Quote Originally Posted by Carl View Post
The bonus from the spell you suggested is though and that was what the comment that spawned this littile mini thread of the debate was responding to.
I'm really talking about PAO. Bull's Strength is just an optional extra.

Sorcs have a specific spell list the last i looked, and divine power was not on there.
They do have a specific spell list, but this is entirely pointless because they are specifically allowed to take spells from other lists.

Also where optimizing strength because if your taking the core DD your not taking more than 1 level of sorc, there is no situation under which DD levels are better than sorc level until we bring in heavy house ruling, (which admittedly seems to be very common based on the number of T3 houserules threads we see).
So, basically, "Because we're suboptimal"?

The most common would be an ubercharger, but if where bringing yours into it or other homebrew it's because we could have some other class feature from another class that scales with strength modifier, at which point being able to get that far ahead whilst keeping such a good BAB is really handy.
Uberchargers usually don't use Dragon Disciple unless they have tons of levels to spare. Normally you go for an orc barbarian/psychic warrior with headlong rush, spirited charge, a lance, and the dive action (because you're on a griffon). If you were using homebrew, you'd drop the lance, take a level in Champion and get the 1d12 device and the ability that makes that 2d12 instead, then take a level of disciple apparent and use inferno blade and smash to rack up a bit more damage.



A weapon adds damage, and attack roll modifiers, (incidentally if where comparing it to a weapon the difference is rather larger in your case due to everything being a primary), also a +8 is significant. +8 on a to-hit roll that didn't require a natural 20 to hit is a 40% increase in hit rate, it makes any attack which didn't require a D20 roll of greater than 20 viable instead of eminently ignorable, and turns modest hit chance attacks into near certainties.

The danger really comes though from combining that high strength with other capabilities. That's one of my issues with it on your class. You can get a +12 un-typed modifier by 13th level which just begs that you go find a class that complements this. Hell even building a simple ubercharger combined with enough broad spectrum of side capabilities from other sources could break things.
If you're dropping 13 of your levels just to get a bonus to your strength, why not just... I dunno, be any kind of spellcaster and you could get that anyway?

Good game design says you never compare to either End of the spectrum. You choose, (based on many, many factors), a balance point and compare to that.
No, because if someone is stronger than you, you don't see use.

My own falls probably falls somewhere in the T3 range of the tier system, though obviously being personal it doesn't always match exactly. it's natrually open to a degree of stretching either way like anything, some things are hard to pin into traditional balance factors, and i generally assume a level of optimization below the absolute maximum, (i accept given the amount of sourcebooks that somewhere there will be some way to break something, i just try not to make it too easy). But beyond that i tend not to assume a wizard or a sorc going all out as my balance point because they're clearly broken balance wise in how they invalidate not just other weaker classes, but the entire game itself.

That's a bit of a simplification but still.
Mine's also pretty categorically T3, but only because it's actually good at hitting things in the face, rather than mediocre, in the manner of the fighter, and it also gets a few spells.


My worry with yours is that between the way you have natural attacks setup and the easy extreme damage with no real optimization ceiling allowing modest optimization to turn it into one of the best melee classes
Yes, this is the entire point, because most melee classes suck horribly.

before we even get to combo's or spells, which are presumably going to make it at least passable in a wide variety of area's. If it didn't have the spells and combo's i wouldn't be worried, i'd dislike the narrow focus of it, but it wouldn't worry me. But with those in place it has the capability to trivialize a number of encounter types whilst still contributing in a strong if less overwhelming fashion to others.
That is... the entire point... of T3. You can walk over something you're designed to walk over, and still contribute when you're not designed to walk over stuff.