will save? Please. Now you are talking about fantasies. Or you are fighting things of a lower CR than you should.

Well, just like you can pump up an archer, you can pump up a Wizard.

The Wizard who did this (3 times in 4 levels, 5 through 8) was a Sun Elf with a 20 Intelligence, spell casting prodigy, spell focus and spell penetration (although that is not needed at lower levels).

Not a tactic I would recommend as a preferable way to take out a Dragon, especially above the 5 through 10 level which we are discussing, but I roll all attacks, damage, and save rolls in front of my players and it happened. Plus, at levels 5 to 10, the dragons that you meet do not yet have combined impossible Will Saves / Spell Resistance.

Personally, I was a little shocked when his first spell choice at 5th level was Slow, but he used it extremely effectively in many situations. The party archers still did their job, but the Slow has worked much better by taking out the real powerful foes (especially against low will combatant types like giants and trolls) than the extra 1 or 2 points of damage per successful arrow.

Virtually irrelevant, since it only gives him a single extra attack. The party I referenced earlier had Haste available for months of game time and used it once or twice. It is nice, but for non-spellcasters it isn't that helpful.

It's very helpful.

Every time you post something, you make yourself sound worse.

Haste on an archer is great for several reasons, not just the extra attack:

1) Haste gives an extra partial action. This is just as important for movement purposes as it is for the extra attack because it allows the archer to pick greater lines of fire. It can also be used to prepare a Readied missile attack against an opponent spell caster AFTER a full round set of arrows.

2) Powerful archers are prime targets in combat because they can hit so often. Hence, bumping up their AC by 4 is very helpful.

3) Even just using it for an extra attack, it is outside of a full round action. Hence, your 10th level archer with 18/18/13 can attack with 20 + 18/18/13 and will generally increase his average damage by about 35%. GMW increases his average damage by about 45% beyond 30 feet, 35% within 30 feet, and less then this if he got himself a magic Mighty bow. Damage-wise, Haste is not that far behind.

I'm not saying that Haste is better in all circumstances than GMW, especially since GMW can last throughout the day. But, there are a lot of circumstances, especially individual combats, where Haste helps out a LOT more for an archer.

They can be, or not. An archer can target things in many different places, the melee fighter cannot, even while hasted, since he has to move between targets. Most combats I have seen involve a lot of maneuver, and foes that are spread out in many cases.

And that is precisely why Haste is so good for a melee fighter. It gives him more mobility, more AC, and more attacks.

I've seen a dedicated archer fire 48 arrows and miss once. Archery attack bonuses get so high so quickly that it becomes very easy to score incredible hit rates if you fight lots of opponents in your CR range.

Yes, we all have our exaggerated and mis-remembered war stories about fighting Orcs.

Or they have pack horses. I remember the party archer would routinely have 200 to 400 arrows packed onto his pack horse (which for a pack horse is a negliglble amount of extra weight). A Quiver of Ehlonna is very helpful here too.

And you never had a Dragon or Wyvern swoop down and steal the pack horse? Get on the stick SR.

They rely on leveraging your specific spells into usable situations. One thing you have missed out on is that the fireball happens once, while the GMW lasts for hours and mutiple combats. It only takes about 15 arrows to equal the typical damage output on a fireball, and the archer has two and a half times more enchanted arrows available if he needs them for a second fight.

I didn't miss that. GMW does do that. For a maximum of 150 extra points (assuming misses and criticals even out) a day at 10th level. Only 100 extra points at level 8 where my characters currently are.

The archer, however, is not hamstrung if he doesn't still have GMW. He will still do boatloads of damage every combat. He will still drop single opponents quickly, just not as quickly.

The difference is that the Slow, or Fireball, or Dispel Magic or Haste has a better chance of making ONE combat much quicker, hence, the party has to use up less resources such as healing in order to survive. That makes future encounters during the day also easier to survive.

Simple logic SR.

The utility of the spells are based on situation. So, if you are heading into a dungeon, GMW makes a lot of sense, especially at 9th and higher level. But, in the wilderness where they may be only one or zero encounters or in a town, its utility decreases significantly.

Assuming your foe has a dipel magic handy and figures out that the archer has some dispellable effect and targets him over someone else and wins the opposed check and doesn't have something better to do, like casting a spell that will deal damage or something. Yes it can be dispelled, but so can haste, fly, slow, cat's grace and all other spells with a duration.

Again, you make yourself sound foolish.

Targeted Dispel Magic would not work on GMW since it is not a spell on the archer.

An Area Dispel Magic, on the other hand, has a good chance of taking out GMW since GMW is a spell effect in the area.

I have never seen a fireball come close to taking out a single CR10 opponent in one round. I have seen a dedicated archer do that.

I haven't seen a dedicated archer take out a single dragon in a single round. I doubt it can happen. I have seen Slowed Dragons run for the hills in a single round. I've even once seen Hold Monster affect a Dragon. Rare, but faster then arrows.

When you are talking single opponents, spell casters will typically win out over archers as far as speed. Not always, but often.

Fireball is the quintissential "they can counterattack" spell most of the time. Dire wolves laugh off fireball damage most of the time, giants, monstrous vermin and other types of opponents you are likely to find at 9th-10th level and beyond just giggle when you toss a fireball, and then they make full attacks.

Not for the Harpy or Ogre example you gave.

Not when you have an archer who can pick off wounded opponents.

Stop thinking in a vacuum when it is to your advantage and suddenly pulling party members in casting GMW and assisting when it is also to your advantage.

The real point is the GMW increases in utility at higher levels, but at mid levels, it is just another spell.

9th level is probably the break even point. 12th level is probably the point where GMW usefulness becomes especially effective.

But, GMW wouldn't have helped at all this last week in the fight with the Sorcerer. Stoneskin is a 4th level (expensive) spell which NPC arcane casters would resort to quite frequently when outnumbered by a party of characters.

Ah yes, the "Backstreet Boys" form of evidence. If someting is popular it must be good, and if it isn't it must not be. Put up a popularity contest. That proves how effective something is, doesn't it? The fact that you would suggest this sort of thing as "evidence" tells me that you are not worth bothering with.

I wasn't suggesting it as evidence.

I was suggesting it for two reasons:

1) A poll would bring more people into the discussion and it would focus on the topic in a new thread. Doing it on a per level basis also brings in more data concerning utility.

2) I consider your position to be extremely weak with regard to levels 5 though 8. It is almost supportable at levels 9 through 11, but only as a different tactic. However, I may be missing something, so it would be nice to listen to someone who may actually support your point of view.

 

[KarinsDad]

The rules make them apples and oranges.

What does a Mighty Bow Cost?
What does Flamiong Burst or Holy cost?

Clearly not equivalent.

Gauntlets of Ogre Power +2 Strength is 4000 GP.
Ioun Stone that does +2 Strength is 8000 GP. Double the cost due to not taking up a slot.

Elven Cloak +10 to Hide is 2000 GP.
Ioun Stone of Alertness +2 to Spot and Listen or +4 overall for 8000 GP. 2000 GP per +1 in skill as opposed to 200 GP per +1. 10 times the cost. Why?

Just because a cost is in the books does not mean that it is balanced.

Cost equations for Mighty is broken. Bottom line.

That's why comparing power levels is the way to go and that's why it is not apples and oranges.

 

[kreynolds]

In a game, I would Fireball my entire party including myself if they were attacked by 20 Stirges already in their midst where the threat of the opposition is greater than the threat of the Fireball.

I used to get into a lot of trouble with my fellow party members for using tactics like that.

 

[KarinsDad]

I used to get into a lot of trouble with my fellow party members for using tactics like that.

In 2E, I would agree.

In 3E, CON drain is deadly. Hit point damage is vastly preferable in a lot of cases. Plus, a Fireball will rarely take anyone out, especially early on, even if the save is missed. Four or five attached Stirges (with +6 touch attacks) can easily take nearly anyone out, or come darn close to it.

Worse yet, leveled Stirges.

 

[kreynolds]

Worse yet, leveled Stirges.

Hehe...Paragon Stirge.

 

[jontherev]

Maybe Polymorph Any Object?

The problem is that there is rarely a one to one correspondence between Wondrous Items and spells.

Oh, I agree on that point, but Bull's Strength? Nope. I prefer the Ironwood (thanks to the poster who suggested it) suggestion over yours, no offense. Now, we're talking a caster level of 11 instead of 3. I'd say this ring is worth less than a ring of blinking for sure. I'd say a fair price for this ring is around 20000gp market price. If you'd like the ring to be cheaper, but still make more sense than using Bull's Strength, use Warp Wood instead and lower the cost a little. Still, this ring is REALLY nice and only gets better as the archer gains levels (since his probability of having a +5 strength increases as the levels go up for a number of reasons...more spells/day for friendly casters, more cash to buy potions, ability increases, etc.). In the original poster's case, it seems that he is limiting magic in his world, so he probably won't run into a problem (um, not to mention that he is limiting it's effects to NONmagical bows). However, in many other campaigns, this ring (as originally posted) would make an archer that much better. No less than 20000gp IMO.

 

[doktorstick]

Actually, two of the players in our current group are some of the best tacticians I've ever played with in 24 years of playing DND.

Interesting. Is it because you give them information about what is coming up? Do they use divination spells so they can prepare? Are the typically prepared for the encounter? Or do they just wing it and make it out?

/ds