Tahotai's page

I feel like 'wildly inaccurate' has to take into account the nature of the good and past experience with it.

With an expensive item the peasant has never seen before, then you have crazy appraise guesses. A fur cloak worth 1,000 gp might get priced anywhere from 50 to 10,000 gp.

With the cut of ham worth 2 sp, no peasant will see the cut of ham and think it's worth a thousand gold because that'd be insane. But they could see the cut of ham and think it isn't very good and only worth like 5 cp. Or they think they're getting a good deal and the cut is worth 3 or 4 sp. Those are estimates that are far outside the 20% margin but not crazy.

But I think the real solution is

1) A circumstance bonus for extremely common items that have been bought before.

2) Allowing people to make Appraise checks using their Profession ranks for items relating to that Profession. Bookbinders can appraise paper, farmers bags of turnips, and sailors lengths of rope without having any idea about the items of other professions.

3) You just don't even try to make the check and trust the merchant. Or you buy the item and grumble about how they're probably cheating you even though you have no idea of the value of the item (Definitely a real world behavior).

The fundamental problem with wizard is their rarity and the inability to replace them.

Wizard training takes awhile, and you can't send everybody off to wizard school, much less simply give them the extra levels to makes them more effective.

So yes, wizards can do a lot of damage to masses of men, but when they do so they open themselves up to attack from units dedicated to killing them. And once lost they are not easy to replace.

The role wizards would probably take is similar to air superiority. They hold off on launching attacks on the ground troops until their able to kill or throw off the enemy air support. Once they do that they can tear into the enemy army and inflict a lot of damage.

If I were building a mage killer

We'll start with a Wizard 6. Reasonably within the level range you could expect I think. He's have to make caster checks to use a lot of items

1st level: Damaging spells
Self-cast: Protection from Arrows
Self-cast: Fox's Cunning
Self-cast: Resist Energy (Fire)
Self-cast: Resist Energy (Lightning)
3rd level slot - Dispel Magic x2, Summon Monster IIIx1

Scroll of Overland Flight (1,125gp) Lasts 9 hours
Scroll of Improved Invisibilityx3 (2,100gp) Lasts 7 rounds
Ring of Invisibility (20,000gp)
Scroll of Feeblemind (1,125gp)
Scroll of Black Tentacles (700gp)
Scroll of Cloudkillx2 (2,500gp)
Scroll of See Invisibility x5 (750gp)
Scroll of Scorching Ray x5 (750gp)
Scroll of Lightning Bolt x2 (750gp)
Scroll of Enervation x2 (1,400gp)
Total: 31,200gp or 15,600 crafted

Our mage uses the scroll of overland flight and ring of invisibility to cruise high above the battlefield ready to strike against any casters who reveal themselves.

Once one does by unleashing rocks, fireballs or the like, the wizard activates See Invisibility and casts any short term buffs and swoops down.

He tries to use detect magic to detect the wizard and see if the wizard has any buffs worth dispelling.

When he's ready to start, he activates the scroll of improved invisibility.

Open with Dispel Magic if necessary, otherwise, open with scroll of feeblemind.

Follow with scroll of black tentacles.

Follow with scroll of cloud kill.

Use some combination of Scorching Ray, Lightning Bolt, Summon Monster III, extra cloud kill, enervation and first level damage spells to make the caster deadified. Then run back to your own lines.

Obviously, the enemy will then begin to adapt and you'll end up having caster air battles.