Stats scaling past 18/19

[Sekhmet]

[MENTION=8461]Alzrius[/MENTION] The point is that the Tier 1 classes can adapt when an enemy counters/blocks/defends against one particular thing.
If a Fighter's style gets countered, he's out for the entire encounter. Wizards are out for a round.

Regarding your link, Wand of Knock doesn't use many resources at all, and no daily ones.
Remember that the D&D "day" is meant to be four encounters - even a low level Wizard can Summon Monster or Grease his way to victory for four encounters.

 

[billd91]

This assumes the caster is even using spells with saves. I mentioned Shivering Touch specifically because it doesn't have a save, though a fighter had better have a higher touch AC than a dragon. Funny enough, one of the ways dragons have around that spell is one of their own called Scintillating Scales, which might not even work if the nerf to stacking various modifiers went into place.

When one side has ways around a nerf that the other side doesn't, the nerf isn't going to be as effective. Simply put, nerfing various buffs will hurt mundanes a lot more than it will casters and thus further widen the gap between them.

One broken spell doesn't exactly invalidate the premise that capping stats is a good idea. A large proportion of a wizard's encounter-ending spells do require a saving throw.

 

[Alzrius]

[MENTION=8461]Alzrius[/MENTION] The point is that the Tier 1 classes can adapt when an enemy counters/blocks/defends against one particular thing.
If a Fighter's style gets countered, he's out for the entire encounter. Wizards are out for a round.

Sekhmet, I disagree with this completely.

For one thing, the idea of "tier 1's" having a better ability to "adapt" when their first killer-combo doesn't work strikes me as being completely overstated. When you're out of (higher-level) spells for the day, how are you going to adapt to that?

Likewise, I think that the idea of a fighter's "style" being countered is both over-stated and ill-defined. How is a fighter's "style" (e.g. making attack rolls) ever "countered"?

Regarding your link, Wand of Knock doesn't use many resources at all, and no daily ones.

If you're playing at first level, that statement doesn't hold up. Likewise, there's more to both rogues as a class and Disable Device as a skill than opening doors (plus, neither can be sundered, stolen, or dispelled).

Remember that the D&D "day" is meant to be four encounters - even a low level Wizard can Summon Monster or Grease his way to victory for four encounters.

Again, I don't grant your premise. A "D&D day" is "meant" to be whatever the GM and the players say it is. Operating on some sort of fictional standard for how many fights your group will get into over the course of a day is an excellent example of theory-crafting that doesn't match how actual game-play runs.

Case in point, in my game last night, the party faced seven encounters in a single day. The game did not fall apart.

EDIT: Likewise, I don't see any particular reason why a fighter can't fight his way to victory just as well as grease and summon monster.

 

[Sekhmet]

[MENTION=8461]Alzrius[/MENTION] Countering a fighter's style is relatively simple. If he's a damage dealer, prevent him from dealing damage. Shivering Touch, Grease, Darkness, Invisibility, Fly, Obscuring Mist, Shrink Person, Ray of Enfeeblement, the list goes on and on.
If he's a grappler, prevent him from moving, reduce his grapple check, remove his ability to get to you (fly, freedom of movement, various teleports).
If he's tripping, take his weapon (heat metal, summon a monster to disarm him, etc).

Once you negate a Fighter's niche style, he's useless.
Likewise, while a Fighter can take the place of a well placed spell, the fact that Tier 1 classes can replace an entire character's role with a standard action is telling.

Also, Pg.49 states that the average encounter should take 20-25% of your daily resources, and after four encounters your party should need to rest.
If your DM is throwing under powered encounters at you, you'll use fewer resources anyway, and that means you get even more bang for your spell's buck.

 

[Alzrius]

Alzrius Countering a fighter's style is relatively simple. If he's a damage dealer, prevent him from dealing damage. Shivering Touch, Grease, Darkness, Invisibility, Fly, Obscuring Mist, Shrink Person, Ray of Enfeeblement, the list goes on and on.
If he's a grappler, prevent him from moving, reduce his grapple check, remove his ability to get to you (fly, freedom of movement, various teleports).
If he's tripping, take his weapon (heat metal, summon a monster to disarm him, etc).

There are two major problems with this. The first is that most of these are either incredibly limited in "preventing" the fighter from dealing damage (e.g. grease; don't step there, or just make the check to move out of the area) - that's when they function at all, since they have saves or attack rolls - to the point where they're not at all the sort of "absolute" that they're made out to be.

The second issue is that many of these don't "prevent" the fighter from dealing damage, but rather lessen the amount dealt (e.g. reduce person). Functionally, that's no different than just wearing armor (the big difference being that armor affects the overall damage dealt by lowering the percent chance of hitting, whereas spells that add damage penalties leave the overall chance of hitting the same, but lower the average damage dealt - functionally, it's the same).

This is also overlooking the much broader problems that I listed previously. If a "tier 1" character has already expended these spells, for instance, or simply doesn't have them available, then these so-called solutions effectively no longer exist.

Once you negate a Fighter's niche style, he's useless.

I disagree strongly with this. Besides the idea that fighters have a "niche style" (killing things has long been labelled, albeit humorously, as the point of the game), he's certainly not useless. If you "take away" his weapon, he can trip with his bare hands. If he can't grapple you, he can just hit you. Or bull rush you, or ready an action to disrupt your spells, or disarm you of a magic item or material component, or aid another to hit you, etc.

Likewise, while a Fighter can take the place of a well placed spell, the fact that Tier 1 classes can replace an entire character's role with a standard action is telling.

Actually, what's really telling is how many people believe that a single standard action can replace another character's role entirely. It's self-evident that that's not true.

People have come to see any sort of overlap as replacement, when in fact that's false; the simple economy of actions proves that. A standard action can't replace another character, role or not, simply because another character would get a full-round's worth of actions.

Even leaving that aside, a damage-dealing spell doesn't replace a fighter's role in the game any more than a fighter with Disable Device replaces the rogue's role in the game. Or any more than a rogue with a high Use Magic Device skill and some scrolls replaces the wizard in the game.

Also, Pg.49 states that the average encounter should take 20-25% of your daily resources, and after four encounters your party should need to rest.

Okay, I'll quote from The Alexandrian again:

As far as I can tell, everybody misread the rulebook. Here’s what the 3rd Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide had to say about “Encounters and Challenge Ratings” (pg. 100):

A monster’s Challenge Rating (CR) tells you the level of the party for which the monster is a good challenge. A monster of CR 5 is an appropriate challenge for four 5th-level characters. If the characters are higher level than the monster, they get fewer XP because the monster should be easier to defeat. Likewise, if the party level [....] is lower than the monster’s Challenge Rating, the PCs get a greater reward.

And a little later it answered the question “What’s Challenging?” (pg. 101):

Since every game session probably includes many encounters, you don’t want to make every encounter one that taxes the PCs to their limits. They would have to stop the adventure and rest for an extensive period after every fight, and that slows down the game. An encounter with an Encounter Level (EL) equal to the PCs’ level is one that should expend about 20% of their resources — hit points, spells, magic item uses, etc. This means, on average, that after about four encounters of the party’s level the PCs need to rest, heal, and regain their spells. A fifth encounter would probably wipe them out.

And, at that point, everybody apparently stopped reading. Because this was what seeped into the collective wisdom of the gaming community: Every encounter should have an EL equal to the party’s level and the party should have four encounters per day.

I literally can’t understand how this happened, because the very next paragraph read:

The PCs should be able to take on many more encounters lower than their level but fewer encounters with Encounter Levels higher than their party level. As a general rule, if the EL is two lower than the party’s level, the PCs should be able to take on twice as many encounters before having to stop and rest. Two levels below that, and the number of encounters they can cope with doubles again, and so on.

And if that wasn’t clear enough in saying that the PCs should be facing a wide variety of ELs, the very next page had a chart on it that said 30% of the encounters in an adventure should have an EL lower than the PCs’ level; 50% should have an EL equal to the PCs’ level; 15% should have an EL 1 to 4 higher than the PCs’ level; and 5% should have an EL 5+ higher than the PCs’ level.

But all of that was ignored and the completely erroneous “common wisdom” of “four encounters per day with an EL equal to the party’s level” became the meme of the land.

If your DM is throwing under powered encounters at you, you'll use fewer resources anyway, and that means you get even more bang for your spell's buck.

Actually, it's more correct to say that your "tier 1" characters will eventually have to choose between using their "big guns" on such a fight, and thus not have them later, or not use them and in doing so voluntarily removing them from the fight anyway. Hence, they get less "bang for their spell's buck."

 

[Sekhmet]

[MENTION=8461]Alzrius[/MENTION] Casters don't run out of spells after about level 5. If you're playing a caster in a way that does, then you're playing it wrong. I don't know how you can continue to believe they do, especially when even Wizards can get up to 8+ spells per spell level and carry an effectively infinite number of wands.
Played correctly, you never "have to choose" to use a "big gun", you can fairly well perform the same function every encounter, all day.
Blasting is not the role of the caster. I make no claim that Wizards and Fighters can deal the same amount of damage all day - the fact that an optimized Fighter can deal (under the correct circumstances) hundreds of damage per round with very little chance of missing is the only role he can actually best a caster in.

Regarding the rest of the text on Pg. 49, no one stopped reading. In all of those cases, you're still expending the same amount of resources per day - about 80%. If your caster is blowing his load early in the day, he's being foolish - like an archer using all of his arrows, a fighter using all of his potions, or a rogue throwing all of his grenades.

In the case of low-ECL encounters, one spell can take care of the entire encounter. One Grease (even if you save, you move at half speed) can give your party the time to take them out with ranged attacks, spending less than 5% of your party's resources. One Darkness gives your melee fighters with Blindfight/Blindsense time to kill everything without getting hit - again, less than 5% of your party's resources.

Regarding "single standard action replacing party member" - lets say you cast Summon Monster I and bring out a Celestial Dog. That Dog can effectively replace your Fighter for the duration of the spell at lower levels. You get a full round action, they get a full round action. The Medium Centipede can best a Fighter, considering the 1d3/1d3 Dex damage.
Grease removes the Fighter from play by making it move at half speed or fall prone.
Fly forces the Fighter to twiddle his thumbs while you do whatever you want to him.

Regarding taking his weapon to prevent tripping - without his weapon, he doesn't threaten nearly as many squares, reducing his ability to control a battlefield.
Regarding Reduce Person - It lowers his To Hit, his Damage, and his reach - since you're wearing Mage Armor or Bracers regardless of the presence of Fighters, your point is moot.
Regarding "if you take away this, he'll just do this" - Fighters are forced to specialize. Trippers are generally not Damage Dealers or Grapplers. Grapplers aren't Trippers or Damage Dealers. Damage Dealers are not Grapplers or Trippers. Taking away what they are good at forces them to do something subpar, like removing the Rogue's ability to Sneak Attack or the Archer's ability to stay at range.
Regarding "lol saves/rolls" - use spells that target weak saves. If your opponent has a high AC, hit his touch ac. If he has a high touch, hit his square. If he has a high fort, hit his reflex or will. If his Dex is high, hit another ability score. No one has all around perfect defenses, there is always a hole that is easy to ascertain.

 

[Dandu]

Alas, Alzrius, kingius, you have chosen the path of defeat.

If anyone doubts the power of spellcasters, try running a relatively by the book campaign with me playing a spellcaster. I am sure it will be very enlightening for one of us. Let us not waste this opportunity toslay spherical cows; if we could all take the energy we poured into this thread and put it into a pbp, I'm sure great things would happen.

So, t'all you fine dandies so proud, so cock-sure. Prancin' aboot with your bags full of swords! Come and get me I say! I'll be waiting on ya with a whiff of the 'ol brimstone. I'm a grim bloody fable with an unhappy bloody end!"

 

[Alzrius]

Alzrius Casters don't run out of spells after about level 5. If you're playing a caster in a way that does, then you're playing it wrong. I don't know how you can continue to believe they do, especially when even Wizards can get up to 8+ spells per spell level and carry an effectively infinite number of wands.

I honestly wouldn't even recognize a game played like this as being D&D. Spellcasters absolutely run out of spells above and beyond level 5. My 8th-level spellcasters did in last night's game, across seven encounters altogether.

I'm not sure if you're looking at some magic items (rings of wizardry, perhaps?) that allow for more spells per day, but on bonus slots via high ability scores, eight or more spells of each spell level per day (for a wizard) is, quite simply, insane. I'm sure there's some sort of CharOp build for it, but there's a CharOp build for Pun-Pun too, which is my way of saying I don't find such material to (as I've said before) be very relevant at the game table. I won't even mention the idea of an infinite number of wands.

Likewise, if you're going to say "if you're not doing it min-maxed, you're doing it wrong," then there's going to be very little left to discuss. I'm trying to say that such theorizing about power-builds doesn't mesh with actual game-play; to say that means the game is being played wrong is to take the idea of the game over the game itself, and I can't believe that anyone would do that.

Played correctly, you never "have to choose" to use a "big gun", you can fairly well perform the same function every encounter, all day.
Blasting is not the role of the caster. I make no claim that Wizards and Fighters can deal the same amount of damage all day - the fact that an optimized Fighter can deal (under the correct circumstances) hundreds of damage per round with very little chance of missing is the only role he can actually best a caster in.

See above for my response to "played correctly" versus "played incorrectly." It's an ironic truism that only bad players tell others that they're having BadWrongFun.

Likewise, I've already spoken to the idea that wizards are always better than fighters because wizards can control the entire battlefield. That's only true under hypothetical scenarios which are designed specifically to support such a position.

Regarding the rest of the text on Pg. 49, no one stopped reading. In all of those cases, you're still expending the same amount of resources per day - about 80%. If your caster is blowing his load early in the day, he's being foolish - like an archer using all of his arrows, a fighter using all of his potions, or a rogue throwing all of his grenades.

In the case of low-ECL encounters, one spell can take care of the entire encounter. One Grease (even if you save, you move at half speed) can give your party the time to take them out with ranged attacks, spending less than 5% of your party's resources. One Darkness gives your melee fighters with Blindfight/Blindsense time to kill everything without getting hit - again, less than 5% of your party's resources.

This is more theorizing that ignores how things actually play out - the little details that somehow never make it into these scenarios - when you sit down and actually play the game.

Grease, for example, covers a 10-ft. square, so you're always adjacent to the edge of it. It's one easy check to move out of the area, and so eats up five, maybe ten feet of the enemies' movement...presuming they aren't flying, that it isn't an aquatic area, that they don't just do around it, or jump over it, or burrow under it, etc. The idea that "you can destroy a lower-level encounter with a single spell" is a myth that doesn't exist outside of the aforementioned theory-crafters' pet scenarios.

Regarding "single standard action replacing party member" - lets say you cast Summon Monster I and bring out a Celestial Dog. That Dog can effectively replace your Fighter for the duration of the spell at lower levels. You get a full round action, they get a full round action. The Medium Centipede can best a Fighter, considering the 1d3/1d3 Dex damage.

Again, this doesn't hold up to closer scrutiny. Even leaving aside the incredibly short duration of this spell, and that the spellcaster needs a full round (not just a full-round action) to cast it, a celestial dog has 6 hit points, which means that even a first-level fighter has it beat in terms of lasting in combat (not that it can anyway, with it's poor duration). It's also one protection from good away from being unable to attack a given foe.

The idea that a summoned monster can simply replace the party fighter outright is, quite simply, misguided unless you're looking at a very specific scenario for very specific parameters for a very short period of time.

Grease removes the Fighter from play by making it move at half speed or fall prone.

Untrue. See above.

Fly forces the Fighter to twiddle his thumbs while you do whatever you want to him.

Ranged weaponry. Magic items. The list here goes on and on.

Regarding taking his weapon to prevent tripping - without his weapon, he doesn't threaten nearly as many squares, reducing his ability to control a battlefield.

If we're talking about tripping, then without his non-reach weapon, he can still trip just as many possible squares as he could before. If you're referring to making trip attacks of opportunity, that's as easy as Improved Unarmed Strike or even a spiked gauntlet.

Regarding Reduce Person - It lowers his To Hit, his Damage, and his reach - since you're wearing Mage Armor or Bracers regardless of the presence of Fighters, your point is moot.

You're not making sense here. A Medium-sized fighter reduced to Small-size has the same reach as he did before. Likewise, my point from before was that the overall difference from better armor (hitting less of the time for average damage) versus a damage penalty (hitting an average amount of time for less damage) being equalized on a scale wasn't moot - you simply didn't understand that it's a way of showing how damage penalties are no more effective than a higher AC.

Regarding "if you take away this, he'll just do this" - Fighters are forced to specialize. Trippers are generally not Damage Dealers or Grapplers. Grapplers aren't Trippers or Damage Dealers. Damage Dealers are not Grapplers or Trippers. Taking away what they are good at forces them to do something subpar, like removing the Rogue's ability to Sneak Attack or the Archer's ability to stay at range.

See, this is where the theory-crafting goes completely off the rails. Characters aren't "forced to specialize" in anything except very broad terms (e.g. multiclassing can make it harder to excel in a given area). A fighter that has a trip weapon and Improved Trip can still hit things for damage.

Regarding "lol saves/rolls" - use spells that target weak saves. If your opponent has a high AC, hit his touch ac. If he has a high touch, hit his square. If he has a high fort, hit his reflex or will. If his Dex is high, hit another ability score. No one has all around perfect defenses, there is always a hole that is easy to ascertain.

Leaving aside the "easy to ascertain" bit (which is another way of saying that you'll have metagame knowledge about what opponents you're facing), this still presumes that you have a perfect choice of spells available and that the dice will go your way much more often than not. I've been trying to tell you for a while now that this isn't always so, and quite a few times it's only rarely so.

 

[Dandu]

If we determine things by how they are played out, I have successfully played spellcasters of between levels 5-10 who use battlefield control and never ran out of spells, and who were much more powerful than the party fighter.

So what conclusions are we to draw from our disparate experiences?

 

[kingius]

I think you meant it would be very enlightening for two of us, as there would be three in the game and two hold contending points of view to your own... in other words, you inadvertently slipped up and made out it would be enlightening for yourself, which I'm not sure is what you intended.

I could DM on here but I would need some time to prep if I was going to do that. I run a biweekly game of 3.5 as it is, so it's not impossible that I might have time to do that. Players who are jazzed up about character builds are just fine, I am not a 'killer DM', if everybody gets something out of the game then I'm happy.

I would hope that the class based / role based rivalry as to who is better would not affect the quality of the game, though. I do know that you are not giving the fighter his due... but then you have a particular idea of the way the game should work. If the mage cannot get his rest, he's doomed. It's worth bearing that in mind, as a closing comment on the high level fighter is a bad choice myth.