Tamarask -- or why I started worrying and stopped loving the

[virgil]

When he first saw it used, I just had a bunch of huge greatswords (basically, actually was darkwood warmauls or something to that effect). They weren't magical, and were carried by my huge multiarmed animated object (which I had for three levels by that point). So it was X number of attacks (X = caster level or 15, whichever's lower), each doing 4d6 damage. Apparently 'prepared' means what it says, actually thinking far enough ahead to bring something that's better than nearby rocks.

'That' was considered exploitation of the rules. I was honestly surprised he didn't ban the spell, with the opinion he had with it.

I didn't use actually prepared weapons until we had the final boss fight or two, when I actually started packing the super-flasks.

[Cynic]

Yeah, He's got the tactical deviousness to be good.

He's just being humble.

I'm going to go and throw up in the toilet now.

Note, I'm still rejoicing that that this campaign is over.

This hell-hole of this campaign is over, might i add.

[virgil]

In my hope that it was because it was an experimental, pre-planned mega-campaign (and to get to still be a player), I decided to join in a new game being run by one of the DMs. Not the really bad one, as I'll never be in a game he runs again, but the better one.

Turns out he's using Paizo's Handbook, pretty much loving any and every thing they churn out, and is in fact running us through their Pathfinder adventure modules. They're also using the "death at negative Con score" house rule, but only because Paizo suggested it; that and a few aspects of the 3.P rules were actually seen in my game because of either personal house-rules, or aspects of the AE system. The two DMs were in my game for a time, but eventually quit (both nicely, and one admitted it was a philosophical difference in playstyle, and not just rules), and actually disagreed with the house rules at that time. Now that Paizo uses them, they love/accept the rules whole-heartedly...*grumble*

When I was about to make a character, I found out that wizard was already called, and nobody was playing the cleric. I decided to be a 'good boy' and play one, as that way I can at least look like I'm playing nice and I'm not a crap character; that and the DM only has experience with me being a wizard, who uses different strategies. In order to make sure I can choose to not svck later on, I chose to be a True Neutral cleric with the Repose & Death domains along with positive energy channeling. I played up the RP-aspect to make my version of necromancy non-evil, something about undeath being a form of Purgatory when given proper guidance (such as myself).

I was surprised at the ease of turning off my in-game intelligence, which made the game much easier to enjoy. Many spell slots were wasted on casting CLW, and all I used was the bleeding touch ability from the Death Domain, along with the occasional sleep touch.

We're about four or five sessions in, and I'm already hitting hurdles. Either the DM read the rules with a bias, or he's 'subtly' making a house rule that acid doesn't ignore hardness; all in response to a random idea I had of suggesting to the wizard that he use acid splash to break the lock from a distance to make sure there aren't any traps in it.

We just finished fighting an 10HD greater barghest (with our level 4 selves), which apparently had some other stuff going on, because its strength was greater than normal. Before I could finish telling the party to not harm its corpse too much, the DM was already realizing that I can animate it next level. At this point, he makes a house rule that you cannot animate outsiders, claiming that their stats are too good (which was an overall complaint he's had from the beginning, the pit fiend being the biggest example).

Depending on how the next couple sessions play out when I reach 5th level and start animating everything else, I'll just have to quit rather than grin & bear it like last time.

[SphereOfFeetMan]

Before I could finish telling the party to not harm its corpse too much, the DM was already realizing that I can animate it next level. At this point, he makes a house rule that you cannot animate outsiders, claiming that their stats are too good (which was an overall complaint he's had from the beginning, the pit fiend being the biggest example).

Gah. There is little I resent more than on-the-spot houserules which invalidate character options that the Dm had already approved.

If I feel a Dm is capable of spontaneous houserules, I explicitly ask about my character and how the the Dm runs things before the game begins. In this example, I might have asked "Are you running turn/rebuke undead as per normal rules?" If the Dm said yes, and then pulled this Barghest stunt, I would call him on it, and probably quit the game.

[virgil]

He had been whining about the stat power of outsiders for months, so this is not an unexpected event. The real test will come when actually start animating things, especially if we find an ogre corpse.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

Here is a houserule for you:

"You cannot drop a weapon and draw a weapon in the same round and still make a full attack. No, not even if you have Quickdraw."

Now I realize that I action-abuse for all that it is worth. +6 BAB characters in Tome games have Quickdraw by default. DM has ruled that I cannot:
Drop a longbow, draw 2 weapons, make 4 attacks with the weapons (full BAB, TWF).
but that I CAN
Drop a longbow, draw FOUR darts, and throw them. "Darts are ammo, and drawing them is a non-action rather than a free action".

/rant

[Cynic]

Here is a houserule for you:

"You cannot drop a weapon and draw a weapon in the same round and still make a full attack. No, not even if you have Quickdraw."

Now I realize that I action-abuse for all that it is worth. +6 BAB characters in Tome games have Quickdraw by default. DM has ruled that I cannot:
Drop a longbow, draw 2 weapons, make 4 attacks with the weapons (full BAB, TWF).
but that I CAN
Drop a longbow, draw FOUR darts, and throw them. "Darts are ammo, and drawing them is a non-action rather than a free action".

/rant

WHAT THE EFF? that's pretty stupid on his part.

[virgil]

Either the DM is trying to be 'realistic', or he somehow thinks that being able to switch two-handed weapons in the middle of an iterative attack is OP, or maybe he's afraid of the tactic where you charge someone with a dagger while mounted and suddenly whip out a lance to fool someone.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

What he didn't like is me using the Blitz+PBS+highcrit+Kiai! combo one round and the TWF+MonkNaturalAttack+PowerAttack+DRavoidance+highcrit+Kiai! the next.

And a quote from yesterday: "Archers are supposed to be weak characters"

[Cynic]

What he didn't like is me using the Blitz+PBS+highcrit+Kiai! combo one round and the TWF+MonkNaturalAttack+PowerAttack+DRavoidance+highcrit+Kiai! the next.

And a quote from yesterday: "Archers are supposed to be weak characters"

I've heard that idiocy before.

A quote from the now defunct game this thread was based on.

"Why cleric archer? That's weak."

[virgil]

Those same people quickly moved their opinions to A_Cynic being a dumpster diving, number-twisting, munchkin. I wasn't thought of in nice terms with my wizard either.

[virgil]

Same group/DM, new game, playing 3.P

Managed to convince the DM to allow a warlock (went with a fey theme) in a Paizo adventure path where giants are the overwhelming majority of targets.

At this exact moment, level 11.

Just got forbidden the feat Supernatural Transformation onto my Eldritch Blast, which means I'll take another feat later for the Vitriolic Blast Essence invocation. Also suffered a mid-game ruling that overlapping Walls of Fire do not stack their damage, so a large creature standing on two parallel walls will take damage as if there was only one (just more effort to get fully out). Hearing lots of complaining about the invocation that acts as targetted dispel magic for two rounds (one initial, rolls again next round automatically), but it's not nerfed so far.

And they still think that my 8d6 Eldritch Blast (greater item for +2d6 included) is awesomely fine because of its reliability.

Ugh.

[Username17]

Wait, wat?

This is Pathfinder Beta masturbation, right? You're high enough level that you could just be a Druid and walk around wall of thorns punking people.

-Username17

[virgil]

To quote the DM, "But it wouldn't be at will", where I would get to abuse all of the large creatures in tight spaces by stacking Walls of Fire like crazy.

I chose to play a warlock because I figured I could actually do poorly enough with that to be on par with everyone else. Also, I used to be a wizard in the last game, where I breezed through things with spellpower and the frustration there was deep.

[Username17]

So wait a minute... if you do something good they sit around and sulk and let you do it. But if you d something that blows then they throw a monkey wrench at you? What the fuck?

Have you considered just sitting down and drawing a diagram?



See for the first part it's pretty simple: when you throw a SOD on the first turn in 10 combats you kill like 5 enemies - which is by definition at least as much as every single other character is capable of doing.

The second part is equally easy to explain. When you dump a big effect like a briar web you get more screen time than someone gets by swinging a longsword and doing 8 points of damage. By a huge amount. Indeed, if you did nothing else for a 6 round combat, you'd still have more screen time just based on the fact that you did that one awesome thing.

What this means is that if people are limited by charges on their cool super moves that doesn't really matter, because battles don't actually last long enough for the crappy maneuvers to catch up to the fire and forget spells even if wizards and druids had to go to sleep every time they cast a big multi-target spell in a battle (which by the way, they don't).

I men, sure, you could show him the Tome Monk as an example of how to get out of these difficulties, but frankly I don't think they'll go for it. There's a certain kind of person who just won't accept a character accomplishing anything by swinging swords. They just get locked into Anime thinking where it takes like 20 sword swings to accomplish anything and a super attack spell does it all in one go. Forgetting of course than in Anime land those 20 sword swings take the same amount of time as a spell and thus those anime fighters should be getting individual actions like "attack 20 times."

Really you've just got to level with them that unlimited uses don't mean fuck all when the Fighters run out of hit points before they've had 6 combats in a day.

-Username17

[virgil]

This entire thread details the trials and tribulations I and A_Cynic went through in the prior game. It's not like there weren't in-game nerfs then. Solid fog and its ilk were just plain removed, amongst other things.

I've mentioned the whole "fights don't last long enough for at-will to matter" before, but it's not something they consider a real argument; because a sorcerer wouldn't fill his memorization slots with nothing but dispel magic, fly, wall of fire, magic missile, invisibility to create the effect I do. Fights last long enough for me to throw down three walls, which I do, and the damage gets stupidly better than everyone else's if the enemy is sufficiently constrained for me to overlap walls (which happens more often than they realized).

For wall of thorns specifically, that would do almost less than jack squat. Everything we fight has ~25 or more AC, so its damage would be minimal at the best of times. It's the same reason why I never learned chilling tentacles, ESPECIALLY in the face of 3.P's grappling rules.

Now, spike stones, there's where it's at in this game; and I just got a staff of it. However, a 3.P staff only has 10 charges, is rechargeable (1 per day, maximum), and the specific staff I got costs 2 charges to use spike stones.

[Username17]

Wall of thorns isn't to do damage, it's because it is made of arbitrarium and takes forever to cut through. Then you cast summon swarm and wait for enemies to die.

-Username17

[virgil]

That would require me being a druid, and I got enough grumbles back when I was a wizard and doing similar techniques with illusions and other walls.

I'll contemplate putting it into a staff to see how it works out, though our preference for high Strength opponents will make it easier for them.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

Here is the fun part, from; http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/wallOfThorns.htm


Wall of thorns may not be destroyed for duration of combat:
"A wall of thorns can be breached by slow work with edged weapons. Chopping away at the wall creates a safe passage 1 foot deep for every 10 minutes of work. Normal fire cannot harm the barrier, but magical fire burns it away in 10 minutes."

You read that right, you can hack through it and die. Or, start hacking though it and be attacked over an HOUR later and still only be 6 feet through it (you can fairly easily encase someone in this enough to keep them locked up for hours). If you have Fireball, you still have to suck up a combat in it.

Wall of thorns is crazy hard to move through:
"Creatures can force their way slowly through the wall by making a Strength check as a full-round action. For every 5 points by which the check exceeds 20, a creature moves 5 feet (up to a maximum distance equal to its normal land speed). "

Assuming you have a crazy-town high strength such as the CR 13 Storm Giant (str 39), you still only have +13 to that check. So you can move a max of 2 squares (round down in players favor) as a Full Round Action.

[virgil]

Not that it matters terribly, the DM has stated outright in regards to spellcasters "any way I could find to nerf em I'd probably give it a shot." Aka, he feels that spellcasting breaks the game and is the cause of all the problems. Part of this delusion is that a party of non-spellcasters in 3.P can keep up perfectly fine so long as they fight brutes only, while a party of pure casters simply annihilates everything.

[Judging__Eagle]

To quote the DM, "But it wouldn't be at will", where I would get to abuse all of the large creatures in tight spaces by stacking Walls of Fire like crazy.

I chose to play a warlock because I figured I could actually do poorly enough with that to be on par with everyone else. Also, I used to be a wizard in the last game, where I breezed through things with spellpower and the frustration there was deep.

your group is full of idiots.

and not just stupid idiots.

willfully stupid idiots.

They see that what they're doing doesn't work, and then they proceed to keep doing it.

That's like, the defenition of a Slaad trying to get around in not-Limbo.

Yes, your fellow players are no better than insane frog-people.

[CatharzGodfoot]

At least they play with nerfed spellcasters.

[virgil]

I'm surprised, the DM has heard of Frank (I brought up the Tome series); "an enormous douchebag" being his summary, from that antics he's seen on various message boards.

[Maxus]

I'm surprised, the DM has heard of Frank (I brought up the Tome series); "an enormous douchebag" being his summary, from that antics he's seen on various message boards.

Ergh. When will people understand?

Okay, yeah, Frank can be a dick. So can anyone else, given provocation.

But being a dick, either all the time or at intervals, does not exclude you from also being right. Frank and K's work goes a long way towards making DnD a more enjoyable game. They provide rule fixes, race fixes, class fixes, and some attempts at straightening out some of the messes certain spells cause.

Your DM, however, does not seem to want to play DnD. At least, not DnD without butchering the rules. Ask him what magic should be doing, or if he thinks there should be magic in the game at all. If he wants to play a game about people beating on the ankles of giant monsters until the monster somehow dies, he should just come out and do it.

[virgil]

I know he desperately wants multi-round epic fights, and ultimately that's his motivation to nerf casters; they are part of the Rocket Launcher Tag syndrome that he chaffs against. That's very much the reason why he'd practically run screaming from reading the Tome series by the time he hit the Assassin (yes, it's in alphabetical order).