No spell resistance vs. Orb spells? Why?

[Twowolves]

If you have his entire proof please provide to me the following information:

What kind of dragon is this

Irrelevant.

Who are the other members of the party (with complete stats)

What, you want an entire, completely stated out party before you will accept ANY evidence contrary to your unsupported opinion? Complete stats are unnecessary and you know it. What a joke.

What form of chargen is being used (how are stats generated, are we using any varient rules, is unearthed arcana/arcana unearthed involved)

Irrelevant.

What sources are allowed (dragon, quintessential dandelion eater, various d20 stuff?)

Irrelevant. Any cheese you can pull out of a 3rd party book to support your non-arguement can be matched by another equally cheesy 3rd party book. It's a wash, a dodge, and you know it.

Is the dragon sleeping

What, do you want to know it's "% chance in lair" as well?

Is any of the dragon's treasure useful to the either side (I'd ask if treasure were there, but since there's adventurers involved I think it's safe to assume)

Irrelevant. The debate is over the effectiveness of the orb spells at killing single big opponents, not what kind of candy the PCs get at Halloween.

Is the dragon's treasure easily accessable to either side.

Irrelevant. It's safe to assume that both sides have equipment appropriate for their level/CR.

If you're able to answer these questions I would like links to the posts where the answers are obtained.

Evidence of these types weren't presented, because they were... say it with me now... IRRELEVANT. Once again, you've defended your position with a series of non-answers.

 

[KarinsDad]

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.

Another troll born every minute.

Instead of writing words like "supposed", maybe you too could actually do some real research. It is only "supposed" if you research it and find it in error. In fact, anyone here on the boards can do the research if they doubt the numbers.

I'll give you a hint. With the Search button, you too can find out that there are ~529 touch ACs listed in the SRD and ~36 with touch AC 15 or higher. In other words, 93+% with touch AC 14 or lower. You can also do the same to find out the average touch AC. Even if I made a slight mistake and my numbers are off a little, it is a lot more accurate data than what you have posted on this topic.


PS. Rystal, you'll never convince these people. If the math does not convince them, no other argument will. They argue just to argue, regardless of the facts. And they won't actually do any real work themselves to counter your position.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Another troll born every minute.

Instead of writing words like "supposed", maybe you too could actually do some real research. It is only "supposed" if you research it and find it in error. In fact, anyone here on the boards can do the research if they doubt the numbers.

I'll give you a hint. With the Search button, you too can find out that there are ~529 touch ACs listed in the SRD and ~36 with touch AC 15 or higher. In other words, 93+% with touch AC 14 or lower. You can also do the same to find out the average touch AC. Even if I made a slight mistake and my numbers are off a little, it is a lot more accurate data than what you have posted on this topic.


PS. Rystal, you'll never convince these people. If the math does not convince them, no other argument will. They argue just to argue, regardless of the facts. And they won't actually do any real work themselves to counter your position.

Actually, I think James McMurray has accepted the math now--he's agreeing with my math but disagreeing that the fact that the Orbs are an instakill for a level-appropriate BBEG is a problem, which may be true to his game. That's an argument I can respect when it applies to his games, though it doesn't work for me for making a universal decision about the orbs.

 

[Notmousse]

Prove that this is not how they're normally encountered.

Prove this is how they are always encountered.

 

[Notmousse]

Hong's point is that you're throwing in obfuscation that makes the entire exercise pointless.

I believe part of your point was that they were going up against dragons 9 CR above them and winning. Any idiot that can find a dragon can attempt to fight it even if they're not a mage. Or is it just that they can do gobs of damage when the stars are aligned and that's just not kosher?

Remember my Orcslayer spell?

Are you seriously going to bring this up again? Aside from the fact that godslaying isn't the grounds of pre-epic magic it's just silly and reduces my opinion for you.

Arguing that an enemy with surprise can kill someone before they use Option X is irrelevant to arguing that Option X is not overpowered.

Are you or are you not arguing that orbs are so broken because they can be used to slay things 9 CR above them? If that is even tangentally a part of your arguement then the fact that a dragon not even tricked out has a decent chance of one shotting your mages is relevant.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Are you seriously going to bring this up again? Aside from the fact that godslaying isn't the grounds of pre-epic magic it's just silly and reduces my opinion for you.

Yes, I'm bringing it up again as an analogy. And yes, it's very silly. It's supposed to be silly. That's the point of reductio ad absurdum. The point is, this is a spell we can all agree is overpowered, right? And yet your argument would defend it exactly the same as it would defend Orbs. This proves that your argument in defense of Orbs is invalid unless you also accept that the same argument defends my new silly Dragonslayer spell.

I'll take it into logical terms with a translation below:

A) You said "Dragon can kill Mage before she does X, thus X is not overpowered"

B) I said: Okay, here's Y. You agree that Y is overpowered, yes? You agreed that Y was overpowered.

C) I said "By argument (A) Dragon can kill Mage before she does Y, thus Y is not overpowered" by your argument.

This is a contradiction in the definition. The only possibility is that Y is not overpowered or that argument (A) is invalid.

(X is Orbs, Y is Dragonslayer)

 

[KarinsDad]

(X is Orbs, Y is Dragonslayer)

As Spock would say: "Using logic to try to convince people who ignore the math is not logical".

You're playing in a different sandbox.

 

[Notmousse]

Irrelevant.

What you're fighting in a scenario isn't relevant? I doubt I could say that to my GMs. "Y'know chief, it doesn't matter what we're fighting here, because y'see I got this spell the ENWorlders tell me makes what I'm fighting irrelevant because it's so broken. Please give me the treasure and XP now."

What, you want an entire, completely stated out party before you will accept ANY evidence contrary to your unsupported opinion?

If it's in the scenario I want it's stats. If you can't provide them then fine.

Irrelevant.

Quite the opposite since it's what determines if the mages are even allowed a 14 Dex.

Any cheese you can pull out of a 3rd party book to support your non-arguement can be matched by another equally cheesy 3rd party book.

I've not used any sources from a third party book yet, but, he's already used a feat from Dragon (or typed the wrong name which coincidentally happened to be a feat from dragon).

What, do you want to know it's "% chance in lair" as well?

No, I wanted to know if it's sleeping.

The debate is over the effectiveness of the orb spells at killing single big opponents, not what kind of candy the PCs get at Halloween.

The treasure can be of immense importance. If it were all treasure of gold the dragon could have melted it into fortifications, or create a lake of molten gold over the heads of the PCs.

It's safe to assume that both sides have equipment appropriate for their level/CR.

A dragon with equipment equal to it's CR... That dragon would have more bling than the entire east coast rapper's ball.

Once again, you've defended your position with a series of non-answers.

I simply don't see it that way. Since this was the scenario pushed by the anti-orb position I wish to see the entirety of it before deciding if it's a broken spell when used in such biased situations.

 

[Notmousse]

As Spock would say: "Using logic to try to convince people who ignore the math is not logical".

You're playing in a different sandbox.

Would you please not mock me? I'm trying to get somewhere with this.

Actually I'm trying to get an MP3 player to work right, but I'm here anyway.

 

[Rystil Arden]

As Spock would say: "Using logic to try to convince people who ignore the math is not logical".

You're playing in a different sandbox.

I guess our difference (perhaps I'm being naive, but I like to think well of people), is that I always assume that everyone is a rational and intelligent person who just happens to disagree with me:

For instance, Mistwell thinks that Wraithstrike is a perfectly fine spell. He is a rational and intelligent person who happens to disagree with me. He generally hedged around the math and pointed to everything other than Wraithstrike as the offender (which is what led me to add a caveat before adding the different feats in this thread), but he clearly understood all sides of the argument, and he made logical statements and generally never tried to defend with an argument from ignorance or a statement that would negate anything. In the end, it turned out that his game worked fine with massive Wraithstrike damage (just like James McMurray's game works fine with massive Orb damage), and that was that.