Test your Wizard

[averagejoe]

Demons (or devils, whichever one has the abyss) are not countable infinite. There are an infinite number on an infinite number of planes.

That doesn't make them uncountable. For example, there are infinite rational numbers between every two integers, and the rational numbers are countable.

[quick_comment]

That doesn't make them uncountable. For example, there are infinite rational numbers between every two integers, and the rational numbers are countable.

You can put the number of layers of the abyss into a 1 to 1 correspondance with the integers. So the number of layers of the abyss has cardinality A_0

You can put the number of devils on each plane also into a 1 to 1 correspondance with the integers. So the number of devils on each layer has cardinality A_0

Is A_0*A_0=A_0

I dont have more than an elementary understanding of transfinite math.

[averagejoe]

I dont have more than an elementary understanding of transfinite math.

Neither do I, but I seem to have found a valid counterexample to your argument. One can biject the integers with themselves, and one can form a bijection between the integers and any set {r|a<r<a+1, where a is an integer and r is a rational number}, so this seems to be essentially an identical situation.

[quick_comment]

So there are equal numbers of demons, devils and solars.

[Pharaoh's Fist]

In that Infinity = Infinity = Infinity...

[averagejoe]

In that Infinity = Infinity = Infinity...

You'd think so, right. Infinity is a tricky bastard, though, and I've never really seen anyone working off of intuition be remotely right about it.

[Doc Roc]

l'Hôpital would like to talk to you about that, except he really... well, go check the history of "l'Hôpital"'s rule.

[HamsterOfTheGod]

So there are equal numbers of demons, devils and solars.

Clearly there are far more demons than devils or solars because demons are irrational...

[quick_comment]

In that Infinity = Infinity = Infinity...

Ah, but there are different kinds of infinity.

For instance, there are equal numbers of integers and natural numbers, but there are more real numbers than either.

[Pharaoh's Fist]

Clearly there are far more demons than devils or solars because demons are irrational...

May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your nether regions.

[Doc Roc]

Clearly there are far more demons than devils or solars because demons are irrational...

That depends on the data-type you're using... :)

[PId6]

I would just like to point out that while Astral Projection can be interpreted to say you have to do it from the Material Plane, there's nothing stopping you from doing it in the Material and then sending your body to your demiplane. Just saying.

Also, I know exactly what the CR 25 is and there's no way in the abyss you'd get me to fight that thing. I don't think the wizard can beat it, much less anyone else, unless you're chain-gating something or the other.

[averagejoe]

Clearly there are far more demons than devils or solars because demons are irrational...

[quick_comment]

I would just like to point out that while Astral Projection can be interpreted to say you have to do it from the Material Plane, there's nothing stopping you from doing it in the Material and then sending your body to your demiplane. Just saying.

Also, I know exactly what the CR 25 is and there's no way in the abyss you'd get me to fight that thing. I don't think the wizard can beat it, much less anyone else, unless you're chain-gating something or the other.

CR 25 is an appropriate end-campaign encounter for a level 20 party.

[PId6]

CR 25 is an appropriate end-campaign encounter for a level 20 party.

Ah, but the CR system is extremely flexible, as Belial undoubtedly knows.

[Doc Roc]

Optimized CR 25 is not appropriate for a single ECL 20 character.




Belial, I'm calling in my cred with everyone here.
If you run Doomsday against a wizard, I'm challenging you to ToS.
Because you will have egregiously over-stepped the bounds of a rational attempt at proving anything here.

@Pid6:

Kill -9 that terrible lie. The CR system is hideously brittle, a monstrous mistake iterated over and over.

[Frosty]

I dunno what a Doomsday is, but it sounds terrifying

[Kelpstrand]

I dunno what a Doomsday is, but it sounds terrifying

Well it's apparently called "Doomsday" so off the top of my head, it's not made of Sunshine and Lollipops. Unless those are some mean Lollipops.

[Lamech]

@Pid6:

Kill -9 that terrible lie. The CR system is hideously brittle, a monstrous mistake iterated over and over.

I thought he meant flexible in terms of power levels for a certain CR? For example: Commoner 18 = Fighter 17 = Wizard 17 = Shadow 21 HD Wizard 21 = Shadow 21 HD Wizard 5 archivist 1 Tainted Scholar 1 Dweamerkeeper 7 IotSFV 7

Also, Mr. Leveler that last one there should obliterate any wizard and still be "easy"

[PId6]

Yeah, flexible as in wizard spells are flexible.

[Milskidasith]

I know you guys can't reproduce Doomsday's entire entry here because of copyright, but could you give me a general rundown? What's broken about it?

[Myrmex]

An easy way to circumvent Gate abuse- only willing creatures answer your call.

Look, I don't pull out my kung-fu very often. I'm a nice guy, by most accounts. I play by most of the existing gentleman's agreements. I don't mind railroads or silly plots, or starting games in taverns. I do mind someone insisting that the whole CO community is clearly idiots. A lot of these people, I'm good friends with, I respect deeply, and I've spent serious time on this issue with them. It's not some imaginary problem. It really is an issue within the game.

That's not to say that a wizard is wholly unkillable.
It's just to say that he's a pretty freaking rough target to go after, probably the roughest thing to go chasing after in the PhB short of deities. It doesn't get a lot stupider than this particular endeavor. We found some ways to make him sit down, shut up, and die. But only with a number of Agreements in place, some rules, and the assumption of a truly sensible GM. I guess what upsets me is that there's this mentality that everything is fixed and beautiful if I can provide just one good counter-example. We're not dealing with predicate logic here!

Don't take this as an offense, but I think you are taking this way too personally. Belial seems to just be curious.

[Doc Roc]

The issue is that he's done this and a few similar things recently, and there've been a bunch of threads about this which really over-lap, and all of which re-tread really well-explored territory. I come here for fun and new ideas.

However, most of that was due to a misunderstanding of astral fire's post which immediate preceded mine. I thought AF meant that I was being a bad little D&D-sifu.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

The encounters are obviously not going to be run against a single wizard here. There will be a cleric, a gish and a fighter run by a third party (or by me, if nobody is interested) along with the wizard. There really is no other way to benchmark the wizard's effectiveness except along with some companions.

As amusing as it would be to see people punched halfway through mountains or to the other side of a miles-wide area, Doomsday is not entirely non-homebrew (it has dropped SLAs in favor of some melee abilities) and thus will not be run here. Besides, 2000 hp, +90 attack, regenerating immortal horrors are not appropriate for this test. You did notice the mention of non-advanced creatures being used as a benchmark for what advanced creatures might be used, right?

Do note however that horribly broken stuff, while not used to kill you or even prevent legitimate attacks on your part, will certainly be used to counter exploits.
For example;

Spoiler

Show

Efreet or Noble Djin with an item of Summon Monster will grant wishes to their summoned pets while ordering them to use those wishes for their benefit. Said Efreet or Noble Djin will use those wishes to make sure their Wishes cannot be exploited by anyone and to create more free Summon Monster items for other Efreet or Noble Djin. So when you're attempting to bind Efreet or Noble Djin for Wishes? You still get the creature you're supposed to get but not the Wish exploit.

In short, don't bother with blatant exploits like chain-gating, mindraping legions of monsters and the like that would never fly in a normal game. While not technically disallowed here, they will be otherwise countered.

[Aharon]

@Quick Comment
Per the errata, you can't use alacritous cogitation on Genesis, the errata limited it to apply to “...cast[ing] any arcane spell you know of
the same level or lower and of casting
time no longer than 1 round.”

(In the same vein, Incantatrix was erratae'd: Please add the following sentence to the end of the
Instant Metamagic class feature description:
The incantatrix cannot use this ability if the
metamagicked spell would normally use a spell slot of a
higher level than she can cast.)

Someone seems to actually have seen how hideous these things are without a caveat. Although it's fun how they fixed these small things and never did anything about the really big things like, say... Gate.

@Tidesinger
Teleport through time also requires a drop of oil of timelessness, an item I only found in the 3.0 SRD. The oil itself costs (by 3.0 rules) 150GP, so I think a GM like Belial wouldn't permit you to get a drop of it for free. Or is there something I overlooked?

[mostlyharmful]

(In the same vein, Incantatrix was erratae'd: Please add the following sentence to the end of the
Instant Metamagic class feature description:
The incantatrix cannot use this ability if the
metamagicked spell would normally use a spell slot of a
higher level than she can cast.)

Cut's it down a bit but not all that much. With the metareducers an Incantatrix gets and works out you'll still be persisting spells up to 5 or 6th level and there's not a whole lot of buffs above that that you really need persisted rather than extended. Greater Ironguard is about the only major loss from the usual incantatrix buff routine I can think of

[Myrmex]

@Quick Comment
Per the errata, you can't use alacritous cogitation on Genesis, the errata limited it to apply to “...cast[ing] any arcane spell you know of
the same level or lower and of casting
time no longer than 1 round.”

Heighten Spell?

Teleport through time also requires a drop of oil of timelessness, an item I only found in the 3.0 SRD. The oil itself costs (by 3.0 rules) 150GP, so I think a GM like Belial wouldn't permit you to get a drop of it for free. Or is there something I overlooked?

The whole thing with the flower and undisturbed ground.

Cut's it down a bit but not all that much. With the metareducers an Incantatrix gets and works out you'll still be persisting spells up to 5 or 6th level and there's not a whole lot of buffs above that that you really need persisted rather than extended. Greater Ironguard is about the only major loss from the usual incantatrix buff routine I can think of

Ghostform.

[mostlyharmful]

Ghostform.

5th level. with Persist it's 11th. With two metareducers (one of which comes ready made with Incantatrix) you can have it at 17th, sleep for 8 hours, reprep your 9th levels for something useful and still have a good long run with it up.

[Myrmex]

5th level. with Persist it's 11th. With two metareducers (one of which comes ready made with Incantatrix) you can have it at 17th, sleep for 8 hours, reprep your 9th levels for something useful and still have a good long run with it up.

It's 5th in Tome & Blood, but that's 3.0. The updated version, in Spell Compendium, is 8th.

You ever notice how the more text something has, the more broken it becomes? I feel like tax law must be the same way. We should put our collective optimizing together and go work for a fortune 500.

[mostlyharmful]

It's 5th in Tome & Blood, but that's 3.0. The updated version, in Spell Compendium, is 8th.

Which makes it completely out of sight with the rejig. Gottcha.