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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 297139" data-attributes="member: 2011">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.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.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?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.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.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.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. 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.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.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.And that is precisely why Haste is so good for a melee fighter. It gives him more mobility, more AC, and more attacks.Yes, we all have our exaggerated and mis-remembered war stories about fighting Orcs.And you never had a Dragon or Wyvern swoop down and steal the pack horse? Get on the stick SR.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.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 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.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.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.</blockquote>

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