D&D 5E Truly Understanding the Martials & Casters discussion (+)

[DND_Reborn]

So I’ll actually be running calls for a few different magic weapons. If you or anyone has specific suggestions I’ll be happy to accommodate as much as I reasonably can.

In that case I would target armor/weapons that are

Tier 2 = uncommon
Tier 3 = rare
Tier 4 = very rare

Suggestions are:

Tier 2: (uncommon)
Adamantine Armor
Cloak of Protection
Gauntlet of Ogre Power
Javelin of Lightning
Shield +1
Weapon +1

Tier 3: (rare)
Armor +1
Belt of Giant Strength (21)
Bracers of Defense
Cloak of Displacement
Dagger of Venom (+1)
Flame Tongue
Mace of Smiting (+1)
Ring of Protection
Shield +2
Sun Blade (+2)
Sword of Life Stealing
Sword of Wounding
Vicious Weapon
Weapon +2

Tier 4: (very rare)
Armor +2
Arrow of Slaying
Belt of Giant Strength (23)
Dancing Sword
Dwarven Plate (+2)
Frost Brand
Nine Lives Stealer
Oathbow
Scimitar of Speed (+2)
Shield +3
Sword of Sharpness
Weapon +3

 

[Maxperson]

I addressed these points with a counterpoint not long ago. Talking about the counterpoint would be interesting. Just repeating your previous point and ignoring the counterpoint raised tends to just take the discussion toward repeating the point and counterpoint ad nauseum.

I don't recall seeing that counterpoint. Would you repeat it please?

 

[Maxperson]

So every encounter is a single boss monster? 4-8 enemies (1 boss, a couple lieutenants and 3-4 henchmen) within 80-120 feet (many high level aoes have 40-60ft radii) of each other is just beyond any kind of reasonable encounter building scenario? DMs just don't even think about challenging parties to make appropriate damage priority decisions at high level?

Sure..ok.

Every encounter 1 creature? No. Most encounters? Probably. I mean, if the party is 20th level and they're encountering anything on that list, there probably aren't any other creatures with that boss other than throw away fairly low CR mooks that are a waste to fireball anyway. Groups of more significant monsters will put that encounter over the top and wipe the group.

 

[Asisreo]

Also, I apologize for bringing this back up so late in the discussion, but I'm still just a little bothered by how people have called me dismissive or unreasonable when I feel like I've taken the time to directly address the points made with either a question for clarification or a direct answer to a question directed at me.

I don't call anyone dumb, I don't say something is obvious. I don't accuse anyone of bad faith. I get that I press hard on things and you might not understand why, but I feel like I've honored my side of a fair discussion.

And I know I haven't responded to everything directed at me. I'm honestly not ignoring anyone, but when a thread goes beyond 60 pages in less than a week and many posts have paragraphs of text, it's hard for me to find the time to respond. Especially since I try not to be misleading or state something outright false. I often do research before I respond or make sure to word my sentences carefully. I'm trying to make my posts thorough to respect the response of the other side of the discussion.

Which is why it bothers me to be accused of not discussing in good faith. I'm doing my best to be as faithful to the discussion and the thread as possible.

Again, sorry for the rant.

 

[tetrasodium]

Wasn’t the topic at the time

The use of flawed whiteroom analysis & bad statistics throughout the thread to support claims is exactly the topic relevant to not actually running numbers.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Every encounter 1 creature? No. Most encounters? Probably. I mean, if the party is 20th level and they're encountering anything on that list, there probably aren't any other creatures with that boss other than throw away fairly low CR mooks that are a waste to fireball anyway. Groups of more significant monsters will put that encounter over the top and wipe the group.

Gotcha. I think the disconnect is the assumption that the encounters must all include something on that list. Perhaps that's true but it seems like a strange shift in encounter budgeting from every other level of D&D. I suppose at the end of the day it's all pretty table dependent.

 

[FrogReaver]

IMO, the list of meaningful issues the Fighter could have to deal with is much longer, even more common, and he has much less flexibility to do something else when they arise.

IMO, In the grand scheme of things, fireball is a solid spell to base wizard generalized AOE damage on due to other spells also doing similar damage with different damage types. Ice storm and synaptic static come to mind as alternatives that can be used as needed against fire resistant/immunes and both do comparable enough damage.

@Maxperson

 

[FrogReaver]

The use of flawed whiteroom analysis & bad statistics throughout the thread to support claims is exactly the topic relevant to not actually running numbers.

So it Wasn’t the topic I was engaged in at the time…. Not sure what more you want or what your actual point is? Like, why does this matter?

 

[tetrasodium]

So it Wasn’t the topic I was engaged in at the time…. Not sure what more you want or what your actual point is?

It was only like a page ago.. You responded to me quoting someone other than you & we have been circling this topic of you not actually doing math since you declared the tool I linked to "Very unintuitive for me. So it will be easier for me to run my own calcs.".

 

[FrogReaver]

The numbers will vary, but in a world with fireballs, higher level group encounters won't just clump up and make it easy. They will also involve casters with counterspells a fair amount of the time.

Enemies don't really have to clump up for a 60ft diameter sphere to overlap 3-4 of them.

Counterspell is a really interesting point though. Games featuring alot of enemies with counterspell can really affect the wizards damage output. Likewise, even a Wizard counterspelling enemy casters can also eat a lot into his damage potential. I think it's an assumption @EzekielRaiden and I probably need to talk through. Should counterspelling others or being counterspelled yourself be using up slots that you would otherwise be gaining damage from. How often does this happen as a reasonable average and is it something that make sense to factor into our calculations? Or would it be better handled by just computing damage ignoring it and then let the reader apply a % reduction based on how often counterspelling happens in their games?

Though I'm also feeling like this is getting somewhat into territory like 'how often should we count the fighter as being controlled via wisdom save based control effects. Or restrained due to being in melee with enemies that have restraining attacks. Etc.' So I'm leaning more toward leaving it out and can just allow people to scale damages down depending on how often this kind of stuff happens.