PHB2: Melee Weapon Mastery - am I missing something?

Zurai said:
What you fail to realize is that, past 10th level or so, dealing hitpoint damage is completely suboptimal. At that point, casters are able to completely bypass hitpoints and just say "either you save, or you die"; hitpoints only exist at that level to force the casters to actually use their save-or-dies. Casters also get to do a lot more than "fly, cure, and knock".
One of the interesting aspects of ToB advocates and their capacity for rationalization is that they almost invariably assume their level of gaming experience as well as their general grasp of game mechanics trumps that of anyone who dares dispute them. Two can, of course, play the hubris game. So, in keeping with that spirit of one-upmanship...

Zurai, while I give you high marks for self-esteem, I doubt that there's much about playing D&D you've realized that I haven't. What folks skim over when they make all of the hoopla about the displacement of direct damage by save-or-die effects is that the latter are almost unilaterally all-or-nothing in nature. The effect is dire if you don't save, the effect is a joke if you do. Since spell save DC's don't scale nearly as well as the saving throws of opponents, the odds work against the caster. This all assumes the spell isn't something the opponent isn't immunized against, which becomes an increasingly bad assumption against high-level opponents. D&D designers ain't no dummies.

It's players that have to sweat save-or-dies, since luck will eventually turn against them, and one failure is all it takes. But don't conflate a player's problems with the opposition's. NPC's don't mind absorbing your finger of death, baleful polymorph, or disintegrate, knowing full well that for every one that succumbs, there's another--heck, maybe two, maybe more--that will brush it off. The numbers are on their side.

Damage is nice and reliable. It's what the game handles well. The folks who advocate the supermacy of save-or-dies kid themselves if they consider direct damage a weak or even secondary option at any level.

Teleport? Miracle/Wish? Resurrection? Commune? Plane Shift? Gate? Telepathic Bond? Magnificent Mansion? Geas? Disjunction? Shapechange?

All of those are incredibly powerful abilities that no Fighter can duplicate in any fashion. Many of them can be used to completely avoid the need for a fight in the first place.
I don't know if it's reaching or a case of class envy, but that list of spells you've come up with is pretty bizarre, as is the sentiment that follows. Most of that list has nothing to do with combat effectiveness. Plane shift? Telepathic bond? Magnificent mansion? Resurrection??? They don't even empower the caster specifically; they're very much party resources. All the caster gets is the privilege of burning the spell slot. It's pretty unreasonable to tell spellcasters that they should leave the tanking and nuking to the warriors, because the spellcasters get to be the party's chauffer, nursemaid, caterer, and general provider of miscellaneous drudgery for the rest of the party.

That's like being told you have the "privilege" of being the waterboy, while I'm stuck being the quarterback. "Don't complain; heck, I don't even have the option of being the waterboy even if I wanted to be, so this is the only way to be fair."
 
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Felon said:
I don't know if it's reaching or a case of class envy, but that list of spells you've come up with is pretty bizarre, as is the sentiment that follows. Most of that list has nothing to do with combat effectiveness.

No :):):):), sherlock. I was intentionally NOT pointing out combat spells, to show that casters have out-of-combat ability completely and totally locked down. If you want to do something outside of combat, you pretty much have to be a caster.

Plane shift? Telepathic bond? Magnificent mansion? Resurrection??? They don't even empower the caster specifically; they're very much party resources.

Uh, so what? I don't get your point.

It's pretty unreasonable to tell spellcasters that they should leave the tanking and nuking to the warriors, because the spellcasters get to be the party's chauffer, nursemaid, caterer, and general provider of miscellaneous drudgery for the rest of the party.

Where did I say that? Actually, if you'd read and responded to my fourth paragraph instead of conveniently ignoring it ;) you'd realize that I implied that casters can fufill both those roles just as easily as Fighters can while still filling all the other roles of the party at the same time.


That's like being told you have the "privilege" of being the waterboy, while I'm stuck being the quarterback. "Don't complain; heck, I don't even have the option of being the waterboy even if I wanted to be, so this is the only way to be fair."

Wow, and you're telling me that I have class envy? Pot, kettle, black.
 

Sorry, but that's got a pretty lousy taste to it. I find this notion that versatility is fair compensation for less raw, direct power to be pretty flawed. Power is pretty much in a class all its own. You don't need to fly away from a dead enemy, or heal wounds he didn't get to inflict because he was promptly squashed, or lay down bogs and debuffs for corpses.
The other option is to give wizards and clerics all those--despite what you claim, actually very useful and often deadly--tactical spells, buffs, heals, et cetera, and also make them the best at direct damage. This is the situation as it stands. They're the best at everything related to busting heads. They disable enemies best, they deal damage best, and they have an assortment of extra options that help them to deal with disadvantageous situations by changing the nature of the battle.

To reiterate a bit, I've seen plenty of spellcasters that don't need to touch their direct-damage spells in order to demolish their enemies. There's enough power in battlefield control, status effects, and the like, for a wizard or cleric to reduce the enemies to weakened, exhausted, blinded gimps that the fighter can mop up even with his comparably lesser damage. However, the spellcasters have direct-damage on top of all that, too. The purpose of the fighter seems to be to wear armour and stand in between the monsters and the spellcasters to buy them time to win the battle. The player of the fighter might as well be phoning in his participation, if that's all he can aspire to.
 

Hmm. I don't have too much high level experience myself, but Pcat and other storyhour dudes with epic and other high level games have stated more than once that direct damage dealing is clearly the realm of the melee brutes.
 

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