I obviously don't understand a wizard's power

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Originally Posted by ericgrau

...buffs are generally pretty weak.

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My Cleric that uses GMW and Magic Vestment all day begs to differ. This is pretty much the biggest problem with the argument that melee is the best at dealing damage.

By using GMW and Magic Vestment you free up money you would have spent on those weapons to buy things like metamagic rods instead. This, in turn, allows you to quicken your Divine Power with a MM rod. Now you have full BAB, +6 enhancement to Str, and a +X weapon that is just on par with what a non-caster can afford. Oh, and you also have spells. Throw in something like Persisted (even without DMM, this is an amazing feat) Divine Favor and you are a god of war.

Just as an aside, you do have a weakness to Dispel Magic, but Divine Defiance is a nice answer to that, at least for a Cleric.

By the way, how much would a Lesser Rod if Chain Spell cost? Same as a Lesser Maximize (both are +3 slot feats)? Because that's really all a Wizard needs to buff the entire party with GMW.

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Originally Posted by Grommen

I don't have this problem with wizards in my games. They die fairly well, and they never seem to have the solution to any given problem.

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If the wizards never have a solution to any problem, isn't that a problem? :smalltongue:

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Originally Posted by Sacrieur

He selects weapon specialization, so he gets a whole +1 damage to his attacks.

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+2. Weapon Specialization chain is okay for volley archers (and core only fighters who have nothing better to take).

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Originally Posted by Firechanter

By the way, how much would a Lesser Rod if Chain Spell cost? Same as a Lesser Maximize (both are +3 slot feats)? Because that's really all a Wizard needs to buff the entire party with GMW.

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9000g I think, but I don't have the MiC in front of me. But yes, that became a party item for us when my Transmuter hit high enough level where I could make everyone's weapons +5 all day.

Speaking of Optimization, I played a Transmuter 5/Master Specialist 10/Archmage 2 in a long, ongoing Undead Campaign. I knew I was very powerful so I stuck to casting Slow, Web, Solid Fog and the such. Funny enough, sometimes I'd get bored with it because the two guys focused on damage where so hyper specialized in killing undead, they could wipe out encounters within the first 2 rounds. Their Init mods were insane so they would always go first so sometimes I'd never do anything. Sometimes you just want to throw around Disintegrates.

Part of it was my own fault once I got Polymorph Any Object...I mutated the party it beasts with massive stat bonuses. Turning the archer into an Arrow Demon might have been a mistake...

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Originally Posted by jguy

9000g I think, but I don't have the MiC in front of me.

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Nah, it's 14 000gp like the Lesser Maximize.

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Originally Posted by Kantolin

a chronic habit of eating his familiar

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TAKING THIS FLAW


"Why'd you name him Puddles?"
"I spilled the soup!"

To address the barbarian/tier 1 comparison I played in a mid-to-high level game as a wizard, with a druid and a barbarian. I'd say we were similarly optimized, which was only moderately. As a wizard I specialized in evocation but also took other more effective spells and the barbarian had shock trooper and leap attack.

The DM had to design every encounter specifically so the barbarian had something to do and it only worked because we effectively "wasted" turns buffing the barbarian once in combat.

In every game I've played the tiers have been very relevant and clearly reflected in play and since some of us enjoy the mechanical side of D&D as well, being aware of them is super helpful. They're a very useful tool specifically for groups that like a bit of optimization and for everyone to contribute.

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Originally Posted by Greenish

If the wizards never have a solution to any problem, isn't that a problem? :smalltongue:

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You ain't kidden' :smalleek: I don't know how many times I've wanted to smack my players cause they cast fireball on a Devil.

But I think people are missing my point.

Even assuming average uberasation they have completely messed up their tiers.

My players don't care one iota about optimization. They are more likely to take a spell cause it looks kool, than because it will own every encounter.

That is not to say that spell casters can't be powerful. It's just in 20 years of DM'ing they look good on paper, but in actual game play. It is not a problem.

And one last pet peeve of mine. You all do know that you can buff the fighter right? Cast mind blank on them, bull's str, shield of faith, all that good stuff. Just wind em up and let em go. Then you don't even have to get your hands dirty in a fight, and the fighter will thank you for it latter. :smallbiggrin:

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Originally Posted by Grommen

And one last pet peeve of mine. You all do know that you can buff the fighter right? Cast mind blank on them, bull's str, shield of faith, all that good stuff. Just wind em up and let em go. Then you don't even have to get your hands dirty in a fight, and the fighter will thank you for it latter. :smallbiggrin:

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"Valid target for a buff spell" is not usually considered a ringing endorsement of a particular class's abilities.

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Originally Posted by Amphetryon

"Valid target for a buff spell" is not usually considered a ringing endorsement of a particular class's abilities.

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Case in point, I've often heard how monks make a great platform for buff spells.

[Edit]: If in 20 years your players haven't learned that devils are immune to fire, well, lets just say that perhaps your players are less than representative. Lets say they're… special.

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Originally Posted by Grommen

My players don't care one iota about optimization. They are more likely to take a spell cause it looks kool, than because it will own every encounter.

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Any spell can look cool.

and many of the best buffs are personal (meaning they require a higher level of cheese to cast on the fighter)

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Originally Posted by golem1972

and many of the best buffs are personal (meaning they require a higher level of cheese to cast on the fighter)

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For clerics yes, but for arcane casters, a lot of their good buffs can be shared/given, haste being the classic example. Also, none of the spells Grommen mentioned were personal ranged, although by the tim e the wizard can cast mindblank the fighter should not be able to benefit from bull strength.

I guess the ultimate argument here is

"A well played wizard has a lot more tactical options than even the best barbarian, so keep that in mind."

"That's full of crap! My barbarian always beats my wizard! My wizard always just takes fireball. "

"That's fair, but, you know, your group isn't representative of the whole."

"No, really, he casts FIRE on FIRE IMMUNE enemies. He's not a threat!"

The point here is that there's the potential for a mismatch, especially if your players are exposed to the internet and someone explains how Glitterdust is better than Fireball. Since the guide is posted on the internet it's a fairly safe assumption that they'll eventually start down the road of figuring out what works best.

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Originally Posted by shadow_archmagi

Since the guide is posted on the internet it's a fairly safe assumption that they'll eventually start down the road of figuring out what works best.

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It's not that you'd need a guide. Might be enough that you stumble on a cool-sounding spell, try it out, and beat an encounter by accident.

Or notice that hey, you can have a pet bear following you around, how cool is that? Hey, what if you turned into a bear yourself, now you have two bears!

A person unfamiliar with guns can conceivably forget to load bullets into his gun, or load the wrong kind of bullets. A gun can jam, rust, or otherwise malfunction. Also, a gunshot can sometimes miss. Sometimes, especially in the case of a poor marksman, it can go way off-target and even hit an ally. A gun can also run out of bullets at some point and will require reloading - which is a problem, if the user doesn't know how to reload a gun.

None of these is a valid argument to prove a knife being superior to a gun.

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Originally Posted by Vladislav

A person unfamiliar with guns can conceivably forget to load bullets into his gun, or load the wrong kind of bullets. A gun can jam, rust, or otherwise malfunction. Also, a gunshot can sometimes miss. Sometimes, especially in the case of a poor marksman, it can go way off-target and even hit an ally. A gun can also run out of bullets at some point and will require reloading - which is a problem, if the user doesn't know how to reload a gun.

None of these is a valid argument to prove a knife being superior to a gun.

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[/thread] No more discussion is needed.

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Originally Posted by Vladislav

A person unfamiliar with guns can conceivably forget to load bullets into his gun, or load the wrong kind of bullets. A gun can jam, rust, or otherwise malfunction. Also, a gunshot can sometimes miss. Sometimes, especially in the case of a poor marksman, it can go way off-target and even hit an ally. A gun can also run out of bullets at some point and will require reloading - which is a problem, if the user doesn't know how to reload a gun.

None of these is a valid argument to prove a knife being superior to a gun.

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I've been running a gang for 30 years now, and I couldn't disagree more. I've never had a problem with my knife guys outshining my gun guys. Heck, the gun guys often throw their gun at people instead of firing it! Besides, the knife guys never need to reload.

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Originally Posted by streakster

I've been running a gang for 30 years now, and I couldn't disagree more. I've never had a problem with my knife guys outshining my gun guys. Heck, the gun guys often throw their gun at people instead of firing it! Besides, the knife guys never need to reload.

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. . .
I'm not certain if you're joking or not. :smalltongue:

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Originally Posted by Curious

. . .
I'm not certain if you're joking or not. :smalltongue:

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Hey man, its not his fault if his Police Cheif doesn't offer level appropriate encounters. Most Gangs should be facing tanks and stuff by that point, I'd like to see his knife guys deal with that without gun guy support!

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Originally Posted by RaginChangeling

Hey man, its not his fault if his Police Cheif doesn't offer level appropriate encounters. Most Gangs should be facing tanks and stuff by that point, I'd like to see his knife guys deal with that without gun guy support!

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I'd like to see them deal with it even with gun guy support.

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Originally Posted by streakster

I've been running a gang for 30 years now, and I couldn't disagree more. I've never had a problem with my knife guys outshining my gun guys. Heck, the gun guys often throw their gun at people instead of firing it! Besides, the knife guys never need to reload.

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Originally Posted by RaginChangeling

Hey man, its not his fault if his Police Cheif doesn't offer level appropriate encounters. Most Gangs should be facing tanks and stuff by that point, I'd like to see his knife guys deal with that without gun guy support!

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Originally Posted by Sacrieur

I'd like to see them deal with it even with gun guy support.

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Best analogy ever. Of all time.

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Originally Posted by Strife Warzeal

Best analogy ever. Of all time.

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Ya know, Strife, I'm really happy for you and I'mma let you finish, but streakster made one of the the best analogies of all time. Of all time.

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Originally Posted by true_shinken

Ya know, Strife, I'm really happy for you and I'mma let you finish, but streakster made one of the the best analogies of all time. Of all time.

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Yeah that was kinda what I meant Kanye, my first quote on the list was streakster.

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Originally Posted by Grommen

My players don't care one iota about optimization. They are more likely to take a spell cause it looks kool, than because it will own every encounter.

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Mine too. ^_^ I actually opted against picking fireball for the opposite reason of owning every encounter - because I was trying to make an intentionally underpowered unit.

This does not mean the tier system does not apply!

Heck, your players may pick all of their spells and feats utterly randomly by rolling.

The barbarian will be doing either damage... or nothing relevant. [or tracking, I personally like my barbarians as trackers]

The wizard will be doing damage, summoning balors, sculpting the battlefield, buffing his allies, dominating the king, magic jarring the bad guy's lieutenant, redirecting a river as a standard action... or nothing relevant. [Or tracking, there are a wide array of spells for tracking]

In both cases the characters could be doing nothing relevant. And there is totally nothing wrong with that! I love the ridiculously underpowered game I play in and wouldn't trade it for anything.

The tier system measures the fact that the barbarian can be doing damage or nothing, while the wizard can be doing a wide array of things, two of which are damage or nothing. If you have a gentleman's agreement of 'Wizards shouldn't do that as it's broken', then awesome - you have fixed the problem in one of the myriad of ways the tier system suggests.

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And one last pet peeve of mine. You all do know that you can buff the fighter right? Cast mind blank on them, bull's str, shield of faith, all that good stuff. Just wind em up and let em go. Then you don't even have to get your hands dirty in a fight, and the fighter will thank you for it latter. :smallbiggrin:

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That is exactly what the batman wizard is. ^_^ The batman wizard does not do damage to actually end encounters himself, he uses his spells to buff up his allies and for battlefield control - using solid fogs, walls of whatever, or what-not. He analyzes tons of things beforehand using divinations and the like to try to help the party be more prepared.

Really, the batman wizard is ridiculously party-friendly. Blaster wizards, at any level of optimzation, are actually less party friendly since it means the game has tons of toe-stepping, and I know the warmage makes many people in our underoptimized group feel somewhat ancillary when he blows up all the enemies at once with frequency.

This, however, does not solve the problem that the wizrad can do everything, nor does it change that. But remember, the often-touted batman wizard does, indeed, buff his allies, sculpt the battlefield so his allies can murder the enemies, and etc.

As a slight aside, though, I often see people whine that clerics spend more time buffing themselves instead of enemies... and that annoys me, as I went out of my way to play a timid goblin healer cleric in a core game, and then I hit level 7, and had to sit around there and stare.

I mean... there's divine power, which is personal and an extremely obvious choice, and would've made my 10 strength goblin comparable to the frontliners practically by itself due to how underoptimized everyone was. >_>

There's then what... I brought dimensional anchor, but people aren't teleporting everywhere in underoptimized play. Neutralize poison is ridiculously situational and I didn't acutally use it any time I memorized it. Spell Immunity and freedom of movement were like dimensional anchor.

Buffing other people as a cleric in core is difficult. Noncore makes this more plausible, but a lot of people who whine about CoDzilla seem to insist that going all-core makes things better. >_> If Divine Power or Righteous Might were touch I'd use them on the fighter, but they're personal.

And they're just sitting there being obvious picks, since 4th level cleric spells are really dull. Optimizers like planar ally and freedom of movement and stuff, but those aren't as often-used in our games. It didn't take us long to end up with Czilla, since... well, clerics kind of accidentally Czilla in core.

So bah! It doesn't take much to 'cast divine power once' or 'take natural spell' (Really, in core natural spell is the only feat that explicitly requires a druid! If you were a druid and didn't know what you were doing, you'd glance until you saw 'Druid 6' and take it unless your concept was 'I specifically do not want to cast spells as a bear'!)

So to boil down all of this into one coherant idea on my part I'd have to say this.
A wizard can throw ridiculous magics about, kill hundreds and deal with any situation imaginable, until his spells run out. Or his spellbook is stolen. Or there's an anti-magic field.
A fighter can do a limited array of combat-specific moves indefinitely. He doesn't run out of weapon attacks per day and if his weapon is stolen he merely picks up another one and continues.
D&D has developed from a combat oriented boardgame. Since then whole worlds have emerged, new skills and situations have developed and entire classes have been created to fill the niches of a fully interactive rpg system. BUT, the game fundamentals still concern themselves with combat. As a result, multi-classing has become prevailant as more and more people come to the conclusion that fighter < wizard, rogue < wizard, the correct fighter/rogue mix eats wizards for breakfast.
Each class has it's drawbacks, it's advantages and it's sitautional niches where it truly excels. If anyone is having trouble with game balance then I'd argue they need to have words with their DM.

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Originally Posted by Veklim

A wizard can throw ridiculous magics about, kill hundreds and deal with any situation imaginable, until his spells run out. Or his spellbook is stolen. Or there's an anti-magic field.

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Unless, of course, the wizard wants to deal with those situations too. :smalltongue:

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Originally Posted by Veklim

Each class has it's drawbacks, it's advantages and it's sitautional niches where it truly excels. If anyone is having trouble with game balance then I'd argue they need to have words with their DM.

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If balance is so screwy that the GM has to dedicate significant effort to maintaining it at all times then the game has issues.

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Originally Posted by Veklim

So to boil down all of this into one coherant idea on my part I'd have to say this.
A wizard can throw ridiculous magics about, kill hundreds and deal with any situation imaginable, until his spells run out. Or his spellbook is stolen. Or there's an anti-magic field.

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In a normal game, yes. That's why most people don't have any trouble with spellcasters.
But in a munchkin game like those usually discussed in this forum, there are ways to get around those limitations, too.

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Originally Posted by Veklim

So to boil down all of this into one coherant idea on my part I'd have to say this.
A wizard can throw ridiculous magics about, kill hundreds and deal with any situation imaginable, until his spells run out. Or his spellbook is stolen.

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Which one? The fake spellbook, the backup spell book or real one?

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Originally Posted by Veklim

Or there's an anti-magic field.

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Yes because they grow on trees. Its a mid level spell with a small range that is centrered on the caster. Its not a big deal, unless dead magic zones are the norm in your game setting.

Aditionally, the options your present means the wizard can do nothing. So its 100% or 0%.

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Originally Posted by Veklim

A fighter can do a limited array of combat-specific moves indefinitely. He doesn't run out of weapon attacks per day and if his weapon is stolen he merely picks up another one and continues.

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And proceeds to hit less accurately and without the special abilities of his former weapon. Or his item of flight was stolen and now all he can do it shoot for 1d8+1 damage with his bow. Or he gets exhasuted and cannot reach the opponents, or the opponent has miss chance.

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Originally Posted by Yora

In a normal game, yes.

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A normal game for you is when the wizards reguarly encounter anti-magic fields and have their book stolen?