No spell resistance vs. Orb spells? Why?

[Notmousse]

If memory serves metamagics were in his first examples. In either case it's the same story with any uber ___ build when you over specialize you breed in weakness.

 

[Notmousse]

In this case, you made the following logical statement:

Okay, I admit that it murders all dragons and similar low touch AC high SR monsters. But that's a special case you chose. There are some things that it is terrible against, like ghosts. So it is balanced.

Problem being that I never admitted it murdered dragons at all.

Furthermore with wizard Init you're not even close to guaranteed to go first against the dragon. Even a surprise round in the dragon's favor (not to mention a full round's worth of actions by a dragon) kills your orb chucker just as easily as anyone else trying something what was it, 9 CR over your level wasn't it?

No matter what false logic is applied the simplicity is that orbs are single target kills, many (and I wouldn't be surprised were it most) evokations are designed for multiple targets, hence a smaller damage cap.

If you don't want to admit you're skewing these scenarios in your favor be my guest, but it doesn't fool me.

 

[James McMurray]

Yes, I've shown a predisposition to ignore numbers people toss out with no backup to them. It's one of the reasons I chose to not reply to the supposed averages of the MM. If you throw more numbers out later without any backing to them, I'll happily ignore those as well. It comes from having been on the internet for along time: I'm convinced that everyone is a fat and old FBI agent posing as a knowledgable gamer, making up numbers to lure me into believing their pet thories. Or something like that.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Problem being that I never admitted it murdered dragons at all.

Furthermore with wizard Init you're not even close to guaranteed to go first against the dragon. Even a surprise round in the dragon's favor (not to mention a full round's worth of actions by a dragon) kills your orb chucker just as easily as anyone else trying something what was it, 9 CR over your level wasn't it?

No matter what false logic is applied the simplicity is that orbs are single target kills, many (and I wouldn't be surprised were it most) evokations are designed for multiple targets, hence a smaller damage cap.

If you don't want to admit you're skewing these scenarios in your favor be my guest, but it doesn't fool me.

Huh?

Problem being that I never admitted it murdered dragons at all.

Okay then, how can you say that with the analysis in front of you? I thought that's why you said the dragon analysis was unfair--because you saw that the Conjurer destroyed the dragon. If not, then why not talk about the dragon?

Furthermore with wizard Init you're not even close to guaranteed to go first against the dragon. Even a surprise round in the dragon's favor (not to mention a full round's worth of actions by a dragon) kills your orb chucker just as easily as anyone else trying something what was it, 9 CR over your level wasn't it?

Surprise rounds could go to either side. It's only fair to nullify that possibility and just roll Init for both of them. Wizards like their Dex, particularly Orb Wizards. Even most 25 PB Wizard builds have 14 Dex when they aren't Orb chuckers, and increased to 20 with a +6 item. The dragon thus has exactly a 26.25% chance to go first. On an average fight, Connie goes first.

No matter what false logic is applied

Are you saying that I'm lying to you or that standard logic is false? If the first, I take offense. If the second, that's kind of silly.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Yes, I've shown a predisposition to ignore numbers people toss out with no backup to them. It's one of the reasons I chose to not reply to the supposed averages of the MM. If you throw more numbers out later without any backing to them, I'll happily ignore those as well. It comes from having been on the internet for along time: I'm convinced that everyone is a fat and old FBI agent posing as a knowledgable gamer, making up numbers to lure me into believing their pet thories. Or something like that.

Check any of the numbers. I stand behind them fully unless I made a calculation error, which should be relatively rare because I double-checked most of them when I had to go back and find them again. If you won't either put the effort to check the basic math or just admit that nobody's trying to con you, what's the point? How about this--are you willing to concede that the Orbs are overpowered because they cut through SR assuming I can make those numbers absolutely crystal in painstaking detail? I'm thinking that if you agree to that, it might actually save time. Please feel free to look at the numbers before you decide, and I'm willing to take the time to back up any of them so you don't have to, if and only if you agree. I think that's fair--basically you'd just be saying: "If your numbers are correct, I agree with you, but I'm not sure they're correct. Show me exactly how this works".

 

[James McMurray]

I thought I'd already explained my stance on the orbs? I thought we were just talking now. Did you not read my posts earlier? My opinion hasn't changed. To save you the hassle of digging it up: no, I do not think that the orbs are overpowered because they ignore SR. I do no think they're overpowered at all. I think they're strong spells, and extremely useful in fights with only one or two foes, less useful with 3 foes, a wash or worse against 4, and inefficient to the point of near uselessness with any larger group.

 

[Rystil Arden]

I thought I'd already explained my stance on the orbs? I thought we were just talking now. Did you not read my posts earlier? My opinion hasn't changed. To save you the hassle of digging it up: no, I do not think that the orbs are overpowered because they ignore SR. I do no think they're overpowered at all. I think they're strong spells, and extremely useful in fights with only one or two foes, less useful with 3 foes, a wash or worse against 4, and inefficient to the point of near uselessness with any larger group.

That's what I figured--a guy can hope though, right?

Yeah, no worries if you won't agree to that, but you can see why it seems a bit one-sided of you to have me do the math and then refuse to check it and demand proof, right? If you don't trust the numbers, you probably won't trust my proof much either--the best way to do it is to do the numbers yourself. I'll even help out with the hardest part: since Empower and Maximise don't stack, the weirdest bit of math is calculating the average on a Maximised Empowered Orb (everything else stacks once you have those two, though). That number is 116.25 (90 for the Maximised, 26.25 for the Empower). You can easily use that to derive everything else (Twin/Energy Admixture that? Just double it. Throw a Quickened version of that? Sure, just add it again. Note that the damage on Maximise alone is 90 and Empower alone is 78.75. You'll need that if you do the one with Easy Metamagic on the Energy Admixture instead of the Quicken, since then the Quickened spell is only Empowered and the non-Quickened is Admixtured and Maximised, thus getting up that 258.75 I mentioned).

 

[James McMurray]

You expect me to check your math for you? I'm not your professor. And besides, you later came back and gave numbers, so I'm cool with your math. I just don't think that it makes the spells broken. Strong yes; overpowered? No. There's just too many situations (IMX, YMMV) where packing a single target damage dealing spell is a bad choice.

 

[Rystil Arden]

You expect me to check your math for you? I'm not your professor. And besides, you later came back and gave numbers, so I'm cool with your math. I just don't think that it makes the spells broken. Strong yes; overpowered? No. There's just too many situations (IMX, YMMV) where packing a single target damage dealing spell is a bad choice.

This isn't a math class, though. If I say: "I'm using X, which does Y average damage" it isn't hard to check if you think the number is way off.

And if you don't think Connie is insane against the Dragon, that's fine. The Orbs will be fine in your actual game if those numbers look okay to you, I guarantee it. When it comes to my game, I think the numbers I have here are horrible and make the game less fun if they should ever occur.

However, as far as I know, your current argument is the only valid one that exists for claiming the Orbs are balanced without SR--that is "I understand that this spell does massive damage on average, allowing two characters to end a BBEG that is CR = character level + 9 (and one character can do this if optimised more), but since it's single target, this isn't overpowered in my game." I respect that argument, and it is perfectly valid. What an onlooker who is unsure about Orb balance needs to do, then, is decide if her game is more like yours or mine, and that will help her decide what to do about Orbs.

 

[Nail]

You expect me to check your math for you?

You don't get to have your cake and eat it too.

If you "don't believe the numbers", then it's your job to prove them wrong. If you don't prove them wrong, then you have conceeded the point.

It's really quite simple.




I'm amazed, frankly, that Rystil Arden has had the patience and grace to stay in this thread and post politely, and continue bat down the same ole bad arguments. Good job, bud.