Crusader of Logic's page

Casters have far more options, and those options are less permanent. Even the 'spells known' types can replace up to 9 or so with no harm, no foul. Try to replace an item, you immediately forfeit half its value. And this assumes you can just walk into House Cannith or whatever and buy whatever you want.

Caster guesses wrong, he's screwed for (maximum) 24 hours.

Melee guesses wrong, he never quite recovers.

If everyone knew it, I would not have needed to correct it.

Further, my comments are almost always useful. Even when say... contingent flaming a troll, I make sure to separate the productive bits from everything else. Making good posts often is a bad thing how, exactly?

Compare to frequent posts that consist of nothing but straw man arguments, unprovoked insults, and so forth... I believe most people would prefer a crusade of logic to an illithid brain snack.

I am pointing out WBL does not even allow them to cover all the basics. By the time they're done with the staples (damage, AC, saves) most of their cash is gone. MIC helps considerably, but they still end up with a lot of very basic situations that they just cannot handle well enough as they lack the right tool for the job.

Edit: "This well-made tome is always of small size, typically no more than 12 inches tall, 8 inches wide, and 1 inch thick. All such books are durable, waterproof, bound with iron overlaid with silver, and locked.

A wizard can fill the 1,000 pages of a blessed book with spells without paying the 100 gp per page material cost. This book is never found as randomly generated treasure >with spells already inscribed in it<."

Brackets mine. You can find it as random treasure, it just will not have spells in it. This doesn't matter though, as you can take every spell you do have, and scribe it in for free.

>38 Blessed book 12,500 gp<

Roll a 38 on Medium Wondrous Items. There you go.

Rob Godfrey wrote:

I think the issue is, the way the game is setup spells and SLA are nearly always going to be better than feats, unless the feats themselves basically are SLA's.

Thanks for that tidbit. Really well thought out and definitely necessary to post. When you're done comparing feats to spells, lets compare arrows to cows and platinum to zombies.

Welcome to the design team, buddy!

Thanks for that tidbit. Really well thought out and definitely necessary to post. When you're done being useless while insinuating others do the same, let's discuss the necessary velocity for a cluebat to propel a creature of mass x a distance >= 50 yards.

Welcome to the football team, buddy! (you're the ball)

Here is one potential way to ignore scribing costs: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#blessedBook

Thank you Rob for covering the WBL question, and my new pet stalker troll.

Even if feats were comparable to spells and SLAs and such, you still get more of the latter than the former. If you then give them a bunch of extra feats... then you get 4.0, where 'everyone is equal' because everyone is the same.

Alternately you can just delete every class not named 'Cleric', 'Druid', or 'Wizard'. Maybe Sorcerer too. That'd be much simpler.

No, it's not an easy question to answer.

Wizards do not 'have to' buy spells to add to their spellbooks. Even with just the two free spells a level, they will have more spells known than a sorcerer at every single level of the game. Extra spells are a nice benefit sure, but they aren't required. There are also ways around the scribing cost.

Also, even full WBL tends to not be good enough. He can cover the staples after spending most of his WBL, but how about the utility stuff so that a flying enemy, or a forcecage, or some other relatively straightforward effect does not entirely negate him? He ends up running out of resources before he manages to cover both staples and utility.

does mirror image stack with invisibility. Since it's an illusion and requires visibility to be effective?

Sculpting spells - is this feat in the new pathfinder? (Havn't got the books with me now)

I'm just asking as some of these abilities are coming from splat books and not Pathfinder which I feel is adressing teh caster balance much more.

It doesn't stack. It isn't meant to. It's meant to provide another option. Invis for 'good luck finding me, much less hitting me'. Mirror Image for 'fine, no stealth? Plan B'. This is what makes casters good. If their first trick doesn't work, they have another. Compare to the non casters where if their first trick doesn't work, they're probably SOL. Only way you're beating a caster is if you can either counter everything they do (thereby meaning you are a better caster) or at least counter them enough times to get in some lucky shots and get them that way.

Crusader of Logic wrote:

If possible, I'm actually stridently trying to outshit s#%%ninja.

Wow. Just, wow.

Ok, first of all, who the hell are you? No, don't answer that. That was a rhetorical question. I know who you are. You are a pretty famous troll on these boards who exists for no purpose save posting random, idiotic drivel completely out of context to instigate fights. Well, guess what Mr. Troll? I'm the Crusader of Logic. I get Smite Imbecile as a class ability, and I'm not the least bit afraid to use it to put useless idiots in their place. Now, do you something productive to add to this discussion so I can sheath my cluebat and go back to getting useful stuff done? I'm pretty sure you do not, but I'm asking anyways out of courtesy.

Did anyone point out that you can get saves from most wizards spells for half damage and no saves verses melee damage. I think it they are equal.

Except you are comparing wizard blasting spells as if they were 'most spells' and as if they were the best thing the wizard can do instead of the worst to the best/only thing the fighter can do. This is not a fair comparison.

I've seen plenty of arena fighter vs wizard stuff. Even when the arena rules are designed to favor the fighter, and the wizard can't use any of his best tricks such as Shapechange he still wins every single time in round 1 before the fighter gets a turn. Unless it is some supercharged gestalt monstrosity. Then it's almost even due to the fact gestalt means very high saves by default, and being able to get what few real anti mage measures exist without making yourself blatantly inferior to do it.

The Artificer and Cleric do the same things, and can do it while beating him at his own game (hitting the thing with the other thing).

4chan? Seriously? I see what you were trying to say there, but 4chan is about the worst example you could have used. Pictures of a cat, or 'epic fail', or whatever as the complete body of a post while potentially amusing are not useful or accurate models of adult conversation.

And no, I'm not in the soft crowd. I'm the type that believes a good idea is a good idea regardless of who says it and how. Hostile presentation (and I define hostile a lot more strictly than most here because I am near impossible to offend) is going to get a response like 'I do not like you, but I do respect you' or in blunter terms 'I think you're a douchebag, but that's still a good idea'.

/Devil's Advocate.

Now where was the topic at again? It got lost in all the back and forth over semantics.

First, before I say anything else, am I reading that right? Is it 'fights typically last 3 rounds' or 'typical half life is 3 rounds, aka enemies are half dead by then'?

I would like to remind everyone though that Rope Trick holds 7 people, plus the rope. That's not just the Wizard not getting stabbed by some random night encounter.

Just making sure that hasn't been overlooked. Carry on.

Tome of Battle did a decent job at this. They still get left behind by the enemies, but can keep up longer. For example, party caster could use a Standard action for Benign Transposition to put a Crusader in the enemies' face so he can do the melee thing. Then said Crusader uses White Raven Tactics which if done right means the caster gets his actions anyways, net cost Crusader's Swift action and cannot use WRT for a few rounds. That's a pretty good example of encouraging teamwork, but as the game that most of my feedback is based upon has shown me it still isn't enough to deal with basic system flaws like 'you cannot do anything meaningful outside melee range unless highly specialized in it, in which case you cannot deal with anything inside melee range as you cannot be specialized in both due to lack of resources'. Benign Transposition makes for a nice workaround until the enemy uses some sort of dimensional trap that puts teleporters into an Iron Maiden, instead. Then you can't use it, and melee guy can't do much but double move.

Highly specialized non casters should be awesome at what they do, not merely competent. That way, you can be less specialized in multiple things which you are competent at (but the specialist is still better). There's a good start.

Crusader of Logic wrote:

Lots of fine stuff.

I'm just suggesting that we may come to the game from different perspectives. For example, when I look at channel energy, I wonder if the possibilities of evil clerics becoming suicide bombers at first level is unbalanced. You can tell me that. I'm more concerned, though, with how 'cleric as bomb' changes the role of clerics, what kind of story possibilities it opens up, how it feels as part of a game world.

I'm not saying that your perspective isn't important, but let's cast a wide net here, eh?

Well that falls under the category of abstracts. Abstracts, like opinions are not really debatable. Internet forums, in this context exist for debate so as to come up with and refine ideas. So while it certainly is something to consider at one's gaming table, any discussion about it with anyone else can only go as far as 'I think x is cool' then someone else says 'I think y is cool'. Anything further is one side claiming the other's opinion is wrong.

Before the WotC forums got completely messed up, this is the reason why the Character Optimization boards had a much higher post volume than Character Development. Discussion for the latter can only go so far, and the best qualified to speak for you is you, so most of the people with a background issue likely just worked it out themselves.

If you nerf the casters, you also have to nerf almost every monster or all you are going to do is bring about a TPK. After all, if the group is only able to deal with advanced situations because the caster has the right tool for the job, the caster no longer has the right tool for the job, and no one else has that tool instead... No one has the tool, no one can deal with it, and people die en masse. 1 - 1 = 0. And by advanced situations I mean such tactical genius (sarcasm) as 'enemy is standing atop a 30' wall, and non magic guy isn't ranged specced' or 'enemy begins 60' away, you are wearing full plate and therefore cannot attack until round 2'. We haven't even touched real advanced tactics yet, or any sort of enemy magic. Very basic situations the non magic guy simply cannot participate in. Without being specialized in ranged combat, he's going to be doing 1d8 + very small number with his long bow. After the first few levels, it is completely trivial. The non magic guys are decent for the first few levels. Better is debatable, but they at least work then.

Though there certainly are some problem spells that need to be dealt with, the real issue is that the ones lacking magic just simply do not have enough viable options available to them. Fighter boy can think tactical all he wants. He cannot actually follow through and act it. He's a one trick pony, if he's relevant at all. Even if he did, somehow get multiple tricks they'd end up almost the same and therefore countered by almost the same things anyways. A wizard who never casts anything but Scorching Ray and Fireball no matter what would suck pretty bad too. Even if he instead spammed a good spell such as Glitterdust, the fact still remains there are times where a single trick just is not relevant. Options are required to deal with a variety of enemies.

Must have gotten removed I suppose. Moving on.

Amulets give an enhancement bonus to natural armor. It would stack with the feat, provided that it is not an enhancement bonus. For the same reason, you can Alter Self into a Lizardfolk for unnamed natural armor, and still benefit from your amulet of NA as an enhancement bonus.

How exactly are Drow Monks in any way, shape, or form optimal?

Thank you LogicNinja, for covering everything else I was going to say and a few things I didn't think of.

I've only read the first third of this so far. Why are so many people using Fireball vs two handed weapons as their baseline for comparison? Yes, smart melees are using two handers. Smart casters are not using blasting spells. Support magic is better than blasting magic. Crowd control and SoD magic is better than support magic. Apples to apples.

By the way, Sculpted Glitterdust is a 3rd level spell that has a chance to blind 4 creatures (minimum, more if they don't spread out). It's a Will save. Enemy will saves still aren't that great for the most part, but are getting better.

Also, Fighters don't keep going all day. Hit Points are a finite resource. Do you know what recovers Hit Points? Yes, that's right. Spells. So when the spells run out, they can't keep going either. Seeing as they're the ones in front of big things that want to eat them, guess who needs rest first?

Here's my page 2 response: Archers? Seriously? First off, there are only two archer builds that do half decent damage. Both require heavy specialization. One requires being within 30 feet and the enemy is susceptible to precision damage. The other requires a 3.0 PRC and also that the enemy is susceptible to precision damage. As precision damage immunity is easily gotten via one of several means, meaning that regardless the archer is doing 15 damage a shot (best case) on average, assuming Wind Wall doesn't automatically win against any and every archer lacking a Force bow... Yeah, have fun. We haven't even mentioned Greater Mirror Image (even if you do somehow catch the Wizard with his pants down and full attack, he can still throw this up in lieu of Blur, Displacement, Invis, Stoneskin, Flight, etc... We also have not mentioned the Ring of Entropic Deflection. As long as the Wizard moves 10 feet, all ranged attacks miss him 20% of the time (and that's 50% with any speed boosting item). Since casting is a standard and perhaps a swift action, he loses nothing by staying mobile and even CC skill ranks make it not hard to hit a DC 15 check. Suffice it to say, the wizard does not give a damn about any ranged attacks except maybe Disintegrate (and GMI + ED ring means there is a 10% or less chance it even hits, so who cares)?

Also, someone mentioned the Fighter taking hits for the wizard. What ability is allowing him to do this? Because last I checked, unless you go the spiked chain tripper route there is absolutely nothing stopping the enemies from going right past you, shaking off the AoO, and attempting to attack the wizard anyways. If they're smart, they utilize their most likely superior mobility to bypass the fighter and not even worry about that much. Unless in a relatively narrow passage, fighter is difficult terrain. Any summon bigger than Medium does it better, because they fill more 5*5 squares and no one gets upset if they die so they don't require resources (healing). A wall of whatever does it still better.

Now, it is possible to do this if you use the 3.0 Devoted Defender PRC... except now you have the Fighter PC subserviant to whatever caster PC he is remaining within 5 feet of so that he can use his prestige class abilities to parry attacks directed at said caster, switch places with said caster to block attacks with his face, and AoO anything that attacks said caster. Also, he can only defend one person at a time. He can change who he protects at the start of battle, but then he's stuck with it. He chooses to guard the Wizard, but the dragon decides the Rogue is crunchy and tastes good with ketchup? There is nothing he can do. He cannot change who he is bodyguarding this combat.

Crusader of Logic wrote:

done right ... solution to a problem .... extensive research ... imbalanced at release .... underutilized ... healbot ... full caster brokenness ... complex web ... objectively net loss ... this is erroneous if approached from the proper perspective ... false correlation between more books ... simply a manifestation of that false belief ...

It's like we are speaking different languages.

How do measure possibilities for plot twists? How do you mathematically determine interesting characterization? How do you statistically analyze potential for bringing into play an interesting fantasy trope?

I'm not trashing you Crusader, but we may come at this game with different sets of assumptions. One of mine has always been that wizards will be weaker at lower levels and have frightening power at higher levels. I know, I know. Nutty, eh? That, for me, is what a wizard is and does.

Also, this balance/unbalanced perspective seems to always assume that characters are optimized. I don't try to optimize my character. I try to make them interesting. I don't want to create a character that can make it through the dungeon. I want to make a character that I WANT to make it through the dungeon ... I'd prefer to play a flawed character that I love flaws and all than a 'balanced' character that has been rigorously tested through a complex algorithm.

Nowhere in these discussions of balance do I see reference to any of the authors of fantasy that inspire these designers. Where are they?

I'm not saying that you can't have both, but if I do that would be more by chance than by design.

Cheers,
Tarren

Wizards weaker at low levels? While Fighters are good enough to be worthwhile for the first 4 levels, I wouldn't say they are stronger than Wizards. After all, even 1st level spells such as Color Spray and Sleep can instantly win encounters. At second level, you get Glitterdust, Web, and so forth. Now if you have a stupid wizard who would rather cast Magic Missile at level 1 than shoot his crossbow and do about the same thing except far more times, yes, the Fighter's going to look good. That's not a pro of the Fighter - that is a con of stupidity. Wizards are Intelligence based. You have to be smart to be a wizard. Being stupid is out of character.

This balanced/unbalanced perspective actually assumes stock characters. Optimization benefits the Fighter more than the Wizard because the Fighter 1: Has more room to improve. and 2: Is easier to mess up. In other words, it actually fixes imbalance to an extent.

What authors of fantasy that inspire these designers? There is very little in the way of fantasy stuff out there that resembles mid and high level D&D at all and only a bit more that resembles low level D&D. Conan for example? I don't think he's ever encountered anything higher than about CR 9. So, what inspires everything after the first 8 levels? Well from the looks of it, they just kinda made up stuff and never tested it much. Which is why 11 is the threshhold where such fun as infinite wish loops begins.

If you want a flawed character, make them that way. The system should not be broken by default so as to make those flawed characters available. The default should be a working, solid product. Hit it with a hammer yourself if you want, proverbially speaking. It almost sounds like you're saying you want the designers to make characters weak because they didn't know what they were doing in the design process, thought they had them solidly working, but didn't. And if by flawed you mean character failings instead of mechanical failings you are committing the Stormwind Fallacy by stating that optimization and roleplaying are a 'sliding scale' where being better at one automatically means being worse at the other. Not to mention, you're talking to someone who is quite skilled at both.

All the characterization stuff is completely independent of the system. Freeform works just as well for roleplaying as D&D as White Wolf. If all you want is roleplay, you can save a lot of money on dice and books by going the freeform route. The purpose of the rule system used is to deal with the more concrete details such as 'I shot you!' and 'No you didn't, I have a shield!' and also 'Oh yeah? Well my bullets pierce shields!' so that it does not devolve into the puerile exchange of infinite Uh huhs and Nuh uhs, just like a game of Cops and Robbers inevitably does. Of course these abstract details are not covered in fact. You might as well try to say 'Happiness is Red 42.' All you will do in the attempt is make anyone who overheard wonder just what, exactly you are talking about at best. Now, the mechanics can back up your fluff. If you're described as 'strong' and 'smart' you need a good Str and Int to back that up. Otherwise, it's either lying fluff, or the character is deluding themselves. Likewise, some grappler guy who says he can wrestle bears either needs to actually be able to wrestle bears with a reasonable chance of success (here's where the mechanics matter again), or is again lying to himself and/or others.

An admixture of fluff and crunch is required here.

Crusader of Logic wrote:

The fifth fight involved a large number of enemies, many of which were spellcasters in a tactically advantageous position. The Druid ended up having to cast Heal every round so the Crusader wouldn't die (and was invisible so they wouldn't just attack him instead... though due to DM tactical failure, a druid didn't just Faerie Fire him). I was also invisible (and moving a lot, so the FF trick isn't as applicable) and basically destroyed the encounter in two rounds because even though I was holding back a lot, blasting is still half decent when pumped up heavily with 1-2 metamagics. It just doesn't compare to crowd control and SoDs.

Yeah, I'd like to see this broken down a bit more. How was the druid invisible? "Many of which were spellcasters"? What brought that on? What was the EL and what was the party's level?

Based on what you wrote it sounds like a lot of inexperience. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but based on what you described, the skirmisher should have rocked if they knew what they were doing. Also the druid should have been much more than healing. If the Crusader was having a great deal of difficulty, were the "mooks" not really mooks or were the spellcasters (for some strange reason) focusing on him more than anyone else. Also if spellcasters are as great as people seem to make them out here, why weren't they able to bypass the invisibility that the two of you had? (The last question is more rhetorical.)

But the skirmisher should have been picking off their spellcasters easy. (Especially if the artificer was four levels behind.)

4 levels behind in Artificer. As in, levels in nonspellcasting stuff. Only actually 1 level behind everyone (I started 2 behind everyone).

The druid was invisible because Spell Storing Item: Greater Invisibility made him so. Same with me. I could have used normal invisibility on him, since he never attacked. But hey. The encounter as a whole was apparently CR 20. The group was level 14-15 (mostly 15) and at the time there were 4 of us, not counting cohorts. The psy warrior died to a trap prior, leaving Artificer, Druid, Crusader, and the Skirmisher guy.

The Crusader was having difficulty because he had 2 greater fire elementals (CR 9), and a dire tiger (CR 8) beating on him in addition to some melee NPC of unknown capabilities other than Karmic Strike or Robilar's to allow him to counterattack when struck. Because of this, he was taking a bit over half to 75% of his HP every round, so he needed a Heal every round to not die. Note that the Crusader is immune to fire, so the elementals aren't as big of a threat to him as they would normally be.

The skirmisher, if made smart should have been decent. He wasn't made smart, so instead of doing 21-30 damage with a 30% crit chance he was doing 6-15 with a 30% crit chance. The extra 15 there would simply come from having Power Attack, and Power Attacking for full while ignoring pretty much every type of AC except stat based AC (Dexterity, along with Monk bonuses and such) due to Brilliant Energy + class abilities and therefore still hitting on a 2, with 2 attacks via Bounding Assault. Because of this, he could not even 1 round one of the 6 druids attacking. All 6 druids were mid level (dunno exact stats) so it isn't like they had large amounts of HP.

With that said, the druids should have caught on someone was there invisible after the first casting of Heal because well... spellcasting is loud. Not to mention he (party druid) was standing literally right in front of the dire tiger, who should have been able to smell him and therefore not keep biting and clawing right past him. My character was smarter, and stayed away from the animals (there was also a dire wolf who was duking it out with some summons on the sidelines, and one other mook who my cohort beat up by himself after said mook managed to launch a single attack with some sort of oversized crossbow weapon. By the time they knew she was there, they had already lost. And just in case, she kept moving so if anyone did try to target her, they'd hit where she was and not where she is.

Round 1: Move out of tunnel to find druids waiting with Wall spells which have boxed in the area. The druids are standing atop them, and below waits a dire wolf fighting the druid's summons on the sidelines, a dire tiger, 2 greater fire elementals, the crossbow NPC, and the counterattack NPC. Get away from everything while invisible. This round required a double move.

Round 2: Apply metamagics to a weak spell (Fireball) to make it not as weak. Proceed to unleash Twinned Sculpted blasting. As impressive as it sounds, I was only doing about 50 damage a round with it because Fireball sucks. Granted, that's 50 damage to 4 of them, minimum. Still, it's part of holding back. Some druids die, some retreat, some go defensive. Course, now they know I'm there.

Round 3: Repeat previous action. Eliminate that aspect of the encounter almost single handedly as the Skirmisher just wasn't dealing enough damage.

Meanwhile on ground level, my cohort beat down the crossbow guy, dire wolf is still on the sidelines, other 4 are dueling it out with the Crusader. When the druids go down, the elementals disappear (must have been summoned) leaving him with just two opponents (my cohort was also joining the melee fight at this point, but the enemies ignored him because he did less damage). Crusader's cohort uses a Will save or lose on the counterattack guy, and it works. The tiger loses interest in fighting with its masters gone. Dire wolf collapses from its injuries. End battle.

Now, let's pretend for a moment the enemies did know I was there. Say I just walked out visible, or they cast FF, whatever. Ok. My HP are about 75% of the Crusader's. My other defenses however are higher. AC is several points higher (the Crusader would come close, but he forgot to pack an Animated Shield, and if he did not have his reach two handed for any reason he would be even worse off so Animated or IBD are his only options). Saves (other than Fortitude) are considerably higher. Will is 3 higher (important) and Reflex is 7 higher (not as important). Even Fortitude is only 3 points behind, and with +4 vs poison and +5 vs inflict, energy drain, and death my weak save is still actually better against... well almost anything it'd come up against. Is there anything relevant that is Fortitude based and not poison, death, or energy drain? I'm still holding back here by the way. Were I using all the tricks at my disposal I'd have something more like more HP than the Crusader, AC 20 higher or more, saves at least 10 points higher in all categories... That is just to show you how much a Tier 1 class can do if they really apply themselves. I wouldn't take it that far because it simply is not necessary.

The Crusader actually has a longer list of immunities, but that's because he got the DM to make Bone Knight able to progress Crusader initiating instead of Cleric spellcasting and Bone Knight grants various immunities. Too bad for him we're fighting the Emerald Claw, who would be familiar with his immunities due to coming from the same country and more to the point, having a few Bone Knights in their ranks and not waste time trying them.

Now, add to all of that the fact that as long as I keep up the mobility strategy I'd use anyways, all ranged attacks have a 50% miss chance so it's not that simple, and Greater Mirror Image is an Immediate action away at almost any time. They try to attack, 1d4+4 decoys appear. There is now a minimum of a 83.333% chance their attack is foiled without considering anything else. Course then an image pops, but I get 1 back a round, and as long as I keep moving they don't get to full attack. Even if they could AoO despite me auto passing a DC 15 tumble check, that's still only two attacks. Given two or three rounds of dedicated effort they might begin to pass that defense... but in 2-3 rounds, they're dead. I also have one other defensive measure. I've only had to use it once, and that was because there was absolutely no room to move. Very hard to pin down, high defenses, countermeasures. Caster doesn't get hit. Also, in leiu of mirror image I could go with invisibility so they can't even find me to begin to attack me. But See Invisibility isn't that rare, so I don't rely too heavily upon this. I always have a back up.

The too long, didn't read version: Casters end up better than melee even if they are actively trying not to be better than melee. Further, there is a direct and inverse correlation between the intelligence the enemies are played with and the tactics they use accordingly, and the ability of non casters to keep up and still participate meaningfully in the encounter. Note that by keep up I mean keep up with the enemies, not their own allies.

When it's just a straightforward attack the closest enemy slugfest where mixed threat enemies such as Outsiders are not using their SLAs effectively (or at all) and are instead meleeing despite not having good melee stats, and the casters are still getting a feel for their spells it's not so imbalanced as long as you're a two handed melee. The TWF cohort was largely nullified by DR 10/Good (which he cannot bypass) and the skirmisher nullified entirely by the same. Remember, 6-15 damage - 10 = average of 1.5 damage per attack, or 3 damage per round.

So you know I'm not making this up, here is the enemy we were facing (there were several of them). Very low to hit bonuses for its CR.

When the enemies utilize their > non stat Intelligence scores, the non magical characters quickly fall behind. By fight 5, with the druids it's very apparent. Something as simple as 'enemies are on a 30 foot high wall' prevented the crusader from doing a damn thing to them. The skirmisher could get up there, as he had the athletic and acrobatic skills at high ranks as you might expect but since he was not utilizing himself well he couldn't do much with his actions. Druid had to go on full Heal duty to keep the Crusader alive, which leaves me to try to blast with my unoptimized artificer, counting on the very likely fact the elementals were summoned and less likely fact the dire tiger was a summon. That way, kill the caster, spell effect ends and the Crusader and Druid aren't tied down anymore.

In the later fights, it got even more apparent. Very simple things like 'enemies start 60 feet away from you' reduced him to double moving most of the time as it'd take him till round 2 just to begin attacking, and by then it's either dead or close. I know someone's going to recommend he use a bow here. It would not have made much of a difference as every type of archer except two do completely trivial damage. Those two types require heavy specialization in archery (at which point, he isn't a Crusader anymore), and are completely shut down by immunity to precision damage which is all over the place at this level. Not to mention one has to be within 30 feet in order to do his thing, which means he still might face the double move problem, and is fairly vulnerable to being mauled in response. The other requires a 3.0 PRC to function. Said 3.0 PRC (Deepwood Sniper) was never reprinted so it is fair game from a legal perspective, but many DMs don't like getting into that stuff so it has limited relevance.

I also know someone's going to claim 2-3 rounds is 'too fast'. 2-3 rounds is actually slow for a D&D fight. Especially a high level D&D fight. An optimized party would kill it in 1, before they even get their turn most likely. If it took longer than 3, there's a pretty good chance it will end in a TPK as various offensive, support, and debilitating effects (from the casters, of course) should kill anything CR appropriate aka a routine encounter, and even most things several CRs higher and thereby posing a real threat within that time frame.

Here's a pseudo edit, since some people replied while I was typing this. First, who would use Summon Monster 9 over Gate? Second, who would cast SM9 period? 1-8 sure, 9? No. Much better things are possible with 9th level spells. Just pick one that isn't named Meteor Swarm. Third, SM9 would give 1d4+1 Fiendish Girallions. Here's the problem. You're summoning CR 6 creatures. Technically Fiendish adds something, but just look at their to hit numbers, HP, saves... way too low to be relevant. You could summon a hundred of the things, and it still wouldn't matter much against anything CR appropriate. If someone is using summon magic to call in some beatstick decoys, they'll pick elementals or something that actually have half decent offensive stats and solid HP. If a wizard is trying the girallion approach, it means either the Fighter really sucks (as in far more than usual) or the Wizard is really stupid. Either way, one or both of them will soon die.

I also want to know what intelligent party is being attacked in the night at any level where a Bodak encounter would be appropriate. They are CR 8 after all, ergo the party is at least level 6. That assumes there is only one of them. Since you said Bodaks (plural) let's assume 2 or more, and therefore a minimum party level of 8. For that matter, what intelligent party is being attacked in the night at level 4, or 5? 1, 2, and 3 I can see happening (and if it does, it will be the Rogue, Druid, or anyone else with Spot as a class skill who saves the day, NOT the fighter) but after that first the enemies have to figure out where you are, then they have to get into your extradimensional, core spell granted sleeping area without you noticing in order to ambush the party in their sleep. Which means they owe their safety to the Wizard, or maybe the Sorcerer.

Even if they could somehow be ambushed anyways, the spellcasters still have whatever spells they have not cast in the day, they just haven't recovered the rest yet. The fighter has no armor on most likely, and has to spend his first turn drawing his weapon and getting up (as opposed to getting up and casting something or attacking something, whatever). Rogues wear light armor, which can be slept in. They're good to go. So all in all, getting ambushed hurts the Fighter as much, or likely worse than the casters.

First of all, for the Wizard to have better bracers than mage armor can provide he must have a +5 bonus or better on them. As bracers of armor cost bonus squared * 1k, and 5k * 5k = 25k, this is not possible as there is a rule against having single items worth more than a quarter of your WBL, and WBL of a 10th level character is 49k. 49k / 4 = 12.25k, and 25k > 12.25k.

Second, here are multiple examples. It's not directly a Wizard but it is very close. I am in a long running game where the party composition started as follows:

Artificer. (me)
Druid.
Crusader. (think Paladin, except mechanically sound for those of you unfamiliar with the Tome of Battle)
Skirmisher. (non official hit and run type class, fairly decent)
Psychic Warrior.

This was not a high optimization game, so I held back considerably, doing things like losing a full 4 artificer levels at game start which as anyone familiar with casters knows always weakens them, no matter what you get instead. The Druid has no idea what he was doing from an optimization perspective, and the other three are about average in base power.

First fight is a pretty straightforward slugfest. Everything's about even here. At this point I was still getting a feel for my abilities.

Second fight began to show a bit of disparity, but nothing too bad. Mostly it was the skirmisher guy falling behind, because despite having a decent chassis he didn't take advantage of his abilities such as Power Attacking, since Brilliant Energy makes him hit most humanoids on a 2 anyways and his damage was very low. (but would have been respectable with that) It was also mostly straightforward, though there was a trick to it in that the enemies acted first, and it was close quarters.

In the third fight, it was about the same as the second. Mostly straightforward, but got jumped. Still, casters aren't pulling ahead yet.

The fourth fight is where tricks started coming into play like invisible enemies. Naturally, this means the characters better able to deal with those tricks (casters) pull ahead.

The fifth fight involved a large number of enemies, many of which were spellcasters in a tactically advantageous position. The Druid ended up having to cast Heal every round so the Crusader wouldn't die (and was invisible so they wouldn't just attack him instead... though due to DM tactical failure, a druid didn't just Faerie Fire him). I was also invisible (and moving a lot, so the FF trick isn't as applicable) and basically destroyed the encounter in two rounds because even though I was holding back a lot, blasting is still half decent when pumped up heavily with 1-2 metamagics. It just doesn't compare to crowd control and SoDs.

By this point the skirmisher was basically useless, and the crusader was having a hard time keeping up. Casters just held back a little less. Only differences here is the enemies began using tactics, terrain, etc.

Said skirmisher quit. New character, by new player was a Wizard of the crowd control variety (not many SoDs though). In most fights after this, the Crusader was lucky to be able to do something other than double move in any given round as whatever he was going to kill was already taken out by the time he got there. Fights still ended in the same amount of time (2-3 rounds) which is about standard for D&D, just that as the enemies got smarter, they thwarted him more. Course, casters had to get smarter too. The difference is that they actually had the tools to do so.

More detail on any and all points above tomorrow. If there's something specific you want elaboration on, ask.

By the way, said Artificer has NEVER been hit due to superb defenses. A bit of luck too, but mostly the defenses.

It could if done right. But in such cases, it would be getting presented as a solution to a problem and not x is fixed by y, so x is not a problem. Also keep in mind that testing it is not just a one session thing. It requires far more extensive research in order to be considered testing.

A great deal of the reason why D&D 3.5 is so imbalanced at release is because they did not do nearly enough research. They had one test cleric who severely underutilized himself by making himself a healbot, oh and I think he was the one that took a 2/2 skill feat so that he would have a negative three modifier to something or another instead of negative five. They had one test wizard, who was a Toughness elf specializing in the worst school of magic in the game (Evocation) but that WotC thinks is the best with a secondary focus in Enchantment (arguably second worst, due to all the immunities/redundancies). Then their test Fighters (they actually tried two approaches here at least!) were both decently done (by Fighter standards), and their test Rogue was actually pretty good within the Core guidelines. Other seven classes got almost no play time. No wonder they missed full caster brokenness. Especially the Druid. What makes it even worse is they missed the Druid in 3.0 as well. They had to sneak a fix into the DMG, because no one noticed in several months that a stock animal companion > the beatstick character in every way and the PHBs were already printed and shipped.

By done right I mean the solution actually fixes the problem. Even the professionals often screw this up because balance is such a complex web it just isn't possible to foresee the full extent of the cascade effect brought about by any change. Often, something that appears to fix a problem at best replaces it with another (and sometimes worse) problem. More typically, the problem is or is not fixed, but there are now two or more worse problems brought about so it is still an objectively net loss.

This assumes everyone involves knows their stuff at a professional level. Since everyone involved is not a professional, the degree and scope of error is much greater. For example, a number of people believe that the Core rules of D&D are the most balanced. This is erroneous, and it is easy to see why this is erroneous if approached from the proper perspective. From the wrong perspective though, you get a false correlation between more books and more imbalance, just to cite one of the most common misconceptions.

When example person X has an issue with a Fighter taking a single level of Barbarian so as to get the Pounce ability via the Complete Champion variant, but doesn't bat an eye at the Save or Die/Crowd Control Wizard otherwise known as a God build who is pure Core it is a pretty good sign they do not actually know what balance is as full attack on a charge or no full attack on a charge, the melee guy still cannot do anything meaningful the wizard cannot. It is simply a manifestation of that false belief. Because their perspective is skewed, so too is all that they see. Along the same lines, you can give the melee guy every book in existence, and the Wizard Core, and there will still be a disparity. There will be less of a disparity however, as it is far easier to find improvements when you're nowhere near the top of the heap by default. Give the Wizard every book in existence, he will not improve nearly as drastically as there are far fewer things better than what he already has.

By Wizard I mean any full caster. Clerics and Druids are arguably worse. Likewise by Fighter I mean any hit the thing with the other thing, sans magic type. Not just that specific class.

I'd just like to add a bit here about the nature of play testing. Generally, when a company tests a game they do not focus on what is right. They focus on what is wrong. They have a few people playing 'as intended', and the vast majority attempting to go off the rails on purpose to see what happens, intentionally trying to break the game. After all, this is about the only way you can find what is broken in a game, and thereby fix it. When playtesters are appointed in the professional sense, they often have quotas to meet, and will literally lose their job if they don't find enough problems to fix.

So when someone pulls out say... Planar Binding Wish loops, they are doing the designers a big favor. Because of this, said designers might for example make the economy Wish based, where infinite cash does not break the game as anything over 25k isn't buyable for any price, and as an added bonus it means concepts such as the exceptionally rich person with a lavish mansion are possible characters without heavily skimping on the combat gear to afford it and thereby being ineffective as a PC and relegated to NPC status because you need no longer be concerned about Wealth By Level.

Now, you could make up some house rule where the character can have whatever he wants, as long as it doesn't pertain to combat effectiveness as long as there is a story reason for it. Then you can have your mansion, even at level 1 and not be overpowered. Though more likely it'd be a reward from some Lord or another at level 5, because you saved his land in addition to the roughly 9k of combat gear. The problem of course with this approach is there is nothing stopping that character from selling his estate and even if he only gets a tiny fraction of its worth... well you get the idea.

In a nutshell, playtesting feedback needs to be as general as possible so as to appeal to and be relevant to as many people as possible. Bringing house rules into a feedback discussion is simply not the way to go because they make it overly specific (only applying to your gaming table).