What is CoDZilla?

[Sitara]

Oh come on people. In order to outfight fighters clerics need to buff, and by the time they are done the battle is usually over or close to it. Plus, once they have buffed once or twice, they are done for the day. the fighter can keep fighting all day long.

 

[Testament]

Oh come on people. In order to outfight fighters clerics need to buff, and by the time they are done the battle is usually over or close to it. Plus, once they have buffed once or twice, they are done for the day. the fighter can keep fighting all day long.

Quicken Spell says otherwise. Divine Metamagic says otherwise times 2. Cheesesticks (AKA Metamagic Rods) also say otherwise by a huge margin. And two of those are core book items! Nightsticks just took the C part of CoDzilla into the stratosphere, the D didn't even notice.

Druids laugh uproariously at that claim. I accidentally created CoDzilla with a Druid who cracked the 40 mark on AC at level 12 with only DMG magic items and a single casting of Barkskin, and was also capable of tearing most things to pieces in melee without cracking a sweat. And this was in Living Greyhawk, so said character was somewhat behind the DMG's wealth for level guidlines. All of this was without a single splatbook, I was able to go even more berserk with just Complete Warrior, the one that almost never gets called out for blatant cheese.

When you can accidentaly break a character, something is very very wrong.

 

[Fenes]

Oh come on people. In order to outfight fighters clerics need to buff, and by the time they are done the battle is usually over or close to it. Plus, once they have buffed once or twice, they are done for the day. the fighter can keep fighting all day long.

That depends on how many combats a day you have. In my campaign, it would have been very easy for a cleric to outfight a fighter.

 

[glass]

Err, not really. Wizards have better travel and damage-dealing spells; but they don't have healing spells, cast less spells per day, know only the spells in their spellbooks, and have no additional magical capacities. Clerics and Druids are much better spellcasters.

And after clerics and druids get flamestrike, they don't even much of an advantage in damage dealing either.


glass.

 

[Testament]

And after clerics and druids get flamestrike, they don't even much of an advantage in damage dealing either.


glass.

Druids get Firestorm, for when you absolutely, positively, have to nuke the absolute hell out of a large area. They also get more battlefield control spells than you can shake a stick at, and having easy on-demand access to elementals is always fun.

Clerics get better than damage. They get SoDs galore, and better yet, the 4 Words. With the absolute truckload of ways to jack your caster level up, the ability to just shaft all hostiles within 40 ft of you, no save allowed, trumps any direct damage spell. Do I really need to go into just how broken Blasphemy's table of effect is? I will anyway: the lowest tier of effect is Dazed. Action deprivation at those levels is just two doors down from insta-gib effects.

 

[Sitara]

First, clerics and to a lesser extent druids have far fewer singular damage dealing blasty type spells than wizards. flamestrike and fire storm arecool and all, but not much helpful since you are just as likely to hit your friends as your foes. Wizards and Sorcs though have their magic missiles, ray's, enervations disintegrate,e tc.

As for magic items, that is completely in the purview of the gm. If your gm hands out magic items willy nilly, its his fault the game gets broken, not the fault of a class.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Plus the divine casters can burn a 4500gp block of incense of meditation and have all their spells maximised. They can use a bead of karma for +4 caster level.

I've used a 12th level druid loaded up with maximised flame strikes and maximised call lightning storms and caused damage that made wizards cry like little babies.

Summoned animals + animal growth makes for pretty sick melee beasties.

Wall of Thorns is a fantastic area control spell.

While wizards get better out of combat spells, when it comes to damage high level druids rule the roost (and they get wildshape, two good saves and better hp on top of that!)

As Testament mentions above, Clerics get the amazingly broken blasphemy (see bead of karma again) and single target save or die spells which are fantastic. Plus the ability to protect themselves against magic in ways which make wizards cry with envy.

 

[prosfilaes]

As for magic items, that is completely in the purview of the gm. If your gm hands out magic items willy nilly, its his fault the game gets broken, not the fault of a class.

That specifically knocks out the popular style of play where DMs do make most magic items available at listed cost. Even if you don't play like that, the metamagic rods are fairly standard and useful items that could be expected to be reasonably common. Having to worry about every magic item whether giving it out could break the game is just not fun for the GM.

 

[Testament]

First, clerics and to a lesser extent druids have far fewer singular damage dealing blasty type spells than wizards. flamestrike and fire storm arecool and all, but not much helpful since you are just as likely to hit your friends as your foes. Wizards and Sorcs though have their magic missiles, ray's, enervations disintegrate,e tc.

As for magic items, that is completely in the purview of the gm. If your gm hands out magic items willy nilly, its his fault the game gets broken, not the fault of a class.

Enervation and Disintegrate are awesome and all, but unless you're a Warmage, direct damage is kinda 'meh' at the top end. I'd rather someone drop a Wall of Thorns* than a 5th level nuke, any day of the week. And Firestorm is almost completely shapable, friendly fire is not much of an issue.

And as for magic items, what about Item Creation feats? Some of the doomsday items are pretty easy to make.

*Seriously, who wrote that thing? As written they're invisible, semi-intagible doomsday vines that are near indestructible. A Mountain Giant Warhulk with an adamantine greataxe has the same ability to hack through them as a quadriplegic halfling child with a spoon .

 

[Sitara]

Yes and wizards get metamagic feats for free every 5th level.

Also, wizards get powerful teleportational spells; they also get blink, displacement and dimension door all of which are increadibly powerful in combat. Mirror image is just an insane spell; its basically 5 extra lives right there.

Finally, wizards are not bad at summoning too. Furthermore they get more spells that use attack rolls (like rays) than clerics or druids, giving them more options. Also, disintegrate is more powerful than nearly anything clercis or druids get.

Metoer Swarm completely crushes firestorm in terms of damage output and area of effect.

Druids and clerics are powerful yes, but IMO not near as much as people make them out to be. They are more useful in more situations than other clkasses, but not the most useful.