Tier 4 (maybe 3) definitively beats tier 1?

[Graypairofsocks]

The fighter was using iron weapons, unless they are assumed to be steel when masterwork, which I don't think they are. Illithid slayer is in what book now?

It doesn't matter what metal the weapon is made out of, as Ironguard grants immunity to all metal weapons.

[Psyren]

I guess you never fight NPCs?

That's irrelevant because the strength of an NPC with class levels depends entirely on how he is built. It transcends the tier system. If a DM sends a level 20 wizard at you with nothing prepared except Read Magic in all his slots, no feats except Toughness and no items, you're probably going to win that fight even with a CW Samurai, wouldn't you say?

An entry in the monster manual, or a trap, or even a social encounter is more easily quantifiable. Ghasts paralyze. Medusas turn you to stone. Dragons have specific breath weapons, specific SLAs, and even suggested spells known. An ogre's weapons and feats are listed in its entry. The challenge is objective.

[ElenionAncalima]

I think the trouble here is that the wizard is being played by the fighter's rules.

In reality, a creative wizard player can probably have the competition locked up before it ever gets to combat. The real strength of the wizard isn't in blasting...or even save or dies. It is in their sheer number of options and utilities.

[Devigor]

@ElenionAncalima
This is usually how I play wizards. Manipulation and strategy by far overpower and outmaneuver even those of a much higher caliber of power, even if you could just level the entire country. Which is why I am more, "what could I use this to do", rather than, "you all lose because I'm H4X0rZ."

[Phelix-Mu]

Step 1: Gate to move the wizard to plane x, not the home plane of the fighter.

Step 2: Gate to gate the fighter to the wizard.

Command the fighter to drop gear and stand still for the full twenty rounds, voluntarily failing any saves in that time.

Step 3: Gate to gate in a Solar, who will then be given items of buff Diplomacy, with which the paragon of goodness may convince the fighter to never fight wizards one-on-one, for life is precious, and the spurious wasting of it immoral.

Or, lol, a pit fiend to teach the fighter a thousand years of pain in two minutes. Or a zodar to stand still and look at the fighter in an unnerving manner before it wishes up the best omelette in existence for the fighter to eat.

Or just command the fighter to draw from a deck of many things, or to bathe in acid, or design an optimized low-tier character to take on a Tier 1 with. Pretty much anything instilling either "doom" or "futility" will work in this last step.

[ace rooster]

Apart from anything else, the wizard didn't lose. He left. He can find the fighter easily enough at any time in the future, and leave if things turn ugly again. The fighter cannot reliably locate the wizard, so any fight will be on the wizards terms. The wizard can be prebuffed specifically to fight the fighter, and the fighter will not be ready.

The wizard has methods for shutting down the fighters escape routes, as teleport is about his only option. Assuming the fighter can stop the wizard teleporting, he still has to deal with fly, burrow speeds, or hiding in a forcecage (if there is no space inside the forcecage you cannot dd in). When he has done all that he can start to worry about actually killing the mage, who would have left already if the fight was not going well.

The fighter may have 'won' the battle, but not the war. He gained very little information that he can act on about the wizard, while the wizard is now very aware of the fighters abilities and in a position to target his weaknesses. The wizard may have 'lost', but has recieved no lasting damage or disadvantage. The fighter on the other hand cannot expect things to go so well in future, and his victory is hollow. Your example is actually a very good example of why the fighter cannot 'beat' a tier 1.

[eggynack]

This is usually how I play wizards. Manipulation and strategy by far overpower and outmaneuver even those of a much higher caliber of power, even if you could just level the entire country. Which is why I am more, "what could I use this to do", rather than, "you all lose because I'm H4X0rZ."

The cool thing is that wizards are the best at both. They can do the super cool thing where you take down a wide reaching foe with creative use of spells like silent image, prestidigitation, and maybe charm person, and they can do the super crazy thing where they act before the enemy every time, and destroy them in that brief period before the enemy even has a chance to try anything.

[Krobar]

Why didn't he just cast Time Stop and gate in a couple of Pit Fiends?

[Phelix-Mu]

Why didn't he just cast Time Stop and gate in a couple of Pit Fiends?

Because time stop is overkill in the setup for this match. Three buff rounds should end the game for the fighter.

[Melcar]

Definitely. A Fighter 2/Psion 8/Illithid Slayer 10, for example, could probably defeat a wizard if played intelligently.

To add in to the "stuff your incantatrix could have done" chain, was your fighter-type using iron weapons? If so, Persisted Ironguard (Spell Compendium) deals with that, while being the sort of buff pretty much anybody would want up.

Greater Iron Guard takes care of any metal weapon... :)


Anyways if the wizard starts:

1: Timestop (assuming a roll of 2)
2: Delayed Mord' Disjunction to take care of all your gear
3: Delayed, Twinned, maxed, empowered Energy Drain.
4: fire, cold, acid, sonic, electricity admixtured, maximized, delayed blast fireball for 720 damage.


Or you go timestop and place a vertical gate underneath the fighter...

Or you in your timestop you go twinned gate and call solars, who calls solars, who calls solars, who calls solars.


I have played wizard through out my D&D life, and when I came here on these boards I thought that I knew how to play a wizard. Then "met" Tippy... then I was newb again. You my friend are a newb! Sorry.. I mean no offence.

[137beth]

@Renen:
THAT is what I'm talking about! :D
I had not thought of the contingencied teleport. Also, I had used dimensional anchor, just not *with* forcecage. You officially solved the entire thread and my bewilderment. Thanks! ^__^

This thread was resolved after 18 posts. The forums must have multiclassed to a higher tier forum class!

[Phelix-Mu]

This thread was resolved after 18 posts. The forums must have multiclassed to a higher tier forum class!

Ironically, the forum designers had never intended that threads should end in such a quick manner. The resulting rocket tag trend on threads would prove the bane of many a high-op thread.

[Vaz]

There are two things I feel that any High OP fighter needs, and that is Jaunter and Astral Tracking. You need to be able to reliably hit DC30 Survival by ECL 8 as well. 10 ranks, decent Wis, and a couple of items to boost your check.

This means that a Wizard cannot just teleport anywhere to escape, and recover their perday abilities (especially if they use tricks like fast time planes.

Of course a wizard should have plenty of defences against teleport attacks, but short of returning to their safest sanctum which they've dipped their resources into but a wizard who has fled a challenge having seen fighter weather their attacks would find it surprisimg to learn they are followed immediately after.

It is at this point, things like use activated buffs and heals bece useful. Skull talosmans of heal say. Wothout turning this into anRAW dissemination thread, IHS to remove Debuffs with a DM to stop any potential abuses and hyperbole or needlessly restrictive readings of RAW. These allow a Fighter to compete at full resources, whereas a wizard needa to spend time or considerable wealth (and losing flexibility) on the same.

[Krobar]

Because time stop is overkill in the setup for this match. Three buff rounds should end the game for the fighter.

I thought the point was to show how the wizard could easily slaughter the fighter.

Good thing I didn't pull out the crafted contingent wishes.

[Renen]

@Vaz
You mean most wizards DONT return to their safe place?
A place where they have a tonn of allies on standby?
A place layered with traps?
A place that has so many contingency spells that you can see the magic in the air?
A place where you will die before you can take a turn unless you are the wizards who made it?

Huh...

[Phelix-Mu]

There are two things I feel that any High OP fighter needs, and that is Jaunter and Astral Tracking. You need to be able to reliably hit DC30 Survival by ECL 8 as well. 10 ranks, decent Wis, and a couple of items to boost your check.

This means that a Wizard cannot just teleport anywhere to escape, and recover their perday abilities (especially if they use tricks like fast time planes.

Of course a wizard should have plenty of defences against teleport attacks, but short of returning to their safest sanctum which they've dipped their resources into but a wizard who has fled a challenge having seen fighter weather their attacks would find it surprisimg to learn they are followed immediately after.

It is at this point, things like use activated buffs and heals bece useful. Skull talosmans of heal say. Wothout turning this into anRAW dissemination thread, IHS to remove Debuffs with a DM to stop any potential abuses and hyperbole or needlessly restrictive readings of RAW. These allow a Fighter to compete at full resources, whereas a wizard needa to spend time or considerable wealth (and losing flexibility) on the same.

Jaunter doesn't stop the gate trick I outlined above perchance? I am totally unfamiliar with that ACF/feat/class feature.

[Vaz]

@Phelixmu - Jaunter is a 4 level PrC requiring Spring Attack (IiRC) which gives Dex+Caster Levek SLA (or maybe SU?) Dimension Door, Benign Transposition, Teleport and Plane Shift (counts as two uses). Combined with Astral Tracking (ECL9 earliest), with a DC30 survival check you can locate the end point of a Teleport effect. The two combined nullify that particular escape route for a caster. If it has a Teleport Descriptor it can be tracked, while Jaunter allows you to escape if you need to (and it is unlikely the caster has Astral Tracking. When a fighter is built to beat casters, Mettle, Evasion amd high saves are taken as granted.

The fighter can then fulfil the same trick as a Wizard - albeit, without access to Necromancy or Mind Affecting abilities (sans Scrolls or Binding Naberius (jncisentally, Binder dips are wonderful), binder and Jaunter cost 2 BAB). Admittedly, a wizard doesn't meed to waste money on Disposable items to fulfil that though, but the only difference between a wizard ominating monster and the fighter is that the CL and DC are higher, plus a couple of thousand gp.

Buying a contingent spell for a Fighter is a similar thing (with a triggered plane shift to go off should he be attacked before he gets to act after Jaunting) so that even if he tele's into the heart of wizards tower he's 'safe'. After all, it is a minimum of 15 mins to get spellslots back, so a fighter teleing into wozards sanctum has 159 roundsish for a wizard to fill up ubused spell slots (uncanny forethought being bot too useful in combat).

[Story]

Except that the Wizard will have (Greater) Anticipate Teleport, which the Fighter doesn't. And every spell the Fighter uses is a permanent cost that is difficult to replace, while the Wizard can do it several times a day.

As for changing spellslots, there's always Uncanny Forethought.

Also, Wish + Spell Engine (or RAW Uncanny Forethought + Spell Engine) lets you change all your prepared spells in a single round, though it won't get back slots that are already used up.

But if you're going up against a Wizard with 9th, or even 8th level spells, you've already lost.

[Andezzar]

Also, Wish + Spell Engine (or RAW Uncanny Forethought + Spell Engine) lets you change all your prepared spells in a single round, though it won't get back slots that are already used up.

What do you need wish/Uncanny forethought for? Doesn't Spell Engine alone accomplish the switch?

[Karnith]

What do you need wish/Uncanny forethought for? Doesn't Spell Engine alone accomplish the switch?

Wish or Uncanny Forethought reduce the casting time from 10 minutes to either 1 standard action or 1 full-round action, though it still takes time (albeit half as long as normal) to prepare spells using Spell Engine.

[Threadnaught]

Step 2: Gate to gate the fighter to the wizard.

Command the fighter to drop gear and stand still for the full twenty rounds, voluntarily failing any saves in that time.

Gate doesn't work like that.


Okay, so Necropolitan Vecna-Blooded Gray Elf. Superior Invisibility (Complete Arcane version), Planar Bubble to private Demiplane as the native plane, with Enhanced Magic (all Metamagic) trait, Persist Planar Bubble every day. Immune to any form of detection for 38 hours.

Every single Spell does exactly what the Wizard wants it to for no increase in cost. Once the Wizard discovers that he's expected to fight Fighter McWarrior, he plucks a poor Commoner off the street and Telepathic Bonds him, then buys some Wizard stuff. Wizard takes the Commoner to the arena and hides by his side, waiting for the Fighter to appear.
As soon as the Fighter shows up, Wizard Shapechanges into a Hydra and tears him apart before he can close the distance between himself and he Commoner.

Alternatively, the Wizard doesn't use any of the above buffs or manipulation prior to combat, he merely uses Shapechange to transform into a Zodar. Then punches the Fighter to death.

[ace rooster]

@Phelixmu - Jaunter is a 4 level PrC requiring Spring Attack (IiRC) which gives Dex+Caster Levek SLA (or maybe SU?) Dimension Door, Benign Transposition, Teleport and Plane Shift (counts as two uses). Combined with Astral Tracking (ECL9 earliest), with a DC30 survival check you can locate the end point of a Teleport effect. The two combined nullify that particular escape route for a caster. If it has a Teleport Descriptor it can be tracked, while Jaunter allows you to escape if you need to (and it is unlikely the caster has Astral Tracking. When a fighter is built to beat casters, Mettle, Evasion amd high saves are taken as granted.

The fighter can then fulfil the same trick as a Wizard - albeit, without access to Necromancy or Mind Affecting abilities (sans Scrolls or Binding Naberius (jncisentally, Binder dips are wonderful), binder and Jaunter cost 2 BAB). Admittedly, a wizard doesn't meed to waste money on Disposable items to fulfil that though, but the only difference between a wizard ominating monster and the fighter is that the CL and DC are higher, plus a couple of thousand gp.

Buying a contingent spell for a Fighter is a similar thing (with a triggered plane shift to go off should he be attacked before he gets to act after Jaunting) so that even if he tele's into the heart of wizards tower he's 'safe'. After all, it is a minimum of 15 mins to get spellslots back, so a fighter teleing into wozards sanctum has 159 roundsish for a wizard to fill up ubused spell slots (uncanny forethought being bot too useful in combat).

It is a cool build, and it does shut down that particular escape route (mostly, shadow walk does not have the teleport descriptor, and even if you manage to track them you still have about a 1 in 4 of missing completely with your teleport). It neglects that the wizard has many more, and that following him into his sanctum is probably a very bad plan (even without killer traps, expect things like fog to make the wizard impossible to find, and rubble that prevents running or charging. More lethal is finding yourself in a pool of lava, having not realised the wizard had fire immunity. DC50ish concentration check to escape). Even with your teleport abilities a wizard is far more mobile, and will be far more effective at range.

The build mostly prevents escape, but letting the wizard choose the battlefield is madness. Have you seen what happens if you try to fight a caster on the astral plane? automatic quicken spell. Also your minionmancy is useless if the fight moves.

I'm not even touching 8th level spells, and assuming you have immunity to dim anchor and lock.

[Devigor]

Reading through all of this, there is a lot of useful information.

I knew I was (and I still am) a newb as soon as I started looking on the boards. This whole thing wasn't so much about the initial post, as what came after. I suppose I meant it more to gauge exactly how much I do not know (which, again, I realize that is a huge swath of almost everything involving anything).

[Fouredged Sword]

Yeah, but you can't follow the wizard into his private demiplane with selective forbidden preventing you from teleporting in. It is literally a plane of existence you cannot enter unless you are wizard X or burn a wish to teleport regardless of local conditions.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

I think the trouble here is that the wizard is being played by the fighter's rules.

In reality, a creative wizard player can probably have the competition locked up before it ever gets to combat. The real strength of the wizard isn't in blasting...or even save or dies. It is in their sheer number of options and utilities.

Funnily enough an Incantatrix can definitely play by the Fighter's rules and still win, i.e. he can beat the fighter to death. He learned spells like Draconic Polymorph, Bite of the Were[animal], Wraithstrike, Greater Blink, Greater Invisibility and Greater Mighty Wallop 10+ levels ago, and that gives you more than sufficient damage without too much effort*. The higher level spells are just icing.

Just putting up Mind Blank and Superior Invisibility can ruin the fighter's day depending on your reading of Mind Blank vs. True Seeing, and either way by level 20 you can just disjoin all the fighter's gear and buffs before he does anything. If you want the gear for later or feel like level 9 spells are unsporting, then you can go all Tippy and use a Selective Antimagic Field.

*

Spoiler

Show

Draconic Polymorph into a War Troll for base 31+8 strength. Bite of the Werebear for +16 enhancement. Greater Mighty Wallop and Greater Magic Weapon a bludgeoning weapon. Haste in the buffing round, or ocular persist haste normally. Nab knowledge devotion, because apparently you like to gish. You hit touch AC at +43/+43/+38 and natural attacks (10 base, 22 strength, 5 enhancement, +1 haste, +5 insight) before other buffs, benefits for attacking as an invisible creature, or any other situational modifiers. Your weapon damage is 8d6+43 (33 strength, 5 enhancement, 5 insight) before other buffs, and then you have a bite that deals 1d6+27.

BotW gets you Power Attack for free, so you'll probably end up using it. Power attacking for 10 (and hitting at least 30 touch on a 2 on your secondary attacks) you'll deal ~313 damage on a full attack. You can pump these numbers much further with more effort in the form of spells, feats and items, but like I said, you just need it to be sufficient.

The best part is, the numbers don't go down that much had you done this many levels earlier.

[Aharon]

Gate doesn't work like that.

It may or may not work like that, depending on your interpretation of the words "particular" and "unique":

By naming a particular being or kind of being as you cast the spell, you cause the gate to open in the immediate vicinity of the desired creature and pull the subject through, willing or unwilling. Deities and unique beings are under no compulsion to come through the gate, although they may choose to do so of their own accord.

If you think every being is unique, you can't do the above. However, this would render the calling function of the spell completely useless, since you couldn't call anything. The other interpretation (unique is grandfathered in from second edition and refers to the frequency, as the 2nd ed Gate did) would allow calling named beings. Of course, the wizard would have to know the fighters name for it to work.

[Eldariel]

So I have seem continuously on these forums about wizards being overpowered, even for a tier 1 class; or to be put simply, linear fighter, quadratic wizard. I have pitted a wizard 10/incantatrix 10 with some optimization tricks to enhance spellcraft to relatively high numbers against my optimized fighter 10/rogue 2/ranger 1/horizon walker 7 build (not for tripping, just for teleporting and a few goodies) and the fighter tore the wizard to shreds every time. The wizard went first almost every time. The DC's were pretty high, but the fighter had high saves (and evasion, just in case). Thus, it ended up with the wizard starting off using stoneskin, then greater luminous armor, then some other crud, eventually using greater teleport to go close to his dimension locked home. The fighter still won, sort of... So... Any ideas of either A) what went wrong, or B) what went right?

Note 1: I did in fact allow a 3 round buffing/enhancing time. The wizard has too many spells to cast in those 3 rounds, but still, I didn't cheat the wizard.

Note 2: Ability scores at level 20 for the wizard and fighter;
Wiz- Str 10, Dex 30, Con 22, Int 36, Wis 18, Cha 10
Ftr- Str 33, Dex 35, Con 17, Int 12, Wis 32, Cha 10

My default offense on that level is to just start with Disjunction. Sure, you break loot; whatever, you can always make anything you need with conjured stuff/Shapechange + Wish, Astral Projection duplicates or whatever. More importantly, it automatically removes all defensive spells. Items probably won't break vs. a relevant threat unless you optimize the DC, but that's just good. So, Disjunction to remove most buffs, then Chain Greater Dispel Magic (Greater Dispel Magic used with Chain Spell; either Rod or just the feat - as it's an Incantatrix, probably the feat) to disable all magic items, then whatever. This can all be done in one turn with e.g. Time Stop + Delay Spell, Chronotyryn (Fiend Folio), Celerity chains (Celerity and its variants are from Player's Handbook II) or whatever too. Very, very few non-casters have any significant defense with no magic items. Hell, this can even be moderately threatening to a caster, as getting hit by Disjunction usually is; though losing your Astral Projection to it is less so.

Note also that the Wizard can easily get over hundred AC, to hit, etc. and just shapechange into something that can shred the Fighter in melee, if the Fighter isn't truly pimped out. As the Wizard can do this through Astral Projection, he can conceivably do it as many times as necessary to win, perhaps even experimenting with different melee setups or whatever. This build was a single character build for AC stacking for instance; fairly simple to hit reasonably high numbers this way. Team Solars showcase what you can do with buff stacking simply number-wise when you have a bunch of things to use, and no need to hold back or focus on single things.

A Wizard can also accompany himself with the monster manual if necessary; Simulacrum of this, this Planar Bindinged, Dread Warrior that (Animate Dread Warrior is in Unapproachable East), this Gated. Hell, since non-casters have no ways to dictate the terms of engagement (they lack easy access to wish teleportation, scrying, genesis, astral projection, plane shifting, etc.) a Wizard can literally teleport away, generate whatever army he desires to deal with whatever problem he's facing that can't be solved with any of his Shapechange forms (Shapechange changes once per turn as a free action so he himself, and his familiar, are basically any combination of almost any two monsters in the game complete with all Su and Ex abilities), permanent lackeys (Simulacrums, Dread Warriors, etc.) nor Wish (Zodar from Fiend Folio has it as a Su ability for instance).


Either way, after the defenses have been disabled or removed, the finisher is simple enough. Cast a save-or-die, an Autohit Orb of Billion Damage (use Surge of Fortune through e.g. Limited Wish to guarantee a Natural 20 on the attack roll and True Strike to remove any chance of concealment or such), use Shapechange to acquire a solid melee form and rip them to shreds, sic your zoo/Gated Whatever at them or whatever.

[Aharon]

A point that hasn't been mentioned yet, I think:

I did take into account [...] infinite loot

Assuming equal intelligence of the people building the characters, this renders the contest moot. While the fighter needs more wealth to do so, everything the wizard can do can be copied via magic items, and the wizard can do the same to get the fighter stuff. Usually, the wizard has a big advantage because he only needs to sink xp into crafting contingencies - here, the fighter can do the same. Every spell the wizard can cast can be replicated with magic items.

(Example: Wizard casts Genesis and uses astral projection? Fighter uses Staff of Genesis and Skull Talisman of Astral Projection. The wizard can do it for free, while it costs the fighter several thousand gp, but the end result is the same)

[Andezzar]

Assuming equal intelligence of the people building the characters, this renders the contest moot. While the fighter needs more wealth to do so, everything the wizard can do can be copied via magic items, and the wizard can do the same to get the fighter stuff. Usually, the wizard has a big advantage because he only needs to sink xp into crafting contingencies - here, the fighter can do the same. Every spell the wizard can cast can be replicated with magic items.

The the fighter having an Intelligence equal to that of the wizard is either unlikely. If resources are the same, a fighter with maxed out INT probably will not be very good at fighting, unless we are talking about starting with 6 18s.

(Example: Wizard casts Genesis and uses astral projection? Fighter uses Staff of Genesis and Skull Talisman of Astral Projection. The wizard can do it for free, while it costs the fighter several thousand gp, but the end result is the same)

These are most likely custom a magic items. Their availability and price is in the purview of the DM, and thus cannot be relied on to be available at affordable price.

[amalcon]

Assuming equal intelligence of the people building the characters, this renders the contest moot. While the fighter needs more wealth to do so, everything the wizard can do can be copied via magic items, and the wizard can do the same to get the fighter stuff. Usually, the wizard has a big advantage because he only needs to sink xp into crafting contingencies - here, the fighter can do the same. Every spell the wizard can cast can be replicated with magic items.

(Example: Wizard casts Genesis and uses astral projection? Fighter uses Staff of Genesis and Skull Talisman of Astral Projection. The wizard can do it for free, while it costs the fighter several thousand gp, but the end result is the same)

This is correct. At absurd levels like 20, a Commoner with optimized full PC wealth can easily outperform a typical non-TO character with zero wealth, of any class. This demonstrates that, at high levels, a character's power level is based more on equipment than on anything innate.

Adding infinite wealth makes the whole thing moot, as it ramps the loot-power-level so high that the class-power-level differences will be miniscule in comparison.