Quick fix for wizards.

[Necroticplague]

In both of your scenarios the characters have directed the plot. They both decided "go to the Ice Rift." If the DM wants there to be no adventure in reaching that place then there isn't either way. If he/she wants an adventure where they try to reach this fictional place, then there will be one. Both characters can direct the plot away from the Ice Rift, by virtue of deciding not to go there.

Built in abilities that allow you to just do things aren't necessarily good for the game. Struggling to achieve your goals is the point of playing. In this scenario the Wizard cut-out part of the game, while our hypothetical non-caster has influenced the story by choosing the method of travel.
I would argue that not having an ability to instantly achieve a goal is better story-wise.

Only if the cut out part is actually of interest. I find that too frequently, the adventure in just getting somewhere is essentially tedious busy work. So 'cutting out' that part is basically the equivalent of 'just get to the good part'. Screw the overly long descriptions of middle-of-nowheresville I don't care about, skip the monotonous battle against mundane bandits we could beat sleeping, disregard the plot-irrelevant fetchquest to do a favor to pass through a bridge. Just get to the dungeon crawl I came here for. As a wizard, that's an option, while it isn't for the fighter (barring magic items).

[Andezzar]

And once you get there, the mundanes have the same problem. If the opposition involves for example a dragon, the mundanes will have problems dealing with its mobility, its breath weapon and its spellcasting. Countering them will most likely require magic items and/or caster support and magic items must be made by casters in the first place.

The dragon is only an example. All monsters that have non-walking movement, SU/SP abilities (especially those that involve SOL) are particularly hard to deal with for mundanes.

[Apricot]

I'm fairly certain that arcane spellcasters at the very least and possibly also divine spellcasters would be far more balanced if they just didn't have access to summoning magic, domination magic, and shapeshifting magic. The reason for this is that these three types of magic allow the character to gain access to anything that their character can't put out directly. For example, wizards have a serious problem with dealing damage over a long period of time. They just don't have enough spell slots for it, usually. They have to either nova through an encounter and then rest or devote far too many of their spells to dealing damage and nothing else. Summoning creatures, dominating creatures, or turning into creatures lets you get around that problem entirely. Similarly, sorcerers have an issue with flexibility. They can put out enough damage to end encounters, but will struggle to have the right spells to handle every situation. But with the right spell knowledge, they can just summon, dominate, or shapeshift into a creature with the shark repellent of the day. Summoning, domination, and shapeshifting lets you get around one of the most fundamental features of the game, which is needing to have party members.

So, in conclusion, restrictions here would mean that your arcane spellcasters can't just render their meat shields obsolete, even if they're still technically "higher-power" than the others. It's hard to say how one could accomplish this same change for, say, druids, who have summoning and shapechanging as primary class features, so I'll just leave it here. Oh, and it'd be best to ban Leadership as well, but I think that goes for all cases. One thing I left out in this analysis is skill-obsoleting spells such as Knock. Perhaps those need some restriction as well, to make skillmonkeys important.

[Beheld]

I'm fairly certain that arcane spellcasters at the very least and possibly also divine spellcasters would be far more balanced if they just didn't have access to summoning magic, domination magic, and shapeshifting magic. The reason for this is that these three types of magic allow the character to gain access to anything that their character can't put out directly. For example, wizards have a serious problem with dealing damage over a long period of time. They just don't have enough spell slots for it, usually. They have to either nova through an encounter and then rest or devote far too many of their spells to dealing damage and nothing else. Summoning creatures, dominating creatures, or turning into creatures lets you get around that problem entirely. Similarly, sorcerers have an issue with flexibility. They can put out enough damage to end encounters, but will struggle to have the right spells to handle every situation. But with the right spell knowledge, they can just summon, dominate, or shapeshift into a creature with the shark repellent of the day. Summoning, domination, and shapeshifting lets you get around one of the most fundamental features of the game, which is needing to have party members.

You do need to ban or modify domination, and shapeshifting, you also need to ban or modify calling and undead animation, you really don't need to ban summoning at all. But the reason isn't "Because it replaces meat shields!" or "Because it does sustained damage!" You don't need meatshields or sustained damage at all. If you want to make a party of 4 Wizards who nova everything in two rounds or die trying, you can do that, if you want to make a tank wizard who has so many defense spells that he tanks well, you can do that. If you want to be a Cleric, and have more sustained damage and meat shielding ability than a fighter, you can do that. People shouldn't have to play some specific role in the party, it was bad when it was "Someone has to be the healbot so that we can play at all, I don't care if you don't want to, suffer so we can enjoy it" and it's bad now when people say "Someone should have to be the meatshield so we need to make sure that Wizards die if they are ever attacked! (Wait, what's that you say, there is no aggro mechanic and a bunch of ambush monsters, teleport monsters, giant fire breathing cone monsters will attack the party either at random, intelligently, or all at once! No!)"

The reason you need to ban those things that you do need to ban, and not those things you don't is because:
1) Domination as currently written allows you to spend zero spell slots today in return for between 1 and 500 minions each of which could individually be higher than your level.
2) Planar Binding as currently written allows you to spend zero spell slots today in return for between 1 and 100 minions, each of which could individually be higher than your level.
3) Gate allows you to instantly no save no SR kill any single creature you know the name of in the multiverse.
4) Gate also allows you to spend one spell slot today in return for 10-20 minions each of which is individually higher than your level.
5) Gate also allows you to spend one spell slot this combat for a single minion who is so much higher level than you that he's actually CR 54, which, according to CR rules, means he's capable of beating infinity CR 37 enemies. Since this combat is likely to be against a finite number of enemies under CR 30, that means he wins the combat for you automatically.
6) Animate Dead can, from levels 5-12, produce a number of minions between 1 and about 6 each of which could individually be higher than your level in return for zero spell slots today.
7) Shapeshifting is a game in which you take some parts of your character and some parts of a monster, and combine them to create a new character. In addition to being a book keeping nightmare that no two people actually agree on the rules for, this is a process that you can apply to any one of 6000 or more monsters. If you can't find a monster in that set of 6000 that is broken with some specific combination, then you aren't trying.
8) Summoning is fine, because each summon is so low level and weak, and costs spell slots today, that you basically can't pull out any game breaking effects with summons ever under any circumstance.

So the lessons we can learn from that, in determining what is or isn't broken are:
1) If something costs literally nothing, and gives you minions, it's probably broken.
2) If something costs very little, but gives you minions stronger than you, it's definitely broken.
3) If something gives you minions that are weaker than you, and requires actual in combat action cost and/or spell slots today, it's probably fine.
4) Some part of player+Some part of Monster (choose from 6000) is going to be a problem, because a few of those 6000 are going to be a problem.


Shapechanging in concept isn't that big a deal, which is why Druids, who basically just get to not care about Str and Dex ever, are still only "pretty powerful" but not broken, and when you looks at "why is Alter Self broken?" the answer is "Xorns and Dwarf Ancestors, and NOTHING ELSE." And why is polymorph broken is followed by "Pyro/Cryo Hydras, War Trolls, and nothing else." Shapechange is just broken no matter what, because there are lots of broken supernatural abilities all the way up to 25HD.

But for Alter Self and Polymorph, it's like, maybe 1% of all forms, or even .1% of forms that are actually broken, but since those .1% exist and become the only thing anyone tranforms into, and .1% of 6000 is still 6, that's still broken.

[Apricot]

You're raising the bar far past where I had set it with that post. I was talking about things simply being too strong to the point where they make other solutions obsolete or in other ways irrelevant; you're talking about outright destroying the game. Everything you mention fits within the framework of what I was objecting to, even if your level of objecting to things doesn't find certain things objectionable which I consider to be the case. Or, to put it another way, Gate is RAW something that no character should ever have access to, while Summon spells just mean that you can have a Wizard solo a huge variety of enemies without having to devote the kind of financial or character-concrete resources that a mundane would have to use in order to do the same. While we both think Gate simply should not exist, with its simple transit use possibly being kosher, you're much more comfortable with the idea of a Wizard being able to reliably solo a lot of things above its level than I am.

The healbot objection is a fair one, though, and so I'll try and frame the entire issue that it brings up. One of the problems with any party-based game is making sure that everyone gets to do what they want to do without having every character be identical. This means that there need to be multiple roles available in a party, and that people are free to pick and choose between them with enough flexibility that they can end up doing the things they want to do. Systems tend to hit difficulties when sent too far in one direction or the other: either they're too static and everyone is forced to play a certain role whether they want to or not, or they're too loose and the players lose all sense of themselves as offering unique and vital contributions to the party. 3.5 answers this problem by trying to be insanely flexible: you can use spells or magic items to get a huge portion of class features onto the characters you want them to be on, and you can use multiclassing and Leadership to handle the rest. The weakness of 3.5 is that as a result of this, the magic-using classes end up being much stronger because they have more direct access to spells and magic items. This means that a large portion of classes are more or less "obsolete," and the players using them can end up feeling like they aren't contributing anything. At tables where nobody wants to play a Barbarian or what have you, it's perfectly acceptable to leave this imbalance in place. At tables where someone does, however, it's simply polite and wise to limit Wizardly access to spells that can replace the Barbarian. After all, the only (steep exaggeration, but bear with me) thing preventing the Barbarian from doing the same in return is the steep price point of most magic items. If money were no issue, a Barbarian could quite possibly replace a Wizard, even if you have to deck him out in so many Rings of Three Wishes that it looks like he's compensating for something. Just as Barbarians aren't allowed in RAW to get as many Rings of Three Wishes as they want, so too is it a good idea to stop the Wizards from summoning, dominating, or turning into Barbarian replacements.

And a brief note about healing: it's just generally one of the dumbest things in the game. They correctly modeled the system of natural healing to reflect that it takes a long time, but neglected to consider that it's boring as sin in a game where you really just want to get back to action. So instead they had to put in a ton of magical healing, which now means that everyone has to rely on this sort of static need for health regeneration in order to continue playing the game they want to be playing in any case. It probably would have been a lot better if they limited healing to town clerics and potions. Some people like healing even so, which personally baffles me, but more power to them. I'm not going to badwrongfun them.

[Beheld]

while Summon spells just mean that you can have a Wizard solo a huge variety of enemies . . . you're much more comfortable with the idea of a Wizard being able to reliably solo a lot of things above its level than I am.

Summon Monster does not help Wizards solo anything. A Wizard that never summons anything is going to be better at soloing than one that does. There are zero instances in which Summon Monster is going to help a Wizard beat an encounter he otherwise wouldn't be able to.

There is nothing the Barbarian brings to the table that the Wizard can't just do himself, without summoning monsters. He is better doing that, because Summon Monsters spells are not strong at all.

At tables where nobody wants to play a Barbarian or what have you, it's perfectly acceptable to leave this imbalance in place. At tables where someone does, however, it's simply polite and wise to limit Wizardly access to spells that can replace the Barbarian.

1) The Barbarian isn't useless because the Wizard can cast summon spells. The Barbarian is objectively many times better than summon spells.
2) The Barbarian is useless because he gets no meaningful class features that make him an actual character and everyone else does.

3) There really aren't the roles you think there are. Taking damage is not a role. There is no aggro mechanic, there are no tanks. Most monsters possess the ability to make decisions about targets, and the Barbarian has no ability to effect those decisions (Anticipate Teleport may affect a Glabrezu's targeting choices, existing in a 5ft square really doesn't). If Wizards want to tank damage they can do that better by not casting summon monster, if Wizards want to kill the enemy, they can do that better by not casting summon monster. If Clerics want to exist at all, just by existing they do everything the Barbarian does better.

Taking away the ability to summon a weak monster for a limited duration does literally nothing for the barbarian. It doesn't make his role less infringed, it doesn't make him valuable in any way.

And a brief note about healing: it's just generally one of the dumbest things in the game. They correctly modeled the system of natural healing to reflect that it takes a long time, but neglected to consider that it's boring as sin in a game where you really just want to get back to action. So instead they had to put in a ton of magical healing, which now means that everyone has to rely on this sort of static need for health regeneration in order to continue playing the game they want to be playing in any case. It probably would have been a lot better if they limited healing to town clerics and potions. Some people like healing even so, which personally baffles me, but more power to them. I'm not going to badwrongfun them.

I think for the most part "You have a bunch of wands of Lesser Vigor, and you use them to heal, but you still don't want to take damage, because you are using up a resource" is the best method of healing for the game of D&D.

[Apricot]

All right, let's put it to the test. How would you, as a core-only Wizard20 with no summoning/domination/shapeshifting, reliably solo a Pit Fiend as RAW without becoming so specialized that you're just the Pit Fiend slayer? No using Wish or Leadership to cheat. I'm pretty sure the only real way of doing it is using Energy Drain and the like to reduce its levels fast enough that you don't have to worry too much about the things it summons getting you. Second question: how much easier would it have been if you could use basic Summoning to just have dudes who can grapple the various enemies, and who can possibly overcome the Regeneration and DR without you physically having to walk up and coup-de-grace it with a silver dagger?

Yes, adding in a Barbarian20 is better, but at a certain point you can use enough scrolls to handle things acceptably.

[Beheld]

All right, let's put it to the test. How would you, as a core-only Wizard20 with no summoning/domination/shapeshifting, reliably solo a Pit Fiend as RAW without becoming so specialized that you're just the Pit Fiend slayer? No using Wish or Leadership to cheat. I'm pretty sure the only real way of doing it is using Energy Drain and the like to reduce its levels fast enough that you don't have to worry too much about the things it summons getting you. Second question: how much easier would it have been if you could use basic Summoning to just have dudes who can grapple the various enemies, and who can possibly overcome the Regeneration and DR without you physically having to walk up and coup-de-grace it with a silver dagger?

Yes, adding in a Barbarian20 is better, but at a certain point you can use enough scrolls to handle things acceptably.

1) So your example is a fight that by definition I have a 50% chance to lose. Now, I can definitely overcome that by optimization, but the rules actually state that you have a 50% chance to lose that fight.
2) Uhhh... this is sort of skipping ahead, but "how much easier would it have been if you could use basic Summoning to just have dudes who can grapple the various enemies, and who can possibly overcome the Regeneration and DR without you physically having to walk up and coup-de-grace it with a silver dagger?" It would be harder. Much harder. If I prepared even a single spell slot as summoning spell that has a 20 round duration, requires one full round to cast (allowing anyone to interrupt me), and can be instantly murdered no save in a standard action by the Pit Fiend, things would be harder.

Answer: I'm a high level Wizard, so I go whereever I want to go in a single standard action, I have Superior Invisis cast, so none of his minions can even see me, and neither can he. I have Elemental Body (Air), Mindblank, Greater Ancitipate Teleport I have the Fire subtype, and Energy Immunity (Cold, Lightning, Acid) (or just Cold if the DM chooses to apply the overlapping spells rules in a silly way). I also have Viel of Undeath, because why not? Before I TP, I cast Magic Circle Against Evil, because I'm going to kill some evil outsiders.

I show up in the air, totally invisible (or I fly there invisibly at 400ft per round, whatever), and he has no idea I'm there, and neither do any undead, and if for some reason, he has a bunch of summoned devils around, I have magic circle against evil which hedges them out. All my buffs are cast at like, CL 26 or higher against dispelling (Ring of Enduring Arcana, Ioun Stone, Create Magic Tattoo) but there are plenty of ways to get that even higher, and he probably can't do anything about it but cast AoE effects anyway, because he can't actually target me.

In the Surprise Round (because none of them even can detect me) I either: Cast Wail of the Banshee on all of them, if I for some reason care about killing his summons.

He has SR 32, so Arcane Mastery+CL 22 I already have means I auto succeed. I probably also have other SR beating items and feats, because beating SR is important, but whatever. Theoretically, if I don't have the Arcane Mastery feat, I can swift action Assay Resistance and get the same effect on a 1.

My Int is PB 18, +2 Race, +5 levels, +5 Inherent, +6 Enhancement: 36 (+13). So the DC is 10+13+9: DC 32, his Fort save is +19 natural +4 from unholy aura he always has on him=+23. So he succeeds on a 9 and fails on an 8. 40% chance he dies that action. Then we roll init, and I cast it again. Then he has to try to find a completely invisible enemy that he and his minions can't see, and kill me, even though I'm immune to pretty much anything that he or any of his minions can do. Then I cast Wail of the Banshee again. Ect.

Now, this only uses spells, it doesn't use a lot of items (Belt of Battle? Circlet of Rapid Casting?). I could have had my familiar there firing off enervations every round, by Imbuing Familiar, and shareing all my buffs with him.

I could have opened with a Disjunction, to strip his buffs, which lowers his save by 4 amongst other effects.

I could have used better spells (Sphere of Destruction, which allows me to spend standard actions casting a spell and then move actions directing the spheres. Even better if he teleports in my Greater Anticipate Teleportation radius, I can stack 3 or more spheres into the same square so that he has to make a bunch of saves the second he comes out).

I could have prestige class features of any kind at all.

I could have, god forbid, spent actual feats on metamagic and metamagic reduction, and fire off a Split Rayed, Twinned, Repeating Avasculate on the first round, followed by Power Word Kill.

I could have put any amount of effort at all into boosting my DCs.

Or I could bypass the entire concept of playing the game at all, and have just cast Contact Other Plane to find out his name, then used Shades every day for months to create Shadowy Trap the Soul Gems keyed to his specific name, and then when I arrive, just dump them on his head, the first time he fails a will save, he dies. Even if he makes all the will saves, each successful will save has an 80% chance of him being trapped forever in the shadow gem anyway.

Notice how at no point did I, as a level 20 Wizard, give even the slightest **** about his minions, aside from some buffs I would have cast anyway to deal with him, and at no point did I concern myself with how hard it is to kill someone, because I need a "silver dagger" to coup de grace (I would use a silver Scythe if I was going to use anything).

Now, how much easier if I had been able to cast Summon Monster IX and summon a... CR 10 Beblith? The kinds of guys that he kills in one round and can summon minions that can kill in one round? But it lasts 23 rounds and takes a long time to cast? A Celestial Roc that can't even approach him because of his magic circle? The Barbed Devils that he can summon two of in a standard action and his last for an hour instead of two minutes?

At lower levels, my defenses would be less powerful, my offense might be less powerful (Finger of Death is the same as Wail of the Banshee if you are only facing one enemy), but so would be my opposition. If my opposition isn't a Pit Fiend, and it's some other devil, they don't have Create Undead, and they don't have a 100% of summoning, so it might literally be a one on one.

But levels 3-6 you might need someone else to help kill things, or you might not. Every other level, you can just kill the things yourself with your big bad Wizard spells and move right on. Although, even levels 3-6, you don't want a Barbarian, you want a Rogue to do the killing for you.

[Andezzar]

I thought the Pit Fiend had true seeing, but it's the Balor that has that ability.

[Gün]

Doesn't Mindblank counters True Seeing anyway?

[Beheld]

Doesn't Mindblank counters True Seeing anyway?

1) By Raw, probably, (although people will do anything they can to come up with convoluted interpretations that it doesn't because see 2).

2) It shouldn't though, because that's absolutely ridiculous.

[Gün]

We used raw interpretation in our group. It didn't change things that much, just increased the importance of the blindsight and stuff like that.

It is ridiculous though.

[Andezzar]

Doesn't Mindblank counters True Seeing anyway?

Only if you count seeing as information gathering. Mindblank does not explicitly say it blocks true seeing, true seeing however explicitly states that it lets you see invisible creatures.

[Apricot]

Christ, Beheld, you failed before you even started. It's core-only. I said so very clearly. Rewrite that without using non-core material.

Why do I not allow splatbooks? Because splatbooks have things like Greenbound Summoning. You have to run them through a whole new sieve to get rid of all the blatantly overpowered stuff, and I don't feel like exploring everything on its own to see how insane it is.

[ryu]

Only if you count seeing as information gathering. Mindblank does not explicitly say it blocks true seeing, true seeing however explicitly states that it lets you see invisible creatures.

Seeing is the most important form of information gathering. You learn your enemy's location, general appearance, can track what they're doing, and make predictions based upon what you see. Information gathering is literally the purpose of having eyes. Well... I suppose you could also say our species also uses decorations upon them to attract mates, but mostly information gathering.

[Hal0Badger]

Bunch of ways to defeat a pit fiend

Can you do that at level 17 (when you get your first level 9 spell)? Is there any reason that you cannot defeat 2 pit fiend+their summons in that manner?

[Andezzar]

Sorry I misspoke. I meant only if you consider seeing while true seeing is active as information gathering by a divination spell or effect. The gathering of information is not achieved by the true seeing spell but by the character's eyes. The spell merely ensures that the information gathered is correct. So mind blank does not block true seeing.

[Gün]

Christ, Beheld, you failed before you even started. It's core-only. I said so very clearly. Rewrite that without using non-core material.

Why do I not allow splatbooks? Because splatbooks have things like Greenbound Summoning. You have to run them through a whole new sieve to get rid of all the blatantly overpowered stuff, and I don't feel like exploring everything on its own to see how insane it is.

And other overpowered stuff like druids, wizards, clerics, wish, gate and shapechange in splatbooks right? Oh wait...

[Beheld]

Christ, Beheld, you failed before you even started. It's core-only. I said so very clearly. Rewrite that without using non-core material.

Did you say "summoning should be disallowed in Core only games because my opinion does not extend to any other games!" No, you didn't. You made a statement about games people actually play (all the ones that aren't Core only) so justifying it based on prohibiting the SpC is pretty silly.

I mean, you can still do exactly the same thing, because Greater Invisibility exists, you can ride around with a CL of 31 from Spell Power, Ioun Stone, Deathknell, and UMDed Prayer Beads, and everything else I described was a buff that doesn't even come up because none of your enemies can even locate you. (Superior Invis protects against a bunch of effects they don't have and has a better duration, your fly speed is reduced to a mere 40ft good instead of 100ft Perfect, not that it even matters.)

I mean yeah, so you have higher saves because you blow feats on Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus, you have a higher CL if that even mattered, and you Disjunction him on the surprise round and then Wail of Banshee him while your Raven Familiar fires a wand of Solid Fog on the other enemies twice instead of casting Enervation, because it's really important to ban non core things or something.

So he has a saving throw of +19 against your DC 34 Wail of the Banshee. He dies. The end.

Or you can just pour Shades of Soul Trap Gems on him just like before while laughing manically.

If you want to completely take back your previous claim and say "All Core only games should ban summon so Barbarians can feel good" then I will of course, point out that you are still wrong Summon Monster does literally nothing to help Core Wizards fight Pit Fiends either, because Summon Monster is terrible as a combat spell, but I will also say that no one cares because no one plays Core only anyway, I certainly would never join such a game, and that probably applies to most people who play a specific 13 year old version of a D&D.

Can you do that at level 17 (when you get your first level 9 spell)? Is there any reason that you cannot defeat 2 pit fiend+their summons in that manner?

Well, at level 17 it's a lot harder to get auto pass on SR, you have less gold and a lower Caster level. It's also harder to make the fail the save, you have a lower Int because of both less gold and missing one extra +1 from leveling. Your CL being lower increases the chance that AoE dispels will strip your buffs.

You could probably still pull the Shades Trap the Soul trick, because that basically brute forces down SR by the fact that you are dropping like 20-100 gems on him that each kill him 80% of the time on a successful save.

If there are two of them, it greatly increases the chances that one of them will just leave and start information gathering to track you down and kill you. You can probably still do it, because Superior Invisibility against creatures that can't use True Seeing is basically easy mode, but if they come back with True Seeing next time (and you ignore the Mind Blank True Seeing interactions) then things get a lot harder.

[Cosi]

And other overpowered stuff like druids, wizards, clerics, wish, gate and shapechange in splatbooks right? Oh wait...

All (well, almost all) of the stuff that breaks the game into small pieces is in core. planar binding, shapechange ability stacking, simulacrum, polymorph dumpster diving, gate, and so on. There are a few exceptions (spirit binding is planar binding for different creatures, ice assassin), but that mostly holds.

All of the stuff where you put a bunch of buffs, or feats, or PrCs or whatever that enhance the same thing in a pile and get something crazy good are in splats. The ability to put various obscure spells that grant bonuses that stack because people forgot what bonus types exist is the province of splatbooks.

The stuff that destroys the game is core. The stuff that breaks the game is in splats.

[johnbragg]

And other overpowered stuff like druids, wizards, clerics, wish, gate and shapechange in splatbooks right? Oh wait...

Those are devils old grognards know. Core gives you Wizards. Splatbooks give you spellhoarding loredrake dragonwrought kobold Wizards.

Splatbooks are probably less broken overall than core. But it's the broken stuff (or apparently broken) that gets the attention.

[ryu]

Sorry I misspoke. I meant only if you consider seeing while true seeing is active as information gathering by a divination spell or effect. The gathering of information is not achieved by the true seeing spell but by the character's eyes. The spell merely ensures that the information gathered is correct. So mind blank does not block true seeing.

Filtering information is still a part of information gathering. Anything which directly changes the information your eyes receive is information gathering. That is unless you want tortured readings like it still being your eyes that see whatever your scrying or some similar stupidity.

[Andezzar]

Scrying is notably different from true seeing. The former gives you new information, the latter only ensures that the information you get is not manipulated. Also the eyes still gather all the normal information, whether an illusion spell is present or not. The illusion spell merely causes the viewer not to process the information properly. If Invisibility actually manipulated light, no save would help against it and it wouldn't be an illusion spell.

[Beheld]

Scrying is notably different from true seeing. The former gives you new information, the latter only ensures that the information you get is not manipulated. Also the eyes still gather all the normal information, whether an illusion spell is present or not. The illusion spell merely causes the viewer not to process the information properly. If Invisibility actually manipulated light, no save would help against it and it wouldn't be an illusion spell.

Except the specific type of illusion that does exactly what you say they don't do, and usually doesn't offer a save:

"Glamer
A glamer spell changes a subject’s sensory qualities, making it look, feel, taste, smell, or sound like something else, or even seem to disappear."

Guess what type of illusion Invisibility is?

As I said in my first post on the subject, yes, obviously True Seeing is gathering information you otherwise would not gather. That's what it explicitly does. But people will do their damnedest to come up with some interpretation to avoid just admitting the RAW kind of sucks and should probably just be ignored.

[Andezzar]

The definition of glamer does not contradict what I said. The glamer manipulates the subject (i.e. the viewer), not the target (the creature made invisible) or the light reflected from the target that the viewer sees.

And no, true seeing does not give you different information, it allows you to process the information you always get correctly.

[Beheld]

The definition of glamer does not contradict what I said. The glamer manipulates the subject (i.e. the viewer), not the target (the creature made invisible) or the light reflected from the target that the viewer sees.

No, that is super mega double wrong. The subject of a glamer is the target you cast it on. It even says that right in what I quoted: "A glamer spell changes a subject’s sensory qualities, making it ... seem to disappear."

The thing you cast invisibility on is seeming to disappear, because that's what invisibility does, it makes the subject invisible "If you cast the spell on someone else, neither you nor your allies can see the subject"

It changes what light literally bounces off of you, which is why Glamers don't allow anyone but the target to make a will save.

And no, true seeing does not give you different information, it allows you to process the information you always get correctly.

No, it doesn't. It lets you see in total darkness in a way that lets you read and see colors. That's new stuff. It lets you see different things than the effects that are giving off.

[ryu]

Scrying is notably different from true seeing. The former gives you new information, the latter only ensures that the information you get is not manipulated. Also the eyes still gather all the normal information, whether an illusion spell is present or not. The illusion spell merely causes the viewer not to process the information properly. If Invisibility actually manipulated light, no save would help against it and it wouldn't be an illusion spell.

Actually the only way the spell can function effecting its target rather than everyone else is to directly effect light. If it's in any way directly effecting the sensory organ or brain of other people THEY would get saves. As they don't the spell is effecting light. The fun part about this is that with all light bent around you you can't see by conventional means, and need either an unconventional form of magical sight to replace that or a sense that isn't even sight.

[Beheld]

Actually the only way the spell can function effecting its target rather than everyone else is to directly effect light. If it's in any way directly effecting the sensory organ or brain of other people THEY would get saves. As they don't the spell is effecting light. The fun part about this is that with all light bent around you you can't see by conventional means, and need either an unconventional form of magical sight to replace that or a sense that isn't even sight.

You don't need it to bend around you, it could just absorb all the light and project on the other side exactly what it absorbed, and have a specific part of it at they eyes adsorb it and project twice, once into your eyes and once out the back of your head.

It's Magic, I ain't got to explain ****.

[Hal0Badger]

If there are two of them, it greatly increases the chances that one of them will just leave and start information gathering to track you down and kill you. You can probably still do it, because Superior Invisibility against creatures that can't use True Seeing is basically easy mode, but if they come back with True Seeing next time (and you ignore the Mind Blank True Seeing interactions) then things get a lot harder.

Just to be sure, you can build a wizard, without consulting gate/binding/shapechange, which can take a CR 20 monster almost all by himself, including his pre summoned minions (which can be a cr 16 horned devil). Even if there are 2 of them (including extra minions), best they can do is to retreat to track you down later, if it is possible to bypass your mind blank in a manner.

And nothing is wrong with a wizard in terms of balance, considering the current CR system with the provided monsters, if you take out binding/gate/shapechange.

[atemu1234]

Just to be sure, you can build a wizard, without consulting gate/binding/shapechange, which can take a CR 20 monster almost all by himself, including his pre summoned minions (which can be a cr 16 horned devil). Even if there are 2 of them (including extra minions), best they can do is to retreat to track you down later, if it is possible to bypass your mind blank in a manner.

And nothing is wrong with a wizard in terms of balance, considering the current CR system with the provided monsters, if you take out binding/gate/shapechange.

Here's the thing - people don't say that wizards are unbalanced for challenges, they claim it's for an unbalanced party mechanic. The fighter contributes little, and the cleric/druid/wizard does everything.