Why you should never assume OR-- How I screwed my character over with a single choice

[gizmo33]

I should also mention that I don't blame anyone. It's solely my own fault for assuming that I could be evil. It still sucks, though.

Really? The whole character concept hangs on the razor's edge of a single spell being available? If being able to turn yourself into a 5-headed dragon isn't a broken spell, then you would think it would be easy enough to research/invent an equivalent version for neutral dragons, assuming (as I do) that turning yourself into a dragon is what you mean by a character concept.

In any case, I'm sure that whatever your character concept is, it doesn't involve watching your spells bounce off of enemies for an entire battle. I'm not an expert when it comes to the various 3E splatbooks, but SR 30+ seems too high for CR 17 encounters - maybe the BBEG.

I think of myself as leaning more towards the powergaming end of the DnD spectrum, and yet some of the inferences I drew from the OP made my head hurt. What would possess another player to take that much of an interest in your spell to the point that they're reading it looking for loopholes? Although, that's something I would expect from a drow pirate.

Ultimately, I don't think the assumption was the problem. AFAICT you're talking about using one spell in a situation that was easily corrected. The symptom of the problem is that without this one spell you don't feel that your character can meaningfully contribute to an adventure. I think the reason for THAT problem is a number of different things, all of which I would expect from a game where people start out at 17th level.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

Supose another level or so and you can play with Shapechange? Should be able to get something of the right feel with that?

You have my sympathies there. I've been caught out by similar kinds of things before and it's quite irritating in an 'I did this to myself' sort of way. Doh!

 

[VirgilCaine]

I think you screwed your character over by not taking a single spell that didn't allow SR.

I meank, Maximized Empowered Melf's Acid Arrow or Maximized Ice Storm is a great way to smack something down.

 

[Henry]

Asmor, I heartily encourage thorough looking over of the Sorcerer spells in Spell Compendium. Not only are there some quite nasty spells like assay resistance, but there are a large number of spells that don't allow spell resistance; the Orb spells immediately comes to mind, as my players have plagued me with suddenly maximized Orbs and empowered orbs for a long time now.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

Asmor, I heartily encourage thorough looking over of the Sorcerer spells in Spell Compendium. Not only are there some quite nasty spells like assay resistance, but there are a large number of spells that don't allow spell resistance; the Orb spells immediately comes to mind, as my players have plagued me with suddenly maximized Orbs and empowered orbs for a long time now.

There is some great stuff in that compendium - well worth checking out!


/sidetrack

I had some fun with those very orbs. Nothing like a suprise sudden maximised/empowered orb for the shock value! And quickened true strikes.

Our Gm has done worse than banning them. He's asked us not to take them. And then smiled. Certainly got me worried.

While rambling on, I think they ought to have SR added onto them. But what the heck.

/end sidetrack

 

[Deset Gled]

Really? The whole character concept hangs on the razor's edge of a single spell being available?

I can definetally see this as being the case. Many classes or builds have a "conclusion", so to speak. At level 20, a monk has studied so hard he is no longer human. Same thing goes for the Alienist, or the 3.0 Shifter and Oozemaster (generally speaking, this design philosophy seemed more prominent in 3.0 than 3.5). This particular build seems to culminate with the ability to cast the Aspect spell. I can easily see how removal of this spell would kill the RP aspect of the character. After all, why did the character decide to be a sorcerer at all (instead of a wizard or bard) if not to follow in the footsteps of the dragon?

That being said, I would probably try to convince the DM to allow the evil character. IMO, lawful evil characters actually make for much more party-friendly characters than chaotic neutral.

 

[Umbran]

Our Gm has done worse than banning them. He's asked us not to take them. And then smiled. Certainly got me worried.

Yep. The good old cold war of spell and metamagic combinations - "if you don't use it, then neither will I"

 

[Joshua Randall]

This thread is just another illustration of why SR sucks as a game mechanic. As in, sucks the fun out of playing a spellcaster. [/rant off]

Jeez, now I feel all single-minded like diaglo....

 

[Asmor]

Just to address a couple things...

"One trick pony": I've never played a spell caster before, and I really didn't realize how important this was to my character. I understood that in the (I figured) rare case that I couldn't overcome something's SR, I'd be able to just polymorph myself into the badass 5-headed dragon and kick some ass, but I thought that SRs would be a lot lower than I've experienced. Granted, we only faced two creatures. One was a CR 22 with (I've now looked up) 33 SR, and the other was something like CR 13 with a very high SR (around or greater than the last guy) but he was physically very weak. I don't have any offensive spells that don't grant SR, but I've gotten the DM's permission to rework my character so I'm going to fix that. I'm also taking Assay Spell Resistance, and I'm going to work in Spell Penetration and Greater Spell Penetration.

"SR Sucking as a game mechanic": I basically have to agree with you there... Not only do spells give either a save or have an attack roll, but they also often have to contend with elemental resistances. Then you run into people with insane SR... it just gets annoying! And to make things worse, there is practically no way for a PC to get a decent SR. The highest I've seen is you could get like SR 25.

 

[Henry]

...but I've gotten the DM's permission to rework my character so I'm going to fix that. I'm also taking Assay Spell Resistance, and I'm going to work in Spell Penetration and Greater Spell Penetration.

Great to hear! Never hurts to be slightly more flexible than you think you'll need to be.

"SR Sucking as a game mechanic": I basically have to agree with you there... Not only do spells give either a save or have an attack roll, but they also often have to contend with elemental resistances. Then you run into people with insane SR... it just gets annoying! And to make things worse, there is practically no way for a PC to get a decent SR. The highest I've seen is you could get like SR 25.

Unless you take a Level Adjusted race such as Drow or Githyanki or similar. I believe drow have a SR of 5 + level? Also, don't forget that there are spells which give you SR, especially if you have a cleric in the group; dealing with high-level characters, those figures should be in excess of 25.