And on that subject, trippers take it. Because they need Improved Trip, not because they want or care about CE. That doesn't apply anymore though.
Search Posts
TreeLynx, if a party is involved, and the early fights are super easy with the last one only being a little hard, the only thing that's going to prove is that casters can kill demons. Of course he'll argue it's him, but there's only 2-3 threatening members on that battlefield (depending on if the Rogue figured out how to spam SAs vs everything or not) it's really just a partial party vs a Marilith done to the Benny Hill skit music, whose name is naturally fitting to this.
Point 1: Sure do. The one I was using. Feats: Remove Cleave, because no one cares about it at level 14. Remove Improved Bull Rush, because no one cares about spending your round pushing an enemy a few feet back (I could see it if it had an ability like Earth Elemental Push, or Dungeoncrasher Fighter's ability). Remove Weapon Focus, because it's a trap. Instead give it Improved Multiattack because there is no reason why any natural attack based creature that qualifies shouldn't have it. Add Extraordinary Concentration so it can make use of its Concentration abilities. Granted, that only means Call Lightning. But what else is it going to do with that Swift action? This is mainly a thematic choice. Lastly Knowledge Devotion both to get up the to hit to something respectable, and to go with the theme. I dunno about you, but if I were some millennia old being I'd be using knowledge of my opponent to fight them better. Which is what Knowledge Devotion is. Feats: Extraordinary Concentration, Improved Multiattack, Knowledge Devotion, Multiattack, Power Attack. Before, they had a pretty bad attack bonus (seriously, +20 at level 14 and lower with the secondaries?) which makes PA a waste. Now it's starting to justify itself. Obviously it needs different Knowledge skills now. Local covers most of your typical party, and the other knowledges serve their own purposes along with IDing stuff. Give it the ability to cast Greater Magic Fang on itself with its treasure, and Greater Invisibility. Haste is fun too. Its attack bonus now is +27 with all attacks with an additional 3-5 depending on the Knowledge Devotion roll, and +2 as the invisible bonus. +33 attack bonus (2 bites and 2 claws) doing around 18-32/18-32/13-20/13-20 = 62-104 (83). Not too shabby. I'd say that qualifies as fewer but better attacks. Point 2: The numbers are in the first post. Point 3: If he has 3 rounds by himself, it doesn't matter. He's still not chewing through that many HP in that amount of time. More likely it is 2 though. Greater Fire Elementals get +22/4d8+5 twice. That's a coin toss to hit and do 9-37 (23). So each is doing 23 a round, for 46. They're also flanking because why not. Add 20% to that because he's now getting hit 60% of the time. 55.2 now. Each of those 2.4 successful slams forces a DC 24 Reflex save to not catch on fire, where you take 1-6 (3.5) a round for 1d4 rounds. Not included for simplicity. Tiger has 10-16/10-16/6-16 with 40%/40%/10% accuracy. The first round though that's 50%/50%/20% accuracy, and there's also 2 40% chance 6-12s. So the tiger's actually fairly tame, but still managing 22.4 on the first round and lower on following rounds. So that's near 80 damage on round 1, and about 75 or so on round 2. I think he's dead now. The tiger probably gets a better weighted average on round 1 due to flat footed pouncing. Point 4: As long as the enemies remove half or better in one round it's Heal spam material. Which is what was happening. Point 5: In the original example, this guy was holding off those 3 mooks by himself, and doing a poor job of it. So the Druid had to cast Heal every round so he didn't die, effectively negating his own turn while the beatstick did little with his own action. Were the Druid not on babysitting duty, he'd have been able to do more. However, given that these creatures are low CR he certainly should be able to take them on without any help from anyone else with little effort because he outclasses them. Except he can't. Point 6: You assume things are supposed to work against the things they are meant to work against. You don't care how likely it is to fail a save against a Paladin. You care how likely it is to fail a save against a Cleric, and boost that up to acceptable levels. Likewise, you do not care how likely it is that something that sucks with mundane attacks can strike you with a mundane attack. You care about how well your AC protects you against that big slobbering beast over there your clanking armor just woke up. This isn't an edge case. It's not arguing you made a new and awesome bullet proof vest because it works great against paint balls but fails to actually stop bullets.
Since we're throwing the word Fail around now... Alright. The Beholder is doing something. It may be a little something, it may be a lot of something. But it is something. The Monk is doing nothing (remind me again how it got within 5' step and full attack range?) at all. The Beholder is also doing stuff to the others. So maybe the Beholder dies on round one. Maybe it kills the party. Regardless, the Monk has absolutely no impact on the outcome. Fail. By the way, I'm not FatR. What he says =/= what I say. Fail. Let me know when I can stop declaring Fail and go back to talking normally.
Actually anything with +15 saves across the board or better at level 13 does that. Which means casters hit the breakpoint before Monks. Monks are actually bad at the whole Beholder killing thing because it flies and he doesn't. So he doesn't even get to attack it unless he randomly some Ex flight somewhere. Or more likely the DM is coddling him. Why more likely? Because he's one of the worst classes in the game, even worse than the much maligned Fighter. The beholder killer is whoever can throw a SoD on it from outside the AMF first, or barring that a Swift Hunter (archer).
The only builds that use blasting (aside from newbies that don't know what they're doing) are the ones that basically turned their Wizard into a one trick pony to apply enough metamagics to make a spell level 20, then lowered the metamagiced spell cost cost back down to 7 via Incantrix + Arcane Thesis + whatever else. In other words, you have to be able to cast level 20 spells in 7th level spell slots just to overcome the HP scaling well enough to make it compare to SoD/SoS/other spells that win fights immediately. And this requires so many feats to do you have to focus all on that. No Extend/Persist for example, or CWI to save money. As for the question itself, this thread is getting spammed and ninja posted a lot. It's also encountering a lot of hostility, so I'm not inclined to answer that question here. If however you have an email account you don't mind disclosing I'll tell you that way. Or if this thread calms down so I can post without getting 3 more posts (one of which is very hostile) that works too.
What's this about formation? Formation works great when it's low level human peons against low level human peons. In the D&D world, formation is called 'Fireball bait'. What that Marilith is actually doing is making minions swarm people with no mobility options to box them in, while she boxes others in with a Blade Barrier or whatever, then kills one at a time. Or something. Casters go first. If it's her alone against the beatstick alone, she beats him any number of ways via Cherry Tapping, and he cannot counter this. What happens if the Wizard wastes his turn not auto winning the encounter is the Marilith full attacks him. If he has his real defenses up, he'll live. If not, he won't. Either way he just took a whole lot of damage for a whole lot of nothing. Even if he avoided every attack, he still wasted a round in a game where 3 round combats are considered long. Beatstick doesn't get a turn either. Read Dimension Door sometime. As others have eloquently pointed out, the Fighter is the incompetent soldier that blows your squad's cover. CoDzilla is simply Cleric or Druid + Godzilla. By definition it is a Cleric or Druid that found out they have certain core options that really kick ass and tend to tear everything apart. Like the Druid? He gets a Fighter as a class feature. It's not even his only class feature. His beatstick is better though, because it's disposable, doesn't take the XP and loot, and probably smells better.
That first guy is getting ignored because he has nothing better to do than attack. Aelryinth does have a proven history of stalking me onto now three separate forums, as many can attest to.
Because it is doing 1d8 + very small number. Which means he doesn't even scratch the enemy unless someone torches a combat round aligning his weapon. Then he does scratch it a little, but only just. 1d8 + very small number is acceptable at level 3. Would you bring someone punching 13 levels below their weight along? No? Why or why not? A "real" threat is what winds up causing damage, not what might cause damage. I saw that in action just last night in my home game when the 12th level party encountered a beholder. The blaster (psion) failed a Will save and started running. The mega-beatstick (ranger) failed a Will save and stood around cheering his new buddy the beholder. That left the flurry of minor attacks (monk) and random support spell (archivist) characters. The monk hit and the beholder was shaken. The archivist used dark secret and the beholder was stunned. The next round the monk hit 5 of 8 times with 2 crits, and the beholder had all of 12 hit points left. The beholder had a choice of hoping the monk would fail his saves, assuming it could hit four times against his buffed touch AC, or he could anti-magic the monk and try to bite him to death before the monk hit two more times while reduced to 4 attacks. Neither was a mathematically winning strategy, and the "weakest" character wound up being the biggest threat. Archivists are one of the strongest classes in the game. Also, beholders fly magically. Your DM was coddling you. Your example is invalid. Ignoring a beatstick that can kill you with a single full attack sequence is always going to be suicidal, no matter how immune you think you are. Remind me again how hard it is to stay away from something that can never do anything meaningful to you unless it starts at most 5' out of its reach to you? Oh right, it's pretty damn easy. Especially when you're faster. You do not get to full attack, no build presented will kill an enemy in one full attack and again your example is invalid.
I don't even know what you're talking about here. Who mentioned blasting? We're assuming successful characters right? Not ones wasting turn after turn? So why mention blasting?
Only way to interrupt in this system is Immediate actions. If you can't move as an Immediate action, too bad.
Longbow on non archery character = not relevant. If the group is there, the Marilith is focusing on the real threats such as the Wizard and Cleric and again doesn't give a rat's ass about the beatstick. Defeating encounters in the most efficient manner means casting spells that ****ing kill things. Not just negate both your own and the beatstick's turn to put yourself and the beatstick in front of the enemy. That's called wasting spells and more to the point, wasting actions (the most valuable resource you can ever have). The fact it then gets to happily full attack the Wizard who wasn't played to his Intelligence right after is an added bonus. So you can keep arguing that the entire party should coddle the beatstick in much the same way a football player might work a deal out with the other team to let the mentally retarded player on their side make a play and score a touchdown so he can feel good about himself, but it still does not address the fact that when he has to pull his weight on his own he fails and is only there out of pity. Also, he should be 50/50 against an even level threat. In other words, he should win half the time. He has absolutely no means of even being able to attempt to win. He is incapable of winning against anything that negates his one trick. Which is most stuff really. And the stuff that can't just does what he does, except better. Conclusion: Beatstick = waste of space looking busy. The purpose of the current subject is to change that, not to spread lies about it. Do I have to start putting the disclaimer in every single post again?
Elder Earth Elementals are CR 11, 24 HD. Monster advancement gives it +1 CR per 4 HD. Thus, 44 HD = CR 16. You then get 1 stat per 4 levels or HD. The rest is quite correct, and again is a deliberately bad example. The 56 HD Assassin Vine is a lot more amusing. Just off the top of my head, that's a BAB increase of 39, a Strength increase of 24 (via size gains), then 13 more stat points from HD gains. Let's say it uses 6 to negate the 3 size increases, 6 in strength, then throws the last on wisdom to get some sort of benefit. Cool. So now instead of having an attack of 7 (5 Strength, 3 BAB, -1 size) and doing 1d6+7 damage (5 Strength * 1.5) it has an attack of 53 (20 Strength, 42 BAB, -8 Size) and a damage of 3d6+30 (20 Strength * 1.5). 33-48 (40.5) is not that impressive, but then consider it's Colossal (and has been since CR 11), it gets to make a CL 56th Entangle around itself every round (Reflex DC 39) as a free action and oh yeah, first time it hits it forces what sort of grapple check you get for having a BAB of 42, Colossal size, and 50 Strength. Which means a grapple modifier of +78 in 3.5, and if PF is following its usual pattern you'll have an even harder time resisting it there. Once grabbed while still well away from the creature itself (perhaps even as far as 160' away) it automatically does that 40.5 every round. Told ya this was a funny example.
Doesn't matter what the Marilith does. Your guy can do nothing unless right next to her. He can never get right next to her. Meanwhile she can do something from far away. Doesn't matter how good that something is. Even if it's just 1 damage he ignores 95% of the time, she still automatically wins. Cherry tapping, anyone? He fails at this, because the Marilith has much bigger threats to concern herself with (everyone else) while still disregarding the beatstick. There is absolutely no reason for any intelligent foe (not just this one) to ever pay attention to this guy unless he is the only one there. So basically he's just there looking busy. I'm disregarding this Benny guy too. Mostly because he's still using illegal items.
Doesn't matter what the Marilith does. Your guy can do nothing unless right next to her. He can never get right next to her. Meanwhile she can do something from far away. Doesn't matter how good that something is. Even if it's just 1 damage he ignores 95% of the time, she still automatically wins. Cherry tapping, anyone? Blink alone doubles the Wizard's HP. As proven, the Wizard is only 2 or 3 HP per HD behind... which is to say 34 or 51. That is considerably less than double. That single real defense makes him more tanky. He's also not getting full attacked because he can move more than 5' and do something meaningful, and doesn't need to be right in front of the enemy to hurt them. Not to mention auto pass Tumble checks to not get AoOed. So that's one swing a round that has a maximum 47.5% chance to connect. Lower if the Wizard gives a rat's ass about his AC. Compare to taking 4-11 attacks a round every round. With that said, there aren't really any melee brutes at level 16. They're all various special ability creatures, which means they 'hit' him. Or maybe they don't, but his AC is irrelevant because it isn't being attacked. So the only way to get one is via advancement rules. Here's a very uncreative and bad example. A 44 HD Elder Earth Elemental (4 HD = 1 CR * 5 increases = 20 extra HD). He gets 2 +27 slams doing 2d10+11 before advancement, and earth mastery. You can't fly, so really it's 2 +28 slams doing 2d10+12 each. 20 HD adds 15 BAB. 2 +43 slams doing 2d10+12. It also adds 6 stat points (let's say 5 str, 1 con). 38 Str now. 2 +46 slams doing 2d10+15. It also gets a half dozen feats and some other stuff. 17-35/17-35 = 34-70 (52). It's a very soft melee brute (thus, a bad example) yet still quite capable of beating the crap out of this guy. Also has a few buckets of HP, and DR/you don't have it. A more amusing example would be a 56 HD specimen of this as another creature chosen at random to serve as a melee brute. You can do that math yourself, I'm just doing this for humor now.
Build made after this discussion started and thus invalid. See moving the goal posts. Funny thing though. I actually quoted wrong. It's 260k, not 280k. That was unintentional, but it still amuses me since it's costing 236k just for you to cover part of the basics, still no utility whatsoever. Or the rest of the staples. Oh by the way, Blinking is one of those things that laughs at melees. Even though the Outsiders bypass many of the real defenses, they don't bypass that. Greater Blinking is even better, and easily made to be always on. At this point though I'm done taking you seriously because you do not know how to present an argument. [Your] Case dismissed.
First you'll need to explain how you went from 11/11/5 saves to ??/20/14 saves with Evasion considering you can't afford those things because you fell into the AC trap. He's also somehow getting a lot more HP now (cannot afford Con boosters) and snuck in another 2 AC somehow (even if possible, it cannot be afforded). By the way, saves are one of those real defenses. The Wizard has 15 to his bad saves without even trying. More like 20-25 if he tries a bit. Around 30 if he really applies himself. No net action cost (that's all stuff that either lasts 24 hours, or lasts about 5 hours and can be recast a few times). In the current group the lowest Fortitude save in the party is 19. But 23 vs poison and 24 vs inflict, energy drain, and death means it's actually much higher against everything except Disintegrate (50% miss, always on, only bypassed by Seeking which is a weapon property and thus invalid to spells) and the odd Baleful Polymorph. I can live with that. Next highest is 21. Because this group did not neglect the real defenses, they auto pass every save they have to make against these guys. Maybe they need a 3 in the edge cases. That's about it. At this point though I think you're just going to keep moving the goal posts meaning you lose the argument and further discussion is pointless.
I loled. Jal, he also forgot to mention miss chances block things that aren't AC. Like rays, and in some cases targeted spells. They also do wonders against those hit based effects like Improved Grab, Stun bites, and so forth. Especially since anything that actually cares about melee can and will auto hit you.
Natural 20 works, but another part of the original idea was to make it an option. Even PAing for 1 does the statuses just as well. PAing for higher numbers means more damage, but less chance of hitting (and thereby inflicting statuses). 20s always hit, so it invalidates the option element. As for the tags, I just referenced spells that inflicted them. Shaken is a state of fear. This is implicit. Confusion is only caused by Compulsion and Mind Affecting stuff. Sickened can be a poison effect but is not necessarily so. A shot to the gut wouldn't make much sense in this context. I didn't put that in because I assumed it was common knowledge, and if I were on the wrong track it was a lot of wasted effort. Not that I think I was or am, just as a just in case thing. As for NPCs vs PCs... my party has two guys full attacking, one charging or full attacking, one being a minor pest with about 30 damage a round but can cast if need be (and is far better when so) and two focused casters. It's actually fairly attack heavy. Now scratch off everyone that doesn't have Power Attack and you just get the beatstick and the charger (not a good charger, just someone that uses the move a lot) since the annoyer didn't have enough Strength for PA, and the other beatstick is TWFing. Before you ask, this was an intentionally suboptimal choice since this is a cohort. Throw them into a fight like the last one and you get one enemy that has a pretty good chance to hit them and is getting 11 attacks, 7 of which are at full bonus and another 2 that are at that bonus -5 and can do all three statuses, the next biggest with four pretty accurate attacks that are actually more accurate than the first ones and gets to shaken and sickened it up, then 8 mooks who have to hits around 16-21 and the shaken condition (their BAB is 1 too low for the next step) when the lowest in the party is a caster with 35 that didn't bother pouring much resources into AC because she was smart. They won't all attack though. Instead some of the mooks will trip with TK to give whatever can melee it a +4 on all their attacks. So actually in that example the PCs would benefit more. Though the main two enemies would become more threatening. Remember again, it's easier to get immunities as a PC. One Heroes' Feast means immune to Shaken (Fear) and Confusion (Complusion) is blocked by just hanging out near the unicorn cohort. Or Mind Blank. Or Protection from whatever.
The fact remains if it is a straight up melee brute it will stomp all over him. Even Aelryinth makes better turtles, and the fact I'm complimenting someone I despise should be telling you something. If it's not a straight up melee brute, it has better things to do. So all that AC blocks the weakest thing an enemy can do. And since you overspecialized, you're wide open to the more meaningful things it can do. Nalfeshnee vs party: Slow everyone (your guy fails, maybe one other person fails, everyone else passes). Or how about something with another AoE will effect? Even a lowly Hezrou hits with a Chaos Hammer and slows him (and if he's not Lawful, pick another flavor of alignment smite then see above). How about Mass Charm? Confusion? They don't even have to specifically aim at him. They just need to fire an initial screw you. He practically auto fails, everyone else is fine. Edit: I used Artificers as an example of a class that can make effective use of wands due to their various abilities to apply metamagics to them. Your post gives a Ray of Enfeeblement (decent) and that's about it.
Another thing that a friend and I have tossed around is an increase of base AC equal to 1/4 or 1/2 BAB (my preference is 1/4). I know this is a large change, but it would go a long way to mitigate the issues of scaling BAB versus nonscaling AC. Without hammering out the details, I can't really say. But from what I've seen of defense systems they either replace armor (actually lowering AC in most cases) or are in addition to it, but the scaling is very linear. Which doesn't solve the problem when the issue is AC is good enough to work at low levels, but the fact enemy accuracy improves by 2-3 points a level every level and your AC improves far less even if you try and make the fool's mistake of sinking like 70% of your wealth into it to become a turtle with a shell defect like that other guy did... By the way... Remember those two random creatures I made a while back and posted here? The first one gets to PA for 4 and still auto hit Ael's flat footed turtle. Which doesn't sound that impressive until you remember it's doing well over a hundred damage aka two round KO, and is forcing auto pass grapple checks and near auto pass 1 round stun. Second round it finishes the job. Second one gets +3 to hit from equipment (still entirely unchosen) and buffs then auto hits the turtle. If it gets more than +3 from these sources even better. 18-32/12-22/12-22/11-18/11-18/23-33 = 87-145 (116 average) without equipment which could add 6 per point or something (belt of mighty fists), without PA (see above), without any other equipment or buffs... yeah. Funny thing? This dragon isn't built to melee. It's built to use its breath weapon to maximum effect. It stomps all over the turtle's primary trick with its secondary trick while completely ignoring its own primary trick. Best part about it is one Greater Invisibility on self later and it has a 44 Hide and 32 Move Silently without gear. Congrats, the turtle can't even notice something the size of a small house sneaking up on him and beating the crap out of him. The third one is an even meaner example. Turtle never gets to see his target, gets auto hit once a round and hit once more by the other attacks, taking around 130 damage a round. He also gets ambushed, taking 130 right out of the gate. Win init or die Mr. Defective Turtle. At least you have enough HP to not die from the initial ambush, which is an improvement over the other guy.
Now that the off topic BS is addressed, back on topic. Much of the OP's position on this post revolves around the prevalence of Melee Brute's with monstrous TH rolls, the idea that the average Melee will throw himself at such creatures and not be smart and fight them from a distance or with reach. You know, like casters try to do. The above is correct. And to Wrath: Crusaders are better than Fighters. Period. This one wasn't made that well, but he was also getting compared to stuff 3-4 levels lower than himself collectively and 6-7 levels lower than himself individually. In other words he should be able to defeat them all with no help from his party and only be down about 30-40 HP at the end. So even if his bad choices lower this, (he takes more damage aka more resources expended) regardless he should still be able to win easily with no risk to himself. If it were 15 CRs worth of mooks there, the better made beatstick is still going to get his ass kicked left, right, and center by the things he's supposed to be tanking while the casters do all the real work in a group battle. Note the first example was an individual battle since a single level 15 PC has a party level of 11. 11 vs 11 = routine, trivial combat. The second was a group battle because it was more designed against the group. 15 vs 15 = see above. More to the point, he did have an AC of 33 which is exactly the same as one used in another example therefore it was directly relevant. Ultimately his build quality is irrelevant to an 'AC is useless' discussion as it's just a numbers comparison. The issue wasn't that he wasn't 'ubering up' it was that he didn't back basic staples and utility items, and instead of getting them with his 80k he lazied out. More likely he lazied out due to pressure to write an actual background for this guy to flesh out his personality and illuminate his motivations and such. Lastly, given the nature of beatsticks there are no 'tactics' you can use because you ever deviate from your one trick your effectiveness either falls through the floor or becomes nonexistent immediately. Though ToB types are a bit better off here. They can move more than 5' and still do more than scratch the enemy. Doesn't help much when you have 3 enemies poised to AoO your 20' move speed ass, then full attack you anyways because the elementals have enough reach to do it, and tigers can just pounce.
First off, I would like to remind everyone Aelryinth is my stalker troll, who specifically follows me around just to give me BS. This includes starting to insult me in threads I haven't posted in for days, or at all where his name isn't coming up just to be an ass. So suffice it to say he has absolutely no credibility at best, if not negative credibility. Just to be sure, I actually read the post. Sure enough he's still crying about turtles, making up random BS, and throwing out either low numbers as if they mean something or moderate numbers that were having no offense and therefore being a 5' square of difficult terrain to get ignored. Would anyone like to take a guess how I developed all my anti turtle arguments? If you said 'shooting down a compulsive liar repeatedly and for great justice' you were correct.
[...]Most importantly, it's far tamer than what any caster can do in a surprise round they can easily create, or by winning initiative which they can easily do. You don't see mundanes as sometimes being able to ambush enemies and screw them up good before they can act? Because right now, they don't get that. They get one attack... That's the point. I could have instead went with some really low DC you'd pass on any non 1. But that'd mean an extra roll per hit. This results in the same end effect but is only one roll after the entire attack sequence. As stated before it is intentionally weak because PA is one of the better feats and thus pretty damn close to the baseline feats should be at to make them relevant. It's not disassociated with competence either. Each hit raises the end roll by 5%. Thus you must be able to attack (BAB, Haste) and be able to hit (lots and lots of attack bonus). You technically can get more than 5 attacks in a round, but light weapons don't work with PA so TWFing is right out. If monsters are doing it, they're likely encountering PC immunity a lot more. Remember, Shaken is fear, Confusion is Compulsion and Mind Affecting and Sickened... well poison doesn't make sense, so I dunno. In any case those are not hard to get immunities. Which is again intentional because PA doesn't need much help.
Fortification is magical. It doesn't care what mundane item you put it on. Now if you were arguing for a mundane version of fortification on heavier armors as an innate ability that stacked with the magical kind (otherwise you again encounter irrelevance over time) we could go somewhere with that.
The Outsiders were deliberately a bad example as stated. And if they're designed a bit more intelligently, the Nalfeshnees actually end up with fewer but better attacks. Half wealth assumes you maxed out your defensive items. Very easily done since Heavy Fort is a requirement and eats up the rest of your armor, then Animated on the Shield to keep it relevant, and +3 of other stuff (Let's say arrow deflection and Ghost Ward). Not even a great arrangement, but there you go. Note this is relevant, because if you just go for the +1 you get the special properties cheaper, and you get more of them. The guy I was arguing against used 70% or some crap. More like 85% if you count Dex +6. The guy the elementals and tiger were beating the crap out of had around 33. He was still just inside two round KO territory, and his HP were like... 140 something? Thing about being in two round territory? If you want to fight more than 1 round, someone HAS to burn their action casting the spell Heal on you every round. Which is exactly what happened = the Druid was stuck casting Heal (burning expensive resources) to babysit the melee instead of ya know, being a Druid. Which means lots of ass kicking. So called tank is an active liability. Hell, the elemental + tiger arrangement is low enough in CR to be a routine encounter for the melee guy alone. In other words, he should win easily, and only lose 20% of his resources. Obviously he will take far more than 30 damage so this is false. Why is looking at mundanes misleading when discussing mundane attacks? You wouldn't use being able to resist a Bard or Paladin's spells as a case against spellcasters in general would you? More to the point they're your mirror match. All you can do is hit the thing with the other thing... and same for them. Except they always win because you lack real defenses and they do it better. Always. The ones that do get tricks use them. Which means those enemies that crippled you? Well you can't fight back, your stats are down, and whatever else. Which means say... A Balor isn't going to melee until the Wizard is Imploded, the Fighter is his slave, the Rogue is Stunned, and the Cleric is Blasphemy locked by the other Balor the first summoned. Or something. If they kill it before it reaches that point, it still means AC doesn't matter. It's just because it's never attacking AC, not because it could negate the concept via crippling effects.
Enemy wins init, attacks once. The target has a 5% chance to get Confused for 1 round if the attack hits, then random actions during that round, then they're fine. Compare to your way, where the DC is roughly on par with Supernatural abilities except tied to Str instead of Cha. And it's still every hit. Would you allow someone to cast up to 5 save or sucks in a round every round? No? Why or why not? Whereas if the maximum chance is 25% assuming you hit with all 5 attacks which includes the one at -15... More likely it's like 15%. Very minor, and intentionally so because if PA is unnerfed it's pretty damn close to a real baseline for making feats matter. Most importantly, it's far tamer than what any caster can do in a surprise round they can easily create, or by winning initiative which they can easily do. You don't see mundanes as sometimes being able to ambush enemies and screw them up good before they can act? Because right now, they don't get that. They get one attack (maybe) that scratches them a bit. And that's it. So they annoy the enemy, but it is still fine, and still fights as well. CE again cannot be salvaged, as the entire concept of hiding in your shell so the enemy will eat someone else is invalid when the sole purpose in your existence is to ensure the enemy does not eat anyone else and instead tries and fails to eat you.
Confusion is Compulsion and Mind Affecting. Immunities left, right, and center. Including on those mages. Dazing... Is there even anything in core that is immune to that? I don't even know of any ways to get immunity that doesn't involve random templates, or non core spells, or whatever. An attack roll based save DC still pushes most enemies off the RNG entirely. By most enemies, I mean all but the most heavily buffed casters (even melee needs a 20). Hitting an enemy hard enough to make them not see well for a moment, and stab a friend (rolled 81 on confusion chart) because he thought it was you... how is this hard to envision for someone who is to the Spartans what the Spartans are to normal soldiers? Divide and conquer is a hell of a lot more thematic than making them stand around drooling for 6 seconds.
*Standard Disclaimer is Standard* Ok then. Wizard gets more HP too. He's still two per HD ahead of you. 25 PB is automatically irrelevant. This isn't what I said either, so I'm just ignoring this segment entirely until you learn to read and pay attention to what the other person is saying. You are correct about the illusions not working against them. However, a defense that only gets negated by powerful Outsiders and random stuff of other types is still vastly superior to one that gets negated by everything that cares enough to attack it, and everything that doesn't care to attack it because they instead go after your 11/11/5 save line which means not only does the standard Wizard have more HP than you by far, he has a better Fortitude save as well because he was smart enough to pack a Con booster, and a save booster which you did not on the grounds you thought AC was actually worthwhile. For the record he has a 5 base, 5 con, and up to 5 resistance without even trying giving him 4 points on you. He does the same with his Reflex, and his Will is 15 + Wis. No buffs at all up here, unlike you who are assuming someone's randomly throwing buffs on you you cannot provide for yourself because you can't afford Haste boots either. Lastly, the Nalfeshnee's Call Lightning doesn't matter. It'd doing 10.5 or 5.25, and you have a 70% chance to pass since the DC is so low. It could technically do it anyways just by staying 220' away to beat you down about 7 HP at a time while you can do absolutely nothing to stop it since it moves faster than you to beat you via Cherry Tapping. This is not necessary. The Blade Barrier though is a credible threat against you because your HP and saves are so abysmal that this will kill you in 3 rounds at a range of up to 260'. And there's nothing you can do about it, as any action you take is negated or countered. If you had a meaningful amount of HP and focused on your real defenses (saves also qualify for this, and you boost them all at once with a cloak so why not) you might be able to do something if you caught her. Which would take a while. Even without teleporting. Edit: Forgot to mention that while Mage Armor and Shield are not very great spells, they do work great on things inherently buffable. Like monsters, who get all of their AC from Dex and natural armor, so all the other bonus type slots are empty. 50 gold for +8 AC (pushing Ms. Marilith from 33 to 41 very easily)? Yes please. Remember, she comes standard with UMD. And anyone can use potions.
Shadowdancer is what's known as 'getting HiPS at level 8 if you waste two out of four feats on your Rogue along with 10 skill points'. Other than that, it serves no purpose whatsoever.
If there are multiple lower level enemies, what happens is they end up having a slightly lower chance of hitting you, but the damage output is much higher. Example: 3 Nalfeshnees will lay down more smackdown than 1 Marilith despite being the same CR. So that does not support that argument. Note that that was an example deliberately made bad, because none of those are very melee focused. So basically your argument is you should spend around half your total wealth on something that will only be a mook shield. And not even a very good mook shield. Case in point: CR 9 Fire Elemental * 2 + CR 8 Dire Tiger or something like that vs level 15 guy. They actually were missing a fair bit, but were getting in so many attacks as to push the target into two round KO range anyways. And CR 9 + 9 + 8 = 11 or 12, so this is actually a pretty easy part of the overall fight (the other enemies were attacking other stuff). Had they been a bit better mooks, the result would be high to perfect accuracy against him, and many more attacks = dead tank. Jason B: I can just start copy pasting stuff from the 'Optimization by the Numbers' handbook. However there are multiple issues with this. 1: That handbook counts every single creature in the MM. Obviously not every single creature in the MM is built to be a threat via mundane means, so the entries of monsters that only melee as a last resort, or to finish off crippled opponents or whatever drag down the average as this is simply misleading statistics. 2: It assumes only the listed stats. If an enemy has an 'at will' effect that boosts attack accuracy, it's going to be always on. The averages do not account for this. It also does not account for buffs which some monsters, particularly the stronger ones can apply to themselves. It doesn't account for items, even when the creature is entitled to items or better yet is entitled to items, and has the resources to buy whatever it wants or needs instead of monster guarding chest full of stuff it cannot use syndrome. 3: That handbook actually only accounts for BAB (along with initiative, all 3 types of AC, and all 3 saves). It doesn't consider Strength, or enhancement, or anything else that would boost enemy attack rolls. For what it's worth, CR 20 averages 29.56 BAB. Again not counting anything else that boosts attack accuracy and taking into consideration Balors and Pit Fiends drag down the average with their non mundaneness. Still telling because it means despite this, CR 20 enemies are inherently about 50% better at fighting than you. Yet, are meant to be an even match. Even though they could do more than trade auto attacks with you in 8 out of 9 cases if they cared. Edit: Damn ninjas! Well, the post is still useful.
I was thinking of more simple tactics (Project Image, he can't tell the difference between real demons and fake and she could have used it to 'summon' masses of mooks for the sake of humor). Also, Blade Barrier. Put one around him. If he moves out of it, he has a 55% chance to fail the save and take 16-96 (56) and a 45% chance to pass and take 8-48 (28). 43.4 weighted average. If he doesn't move, she drops the next one right on his head and he has to move, getting damaged by both. It takes exactly three of these to kill him. Meanwhile she single moves as fast than he double moves due to that 20' thing. So unless he starts right next to her, he can never catch her. If he does start right next to her despite him being about as stealthy as the Hulk (and far less cool) and her having incredible perception skills... go Teleport. Then see above. Nothing fancy there at all. Just a Greater Demon toying with an unworthy opponent. This is just the stock Marilith, who wasted 2 of 6 feats on junk. No gear at all. Not even the 1d4 magic swords she's entitled to, and the 'Standard coins, Double goods, Standard items' she is also entitled to. Edit: A correction. 400 + (40 * 16) = 1,040 feet. Regardless it's well out of his effective range, even if he picks up a likely MW bow and tries to shoot her at -18.
*Standard disclaimer is Standard* You throw out the Swift Hunter, that's cool. Just means even less in the way of viable mundanes. Difference is you're the one trying to prove mundanes are viable. I just presented that to correct your aim. So if you want to ruin your own chances, have at it. And if you want to make characters more indicative of the standard, go with 32. That's what my example of a mundane had, and it's about the only number that works well for balance (anything lower just further boosts casters and screws everyone else, anything higher is silly). You have yet to prove how you are getting those attack bonuses. Given the increments you have them scale by it looks like your math is wrong. The Marilith has 33 AC because Unholy Aura is an at will, therefore it's always on. This doesn't matter too much. If she has any ability to buff this goes much higher (the one I actually used had 48 for this reason). This matters slightly more. I have no idea how you got that the Nalfeshnee had Fireball, because it doesn't. Regardless, both win against you very easily by using their special abilities, which is what Outsiders are designed for and favor. Your HP are 11 + 6.5 * 15 = 108.5. This is pathetically weak. I'm not sure what 'flavored class bonus' is supposed to be but since part of your math is wrong I'm going with that's wrong too. Standard Wizard has 14 Con and a +6 item. He gets 9 + 7.5 * 15 = 121.5. PF Wizard has a D6 for HD, so that's +2 at level 1, and +1 at every other level for another 17 points. Your 'tank' has 108.5 HP. The freakin' Wizard has 138.5 HP. Which means your so called tank is about a quarter less durable than even the party mage, who has real defenses (you don't). They attack your abysmal will save of +5, you die/become their slave/whatever. They attack your slightly less sucky +11 reflex save, you take a lot of D6s which actually halfway matters again given your abysmal health. Hell, they attack your slightly less sucky fortitude save and screw you over that way. Which is just proof you didn't read the first post, didn't read the second post where I specifically repeated it... and you aren't actually looking to make a point here. You're just playing deaf when proven wrong.
Because it bears repeating, and I want to ensure it gets noticed. To elaborate a bit more on that turtle with a defective shell thing, your AC is the lowest in the party. Even the Wizard does better, and has real defenses. In every other aspect except AC... I seen no mention of save boosters or stat boosters so you're looking at a base of 10/5/5 + 1/6/0 from stats, and that's it. Ever. Save array is 11/11/5. If the enemy cares enough to throw any Will save effect at him, he loses instantly. Even Reflex saves work surprisingly well on him due to his abysmal HP and bad saves. For that matter, even his so called strength can be easily exploited. Take that Marilith for example. 65% chance to get Strength damaged after every single hit. Have fun. In a nutshell, he's a character that only works until highly intelligent creatures with many options remember that they are in fact highly intelligent, and can do something besides hit the thing with the other thing. Even a stock Nalfeshnee (3 levels lower, has only 2 out of 5 feats worth a damn) will tear him apart. Let's see... Unholy Aura = 55% chance to take Strength damage every time you hit it. Smite = 80% chance you can do absolutely nothing for 1d10 rounds. Yay free attacks. Slow = 60% chance to neuter you for 12 rounds. This thing doesn't even have a great special array (mostly due to the low save DCs on anything except Unholy Aura and Smite).
*Standard Disclaimer is Standard* Ok. I had a look. The first build has 12 Con on a front liner. At high levels, when stat boosters are available. To put this into perspective, the 3.5 Wizard has one more HP per HD than he does. The PF Wizard has a +2 advantage. Except it lacks the real defenses Wizards have, so basically you're a turtle with a shell defect. In other words, complete and utter failure at both defense and offense. After all, 22-32 a hit isn't high at all. Especially when you'll miss half the time, more often against opponents with any buffs whatsoever. I was tempted to simply stop reading at this point, but I kept going and only managed to see various other false assumptions both related and unrelated. The second build is only marginally better with a Con of 10 (someone remind me why these guys are using NPC arrays again)? It also does utterly trivial damage with moderate to low accuracy, which means the opponent doesn't even need a Wind Wall to laugh at her. Both builds are negated by DR/anything they don't have. The third build actually looks half decent, though I had a hard time reading it due to the length. This is mostly because it's the only one smart enough to use a two handed weapon. Where was the gear covered in there? Because I think it forgot the basics too like stat boosts and save boosts. By contrast, here is a random NPC archer I am using. It's adapted to PC status easily enough, though you will have to lose the special arrows as that's too expensive to be maintainable. Other consumables too, though that isn't a problem since you could just work out a deal with a friendly caster to get GMW and Magic Vestment, and poison is far too costly to ever be worth using by a PC (though if you can negate the cost via say... Minor Creation, it becomes acceptable). It's also adapted to PF easily enough though I'm away from books, and it might lose something critical in the translation. Or maybe not. This also serves as a good example of the kind of stuff mundanes need to be relevant at high levels. As a PC I'd recommend slipping a Cloistered Cleric dip in the place of that Fighter dip so the domain devotion can get more than a 1/day use. Nightsticks are nice too. Also note this guy has more wealth than a normal NPC, but less than a PC. Being a bounty hunter for the strongest beings in the world has its perks. Swift Hunter: Fighter 1/Scout 5/Ranger 12: HD: 17d8+51 + 1d10+3 (139 hp).
1: Point Blank Shot.
Fighter 1: Improved Initiative. Scout 4: Swift Hunter. Ranger 1: Track.
Items: +1 Force Seeking Hunting Composite (+3) Longbow. (50.7k)
His standard tactic is to either activate Travel Devotion as a Swift action, move up to his speed as part of that Swift action, then full attack or move (again) and manyshot. Alternately he could flip on Law Devotion with that Swift action (likely set to defense) then move and Manyshot. Second round Law Devotion comes on if it isn't already, and he continues making a nuisance of himself. He'll also likely be using Haste the entire time, via boots. Technically his boots are a custom item, but the 'skirmishing' bit just adds 2 damage. You can easily remove it, just using normal Haste boots and save 4.8k (3.2k * 1.5). His standard AC array is 38/31/38 with 43/36/43 vs ranged since he's always moving enough to benefit from skirmish. This while not great is decent. This does include Haste. The statblock above does not. This assumes Law Devotion is not on. If it is it becomes 45/36/45 and 50/41/50 vs ranged. Now we're getting somewhere. He also gets a 50% miss chance vs ranged as long as he moves aka always, and if a ray or something misses (which is pretty damn often) he gets to reflect it back as an Immediate action via Spell Reflection. That's usable 7 times as he is written, of course after the first reflected attack they're likely to stop trying. His attack sequence is +28/+28/+23/+18/+13 on a full attack, or +20/+20/+20/+20 on a Manyshot. This assumes Law Devotion is on defense mode. If it is on attack mode add 7 to all of the above (+35/+35/+30/+25/+20 or +27/+27/+27/+27). Add 2 more if using a Bane arrow against a human. This is not that great, but at least he gets Find the Gap, so as to actually end up with something better than a touch attack (touch attacks don't ignore things that convert armor, shields, or natural armor into touch AC but this does, so it even bypasses Ghost Ward). Given that this guy is stealth focused, he's probably attacking flat footed AC. At least on the first round, and probably the second. At which point he's either dead and/or has killed someone, so eh. It is high level combat after all. His saves are +19/+21/+16 with a +3 vs energy drain, inflict, and death. He also has Evasion, but this is still admittedly mediocre. There's a good chance a caster will one round him. But this is not new. His damage works out a lot better. He gets 1d8+7, 1d6 electricity, and 7d6+2 skirmish against everyone, every hit. If the target is an 'arcanist', an elf, or a human it instead becomes 1d8+15, 1d6 electricity, 7d6+2 skirmish and the skirmish damage applies through fortification armor and other immunities. The special arrows also add 2d6+2 vs humans and 2d6 vs good. So in a nutshell... Target is a good aligned human (special arrows used): 1d8+15 + 1d6 + 2d6+2 + 2d6 + 7d6+2 = 32-99 a hit, 5 attacks at +30/+30/+25/+20/+15 or +37/+37/+32/+27/+22 or 4 attacks at +22/+22/+22/+22 or +29/+29/+29/+29. Mundane actually gets to threaten casters a little. Just in case it matters he's technically firing +6 arrows, so if some human had DR/Epic he'd bypass it. Not that they do, I just found this funny. Target is a non good human (special arrows used): Exactly as above, except remove the 2-12 damage from Unholy, making it 30-87 a hit. Target is a good non human but is an elf or arcanist (special arrows used): Exactly as above, except remove the 4-14 from Bane which makes the damage per hit 28-85, and remove +2 to all attack rolls adjusting accordingly. Target is a non good elf or arcanist: Remove 6-26 from Unholy and Bane, making the damage per hit 26-73. Subtract 2 from all attack rolls. Target is non good, not an arcanist, and not an elf or human: Bane and Unholy do not apply. Neither does the +8 bonus from Favored Enemy. That just leaves 1d8+7 + 1d6 + 7d6+2 which is only 19-65. Not exactly awe inspiring. Especially when you consider that this guy only gets to ignore precision immunity against his favored enemies (pick 4), so anything else is laughing at him. Speaking of pick 4, I noticed in my notes the last one is Dwarves. So he gets +6 against those (2 less than against arcanists, elves, and humans). I'm tired of typing though, so you can calculate that for yourself. And only being able to do something meaningful against a small fraction of overall creatures types is about par for the mundane course so... eh.
*usual disclaimer goes here, I think you've memorized it by now* Honestly, go look at Benny, Lenny and Cenny. That's what I see at level 16, from straight fighters. Those are the average in the area I'm at. Also if you are just going to ignore parts of the defense you might as well ignore the fact the maralith has multiple magical weapons. Examples without context. Provide a link to your examples. As you said yourself AC 40 is low. Most tanks will have much more than that, in fact that tank I put up is booking an AC 50 and I bet, Yes I'll straight up bet that I could put a maralith on it's butt with the build that equipment comes from (benny's equipment by the way). The Maralith's attack of + 29 isn't good enough to hit on anything but a natural twenty against an AC 50. After having spent well over half your cash on it, thereby making yourself a non threatening turtle. Especially since you are using a one handed weapon since you are physically holding a shield due to the lack of an Animated property (not Dancing, that's something else), and are therefore automatically irrelevant. Also since you have no save boosters it doesn't matter if you're built on like 50 PB or whatever or not. The Marilith attacks anything that isn't your AC and negates you since you only have a single digit Reflex save and Will save and only slightly better Fortitude save (about mid teens, which is still inferior to even a CASTER'S Fortitude save). So even the Unholy Aura has a pretty good chance to work on you. Then it can happily ignore you, though if for some reason it cared (perhaps because you were the only one left alive) it could easily make you waste a few rounds on a Project Image, or Blade Barrier, or Telekinesis.
This statement is false. Also Tower Shield = more turtling = more irrelevance. No penalties to two weapon fighting if one weapon is a shield, and when hitting with the shield you use the shield bonus as an enhancement bonus to hit and to damage. That +5 bashing shield? That gets a +7 to hit + 7 to damage. Cannot bash with a Tower Shield. This statement is false. Also, TWF sans bonus damage = automatic irrelevance. Actually the more I think of it, it's stupid to not go two weapon fighting with shield mastery. You will deal much more damage with a fighter using that than any two handed weapon any day of the weapon, and your AC is better for it too. If you were talking about a two handed fighter using the shield as a weapon you might be onto something. But as it is you are again incorrect. See above.
Light Yagami was a test. Regardless, it was simply an attempt to get back on topic. Not that it was hard to notice in any case. Now, the original topic?
I have already provided my write up. And as stated before, if you are writing from the perspective of 'melee should not be able to prevent enemies from retreating' the fact your example actually makes it harder for them to run away than my write up is counterproductive to your own goals. After all, confusion immunity is more common than dazing immunity, a save based on damage is not trivial, and confusion means do random stuff while daze means do nothing.
The thing you are doing is counterproductive to the aims you are claiming to have. This is not the first time this has been pointed out.
It has a 25% chance of getting applied if PAing, and hitting with all 5 attacks. Including the one at -15. That's not locking down anything. It's applying minor to moderate penalties along with hurting it. Any amount of PA will do, however the higher you PA for the more you get damage instead of effects due to missing and vice versa. So PA 1 means max status probability, whereas harder PAs mean more damage. It gives mundanes options. Also, what self respecting BBEG is all alone? Action Economy auto negates him anyways. It just gets to be the mundane that takes the gold medal this time, and not a caster. Maybe. Also, your statuses are out of line. Flat footed is too conditional, and is inferior to taking attack penalties and such. It's also not a trivial DC so you risk double fixing.
And that AoO means he goes down anyways. So I'm not sure what this is actually intended to accomplish.
Actually my stance is 3.5 as written is flawed. 4.0 and PF as written are more flawed. I already worked out how to fix 3.5, therefore for anything else to convince me it either needs to take less effort to fix than my current revised version, or have less wrong with it to start before I go tinkering with it. For the record, examples I give assume RAW. If it doesn't work that way in RAW, I don't bring it up. So yes, if I give an example it applies with or without house rules in effect. More likely it applies less even with the house rules as I have already thought of it and fixed it to some extent. For example, one corrective houserule I use is HD average 3/4th and not 1/2th. 1d4 becomes 1d3+1, 1d6 becomes 1d4+2, 1d8 becomes 1d5+3, 1d10 becomes 1d6+4, and 1d12 becomes 1d7+5. End result of course is everyone gets more HP. However... 1: The melee guys have the highest HD, therefore they benefit the most. 2: This means the HP difference between them is a lot more meaningful as now it's the difference between 2.5 vs 6.5 at the extreme ends to a difference between 3 and 9 at the extreme ends. A 4 point differential became a 6 point. This increases the ability of melee to do their job. Especially important since melee gets no real defenses barring gishes. 3: Most of monster HP come from incredibly high Con scores. Even the Tarrasque only gains 72 on top of 858 and 48 HD is about as high as it gets as far as I can recall. That's not even 10%. It's certainly a smaller proportion than PC melees get. Even with this rule helping PC melees more than anyone else, there still are a number of near death experiences best summarized as 'one or more enemies attack the melee guy for one round, often just one enemy unless they're (your level -6) mooks or something'. Naturally it is not hard to extrapolate that if you are regularly surviving one round with 30 or fewer HP left because of a house rule that granted you 28 extra HP in your current state... need I say more? Or to use the more recent example, regularly taking 120ish damage a round when you have 150-200 HP. That's Heal spell every round material or die. That's just with the main enemy attacking. Had the enemies even made a passable attempt at focusing fire they'd easily kill 1, perhaps 2 a round. Even the mooks are doing small amounts of damage, and the Nalfeshnee was respectable in melee as well. Doesn't take much to make up the rest.
Hitting AC 40 half the time only requires +29 to hit. This is incredibly low at level 20. It's about typical at level 12. In core only the only melee valid beyond level 5 is a CoDzilla. And they don't care, because they're CoDzillas. They still have spells. So it's pointless to discuss due to being a moot point. I agree with the monsters being buffed, it can and does happen, but usually magic items use the lowest caster level possible, which is fine, but our wizard's tend to pop a greater dispel magic off the bat at anything, to clear those sorts of things off. Dispel does work fairly well against it. However, that's just one creature. Forcing one of the best guys in the party to spend at least one round just evening the odds is huge with 3 rounds is an effective max combat length. Most likely he knocks off the Mage Armor and the Shield and might or might not get Barkskin, Haste, and Greater Magic Fang.
When did Weapon Focus come into it? If it was compared to the one I posted, that's a part of replacing junk feats with meaningful ones. Though I think you just forgot -1 for being Large. Mariliths get 1d4 magic weapons chosen presumably at random. In any case the Magic Weapon helps at least two of them, and she probably doesn't have plain +5s again due to randomness. Not bad, but still not autohitting on an AC 50 for a tank (at level sixteen that's + 5 mithral full plate, + 5 heavy shield, + 5 Ring of protection, amulet of natural armor, and the fighter's armor training bonus (+4) and a dex bonus of + 6 (dex of 22) a belt of physical prowess + 4 still leaves about 20,000 gp for a weapon +3 of some sort). Buffing up the tank could easily add another 10~15 points to his AC just from there, depending on the buffs choosen, and I'm not including the dodge feat here either. Ok, let's see here... +5 mithril full plate = +13 AC, 35,500 gold.
I'm being generous and not including the Dex +6 item in the AC calculations as it actually does other things. That is 184,670 out of... what was it? 280k? So you've spent around 65% of your total wealth just to boost one defensive stat that isn't even your best defensive stat. In fact it is your worst. The proportions would be higher if I counted the gloves as an AC bonus. Then you're stuck with what you yourself call a +3 weapon at level 16, don't have a +6 str or con item, don't have any save boosters, don't have any utility items, don't have any special properties, are slow as hell... And this is ignoring the fact you somehow have a good enough stat array to throw a 16 base into what can generously be called a secondary stat in that it comes after both Str and Con. When you also need some Int for tripping (assuming you unnerf Improved Trip, and want a real tank) and some Wis so you don't end up becoming a liability after the right spell is applied. Then there's no buffs you can apply here really since just about all of them are either redundant (enhancement to gear, natural armor, or deflection AC) or only available in the form of self only spells which you obviously don't get as a Fighter. The one exception would be Polymorph, except for that PF change thing. And the Wilding Clasp thing. So you've capped out a little bit early in becoming a one trick pony of a bad trick. If you survive the next few levels, even that much won't matter. In essence your character is just a theory build to show what can be done. It isn't actually practical at all. More to the point it's a turtle. You know, those things that aren't valid by sheer concept? I'm not sure I disagree with you that AC isn't good enough, I'm just trying to make sure we are on the same page of the same book, sometimes it's hard to know what someone else is talking about across the internet. I find your example to be quite telling.
And you could not have just killed the Shadow, or got him to back off or whatever? Or kill the caster instead?
Hitting half the time on AC 40 just means they have a +29 to hit. Seeing as the melee brutes have hit this point about oh... 6-8 levels ago even with the crap feats and such the MM saddles them with, and even a Rogue 20 can do better pretty easily despite having a pretty damn low to hit score... You are artificially setting the baseline way too low to ever be relevant. Unless you're scared of getting conked for 1d6+4 by the 8 Str Wizard's quarterstaff or something. Just to really drive the point home... As for how did they do it... Mariliths have Magic Weapon at will, so that should always be on. There's also Unholy Aura which is a round a level, but at will. See above. There's +4 to every defensive stat. Demons get treasure. Anyone can use potions. Anyone with UMD can use scrolls. Mariliths come standard with UMD, which is clearly intended to indicate they regularly employ it or else it would not be maxed. Nalfeshnees? Same deal. You know how buffable monsters are? Well the answer is very, because all of their stats are coming from natural abilities (natural armor and dex for AC, stat and HD for saves, Str and BAB for attack...) which means unlike a PC, they don't have to dip a bunch of minor bonus types to get respectable stats. They can just get AC +8 off 2 core 1st level spells, another +5 off a 2nd level spell, then there's Haste, Greater Magic Fang... all low level spells. Had they simply entered the place, the demons wouldn't have had as much time to prepare for them. They also would not have been as prepared. No Align Weapon for example, or Haste. The terrain would also be more closed in so it's not ten on six. But I did a good job of scaring the crap out of everyone. As for it changing CR... since no player is going to settle for the junk feats, why would a monster? Especially a freakin' ancient cosmic power monster... ok, not quite. But these are Greater Demons. They deserve their Tiltowait. Cookie if you get the reference. More to the point, the monsters had to take that junk because core could only reference itself. Why would the enemies have that restriction and not the PCs? Note that if it is a core only game, discussing melee viability is automatically invalid because the concept doesn't exist there. For the record, explain how you are getting AC 50 unbuffed without turtling. If it is turtling, just say so because that's a forfeit. If it involves spending all 280k on AC gear see turtles.
As for "when the full versions comes out...", I hope there will be a lot of melee feats that meleers can take (and the fighter, of course, will be able to take more of them because of having more feat slots). However, I'm talking about the current situation, firstly, and secondly, I want the old Power Attack back. Putting Power Attack back in isn't the most painful house-rule, but nerfing it looked like a combination of solving a non-existent problem (it allegedly being too powerful, as per some) and solving a minor problem DMs could easily solve if if ever came up (some players wasting play time calculating how much to Power Attack for). Standard disclaimer: This is how the game works. Change it or deal with it, but opinions never enter into the equation be they mine or anyone else's. First, watch a real fight sometime. The combatants will watch each other and occasionally throw a testing blow. This is feeling out their defenses. Once they both figure it out the real combat begins. This is what adjusting PA is. It is both simulated well and poorly. Poorly because fights don't last more than about twenty seconds, well because while normal combatants take a while to feel each other out, you're a bit better than even a professional UFC fighter or whatever. Second, melees using a two hander is just standard fare for any melee that wants to be relevant past level 2 (where even a longsword tends to be an auto kill, or a two hit KO just like a two hander). Third, define ridiculously short. Because if a combat is lasting more than three rounds it's either because you deliberately designed the encounter for stalling purposes such as outsiders with buffed defenses, or because a TPK is inevitable. Waves based combat is actually multiple fights so that doesn't count. Fourth, Savage Tide is freakin' vicious. Optimize or die. Just like Age of Worms and Shackled City. I'm surprised they still lived. They likely would not have if they were not taking the smart approach available to them. Fifth, how is having smart melee players a bad thing? Sixth, no one cares about direct damage. Mostly because you need to do so much of it to actually matter. Wizards auto win battles. That is to say, their attacks remove 1 HP. Except it is the last HP, so they win. Oh and in earlier editions you were comparing 10d6 vs saves, resists/immunes, and magic resistance you couldn't really bypass to about 1d8+6 * 6 or something of that nature that simply needs to hit and that's it. So actually even that much isn't true.
So why are you needing to throw your ally around? You can move right through his space just fine as long as you don't end your move there.
Different skill arrangements likely giving them more skill points, different maneuver system, different spells (some differences don't matter, the ones that change entire themes do... just try converting a Druid build around Wild Shape verbatim). At best you will get one of those bad cross over moments. Assuming the universe does not simply implode upon itself, then explode, spewing D20s across the universe. Then implode again for the lols. So yes it is holding it back due to the false belief the line has not been crossed or because it hasn't done enough yet and needs to depending on which definition you use.
4.0 requires more work than 3.5. In 3.5 you memorize the rules, then all you have to know is which apply here. So if you see something with a 'gaze attack', you just need to memorize how gaze attacks work, then plug in the variables such as save DC and effect as appropriate. In other words you do the main bits once, then you fill in the blanks. 4.0 is littered with things that are almost the same but not quite. And it doesn't tell you this, so you have to memorize every single word of every single entry so you don't get sneak attacked by this. The fact the layout and format invokes eye glazing and the terminology eye rolling only makes this more difficult. PF is also very guilty of this, as they go and release a book like the PHB, except with unannounced differences, so you have to memorize every single word of every single paragraph to know what has actually changed. Then you have to cross reference, so you don't get sneak attacked by things like thinking the PF Fighter is actually a marginal improvement before noticing their only two tricks have been removed. Oh and then there's a lot of stuff that just isn't there. So it's like relearning to type on an entirely different and less efficient keyboard arrangement. As if relearning to type wasn't hard enough.
Those are unbuffed stats. Buffed stats came out looking more like this. Note that this is a tame roll on the 1d4 magic swords thing and could have been a lot worse if the roll was higher than 1 and better properties had came up. "Full attack: +3 Flaming Burst Longsword +29/+29/+24/+19/+14 melee (2d6+13 + 1d6 fire/17-20 + 1d10 fire) and 5 longswords +27 melee (2d6+6/17-20) and tail slap +21 melee (4d6+5); or 7 slams +26 melee (1d8+10) and tail slap +21 melee (4d6+5)." Also, default feat arrangements suck. Enter the appropriate Blood in the Water. And Improved Critical, thus the 17-20 range. Still not really optimal (no scimitars, not so many other tricks). The Nalfeshnee looked like this for the same reasons. Full attack: 2 bites +27 melee (2d8+12) and 2 claws +27 melee (1d8+8). (does not include up to +5 attack and damage applicable to any creature that isn't an aberration or an ooze with a minimum result of +2 on all counts). Damage output if everything hits = 46-88 (67), not counting the up to +5 * 4. Overall still pretty tame. It did help though that the Vrocks were free to do the support thing with TK, spores, and so forth while hiding behind various defenses, and the Hezrous did the same to a lesser extent with their stench (Chaos Hammer didn't do jack, as the DC was trivial). Funny thing is before the buffs the casters had the best defenses in the party aside from the 'AC specialist' who was about 1 or 2 points ahead. After... well, they still are. The other melee guy had the lowest. Mostly because he forgot to pack his buckler/animated shield in favor of a minute a level power. Which is nice, except that it is a minute a level power. That, and special properties. Yes, those tasty things.
Oh and with few exceptions, caster level mainly just helps blasting which are the ones that need it most due to that little fact that even with it they do trivial damage. Otherwise you get some range, and a counterstat to SR, and that's about it. Then there's Blasphemy and friends, which use the CL mechanic incredibly well. And by incredibly well I mean get about +10 CL with trivial ease, then proceed to auto kill any non evil creature. For the evil guys, well that's what the rest of the estranged family is for.
Rule to escape? All durations are one round. Do something random (which might throw enemies into disarray), then return to normal. Stun aside from shutting them down entirely means you don't get to do the divide and conquer thing which any 16+ mundane should be able to manage at least some of the time. Making it only work on those susceptible to precision just means the Fighter is a Rogue, without the ability to do something besides fight. He already gets enough of that as it is with the PF stuff, without making it worse. Simplifying the mechanics is certainly possible though. Roll a D20 for each status at the end of the round. Every time you hit them that round expands the range by 1. So if you hit all 5 times, and you roll a 16-20, you made them Sickened. Only hit once, you need a 20. For simplicity it could be low is good, but that conflicts with the usual precedent. Unless the DM does it, then him rolling low is good from your perspective, and it's still consistent. Since none of these statuses help you on your turn (they lower offensive stats and saves, neither of which you are attacking or create a status that isn't going to interfere on your turn) nothing is really lost in the translation. It is three extra dice, but you could always roll those all at once. Adds about 2 seconds to the 20 seconds it takes to say I full attack for the over 9,000th time and roll hit and damage. |