What, If Anything, Might be Wrong with the Warblade?

[Rystil Arden]

"Love is six rounds of squishing sounds" -- a well-built psion

Indeed. Just for fun, I ran the numbers on a 12th-level Psion using the simple tactic of Overchannel + Talented (to avoid damage) on Energy Ray[Fire] versus a Very Old White Dragon (CR = Party Level + 5, so this is expected to be so hard that the party automatically loses). Overchannel helps avoid SR, but still sadly 2 of the 6 attacks will be lost to SR unless the Psion has something else to raise Manifester Level, but we'll assume not. Anyway, including the 7/20 failure due to SR and the 1/20 miss chance of the ranged touch attack, the expected damage appears to be 375, which more than kills it.

So the Psion kills it alone if boosted by WRT of the other party members. And that's if the other party members twiddle their thumbs for those full rounds of actions they get to take.

 

[RigaMortus2]

To make the base Fighter class more appealing, someone on here suggested (long ago) that it would be cool if for every [Fighter] Feat (as opposed to [General] feat) the Fighter takes, they get a bonus. Something like +3 HPs per Fighter feat, or what have you. I really like this idea...

Some feats would have to be reworked with (descriptors) such as [General, Fighter] or what have you.

 

[castro3nw]

Indeed. Just for fun, I ran the numbers on a 12th-level Psion using the simple tactic of Overchannel + Talented (to avoid damage) on Energy Ray[Fire] versus a Very Old White Dragon (CR = Party Level + 5, so this is expected to be so hard that the party automatically loses). Overchannel helps avoid SR, but still sadly 2 of the 6 attacks will be lost to SR unless the Psion has something else to raise Manifester Level, but we'll assume not. Anyway, including the 7/20 failure due to SR and the 1/20 miss chance of the ranged touch attack, the expected damage appears to be 375, which more than kills it.

So the Psion kills it alone if boosted by WRT of the other party members. And that's if the other party members twiddle their thumbs for those full rounds of actions they get to take.

First off, thats pretty impressive... But I have a couple questions about yer thought experiment..

First Q, how sustainable is this? Sure, the first encounter of the day is toasted, but does the party then retire to the inn for the rest of the day?

And second Q... 1/2 an observation, really... How often is that gonna realistically happen? You have a monster with an energy vulnerability, and you're hitting it with a close-range attack "spell", the whole party is no more than 10' away from their nova (breath weapon bait), and the entire party has won initiative... 'Course, I understand its just a thought experiment... But just seems like alot going in their favor...

 

[Rystil Arden]

First off, thats pretty impressive... But I have a couple questions about yer thought experiment..

First Q, how sustainable is this? Sure, the first encounter of the day is toasted, but does the party then retire to the inn for the rest of the day?

And second Q... 1/2 an observation, really... How often is that gonna realistically happen? You have a monster with an energy vulnerability, and you're hitting it with a close-range attack "spell", the whole party is no more than 10' away from their nova (breath weapon bait), and the entire party has won initiative... 'Course, I understand its just a thought experiment... But just seems like alot going in their favor...

Sustainable? Nope, that's why it's called "nova-ing" Two of those will take up all her PPs for the day. Then again, if you fight more than two CR = Party Level + 5 encounters per day, you're in deep trouble Also, you probably don't need to fire all 6 of them to kill it (see below when mentioning Init), so that saves some--realistically you could probably handle three of these.

I'd say that on the first round, the party is almost always positioned so that everyone can get within 10 feet of any other character at some point during the round (whether before or after their move).

To the situation, I just wanted to go with something simple and quick, so I picked something similar to a recent encounter in one of my games. If we optimised it, the Psion would be using Empower Power with her focus, increasing damage output to exactly 130% (so 487.5 Damage). Also, an ideal opponent wouldn't have any SR (the Psion would destroy a creature with no weaknesses but no SR much more easily, for instance)

As to the initiative, the White Dragon's Init kind of sucks. You only to have about three full rounds with the Psion to kill it if they all succeed, so a few of your guys can go afterwards in init without a problem. And do remember that this is only damage done by the Psion. Everybody else still gets to take a full round worth of actions!

 

[hong]

You could also use a barbarian. 6 full attacks while raging will do pretty much the same thing, and a 12th level barb can do this 4 times per day.

 

[Rystil Arden]

You could also use a barbarian. 6 full attacks while raging will do pretty much the same thing, and a 12th level barb can do this 4 times per day.

Quite so! And it's worse if you get one of those spells that last for only "1 round" off on him first to buff. Wraithstrike comes to mind, though that spell is already broken even if it only gives you one round of full attacks rather than six.