You shouldn't get extra money, level 20 characters are expected to fact CR 21 monsters from time to time.
The argument seems to be if you optimize the Fighter, you should to the same to the Pit Fiend.
Printable View
Even if we took implications as rules, the first problem is you don't know what square he is in. You can attack a square, but you can't attack "all squares" so that whole 1 in 100 chance before you even get to the total concealment miss chance is kind of a big deal.
Greater Dispel your buffs from your 14 potions and 2 permanencied spells when you try to snipe a mummy from not cover, then combine cones of cold, ice storms, fireballs, walls of ice, and periodic dispels as you attempt to drink potions of fire resistance and ice resistance again, all from actual total concealment (mostly). All against your vastly exceeding WBL build that relies on consumables.
I'm ready to have you refuse to test your assumptions again while demanding that you be allowed to exceed WBL.
a) A stock Pit Fiend does not have mummies. It has the capacity to make mummies.
b) Mummy sniping will be saved until after the Pit Fiend is dead.
c) A Pit Fiend that creates a large number of mummies is super-easy to kill. The Pit Fiend has a 5% chance of being paralyzed by fear once a day for each mummy that it creates and the second mummy rot is lethal for a stock Pit Fiend (the first could be dealt with by the wish). So the strategy is: Wait for the Pit Fiend to suicide-by-Mummy then come in and clean up the Mummy-mess it made.
Someone neutral needs to volunteer to run a test.
It's here.
The primary strategy is: get surprise and damage it with multishot then win initiative and kill it with a full attack. The primary strategy has a significant degree of redundancy and overkill and high odds of success.
It really shouldn't. It's 100% reliant on the theory that there exists cover within 20 feat of every other location of cover for him to move from over and over and over, and that he will magically divine the fact that a Pit Fiend he can't see is there before he shoots at a Mummy, and that his detect magic someone gives him information without him studying as if he had studied for 3 rounds.
This is my point, the build literally couldn't even function if he didn't have advance knowledge he was only fighting a Pit Fiend, because the same strategy he has to use against a Pit Fiend will instantly kill him against a Balor or Dragon, and he has to somehow never encounter a wall or a hill or anything ever at any point or else he loses to all of those.
Isn't he invisible?
He has True Seeing. Or were you talking about something else?
Now I feel stupid, checking Create Undead, it allows control of the undead you make. :smallredface:Nevermind, that's wrong.
If he's successfully hidden, can't he wait three rounds?
That could definitely be a problem in a gauntlet scenario.
Likewise, this could be a major issue.
I think I've mentioned it already but a Pit Fiend also has no method of actually controlling any undead it creates other than it's decent social checks. In any case piles of mummies aren't in the Pit Fiends example organization.
Okay I'm only four pages in, but Jorg, have you ever even seen a TO build? Because I wouldn't even put these builds near middle limits of PO
Well yes, he is. Does that mean he walks around not using cover to hide and relying on his invisibility, even though Balors have True Seeing always on or a summoned Erinyes (or an unsummoned one) with True Seeing? Or a Titan with invisibility purge on when he walks around a corner or up to a Persistent Image of a wall and loses his invis?
Does he snipe a Mummy he sees when he can't see a Pit Fiend or not? If he does, does he literally speak words (DC 0 + 1 per 10ft against the Pit Fiends +29 Listen or 300ft auto hear and pinpoint location out to 100ft automatically) to go invisible again, or does he not go invisible again, and revert to relying on the aforementioned cover?
No, he doesn't have True Seeing. He has the ability to cast True seeing one time that he bought from a spellcaster at 1/5 the actual price. But if he casts that at the beginning of the day, it lasts 9 minutes. If he doesn't, then it's not active, so he can't see through an illusion 120ft away, or 5ft away. If he casts True Seeing the first time he sees an illusion aura with his detect magic, then he has to once again speak words, thus telling the Pit Fiend he is there and if he's within 100ft, exactly where he is, and boy howdy, sure hope he's not more than 120ft away from the Pit Fiend and an Illusion blocking line of sight to the Pit Fiend, because if he is, he might be in for a rough surprise when it turns out that just casting True Seeing and seeing through some illusions doesn't stop the Pit Fiend from summoning other creatures or teleporting to preprepared zones of Persistent Image and regular walls that prevent enemies from reaching him until he finishes summoning 4 Bone Devils or whatever.
This is what I mean, there are billion reasons his "I have True Seeing once a day for 9 minutes if I speak aloud" might not solve the problem, varying based on his tactics, and the opposition he faces, but his assumption that he will always get the drop on everyone ain't great.
Maybe he can? Is he going to? Is he going to move, then wait three rounds, then move again, always? If he does, I can foresee a few problems he might encounter against Dragons, or Balors, and some even against Pit Fiends, that I'm keeping secret in the vain hope that anyone might actually dare risk actually testing their assumptions with an actual test at some point.
No, it's not. It's a problem in an adventuring scenario. When you make a level 1 character, does Kord descend from the sky and say "HEY YOU! YOU ARE GOING TO FIGHT A PIT FIEND AT LEVEL 20! BUILD ACCORDINGLY!"? Does he wake you up and say "TODAY IS THAT PIT FIEND DAY I TOLD YOU ABOUT!"? No, of course not.
If you don't have any ability to find out what you might run into in advance (which the fighter doesn't) then you just go out into the big world, and sometimes you run into a Red Dragon, and sometimes a Pit Fiend, and sometimes a Balor, and sometimes a pair of Nightcrawlers (see invisibility, man, sure hope he wasn't walking 20 feet forward then waiting 3 rounds without cover relying on his invisibility! That would suck when they summoned 24 shadows and got to wait for them all to show up before attacking you with dispels and fingers of death), and sometimes a Titan. And if your specific build and tactics die to 3/4ths of those when you go adventuring, then it's not a problem "in a gauntlet" it's a problem when you run into the 3/4ths of things your build and/or tactics aren't going to beat and you die before you ever get to face a Pit Fiend.
I see what you mean.
OK.
Why not just buy a Gem of Seeing? That'd fix some of those problems.
I guess we'll have to wait and see.
I'm so stealing this idea for a campaign. :smallwink:
I don't think anyone was trying to build a character that can function in an actual game, though.
Yeah, lack of Divination spells is a huge problem for martial classes at higher levels
I'm not sure it is. I play casters all the time who don't divine their opposition in advance, but because they are capable of preparing a set of spells that functions against all opposition, they don't need to and can do just fine.
For the low low price of a lot of money, it does solve some problems, but comes with others, like the inability to shoot a bow while using it.
Most of the Feats & Equipment the Fighter has are widely useful for an Archer Build and not "Pit Fiend Specific".
Most campaigns (that I have run or been in) don't have "random monster appears" encounters all over the place. If the campaign is going to lead to fighting Pit Fiends, then the characters are almost always going to encounter lower level Devils throughout their adventuring career.
If the campaign is going to focus on fighting Dragons, then the characters are almost always going to encounter younger Dragons (and increasingly powerful Dragons) throughout their adventuring career.
Even in old AD&D there was a clear, linear progression to things. The series of modules "Against the Giants" had the PCs fighting increasingly powerful Giants, with clues and hints that indicated Drow involvement... then the characters went to the Underdark and eventually the Queen of the Demonweb Pits module. Now, admittedly there wasn't a lot of character customization back then... but gear selection was driven by what you were facing and what you were likely to face in the future.
Just like most campaigns now.
The most common assertion is that Fighters are less effective than Wizards. No one is interested in challenging that, even though it's what you should prove to make me care (because opportunity costs are a real thing). The assertion that Fighters can't contribute effectively always implicitly assumes a reasonably close level of optimization, as it is otherwise trivially false because Candles of Invocation can be bought with gold.
If you want to insist on optimizing your Fighter, the best way to run the test would be to build the Fighter first, then present him with a legal EL 20 encounter to beat. So what is the least optimized Fighter than can expect to beat an unknown EL 20 encounter at least 50% of the time? That's something that vaguely approaches fair.
As does the Fighter presented in the DMG.Quote:
The argument is that a fighter can be built that can defeat a pit fiend, not that a fighter can be built to beat any custom pit fiend. Considering a pit fiend's wealth of customization options if you allow it to pick feats and skills then we easily just end up in an eternal "but then my side does x" where the two parties just build around each other forever. A stock pit fiend gives us an actual stationary target to aim for.
And the example Fighter doesn't have ... probably 90% of what Anthro's does have. What is your point, or are we just playing "constrain the problem until the answer I want falls out"?
I don't care if you don't care. Nobody who isn't an idiot would ever attempt to prove Fighter > Wizard.
Nothing matters if you're infinite wish chaining with candles.Quote:
The assertion that Fighters can't contribute effectively always implicitly assumes a reasonably close level of optimization, as it is otherwise trivially false because Candles of Invocation can be bought with gold.
Random level 20 encounter engineered by Cosi is not a fair representation of whether fighters are effective against monsters. Now if you want to pick a random printed CR 20 monster or combination to create a CR 20 encounter I'd agree.Quote:
[If you want to insist on optimizing your Fighter, the best way to run the test would be to build the Fighter first, then present him with a legal EL 20 encounter to beat. So what is the least optimized Fighter than can expect to beat an unknown EL 20 encounter at least 50% of the time? That's something that vaguely approaches fair.
"Can the stock DMG fighter beat the Stock MM Pit Fiend" isn't a question that requires more than a half second of thought to answer.Quote:
As does the Fighter presented in the DMG.
Considering I started this thread not believing a fighter could beat a pit fiend, no. We're going to constrain the parameters to the ones we agreed with to begin with and not shift them when an answer someone doesn't like falls out.Quote:
And the example Fighter doesn't have ... probably 90% of what Anthro's does have. What is your point, or are we just playing "constrain the problem until the answer I want falls out"?
To be precise its" If you’re playing a one-shot random dungeon,
one-use items cost 5 times their normal price " So as long as the dungeon isn't random you can spend as much on consumables at the normal price as you want, as long as you don't want more than 25% of your treasure in consumables.
Ok, explain to me what you see as a connection between sample NPC, building a PC and stock monsters from the MM or Bestiary, because frankly, I don´t see one.
We´re playing rocket tag without pounce here, so naturally ranged attacks rule that field. One step down would be a balanced switch hitter, below that a build that could actually outlast the first "rocket" and retaliate in kind.
We are dealing with a Pit Fiend, not a Balor.
A Balor cannot summon an Erinyes. Devils and Demons don't mix! If you are confusing a Balor with a Pit Fiend, then Pit Fiends do not randomly summon anything since they owe a debt to those they summon.
Dude, the question is about a Pit Fiend. Can an optimized core fighter beat a stock Pit Fiend?
Still trying to use a suicidal Pit Fiend? A Pit Fiend is statistically killed by an uncontrolled Mummy in it's presence after a year. The Pit Fiend will fail it's daily fear save 5% of the time and Mummy Rot is lethal.
Exactly how cover and invisibility are used is situationally dependent. You seem to leap from one extreme position to another with the only consistency being that you favor the Pit Fiend.
Again, RAW says that concentration is not required with Persistent Spell. Concentration is never mentioned in the description of Detect Magic. It's only mentioned in the duration, and that becomes permanent.
No one would play with someone as obviously biased as you, and I have no hope that you can ever be reasoned with. Cosi and Jormengand might not be hopeless cases.
Even setting aside the obvious illogical nature of the claim that because you know what you are fighting and can build for it specifically, therefore things cost 1/5th the price. This is a random dungeon one shot. The Fighter is randomly running into a Pit Fiend (or Balor, or Titan, or pair of Nightcrawlers, or ect.) and then facing them.
I mean, I fully expect people to point out that the encounter might happen outside, so it's not a dungeon, so he gets to buy consumables for 1/5th cost, but that's also a bad argument.
Look, I hate to break this to you, but no one ever really contested that you could make "Pit Fiender, the Pit Fiend Slayer, Fighter that only fights Pit Fiends and dies 100% of the time to everything else" if your tactics get you killed against 75% of opposition, and you have no way of knowing what the opposition is, then your fighter doesn't meat the basic qualification of beating anything, because implicit was "and isn't designed to only beat that one enemy."
Jormegund even clarified that was what they meant when someone posted the "archer of Chaotic Bane Evil Bane Outsider Bane arrows" or whatever that was they objected to.
You could be facing a Balor, you could be facing a Pit Fiend, you could be facing a Cornugun, an Erynies, and 10 Ice Devils. You don't know what you are fighting.
I can think of 4 ways around that just from the Pit Fiends natural abilities, even before getting into the possibility of having Mummies that recognize you are on their side and helping them, or treasure the Pit Fiend has.
By RAW, you must in fact study for three rounds to get all this information. If you aren't going to be waiting 3 rounds, you aren't going to be getting this information.
Anyone who tells you to follow the rules for one shots is automatically to biased to test with in your mind. It's really convenient that anyone who disagrees with you about any of your rules interpretations is too biased to be worth testing your assumptions with, because that way you can just make up rules interpretations that make no sense but ensure victory.
Yes you do have to study what you are looking at, but the RAW does not state that "studying" something takes any action type what so ever.
Therefore by RAW it takes no action type, and simply requires watching something for three rounds.
But again none of this matters if we have arcane sight permanent instead.
Also what is to stop the fighter(besides WBL) from having a few contingent teleports ready? I.E. one that specifies when within a few hundred feet of a challenging, but not outright deadly creature, it puts him within snipe range, in a position that he can also be hiding from, and if that is not possible to instead teleport him home to better prepare.
Bam he is now hidden, within sight range, and has surprise. Sure it's costly, but works on any enemy he comes across, not just said pit fiend. Although for dragons that could still be dangerous. Still that fixes so many issues.
While the statement "it doesn't list an action type, (except that it does, because you have to concentrate on the spell and this is the action of studying) so it's a non action" is false and not a part of the rules, Detect Magic is very clear that you have to keep the detect magic in the exact same area for all three rounds of study, so even if it did take no action at all, that still wouldn't make my statement that you have to move forward then wait 3 rounds to actually get this information.
Which doesn't matter, because you don't have the ability to get Arcane Sight Permanencied.
Well 1) That you can only have one contingency. 2) If he wants to spend 6300gp on a single contingent teleport, he's free to do so. But he better put a lot of work into wording that contingency, because for example, your example wouldn't work on the Pit Fiend at all.
Of course, that gets into all the crazy nonsense like "Contingency: If, on the 3rd Tuesday of May, I am going to be attacked by a Balor, teleport me to the square marked yes on the divination board" if contingencies give you magical information that you don't otherwise possess, that's a very odd rules interpretation.
Technically, RAW provides a variety of methods of determining treasure for monsters. Random is one of them. But I consider both "cooperation with Mummies" and "treasure that addresses this problem" potential but not certain solutions. Hence why I made the point about having 4 ways of dealing with the problem without using those.
So the RAW on concentration is only on the duration, which was removed when it was replaced with duration : permanent.
Quote:
Which doesn't matter, because you don't have the ability to get Arcane Sight Permanencied.
So there is a way for us to have permanent arcane sight, not including cost of a scroll of arcane sight.Quote:
So to make this all simpler we can buy a staff of permanency with 1,500xp per casting for 24,375.
With a UMD heavy build and a +15umd ring and skill focus(while only having it at cross class maximum of 11), starting with a non elite array would be about 14cha and point buy of 18, so 14/18 a +4 cloak and a total of 5 increase from level ups and a 3inherent from tomes to make it even.
That's puts UMD at a modifier of 11+15+3+8/10 for a total of 37/39 to use a staff of permanency to have a effective caster level of 18/20~37/39 when using said staff. Now we don't have to worry to much about the whole dispelling of permanenced spells. And while we are at it can't we just upgrade detect magic to arcane sight at this point?
Oh yeah and the +15 ring would cost 22,500gp.
I listed one contingency. Honestly contingency works in mysterious ways.Quote:
Well 1) That you can only have one contingency. 2) If he wants to spend 6300gp on a single contingent teleport, he's free to do so. But he better put a lot of work into wording that contingency, because for example, your example wouldn't work on the Pit Fiend at all.
Of course, that gets into all the crazy nonsense like "Contingency: If, on the 3rd Tuesday of May, I am going to be attacked by a Balor, teleport me to the square marked yes on the divination board" if contingencies give you magical information that you don't otherwise possess, that's a very odd rules interpretation.
For detection types it boils down to 1)common sense and
2)DM discretion.
I would consider contingency to have detection capabilities of either all divination spells of a lower level than it(making sense why you would want to heighten it) or the character it is cast on if they have a better way to "find" what is specified in the contingency. But, and large but, that is just what I feel would be fair.
Just what I would rule, and makes sense, but by RAW contingency just "works".
So one teleport contingency set to do a very specific thing, and if it cannot, it sends me home.
Or what you say a mass of contingencies that doesn't work.
But again without an impartial DM it's hard if not impossible to adjudicate if this is feasible.
Edit- also can you specify why said contingent teleport wouldn't work on the pit fiend?