I obviously don't understand a wizard's power

[Kantolin]

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.

You are rightish - an antimagic field usually screws over most normal wizards.

The problems with it are threefold.

First is that antimagic field is kind of hard to get, and usually screws over whomever casts it as well - in core, the cleric can still do something therein with his medium BAB, but does he really want to lose all of his own spellcasting? I mean, the wizard can take a mace, and either withdraw behind someone else, or just move ten feet away and teleport or something - the wizard can easily make the spellcraft check to be aware of that if he doesn't have the spell himself (Not to mention, generic response is to run away).

Secondly, it also screws over the fighter unless he's rather well optimized. We had a DM who had a dragon use a plot-large Antimagic field, mostly to screw over the party psion (Who then retreated to the back of the party and started using his crossbow). Said dragon then went over and disassembled the fighter, who no longer had an AC to speak of (AC became 18? 20?), lost a chunk of his to-hit and damage (Nonmagical weapon, go!), and could no longer bypass DR/Magic. In an antimagic field, everyone sucks - just wizards suck slightly more than fighters do. One of the nonsense chargers you see on the boards could've solved that dragon since it remained on the ground for no reason, but our non-munchkiny fighter really couldn't do anything about it.

And thirdly! If you are resorting to a merry jaunt through anti-magic-field-land to reign in the wizard, that doesn't sound at all fun to be the wizard. It also encourages him to go find conjurations that work into antimagic so he can at least be functioning somewhere. Really, you should've just said 'No, you cannot be a wizard'. Not to mention that requiring anti-magic-field-land in the first place means the game is already borked.

Stealing spellbooks is similar. If the only way the wizard becomes fair is 'you cannot cast spells', then that is a curious state of 'balance'. It also, once it starts happening for awhile, starts encouraging people to find solutions to this if they want to be a wizard - whether spell mastery or being a sorceror - and this isn't trying to be a munchkin. It's like how most wizards I've seen gravitate towards rings of freedom of movement after the fourth time they've been grappled and utterly unable to do anything about it except waste their teleport. Not to mention the versimilitude wrecking with 'If they're able to steal the spellbook from my pants, why haven't they stolen everyone else's gear too? Or just slit all of our throats and called it a day?' The fighter sucks without his +5 Holy Keen Longsword, too.

It's really not 'If you weren't munchkiny, antimagic field could stop you'.

~~

Also, without munchkinery, a fighter's ability to swing his sword is severely limited by his HP, which requires (again, without munchkinery) someone to be spending spell slots or other resources. Thus, more or less, a fighter is just as reliant on spell slots as everyone else if not more so.

Edit: Oh, also!

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.

This is also true. A wizard, and generally speaking a tier 1 class, does not have the spell slots to have literally every option avaliable to him avaliable at once.

It's just that there are many more advantages to wizards, and many more niches where wizards excel, than there are say fighters. So it's a lot easier to make a sequence where the fighter has to let other people help him out than the wizard (who almost always, tommorrow or in 15 minutes, could have the appropriate solution).

Even if a fighter's niche is in-an-antimagic-field-when-the-wizard-has-also-has-his-book-stolen-against-enemies-who-are-poor-at-combat.

[Taelas]

The "It's not a problem because I can fix it"-line of thinking is a fallacy, people. If it were not a problem, you would not have to fix it in the first place.

If you can fix it and don't mind taking the time to do so, by all means, do so. But do not pretend you're not doing just that.

[shadow_archmagi]

Honestly though, I've never seen a wizard have his spellbook stolen in one of our games, and we've never encountered an antimagic field.

The former partly because 'thieves' in general are not a theme the DM uses a whole lot, and the latter because null magic zones are just not something that comes up a lot.

It also helps that I'm our party's primary caster most of the time, and I prefer artificers, psions, and sorcerers, because preparing spells is so much paperwork. But, as it's been said, if you're relying on the wizard periodically being kicked back to square one, then maybe that's a sign that he really is and does become really powerful.

[erikun]

I'd like to make this comparison to illustrate the difference.

The fighter can fight, can trip, and can power attack. The cleric can buff himself to fight, can debuff, and can heal.

The cleric can also buff the fighter, making the fighter twice as effective at fighting, tripping, and power attacking. The fighter cannot do the same - there is nothing the fighter can do that will make the cleric better at fighting, or debuffing, or healing.

That is kind of the point behind tiers: options. How much you can do, and how well you can do it, determines what tier you belong in. Cleric are tier 1 because they can buff themselves to be fighters, can buff fighters to be better, can summon allies to buff, can debuff, can heal, can divine, and can even trip and power attack if they really want to. Fighters end up in tier 4 because, in general, they can't.

(I'd also like to point out that the best option is an optimized Cleric buffing an optimized Fighter in this situation. The Fighter can get the feats earlier and make better use of the Cleric buffs than the Cleric can himself. A summoned ally won't have the optimal feats, and and you can't double up on buffs on an allied Cleric. Saying that an individual Cleric is better than an individual Fighter is not the same as two Clerics being better than a Cleric and a Fighter... all the time.)

[Eldariel]

Honestly though, I've never seen a wizard have his spellbook stolen in one of our games, and we've never encountered an antimagic field.

The former partly because 'thieves' in general are not a theme the DM uses a whole lot, and the latter because null magic zones are just not something that comes up a lot.

We've had attempted spellbook thefts. Wizards generally have enough precaution that it's non-trivial to accomplish, and there tend to be ways to reacquire it or replicate its contents in place (even if the Wizard doesn't keep it in extradimensional storage). It does hurt, but it's nothing Wizards can't deal with.

Null Magic Zones we actually deal with more than AMFs, mostly because we've played Faerun games and Faerun is chockful of places where magic works kinda funny, or not at all. They're...alright; the playing field is kinda level since the same problems apply for everybody (aside from stupidity like Initiate of Mystra) and people are aware of what they're getting themselves into and as such, can apply the appropriate preparations. Then again, our players are sorta up-in-the-known with regards to rules and as such, probably more equipped to handle such hurdles than an average joe.

AMFs are rarely a problem due to being small and anchored on the person casting it; move actions tend to solve vanilla AMFs with more esoteric tactics being necessary for more esoteric AMFs, but it's rarely efficient to try and get the AMF to a caster in the first place.

I'd also like to point out that the best option is an optimized Cleric buffing an optimized Fighter in this situation. The Fighter can get the feats earlier and make better use of the Cleric buffs than the Cleric can himself. A summoned ally won't have the optimal feats, and and you can't double up on buffs on an allied Cleric. Saying that an individual Cleric is better than an individual Fighter is not the same as two Clerics being better than a Cleric and a Fighter... all the time.

Yet, they still generally are. The Fighter has vastly limited options as mentioned. Clerics also have Personal buffs; while Fighter buffed by Cleric will probably outperform a Cleric buffing himself, having two Clerics buff themselves generally results in something superior than the Fighter and the Cleric buffing the Fighter. Especially once things like Dispel Magic come into play (of course, Fighters perform fine on the first levels if built for that). Which, of course, is an issue with both, magic and the design of the Fighter-class. So meh.

[erikun]

Yet, they still generally are. The Fighter has vastly limited options as mentioned. Clerics also have Personal buffs; while Fighter buffed by Cleric will probably outperform a Cleric buffing himself, having two Clerics buff themselves generally results in something superior than the Fighter and the Cleric buffing the Fighter.

Depends on what level. Sure, your 7th level Cleric could buff themselves with Divine Power for full BAB and +6 STR, but my Cleric has been doing the exact same thing for four levels with Bull’s Strength on the Fighter. Plus, a devoted ubercharger wielding a two-handed weapon will be far more damaging (after buffs) than two Clerics going sword-and-shield.

The strength of the Cleric isn't that you can wield a greatsword yourself and pick up Leap Attack + DMM Persist, but that you can summon huge earth elementals and fight along side them to wreck anything. Leave the Fighter optimization to the Fighters and give them a chance to succeed. You have much more you can be doing that trying to emulate a Fighter with you limited feats.

[Eldariel]

Depends on what level. Sure, your 7th level Cleric could buff themselves with Divine Power for full BAB and +6 STR, but my Cleric has been doing the exact same thing for four levels with Bull’s Strength on the Fighter. Plus, a devoted ubercharger wielding a two-handed weapon will be far more damaging (after buffs) than two Clerics going sword-and-shield.

The strength of the Cleric isn't that you can wield a greatsword yourself and pick up Leap Attack + DMM Persist, but that you can summon huge earth elementals and fight along side them to wreck anything. Leave the Fighter optimization to the Fighters and give them a chance to succeed. You have much more you can be doing that trying to emulate a Fighter with you limited feats.

Certainly, the first ~5 levels see Fighter/Cleric probably performing very similarly as higher level Personals aren't game yet. Clerics could just buff themselves with Bull's Strength with the same action (or have one buff the other); tho it's only +4. Leaving it to Fighters is all well and good but once we bring Heroics into the picture, or god forbid things like (Draconic) Polymorph, suddenly Clerics just begin doing Fighter's job better than the Cleric-buffed Fighter. Which is really the very root of the issue.

I mean, Clerics could go Sword'n'Board but they have just the same access to Animated Shields as everyone else so I see little reason not to two-hand, Power Attack, Knowledge Devotion and go to town. With Divine Might for good measure. Fighter Clerics can actually make superior buff platforms to straight Fighters, mostly on the back of Personal buffs and some Domains and Cleric PrCs.


Again, you shouldn't do that in a game but fact is that it's possible to make a Cleric that fights better than a Fighter buffed by a Cleric and that's really the root cause of the issue; why have Fighter and Cleric in a party when two Clerics would just perform better?

[erikun]

A Cleric with 14 STR, Divine Power, and Righteous Might is actually inferior to a Fighter with 20 STR, Bull’s Strength, and Enlarge Person (from the Wizard). And this has nothing with the feats the Fighter has: the self-buffing Cleric won't have the feats for chain-tripping or multiclass to make use of charging like the Fighter will.

Sure, you could have a Cleric with 20 STR and that takes Fighter levels for the additional feats, but at that point you're mostly a highly optimized Fighter than a combat-oriented Cleric.

And certainly Polymorph breaks things, but that's already a given. It also seems amusing to state that the Fighter is weak because the Cleric can beg someone else to cast Polymorph on them as well.

[Eldariel]

And certainly Polymorph breaks things, but that's already a given. It also seems amusing to state that the Fighter is weak because the Cleric can beg someone else to cast Polymorph on them as well.

Naa, Clerics can cast it themselves. Greater Anyspell.

[Aspenor]

A Cleric with 14 STR, Divine Power, and Righteous Might is actually inferior to a Fighter with 20 STR, Bull’s Strength, and Enlarge Person (from the Wizard). And this has nothing with the feats the Fighter has: the self-buffing Cleric won't have the feats for chain-tripping or multiclass to make use of charging like the Fighter will.

Sure, you could have a Cleric with 20 STR and that takes Fighter levels for the additional feats, but at that point you're mostly a highly optimized Fighter than a combat-oriented Cleric.

And certainly Polymorph breaks things, but that's already a given. It also seems amusing to state that the Fighter is weak because the Cleric can beg someone else to cast Polymorph on them as well.

I fail to see how being unable to trip things matters when you still have the spellcasting of a pure cleric, after buffing to the strength and size of the fighter.

Woohoo...the fighter has a slightly higher STR and can trip stuff. The cleric has 90% of the combat ability of the fighter....and still has spells. Cleric wins.

[erikun]

Naa, Clerics can cast it themselves. Greater Anyspell.

Good point, I missed that - although now we're talking about 11th level, and for only about 10 minutes a day.

My point, though, is to allow the specialists to specialize. I'm not saying that Fighters outperform or even compare at high levels - noncasters kind of become obsolete at 13th level or so. I'm pointing out that a buffed Fighter is generally better than a buffed Cleric at straight melee combat in low/mid levels, even with the inferior target-other spells.

Also, a lot of the Cleric's non-spell optimization can be used by the Fighter. One level of Cleric for Knowledge Devotion is just as easy as one level of Barbarian for pounce.

Woohoo...the fighter has a slightly higher STR and can trip stuff. The cleric has 90% of the combat ability of the fighter....and still has spells. Cleric wins.

So you are telling me that between allowing the Fighter to bash stuff in the head with the Cleric casing, and allowing the Fighter to bash stuff in the head with the Cleric bashing stuff in the head, the most optimal decision is for the Cleric to bash stuff?! Surely you jest.

And the difference is the Cleric using Power Attack for 1.5x STR damage, and the Fighter using a lance and Shock Trooper to deal 6x full weapon damage in a full attack with no loss to hit. And trip. At an earlier level.

[Aspenor]

So you are telling me that between allowing the Fighter to bash stuff in the head with the Cleric casing, and allowing the Fighter to bash stuff in the head with the Cleric bashing stuff in the head, the most optimal decision is for the Cleric to bash stuff?! Surely you jest.

No, I never said anything of the sort. What I said was that the cleric should cast, and the fighter should go farm potatoes.

And the difference is the Cleric using Power Attack for 1.5x STR damage, and the Fighter using a lance and Shock Trooper to deal 6x full weapon damage in a full attack with no loss to hit. And trip. At an earlier level.

Or, he could go farm potatoes, because that's what he really ought to be doing. His shock trooper-lance-trip is not relevant. The cleric casts spells, and can do everything the fighter can do, and more.

[true_shinken]

Or, he could go farm potatoes, because that's what he really ought to be doing. His shock trooper-lance-trip is not relevant. The cleric casts spells, and can do everything the fighter can do, and more.

I really think you're missing the point.
Cleric can cast good spells, yes. Most of those good spells are buff spells.
So why should the Cleric cast them on himself... when he cast them on a much better prepared warrior, like the Fighter?
The Cleric can't do everything the Fighter can, not until very high level, and even then it takes resources he might be using for something else.
Yes, spellcasters are powerful, but if someone said in my table that non-casters are 'not relevant', I'd just have to show them a lesson Gandalf already seems to have learned.

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[Greenish]

Indeed, as shinken pointed out, it's often more efficient to get the charger a clear route to charge than to beat things up yourself.

[Kantolin]

So why should the Cleric cast them on himself... when he cast them on a much better prepared warrior, like the Fighter?

Because many good buffs are personal.

Also, why can't the fighter just also be a cleric and buff himself? Then you have two people being effective, and not one person enabling another person to be effective.

If the cleric's only job is to buff the fighter, a lot of people wouldn't enjoy playing clerics for the same reasons as why most wizards like fireball or most fighters like walking over and smacking things - people like being do-ers, and not the second bananas.

This is subjective, mind you, as the batman wizard for example enjoys buffing his allies and sculpting the battlefield such that his friends can solve problems (And this works well). I personally love playing the party-buffer who makes everyone else awesome. But it's not for everyone - it's apparantly not for the fighter's player, for example.

Edit: Also... um, bull's strength? I was playing a cleric who was absolutely devoted to party buffing and healing, and bull's strength is only useful for an extremely short length of time before the fighter very reasonably gets himself gauntlets of ogre power or something. In core, it's rough to buff your allies as a cleric - although the spell compendium and other splats helps this a lot and puts some more party-buffs on the cleric's list. ^_^

Of course then you have the problem that 'Yay, the cleric's buffs won the encounter!'... but people tend to be happier playing with batman wizards than playing with effective blaster wizards.

[Gametime]

Because many good buffs are personal.

Divine Power's main function is to get the cleric level with the fighter. It makes no sense to use it as an argument that the cleric is better off buffing himself; the fact that it's personal doesn't matter, because the fighter doesn't really need that buff anyway. He comes pre-packaged with it. (Okay, the +6 to strength is nice, too, but you could get 2/3 the benefit of that with a spell half the level.)

Divine Favor maxes out at +3 to attack and damage. That's only slightly more attack, and less damage, than fighters get from investing in the Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization trees, which are almost universally derided as weak feats. If the small bonus to attack and damage matters that much, the fighter can certainly get it with his oodles of feats.

Righteous Might is the only personal buff that really gives the cleric an edge over the fighter. It is, admittedly, a pretty sweet buff. Is it the equivalent of the many combat feats the fighter gets, all on his own? I'm not so sure. Certainly, the cleric can make himself a better combatant than the fighter, but with fewer spells he could just make the fighter even better and get the same result for less investment.

[Firechanter]

I see it the other way round: anything the Fighter can do as inherent class feature (thereby giving up potential features from other classes), the Cleric can easily emulate with spells.

re Divine Power: so you get the same BAB as a Fighter, and the same HP as a Fighter, and you save 36K for a Str belt.

re Divine Favour: +3 to attack and damage is great, especially for a _first level spell_. A Fighter has to spend something like what, 4 friggin feats to get a similar effect, and a Cleric just needs to cast a measly 1st level spell!

re Righteous Might: how exactly does a Fighter increase his size, get a size Strength bonus, and gain Reach that stacks with reach weapons?

Sure, all that is just a few rounds per day, unless you use the extremely popular (DMM) Persist option. Even without Nightstick abuse you can easily DMM-Persist Divine Power, regular-persist Divine Favour, and just tack on Righteous Might when you need it.

Really, you're the first person I've seen to say "a cleric's personal buffs aren't all that great".

A little anecdote. Once we had to take out a boss and his lieutenant, but there were only two of us that day: my Cleric/Ranger and a Fighter/Bard, both around level 16. At first I only had long term buffs on us, and got our asses handed to us. The bard was knocked out, and I barely managed to grab him and escape (using magic, of course). At a safe place, we healed up, and I reshuffled my spells. After resting, we went back in there, and this time I used DP and DF (regular, not even extended), and kicked both bosses' hides before the spells expired. Granted, the Bard also played it a bit smarter this time.

Long story short, what people are saying here is that Clerics (like other casters) can do everything a Fighter can do and are _still_ full casters on top of that. What is so hard to understand?

[Veklim]

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

Actually, yes. I run games which reward ingenuity and lateral thinking. Magic in my settings is only stable in places where it's been tamed so to speak. Many of the wilder places (and therefore most often visited by the group) have rogue magic and anti-magic zones all over the place. The effects are often random but it's not uncommon for a wizard in my campaigns to be seriously challenged by these anomalies.
I do this for the sake of not just game balance but also for quality of gameplay. A wizard who needs only fire off a couple of high level spells to solve an encounter will get as bored and frustrated as the rest of the party at not having more to do. Thusly, I engineer encounters, environments and NPCs to create awkward and challenging scenarios.
A wizard can easily lose his spellbook with a proficient theif nearby, there are ways of protecting or obscurring said spellbook but nothing is infalible. On top of that there are rival NPC wizards in my campaigns who would do anything to gain access to an adventuring wizard's spellbook just to get hold of rare and unique spells they have either seen used or heard about.
This way, everyone gets a challenge, nobody can guess too well what's coming next, and most of the time the entire group have a role to play.

[erikun]

Really, you're the first person I've seen to say "a cleric's personal buffs aren't all that great".

True, the cleric's personal buff list is very nice. It's one of the best reasons to play a cleric. However, since I'm the one who brought it up, I feel like I should make a few points in the Fighter's favor.

First, the Fighter will generally be focusing on Strength, making it his highest ability score. The Cleric generally will not, focusing on Wisdom for extra spells. In fact, if we're talking about a DMM Cleric, it will probably be tertiary, after Wisdom and Charisma (16 CHA for one use of DMM Persist). It wouldn't be strange to see the Fighter with 20 STR at 8th level, while the Cleric only has 14 STR - and likely less. In the case of Divine Power, the +6 enhancement bonus to Strength doesn't so much propel them ahead of Fighters as put them on equal footing.

As for the other spells: Bull's Strength is roughly equal to Divine Favor (being only one point behind in to-hit for a THF character) and the main benefits of Righteous Might are replicated by the Enlarge Person spell. At this point, the Fighter is only -2 to hit and -2 damage behind the Cleric, and several feats ahead. A difference which can easily be made up thanks to the Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization feats - and those are one of the weakest choices the Fighter can make.

Also, note the investment you've made into making your Cleric competent in fighting. Three feats, all of your turn attempts, a 4th level spell slot, a 5th level spell slot (each battle), and a 7th(!) level spell slot. Compared to... one 1st level spell slot and one 2nd level spell slot, to make the Fighter equilivant. And the Fighter still has all his feats available. (Although considering we're talking about 13th level characters here, any beatstick is likely becoming redundant.)


Of course, there's nothing wrong with being a Cleric that ignores the standard Cleric advise. Although between focusing on Strength, ignoring Charisma/DMM, and losing caster levels for multiclassing out, the character is less of a cleric and more of a magical self-buffing fighter.

[Aspenor]

I really think you're missing the point.
Cleric can cast good spells, yes. Most of those good spells are buff spells.
So why should the Cleric cast them on himself... when he cast them on a much better prepared warrior, like the Fighter?
The Cleric can't do everything the Fighter can, not until very high level, and even then it takes resources he might be using for something else.
Yes, spellcasters are powerful, but if someone said in my table that non-casters are 'not relevant', I'd just have to show them a lesson Gandalf already seems to have learned.

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Why should you bother casting them on the fighter, when you can kick the fighter out of the party and get somebody useful like another cleric, or a druid? Now, instead of one cleric using his spells to make a mook into something remotely threatening, you have two clerics using their spells. Or a cleric and a druid.

[Thurbane]

Every time you use the word "Tier" in a non-competitive game environment, fun dies a horrible, painful death.

Late to the party here, but I wanted to comment - FWIW, I mostly agree with this.

Far too many people misuse the tier system as a "don't play this class, ever, even if it's one you used to enjoy prior to reading this" hammer.

And at the end of the day, any "ranking system" of classes is going to be based mostly on personal experience and personal opinion. Sure, the people contributing to the ranking can be well versed in the game, but the fundamental fact remains. I certainly don't profess to be more of an expert on 3.5 gameplay that the creator(s) of the tier system, but I will say that my personal experiences aren't necessarily reflected by it.

[Boci]

Actually, yes. I run games which reward ingenuity and lateral thinking. Magic in my settings is only stable in places where it's been tamed so to speak. Many of the wilder places (and therefore most often visited by the group) have rogue magic and anti-magic zones all over the place. The effects are often random but it's not uncommon for a wizard in my campaigns to be seriously challenged by these anomalies.
I do this for the sake of not just game balance but also for quality of gameplay. A wizard who needs only fire off a couple of high level spells to solve an encounter will get as bored and frustrated as the rest of the party at not having more to do. Thusly, I engineer encounters, environments and NPCs to create awkward and challenging scenarios.
A wizard can easily lose his spellbook with a proficient theif nearby, there are ways of protecting or obscurring said spellbook but nothing is infalible. On top of that there are rival NPC wizards in my campaigns who would do anything to gain access to an adventuring wizard's spellbook just to get hold of rare and unique spells they have either seen used or heard about.
This way, everyone gets a challenge, nobody can guess too well what's coming next, and most of the time the entire group have a role to play.

My point was that in most games this wasn't the case, people just say anti-magic field, forgetting that someone must cast the spell and that its range is unimpressive.

As for the spell book: why are thieves so fixated on this? Since when do high level adventurers lack shiney stuff to steal?

I would be interesting in hearing how these rogue magic areas work.

Late to the party here, but I wanted to comment - FWIW, I mostly agree with this.

Far too many people misuse the tier system as a "don't play this class, ever, even if it's one you used to enjoy prior to reading this" hammer.

But far more use it as a guidline to assess how versatile each player could be. And the reverse is also true: if someone wants to play a druid in a low tier party, they will often be told about lower tier options.

[Tyndmyr]

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.

Rope trick. Or scrolls. Seriously, having giant piles of scrolls is a wizard thing. Might as well.

Or his spellbook is stolen.

How do you steal a well protected item from what is essentially a miniature god?

Or there's an anti-magic field.

Invoke Magic, Initiate of Mystra, Instantaneous Conjurations...keep on rocking.

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.

If his weapon is stolen, he is generally gimped. A magic weapon usually takes up a significant fraction of a melee chars wealth, and it is typically specifically chosen to complement his preferred style(ie, reach weapon with combat reflexes, etc). There is not always an identical replacement at hand.

Backup spellbooks are cheaper than backup magical weapons.

Also, the fighter DOES run out of hp.

[quote] the correct fighter/rogue mix eats wizards for breakfast.

Really? What mix is this?

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.

Right. Not broken because the DM can fix it. Oberoni fallacy, how you appear in every thread on class balance...

[MeeposFire]

could no longer bypass DR/Magic. In an antimagic field, everyone sucks

I just want to say that unless I am remembering incorrectly DR/magic is supernatural and is thus nullified in an anti-magic field so that small problem is not a problem. Rest is true though.

[Firechanter]

As for the "stealing the spellbook" stuff - it's never happened in any game where I was involved. Usually the gentlemen's agreement seems to be that central class features are sacrosanct. It's not like stealing a Fighter's weapon, it's more like chopping off his arms.

(Nevertheless, in a high-level pbp game where I play a Wizard I traded her familiar for Eideetic Memory just to avoid any temptation in that direction. The only spellbook this character has is a fake one filled with Explosive Runes. Also, her total known spells (at level 18) would amount to _10_ spellbooks, or two Eberrron spellshards.)

That said, spellbooks are rather unappealing to the normal, mundane thief, due to their abysmal resale value.

[Veyr]

I just want to say that unless I am remembering incorrectly DR/magic is supernatural and is thus nullified in an anti-magic field so that small problem is not a problem. Rest is true though.

I've just poked around, and see no indication of this. The Damage Reduction section in the Special Abilities chapter does not mention this. A Barbarian's DR/- is Ex; a Monk's DR/magic does not have a type listed. Monsters have DR/magic listed in their Special Qualities. I do not think that it goes away in an AMF.

On the other hand, the natural weapons of creatures with DR/magic do work, even in an AMF, since they aren't actually magical, just "count as" "for the purposes of damage reduction", and an AMF doesn't mess with that.

[Cog]

I'm pretty sure I've seen it somewhere else, but the only evidence I'm finding right now is on page 58 of the Rules Compendium. A vampire is given as an example in the sidebar, and its DR/magic goes away in an AMF.

Note that in the Vampire entry, the DR is given as an Su trait.

[Gnaeus]

Of course, there's nothing wrong with being a Cleric that ignores the standard Cleric advise. Although between focusing on Strength, ignoring Charisma/DMM, and losing caster levels for multiclassing out, the character is less of a cleric and more of a magical self-buffing fighter.

1. Is magical self-buffing fighter the most optimized roll a cleric can play? No.

2. Can a cleric (without multiclassing out, never lose caster levels) rocking domains like war, strength, and destruction, compete credibly with a fighter through low level play, and eclipse the fighter in high level play? Yes.

3. Would a cleric playing a magical self-buffing fighter step on the fighters toes in an unfriendly way? Maybe. It depends on the optimization and composition of the group. There is no reason why "priest of a war god" is inherently a less worthy concept than "guy with a sword".

4. Would I rather have 2 clerics in my group than a cleric and a fighter? I'll take the clerics. At any level.

[true_shinken]

Also, why can't the fighter just also be a cleric and buff himself? Then you have two people being effective, and not one person enabling another person to be effective.

Maybe people like being badass normals? Maybe you don't want a religious character? Power is not the only reason why people choose character class, otherwise we would all only play Pun-Pun.

If the cleric's only job is to buff the fighter, a lot of people wouldn't enjoy playing clerics

Did anyone say that buffing the fighter was the cleric's only job? Because I didn't see it.
Also, a lot of people don't enjoy playing clerics for lots of different reasons, same as lots of people don't enjoy playing fighters and lots of fools people don't enjoy playing a melee warlock. I really don't see your point... specially when you consider there are classes that only buff and many people have a blast playing them.

Far too many people misuse the tier system as a "don't play this class, ever, even if it's one you used to enjoy prior to reading this" hammer.

Thurbane, you're my favourite playgrounder ever.

[Veyr]

Maybe people like being badass normals?

D&D 3.5 is, quite frankly, the wrong system for that. It's so absurdly high magic that nothing completely mundane is going to be able to compete after about level 10.