Saph_Arcanic's page

Help... graphs...
I'm gonna see if someone else has a graph and ask nicely to steal it

Even though it's not the optimal strategy, lots of people like blasting. Instead of ridiculing those people, your guide should help them blast better.

Plus, you know, crossblooded sorcerer dip.

*Sigh*

Imbicatus wrote:

I agree 100% with Iammars. You also are undervaluing Yai-mimic. It's benefit isn't that you heal one point a round, it's that you cannot die from hp damage while the regeneration is active. It's still situational, but it's not red.

Deathless is a thing.

First, this guide looks like to applicable only during high levels. The vast majority of feats you recommend start to work at high level. I mean, dazing is crazy good, but even at level 7 it's not worth it (Dazing Burning Hands?). That's more than an half of a PF character career. In the meantime, a Toppling Magic Missile just ruined half of the enemies action economy, and that works from level 3. And it always gets better.
I agree with Iammars too. Today, Impossible Sorcerers can take care of every mind affecting immunity with 3 feats and a class feature (and may the gods save the enemies if it happen to be a kitsune sorcerer). Try also to check other points of view for metamagic users, blasters always prefer metamagic over spell level (Fireball and Delayed Fireball, Snowball and Flurry of Snowballs and many other couples stands as example).
Elemental spells works great if you are a spontaneous caster, meh if you aren't, and nothing if you are an admixturer, but I saw nothing about this.
Extend spell is wonderful, it allows your spells to last enough to be active the day after you cast it, refreshing the slot. Poor men Contingency, that is.
You should also say if metamagic effects are worth a rod. Dazing, enlarged, persistent fireball is hilarious, and the rod is only a lesser one.
Spell perfection also doesn't appear here. That's the point of most spellcasters.

Well, not high level necessarily. More mid level and up. My perspective on this is, there are certain feats you need and should be getting early - Improved Initiative and Improved Familiar, to name a couple. By the time i'm usually looking at Metamagic, I'm at least eighth level. And moreover, Reach is a low level thing.

In my opinion, "metamagic guide for God wizards" is entirely too niche a subject. Either write a full guide to God wizards (by which I mean copy and paste Logic Ninja's guide, but make up your own color scheme because heaven forbid something be easily accessible), or else write a metamagic guide inclusive of prepared casters, spontaneous casters, half casters, and even, dare I say it, divine casters.

As it is, outdated, limited, and sometimes (in my opinion) as wrong as it is, I think Rylar's guide to metamagic is a more helpful guide, if only due to the brief discussion of how different classes should think about which metamagics to take.

This isn't just for god wizards - it's a general guide for god casters. I'm working on which feats you should take for which classes, but the advice mostly still applies. For instance, on a lot of my clerics I take Quicken and Reach spell. Prepared Arcane casters should take Quicken, Reach, and Dazing. Etc.

I'm getting "File does not exist" :(

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12ylykysKhdLRnipqo-ozviJ9UuO_0nznROatGXq D25Q/edit?pli=1

Yeah okay, looking over this it looks like it needs some major work.

First of all, you really need to take a look at the way Psychic casting works before judging those metamagics - Logical Spell and Intuitive Spell are arguably better than Silent & Still. Most of the reasons for Still Spell being a thing no longer exist (Grappling no longer stops yo u from casting - it just gives you a super annoying concentration check based off the grappler's CMB), and Silent Spell was never very good unless you planned on casting silence yourself. Meanwhile any fear effect causes you to stop being able to provide an emotion component and a thought component either causes the concentration DC to be raised by 10 or for you to take a move action before casting - both of which are annoying when they come up.

You mention blasting as being bad, but you seem to have only written your guide from the viewpoint of a god wizard. Blasting is great if you're a magus - or if you're trying to be a blockbuster wizard (arguably more important since metamagic'd blasts are better than higher level spells). Intensify Spell is pretty much a required spell if you're a magus who is focusing on shocking grasp or a blockbuster wizard who is focusing on a traditional spell like fireball.

Specialist sorcerers also will use metamagic - especially enchantment-focused sorcerers, who often do not have the spell choices to have spells designed to take care of every creature that is immune to mind-affecting effects. Coaxing Spell and Threnodic Spell are very useful here.

If you want to write a metamagic guide for god wizards, then feel free to. But tell people that on the tin. Right now people are expecting the Guide to Metamagic in general, and it has way more uses than the God Wizard would imply.

This is mostly written from the perspective of a "god" - though I use this advice with similar builds as well, such as non-pure buff clerics and witches and the like. You are correct that I should preface it a bit better, and I'm making the edits now.

I would disagree with your point on sorcerers. When I play one, I usually pick "utility" spells that affect almost anything, instead of a type of magic that's easily shut down by numerous monster types. Even if I'm focusing on enchantment (because I did once) I'd also pick up something like Summon Monster that works on everything.

I am not very familiar with Occult Adventures. I'll look into it - thanks for the advice! It sounded like it was just replacing a typical component, and that sounded useless. I'll reevaluate it now.

This is the actual link.

I appreciate the link help :p

Just a quick thing I threw together last night. Please enjoy.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12ylykysKhdLRnipqo-ozviJ9UuO_0nznROatGXq D25Q/edit?usp=sharing

Fergie wrote:

blackbloodtroll wrote:

BigDTBone wrote:

Heretek wrote:

There are people who don't believe in the martial caster disparity... Wow... Now I've seen everything. This is like denying evolution.

Not just some people, but a least 1 person (for sure, probably more) who design/develop the game don't believe in it.

That's the Creative Director. Also, it's hard to tell in the one comment he made, if he's being sarcastic, or not.

I don't think that is a fair or accurate thing to say about him. I know that he did write something to that effect in answering one of TENS OF THOUSANDS of questions, but using that quote strikes me as unfair in capturing Paizo's feelings about class power. There are other quotes in the same thread that reflect a more nuanced understanding of the game.

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page=528?Ask-James-Jacobs-ALL-your-Qu estions-Here#26380
It seems to me he is saying that imbalance can and does occur in the game, and that it is up to the GM to balance it out. In short, the rules EXPECT the GM to alter the game so that everyone has fun.

While I do think there could be some changes to the rule system, I also understand that optimizers on the message boards are a small subsection of the overall gaming population, and what may please them, may not be the best for the game overall.

Saying that the Creative Director isn't obsessed with rules balance, strikes me as more of a positive then a negative anyway...

Why does someone have to be an optimizer to desire game balance?

What if I just wanted to pick up an adventure path and run it as written without having to fix it? What if I just wanted CR to mean something? What if I just wanted level-based powers to curve similarly? Why does that make me an optimizer?

That. Exactly that. It's like buying any other product - I just don't want it to break if I'm using it for the intended purpose.

Fighter, Evil

1. Persuade a local noble to help the party.

5: Take debt. Without diplomacy it will be a big debt and will probably lead to some side-quests if DM wants so.

10-15: Talk to him reasonably if he is not willing to help wreck his place. Break walls, crash windows and cut anyone who will try to intervene.

2. Kill a single powerful monster, like a dragon. Assume it's clever and prepared.

5-10: Go your own way cause you will die horribly if you try. But you are evil so you don't care that much.

15: Hire mercenaries. A lot of mercenaries. Siege engines, alchemical items and all that staff. Preferably be an archer fighter. Chances are good you will still die horribly but you can probably push your chances of success somewhere to 30-40% range.

3. Kill a group of mediocre monsters, like Orcish raiders with a few levels. Assume they're clever and prepared.

5: Die horribly.

10-15: Mercenaries again for meatshields and target oversaturation. Hide your magical items under cloak and be an archer. Kill everyone and loot their bodies. Drink ale with mercs who survive combat.

4. Get inside an enemy's stronghold without the enemy knowing. Assume they have important hostages, or some other hook in them to keep them from just knocking the place over.

5: Probably no luck.

10-15: Find noble rogue from the first task and terrorize him until he will do this work for you. If he dies get your mercs and burn stronghold to the ground - just because you can and you already failed at your main task.

5. Get through a heavily trapped place, like the Tomb of Horrors or a wizard's vault.

5: Nope.

10-15: Get to work. Take you mercs and start raiding villages for slaves and livestock and after that use them to find traps. You can also make bets on who will go through most traps alive or how far the heads will roll.

Awesome! I like the twist of making the fighter evil to allow for some "Flexible morality." It's a nice touch, and a good way to show that alignment and roleplaying can also make a difference in what a character's options are.

Though just to note, a high level LG Paladin may be able to persuade people because he/she is charismatic and world renowned for being on the side of the angels. It's a cool way to reverse your dynamic, and I really like how you're thinking about this.

If no character can do all of these, but a couple can only do 1 or 2, and others can do 8 or 9, that's not invalidating the thought experiment at all. In fact, that would be total vindication.

The only arguments you can make against this little thought experiment are something like the situations are unrepresentative of Pathfinder in a way that favors one class over another, or that Pathfinder is not a game about overcoming challenges.

Yush. That's pretty much the point. It's a thought experiment though, and a poster above just found some reasonable ways for a fighter to do about half. This is supposed to simulate the game, not characters existing in a vacuum, which gives the martial characters a better shot, in my humble opinion.

So, you're not wrong... but the point is also to see how people think about their class, and how they might solve an issue without resorting purely to numerical abilities or what's written down on the sheet.

You are correct on all counts, though my original post may have been unclear.

One character isn't supposed to do everything. It's a metric of what one character CAN solve. I'm sorry if I didn't make it clear, but I don't think one class should be able to do all this either.

And yes, it is a group game. But often, one class does shine or takes care of one aspect. The cleric doesn't check for traps, and the rogue doesn't lecture the wizard on outsiders, and the wizard leaves the cursing and uncursing and resurrection to the class that has those abilities. But the point is to have a class that OVERALL can handle these scenarios, and that requires having at least one character equipped to deal with them.

Also, please don't make that many characters... that would be exhausting. Try one - say a 10th level rogue - and explain.

Hey, OP checking in.

I think I made a better discussion for this issue, recently posted. To try and settle this, if anyone (especially Athaleon, your comments have been fun. And some other people whose names escape me.) please come over and check a post labeled Actual Balance Discussion (by me). It laid out 10 common campaign scenarios and asked how one character of one class could solve each, at different levels, and how efficiently they could do it.

I thought it'd be a fun thought exercise, and maybe less prone to yelling.

So, I was kinda curious. I wanted to do a structured balance thread - not just saying "Casters are better/NO THEY AREN'T SHUDDUP!"

So here's 10 common things from a spectrum of circumstances that can easily come up in a well run campaign that isn't just straight fighting. Explain how ONE CHARACTER (not the same class optimized for different circumstances but ONE character of ONE class) can handle the situation. Specific numbers aren't really necessary, I'm okay with generalizations. But y'know, a class of a certain level can only really have a maximum hypothetical score in any ability. So don't be silly.

Also, please have fun. Get creative, not ranty and angry! And finally, it doesn't matter if a solution is elegant or efficient as long as it works. This is what should happen in a campaign, and I'd say a class is balanced ENOUGH (not perfectly, or the absolute best at a specific circumstance, but good enough to do it) However, efficiency is NICE. So don't totally discount it, but try and find a solution.

For character level... do three. One at 5, one at 10, and one at 15. Add more if you want, but I think early levels are boring and nobody ever continues campaign until 20th level anyway. This is for practical stuff, not hypotheticals.

NOTES
PLEASE DON'T MAKE LIKE THREE CHARACTERS OR CLASSES! PICK ONE!

DON'T TRY AND COVER EVERY SCENARIO IF THE CHARACTER/CLASS ISN'T ABLE TO! ROGUES SHOULDN'T TRY AND CURE DISEASES; THAT'S SILLY! THEY SHOULD, HOWEVER, BE ABLE TO TRY AND FIND WHO STARTED SPREADING IT!

THE LIST
1. Persuade a local noble to help the party. Assume the noble is a mid-level rogue (or something similarly appropriate for the nobility, I like rogue) with a reasonable ability to do diplomacy things and tell when people are lying, because if they were totally incompetent that would be silly. Also assume they can be persuaded, obviously.
2. Kill a single powerful monster, like a dragon. Assume it's clever and prepared.
3. Kill a group of mediocre monsters, like Orcish raiders with a few levels. Assume they're clever and prepared.
4. Get inside an enemy's stronghold without the enemy knowing. Assume they have important hostages, or some other hook in them to keep them from just knocking the place over.
5. Get through a heavily trapped place, like the Tomb of Horrors or a wizard's vault.
6. Cure a fatal disease that's spreading throughout a population.
7. Find who or what spread the fatal disease in the first place.
8. Get information from an unwilling crime lord, through a method that's not straight persuasion. Hence the "unwilling" aspect.
9. Discover an extremely obscure bit of lore about an artifact.
10. Stop or control an extremely, ridiculously powerful monster that's raging out of control. Think the Tarrasque, but not so lame that a spellcaster in the single digits can kill it.

If anyone has suggested circumstances to add that are totally different (as in, relying on completely different skills and abilities) post it! The more the merrier.

Or, to put this in simpler terms:

Take the monk. Spell resistance... 30 at 20th level. Most saves save is probably around... oh, let's say +20. That's assuming a stat of 26, which is probably a bit off, but I think it's a good metric.

On average, a wizard with the usual stuff has 75% chance to penetrate the spell resistance, and a 65% chance to overcome any saves. Now, monk's high, and on average the wizard is running about even with spells.

But wait, there's a better way. See, assuming the wizard is using spells that run through both SR and a save, the monk has a decent chance to get in and get a Quivering Palm or something.

But plenty of spells ignore both of those. Time Stop, cast Summon Monster for a bunch of stuff that the monk will eventually die to. use Mage's Disjunction to destroy any magic items, dropping those saves a reasonable margin if there's any items involved. Drop a prismatic sphere over them. Use Forcecage and throw rocks or something. There's too many spells that ignore or override the monk's defenses, and too few ways for the monk to get at the wizard.

After reading a few threads like this on the 'martial/caster disparity', the '15 minute adventuring day', and similar tropes that never made sense to me, I think I may now be getting a handle on them.

In my experience, these things (as described above and in similar threads) are known by the alternate term, 'Bad GMing'.

If Time Stop, Create Demiplane, Simulacrum, Gate, Wish, or any other spell can make you all powerful... you're doing it wrong.

Yes. THIS IS NOT INTENDED TO BE USED IN REAL PLAY.

On the other hand, casters have access to "fair" (read - intended, unlike this nonsense) abilities that are totally game wrecking too. The existence of spellcasting abilities is why they're considered more powerful, not this specific scenario. A caster can have a spell for nearly any situation whereas a fighter... can hit things. Not even very well. That's the issue I was referring to, not this exploit in particular.

Holy crap. I came here for a fun little exercise and instead we got hammered with this idea that the very notion of a Pathfinder Pun-Pun is an insult. How did a thread made strictly for s!@*s and giggles turn into a ridiculously vicious argument?

I think these forums are way too sensitive about potential "flaws" in the game. Yes, it's contrived. Do you not understand the point of a Pun-Pun?

THANK YOU! IT'S A FREAKING THOUGHT EXERCISE NOT A THING TO USE IN GAME UNLESS YOU'RE A JERK!

And even then, any DM that isn't a rock disguised as a person will tell you to cut it out.

Athaleon, I like you. We should build pure spellcasters and cackle madly sometime. :)

Isonarac... yes. Excellent use of the idea. Or use the Prismatic spells! There are so many wonderful options to go with.

It's "pretty accepted" only because one side keeps loudly harping on the issue and moving forward as though they've achieved victory because the other side hasn't been able to persuade them - and as I've learned the hardest of hard ways, being able to win an argument has very little to do with being right. If the other guy can't/won't try to understand what you're saying, there's upsettingly little one can do. We're not really having the same argument.

Athaleon wrote:

But remember, "martial-caster disparity is a myth propagated by people with agendas."

With an attitude like that, why should any of the rest of us even bother to listen to you? I'd actually call this pretty damning for your side - it's calling someone Hitler after it's been established that it's never cool to call people Hitler (even when it's totally legitimate and even necessary to do so, but that has NOTHING to do with what we're talking about here).

...I think you may have missed something there, my friend.

Saph_Arcanic wrote:

Turin the Mad wrote:

Dropping a single disjunction at this level of play results in the problem solving itself. If you're lucky, your foe didn't do so as a swift action.

At lower level play an anti-magic field thwarts this as well.

You're entirely correct - assuming the person knows this is happening, finds where you're making the demiplane(s), and casts it. Once you have the infinite Time Stop stuff up, you're moving infinitely fast forever. Nobody has time to do anything anymore.

Not really - my latter option clamps a "cease and desist" on the spot where you were standing, pulling you back in for the melee beat-down. The disjunction wipes out EVERY spell up and running. There are ways to make either happen reactively. ;)

Mhmm, as I said, if you know it's coming, it can be countered. But if you don't... Time Stop supercedes everything, last I checked.

Why does disjunction even exist... the most powerful effects in the game don't NEED counters...

Saph_Arcanic wrote:

I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:

Do you realize that this is all an entirely contrived scenario, isolated from the entire rest of the game, engineered from the start to prove a foregone conclusion? You're trying to prove there's something wrong with the game by setting up a situation that would never, ever, occur in actual gameplay - therefore, your claim that this "proves" that wizards are too powerful and fighters/monks/rogues aren't powerful enough is completely groundless.

Just so we're clear - it's pretty accepted that spellcasters outclass nonspellcasters by a lot. This is a contrived situation, but even without crazy exploits like this it's easy to destroy nonspellcasters before they even get time to act.

You... do realize that right?

Even though I agree with you, I gotta say: Oh boy, here we go again.

*min/max tears*

IT'S A SIMPLE OPTIMIZATION PROBLEM WITH MINIMAL STATS INVOLVED! I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHY THERE EVER WAS A DEBATE!

Do you realize that this is all an entirely contrived scenario, isolated from the entire rest of the game, engineered from the start to prove a foregone conclusion? You're trying to prove there's something wrong with the game by setting up a situation that would never, ever, occur in actual gameplay - therefore, your claim that this "proves" that wizards are too powerful and fighters/monks/rogues aren't powerful enough is completely groundless.

Just so we're clear - it's pretty accepted that spellcasters outclass nonspellcasters by a lot. This is a contrived situation, but even without crazy exploits like this it's easy to destroy nonspellcasters before they even get time to act.

You... do realize that right?

Heck even I agree this scenario is silly and pointless, and I agree with his basic premise.

Of course it's pointless. What did you expect? I even said at the bottom never to use it in a real game, that it was a thought experiment.

Sheesh.

I give up on trying to understand planar geography. Unless I'm mistaken, every plane would have access to the Astral. So all that restriction does is stop you from making a demiplane in the Akashic Record, or something.

Pretty much :p

Oh, yeah, of course. Anything like this has a good chance of being vetoed - it's just a thought exercise.

Lesser Create Demiplane wrote:

You create a small, finite demiplane. You must be on the Astral or Ethereal Plane or on a plane that has access to one of those planes (such as the Material Plane) to cast this spell.

I'd interpret that as no nesting. Greater doesn't contradict this text, and states it functions as Lesser except (tons of irrelevant stuff).

Secondly, time seems to be measured relative to material. Going from a plane with double time to another plane with double time does not, so far as I can tell, result in quad time.

This is true - it's a very loose interpretation of the rules and what they say. I was kinda reading between the lines... time is relative, so "twice as fast" just means twice as fast as the plane it's relative to, since astral, ethereal, and material all share the same time. I am assuming nesting because when you use the "eject" thing to remove them from the plane, it removes them to the plane you cast it from. Overall though, you're right. It's a very munchkiny "WELL IT DOESN'T SAY I CAN'T" approach. However, I'd say using the timeless magic+time stop thing would still work. Demiplane nesting was only included in case of GM fiat that said Time Stop wouldn't work. Technically, it isn't an instantaneous effect.

Dropping a single disjunction at this level of play results in the problem solving itself. If you're lucky, your foe didn't do so as a swift action.

At lower level play an anti-magic field thwarts this as well.

You're entirely correct - assuming the person knows this is happening, finds where you're making the demiplane(s), and casts it. Once you have the infinite Time Stop stuff up, you're moving infinitely fast forever. Nobody has time to do anything anymore.

So, for a full backstory on this, I got into an argument with a player. This player stubbornly insists that monks, fighters, and other underpowered classes are fair and balanced versus pure spellcasters, like wizards.

Needless to say, I was annoyed. And also needless to say, I told him to roll up an optimized monk, give him 19 identical siblings, and 1v1 ME BRO! The rules were - 20 point buy, average gold for a 20th level character (880,000 gp), and a day prior to the fight to prepare.

So there I was, trolling through some guides and the SRD and adding prospective spells... I was building a Samsaran Diviner to use Mystic past Life cheese and guarantee I'd win initiative.

ACTUAL OPTIMIZATION BEGINS HERE

Then I looked at Create Greater Demiplane, and my optimization went up a level.

You see, you're allowed to alter TIME. Specifically, you can make spell effects timeless - anything with a duration beyond instantaneous persists until dispelled. Alternately, you can make time flow twice as fast or twice as slow.

So here's the idea. The actual build doesn't matter - all you need to do is cast this spell. Then things get fun.

You can interpret what happens if you cast Time Stop in the demiplane two ways - either it lasts forever or it doesn't. Since technically you're just speeding yourself up to infinity, let's assume it doesn't work. So instead, just create another demiplane and give it times two speed, along with the first. Nest about ten demiplanes, and the tenth one will have a time speed moving 1024 times as fast as the normal world. Either way, you get the same effect; a dimension that moves incredibly fast relative to the real world.

So, back on the normal world, memorize a few copies of time stop. Cast it, move super fast, wreck some stuff, whatever. On the round right before it expires, Plane Shift to your super time dimension. Rememorize spells, then shift back. Time's still stopped, but your spell list is fully replenished. Summon an infinite amount of monsters and read this What If about a mole of moles for the effects.

https://what-if.xkcd.com/4/

So, thoughts? This build seems to give you infinite actions forever - there's really no counter. Even the original Pun Pun build in 3.5 didn't go to infinity, just an arbitrarily high number. This does. You never need to leave Time Stop or stop casting spells, so you can basically just do whatever you want for however long you want to do it.

Disclaimer: Please don't use this in a real game. That would just be abusive.