Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 4457075" data-attributes="member: 19675">All of that can be found as breakdowns of SPR.This will always favor the Wizard and the Wizard-based Theurge types because, as I recall, only the various flavors of Wizards have no uppper limit on the number of spells they can learn.  Most other PCs must either multiclass or take some kind of feat- Extra Spell, Draconic Legacy, a Bloodline Feat from DCv1, for example- to learn more spells than indicated by their class charts.This can vary greatly from campaign to campaign depending upon initial conditions- how stats are generated- to the general overall availability and potency of magical items.Goodman Games' Power Gamer's 3.5 Wizard Strategy Guide has a chart on this.Again, there are lots of ways around SR, depending upon feat and spell selection.  The Draconic Breath feat that was the catalyst for this SPR metric, for instance, lets the spellcaster channel his arcane spell slots into an area effect attack that bypasses SR entirely.  The damage output is less than for an equivalent level attack spell- typically about half- but SR is completely out of the equation.Others include many Conjuration attack spells, Summons and Buffs.  SR simply doesn't matter to them.How do you factor that in?This too can vary greatly from campaign to campaign depending upon which books get used, and what spells, feats & items are available.For instance, as I asked earlier, does the UM's spellcasting boost stack with that from Practiced Spellcaster?  I can argue why or why not, but AFAIK, there isn't any rule that says they can't...meaning a PC with that feat and that PrCl could potentially have a +8 level boost to their casting level.And that doesn't even take into account accumulating certain Reserve or Heritage/Bloodline feats which can also boost caster levels.Goodman Games' Power Gamer's 3.5 Wizard Strategy Guide comes down 100% in favor of specialization...and would presumably do much the same for Focused Specialization if it were part of the PHB (which the book limits its coverage to).Their opinions and statistical analyses consider the pros gained by specialization to be greater than the cons, and shows you how to ensure that they do.While undoubtedly valuable, those are difficult to quantify.Feat slots are the easiest- you either have them or you don't.  And for the most part, Wizards, Eldritch Knights and UMs do, and most others don't.Special Abilities, though, are just as random in quality as spells themselves.  Some classes let you cast in armor.  Some let you channel spells through melee or ranged attacks.  Some get you access to additional spells.  Some give you better DCs to certain or even all spells.  Some give you metamagical type abilities.  And so forth.  Which ability is best...or simply better?Opinions will vary...and it would be difficult to come up with hard numbers upon which to base a mathematical comparison.As I said earlier, I have no problem with that.  I didn't do it because I didn't have the time to do so- I picked the 20th level endpoint...and admittedly, screwed it up!SPR helps with those analyses as well.</blockquote>

Verification