Archers vs outsiders split from unfairly powerful monsters

[lord_khaine]

I don't think a wizard built by Mr +5 vorpal great sword could solo a pit fiend either.

I do agree on this point as well. It has been made a few times already.

You made a build for only Pit Fiends. Even if you make a build for only Pit Fiends, the one shot rule for consumables still applies.

Looking at the build then its actually effective against evil things in general. Do you have any proof to support that its only made for Pit Fiends?

See, the build you posted really gives every impression of having been made at level 20 by a person that never played an actual Fighter from level 1 on upwards. That´s not even having anything to do with being "super optimized", but by playing the actual class and learning from experience, you will automatically notice holes in your performance and take steps towards eliminating them.
(Dealing with DR, handling subtypes with immunities/vulnerabilities, etherealness, movement modes and simply enemies that can kite you)

I honestly dont see any relevance to the bit about not looking like something that has been played from level 1 and up. We see tons of builds on this board that dont look like that. And honestly, playing from level 1 to level 20 is extremely rare. In all my years of playing i have newer done so. Have you?
Because if you have not done it more than 1-2 times yourself then i dont think its fair to critizise on that point.

A wizard built by the guy who built greatsword-dwarf could kill a pit fiend. A wizard built like the archer of intelligent custom nonsense could take over the galaxy in a few rounds.

A wizard build by the greatsword dwarf is likely to lose initiative and die to the initial PWS->meteor shower combo before he has a chance to cast his Polar Ray. And what archer are you talking about? because the one currently discussed dont have any intelligent weapons.

[Menzath]

I mean, you can sell it and buy a weapon that costs half as much if you like.

It's exactly because the fighter would have been played from level 1 to level 20 that not all of the items they get their hands on will be useful detection items - they'd have to be bought from the gold that drops directly, or else items would have to be sold at half price in order to get them.

But I simply have never seen a fighter with all the stuff that you're putting on him - the stuff that you, 3.5 optimisers, have spent the last three threads fine-tuning onto him - and I have seen fighters that looked more like Steve IV.

A wizard built by the guy who built greatsword-dwarf could kill a pit fiend. A wizard built like the archer of intelligent custom nonsense could take over the galaxy in a few rounds.

I think one of the goal posts, was an optimized core fighter, not a fighter that feels as though it has been leveled and has gear organically through play.

It is a thought experiment.

[Beheld]

Looking at the build then its actually effective against evil things in general. Do you have any proof to support that its only made for Pit Fiends?

His entire build plan is designed around a set of tactics that doesn't function against any CR 18-20 enemy except the Pit Fiend. It doesn't work on balors, it doesn't work on Dragons, it doesn't work on NightCrawlers. The tactics are specifically Pit Fiend Themed.

Now, they also wouldn't actually work on a Pit Fiend either, but that's a more complex issue than his plan to sneak invisibly to within 60ft of a Balor/Nightcrawler/Dragon and then study for 3 rounds to detect their illusions, and then cast True Seeing to snipe them from hiding.

If your "default tactics" that your build is designed around get you ambushed by every enemy that isn't a Pit Fiend, and allow you to argue that you ambush the Pit Fiend (even if that it incorrect) and your build is based around stealth ambushes, then your build is designed for Pit Fiends.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Looking at the build then its actually effective against evil things in general. Do you have any proof to support that its only made for Pit Fiends?

He's plan relies on being invisible; Balors, for instance, have True Seeing.

A wizard build by the greatsword dwarf is likely to lose initiative and die to the initial PWS->meteor shower combo before he has a chance to cast his Polar Ray.

No. If that Wizard is at all well put together, he will win initiative and will be immune to Power Word Stun (why wouldn't he have Mind Blank up?).

[Anthrowhale]

Not really. After you finally give up and buy the Gem of True Seeing, and then make up some crap about a headband, so you can constant effect true seeing with no downside for the reduced price, then it could, but probably not with your tactics, which rely on things that just aren't going to happen.

You are right about the Gem of Seeing. I realized that Permanency Detect Magic is impossible in core because it can only be cast on yourself and the casting of Permanency means you cannot concentrate on Detect Magic. This applies to wizards as well so it's a dysfunction.

The gem of seeing will be attached to some glasses and the sniper will keep one eye closed some of the time to stretch out the timing of Trueseeing over the day. Note that the Robe of Eyes provides excellent vision, even with both eyes closed.

I also took advantage of the opportunity to overhaul the halfling sniper so that all consumables are divisible by 5. To get the consumables for a one-shot, divide by 5 and round down. This is somewhat inefficient with wealth, as the build keeps an animated shield that only contributes marginally to AC in a one-shot, but I personally prefer a more general build.

You are however wrong about the tactics. Hide and snipe is effective against many opponents as there is no strong spell-based counter.

The entire explanation has always been that you build a fighter that is for all the encounters, you fight one of them at random, and then you get reset back to before the fight, and go off to adventure against a completely different monster.

No, this is moving the goalposts. The original claim was that a core fighter could not tackle a Pit Fiend. Your eagerness to move the goalposts is borderline admitting that a fighter can tackle a Pit Fiend now. That's appropriate.

[Lans]

He's plan relies on being invisible; Balors, for instance, have True Seeing.



No. If that Wizard is at all well put together, he will win initiative and will be immune to Power Word Stun (why wouldn't he have Mind Blank up?).

Well for starters the greatsword build neglected a cloak of resistance, and choose ring of sustenance over freedom of movement, so that would imply a player who is neglecting non ac defenses.

Edit- The defending gauntlet thing seems a little weird, I have never seen that out side of forums, as opposed to intelligent items that I'd seen used back in early 3.0, though not much after that.

My group started basically when the only 3 books where the 3.0 core set, so that may have some effect on what I expect people to do.

[ColorBlindNinja]

You are right about the Gem of Seeing. I realized that Permanency Detect Magic is impossible in core because it can only be cast on yourself and the casting of Permanency means you cannot concentrate on Detect Magic. This applies to wizards as well so it's a dysfunction.

No it doesn't, a Wizard can use Contingency or (if we're going really high Op) a magic trap/Spellclock.

Well for starters the greatsword build neglected a cloak of resistance, and choose ring of sustenance over freedom of movement, so that would imply a player who is neglecting non ac defenses.

Why would you do that?

Freedom of Movement is nigh essential at higher levels, and 3.5 was deigned with the save bonus from the Cloak of Resistance in mind.

Edit:

Edit- The defending gauntlet thing seems a little weird, I have never seen that out side of forums, as opposed to intelligent items that I'd seen used back in early 3.0, though not much after that.

My group started basically when the only 3 books where the 3.0 core set, so that may have some effect on what I expect people to do.

I think it's more of test for viable builds than anything else.

[Anthrowhale]

He's plan relies on being invisible; Balors, for instance, have True Seeing.

It would be more correct to say that Invisibility is used and against some monsters it hits hard while for others it does not. The Balor's True Seeing does not work beyond 120' so invisibility works there. And even within 120', True Seeing does nothing to penetrate the high Hide. The Nightshade has See Invisibility which works at any distance, but again this does not penetrate Hide. As long as the terrain allows hide, you are beyond 120' vs. True Seeing, or there is no true seeing, stealth works.

No. If that Wizard is at all well put together, he will win initiative and will be immune to Power Word Stun (why wouldn't he have Mind Blank up?).

Winning initiative in core is much harder than I think you realize for a Wizard. You need +12 to even tie the Pit Fiend. +4 can come from Improved Initiative. It's easy to get +5 from dexterity, but you will pay significantly for another +3 let alone for a sure or near-sure initiative win as this build has.

[Elkad]

I think the basic premise of a Fighter beating a Pit Fiend is sound. The archery build works. A Tiny guy can find cover/concealment to hide behind almost anywhere. A foot-high curb would do, as would the corpse of one of those Mummies, or tall grass, or just about anything else.

Question. You have an 18th level party of Wizard, Druid, Cleric, with some moderate PO. You find out you are going to be fighting pit fiends, and are recruiting a 4th party member.
Given the choice of a 20th level fighter, or another Wizard of level X, what's the lowest level Wizard you'd consider the better choice. 15th? 12th?

Assume the fighter taking more XP isn't a thing.

[logic_error]

I think the basic premise of a Fighter beating a Pit Fiend is sound. The archery build works. A Tiny guy can find cover/concealment to hide behind almost anywhere. A foot-high curb would do, as would the corpse of one of those Mummies, or tall grass, or just about anything else.

Question. You have an 18th level party of Wizard, Druid, Cleric, with some moderate PO. You find out you are going to be fighting pit fiends, and are recruiting a 4th party member.
Given the choice of a 20th level fighter, or another Wizard of level X, what's the lowest level Wizard you'd consider the better choice. 15th? 12th?

Assume the fighter taking more XP isn't a thing.

Why recruit one more? Fire any two.

[Beheld]

No, this is moving the goalposts. The original claim was that a core fighter could not tackle a Pit Fiend. Your eagerness to move the goalposts is borderline admitting that a fighter can tackle a Pit Fiend now. That's appropriate.

It is generally poor form to attribute to people claims they did not make. Saying that I am moving the goal posts implies that I set up goal posts in one location, and then moved them. I have never contested that a hypothetical Fighter could not be built to beat one specific monster and no others.

My very first post in this thread, reads in it's entirety:

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.

Notice that I bring up the issue of metagaming the build like you did for a single enemy, and testing the build against a collection of enemies in my very first post, before you even presented your build. I cannot be moving the goal posts to a point in response to your build, when I put the goal posts there before you made the build.

Now if you want to claim you "satisfied the conditions of the thread" by metagaming your build against a specific enemy, then you can try to claim that instead, but I don't think that really does, since this thread spawned off a discussion/issue as presented by Jormengand. And even before this thread started, they had already criticized a previous build as obviously being metagamed for a Pit Fiend specifically by having arrows that did piles of bonus damage to a Pit Fiend, but missing at least some if not all their damage against most other enemies.

You are however wrong about the tactics. Hide and snipe is effective against many opponents as there is no strong spell-based counter.

...

It would be more correct to say that Invisibility is used and against some monsters it hits hard while for others it does not. The Balor's True Seeing does not work beyond 120' so invisibility works there. And even within 120', True Seeing does nothing to penetrate the high Hide. The Nightshade has See Invisibility which works at any distance, but again this does not penetrate Hide. As long as the terrain allows hide, you are beyond 120' vs. True Seeing, or there is no true seeing, stealth works.

Like I said, it's really easy to claim you will always have cover and/or concealment, it's very hard to actually always have those things (unless your build actually provides it). Especially in the high level playground. This is one of the things that will be demonstrated by a test. Saying "I will always have cover and concealment when I sneak up on all enemies even the ones I don't know about and can't see and am completely surprised by" is a lot easier than actually having it, and actually successfully sneaking up on enemies you can't see.

[ColorBlindNinja]

It would be more correct to say that Invisibility is used and against some monsters it hits hard while for others it does not. The Balor's True Seeing does not work beyond 120' so invisibility works there. And even within 120', True Seeing does nothing to penetrate the high Hide. The Nightshade has See Invisibility which works at any distance, but again this does not penetrate Hide. As long as the terrain allows hide, you are beyond 120' vs. True Seeing, or there is no true seeing, stealth works.

Those are some pretty big "ifs".

- 120' is quite a distance, you probably won't be able to approach from farther away if you're indoors.
- You need cover to hide, that's not guaranteed.

Winning initiative in core is much harder than I think you realize for a Wizard. You need +12 to even tie the Pit Fiend. +4 can come from Improved Initiative. It's easy to get +5 from dexterity, but you will pay significantly for another +3 let alone for a sure or near-sure initiative win as this build has.

Getting the DEX score necessary isn't that hard. If you're a +2 DEX race, you'll have a +9, otherwise you'll have a +8. + 4 from Improved Initiative gives you a mod of +13/+12. Edit: Once you've bought a +6 and +5 item for DEX, anyway.

That's ignoring the debate surrounding Moment of Prescience; if that applies to initiative checks, the Wizard is going first.

[Anthrowhale]

No it doesn't, a Wizard can use Contingency or (if we're going really high Op) a magic trap/Spellclock.

Contingency doesn't work by RAW because Permanency affects a spell not 'your person'. A Magic Trap would be a custom item which we are avoiding and a Spellclock definitely is not core.

[Anthrowhale]

It is generally poor form to attribute to people claims they did not make. Saying that I am moving the goal posts implies that I set up goal posts in one location, and then moved them. I have never contested that a hypothetical Fighter could not be built to beat one specific monster and no others.

You are certainly moving the goalposts with respect to the OP. Read it, and if you want to do something offtopic go start your own thread.

Like I said, it's really easy to claim you will always have cover and/or concealment

This is not a claim I made. It is you working hard to misinterpret what I said.

[Beheld]

You are certainly moving the goalposts with respect to the OP. Read it, and if you want to do something offtopic go start your own thread.

1) A statement about what a fair test is, is not moving the goal posts or off topic.

2) The Op is one poster responding to something that someone else had said in an another thread. The other poster had already rejected a build as being metagamed to the Pit Fiend. If your entire premise is that this thread allows a metagamed to the Pit Fiend build to satisfy Jormengand's concerns, you are objectively wrong, because before this thread even existed, they had already rejected the idea that a specifically metagamed for Pit Fiend build met their concerns.

[Anthrowhale]

- 120' is quite a distance, you probably won't be able to approach from farther away if you're indoors.

Note that indoors finding cover is easy because you have walls.

- You need cover to hide, that's not guaranteed.

True, but it is common in natural settings when you are 18 inches tall.

Getting the DEX score necessary isn't that hard. If you're a +2 DEX race, you'll have a +9, otherwise you'll have a +8. + 4 from Improved Initiative gives you a mod of +13/+12. Edit: Once you've bought a +6 and +5 item for DEX, anyway.

You've allocated 23% of your wealth, limited your race to Halfling or Elf, used 31% of your point buy, and used up 25% of your general purpose feats to win initiative 57% of the time. It's a reasonable investment but you've demonstrated that the cost is significant.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Note that indoors finding cover is easy because you have walls.

I don't think most walls that reach the ceiling will give you cover.

True, but it is common in natural settings when you are 18 inches tall.

That depends on the setting.

You've allocated 23% of your wealth, limited your race to Halfling or Elf, used 31% of your point buy, and used up 25% of your general purpose feats to win initiative 57% of the time. It's a reasonable investment but you've demonstrated that the cost is significant.

Winning initiative is so important that I really don't care.

[Anthrowhale]

I don't think most walls that reach the ceiling will give you cover.

I should have said "corners". Corners give cover easily. As does furniture, doorways, etc... Cover is gained when the spotter does not have LOS to every corner of the square you reside in.

[Zanos]

That's ignoring the debate surrounding Moment of Prescience; if that applies to initiative checks, the Wizard is going first.

What debate? Initiative is a dex ability check but it isn't opposed.

[ColorBlindNinja]

I should have said "corners". Corners give cover easily. As does furniture, doorways, etc... Cover is gained when the spotter does not have LOS to every corner of the square you reside in.

OK.

What debate? Initiative is a dex ability check but it isn't opposed.

You compare your initiative results and whoever loses goes first, right?

[Jormengand]

You compare your initiative results and whoever loses goes first, right?

First, whoever wins goes first. Second, an opposed check is a specific thing:

Opposed Checks

An opposed check is a check whose success or failure is determined by comparing the check result to another character’s check result. In an opposed check, the higher result succeeds, while the lower result fails.

You don't succeed or fail at an initiative check, so it's not opposed.

[ColorBlindNinja]

You don't succeed or fail at an initiative check, so it's not opposed.

I'd argue that's a matter of semantics, but it's honestly not that important to this thread.

[Florian]

I mean, you can sell it and buy a weapon that costs half as much if you like.

It's exactly because the fighter would have been played from level 1 to level 20 that not all of the items they get their hands on will be useful detection items - they'd have to be bought from the gold that drops directly, or else items would have to be sold at half price in order to get them.

But I simply have never seen a fighter with all the stuff that you're putting on him - the stuff that you, 3.5 optimisers, have spent the last three threads fine-tuning onto him - and I have seen fighters that looked more like Steve IV.

A wizard built by the guy who built greatsword-dwarf could kill a pit fiend. A wizard built like the archer of intelligent custom nonsense could take over the galaxy in a few rounds.

Woah Jormengard, no hits below the belt line - I´m a PF optimizer(*) ;)

On a more serious note, it more or less gets underestimated that playing one of the basic martial classes requires more and in-depth system mastery than playing a caster class. The system, as it is, forces you to find solutions to more problems than any caster class ever has to face - adapt or die.
That difference is the major point we´re talking about here and why some martial classes fail, other succeed and how we evaluate their overall performance.

(*) Martial classes work a bit different for me, as I´ve got other tools to play around with. Stuff like teleport-pounce can be done on a pure Fighter chassis w/o getting into any cheese like Templates or PrC, that´s why you might get a wrong impression on how I rate some things.
Edit: I could also get a lot of basic spells as SLA (Relic Master), get a Improved Familiar as a mini-mage to buff me up (Eldritch Guardian) or train up my own personal intelligent weapon free of cost (Steelbound Fighter) or combine all of those.

Edit 2: Let me remind you that this "feud" between the two of us originated from a discussion on what changed between 3,5 and PF when you flat-out disbelieved what a Barbarian can do without inquiring what the actual build components do and where they fall on the PO/TO divide.

[Jormengand]

Let me remind you that this "feud" between the two of us originated from a discussion on what changed between 3,5 and PF when you flat-out disbelieved what a Barbarian can do without inquiring what the actual build components do and where they fall on the PO/TO divide.

Nuh-uh. Not me. I was discussing 3.5 in the "Differences between optimisation theory and your games" thread and the "Unfairly powerful monsters" thread. I don't care too much about Paizo's homebrew system.

[Anthrowhale]

I tweaked the sniper again. I realized that Seeking was a bit redundant with a Gem of Seeing so I eliminated that and added a bit more to the consumables. This makes a difference for anyone who wants to run a one-shot scenario since it allows two rounds of full attacks with anarchic or axiomatic arrows.

I also examined what the build does against a variety of CR 17-20 monsters. Overall, it seems to be a lethal threat to everything that is evil while nonevil things are more iffy. Combat with dragons is likely to be messy as two rounds of full attacks are necessary to chew through their giant pool of hp and in particular a Black Wyrm looks like a 50/50. I used this as a relatively neutral estimate of dragon builds since they otherwise have feats ans spells unspecified.

[Florian]

Nuh-uh. Not me. I was discussing 3.5 in the "Differences between optimisation theory and your games" thread and the "Unfairly powerful monsters" thread. I don't care too much about Paizo's homebrew system.

Just checked. Sorry for part of the venom. You came into an ongoing discussion, but your reaction was a bit... odd later on.

[Beheld]

As this thread fades into the background, I for one, will lament it as yet another time that everyone just sort of blanket refused to test their assumptions by seeing how the game actually functions when run.

[Anthrowhale]

The problem is the offerer not the offer so there is room for a test to happen if someone reasonable can be found to run it.

[Jormengand]

I think part of the problem is that you want to pit fiend to be run by someone who doesn't have the pit fiend's best interests in mind, which isn't necessarily helpful.

[Anthrowhale]

It's fine if Beheld runs the Pit Fiend. I just want someone determining the environment and what happens who understands the rules and avoids bias.