Now that there has been a rogue and a fighter playtest done, let's move on towards one of the big guys, the wizard.
Halfling Generalist Wizard - Level 15
Stats (32 point-buy): Str 6, Dex 18, Con 18, Int 28, Wis 14, Cha 8
Feats: Improved Initiative, Empower Spell, Extend Spell, Greater Spell Penetration, Quicken Spell, Scribe Scroll, Spell Penetration, Sudden Maximize, Sudden Widen, Toughness, and another two
Skills: Spellcraft, Craft (Trapmaking), Knowledge (Arcana, Dungeoneering, Nature, Planes, Religion)
Equipment: Heward's Handy Haversack, Spellbook filled with secret page, Headband of Vast Intelligence (Appraise, Craft - Alchemy, Fly) +6, Cloak of Resistance +6, Belt of Dexterity/Constitution +4, 45 colossal crossbow bolts with extended greater magic weapon cast the day prior, +2 Twilight Mithral Chain Shirt, Ring of Protection +2, Ring of Featherfall, Amulet of Natural Armor +2, +3 Mithral Buckler, Lesser Rod of Quicken
* Marut: An incredibly easy fight, as the wizard goes first every time and fires off a maximized disintegrate and a quickened disintegrate (first from Sudden, second from class ability), not even letting the marut go from the damage.
* Yakfolk Cleric + Dao Party: Knowing the power of the wish engine, the wizard opens with a maximized empowered chain lightning on the cleric. As a side-effect, most of the dao are killed, and are readily handled with a quickened chain lightning. Once again, they never get to go.
* Warparty of Cloud Giants: Our wizard opens with a quickened mirror image and a widened glitterdust. One is horrifically killed through a readied prismatic wall, another through a high-damage trap made with major creation. Quite a few resources are used up, but he manages to persevere each time.
* Rube Golderg's Weird & Symbols of Pain on an artifact: Detect Magic shows major mojo, forcing our fearless arcanist to attempt a greater dispel, followed by just walking up to artifact with an antimagic field.
* Gelugon and Iron Golem Bodyguard: Not wanting to be nice, we open up with banishment & quickened acid fog. Only the first fight gave the gelugon a chance to teleport out in melee, but did a pirouette for 8 rounds. The golem was readily handled by waiting for it to escape the acid fog while a summoned monster and a painful trap wait for it.
* Cornugon: The first fight is painful because both spells fizzle against its SR, at which point it charges and stuns and fears and enjoys a fine halfling meal. The second fight goes much the same way because it wins initiative. The third fight finally goes right, and the cornugon is banished.
* Death Slaad riding a Titanic Toad: The wizard was lucky and won initiative twice, banishing the slaad and doing cleanup work on the nonflying toad. Things were a touch more dicey on the third fight, where he got smacked with a power word blind and then implosion while attempting to recover.
* Mature Adult White Dragon: The first fight looks good when the wizard teleports over and casts a quickened extended irresistable dance. The second and third fight look fairly harrowing when the dragon rolls well on initiative, giving it the chance to bite and snatch the halfling. However, grappling doesn't prevent spellcasting anymore, so it does the tango anyway.
* Pair of Glabrezu: We try hard here to use banishment, which works as long as you throw in a quickened one for the first round. However, on the third fight, one stayed standing through both and used power word stun. It then summons a vrock and the two rip the wizard to shreds before he can act.
* Harem of Succubi: Our first fight does not go down well, because the wizard buckles under pressure and rolls a one on the very first charm monster. A quickened widened empowered maximized fireball (boy is that a mouthful) manages to overcome this incredibly sexy challenge the next two times, however. Also, I'm noticing that the double entendres are rather thick today.
* Twenty Dire Bears: He can fly, they can't. He can make large walls of stone to pen them in and fill it with cloudkills and acid fogs, and they can't.
* Dozen medusa mounted archers on hellcats: First fight, he gets stoned. Second fight, he unloads a handy quickened widened maximized empowered fireball. Third fight, he survives being petrified, but gets mauled unto death by a lot of pouncing hellcats.
* Forest made of lava and infested with hostile fire-element dire badgers: Wow, this is easy, what with teleport as a spell-like ability.
* Pair of Beholders: A very bad fight for the wizard because of the antimagic cone, especially since his little legs make it difficult to get out. Wins through dumb luck and two castings of telekinesis on the second fight.
* Slaughterstone Behemoth: Painful fight here due to limited movement options in a cave. The wizard actually loses initiative the first two times, and goes down painfully. The third fight goes better with a readied prismatic wall.
Score: 80% success rate. Several of these fights would've gone differently had it not been for the metamagic ability of the generalist, which would bring score to a bit less than 70%, and might've gone down another 5% if we didn't have the versatility of the bonded item and limited wish 1/day.
One important thing to keep in mind is that our wizard loses those significant advantages after the first encounter, dropping to a level roughly equivalent to the rogue.
|
Questions:
1) What was your spell list? Did you alter it at all before each challenge?
2) There is reason to believe that the Alpha 3 release will limit the metamagic specialist ability to a single metamagic feat per casting; would this have impacted your results at all?
I am, in general, unsurprised, however.
|
|
Just curious--straight 3.5, were they all 50% across the board all classes?
I agree, a 25% for a fighter versus an 80% for a wizard looks kinda skewed there, I was just wondering what the previous spread was.
Also what's the acceptable range; maybe 40-60% and it all evens out when you account for group cohesion?
The spell list was unchanged between fights, so I went with what I felt to be a general run of material.
8th - Irresistable Dance, Prismatic Wall
7th - Limited Wish, Extended Acid Fog, Greater Shadow Conjuration
6th - Chain Lightning, Banishment, Disintegrate, True Seeing
5th - Cloudkill, Overland Flight, Telekinesis
The fights wouldn't have been terribly different if the generalist's metamagic was limited to one per spell, might've brought down the score by about 2% to 5%.
I don't recall the 3.5 spread as far as exact numbers go, because I wasn't the one who ran it. From what I remember the originator said, the only properly balanced classes were the cleric/flask rogue/wizard, while the druid was OP, and the martial classes were almost all lucky to be as good as a cohort. One thing I have noticed is that the martial classes haven't seen a substantial improvement in power, so the results I've been getting aren't surprising; and once you hit high levels, you need more than +attack & +damage in order to actually get anything done in melee.
As for acceptable range, 40-60% is the preferred range, and getting much outside that band put you into over/under-powered territory. Getting slightly over 60% is preferrable to getting slightly below 40%, because these tests are generally done with highly optimized builds, which skews the results toward the high end.
I know that the rogue's high level playtest for 3.P is around 65%, which is understandable considering the fact sneak attack is more permissable and it was a very optimized build.
|
|
I'm just wondering about the spread because when the spellcaster shoots his main wad, or is saving his monster blasts for that last shoot-for-the-moon against the crackpot in the last room, he needs to fall back on the fighter a little more.
Also, hopefully when the fighter's covered in so much blood that he can't tell what's his and what's his enemies, there's Mr. Johnny-on-the-spot with a cure (insert) wounds which is more useful to him with a higher h.p. cap than a wizard.
So when a wizard's holding back or tapped out, his 80% performance rate might nerf down on its own accord; conversely the fighter with adequate support from the cleric might bump up a bit.
But I digress; I'm just curious about intragroup synergy as well as the finite nature of spellpower factors into those final numbers.
I'm quite serious when I say that a cohort cleric can do as well or better than a PC fighter.
The wizard is still doing substantially better than the fighter when he holds off on using any of his metamagic charges and bonded item usage, so he's certainly not falling back on the fighter for anything.
Durability can matter, to a point. The expected and calculated fights per day are roughly four in number, and virtually any fight in the upper levels lasts a maximum of three rounds. This means having a baker's dozen of meaningful actions per day is almost identical to having them at-will.
The fighter's survivability isn't any better than the wizard's at high levels, and is in fact worse, because of the high volume of Save-or-Die flying around. Things look even worse if we include the Frank Cheat and the fifteen-minute work day, which allows sufficient low level buffs (lesser rod of extend for the 1 minute/level ones to make certain) to make everyone better.
The fighter doesn't truly have infinite swordswings per day, because his hit points and saving throws are going to give out LONG before he actually takes advantage of this; and a wand of cure light wounds pretty much covers out-of-combat healing for a pittance.
Casting buffs on the fighter actually emphasizes his problems. If the fighter isn't any good unless buffed, that says to me that it's the buffs overcoming the challenge, rather than the fighter; especially since you can put those buffs on other, more powerful, allies.
A group is still necessary, because an EL = APL scenario is supposed to be readily handled with minor resource loss, and diversity is required simply to shore up weaknesses (four clones still lose when fighting their foil). You can even meet this standard by going round-robin with the party's effort, where only one player uses their biggest actions for any particular fight while the others use their more plentiful but lower-grade action. This is in fact actually gives some kind of sense to the 20% resource loss rubric, letting each character take turns blowing their wad while the others relax and do something less strenuous for the fight.
I must admit that a party of nothing but rogues is a frightening picture of effectiveness, especially if they invest in some kind of swift action dimension door item and jump into flanking positions.
My bad on the banisment placement (looked at the spell name and didn't notice the Clr placement), though it's easy enough to switch acid fog with it (removing the extend meta).
As a colossal crossbow bolt only weighs 1.6lbs, it's easy enough to store them in the haversack, especially because the bolts have a combined volume of less than 3 cubic feet. It's most certainly not cheese to actually have something worth throwing, as it wasn't even worth the effort the vast majority of the time due to the attack bonus generally being insufficient for challenges at hand.
The trap, capped at CR 10, is easily made with major creation. It could theoretically be made with polymorph any object as well, but the changes to the polymorph line made it iffy to try using that spell for this. Even if you have a DM require a skill check, I covered my base sufficiently that we only need a 3+ to make it (or 8+ if we add the automatic reset).
Acme Anvil (CR 10)
Search/Disable Device DC 15
+14 touch attack (22d6 damage)
Location Trigger, No Reset
As per minor creation spell text, you must succeed on an appropriate skill check to make a complex item, which a trap certain qualifies for. As for its Search DC, that was merely simplicity; not that it matters if it's a DC 0 to notice when it goes off instantly. When I say that a painful trap waited for it, I meant the wizard waited until he could see it and then go place the trap.
Last I checked, one doubled four times gives you sixteen, with a total weight of 72 pounds for 45 bolts (three castings). The rules explicitly state how to adjucate weapon sizings, so I'm not going to ignore them. One can easily have a makeshift quiver that holds all of them, thus making it a 'single' item to bring to the top for telekinesis to grab the actual bolts.
If you disagree with this, it is easy to just have had cast extended floating disk the day prior, and thus not change anything.
Or even better, we can easily give the wizard a pit fiend skeleton and a zombie hydra. Solves both the carrying qualms AND cuts back on the wizard's summoning load (shouldn't actually change the win/loss ratio, after a quick glance through my notes). We don't have the cleric's death domain around, so we don't need to worry as much about pseudonatural paragon skeletons.
Reading the test, I get the impression you're favoring the wizard by very lenient use of some spells / rules.
Besides the Telekinesis cheese...:
+2 Twilight Mithral Chain Shirt
I think it would be better to test PRPG only with material available in PRPG/Core.
One is horrifically killed through a readied prismatic wall
How did this work exactly? If it was cast while the giant was moving, I think the giant could just stop or change his path to avoid the wall.
Twenty Dire Bears: He can fly, they can't. He can make large walls of stone to pen them in and fill it with cloudkills and acid fogs, and they can't.
How did the wizard trap 20 large creatures with Walls of Stone!? A single wall wouldn't be enough, even if the bears sat down in a nice 5x4 pattern. Several castings would give the bears opportunity to move around, so... how to catch them?
Also, a Dire Bear can overcome the hardness of the wall easily; it probably wouldn't last long for the bears to die of Cloud spells.
I find these backhanded comments about telekinesis rather insulting. A third of its text explicitly details throwing weapons, so I actually have weapons to throw, and it's only logical to throw weapons that might do damage rather than crap. Did you notice that I didn't even bother to cast it the vast majority of the time.
The game is designed to be backward compatible with 3.5 rules, and Twilight armor is in two seperate books for 3.5 and thus basically a part of the game.
As that wall spell, it's readied action to cast prismatic wall when attacked in melee by the opponent, which results in it punching seven flavours of pain.
Major Creation, when cast as a normal spell, has a casting time of 10 minutes. When cast through limited wish or as a spell-ike ability, has a casting time of one standard action.
I find these backhanded comments about telekinesis rather insulting. A third of its text explicitly details throwing weapons, so I actually have weapons to throw, and it's only logical to throw weapons that might do damage rather than crap.
How do you handle attack roll penalties for using oversized weapons with Telekinesis?
The game is designed to be backward compatible with 3.5 rules, and Twilight armor is in two seperate books for 3.5 and thus basically a part of the game.
It's still a flawed basis. There's a lot of completely broken or overpowered stuff in D&D3.5. If you include things from outside core, any playtesting may be flawed due to the problems of these feats/spells/items.
As that wall spell, it's readied action to cast prismatic wall when attacked in melee by the opponent, which results in it punching seven flavours of pain.
That's a viable ruling, but one at least I don't share.
Then, any time before your next action, you may take the readied action in response to that condition. The action occurs just before the action that triggers it. If the triggered action is part of another character’s activities, you interrupt the other character. Assuming he is still capable of doing so, he continues his actions once you complete your readied action.
The last sentence can be read in the way you appear to do. I'd say that "capable" does not mean "capable without regard for consequences".
Major Creation, when cast as a normal spell, has a casting time of 10 minutes. When cast through limited wish or as a spell-ike ability, has a casting time of one standard action.
True for Limited Wish:
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Not true for SLA:
A spell-like ability has a casting time of 1 standard action unless noted otherwise in the ability or spell description.
So you have to burn a 7th level slot for the trap. And the question wether Major Creation allows to create items out of different materials remains unanswered.
A question, though: If you allow the creation of traps with Major Creation, what about creating Acid or Alchemist's Fire? The spell creates an awful lot of material: 1 cu. ft/level, that's about 27 liters per level. Assuming D&D acid weighs about 2 pounds per liter, you get the equivalent of 54 flasks of acid out of each cu. ft (neglecting the weight of the bottle itself). That's a whopping amount of (levelx54)x1d6 of acid damage, e. g. 540d6 at level 10.
Drop that on an opponent huge enough to actually be affected by it, and you can flush him down the drain afterwards.
Telekinesis does not wield the weapons it throws. It throws stuff, and the damage done is based on the weapon.
Arguing on the position that there exists broken material invalidates using core as well, because that isn't balanced either, including some effects that make the game stop working. For example, as a broken (but not game-stopping) technique, we can use minor creation to fill a literal bucket of black lotus extract with which to have our undead minions throw at the enemy and thus force enough saving throws to ensure total death if they're at all vulnerable to poison.
But if it consoles you at all, the wizard's AC didn't really matter. Almost everything was hitting his 29 AC anyway, and it was mirror image that stopped attacks pretty much the few times it mattered.
Both greater shadow conjuration & limited wish are memorized spells for the sample wizard, so getting a standard action is not a concern.
Do you realize that virtually no object is truly homogenous, and your argument is attempting to make it so that major creation cannot create anything? No armor, no bows, no doors, no colored tapestries, etc. Even then, it is fully possible to have a clockwork blade blender trap made out of nothing but adamantine (hey look, homogenous!); we could make this stuff out of darkwood too, since it's as hard as steel, and thus createable by minor creation.
With max ranks, as I stated for this wizard, casting defensively is automatic even with the minimum intelligence to cast prismatic wall. Except that the wizard doesn't have minimum intelligence, and in fact requires gremlins to sneak into my home and carve -5 onto my dice in order for the ability to fail.
Might I add that it's kinda stupid for the DC to cast defensively to be just as hard as trying to cast while grappled?
And I'm certain minor creation and its superior does not require homogeny, as the spell text doesn't say anything about mixing types.