When exactly does all this optimization apply?

[TarlSS]

You know, for all this talk of super-optimization with the cleric archers and the what not, I've never really played a game where it's been terribly apparent Mage> Fighter.

Not in D&D. It's showed up extraordinarily in GURPS and Alternity, but not D&D. Not for me anyway. However in systems where magic is less than pervasive, it seems to trump more or less everything.

Folks say that alternative effects> Damage, but I've never seen that happen, like ever. Most of the time fighters, or SOMEONE deals enough damage that such penalizing effects are more or less ancillary.

You guys like to bash warlocks and warmages and such- and while understandibly they're weak from a 'get all out' sort of standpoint, when have you guys actually had the oppurtunity to throwdown in a group that actually goes all the way? Are you arbitrarily disregarding the effect the DM has on the group? Because I think most of the design logic behind many of these weaker classes is under the assumption (Correctly) that a reasonable person is behind the DM screen.

[Tokorona]

I've ran into it a few times. And the thing is, you really never want to assumea reasonable person is behind the DM screen. I've ran into several who weren't, and the games rapidly became Randonnerf, the Playing.

[User3]

If by "reasonable" you mean, "caster-hosing ass-monkey," I'd agree with you. To nerf casters to down where the fighters are, you have to ride them hard; and then, depending on the optimization skills of the meleers, you may also have to reduce the ELs of the encounters, because an unoptimized meleer is simply useless against appropriate ELs.

The reason it doesn't happen much is that players who know how restrain themselves, and many players just don't know how to play casters. Building an effective caster requires some experience and insight into non-obvious things; breaking the game with one requires more.

[SirWayne]

It's kind of funny... I never played much AD&D, but in the 2E days, basically nobody knew what they were doing, and I got by just fine as a half-elf Ranger (yes, straight-classed, why do you ask? >_>). But since 3E I've played in about a dozen groups (mostly in the first two and last two years), and they've been split almost down the middle between "casual" gameplay and "min-maxing." And it's not like it's a minor difference-- one group had a "tank" being a Ranger/Horizon Walker with 40hp at level 8 and 6 average damage per swing, and one had a buffing Cleric with Divine Metamagic.

I don't know about "official" gaming like playing Mark of Heroes/RPGA (never had any patience for it; like heck will I let someone say a book I wasted $30 on is "restricted"), but in my experience playing with a new group is a crap shot as to how "effective" the players will be.

I think this is where I cross swords with Frank and the more "hardcore" guys here-- a large number of players, certainly not a minority; do not know or care to find out about the vast majority of "brokenness" out there, and if a group is batting at 4 CR less than their EL, there's nothing wrong as long as the DM adjusts to it and runs more goblins and fewer dragons. And contrary to the dispute in Caedrus's Paladin thread, sometimes having +4 saves and AC over everybody is enough to make you a "defense specialist" and get the DM to actually think you're breaking the game (this happened to me, heh).

All that being said, Tarl, the main reason most of us learn the in-and-outs of the game and optimization is probably for pre-emption-- if you don't know what to look out for, you won't be ready for it when it hits you. And this can happen to any group. Riddle me this-- who in your 3.0 group first figured out Polymorph Other? And what did the DM do once it came up (and the nonsensical "errata" started rolling out)? Gate or Planar Binding? My character became a Solar in my very first 3.0 campaign, and the DM had absolutely no idea what to do about it (eventually he asked me to start a new game and rolled up a PC for it).

I imagine that most tables have a "gentleman's agreement" not to use the silliest of it, but that's only the start. How do you make challenges for a high-level party that has both a Druid (who can use quillblast and slime wave to wipe out dragons by accident) and a Barbarian (who's on the enemies' side in most adventures that use demons or enchanters)?

Folks say that alternative effects> Damage, but I've never seen that happen, like ever.

One of my friends ran us through the incredibly lame adventure in the Eberron book, where we were nearly TPKed by Color Spray fired through the door our group was preparing to attack through, and only "won" because the NPC decided to call the cops.

I actually agree in that most groups I've played in has had damage be the fundamental currency of combat (of course, not one of my last four groups has had an honest-to-goodness Wizard... just Warmages or Warlocks :[ ), and as a DM I've taken steps to encourage that (changing save-or-dies to scaling "spirit damage" that causes the given effect when it overlaps your remaining hp), but it doesn't change the reality that a "smart" group is going to use their spells on black tentacles and solid fog, and not fireball-- at least, not at first-- and I wouldn't bet on every group not being "smart" enough to do that.

[Modesitt]

You know, for all this talk of super-optimization with the cleric archers and the what not, I've never really played a game where it's been terribly apparent Mage> Fighter.

I will describe for you a 3.0 Ravenloft campaign I played in. The game went from...I believe it was from 4 to 11. In that time, it became increasingly clear that the fighters simply didn't exist. At all. I helped create the characters through the method of asking them "What do you want your character to do?" and then walking them through how to make their character good at whatever they chose. Characters:

1. Cleric. The GM allowed me to use Spikes, so I just played a Spikes-using cleric instead of going all-out on Cleric archer. I used various buffs to improve myself(The GM was OK with Persistent spell), but usually spent a half dozen or more slots on the other PCs. The character's name was Saeval.

2. A human archer named Skitts. He was a Fighter/Order of the Bow Initiate.

3. Human Paladin/Templar. His name was Thayer. He used a sword and shield, never summoned a horse. He never summoned the horse for flavor reasons, not mechanical reasons(Horses in Ravenloft are evil).

4. Evil human wizard.

5. K'Thunk, Half-Orc Rogue 1/Bard/Deepwood Sniper. He started out casting spells, but quickly stopped casting anything but buffs. He multiclassed into Deepwood Sniper the moment he fufilled the prereqs(I believe that's what the Rogue level was for)

6. Craal, Human Ranger/Fighter/Devoted Defender. I helped him create his character and advance it.

7. Half-Elf Rogue named Pai. Used dual daggers and sneak attack.

8. For the final couple of sessions before the game disintegrated, we had a wizard who I helped pick out spells. He fully understood why save or dies kicked all sorts of ass, among other things.

We were usually down at leastone character and Craal didn't last long. Regardless, I can extract many lessons frmo this group.

1. Bards > Fighters. Really. Initially, K'Thunk felt weak because the groupthink was that all NPCs had great saves(They didn't, they were just lucky in the first few combats) and so spells that forced Saves were weak. And then K'Thunk noticed I was using GMW on myself and other PCs, sometimes including K'Thunk. So he started casting it on his bow and arrows. Keep in mind this is 3.0 rules where that stacked. Even with me spending slots buffing up other PCs(Particularly Skitts) in order to hold myself back and improve them, he ridiculously outclassed them with JUST GMW.

2. If the Paladin and the human fighter were fighting a guy, they'd identical. The Fighter sometimes got cleaves, the paladin sometimes smited, but most of the time it was just "I roll attack". I convinced the fighter to take up a PrC by pointing out he hadn't done anything but stand there and roll attacks for several combats. He took DD so he could protect the fragile Rogue. I like how that worked out.

3. Clerics > All. I had incredible saves due to PrC's and spells. This was kind of a big deal. Ravenloft forced a lot of 'horror' checks and such, most of which were based on Willpower. I got a LOT of mileage out of sometimes being the only PC who wasn't running away from the BBEG in fear. Incidentally, the Paladin's Fear abilities and saves actually mattered in Ravenloft. I, like, NOTICED them! Part of that was because I was casting Eagle's Splendor on him every morning, but the other part was him being very good about reminding us of the bonus he gave.

4. Wizards depend on competant play. The player of the Wizard had gambled this would be a very short game and blew over 90% of his startign wealth on 2nd level spells. He shot himself in the foot when the game then lasted a lot longer. He never really used his spells to their maximum capacity, vastly preferring to just cast attack spells. He tried to betray the group and failed(we didn't realize it at the time). We later killed him when it become obvious he was trying to screw us.

5. Rogues > Fighters, most of the time. Rogues are actually pretty good for new players. They quickly pick up what flanking is and why they should love it. They eventually understand the other ways, but they usually fall back to flanking for Sneak Attack even when other ways are available. They also like feeling really useful, such as when they say "Ok! I'll disarm the trap!" The're also not overloaded with abilities. While I did have to remind him about Evasion once, he remembered it after that because the idea that he could sort of 'dodge magic' really appealed to him. Unfortunately, this was RAVENLOFT. Most of our opposition was undead. This put a crimp in the rogue's style.

But most damningly was that we killed a 20th level fighter at level 10 with...5 PCs I believe. Maybe 6. No shenanigans on our part, just us killing him in a straight-up fight. The 20th level fighter was a mounted combat character that wielded a magic scythe. The PCs were trapped in a pocket plane. If you ran more than...200 feet in any direction, you just looped back to the other side. The GM's plan was for him to run around doing a full attack every round and just killing people. So my PC walked up to him, successfully survived one full attack, and then the wizard cast a spell on the horse to freeze it. Hold Monster, I believe. So I CDG'd his horse and cut the fighter's balls off in the process. He killed my char on his next action, but the rest of the PCs caught on that he was gimped and spread out, flinging arrows and spells at him from every angle. It took a little while, but he was eventually dropped.

[erik]

1165649710[/unixtime]]You know, for all this talk of super-optimization with the cleric archers and the what not, I've never really played a game where it's been terribly apparent Mage> Fighter.

It isn't obvious at lower levels, where the mage only has a few rounds in his cannon, but at higher levels the fighter just can't handle almost any equivalent challenge 1v1, whereas a mage has almost no problem handling any challenge 1v1.

Look at the monster manual and compare an iconic fighter against any challenge of his CR. He is going to get his ass stomped.

Match an iconic wizard against the same challenges and they have a decent chance at an outright win.

So when you form a party, do you want a guy who can take on that encounter all on his own, or a guy who is no match?


The only time I see a fighter able to keep up in the wild with their expected challenges is when they have some cheesed tactic (usually spirited charge+two handed power attack) to effectively make their damage ouput into a save or die based upon armor class.

1165649710[/unixtime]]
Folks say that alternative effects> Damage, but I've never seen that happen, like ever. Most of the time fighters, or SOMEONE deals enough damage that such penalizing effects are more or less ancillary.

Then you must not have played with a wizard who has used color spray, web, glitterdust, or solid fog... not to mention plenty of other save or die spells. I have played many many combats where casting just one spell made the entire combat a cake walk (usually one of those first three at low levels).

I'm playing living greyhawk a fair bit, and most of the fighter types I see at levels 8 and 10 are kind of depressingly sad. My character paired up with them is usually lower level and out-performing them handily.

On the flip-side, I recently played a few adventures where we got a table full of wizards (something like 4 wizards, 1 warmage, 1 rogue... no cleric or even potential user of a CLW wand), and they were some of the easiest combats I've had in a while even with some of the wizards wasting their time with crap like magic missle. We didn't even sweat that we couldn't heal damage, because we never ever had to.

[MrWaeseL]

It isn't obvious at lower levels, where the mage only has a few rounds in his cannon,

I disagree. Sleep is better than Wail of the Banshee at levels 1-3

[erik]

1165724251[/unixtime]]

It isn't obvious at lower levels, where the mage only has a few rounds in his cannon,

I disagree. Sleep is better than Wail of the Banshee at levels 1-3

But you either have sleep or color spray really with only a few castings and not every critter is vulnerable to them either. I'm saying that roughly by level 5+ you have enough combat altering spells that you can prepare enough to pick the appropriate ones per encounter, and still have enough for multiple encounters hopefully.

I've been vexed by my low level wizards fighting crap like undead or sightless creatures such that I was unable to sleep them, or color spray them (or even use silent image on the eyeless buggers), when I had just one or the other prepped.

[Crissa]

Why didn't silent image not work on the undead? Your DM say 'they can't see it'?

-Crissa

[MrWaeseL]

Didn't you know? Undead see lifeforce, not light

[erik]

Sorry, two separate monster sets.

Color spray however does not work on mindless undead because it is mind-affecting.

Wound up having sleep/color spray when fighting skeletons & zombies, wound up having color spray and silent image when fighting some nasty eyeless creature (effectively statted as a dire wolf). If I had more slots I would have been okay, but I was only level 1 or 2 at the time.