Hey, Kaptain! You said if I wrote an evaluation to druid wildshaping and animal companions, that you would write a guide on their spells! You have to do that too on top of everything else! ;)
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one thing. I'm curious why you rated "reduce person" to red status. Maybe it's just the group I play with, but we always have an archer in our midst, and this spell works great, especially at lower levels. A +2 to hit, and a bump in AC are great, especially, when they're trying to rapid shot, at lower levels. The -2 strength is definitely a sacrifice, but I'd think that'd make it lean towards orangish, rather then straight red. Based on numbers I've run in the past, I believe that archers tend to break even on damage when Reduce Person is cast on them. They hit more, but they deal less damage. Most melee characters do less damage with reduce, but the exception is rogues. Because sneak attack damage isn't affected by size, rogues actually see an appreciable damage boost under the effects of reduction (and actually see a damage drop under the effects of Enlarge Person). However, it's probably not so much of a difference as to justify the wizard using a spell slot or a standard action on the buff. That said, a wand of Reduce Person or some other magic item with a similar effect could be worth it for pre-battle buffs.
Even mooks can hit a wizard's AC. A mook at high levels might be a CR 11 with a +20 to hit. Most level 15 wizards don't even sport an AC of 30 or 26(AC before shield). Wraithstrike is right, and here's some data to back him up. This is a chart of the AC needed at each level to give monsters a 10% miss chance against you. In other words, it is the point at which your AC actually starts doing something, and any AC lower than that value might as well be no AC at all. The chart is based off the median attack roll modifier on the first melee attack for each challenge rating. CR AC for 10% Miss
Assuming you have a dexterity of 16 (reasonably high for a wizard), then that means a Shield spell stops doing anything for you (on average) once you start facing CR 9 monsters (or CR 11 if you also keep Mage Armor running at all times). Even if you run heavy AC buffs, you'll find it harder and harder to keep up as you rise in level. At a certain point, you have to decide whether it's worth spending a large amount of your resources and actions just to break even, or if you should just give up and run around naked (while spending your wealth on metamagic rods and tomes of intelligence). At low levels, though, it's a different story. AC buffs are wonderful then, though Professor Q is right about the issues of spending two spell slots on just buffing your own AC (remember, this is at low levels where those slots are still valuable).
I'll get with shoelessinsight sometime and we will figure out the median CMD for NPCs to get an estimation about how good those CMD targeting spells really are if your campaign is NPC heavy. I will reevaluate those spells once we do that. I think it would be pretty rare to see more than a 60% miss chance on combat maneuvers from spells against NPCs, and more likely it's going to fall into the 20-40% miss range. This is because the most important scaler on NPC CMD is BAB, and casters match that progression on maneuver spells with their caster level. It's not unlikely for NPCs to be a little higher level than the party, but not all NPCs are going to have 1:1 BAB progression (especially when you consider that villain NPCs are often mighty wizards or evil clerics). Ability scores sort of scale with level, but NPCs usually have lower wealth-by-level progression than PCs, so they probably won't scale their strength or dexterity any faster than the wizard is scaling his intelligence. And not every NPC focuses Str or Dex (again, evil wizards and clerics). The size modifier will usually be 0, though you may run into the occasional enlarged barbarian or the wild shaped druid. And the miscellaneous modifiers are partially wealth-based (rings of protection and the like), so those won't scale strongly either. You will see some small bonuses here from spell buffs, like the +1 dodge from Haste or the deflection bonus from Shield of Faith. In a game heavily populated with NPC antagonists, maneuver spells would probably be as, if not more, effective than your typical saving throw spell. (And on that note, saving throws are probably even weaker against NPCs than most monsters because of how easy resistance bonuses are to obtain)
The Combat Patrol route might work if you have a lot of melee in your party. The way I read it, since it's increasing your threatened area, it should allow you to flank anything in that area. If you have three other melee people in your party, this could be very useful. If not, then it's probably a waste of feats unless you can deal serious damage with any AoO you get. As far as tripping things (or any combat maneuver), that's not really a viable option for most classes with less than full BAB. CMD scales like mad on high CR monsters, and even full BAB characters have to dedicate their entire build to be able to overcome that. About the only 75% BAB tripper build that I've seen be viable is a feral druid (stegosaurus tail attack FTW!). Edit: Also, Combat Patrol would defeat any attempts you make to dump dexterity.
Being in the same game as KaptainKrunch, I can explain the circumstances a little bit more. We all got the Leadership feat for free in this game, but the rule is that we generally can't take our cohorts or followers along with us on adventures. For the most part, they'll stay at home and manage our estates while we aren't there (we've all been given plots of land to develop). So for the most part, the cohort's class and abilities are mostly for RP. That said, there may come up the occasional scenario where they do get to show off what they can do. Kaptain, you should explain what you'll be doing with your land since that's where the cohort will spend most of his time.
This is awesome.
I just added the other five ability scores to the statistics sheet. I originally only did Wisdom because I was curious about Intimidate DCs, but I couldn't see much reason to do the others at that time. Since you were curious, though, and they're easy to add, I just did them all. Now I need another statistic to add so I can keep all the columns filled. It's nice to have everything nice and even, after all. =)
If your targets needed a natural 20 to succeed the saving throw, then Persistent Spell would bump the odds of them failing from 95% to 99.75%. Depending on how important it is for that spell to land, I agree that it would be worth bumping the spell level up by two. The only point I was making with the chart is that you get more effect out of the feat (or similar effects) when you want it more: when your odds of success aren't nearly guaranteed. Of course, the other edge to the sword is that it helps you even less when your odds are already nearly hopeless. One way of looking at this feat is that it increases the DCs of your spells by an average of about +3 in exchange for +2 spell levels (which is better than Heighten Spell). This analysis would be most applicable if enemy saving throws were completely random. However, enemy saving throws aren't totally random; they scale with CR. So perhaps a better way of thinking of it is that the feat gives you about a +4 to your DCs in the large majority of cases that you'll actually come across. Of course, we all already agree that Persistent Spell is an awesome feat, but it always helps to know exactly how much something is worth before you buy it. Besides, the analysis also applies to many other effects, such as Battlemind Link, Brilliant Inspiration, Stealth Synergy, etc.
As an expansion to the earlier discussion of the benefits of Persistent Spell, here are a couple of quick charts that demonstrate the effective bonus/penalty from rolling twice and taking the best/worst roll. The DC is the natural d20 roll needed to succeed after all other modifiers are considered. The bonus/penalty is the modifier that the two rolls are equivalent to for that DC. As you can see, abilities like Persistent Spell are most effective when you have close to a 50% chance of succeeding (or your enemy is close to 50% chance of failing). Best of 2 Rolls Worst of 2 Rolls
I think Shoelessinsight worked out that there are something like 3000 spells in the spellbook (he'll correct me if I'm wrong) That's no small task! Heh, maybe in 3.5e, but Pathfinder is a little less than half that figure. According to Mike Chopswil's spell database, there are 1,464 spells in Pathfinder right now. That's including all the adventure path stuff that's on d20pfsrd.com. So Caleb almost has them all. Impressive, to say the least!
Also, you mention that Create Pit controls a 15x15 area, when it's really a 20x20 area. You get 5 feet from all sides of the pit. That was my fault. He had it correct at first, and then I messed it up for some silly reason. As far as Persistent spell, I'm not a statistician, but I've heard that rerolling a dice and taking the higher is like getting a +3.5 to the dice roll. Is the inverse also true? If it is, then you're basically getting a 50% bonus on Heighten Spell when you use Persistent spell. When you roll 2d20 and take the highest result, your average roll will be 13.825. If you roll 2d20 and take the lowest result, your average roll will be 7.175. But the actual worth of this mechanic is a lot more complicated than that, because attack rolls and saving throws are pass/fail rather than having scaling effects. The short story is that the value of "Pick the best/worst of two rolls" depends on the DC that you're rolling against. In most cases, it's better than +3.325.
Obviously, you'll be expected to write updates to all of Treantmonk's guides now (including the ones he never wrote!). |