Melee Smackdown - Who kicks more butt, PsyWar or Ftr? Prove it!

[Elder-Basilisk]

Hey basilisk, your tower shield limits your max dex to +2 yes? And that armor check penalty total hurts you should make it of some special material I think. Looks to me like it is -13 to a host of skills and -26 to swim.

Oops. I forgot about the max dex of +2. In that case, I think I'll edit it down to a heavy shield of some kind--probably adamantine since I can have an adamantine heavy shield and that shield is valuable enough to protect from sunder attempts. Rethinking it, there's not much point to a tower shield if you've got Improved Comabt Expertise anyway. Since I'm not limited to 5 points any more, nothing stops the character from just expertising for 7 instead of 5 when he wants that tower shield AC. It would only make a difference when flatfooted, and when I want to take cover behind it or in the event that I want to put +19 to improved combat expertise. I don't think that particularly likely.

Making the edits now.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

well, the headband and necklace slots are two completely sepearate slots. Changing the periapt to a headband seemed all right though, as headband is for 'mental augmentations' and if wisdom isnt that...

Still, I was going to simply get a belt of magnificence and not worry about it but that particular source was not offered as useable (the fact that the ability boosting items overlap in slots so heavily is very disturbing and not very beneficial. They were assigned pretty haphazardly back in the day and were not generally changed.)

Also, for the standard this guy simply has a polearm strapped to his back to which it is attatched. It doesnt say you have to weild the weapon it is attatched to, simply that you have it attatched to one.

Going for the Warhammer space marine look eh? Finally, a role-playing use for all those minis with backbanners

This character isnt really min/maxed for gear though. I gave a cursory glance to various items and set him up with some very basic stuff. Given time and effort I could match it out much better. But really, both builds have the same amount of gear so that is largely immaterial. If someone happens to pick better gear than the other then that proves nothing.

Actually, I don't think that's quite right. There are different goals for fighters and psi-warriors with gear as you can see by looking at our builds. A fighter's gear has to cover a lot of ground that a psi-warrior covers with his abilities. The ring of spell storing, aportive armor, and similar mechanics are the only way to give the fighter renewable "I need to crank it up to 11 in this fight" resources. Such things are less essential to a psi-warrior who blow his whole remaining power pool to crank his abilities up to 11 in a particularly tough fight. On the other hand, the psi-warrior wants gear like torcs of power preservation, cognizance crystals, etc. that augment his psionic powers. A fighter doesn't need that stuff. Similarly, the psi-warrior benefits more in combat from the standard of heroism since the psi-warrior will regularly be making concentration checks to regain psionic focus. So, while the fact that one set of gear may be better min-maxed than the other is immaterial, gear IS an essential part of the comparison.

 

[green slime]

Regarding slotted items, I think for the purposes of comparison, we should actually stick to items that are already presented in the sources, and not try to extrapolate what may or may not be allowed in other compaigns by other DMs, regardless of how haphazard or irrational they may (or may not) be percieved.

This way, it is more equal for each. Both (all) suffer from the same handicaps.

/[edit] spelling...

 

[Patlin]

Is anyone with a fighter build going to comment on how they do against the hypothetical monster? Scion's post seems to answer ForceUser's question pretty well for the PW.

 

[Scion]

If one of our item buying sprees is much more min/maxed than the other then it will throw off the totals at the end. I could go through and toss away the str book and pick up a ton of little things here and there that would toss the ball more into the psychic warriors favor, but I was mainly just trying to make an interesting guy who was not min/maxed terribly.

If people think that the psychic warrior is worse off (which just by going through a few cursory monsters in the monstrous manual he is not) then I'll go back and fix that stuff

As for the slotted arguements though, there are quite a few items that should be available for different slots. It is just that wotc is lazy and didnt want to write out more than one item for each. Punishing players when there is a perfectely valid alternative (and if 'mental augmentation' isnt a perfectly valid alternative then something is seriously wrong).

If you want to have your robe of the monteback go ahead, but you'll have to get rid of some other equipment for it as you are over the limit

 

[ForceUser]

Is anyone with a fighter build going to comment on how they do against the hypothetical monster? Scion's post seems to answer ForceUser's question pretty well for the PW.

Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to complete my build with the painters here. Hopefully I'll be able to post my guy tonight or tomorrow.

Although the point of this thread is to gauge how well each class does verses a hypothetical monster, someone got confused early on and thought it was a fighter vs. psychic warrior thread. I wish I could take credit for the following idea, but a friend came up with this while pow-wowing about the fighter build: in the fighter vs. psychic warrior model, the fighter only needs one magic item.

A ring of anti-magic field, always active. Psychic warrior loses.

 

[Thanee]

With such an item, the fighter is actually completely incapable of winning.

Well, at least, if the psychic warrior can fly and use a bow.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Darklone]

Lasso!

 

[fafhrd]

With such an item, the fighter is actually completely incapable of winning.

Well, at least, if the psychic warrior can fly and use a bow.

Bye
Thanee

That's when the fighter goes into the inn and has a beer while waiting for the pansy to come down.

 

[ForceUser]

With such an item, the fighter is actually completely incapable of winning.

Well, at least, if the psychic warrior can fly and use a bow.

Bye
Thanee

Oh, now we're in If Land! Well, in If Land, if the psy war can fly and use a bow, the fighter is double specialized in the bow, and has a masterwork mighty composite longbow (+5 Str)! Ha!