Quote Originally Posted by The Prince of Cats View Post
So... My example of a vaguely-optimised ranger is countered by... a stupidly-optimised wizard? Yes, it is possible to get a wizard's init up to +15, but unlikely.
That's not really what's happening here. The majority of those things are just basic features of the class that can be picked up trivially. Nerveskitter is a single 1st level slot, a hummingbird familiar only sacrifices other familiar bonuses, which are usually worse, and possibly some UMD cheese, which you would find equally problematic for your ranger in other ways, and 14 dexterity is standard. I'd say that the scribe scroll trade is going a bit out of the way, because scribe scroll is pretty strong, but it's not going out of the way by much. You're looking at a ridiculously high initiative modifier, and that's true no matter how you slice it. This is not a place where the ranger has an advantage.


Forgot about the reduced actions in a surprise round. So yes, that almost halves the damage output.
Aren't you pretty much just getting a single attack? And if this is the surprise round, doesn't that single attack require you to be standing right next to the opponent as you surprise them? Wizards gain massive benefit from a surprise round. I don't think rangers really do.

So... Your argument is that a Necropolitan Wizard with Nerveskitter and a Hummingbird Familiar who has all his spells for the day can kill an unoptimised ranger?
No, I think his argument was that an optimized wizard with a reasonable quantity of spells/day can kill a ranger that's optimized, as long as that optimization doesn't include mystic ranger/SotAO stuff. Granting high level casting to the ranger makes it more about player skill than class, because the two will be reasonably equal, with a decent edge for the wizard.

Nope... Never been keen on playing with or as a min-maxer... (as a DM, they never had long life-expectancies due to their tendency to stir up trouble)

How is that even fun? It sounds more like accountancy than a game, trying to eke out every possible bonus from every decision.
Think less accountancy, and more Ultra-complicated hyper-chess. Wizards aren't awesome because they eke out bonuses from everything. They're awesome because they can do things with massive strategic and tactical ramifications. Sure, they can also get pretty big numbers, especially to initiative (wizards like initiative), but it's mostly about the big tactical ramifications. The reason you're seeing such a massive deficit between what this wizard and this ranger is capable of, is because wizards are amazingly powerful, while rangers are not. You start talking about how your ranger is going to out-initiative the wizard, and then the wizard casts a single spell, and there goes any advantage you once had. It's tragic, really.