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

Lamoni said:
I agree... but a well thought out fighter almost always includes some prestige class and for the purposes of this thread, prestige classes were disallowed.

I don't think that a fighter 20 is useless. Continuing with full BAB and a D10 HD is nice... but prestige classes that offer that plus more are much better. By level 10-12 most fighters will gladly give up any additional bonus feats for any other special ability.

Anyway, we still need a submission of a straight fighter 20... even if it won't be as good as the character you submitted. I was going to just grab an example from a messageboard. The problem is that all the optimized fighters I could find are not straight fighters and I don't want to take the time to build one myself.

The reason for DD was for the Dr6/- do he could use a viscious weapon without hurting himself.

Infact a straight fighter 20 would do more damage because he would have greater weapon specialisation. So for the purposes of number crunching the PrC made no difference

The differences in game would be
The saves would be slightly lower, and 4 points of ac would be lost.

In return the fighter could pick up a who bunch of feats namely:
Greater weapon specialisation
Great fortitude
Improved unarmed strike
-> Improved grapple
Dodge

This help offset some of the saveing throw and ac loss. In terms of the simulation, the creature still wouldnt actually penetrate the stone skin and the fighter would kill the monster even faster.

At this point you can probably chuck in the ring for Freeaction and buy some elemental resistances for your armor, your grapple check while enlarged is +34.
Depends on how big the sort of things you fight generall are.

If people really want me to print out the whole thing with these minor changes I will. But as you can see from the brief summary, the difference for the purposes of this simulation are negligable, the fighter does more damage and takes a bit more too.
 

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Flaming and frost specifically say "upon command." Why do you believe other weapon properties are selectable? I could be wrong, but that is definitely not my impression.

Also, are you sure the backlash from a Vicious weapon is blocked by DR? Usually backlash type damage can't be blocked by anything at all.
 

I, for one would like to see the whole thing. Your fighter may well do more damage and take more but the question is how much more.

To tell the truth, what I would really like to see is that Greatclub fighter we were promised. I put together what is essentially a defensive tactical fighter who makes good use of combat expertise, trip, spring attack, etc. to control the flow of battle. A good, offensively focused fighter with maximized strength and con, Three Mountains Style, Shock Trooper, and Combat Brute would be interesting to see.

Majere said:
If people really want me to print out the whole thing with these minor changes I will. But as you can see from the brief summary, the difference for the purposes of this simulation are negligable, the fighter does more damage and takes a bit more too.
 

One other thing about the dwarf--you're being awfully optimistic stating flat out that all you need to worry about is touch AC.

From the SRD (emphasis mine)
A brilliant energy weapon ignores nonliving matter.Armor bonuses to AC (including any enhancement bonuses to that armor) do not count against it because the weapon passes through armor. (Dexterity, deflection, dodge, natural armor, and other such bonuses still apply.)

So Brilliant Energy is pretty darn good if you're going up against adventurer types. My candidate here would lose 20 points of AC against a brilliant Energy weapon (though his AC against brilliant energy is 5-11 points higher than his touch AC depending upon whether or not he's using Alter Self). However, Brilliant Energy doesn't do any good at all against the Pit Fiend or Balor and only does anything against the Black Wyrm if it used Shield and Mage Armor on itself.

So it's a good enhancement, but not nearly as good as your numbers make it out to be.
 

Gah :( I had a big post all written out.. then gone :(

I'll be brief this time as it is late.

Effectively the psychic warrior doesnt have to worry about grappling, he automatically succeeds in attempts to resist grapples and autosucceeds in escaping them. So the psychic warrior wins that one.

If for some reason that wasnt the case then the psychic warrior could pop up an augmented expansion and become size huge and put up form of doom. At this point he'll have massive grapple bonuses and some killer attacks.

Vs the two demons above the psychic warrior I posted wouldnt have a huge amount of problem really, he is immune to most of their attacks. I can get through their dr effectively, although indirectly, though wound transfer and feedback.

Vs large number of weak creatures I simply take some damage and then put out a huge burst of damage with empathic wound transfer, hostile. Healing and slaughter all at the same time.

Vs regen and dr (if I cannot bypass normally) then empathic feedback will kill them eventually. As my character also does comparable damage to the fighter (about even) and way more when I need to (form of doom and/or expansion) we are both in the same boat, but my enemies will die to empathic wounds and con damage.

Vs a single incredibly powerful enemy (such as the dragon) if my guy is outmatched I have my dim door to fall back on. If fighting is necissary for some reason then form of doom puts me up into the almost having a fighting chance (sortof, being able to deal a lot of damage before being slaughtered is a chance right? ;) ). If I get off a full powered psionic lions charge while form of doomed, expanded, and with strength of my enemy up then I'll actually have a chance, though still very small.


Also, more things to take into account. The psychic warrior has massive bonuses to spot and listen, also he is immune to figments and glamors (no invis!), immune to mind effecting attacks and like abilities, can move much faster, has force armor so incoporeal touch attacks will have a much harder time, and my guy can go into any environment and be fine (no air? sure. underwater? whatever. plane of fire? bring it.)

Having DR is nice, walking through walls is cool, being able to be undetectable for awhile is also very nice (even tremorsense and the like does not help), quick escape is always a plus, and overall being simply more versitile.

Exchanging out a few items for better choices could up this guys power by quite a bit, I spent a lot of money on pretty fluffy things (strangely enough even the +4 book of str is mostly fluffy ;) ). But, even with how it is now I think that the psychic warrior pretty well wins out hands down.
 

Majere said:
The reason for DD was for the Dr6/- do he could use a viscious weapon without hurting himself.

As stated, doesnt work that way ;) If it did I might've put it on my weapon.

Majere said:
Infact a straight fighter 20 would do more damage because he would have greater weapon specialisation. So for the purposes of number crunching the PrC made no difference

Then make it without it ;)

Also, my psychic warrior is doing more damage than the fighter. If I traded out suppression (which does no damage but dispels every round are nice) and wounding (great enhancement, but very difficult to say how much damage it really does) and lucky (does nothing at all for this comparison) and picked up extra damage enhancers my damage would shoot up 'much' higher than the fighters damage. Psychokinetic (only d4, but nothing resists it), flaming, frost, sonic, viscious, and whatever else.

but I like the extra utility of suppression and wounding. They make up for a lot of little things that might have been missed elsewhere.


But go ahead and stat the whole guy up, lets compare!
 

Scion said:
Also, my psychic warrior is doing more damage than the fighter. If I traded out suppression (which does no damage but dispels every round are nice) and wounding (great enhancement, but very difficult to say how much damage it really does) and lucky (does nothing at all for this comparison) and picked up extra damage enhancers my damage would shoot up 'much' higher than the fighters damage. Psychokinetic (only d4, but nothing resists it), flaming, frost, sonic, viscious, and whatever else.

but I like the extra utility of suppression and wounding. They make up for a lot of little things that might have been missed elsewhere.

Well, then you're not doing more damage than the fighter. You could do more damage with different enhancements on your weapon. (I expect Hostile Empathic Transfer would work nicely with a vicious weapon). However, you chose not to have those enhancements on your weapon and went for flexibility instead. Claiming the abilities of the flexibility you paid for and then claiming the abilities of the damage-enhancers you didn't pay for is trying to have your cake after you've already eaten it. Plus, Flaming, Frost, Shock, and acidic would not really increase your damage very much against CR 20 monsters. Most of them are only vulnerable to one or two of those energy types.

My fighter deals more damage at the moment. His equipment could also be min-maxed more to deal more damage. (Probably the biggest way to maximize the character would be to depend more on his party. As written, he's not getting any help from anyone. If he relies on party members for enhancement bonusses, he can add vicious, psychokinetic, and wounding to his weapon (I very much like wounding weapons) and either crank up the abilities on his armor and shield or get a few other items to add to his abilites. Thinking about that, he really ought to do that since Scion's build is heavily dependent upon the party--he only has the 44 pp/day because he is depending upon the cleric for healing. Since the cleric is curing well over 90 points of damage spread out over at least 3 times during the day, the fighter is still less dependent upon the rest of the party if he picks up two magic vestments and a pair of greater magic weapons.
 

Scion said:
Gah :( I had a big post all written out.. then gone :(

I'll be brief this time as it is late.

Effectively the psychic warrior doesnt have to worry about grappling, he automatically succeeds in attempts to resist grapples and autosucceeds in escaping them. So the psychic warrior wins that one.

Well, your PsiWar is less vulnerable to grapple. On the other hand, except in extreme cases, my fighter is actually benefited when the enemy tries to grapple him because he gets to deal nearly thirty points of damage each time they try and then the grapple check is a mere formality. Only the best grapplers have a chance of beating a 28+32+d20 grapple check. At the high end of the grapple chain (a black wyrm dragon with the snatch feat who is not taking the -20 so as not to be considered grappled for instance) your psiwar has a very definite advantage. Across the rest of the board, I'd say beating the tar out of the foe and then beating their grapple check is better than not beating the tar out of them but automatically beating their grapple check.

If for some reason that wasnt the case then the psychic warrior could pop up an augmented expansion and become size huge and put up form of doom. At this point he'll have massive grapple bonuses and some killer attacks.

Well, that buys him a +12 bonus to his grapple score as I count it. I think that brings his total grapple check to +37 (+15 BAB, +12 str, +8 size, +2 morale) That's good, but it's not going to beat a high end grappler. Heck, it's not even much better than a pit fiend. (And the extra natural attacks from Form of Doom can't be used in a grapple since the only way to use non-iterative attacks in a grapple is to have the rake ability).

Vs the two demons above the psychic warrior I posted wouldnt have a huge amount of problem really, he is immune to most of their attacks. I can get through their dr effectively, although indirectly, though wound transfer and feedback.

I wouldn't count on hostile empathic transfer working on them. They've got good saves and good SR. You'll get through SR less than half the time and they'll generally make the save.

Empathic Feedback would be pretty effective at hurting them. However, keep in mind that they have two or three times your hit points and a lot of their attacks do more than 22 points of damage. The pit fiend regenerates the damage too (though not quickly enough to really make a big difference). So, if that's how you plan on killing them, you're going to kick the bucket a long time before they do. Also, they've got a fair list of spell like abilities which wouldn't trigger Empathic Feedback to fall back upon.

Vs large number of weak creatures I simply take some damage and then put out a huge burst of damage with empathic wound transfer, hostile. Healing and slaughter all at the same time.

A good strategy but you'll need to do more than just that in order to win. Remember that at level 20, Cornugons, Glazebru, and max HD Erynies fighters (or psiwariors if fighters don't worry you) count as "weak" creatures so you can't expect to wipe them out with a single hostile empathic transfer. (They'll resist the power every now and then, make the save a fair amount of the time and still survive the damage if they don't). You can only do it three times per day before you blow through all 44 of your discretionary power points.

Vs regen and dr (if I cannot bypass normally) then empathic feedback will kill them eventually. As my character also does comparable damage to the fighter (about even)

Your psiwar is not even remotely close to my candidates normal damage (let along Majere's pseudo-candidate). To quote your earlier calculations:

Against ac 35 the first round has a 90% chance to hit, 65% chance, and 40% leading to an average of 50.7 damage, 1.95 con damage and between 1 and 3 dispel checks on the target.

While wounding is hard to estimate, let's set the base HD of the foe at 20 (like a balor), so the con damage is equivalent to 20 hit points. Your character then averages about 71 points of damage per round. I don't know how math works where you come from but where I come from, that's a LOT less than 161.6 points of damage per round.

and way more when I need to (form of doom and/or expansion)

As I calculate it, you can spend 13pp to expand to huge as a swift action. This would increase your damage by about 10 points per hit. (+2 atk from +4 str cancels out the -2 atk from size, you get an extra 2d6 damage from the weapon's size increase (average 7 points) and an extra 3 points of damage from strength). Which would leave you at 90 points of damage per round. Your Psi-War still isn't breaking 100 points of damage per full attack. Spending another 11 points on form of Doom as well, I think you pull ahead slightly but not by much. I'll leave actual calculations to you. However, keep in mind that doing so:

A. Blows more than 1/2 your discretionary pp for the day
B. Takes a round, during which time, your only damage will come from Empathic Feedback--and you can't afford to deal too much damage with Empathic Feedback because as I mentioned, a lot of the enemies in question have double your hit points.

we are both in the same boat, but my enemies will die to empathic wounds and con damage.
Well sort of. Neither of us is particularly well off against DR (though with the extra money from relying on the cleric and wizard for a few spells, my guy could pick up a DR beating weapon or two and just quickdraw them when needed. Honestly though, I expect he'd crank his current weapon a bit more and cover some weaknesses by getting things like a crystal mask of Mind Armor and such so that ability doesn't count in this comparison). Con damage is a hash mark in your column. On the other hand, the ability to power attack for five and still hit as often as your PsiWar ought to come down on the side of my candidate. I'll give your character a slight edge but it's only due to his choice of weapon. Give the fighter a greater magic weaponed +1 (+5) psichokinetic, wounding, parrying, evil outsider bane weapon and that advantage is squarely in the hands of the fighter.

Vs a single incredibly powerful enemy (such as the dragon) if my guy is outmatched I have my dim door to fall back on. If fighting is necissary for some reason then form of doom puts me up into the almost having a fighting chance (sortof, being able to deal a lot of damage before being slaughtered is a chance right? ;) ). If I get off a full powered psionic lions charge while form of doomed, expanded, and with strength of my enemy up then I'll actually have a chance, though still very small.

Actually, for "a chance" I would figure the goal is to survive one or possibly two rounds while absorbing attacks. If you do 100 points of damage to the dragon and then kick the bucket in his retaliation, that's nice but probably not as valuable as eating up 2 rounds of attacks and then kicking the bucket. If you do 200 points of damage and then kick the bucket in his retaliation, that's nice too and is probably as good as eating 2 rounds of attacks but not doing much damage and dying at the end of the second. It's not nearly as good as eating two rounds of attacks, surviving, getting a Heal spell, and jumping back into the fight though.

I'd say Improved Combat Expertise, Elusive Target, Spring Attack, an AC the dragon can actually miss (easily pumpable to an AC the dragon will miss 50% of the time with all his secondary attacks--even if he has multi-attack and that his primary attack will miss pretty regularly too) while retaining the ability to hit the dragon and present a credible threat as well as nearly double your candidate's hp tip this balance in my candidate's favor. That said, Empathic Transfer would really put the hurt on the dragon and the DR from Inertial Barrier would be surprisingly effective.

Also, more things to take into account. The psychic warrior has massive bonuses to spot and listen, also he is immune to figments and glamors (no invis!), immune to mind effecting attacks and like abilities, can move much faster, has force armor so incoporeal touch attacks will have a much harder time, and my guy can go into any environment and be fine (no air? sure. underwater? whatever. plane of fire? bring it.)

Having DR is nice, walking through walls is cool, being able to be undetectable for awhile is also very nice (even tremorsense and the like does not help), quick escape is always a plus, and overall being simply more versitile.

Exchanging out a few items for better choices could up this guys power by quite a bit, I spent a lot of money on pretty fluffy things (strangely enough even the +4 book of str is mostly fluffy ;) ). But, even with how it is now I think that the psychic warrior pretty well wins out hands down.

You also think the PsyWar's 70 points of damage per round is more than 167 and that 90 points of damage per round with Expansion is dramatically more. As I see it, the PsyWar wins in the flexibility department but he seems to be getting rather badly trounced in the dealing and receiving damage departments.

And the fighter can approach the PsyWar in the flexibility department if he gets some buffs from his allies to match the cleric healing all your overchannel damage. (Otherwise, as I calculate, you end up with 16 power points which is not enough to bring you much past 70% of my sample fighter's damage/round.) Regular Mind Blank from the wizard will match your Psionic Mind Blank. Mage Armor will help with his AC vs. incorporeal touch. See Invisibility in the ring of spell storing (cast and immediately replaced with something useful in combat--if he's prepping, there's no reason he can't get the wizard to put See Invis and Alter Self in the ring, cast them both, then get the cleric to put a quickened divine favor in the ring for use in the final combat) helps with spotting. Etc, etc. He's not going to match the PsyWar in flexibility, but he'll come a lot closer.

Also I should note that your PsyWar's answer to nearly every situation was to blow about half his discretionary pps for the day. If the PsyWar is going to deal with a group of weak foes by using Hostile Empathic Transfer, getting cornered by a dragon with dimension door, and sock it to the big bad by blowing through all that's left of his power pool, it sounds like he's run out of pps before he's halfway through. It seems to me that your build really needs to be able to get through the normal, easy battles with amorphous +35 atk, AC 35, 300hp, nothing else worth noting monsters without spending any power points (except maybe a few on healing) if you want to be able to Augmented Expansion+Form of Doom+Maximally channeled Psionic Lion's Charge the gig bad. (And that 44 pp, 2 round combo is the only way you come close to my candidate's damage/round).
 
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I agree with Elder-Basilisk. When making these comparisons at such a high level, it is far too easy to ignore the cost in power points and/or X per day abilities.
 

Note:
I corrected one or two errors in my first post so its worth looking back to make comparisons


Dwarfy McBeard: Fighter 20
Important additional feats:
Great fortitude
Greater weapon specialisation

Ac 27
Average Damage/round with no PA = 191.52 (223.44 vs Evil)
Average Damage/round with OPA = 244.62 (270.24 vs Evil)
Average Damage taken: = 113.68875 +23 (Vicious weapon)

Saves : +26 +18 +18

Dwarfy McBuff
Ac 45
Average Damage/round with no PA = 264.48 (296.4vs Evil)
Average Damage/round with OPA = 388.74 (417.6 vs Evil)
Average Damage taken: = 23.058 +23 (Viscious weapon)
(27.091 after stoneskin is taken into account)

Saves : +31, +23, +23


Comments
4 points lost from will save
Damage taken increases by about 34 points
Damage dealt increases by about 17 points


So yes a Dwarven defender is stronger than a straight fighter, but not by as much as you might think.
Infact, if you spend a little money on adamantite armor giving the fighter DR 3/- Then the increase in damage taken falls by 12 points. That would require changing the armor from mithrial and a whole new set of maths, but the increase in damage taken can be offset to about 25.

And when both of then are buffed the increase in damage taken is only 4 points, but the increase in damage dealt is around 40

So if You can get you buffs up, the fighter is much better than the Dwarven defender. If you caught with your pants down, the natuaral DR and ac bonus of the dwarven defender wins out over the greater weapon specialisation.

Majere
Posts you the level 20 fighter you asked for.
 
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