GODWizard's page

ITT: Wizards holding the Idiot Ball are considered a valid argument. Even though that rather defeats the whole point.

Hint: If your opponent has to be holding the Idiot Ball for you to have any chance of beating them, it means you don't beat them. Stop pretending otherwise, and we can have a meaningful discussion about what Rogues can and cannot do. Until then, this topic is going nowhere fast.

Assertions without backup are irrelevant. What would you have done differently when dealing with a friendly NPC in your own home?

Kept my guard up. Not treated them like a lifelong friend no matter what the Diplomacy dice say. Kept the long duration buffs up, because they should be always on. Kept the magic items on, same reason. Kept in mind I didn't get to live long enough to learn 9th level spells without having Contingencies (both the actual spell, and just plans) and contingencies to those contingencies, and contingencies to those contingencies.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagnificentBastard

If this does not describe your high level Wizard, I dare say that you are doing it wrong.

GODWizard wrote:

11+? Forget about it. If it's not another full spellcaster, and it's not many levels higher than the party it's going down. And it will be a spell or two that makes victory possible.

*watches a golem bludgeon your 11th level wizard to death*

Grease > Golem of any level.

Silent Image > Golem of any level.

Anything defeated by a 1st level spell at higher levels = not a threat at all.

Do try harder.

Spells are just as narrow -- fireball only does what fireball does. Toughness only does what toughness does, invisibility only does what invisibility does while point blank shot works with all ranged weapons (and attacks) as does precise shot.

Any character who prepares Fireball deserves whatever they get. Point Blank Shot is what? +1 damage?

The caster has fantastic cosmic power (itty bitty living space) and PLUS ONE DAMAGE is supposed to compare?

...Um, no.

Having a lot of spells isn't the same as having a lot of effective spells or applicable spells. Indeed I very much doubt you can show me a situation where none of the feats a fighter has will be applicable -- but of course you are welcome to try.

+1 damage is something you can forget you have. Sure you can use it, but no one cares. And the ones that aren't narrow in application don't have any practical application.

Spells don't auto-succeed either, and each failure (or success for that matter) just makes you that much weaker for the rest of the day.

Also even past level 11 a wizard is not immune to grappling, he's not immune to fortitude saves (or the things that cause fortitude saves) and funnily enough he's not immune to dragon's breath (though he might survive the first blast), his defenses against actual physical attack have deteriorated significantly. Most of the illusion based defenses have been nullified by various senses, the wizard's choices for increasing AC has plateau, and he has few other defenses available at this point.

Of course pointing any of this out is "using special tactics that aren't normal" (as I mentioned earlier) or are ignored.

Spells do not auto succeed. If chosen properly, they come damn close to it. Even if you don't get all of them, you'll still get about 75% or so. That's far better than what a non spell can do.

Grappling was severely nerfed. Even if you discount a FoM from the Cleric, in exchange for a useful Wizard buff it's not a problem.

Wizards, and Sorcerers for that matter have very solid Fortitude saves. Our party Sorcerer has a Fortitude save of +18 at level 10. He's not really trying. That is 4 less than what an equal level martial sort would have by base progression... except that it's a lot easier to afford a +4 Con item on a Sorcerer instead of a +2 at this level and a rat familiar is another +2. Which puts them a whopping 1 point behind. I am unimpressed.

Dragon breath became much easier to survive thanks to the HP buff. It was never a problem before, but when the party Sorcerer is close to three digit HP it is really hard to be concerned about breath weapons that do an average of 27 to 36 points of damage depending on the type of dragon and that's if you fail your save, and have no energy resistance. I don't know about you, but dragons aren't random encounters in any game I run or play in. And since they're also color coded for your convenience, this makes coming in with the right resist energy easy.

...But even ignoring that, you can expect to take 4-5 breath weapons (with 1d4 rounds between each) to kill the lowest HP character in the party provided he does absolutely nothing to help himself, or others to help him and has no protective measures whatsoever beyond the most generic ones possible.

His defenses against physical attacks have improved for all the same reasons. Certain senses bypassing illusions is not new, but only matters when fighting a dragon - nothing else has both the sensory ability to bypass the effective defenses and attacks good enough to follow up. Now I'll grant you this means dragons can tear Wizards apart - but they'd do just the same to Monks, who has fewer options to avoid being torn apart and who kind of have to go into 'be torn apart' range to do anything to the dragon whereas Wizards are just fine over here. And dragons are themselves spellcasters, so this is to be expected.

AC is useless to everyone at level 11, so I'm not sure what your point is.

Meanwhile Glitterdust is a second level spell that makes a good choice against half the low level MM and at least a third of the mid and high level MM. And that is just a single low level tool of many. That still works against other things, it just isn't super effective. Clever use of 5th level and lower spells can replace entire parties if you are so inclined, and not only will you not be at a loss for it you will actually perform better. Don't even get me started on the 6th level and higher spells.

GODWizard wrote:

If he rolls a natural 1.

Hmmm...same DC calculation as a Sorcerer's spells...do they all only work on a natural 1?

DC is 10 + 1/2 Monk's level + WIS.
DC for a Sorcs spell is 10 + spell level + CHA.
Spell level for a sorc is half their level...
So, really?

Also, what spell the wizard chose is irrelevant, it's just important that he got to cast. Nitpicking obviously unimportant parts of an argument is beneath you guys, really.

A finese monk is using his probably amped DEX to land those stunning fists with, whereas a monk who spreads out accross strength as well won't hit as well, even if he does more damage, assuming he's pumping points in to DEX and WIS as well, and if he's not he's also more hittable. That's a sad panda.
So the argument is he'll rue the day he ran accross your STR monk because you did like maybe 3 whole extra poitns of damage per hit (maybe)?

A Sorcerer has Cha as their primary stat. At level 10, they will have 26 in Pathfinder.

A Monk is Multiple Attribute Dependent. He doesn't have a primary stat, and he's not getting anywhere near a 26 Wis unless the DM gave him 50 PB. More likely he has 16 or 18. That's -4 or -5 DC. Quite crippling. Or put more simply, you're about as likely to work your stun as the Sorcerer is to work his cantrips. Except that the Sorcerer uses his cantrips for things like moving small objects and keeping himself in order. It's not his whole character.

A finesse monk hits with all the force of one of those foam floating noodles children use as pool toys. It doesn't matter if those attacks connect or not, no one cares.

Dire Mongoose wrote:

Brian Bachman wrote:

So I'll stand by my point until proven otherwise. The necessity to memorize skills and the probability that sometimes that spell list will be less than optimal to deal wtih the challenges at hand is one of the things that makes wizards challenging to play well. In my experience, the ones who do it best are the ones who can not only guess what is needed the best, but are able to adapt on the fly and make use of the non-optimal spells they have to deal with problems in sometimes unorthodox or creative ways.

If this is your point, then I don't disagree -- actually it's one of the things that makes playing a wizard fun instead of the equivalent of taking a magnifying glass to ants: depending on how well or badly you pick your spells, you can be the biggest contributor in the party or the smallest.

The best I've seen didn't hit 100% perfect preparedness for anything, no -- but came close enough that it would make more sense, as a GM, to assume they would have the right spell for everything. You might run one of these guys through a whole Adventure Path or equivalent length campaign and only see them come up empty for a spell they could have learned and/or prepared and didn't once or twice.

Maybe someday, I'll play with somebody like that and change my opinion. Until then, color me skeptical.

Regardless, I think we've narrowed down our differences and can agree to disagree on the rest.

I wish you good luck and good gaming!

Feats are narrow. Spells are not.

While you could easily end up in a situation where none of your feats were applicable even if you had a feat progression equivalent to a full spellcaster's spell selection the same is not true of any spellcaster of level 3 or higher. Sure at level 1 you have Color Spray and not a lot else so if you run into skeletons too bad, but by 3 you can easily cover the things that Will based effects don't. Merely having a handful of spells that each target different things means you collectively have about 99% of the MM at your level covered. Once you hit 5-10, if you're playing well you have multiple ways of winning the encounter on the spot. It's more a matter of which one you'll use than whether you have something in your bag of tricks at all.

11+? Forget about it. If it's not another full spellcaster, and it's not many levels higher than the party it's going down. And it will be a spell or two that makes victory possible.

Dire Mongoose wrote:

Kryzbyn wrote:

I said the following a ways back:

Kryzbyn wrote:

I believe a monk's role is to use his mobility to force opponents to pay attention to him to take out lesser foes or melee mezz bigger ones while the fighter focuses on the bigger nasties until he can get to the ones the monk has. He can heal himself slightly, and has the mobility to get away if he's bit off more than he can chew. This screams "off-tank" to me. Lets focus on what the role of the Monk is, and how to help it do it's job better, instead of discussing how powerful wizards are.

I said that I don't believe a monk is a primary damage dealer, not that he has no place in combat. Those 2 things aren't mutualy exclusive.

His mobility is the weapon, not his DPR. He moves around and "locks down" or occupy opponents that have gone after your cleric or other casters, and vs one opponent flanks with the rogue or the fighter to drop it quicker, trying to stun it to keep it out of play. He is an off-tank. He or she doesn't need to dish out tons of damage to be effective at this role, imho, but his speeed and avoidance instead.

Why would you, as the monk's opponent, pay attention to him if he isn't really doing damage or anything useful to you?

Because your GM is charitable and playing them stupid to make the monk feel better? I don't think this is a great answer to class balance.

Becasue every 6 seconds you're possibly coming out of a daze...and that was another 6 seconds you didn't hurt my Wizard buddy, who just hit you with another scorching ray...

So, you can ignore my "damage" or deal with my locking you down before you go after the wizard...oh wait, the fighter's done with his mob, now it's your turn, let me just move 5 ft this way to flank...

If he rolls a natural 1.

If your Wizard is casting Scorching Ray you have worse problems as the Monk. The enemy however has no such difficulties. Which is why they walked around the Monk to go eat the Wizard. If he's casting Scorching Ray, he is an exception to the rule of being able to easily survive this.

You know, sockpuppets are even funnier.

Yes, this is a sock puppet. If you click on my name it shows you who I am. What is your point?

-_-

Why the sad face? This thread needs more humor. A bit of Otto's Irresistible Laughter, and perhaps even a Dance would make it feel a lot better.

I used to love Monks. After all, crafting magic items required life energy to power the process. The easiest way of getting that was to win easy battles. And there was no battle easier than caster vs monk. Unless of course you're the monk.

Crafting no longer has an experience cost though. So I'm sad to say they don't have a use anymore.