Archers vs outsiders split from unfairly powerful monsters

[Lans]

Because this didn't get resolved in the manner that I wanted too and its been a few days

In theory and in practice, it remains equally true that the build with which I was presented was categorically incapable of fighting a pit fiend. Hells, I even got someone to try to play the build against a pit fiend just to check that it wouldn't work (it didn't).

Now we talk. It would be interesting to compare your players build with my players build and go from there.

The build was this

https://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=1223270 minus everything that wasn't a weapon or something that enhanced damage or accuracy , and I gave it all 18s because it was a thought experiment off of jormengand wanting to see a core fighter that could kill a pit fiend.
They got really uptight about using all 18s for what looked to be a thought experiment so I changed it to stats that I rolled once. It only had attack and damage things because it wasn't meant to be a complete character, just one that dished out enough damage.

He's been following me from thread to thread, insisting that everyone from PF paladins to 3.5 core fighters are good, because they can do almost (but not quite) enough damage to kill things, if they roll straight 18s and are loaded up with arrows with all possible subtypebanes for the target in question, which is why high-level outsiders are no match for the wrath of a fighter, apparently. It's all very strange.

I believe you are confusing him with me, and I don't think I said that fighters are good. I might of said passable.

It's less "This doesn't mean anything when wizard does..." and more "No, seriously, this doesn't do enough damage to kill it." Like, I'm talking about what actual people do in actual games, which is why I've said that about seven times this thread already.

You never responded to when I pointed out your math was wrong, you had rolls of AC values missing, and that it did enough damage to kill the pit fiend with an average attack.

Can you do me the favor and actually post the build or at least a stub?

Edit: As you evaded the point the last time we got there, my guess is you can´t and you´re just a simple lier, perpetuating your "truths" without any meany to back it up.
Dollar for a dime that this will stay unanswered.

You mean the build we spent several pages of another thread arguing about already?

No. I already discussed to death why the build doesn't work. I wrote at least a thousand words explaining it to you. You can guess all you like, but I've already explained the exact particulars of why fighters don't work the way you think they do.

Either you dream or I´m drunk. Being in the beer-business the later is a common day to day occurrence for me, so I rule that out. We argued about a Mythic Barbarian for which I didn't provide full stats, as it was equipped and outfitted according to a very specific campaign and I don´t see the point in sharing and comparing under that circumstances. You did not provide anything, neither a build nor a way to go from there.

I can provide that on the stipulation that you do your research on the rules, but can you?

As I mentioned above they are confusing you with me, this is the finished build,

https://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=1223270 it wasn't originally made to fight a pit fiend, just put up enough damage to kill it like 40% of the time on a full attack. When I had clarification that that wasn't what they meant, and revised it they didn't respond

[Florian]

@Lans:

That conversation carried a heavy dose of spillover from a prior discussion on the same topic, Fighters vs. Pit Fiends. That didn't´t have anything to do with your build, which is basically fine and proves the point.

[Anthrowhale]

This does seem pretty good. I see only 3 complaints people could make: use 32 point buy instead, fear aura still gets through 40% of the time, and the specialized anti-balor ammo.

[Jormengand]

Because this didn't get resolved in the manner that I wanted to

This is mostly because I'm not going to believe that evil outsiders can't melt steel fighters, the moon astral projections were faked and we should wear tinfoil commoners to protect against mind control.

This does seem pretty good. I see only 3 complaints people could make: use 32 point buy instead, fear aura still gets through 40% of the time, and the specialized anti-balor ammo.

I can think of a few more - like "The pit fiend could grapple the fighter before the fighter knew that the pit fiend existed, if he didn't have yet two more items that were tailored to fight pit fiends because I pointed out in the last thread that this was a viable tactic for the pit fiend" or "You're wearing three rings and two sets of boots and three amulets and dear god did you even read the part where custom magic items require DM approval?"

[Anthrowhale]

As a DM, I would approve. He's paying the full x1.5 cost and inventing nothing new either effect-wise or location-wise. Furthermore, the MIC later ruled that the x1.5 need not be paid sometimes.

The spot related items are also excellent general purpose choices if that's what you are referring to about Pit Fiend detection. There is nothing wrong with revising his build to accommodate your objections.

[emeraldstreak]

This does seem pretty good. I see only 3 complaints people could make: use 32 point buy instead, fear aura still gets through 40% of the time, and the specialized anti-balor ammo.

The offcial point buy of 3.5 is 25. Any claims about RAW must adhere to that.

I can think of a few more - like "The pit fiend could grapple the fighter before the fighter knew that the pit fiend existed, if he didn't have yet two more items that were tailored to fight pit fiends because I pointed out in the last thread that this was a viable tactic for the pit fiend" or "You're wearing three rings and two sets of boots and three amulets and dear god did you even read the part where custom magic items require DM approval?"

Hence with or without custom items solutions to challenges. Obviously the latter makes things different. Slightly less obviously it is in favor of classes with limited/no spell selection.

[Jormengand]

As a DM, I would approve. He's paying the full x1.5 cost and inventing nothing new either effect-wise or location-wise. Furthermore, the MIC later ruled that the x1.5 need not be paid sometimes.

It still falls victim to the Oberoni Fallacy, though - the idea that if it can be fixed (with rule 0), it isn't broken. Yes, the DM can say "These guidelines for making homebrew are now rules", but that says more about the custom item rules than about the fighter.

The spot related items are also excellent general purpose choices if that's what you are referring to about Pit Fiend detection. There is nothing wrong with revising his build to accommodate your objections.

I more mean the ring of FoM (not an item I see commonly) and the intelligent item with powers chosen to help the fighter against pit fiends (it has dimensional anchor and invisibility purge to the pit fiend's greater teleport and invsibility), and which deliberately didn't take two of the powers that it has to take, presumably to keep the item's ego from hitting the 21 it would have otherwise and therefore taking over the fighter (though why he didn't just save 3000 GP on getting a less powerful one I don't know), but the fighter still has to take will saves (which he still fails on a natural 1) or do what the item wants, not what he wants.

[Azoth]

It still falls victim to the Oberoni Fallacy, though - the idea that if it can be fixed (with rule 0), it isn't broken. Yes, the DM can say "These guidelines for making homebrew are now rules", but that says more about the custom item rules than about the fighter.



I more mean the ring of FoM (not an item I see commonly) and the intelligent item with powers chosen to help the fighter against pit fiends (it has dimensional anchor and invisibility purge to the pit fiend's greater teleport and invsibility), and which deliberately didn't take two of the powers that it has to take, presumably to keep the item's ego from hitting the 21 it would have otherwise and therefore taking over the fighter (though why he didn't just save 3000 GP on getting a less powerful one I don't know), but the fighter still has to take will saves (which he still fails on a natural 1) or do what the item wants, not what he wants.

Really? All my high levels characters either buy Ring of FOM or can cast it themselves. Dimensional Anchor and a means to beat Invisibility are also typical high level tools.

There is an entire handbook on things you need by the high levels to basically function against average encounters. All three of those are on it along with flight, special senses, tactical teleportation effects, and more.

[Zanos]

Really? All my high levels characters either buy Ring of FOM or can cast it themselves. Dimensional Anchor and a means to beat Invisibility are also typical high level tools.

Jormengand mentioned this briefly in the other thread. Isn't this discussion like a week or two old? I personally don't think FoM is an uncommon effect, but J doesn't put a lot of value on 'standard' defences. Personally I always like to have a ring of FoM, Heart of Water, or the actual spell up when I can reasonably afford it. There's a lot of monsters where if they grapple you you're just screwed, and a lot of movement restricting spells that are really nasty, even if you operate from the perspective that FoM doesn't work against mundane effects. Heart of Water is a 3rd level spell that gives you access to FoM pretty much once per day, and the ring of FoM isn't all that expensive at higher levels.

I very much would like to see a fighter build that could reliably kill a pit fiend without custom magic items and with 32 PB, though. In my experience the former are almost never allowed. W

Also, what are "anti-fire dragon", "anti-ice dragon", "anti-balor"?

[emeraldstreak]

Fighter v Pit Fiend	Core only	All 1st party splats	All 1st&3rd party
no UMD	Fighter wins	Fighter wins	Fighter wins
UMD	Fighter wins	Fighter wins	Fighter wins
UMD and custom items	Fighter wins	Fighter wins	Fighter wins

Summary for cell "A1" so far.

Going down the cells aids only the Fighter. Going right the cells greatly expands the Fighter options, and slightly expands the Pit Fiend's options.

Considering all of the above, it's hardest to prove the Fighter wins A1, and if he does, then he wins them all.

[Jormengand]

Isn't this discussion like a week or two old?

Yup. The others have been popping up in basically any thread where I've posted (or even where I haven't) so that they can have a go at me, all the while insisting that caster superiority is fake and that fighters are actually good. It's obvious bait, but it's funny so I'm willing to let myself get dragged in to their bizarre conspiracy theory thing.

Here

Fighter v Pit Fiend	Core only	All 1st party splats	All 1st&3rd party
no UMD	PF wins?	tough one?	Fighter likely wins
UMD	Fighter wins	Fighter wins	Fighter wins
UMD and custom items	Fighter wins	Fighter wins	Fighter wins

We went over why UMD doesn't help the fighter, and I'm still not convinced that it wins with the custom items either.

But then, given that partially charged wands are custom items which require UMD, I'm not surprised.

[Beheld]

I'd prefer to see someone make an actual fighter not knowing specifically what on enemy they were going to be fighting, so they can't metagame the build, make the build, not use things like intelligent magic items (that are both purely DM fiat, and also metagamed) and not using custom magic items, and not using UMD, but using the 1.5times cost for two functions on an item, and the MIC rules about how basic bonuses don't do that.

Ideally, we'd see that fighter every level 1-20, or at specific levels, like 5/6, 9-11, 14-16, and then we could compare that fighter not built to fight a specific enemy to a different collection of enemies, to see if they are actually designed to beat one specific enemy and their tactics, or if they are more generally useful against a bunch of enemies.

[Zanos]

Yup. The others have been popping up in basically any thread where I've posted (or even where I haven't) so that they can have a go at me, all the while insisting that caster superiority is fake and that fighters are actually good. It's obvious bait, but it's funny so I'm willing to let myself get dragged in to their bizarre conspiracy theory thing.

Well, I don't think not being able to one round CR 20 at level 20 is a great qualifier to call a class bad. Fighters aren't absolute garbage against core threats, they just don't absolutely destroy them like some of the other PHB classes can if played well.

[Jormengand]

Well, I don't think not being able to one round CR 20 at level 20 is a great qualifier to call a class bad. Fighters aren't absolute garbage against core threats, they just don't absolutely destroy them like some of the other PHB classes can if played well.

I'm not insisting that it should be able to kill the pit fiend in one round, so much as before the pit fiend murderises his face. The fact that those are fairly similar lengths of time isn't my fault.

Also, if you can't do your job (fighting) and can't do anything else either, then you're not really very much of a success as a class.

Finally, the massive levels of optimisation going into this attempt to kill the said pit fiend imply that the fighter class itself has very little to do with it.

[Zanos]

I'm not insisting that it should be able to kill the pit fiend in one round, so much as before the pit fiend murderises his face. The fact that those are fairly similar lengths of time isn't my fault.

I think it would take at least two or three rounds for the pit fiend to toast a 20th level fighter, simply because it can't blasphemy it to oblivion and most of its tactics revolve around HP damage.

Also, if you can't do your job (fighting) and can't do anything else either, then you're not really very much of a success as a class.

Fighters can't fight great by forum standards, but they're ok in a 4 man party against core monster manual threats.

Finally, the massive levels of optimisation going into this attempt to kill the said pit fiend imply that the fighter class itself has very little to do with it.

You aren't wrong here; it reminds me a little bit of Tippy's monk test where people were stacking so much stuff on the "monks" that they probably could have been commoners and been just as effective.

[Beheld]

Fighters can't fight great by forum standards, but they're ok in a 4 man party against core monster manual threats.

They really aren't. What they are is "present while the rest of the party does things" against CR threats. But I've played games with parties of 3, because we have games with 4 players and sometimes people don't show. 3 PCs can handle a lot of challenges, when they are real PCs. If you took out the fighter and replaced him with an animated skeleton or half his CR equipped with the same items, the party could probably get along just as well.

[Florian]

Here

Fighter v Pit Fiend	Core only	All 1st party splats	All 1st&3rd party
no UMD	PF wins?	tough one?	Fighter likely wins
UMD	Fighter wins	Fighter wins	Fighter wins
UMD and custom items	Fighter wins	Fighter wins	Fighter wins

UMD mainly concerns cost-benefit-ratio of buffs and simulating things you can expect to have in a regular party of four. Don´t even have to go too deep into custom items at that point. (For ex fly, FoM, ProtEvil, and so on)

[Dagroth]

I'd prefer to see someone make an actual fighter not knowing specifically what on enemy they were going to be fighting, so they can't metagame the build, make the build, not use things like intelligent magic items (that are both purely DM fiat, and also metagamed) and not using custom magic items, and not using UMD, but using the 1.5times cost for two functions on an item, and the MIC rules about how basic bonuses don't do that.

Ideally, we'd see that fighter every level 1-20, or at specific levels, like 5/6, 9-11, 14-16, and then we could compare that fighter not built to fight a specific enemy to a different collection of enemies, to see if they are actually designed to beat one specific enemy and their tactics, or if they are more generally useful against a bunch of enemies.

I see no problem with a fighter equipped to fight Devils or Demons if that's the direction the campaign is going.

If you're running the Savage Tide campaign for example, you have to expect Holy, Axiomatic, Evil Outsider Bane & Cold Iron to be high priority things for the fighter-types to focus on getting.

Edit:
P.S. 25-point buy is crap. I play RPGs to play HEROES, not to play barely above average guys. And at least with 32-point buy, you can allow for Templates. Especially if you use the E6 rules on point buy reduction for templates.

[Anthrowhale]

It still falls victim to the Oberoni Fallacy, though - the idea that if it can be fixed (with rule 0), it isn't broken. Yes, the DM can say "These guidelines for making homebrew are now rules", but that says more about the custom item rules than about the fighter.

There are degrees here, and this use seems quite minor. The tinfoil hat approach that wizardphiles use to claim antimagic can't touch them seems significantly more egregious in practice.

The intelligent item is however a step beyond what makes me comfortable, so the 4 picking points for me are:

1. Should be 32 point buy (or less)
2. Avoid intelligent item.
3. 40% chance fear gets through is worrisomely high.
4. Very expensive specialized ammo.

[Jormengand]

P.S. 25-point buy is crap. I play RPGs to play HEROES, not to play barely above average guys. And at least with 32-point buy, you can allow for Templates. Especially if you use the E6 rules on point buy reduction for templates.

I agree that fighters are great if you ignore all the parts of the rules where they aren't.

There are degrees here, and this use seems quite minor. The tinfoil hat approach that wizardphiles use to claim antimagic can't touch them seems significantly more egregious in practice.

I also agree that that trick doesn't work if you ignore all of the parts of the rules which say it does.

[Dagroth]

I agree that fighters are great if you ignore all the parts of the rules where they aren't.



I also agree that that trick doesn't work if you ignore all of the parts of the rules which say it does.

Oddly enough, the rules don't state that any specific number is required for Point Buy... so your argument is invalid.

[Jormengand]

Oddly enough, the rules don't state that any specific number is required for Point Buy... so your argument is invalid.

I... meant the part where you decided we were using E6 rules out of nowhere.

[emeraldstreak]

I have to call it guys: anyone thinking a level 20 Player Character pouring his WBL into UMD won't defeat a Pit Fiend is just naive. Mind you, that has nothing to do with Fighters.

A slightly more useful test would be consistently defeating Pit Fiends, say 1 per day for 1 year. But considering Pit Fiend treasure is the standard 80,000 + double items, while a scroll of Shapechange is 3,825 and a scroll of Wish 28,825...I don't see much chance for the Pit Fiends there as well.

Now suppress any desire to raise objections that are summarily defeated even by the most basic UMD optimization bible, and let's focus on the meat in the Fighter v Pit Fiend argument, which is the uppermost line in the table, where it actually matters what class the player character is.

The reasons behind the present annotation is:

Core (likely) to Pit Fiend: basically, the original Fighter's weaknesses exposed with few magic items on the market to shore them up

3rd Party (likely) to Fighter: well, considering at the very least the Fighter is now immune to hit point damage and will one-shot the paltry hit points of the Fiend...

And in the middle, all 1st party splats...they certainly raise the Fighter's deadliness, but do they give him enough battlefield control and/or staying power to survive the Pit Fiend?

If it isn't obvious, if the pro-Fighter guys prove he wins in the Core (without UMD/customs), it's all over for the Pit Fiend. Meanwhile, if the pro-Pit Fiend guys can make a solid argument for the devil's victory against all 1st party or even better all 1st+3rd party, that be an ignominious outcome for the Fighter as a class.

[Lans]

This does seem pretty good. I see only 3 complaints people could make: use 32 point buy instead, fear aura still gets through 40% of the time, and the specialized anti-balor ammo.

I am aiming at the high end of what is possible, figure start at the high point and work down, the fear aura is only 20 feet, hopefully the fight starts beyond this, the specialized ammo and intelligent item is a bit much, but this is a core solo build with out caster support. In an actual campaign I would imagine the archer still has cold iron bane arrows, maybe the anti law or chaos enhancements, but the holy and elemental properties get popped onto the bow, which a caster would cast GMW on.

I can think of a few more - like "The pit fiend could grapple the fighter before the fighter knew that the pit fiend existed, if he didn't have yet two more items that were tailored to fight pit fiends because I pointed out in the last thread that this was a viable tactic for the pit fiend" or "You're wearing three rings and two sets of boots and three amulets and dear god did you even read the part where custom magic items require DM approval?"

Are you saying that he only has the ring of freedom of movement because you brought the tactic up? Because having something to handle grapples is just basic supplies for a solo venture. If this was noncore then weapon supremacy or close quarters fighting would be chosen over this. In a party scenario the monster using is super beneficial to the rogue and gives other characters free whacks.

The intelligent item is more for the blindsense, the invisibility purge was just a bonus. Also, anti invisibility tactics are a must for like levels beyond 5.

I don't consider combining item effects to be out of bounds, its an effect that was already priced and balanced, and their is a set price modifier for adding them. Its not like I'm using a 2k sword of truestrike.

I more mean the ring of FoM (not an item I see commonly) and the intelligent item with powers chosen to help the fighter against pit fiends (it has dimensional anchor and invisibility purge to the pit fiend's greater teleport and invsibility), and which deliberately didn't take two of the powers that it has to take, presumably to keep the item's ego from hitting the 21 it would have otherwise and therefore taking over the fighter (though why he didn't just save 3000 GP on getting a less powerful one I don't know), but the fighter still has to take will saves (which he still fails on a natural 1) or do what the item wants, not what he wants.

I chose 5 powers, dimension anchor cmw, bless faeerie fire, and invisible purge the dimensional anchor probably isn't going to matter, the invisibility purge is mostly a waste when the item has faerie fire and blind sense.

Also, what are "anti-fire dragon", "anti-ice dragon", "anti-balor"?

Shorthand for specialized arrows. In core the archer needs it to one round the pit fiend, so in order to justify that I had to cover the other big threats of that level.

[Lans]

I made a column for if effects can't be combined. I didn't think combining effects would fall under things that need DM permission. Its in the feats and special abilities section of the character sheet.

https://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=1223270

It freed up a pile of cash, knocked the AC down by 8 points, upped some skills, lost the displacement effect, gained protection from evil in exchange for invisibility purge

[logic_error]

I will point out again what the OP is missing as an argument:

That a NAKED Wizard 20 can beat a Pit Fiend just armed with class skills. A Fighter can not.

A fighter needs support from all kinds of *magical* sources, including UMD which is for intents and purposes actually wizard spells, to beat a PF.

To be clear: The argument isn't if a level 20 Fighter fully equipped with magical stuff can beat PF or not. The argument is that Fighter with his *class skills* alone can not.

Why is this argument of this form? Because other classes that are NOT wizards can also do it, sometimes even better, such as Cleric or Druid. Even Rogues.

[The_Jette]

I will point out again what the OP is missing as an argument:

That a NAKED Wizard 20 can beat a Pit Fiend just armed with class skills. A Fighter can not.

A fighter needs support from all kinds of *magical* sources, including UMD which is for intents and purposes actually wizard spells, to beat a PF.

To be clear: The argument isn't if a level 20 Fighter fully equipped with magical stuff can beat PF or not. The argument is that Fighter with his *class skills* alone can not.

Why is this argument of this form? Because other classes that are NOT wizards can also do it, sometimes even better, such as Cleric or Druid. Even Rogues.

Could you describe what you mean by a "NAKED" Wizard? And, I'm not sure why you're saying that a Fighter should be stripped of magical stuff, since D&D is all about gathering neat magical items and using them to murder monsters.
To be devil's advocate, though, it's not likely that a naked Cleric or Druid would be able to kill a Pit Fiend, since they both need divine focuses to channel their spells through...

[Jormengand]

To be devil's advocate, though, it's not likely that a naked Cleric or Druid would be able to kill a Pit Fiend, since they both need divine focuses to channel their spells through...

I don't think the pit fiend needs an advocate. Though it might need one against a cleric who was naked, but carrying a holy symbol, which I'm pretty sure you can do while naked.

Not that the ability of a cleric, druid, sorcerer, wizard, psion or even truenamer to fight a pit fiend was in question so much as the fighter's.

[logic_error]

Could you describe what you mean by a "NAKED" Wizard? And, I'm not sure why you're saying that a Fighter should be stripped of magical stuff, since D&D is all about gathering neat magical items and using them to murder monsters.
To be devil's advocate, though, it's not likely that a naked Cleric or Druid would be able to kill a Pit Fiend, since they both need divine focuses to channel their spells through...

Worldly focus if we are talking toally naked. But, yeah, I imagined the crucial stuff like favored weapon and armour and shield on a fighter a part of nakedness. Don't expect them to go all fist and teeth. Equivalent of that for clerics would the symbol.

[DEMON]

Worldly focus if we are talking toally naked. But, yeah, I imagined the crucial stuff like favored weapon and armour and shield on a fighter a part of nakedness. Don't expect them to go all fist and teeth. Equivalent of that for clerics would the symbol.

Question is, why would we expect anyone to tackle a CR20 challenge naked. Even more so, considering he's actually supposed to be soloing said challenge.