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So if you take 1 point of con damage and then lose your eidolon. Then, through either a successful banish, a dismissal, or a sleep spell, or some other spell, you die.
Yes... but how likely is it that you will lose your eidolon? At level 1? When fused you can't be targeted seperately, so your potential attacker has to drop your eidolon before targeting your pitiful base Con score. By level 3 you'll have enough Wealth by Level to pony up the 1,280gp donation to your local branch of the Green Faith to get Reincarnated - presto, your age penalties vanish, and you likely get a boost to your physical Ability Scores too. Granted, anyone could do this by playing an old coot, but Synzilla is an old coot who can easily survive to level 3, and beyond, without hitting the temporary inconvienience of death...
What I am getting at, is that you are forcing your dm into a situation where he can't pop your power armor without killing you. I personally think it is a better situation when a dm has ways of hindering you that do not kill you.
That's really no different from the DM having the bad guys targeting, for example, a Barbarian's Hit Points whilst he's raging - drop him, drop rage, and the crash (from Con loss) kills him. DMs target Barbarian Hit Points all the time.
Sure the synthesist may make 95% of his will saves, but 5% is still something to consider over the course of a campaign or 2.
Over the course of a campaign or two your old dude was probably planing on being Reincarnated at some point anyway - all he needs is a couple of good quests under his belt and a friendly Druid...
But yeah, any build can be stopped in some way - the point about Synzilla is twofold: firstly, the benefits far outweigh the risks; secondly, the Sythesist archetype is actually geared towards you doing this - if you don't use the opportunity to dump your physical Ability Scores (to some extent) then you're really just gimping yourself (mechanically speaking) by playing one, since you've lost all those extra actions a normal Summoner + eidolon gets when acting seperately.
And, again, a single level of this then Wizard all the way... or Barbarian, maybe, for the extra Strength and Constitution when raging? From a game mechanics point of view there's no real reason not to do this... Thankfully, most of us don't play characters based just on what the game mechanics dictate. :)
There was a user here named CoDzilla, but he left.CoDzilla seems to have stopped posting since the beginning of February. ^^What?
I didn't get that.
Oh ok.
You know there is one more thing about CoDzilla.
Anti-magic fields.
I'm not sure where, but I remember reading something that Divine casters could still function in an anti-magic field because the gods are not bound to the magic of mortals.
Who knows though, maybe I just dreamed of it one day..
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I have heard about the CoDzilla cleric but because i wasn't around here in 3.5 i just didn't experience this thing.
So what exactly is a CoDzilla cleric?
I know that the basis is the divine metamagic feat and the persistent spell (which in 3.5 it made every spell last 24 hours by adding 2 spell slots right?)
Now what else did the CoDzilla cleric used (spells, feats, items, PrCs)? And in what books are those?Thank you.
It is something that came from people showing that if you fully buff a cleric or a druid you can in some circumstances out melee a melee character. In addition, if you select the right spells for the occasion with both a Cleric and a Druid you can out cast an arcane caster in some circumstances.
The fact that you had to have all the right spells in the right circumstances is why theorycraft is less informative than people want to acknowledge.
It is something that came from people showing that if you fully buff a cleric or a druid you can in some circumstances out melee a melee character. In addition, if you select the right spells for the occasion with both a Cleric and a Druid you can out cast an arcane caster in some circumstances.The fact that you had to have all the right spells in the right circumstances is why theorycraft is less informative than people want to acknowledge.
No it was actually true. Clerics and druids out melee'd the melee guys while still be full casters. I played those characters... it made the dm sad. So then I spent the rest of our 3.5 games playing roguish characters to repent.
A cleric could out cast an arcane caster in many ways depending on domain selection. But considering a cleric could pick up the feat domain spontaneity(which allowed you to spontaneously cast domain spells at the cost of a turning attempt), I think it is largely true that clerics had ready access to multiple wizard spells that they could cast spontaneously.
Of other note, clerics also made the best necromancers since they could animate undead starting at lvl 5 as opposed to lvl 7, had access to rebuking/commanding, and they had access to domains that boosted their caster lvl.
What domains allowed a cleric to outwizard the wizard?
I agree on the necromancy stuff.
What domains allowed a cleric to outwizard the wizard?
I agree on the necromancy stuff.I wouldn't entirely say outweigh but more like overlap with.
If you want to be a cleric who heavily overlaps with a wizard then I would probably make a cloistered cleric(from unearthed arcana).
You get bardic knowledge, the knowledge domain for free, 6+int mod skill points, and 2 more domains that you would normally pick. Your bab is reduced to poor progression.
For the domains, I would likely pick trickery( netting you many good spells finishing up with time stop), and I am unsure on the last domain I would pick. Perhaps air, if I wanted to be casting control winds alot. I am unsure which domain would be my 3rd.
The cool part about cloistered cleric is that even though you are trading your bab to get multiple other abilities, all it takes is 1 casting of divine power for you to be a full bab class. I did a divine metamagic persistent spell cloistered cleric who rarely operated at poor bab. It wasn't half bad.
(about the bolded part) Ohhhhh the horror.....
i think that i am beggining to grasp why the 3.5 cleric was so powerfull.....So knowledge, trickery and air hmmmm.....
I suspect that there were PrCs that allowed you to gain extra domain(s) right?
Druids were especially powerful in point buy scenarios once they got shapechanging because of the way polymorphing worked. Physical stats of the monster were used instead of the bonuses that are now given to the shapechanger's base stats. This meant that druids could tough out the low levels with terrible physical stats, relying on the AC and spells, and then they would have far superior stats once they spent all day shapechanged.Which is why is was so weird to see Synthesist Summoners fall into exactly the same trap... only worse, because they can do it from level 1...I think that it's not the same situation for two reasons:
1)From what i have heard the extra MM presented very powerful monsters so i don't think that the eidolon is the same thing.
2)When the eidolon's hp (your temporary hp) go to zero the eidolon goes away.Actually, Synthesists get to keep their eidolon around by sacrificing their own HP.
What Balances them out is that they are subject to all of the problems an eidolon has, such as being subject to "Banish", and that they're limited to one set of actions instead of the two normally afforded to the Summoner... not to mention being forced to use certain eidolon limitations (such as BAB, etc.).
Also, the eidolon has set stats pre-tested to being balanced to their proper progression. They Synthesist is actually weaker as they have to use their feats, V.S. having the eidolon having their own, which means that they need to stat themselves so that they can use most of the feats they plan on using fused with their eidolon, basically Synthesists almost have the same MAD problems paladins have if not worse.
Also, the eidolon has set stats pre-tested to being balanced to their proper progression. They Synthesist is actually weaker as they have to use their feats, V.S. having the eidolon having their own, which means that they need to stat themselves so that they can use most of the feats they plan on using fused with their eidolon, basically Synthesists almost have the same MAD problems paladins have if not worse.
What feats are you thinking that require ability scores? ok STR 13 for power attack, other than that?
Sure? Search for Cheater of Mystra.
APG came very near with a feat, but our good SKR fixed it very soon.
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It is something that came from people showing that if you fully buff a cleric or a druid you can in some circumstances out melee a melee character. In addition, if you select the right spells for the occasion with both a Cleric and a Druid you can out cast an arcane caster in some circumstances.The fact that you had to have all the right spells in the right circumstances is why theorycraft is less informative than people want to acknowledge.
No it was actually true. Clerics and druids out melee'd the melee guys while still be full casters. I played those characters... it made the dm sad. So then I spent the rest of our 3.5 games playing roguish characters to repent.
A cleric could out cast an arcane caster in many ways depending on domain selection. But considering a cleric could pick up the feat domain spontaneity(which allowed you to spontaneously cast domain spells at the cost of a turning attempt), I think it is largely true that clerics had ready access to multiple wizard spells that they could cast spontaneously.
Of other note, clerics also made the best necromancers since they could animate undead starting at lvl 5 as opposed to lvl 7, had access to rebuking/commanding, and they had access to domains that boosted their caster lvl.
All the divine melee buffing spells used to stack in 3.5, in Pathfinder, they clearly stated they do not stack, which also went a ways towards nerfing CoDzilla.
Sure? Search for Cheater of Mystra.
APG came very near with a feat, but our good SKR fixed it very soon.
Which APG feat?
Selective Spell.
the Cheater of Mystra PrC allowed something similar, but for not instantaneous spells too.
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I agree mostly but we will have to see for them to clarify many different parts of this class. If you use just your eidolon bab for the rest of the game, then I think multiclassing into other will not work well. Also most melee classes will not want to take just 1 lvl of synthesist because you are keeping yourself stuck at 14ish str/dex and 13 con for the rest of the game.
Yeah - Ultimate Magic needs quite a bit of errata... Hopefully by pointing out potentially game-breaking issues like this we can help make sure the guys at Paizo sort it all out (which, to be honest, they seem pretty good at doing).
I can't imagine that the Synthesist uses the eidolon's BAB for anything except his Summoner levels - doing otherwise just flies in the face of so many other game conventions - but it'd be one way for the DM to use the vagueness of wording to help stop any such twink attempts in their tracks.
Ability Scores wouldn't be that much of a limit. Biped eidolons (the most common for this sort of thing, I'd guess, if you're aiming to just be a better 'you' rather than an outright monster) start with Strength 16, so you could boost that to a respectable 18 at level 1 (instead of boosting Con). Later on you can add Ability Score boosting belts, since they work fine on your fused form, but in any case you can take your first 3 levels in Sythesist without damaging your BAB (which gains you an extra point of Str and Dex, an extra +2 natural armour, Evasion, and 5 evolution points to play with), or go to level 7 with only a -1 to your overall BAB (+3 to Str and Dex, +6 natural armour, and 10 evolution points, not to mention +2 shield bonus and +2 bonus to all your saves from the Shielded Meld feature at level 4, and the ability to Dimension Door as a spell-like abilty once per day from Maker's Jump at level 6...).
A simple level 7 Synzilla can have...
Strength 23 (biped eidolon +3 eidolon levels + 4pt evolution)
Dexterity 15 (biped eidolon +3 eidolon levels)
Constitution 17 (biped eidolon + 4pt evolution)
Intelligence 17 (14 from point buy +3 age)
Wisdom 17 (14 from point buy +3 from age)
Charisma 24 (18 from point buy +2 racial bonus +3 from age +1 from levels) (so, 2 bonus 1st, 2nd, and 3rd level spells)
Natural armour +12 (biped + levels + 2pt evolution)
Armour +4 (Mage Armour spell)
Shield +2 (Shielded Meld class feature)
Dexterity +2
Total AC = 30
Reflex save +6 (+2 Summoner base +2 Dex +2 Shielded Meld feature)
Fortitude save +7 (+2 Summoner base +3 Con +2 Shielded Meld feature)
Will save +10 (+5 Summoner base +3 Wis +2 Shielded Meld feature)
Hit Points 116 (3 from level 1, 6 from levels 2 to 7, 56 from the Con boost of being fused, 33 base average and 18 from Con for eidolon Hit Points)
... before adding in any further Feats, magic items, or the like.
Make him a half-elf, give him the Ancestral Arms alternative racial trait so he can wield a lucerne hammer with some skill (and just use his eidolon's claws against anyone who gets within his reach), spam Enlarge Person, Bull's Strength, Haste, Stoneskin, and all that other goodness on the Summoner spell list, and watch him go!
Better than a level 7 Fighter?
What feats are you thinking that require ability scores? ok STR 13 for power attack, other than that?
Also, the eidolon has set stats pre-tested to being balanced to their proper progression. They Synthesist is actually weaker as they have to use their feats, V.S. having the eidolon having their own, which means that they need to stat themselves so that they can use most of the feats they plan on using fused with their eidolon, basically Synthesists almost have the same MAD problems paladins have if not worse.
Depends on the build really. Dodge, wind stance, lightning stance, eldrich claws, punishing assault, improved side step, etc. There are more, and the list will grow as long as Paizo prints pathfinder books.
13 is that stat value you need for most of the feats combat feats that require a physical stat. multiweapon fighting is also a 13.
Thus if you want power attack a 9 str is perfectly fine. Pick up a belt of +4 str and you will meet the prereq even when you are not fused. Synthesists definitely do not have suffer from multiple attribute dependency.
That in my opinion is a very poor decision, as I would almost never get a feat that required me to have a magic item. What if the item was broken, stolen, dispelled, or disjunctioned?
The thing that always gets me when people talk about the power of wild shape in 3.5 is that it actually had some very real limitations built into that could shut it down pretty quickly, but most people overlooked.
First, yes, you had to be familiar with the creature you were turning into. Who cares if there is a creature in MM4 that would be badass to turn into; if your character doesn't have any way of knowing about it, and the DM lets you do it anyway, that is entirely the DM's fault. Same with dire versions of animals, they technically weren't valid to be used with wild shape.
Second, ultra high strength or dex for any of the creatures the druid would actually know about almost almost always meant ultra low in the other. Knowing creatures that had both strength and dex high would require focus, and if the DM was smart, be a quest level task.
Third, a lot of natural attacks is great until you realize that you have to spend a spell slot in order to have them get around basic DR and even more spell slots if you want to get past any of the specialized DRs.
Fourth, full attack is problematic if the DM throws a variety of enemies and battlefields at the party, and uses both intelligently.
Fifth, limited actions kept the druid, and for that matter, the cleric, from getting such things set up quickly without devoting a serious amount of feats, resources, and focus on doing so. That leaves time for the others to finish the battle before the cleric/druid can finish buffing and get into position, as well as time for the DM to disrupt the druid/cleric.
This isn't to say that CoDzilla couldn't happen, but in actual play with a DM who was watching the limitations as well as the strengths, especially the part about non core items, it would a powerful trick, but not one that would be likely to dominate the group unless the rest of the group let it.
Sunshadow - The argument is that since druids are part of a potentially world-wide druidic fraterntity, and they share their knowledge, there really aren't any animals that a druid wouldn't be "familiar with" especially those that other druids would consider to be great wild shape opportunities. At the yearly druid winter solstice celebration I'm sure there's a steady business of druids summoning powerful animals to show them to other druids, and wildshape contests would be pretty common.
What I saw a lot of in 3.5 was druids wildshaped more or less permanently with permanent versions of their natural attack buffs, so there was literally no "set up time" for those druids, they were ready 24x7.
Also, my 3.5 druid, while very tame compared to a CoDzilla, typically wildshapes into a bird or other handy animal and scouts ahead, as does our rogue. So a goodly portion of our encounters are known well in advance and my druid and out two clerics tend to be able to buff up for most fights. Plus, if there's really a need, there are spells that can delay the enemy for a round or two and that can give you the time you need to buff.
Full attack is no less difficult for a wildshaped druid or a battle-buffed cleric than it is for a fighter. And druids can always charge in lion form and do the famous pounce/bite/claw/claw/rake/rake attack.
CoDzilla was very real in 3.5. Especially when certain splat books allowed items like "wild clasps" to be used, which allowed magic items to function while wildshaped.
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At least later splat books contained some stuff for martial characters, too. The Player's Handbook didn't offer that much combat feats. Which is kind of a problem if you have a class whose only class feature is the ability to take lots of feats.
It's also the reason that anyone declaring how core only 3.5 was balanced and only splat books broke it is either lying or has no idea what he's talking about. 3.5 has never been not broken.
Jadeite, that's true, but many of the books created flatly unbalanced feats which didn't really solve the feat starvation as much as it created entire new problems. But probably the majority of new martial feats were fine, I just wish there had been more concern for balance in those non-core books.
CoDzilla is not just a high level druid thing either. I love my 3.5 druid and she is deliberately not optimized for wildshaping or summoning. She's an archer druid and prefers using her bow.
But the reality is that she is as good with her magical attacks as our sorcerer is, she is as good in melee as our cleric and aside from some rogue special abilities she is as good at scouting and sneaking as our rogue. She can quite literally do every role in the party if she needs to. I play her as the party's ranged combat person, but that too just shows how she can pretty much do anything. Her lower BAB is easily countered with a "Cat's Grace" spell or even better, "Bite of the Wererat" a seriously overpowered spell in the Spell Compendium.
In most of our encounters she focuses on the biggest threat at range and if things start to go south, she lets loose with powerful ray spells or bottles up the enemy with summoned meat shields. And in a pinch she can even throw a heal on someone.
I guess I never played in groups that were interested in breaking the game for the sake of breaking the game so I never saw that level of twinkiness. I can understand some of the changes to wild shape, but it still feels stale somehow. To me the changes make me feel like a poor actor who just put on an animal skin to try to entertain people.
I guess I never played in groups that were interested in breaking the game for the sake of breaking the game so I never saw that level of twinkiness. I can understand some of the changes to wild shape, but it still feels stale somehow. To me the changes make me feel like a poor actor who just put on an animal skin to try to entertain people.
From what i have heard and from what little i have seen there were necessary.
13 is that stat value you need for most of the feats combat feats that require a physical stat. multiweapon fighting is also a 13.
Thus if you want power attack a 9 str is perfectly fine. Pick up a belt of +4 str and you will meet the prereq even when you are not fused.
I think i remember that this wasn't clear if this could be done or not (legally i mean), did we get a clarification?
I guess I never played in groups that were interested in breaking the game for the sake of breaking the game so I never saw that level of twinkiness. I can understand some of the changes to wild shape, but it still feels stale somehow. To me the changes make me feel like a poor actor who just put on an animal skin to try to entertain people.
Well, I never played in a game like that myself. As a GM I never allowed many of the splat books and didn't allow things like wild clasps or humanoid apes who wore human armor and could wield human weapons. But I saw plenty of it.
I have not yet converted my 3.5 druid to PF. We are still wrapping up a 3.5 campaign and I intend to convert her as soon as that's done. Since she's primarily an archer fighter who wild shapes on occasion, I'm not terribly concerned about the wild shape changes. Frankly I'm more worried about the lack of ray spells since her archer build and feats mostly work with ray spells too. I will probably ask my GM if she can research some ray spells so that she maintains some level of her current abilities.
3.5 druids were overpowered. In one encounter my druid was dominated by an evil wizard and turned against the party. She almost wiped out the rest of the party by herself and her animal companion. If she hadn't rolled poorly on an icelance against the party tank, I think it would have all been over.
The mechanical aspects probably needed changed, and I don't mind that. What gets me is that in 3.5, the power was really cool because you were turning into the creature. In PF, its more of a "let me put on a new skin on real quick and see if I can do something to make it look realistic" kind of power, which is fine mechanically, but lacks the flavor.
The mechanical aspects probably needed changed, and I don't mind that. What gets me is that in 3.5, the power was really cool because you were turning into the creature. In PF, its more of a "let me put on a new skin on real quick and see if I can do something to make it look realistic" kind of power, which is fine mechanically, but lacks the flavor.
Well, the reason for that was all the druid players who metagamed the system and dumped physical stats so they could wildshape and have great mental AND physical stats. The new rules won't allow that so it more or less forces druid players to at least have survivable stats in str, dex and con, and to have good stats in those areas if they want to wildshape, which means they have to sacrifice some int or wis.
I suppose there might be other ways to achieve the same goal, but they had to do something. It seemed like every druid I saw in a game was wildshaped into humanoid apes with 20 wis, 18 int, 22 str, 20 dex and 18 con, or something like that. Wearing human armor, wielding magic swords...
I mean it really got silly.
The mechanical aspects probably needed changed, and I don't mind that. What gets me is that in 3.5, the power was really cool because you were turning into the creature. In PF, its more of a "let me put on a new skin on real quick and see if I can do something to make it look realistic" kind of power, which is fine mechanically, but lacks the flavor.
Oh on that i agree with you, keep the PF mechanics and use the 3.5 flavor.
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First, yes, you had to be familiar with the creature you were turning into. Who cares if there is a creature in MM4 that would be badass to turn into; if your character doesn't have any way of knowing about it...Second, ultra high strength or dex for any of the creatures the druid would actually know about almost almost always meant ultra low in the other. Knowing creatures that had both strength and dex high would require focus, and if the DM was smart, be a quest level task...
Third, a lot of natural attacks is great until you realize that you have to spend a spell slot in order to have them get around basic DR and even more spell slots if you want to get past any of the specialized DRs.
Fourth, full attack is problematic if the DM throws a variety of enemies and battlefields at the party, and uses both intelligently...
Fifth, limited actions kept the druid, and for that matter, the cleric, from getting such things set up quickly without devoting a serious amount of feats, resources, and focus on doing so...
Well, for your first and second points, knowledge nature covers those. Whether you know about a creature or not is dependent on a knowledge check, so those builds tended to max knowledge nature out so there was no question that they knew about the creature. Then, knowing about the creature, they can just shift into that form and see what the stats are themselves.
Third, the beauty of wildshape, you could pick a form with a ton of natural attacks. Or you could pick a form with fewer, but much harder hitting attacks if you did end up going against dr.
Fourth isn't druid-relevant. Fighters have the same problem. However, druids had the option of using a form with pounce. That way, they would still get all their attacks every round. They are less affected by that than most other melee-based classes.
Fifth, the best part about the buffing combo was that most buffs were supposed to be up all the time. You could spend a round buffing, but you generally had a bunch of other bonuses already active. While this was less true at low levels, it became increasingly more impressive the higher the character became. So instead of wasting time, you could get into the fight on the first round.
The point being that these were only "limitations" if the player didn't know what they were doing with their druid. Or, of course, if the dm broke the game rules himself in order to prevent the druid from using his knowledge skill or some such.
I played a druid, and found it to be far from earth shattering in the campaign as a whole. Enough adventures happen in cites that having the large animal companions or going for purely massive wild shapes on a consistent basis does have drawbacks, very real ones. Even in the country, any bystander seeing you turn into some of the creatures from the later monster manuals would likely have a very strong reaction. A druid could out fighter a fighter in certain situations, but a fighter could still do their job more consistently, more reliably, and take more abuse.
I do not see why random bystanders would be more likely to have a negative reaction to a druid wildshaping than to other kinds of magic.
Wild shaping into a bear or other common animal probably wouldn't get much reaction outside the city. Wild shaping into a multi headed hydra is going to get a very strong reaction where ever you are, because just because it may be known and familiar to the druid and his fellow adventurers, to the average person, that is not something they are going to want to see anywhere near their home, under any circumstances.
And part of the problem is everyone wanted to be throwing magic of all kinds around without expecting any kind of reaction from the people watching them irregardless of the level of magic being used. Fireballs and bears I can see getting used to, but hydras and using enough magical energy to level a city in one spell should get a reaction of some kind. That was one of my biggest peeves with FR. Too much high level magic so that all magic simply got brushed aside as mundane.
I don't mind people being afraid of magic if its across the board. But yeah, it would tend to be a decision a dm makes from campaign to campaign.
I don't think magic as a whole needs to be feared, but anything that could be compared to or is a spell at or above 6th level needs to be treated with respect and not thrown about lightly.
Druids also had a pretty ridiculous spell...I forget where it was from (an FR book I think...Uncharted East maybe?), but basically it added a bunch of acid damage to your natural attacks and it was a long duration buff. And when I say "a bunch", it was something like d6/2 caster levels...on every natural attack...
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the thing which broke CoDzilla was buff duration.
Ignoring the full casting, armor, d8, two good saves and medium BAB, and spontaneous casting...all things making them superior to arcane casters. And we'll also ignore access to the full spell list, where arcane casters have to pick, choose, and acquire.
Shield of Faith - Deflection bonus. Cast it, no need for a Ring/Prot. Level 1 spell. Hour/level = all day.
Greater Magic Vestment - Cast on armor and shield. Never need to enhance magic armor past +1...so you can buy special abilities cheap. Lasts hour/level = all day.
Greater Magic Weapon - +1 weapons enchanted to +5 with +9 of special abilities. Lasts for hour/level = all day.
Divine Favor - Level 1 Spell. Luck bonus th/dmg, maxes at +6. Better then the entire spec weapon tree, or a barbarian's rage. Persist it, around all day.
Divine Power - Your Medium Bab is now full, you get more hit points. You are now a fighter with full clerical spellcasting, and better gear. persisted.
Righteous Might - Better then Enlarge Person, +Dr. Persisted.
Now, most DM"s ruled that multiple Nightsticks didn't stack, but those six spells above basically did the job. Sure, they could do more dmg if you put them on a fighter, somewhat...or the fighter could just be a cleric and do it for himself, and still have tons of other spells and options like, oh, healing himself.
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Druids abused the stats of Wildshape, sure enough. But the buff spells did it too.
Venomfire. gak. Put it on your deinochyus, and do sick acid dmg with every one of your five attacks.
Greater Magic Fang is around all day.
Wilding clasps allowed you to keep your armor on you while wildshaping into something with a +15 Nat AC...and keep your stat buffers, too! Look, I'll wear Dragonhide full plate even though I'm not proficient in it, because I don't care about the penalties and can still cast in it!
Barkskin = High bonus early, +5 by 12th. Hours/level. Cast on yourself, share with pet for a 2 for one. Get yours and his AC's into the 40's by 10th.
The "Bite of the WereX" line of spells, basically giving you the stat buffs of a lycanthrope. THe fighter looks at the +16 Str, +8 Con and +2 dex, wonders why his stats cost money to max out at +6.
by wildshaping into small/fine forms, you got huge str bonuses, free flight, water-breathing, burrowing, swimming, and looked totally unremarkable. Hey, there's a sparrow on the eaves pooping in the birdbath!...
Work with Legendary Animal forms and the non-limits of Shapechange, and damage got really sick, really fast. A high Str and bunch of natural attacks EASILY subs for BAB and damage bonuses, huge+ natural forms and innate abilities to grab, trip, overrun are better then feats can give...
AND YOU ARE A FULL SPELLCASTER THAT CAN HEAL THEMSELVES.
And there you have CoDzilla.
The CoDzilla relies on spells to make them uber. Melees MUST have really, really expensive gear. ANything they can get the CoDzilla can...and then spellcast on top of it.
And it was all core if you took out wilding clasps and Persistent spells. It took a few levels to get rolling, but once it did, you never needed a melee in the party.
====Aelryinth
Look, I'll wear Dragonhide full plate even though I'm not proficient in it, because I don't care about the penalties and can still cast in it!
That is a problem you are going to have in any system. I never played with anybody that was that willing to blatantly ignore massive penalties on that scale. You are just confirming my belief that the problem was as much with people who were bound and determined to break the system as it was the system itself. 3.5 may have given such players more ammo in the splat books, but blame that on the poor quality control, not the system itself. The problem with 3.5 was that counters existed in the rules for every possible action, but it was often took a lot of work and reading to track down specific counteractions for specific actions, and once found, incorporating them into game play could be difficult without coming across as heavy handed.
If anyone's curious, Living Greyhawk was a 3.0/3.5 campaign that banned the worst of the cheese of the edition, such as Persistent Spell and nightsticks -- and cleric and druid still rocked the house in a serious way.
The first time you see a (admittedly high level, like 17th or so) cleric with a base 10 strength and no combat feats to speak of lay out four or five hundred points of melee damage in a round (which, to be clear, wasn't the main thing or even really on the top five list of things the character was good at) you think to yourself: Why play a fighter ever again?
Generally that whole situation has gotten a lot better in Pathfinder.
To comment specifically on the person who pointed out that wildshaped druids have to deal with DR -- yes, but you could do so they did so much damage you didn't really care, plus beat anything that didn't have freedom of movement at grapple. As long as you could reliably pin anything (and by around 10th level, you could -- and I don't mean, CR appropriate opponents, I actually mean anything) it didn't matter that much if you were tossing the first 10 or 15 points of each hit.
Look, I'll wear Dragonhide full plate even though I'm not proficient in it, because I don't care about the penalties and can still cast in it!That is a problem you are going to have in any system. I never played with anybody that was that willing to blatantly ignore massive penalties on that scale. You are just confirming my belief that the problem was as much with people who were bound and determined to break the system as it was the system itself. 3.5 may have given such players more ammo in the splat books, but blame that on the poor quality control, not the system itself. The problem with 3.5 was that counters existed in the rules for every possible action, but it was often took a lot of work and reading to track down specific counteractions for specific actions, and once found, incorporating them into game play could be difficult without coming across as heavy handed.
The main problem with 3.5 can be demonstrated with one magic item. The "wilding clasp." When I first heard about that thing I knew 3.5 was dead. There were probably a dozen other things that were just as clear a death knell, but it's the wilding clasp I remember.
Why?
Because the inability to use magic items and armor in wild shape was a key part of the balance of druids against other classes.
When wilding clasps were introduced it was clear to me that the escalation of power had reached an irreversible state and that the game had become an ever-accelerating race of classes attempting to catch up to each other.
Monsters with crazy abilities and spell casters being able to become those monsters was just another step on that path. Ape-men who could wear human armor... spells which made the caster melee gods...
In my games I simply didn't allow most of that stuff. That meant not allowing entire splat books, so I did.
I am somewhat worried by Paizo's latest releases frankly. Some of the stuff I am seeing is making me wonder if that race has already started in Pathfinder.
Not sure what to do about it. If you want the game supported, then the company has to sell books. People want new and shiny stuff for their games, and that creates powerful incentive for the game designers to keep pushing the envelope. Because of the near-infinite combinations of powers, spells, feats, skills, abilities and magic items, it is almost inevitable that the game will reach a critical mass where pun-pun is reborn in another form.
But that's OK with me. I still play 3.5. I just don't allow the broken stuff. And my groups tend not to play epic levels because there are other games that do the superhero bit better.
The problem with the wilding clasp wasn't the ability it gave, it was its price, just like most of the stuff in Magic Item Compendium. Seriously, I love the book, but the prices for about 75% of the stuff in there are way off.
I'm not as worried about Paizo because they said up front they would be front loading the Ultimate type of books so that they could get the options out there and actually have a chance to work with them. This means that many of the options are going to over or under powered, but that by the time it comes time to rework the system, the major kinks will be fairly well known.
The whole problem with the druid and cleric is that the people who designed them knew that mechanically, the classes were very strong; they kind of had to be, as the role they were expected to fill was not a particularly glamorous one. They also expected, perhaps unrealistically, that by emphasizing the whole "get your power from someone else who has their own agenda" aspect, that DMs would have the necessary freedom to curtail player abuse. Because this was when organized play was starting to take hold, that way of balancing character power fell out of power rather quickly, as the RPGA understandably needed a more reliable system. Unfortunately, it also meant that a critical part of the checks and balance systems was seriously undermined.
I am somewhat worried by Paizo's latest releases frankly. Some of the stuff I am seeing is making me wonder if that race has already started in Pathfinder.
Anything particular or a general feeling?
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Funny thing was, that Codzilla was screwed by 2 things..
Anti-magic Zones and Suppressing weapons.. both turned them into the weak things they are, over and over
Heck I had a Codzilla be overshadowed by BOTH my Melee Warmage/Warlock and My WTF Ninja build
2 things that would be a rather odd sight if they showed up every session.
Hint: Turning off a class ability does not prove it is balanced.
Maybe your one Codzilla was overshadowed, in one instance. I doubt those builds would hold up in multiple situations.