High Level 3.P Wizard Playtest, anything missing/wrong?

[virgil]

Now that there has been a rogue and a fighter playtest done, let's move on towards one of the big guys, the wizard.

Halfling Generalist Wizard - Level 15
Stats (32 point-buy): Str 6, Dex 18, Con 18, Int 28, Wis 14, Cha 8
Feats: Improved Initiative, Empower Spell, Extend Spell, Greater Spell Penetration, Quicken Spell, Scribe Scroll, Spell Penetration, Sudden Maximize, Sudden Widen, Toughness, and another two
Skills: Spellcraft, Craft (Trapmaking), Knowledge (Arcana, Dungeoneering, Nature, Planes, Religion)
Equipment: Heward's Handy Haversack, Spellbook filled with secret page, Headband of Vast Intelligence (Appraise, Craft - Alchemy, Fly) +6, Cloak of Resistance +6, Belt of Dexterity/Constitution +4, 45 colossal crossbow bolts with extended greater magic weapon cast the day prior, +2 Twilight Mithral Chain Shirt, Ring of Protection +2, Ring of Featherfall, Amulet of Natural Armor +2, +3 Mithral Buckler, Lesser Rod of Quicken, 12k more gold
Minions: 10-headed hydra zombie, pit fiend skeleton

* Marut: An incredibly easy fight, as the wizard goes first every time and fires off a maximized disintegrate and a quickened disintegrate (first from Sudden, second from class ability), not even letting the marut go from the damage.

* Yakfolk Cleric + Dao Party: Knowing the power of the wish engine, the wizard opens with a maximized empowered chain lightning on the cleric. As a side-effect, most of the dao are killed, and are readily handled with a quickened chain lightning. Once again, they never get to go.

* Warparty of Cloud Giants: Our wizard opens with a quickened mirror image and a widened glitterdust before sending his minions on the charge. One is horrifically killed through a readied prismatic wall, another through a high-damage trap made with major creation. A win is gathered after about four rounds each time.

* Rube Golderg's Weird & Symbols of Pain on an artifact: Detect Magic shows major mojo, forcing our fearless arcanist to attempt a greater dispel, followed by just walking up to artifact with an antimagic field.

* Gelugon and Iron Golem Bodyguard: Not wanting to be nice, we open up with banishment & quickened acid fog. Only the first fight gave the gelugon a chance to teleport out in melee, but did a pirouette for 8 rounds. The golem was readily handled by waiting for it to escape the acid fog with the two minions and really painful traps.

* Cornugon: The first fight is painful because both spells fizzle against its SR, at which point it charges and stuns and fears and enjoys a fine halfling meal. The second fight goes much the same way because it wins initiative. The third fight finally goes right, and the cornugon is banished.

* Death Slaad riding a Titanic Toad: This could've been a painful fight, but the wizard was lucky and won initiative twice, banishing the slaad and letting his minions do the dirty work. Things were a touch more dicey on the third fight, where he got smacked with a power word blind and then implosion while attempting to recover.

* Mature Adult White Dragon: The first fight looks good when the wizard teleports over and casts a quickened extended irresistable dance. The second and third fight look fairly harrowing when the dragon rolls well on initiative, giving it the chance to bite and snatch the halfling. However, grappling doesn't prevent spellcasting anymore, so it does the tango anyway.

* Pair of Glabrezu: We try hard here to use banishment, which works as long as you throw in a quickened one for the first round. However, on the third fight, one stayed standing through both and used power word stun. It then summons a vrock and the two rip the wizard to shreds before he can act.

* Harem of Succubi: Our first fight does not go down well, because the wizard buckles under pressure and rolls a one on the very first charm monster. A quickened widened empowered maximized fireball (boy is that a mouthful) manages to overcome this incredibly sexy challenge the next two times, however. Also, I'm noticing that the double entendres are rather thick today.

* Twenty Dire Bears: He can fly, they can't. He can make large walls of stone to pen them in and fill it with cloudkills and acid fogs, and they can't.

* Dozen medusa mounted archers on hellcats: First fight, he gets stoned. Second fight, he unloads a handy quickened widened maximized empowered fireball. Third fight, he survives being petrified, but gets mauled unto death by a lot of pouncing hellcats.

* Forest made of lava and infested with hostile fire-element dire badgers: Wow, this is easy, what with teleport as a spell-like ability.

* Pair of Beholders: A very bad fight for the wizard because of the antimagic cone, especially since his little legs make it difficult to get out. Wins through dumb luck and two castings of telekinesis on the second fight.

* Slaughterstone Behemoth: Painful fight here due to limited movement options in a cave. The wizard actually loses initiative the first two times, and goes down painfully. The third fight goes better with a readied prismatic wall.

Score: 80% success rate. Several of these fights would've gone differently had it not been for the metamagic ability of the generalist, which would bring score to a bit less than 70%, and might've gone down another 5% if we didn't have the versatility of the bonded item and limited wish 1/day. Overall, the wizard is looking to be a bit much for this level, going by the 50% success rubric.

[Kaelik]

1) How did you do the spell list, did you assume a basic knowledge of what you were facing? Did you expend slots on Divinations and then do the same? Did you prepare a set spell list for all encounters? Did you prepare it knowing generally what you would be facing?

2) You seem to have picked the feats to arrange for versatility over power and 1/day awesomeness over 4/day kickassery in a way that is useful for this test, but less so in game. I can't really fault you for that though, since in any game, a Wizard will be optimized for the play style he can expect from the DM.

3) I have not been keeping track of 3.P very much, but apparently Generalist Wizards can apply Metamagic to spells spontaneously? Besides this information putting all those Sorcerer debates into even better perspective (They thought 1d6+level damage as a touch attack compared to that?) does it apply to Quicken as well? How does it deal with level?

4) The Wizard is way too good is something I can agree with, I have a slight disagreement with Frank about relative power levels, while I agree that being a Cleric or Druid is awesome because you know every spell, I feel that a well prepared Wizard can have in his spellbook and prepare each day, a list that makes him more powerful then those classes. So that said, I am not at all surprised that a Wizard was significantly more successful then the general rubric. Especially not the 3.P Wizard, since he has apparently been given a host of SLAs and other abilities.

However, could you provide the link if you have posted this on Paizo, and the same for any future playtests. I enjoy watching them complain and decry any such tests as much as I do the actual tests themselves.

[Username17]

Just off the top of my head, detect magic won't save you from a symbol of pain. The range of detect magic and the symbol are identical, and it has a readied action. The very instant you can see it with DM, it is already blasting you.

Second, Disintegrate is Spell Resistance: Yes. So it really seems kind of unlikely that you would have 1st turn Falcon Punched the Marut three times in a row. It has a shit Touch AC and a shit Fort save, but it does have a SR of 25.

-Username17

[virgil]

I assumed the following memorized spell list:
8th - Irresistable Dance, Prismatic Wall
7th - Limited Wish, Extended Acid Fog, Greater Shadow Conjuration
6th - Chain Lightning, Banishment, Disintegrate, True Seeing
5th - Cloudkill, Overland Flight, Telekinesis

Damn, misread the activation range on symbol. Not quite certain how to fix that part, arcane sight?

As for the SR part, although I only needed a 6+ to beat it, I did fail twice in total. But I was lucky and never failed on the maximized disintegrate, which was the insta-kill shot; much like how I was unlucky on two of the fights with the slaughterstone behemoth where it went first (with its -1 initiative).

I still haven't decided on two feats and 12k gold, which could be used to shore up the durability concern. The wizard does seem to drop down to a level about on par with Frank's high level rogue after using up the free limited wish & metamagic levels.

3.P generalist wizards get half their class level in spontaneous metamagic levels per day. Which means that this wizard can slap a cumulative total of 7 spell level increases of any metamagic feat he knows onto any spell he casts.

The critical reaction to these tests on the the Paizo boards has been lacking. There were some reactions to the very first one I did, the barbarian, but pretty much nothing on this one or the high level fighter playtest.

[Kaelik]

I didn't see the high level Fighter Playtest. Did you put it up here?

[virgil]

No. I put it up on Paizo, and forgot to put it here. One moment...

A couple notes. Cleave is useless once you can attack more than once per round, and Great Cleave is about the same level of use (yes, that's a very backhanded opinion).

Dwarven Fighter Playtest - Level 15
Stats (32 point-buy): Str 24, Dex 18, Con 20, Int 14, Wis 16, Cha 6

Feats: Backswing, Careful Targetting, Combat Expertise, Deadly Aim, Devastating Strike, Exact Targetting, Greater Weapon Focus, Greater Weapon Specialization, Improved Critical, Monkey Grip, Overhand Chop, Pinpoint Targetting, Power Attack, Toughness, Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization

Skills: Intimidate, Perception (cc), Ride, Survival

Equipment: Belt of Str/Dex/Con +6/+4/+4, +1 ghost touch mithral full plate of moderate fortification, Cloak of Resistance +6, +1 cold iron scythe, composite longbow w/25 +1 arrows & 200 nonmagical arrows, Ring of Protection +1, Amulet of Natural Armor +1, +1 Heavy Wooden Shield, Potion of Air Walk x3, Potion of Haste x3, Potion of Enlarge Person (CL 10) x3

* Marut: While there are spells that allow you to overcome construct immunity, it's only for sneak attacks, meaning our fighter is going to have to try to barrel through. He can't run away to try ranged (d-door at will), but he'll at least move away to try and quaff a haste potion for the first round. The fast healing and DR make it so he can barely do damage, all the while suffering blindness and being hit by a freight train. Loses all three times.

* Yakfolk Cleric + Dao: Much like the rogue, it's all over if he goes after the dao first with the wall of force closing him off & poison gas killing him off. Unlike the rogue, he can't get out of a wall of stone after killing the cleric; except through violence. He can only bash down 4 inches per round, against the dao's combined 16 inch thick layer every round.

* Warparty of Cloud Giants: First fight, I try melee, and charge with Devastating Strike and Power Attack. While I do well with damage, it's actually not enough to take it down (damn close). They then proceed to rip him limb-from-limb. Other tactics are tried, but they output a combined attack power that is just too much for him to beat. Loses all three times.

* Mature Adult White Dragon: Dragons have what some call the (Awesome) subtype, and are actually tougher than what their CR indicates, which is why he's fighting a CR 12; because it's true power is actually CR 15. The first fight was a censored bar of gore (all hit, two crits) when the dragon witlessly tried to get in melee with the fighter. The second fight involved the dragon going invisible and moving away and doing some buffing, and opens with a full attack while surviving the received full attack and finishing him off the next round. The third fight is the same result. 1 out of 3.

* Death Slaad riding a Titanic Toad: Our poor little fighter is blinded every time for a noticeable amount of time. Every fight, he flails blindly in the air while getting pounded on by the frog and the death slaad laughs out of reach and hurls piddly fireballs, unto death. I discover that Power Attack is a joke in this fight, because I take too big of a hit in attack to even bother. I even assumed the fighter got to start the fight with haste. Three losses.

* Cornugon: Illusions abound at first, giving the cornugon a chance to get within 25' and open up outside of his 5' step reach. He's just barely able killed the first fight, but the second two fights are painful deaths because he failed one of the saves against stun.

* Gelugon and Iron Golem Bodyguard: The first fight is rather pathetic, because he moves to charge the gelugon, does some damage, and then runs in slow motion until killed. The second & third fight is a valiant attempt to stay out of melee, but the gelugon just surrounds himself with ice and gives its side unholy aura, making the terrain such that the fighter goes in melee with a punching golem surrounded by a cone of cold. He fails to overcome this challenge at all.

* Rube Goldberg's Weird & set of Symbols of Pain on the artifact: The pair of symbols of pain fail to do anything, but weird kills him on the first attempt. The second attempt results in him taking sufficient strength damage to stagger beneath the weight of his gear, which he can then just drop the tower shield and walk completely unhindered. The third attempt hurts, but he continues. Two out of three, our best yet.

* Pair of Glabrezu: With chaos hammer and mirror image, he is absolutely unable to do sufficient damage from range to survive, so we have to suck it up and go melee. He gets surrouned by over a dozen glabrezu (of which he misses the real one), gets grappled, and gets pounded to paste; all three times this happened. Never even bother to used power word stun.

* Harem of Succubi: I'm going to assume he has some kind of immunity to charm, because otherwise this fight is over before it begins. It's not so much a harem (16) of succubi, as it is 15 succubi and 4 vrocks (6 on the third fight), because he pretty much kills one succubus while the others attempt to summon help. He ends up having to close his eyes for a real chance to actually hit the vrock, but it's still not enough to survive this abyssal horde. Ultimately loses all three times even after giving the succubi a severe handicap of being unable to use compulsions.

* Twenty Dire Bears: About bloody time he can do something. He has enough arrows for him air walk out of reach and kill them at his leisure. An actual hat trick for the very first time. Just ignore the fact any slob at level 5 and a hippogriff mount can do the very same thing.

* Dozen medusa mounted archers on hellcats: A good idea to get out of reach with his eyes closed until he's 40' or higher in the air (easier to sprint). Fortunately for our fighter friend, his AC is such that they need natural 20s to hit him, and the hellcats can't even reach him. Unfortunately, he can only do this to kill the medusa (invisible hellcats). He attempts to reach the ground using total defense & shield, and dies from the sheer volume of attacks. Triple loss.

* Forest made of lava and infested with hostile fire-element dire badgers: While he can survive for a long period just by drinking his potions of air walk and going over it, the forest needs to be less than 15 miles deep, because otherwise he runs out of potion and dies to the environment. He has Survival maxed out, so we can assume if there is a thin part of the forest that can be trekked through, he finds it. Because this is based on luck and geography on the DM's part, I'll give the fighter a 2 out of 3.

* Pair of Beholders: They both open with fear, slow, & sleep, which takes him out half the time right there, the other half he lives long enough to kill one before being killed by the other. Triple loss.

Notes: The results were pathetic, slightly less than a 20% success rate. His few successes were practically freebies that could be gotten by characters five levels ago (or sooner in the case of the dire bear). This was a build that was heavily focused on making his numbers as big as possible, which not only were insufficient against the opposition, but his versatility was virtually nonexistant and yet wholly reliant upon his gear at the same time. Attempts to spread himself so as to actually have some versatility would make his numbers at any activity too subpar and thus still be unable to overcome enough challenges to make a difference.