I saw it in 3.0, 3.5 the Cleric/Druid were worse and in PF we rarely hit the higher levels anyway as the game tends to fall apart around level 10 or so.
I'd just like to know how many consider that a good thing, and how many consider that a bad thing.
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I, and 1 other player in our home games, are no longer allowed to play wizards. After a few games it became clear we didn't need the party unless the adventuring day went more than 10 encounters. As such wizards tend to be rare at our tables. This post encapsulates wizards to me. Either they're so powerful due to system mastery that breaking the game takes effort to prevent or they're not so broken but still powerful.I was barred from playing wizards once.
After playing a fighter for a while, it was requested that I stick to wizards.
Yeah, I can see where people would rather have the all-powerful god Wizard than the not-so-powerful Fighter.
Better to pull your own weight AND everyone else's than not even pull your own, after all.
Never GMed for it, but I've seen the beginnings of the god <Insert caster here> at work once it starts to kick in around level 10+.
I never had too much of a problem with it, but never particularly liked it either. Might've had to do with the fact that the PLAYER was a bit of a doucheweasel though more than anything.
Encounters were doable without him. They were roflstomps with him.
I destroyed the campaign, walking uninjured out of fights that left everybody else dead.
I saw it in 3.0, 3.5 the Cleric/Druid were worse and in PF we rarely hit the higher levels anyway as the game tends to fall apart around level 10 or so.have you ever thought why the game usually fall apart around that level?
It might have connections with lvl 5 spells...
That to but the escalating damage of martial types kind of ruin things as well. Ultimate Campaign was the last PF related product I bought and I have gone to retroclones which are surprisingly fun. We were playing BECMI retroclone the other day and one of the d20 players was amazed at how good 1d10+5 damage was lol. D&DN also seems to be getting better although right now it is a bit meh. Most likely will be ending 11 years of Paizo goodies soon one way or another except maybe the occasional AP and the last one that interested me was Skull and Shackles.
I destroyed the campaign, walking uninjured out of fights that left everybody else dead.I, and 1 other player in our home games, are no longer allowed to play wizards. After a few games it became clear we didn't need the party unless the adventuring day went more than 10 encounters. As such wizards tend to be rare at our tables. This post encapsulates wizards to me. Either they're so powerful due to system mastery that breaking the game takes effort to prevent or they're not so broken but still powerful.I was barred from playing wizards once.
After playing a fighter for a while, it was requested that I stick to wizards.
Yeah, I can see where people would rather have the all-powerful god Wizard than the not-so-powerful Fighter.
Better to pull your own weight AND everyone else's than not even pull your own, after all.
Never GMed for it, but I've seen the beginnings of the god <Insert caster here> at work once it starts to kick in around level 10+.
I never had too much of a problem with it, but never particularly liked it either. Might've had to do with the fact that the PLAYER was a bit of a doucheweasel though more than anything.
Encounters were doable without him. They were roflstomps with him.
Ya, but at least if you were killed you would die. And you didn't have a small army to manage. And you couldn't force an arbitrary number of save or suck/save or die every encounter for free. And you weren't constantly buffed with enough magic to blot out the sun. And you couldn't make skill related things irrelevant by merely casting a low level spell. And you were probably affected by Anti-Magic field. And you lacked the ability to move instantly to one location or even another plane with a standard action.
Don't get me wrong someone with enough system mastery can make a Martial class that can fight well and even make people with less system mastery feel unnecessary. But no matter how well you built your Martial, a Wizard with high system mastery would overshadow even that Martial.
1.) Buff/Control Wizards DO trivialize encounters. There's a reason it's called battlefield CONTROL.
Shrug. I disagree. Rather famously, no air force has ever captured territory, and similarly, no one ever died from a Grease spell. The point of Treantmonk's God build is that, unlike the blaster and save-or-die specialists, the God wizard rarely if ever does damage to anyone, and instead enhances the ability of the rest of the party to take out the opponents. As he put it, "you should consider your primary goal to have your BBEG standing in front of your GC and BSF dazed, stunned, nauseated, STR = 1, Dex = 1, Level = 1, and Blind," none of which actually kills him or even does any hp damage.
But the encounter isn't "trivial," in the sense I understand the word. It's easy, but there's still work for the GC and BSF to do, as opposed to a save-or-die spell that just leaves the rest of the party drooling on themselves.
My Bloody skeletons/Simulacrums/Summoned Monsters/Called Creatures can do the GC and GSF's job just fine thanks. Even better they won't take a share of the loot or ask for buff spells.
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People hear the term 'God Wizard' and think it denotes godlike power, but that is not the meaning.
The idea is taken from mythology. The gods are presumably capable of doing some serious butt-kicking, so why don't they? Because all they do is sit on their mountain and use some mortal agent to do all the dirty work. But what the god does is provide the means for the hero to do what needs to be done: vorpal sword, winged sandals, helm of invisibility...advice...!
So the God Wizard is so called simply because he empowers the rest of the party to be much, much better at doing what needs to be done, all without seeming to do anything (directly) himself.
I once tried to play a god-wizard, using a fairly broad number of third-party publisher resources, in particular one to play an arcane spellcaster that could cast unlimted spells per day, and used a system where I could add metamagic as a skill check without increasing the spell level. Most of the remaining third-party materials were for spells and feats.
Needless to say, it didn't go as planned. Simply put, the GM made sure that the weaknesses of my build stayed relevant, and the dice did the rest.
To put it another way, the campaign kept moving at a pace where I couldn't effectively utilize the ability to cast spells out of combat with no real limit; things were progressing at the rate of days, and we couldn't take weeks off for me to maximize my potential to cast spells over and over to unbalance aspects of the game world.
Moreover, the nature of the campaign involved a lot of powerful mystical forces at work. My ability to utilize some low-level third-party spells that made daily life a lot easier for peasants (and thus start to take over the social infrastructure of the major societies) didn't come to much, because that was hard to do when there were demigods and epic dragons battling across the campaign world (albeit in the background), and most peasants were thinking it was the end of days, and so weren't concerned with the long-term ramifications of spells that could sow their fields for them.
The GM also strictly enforced the time and cost limits that this class had on learning new spells. Moreover, finding new spells was not easy, as even in large cities it could only be done by random determination. He did let me engage in private spell research, but that took even more time and money that my character was always strapped for.
Finally, combat wasn't anything to write home about. Since my character needed twice as long to cast spells as a standard...
Nothing about that third party material sounds remotely good and the character does not sound very optimized. Twice as long to cast spells... you realize a regular Wizard can add multiple metamagics to a spell and still cast as a standard action right? Hell, with Magical Lineage, Wayang Spellhunter, Spell Perfection and Metamagic Rods you can toss around some fancy stuff. Quite frankly, that third party class sounds terrible.
Considering I haven't taken more then 1 round to cast a spell in combat, I really think I am. Time and Gold to learn new spells? Do you not get any for free? I mean I really only need my free spells to undo creation so I'm not sure why Time and Gold are a factor. Furthermore if you get unlimited spells, why not get a Ring of Sustenance and just cast long duration effects all night long? Does the class no offer Animate Dead/Simulacrum/Shrink Item/Explosive Runes/Symbols/Permanency/hour per level buffs? Spells without limit isn't especially great either (unless this class gives Wizard casting without limit, but even then at the action cost it still sounds suspect for viability). You know what else could do "spells" without limit? The 3.5 Warlock, which was pretty mediocre. But please do share the character build and class, I'm very curious now.
That a third party spellcaster is or is not balanced gas no meanigful contribution to the fact pathfinder casters aren't.
Your DM made relevant a bunch of drawbacks that Pathfinder wizards dont have. That's why it is of no hell here.
If you look at my list from the first page of the thread, yes Houserules is one reason why many people haven't seen an all powerful wizard (Along with System mastery, Gentleman's Agreements, Level of the Game and Fun). However, as I note under the Houserules section of my list:
When people talk about the all powerful Wizard, their talking about the kind of Wizard that you can play with the rules that are in the books. That being said, please note that just because a GM can say "Sorry Anzyr, even though the rules let you make infinite Simulacrums of yourself, in my game you can't." does not make Wizard any weaker. The very fact that you need to houserule that (or preferably get a Gentlemen's Agreement) indicates that the class is so strong that you need to change the rules to accommodate it.
Your DM can make everyone fumble their weapons on a natural 1 to hilarious or hazardous results. Such a rule makes classes that depend on the full attack action significantly weaker. (I play a caster in such campaigns or refrain as the DM is unlikely to understand balance with such a rule, but I see similar Fumble houserules often) This houserule however is not relevant when we are discussing the power level of classes. A DM can change any rule and make any class less or more viable sure, but these have no bearing on the default rules.
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That being that an engaged GM who works in the context of a game to keep a class's drawbacks relevant is how you stop issues with "god wizards."
you mean a GM that knows wizards are so much better that purposelly try to build every encounter and the campaign itself to gimp the wizard?
Imagine a GM does that with, say, rogues. Lots of combats vs elementals, oozes, guys with blurr or otger sneak-attack negatting spels. Or fighters facing weapon-inmune swarms, or flying and arrow inmune monsters.Who is going to suffer more?
Most mortals would agree with that statement Alzrius.
you mean a GM that knows wizards are so much better that purposelly try to build every encounter and the campaign itself to gimp the wizard?Hm, no, that's actually not what I mean, or what I said for that matter.
What I said was that GMs should act to stop characters from becoming egregious "god" characters by making sure that their drawbacks remain relevant.
How you got "build every encounter and the campaign itself to gimp the wizard" from that is beyond me.
You don't seem to realize that there's a middle ground between "god" and "gimp."Imagine a GM does that with, say, rogues. Lots of combats vs elementals, oozes, guys with blurr or otger sneak-attack negatting spels. Or fighters facing weapon-inmune swarms, or flying and arrow inmune monsters.
Who is going to suffer more?
First, there is a middle ground but it requires that the Wizard deliberately hold themselves back and when your talking about class balance saying something is ok as long as it doesn't use it's special moves is kind of bad balancing method. Let me show the kind of tactics an all powerful wizard can utilize.
I don't usually have to worry about finding new spells to learn. They are nice to have but hardly necessary. For example at 5th Level, Explosive Runes and Animate Dead, Lesser is extremely potent. Explosive Runes lets you convert a 3rd level spell slot into an damage spell that can be stored until used. Animate Dead, Lesser gives us a free meatshield (tragically we're locked out of the Bloody Skeleton until 7th level). An example of how to combine these two spells is to place Explosive Runes on your new disposable minion and send it into melee combat with the target you want dead. Make sure each rune is on a different object (I like Capes) and have your party member read the explosive runes. Anyone close enough to the Skeleton takes X * 6d6 damage where X is however many Explosive Runes your have stored.
At 7th Level you get access to Animate Dead proper and we can get more then one meatshield that will come back after being destroyed by Explosive Rune. Make sure you collaborate with your divine caster and make these Bloody Skeletons in the area of a Desecrate spell containing an altar to the divine casters deity, so you get 4xCL HD (Keep in mind Bloody skeletons count for double HD) worth of Animate Dead to work with along with free +2 HP per HD.
9th Level is when access to Permanency occurs. I'll admit this level is where picking up extra spells to Permanency on yourself and others becomes handy, but you can do fine without every spell on the Permanency list if you must. Get your caster level up here (I like UMD Bead of Karma).
Some neat Permanency combinations at this level.
Shrink Item - On a wall, use to escape, as a bridge, as a big object to drop on enemies, or as a place to store your Symbols (see below).
See also Tinfoil hat trick - Get yourself a cone shaped hat to duck under when the Antimagic field hits.
Symbol of Pain/Symbol of Slowing (Only if you can add them to your spellbook otherwise skip.) Start accumulating these early and put them on your Shrunken Wall from above. Debuffing spell slot free! (Read up on extending casting time to attune creatures.)
Symbol of Healing (Divine Caster party member) = Free out of combat healing! Never spend another GP on wand of Cure Light Wound again! (Ok, maybe keep a back-up, but I'm paranoid like that) Also make undead regret their unlife choices.
Animate Objects (Divine Caste Party Member)(If you can get 1 more CL, shouldn't be to hard.)
Your limited to Huge objects, but these are unlimited minions which is fantastic, though move action to re-designate targets is a bit meh.
(Material Costs are being paid via Blood Money and before you ask yes I can get my STR that high).
I'm curious how a GM designs encounters around these tactics that a non-caster can contribute to without being redundant/overshadowed/useless.
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But the encounter isn't "trivial," in the sense I understand the word. It's easy, but there's still work for the GC and BSF to do, as opposed to a save-or-die spell that just leaves the rest of the party drooling on themselves.If I hit every enemy in the encounter with a Dazing Fire Snake which leaves them standing there drooling for 5 rounds and the rest of the group beats on them like they were some sort of training dummies then I have trivialised the encounter.
The same is true for Glitterdust, Stinking Cloud and the host of other powerful control powers.
The same is true for the fighter or barbarian that deals 400+ damage per round. His opponent will never act again.
The only time it seemed to be a problem was when the GM's basic setup let it be a problem.
I was the wizard and he wasn't all that terribly optimized.
We had all the time we wanted.
We were rarely surprised.
We could scout or scry virtually everything without being detected.
If a fight looked at all tough, we could just back off and the cleric and wizard would prep specifically for that fight.
We could usually buff all we wanted before an encounter.
So we would buff the martial guys until they were nearly unstoppable and then we had the specifically 'best' spells for nearly every encounter.
Almost the only limit we had was cash to make or way to buy specific magic items. But all the other freedoms more than made up for it.
I don't remember exactly, but I think we were stomping through APL+5 encounters very easily. It got to be boring fairly quickly.
The only time we had any real problems was when chance would catch up with us. The martials would all roll really low on to hits while the monsters were rolling high and the monsters would roll good on saves while we were rolling low. But those instances were rare.
The same is true for the fighter or barbarian that deals 400+ damage per round. His opponent will never act again..
Competent spell casting characters who are reasonably well built are able to take out everything in an encounter in a single round.
Not even close.
Been playing since the 70s and not seen it as problem. Lots of GMs allow 15 minute adventuring days and do not protect their creatures/opponents from scrying.
With proper pacing and monsters/npc acting intelligently wizards, GOD or otherwise are powerful but not dominant.
I have seen every kind of character out shine the rest of the party over the years. Although with the rogue it was only in his own mind (he had a knack of landing the killing blow on powerful creatures and naming himself " giantkiller" dragon killer" etc)
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The same is true for the fighter or barbarian that deals 400+ damage per round. His opponent will never act again.Competent martial characters who are reasonably well built should generally be able to kill a single equal CR opponent in a full attack.
Competent spell casting characters who are reasonably well built are able to take out everything in an encounter in a single round.
There is a rather significant difference there.
The caster expends finite resources to do so.
The marital does not.
There is a rather significant difference there.
Been playing since the 70s and not seen it as problem. Lots of GMs allow 15 minute adventuring days and do not protect their creatures/opponents from scrying.
With proper pacing and monsters/npc acting intelligently wizards, GOD or otherwise are powerful but not dominant.
I have seen every kind of character out shine the rest of the party over the years. Although with the rogue it was only in his own mind (he had a knack of landing the killing blow on powerful creatures and naming himself " giantkiller" dragon killer" etc)
This.
I've been playing for 30+ years and have seen (and been) dominate characters of nearly every class.
The person playing the character is much more important than the character's class.
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Not even close.You have no idea how spell casters work.
God I wish this place had an ignore function.
I am intimately familiar with both the strengths and weaknesses of casters. A high level caster can be exceptionally difficult to kill, but simple survival does not equal successfully resolving encounters.
The same is true for the fighter or barbarian that deals 400+ damage per round. His opponent will never act again.But the encounter isn't "trivial," in the sense I understand the word. It's easy, but there's still work for the GC and BSF to do, as opposed to a save-or-die spell that just leaves the rest of the party drooling on themselves.If I hit every enemy in the encounter with a Dazing Fire Snake which leaves them standing there drooling for 5 rounds and the rest of the group beats on them like they were some sort of training dummies then I have trivialised the encounter.
The same is true for Glitterdust, Stinking Cloud and the host of other powerful control powers.
this is true. However, if the problem isn't solved with damage, the fighter can't help.
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you mean a GM that knows wizards are so much better that purposelly try to build every encounter and the campaign itself to gimp the wizard?Hm, no, that's actually not what I mean, or what I said for that matter.
What I said was that GMs should act to stop characters from becoming egregious "god" characters by making sure that their drawbacks remain relevant.
How you got "build every encounter and the campaign itself to gimp the wizard" from that is beyond me.
you said it yourself.
You don't seem to realize that there's a middle ground between "god" and "gimp."Imagine a GM does that with, say, rogues. Lots of combats vs elementals, oozes, guys with blurr or otger sneak-attack negatting spels. Or fighters facing weapon-inmune swarms, or flying and arrow inmune monsters.
Who is going to suffer more?
Of course there is a middle ground. That's where magus, inquisitors, bards, rangers and paladins live.
What you have said is "casters are not much more powerful than noncasters, if the GM puposelly attack the caster's drawbacks while making adventures built to let rogues and fighters shine and don't attack their drawbacks". This is akin to those "aquaman isn't really less powerful superhero than superman, if your DM make every adventure to be about saving whales".Sure, your wheelchaired char can win a medal too if the DM pits a Special Olympics contest for him. It doesn't make him less handicaped, though.
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Just wanted to state that it's not, "House Ruling" to limit the amount of non core supplements you allow into your campaign. Pathfinder is built with the assumption that the GM can limit the use of certain materials if they become problematic.
Wayang spellhunter/magical lineage hijinks is pretty easy to prevent considering Traits are an optional rule set. Hell it's harder to prevent just flat core paladins winning initiative and 1 shotting your CR appropriate big bad.
Alzrius if you can't get to 51 STR so you can cast Wishes for free with Blood Money, I have to question your level of system mastery, because its really quite simple. (In fairness I only recently discovered a wonderful new item to help out). So let me very quick prove you wrong.
9 Base STR
+10 Form of the Dragon 3
+10 Blood Rage
+2 Succubus Boon (Ideally off a Simulacrum, but a quick summon works to).
+6 Enhancement (Belt of Physical Perfection, make it yourself on the cheap.)
+8 Inherent - Blood Reservoir of Physical Prowess is a +8 Inherent option for 2k Price on the cheap.)
+6 Ring of Inner Fortitude (effectively) =
51 or 25,000 worth of material components and 1 STR left (cause it would suck to fall to 0 while casting).
This is admittedly my level 20 list for Blood money. (Now with Blood Reservoir of Physical Prowess, which is huge savings.) For level 9 - 9 Base + 10 Blood Rage + 8 Inherent + 4 from Bull's Strength get us to 31 and only costs you 2,000 gold. (1,000 if you took Craft Wondrous... you should have).
So now that I've established how easy that is to do, let me correct you on how Blood Money works you only take 1d6 damage regardless of how much STR damage you take. So yes, yes I do get all those free spells.
Now Let me correct your mistakes on the other points.
Explosive Runes: I am not banking on my party member being immune (in fact my strategy requires that your party member not be able to safely read the runes), I'm banking him being able to make Perception Check to read the runes at further than 10 ft. from the Skeleton.
Animate Dead - First of all... I'm not reanimating the same corpse (otherwise Bloody be less valuable). However, when your Animate Dead, Lesser Skeleton detonates... well I imagine it will make some nice new corpses!
Next as you successfully note, casting an evil spell causing an alignment change is not in the rules. Also, why would turning from neutral to Evil make my character an NPC, please cite a page for this as I am unfamiliar with that rule.
Permanency - Not really feeling the limit no. I even acknowledge that the Symbols are nice but skippable if you can't get that.
Shrink Item - If it wasn't obvious, you can have more than 1 wall... and I strongly recommend against dropping your symbol wall.
Symbols of Pain/Slowing - You realize... you can... and this might come as a shock.... make more then 1 symbol. Have fun with making all the checks!
Symbol of Healing - See above.
Animate Objects - I specifically noted you need 1 more CL for this. I also noted how easy it was to get that Caster Level. Do I need to list some options for you? The simplest method is to craft yourself an Orange Ioun Stone for a mere 15k. A wand of Death Knell made by an Anti-Paladin is only 750 gp. If your wealth averse, there a few traits that grant this benefit, such as gifted adept. Furthermore, there is the drug Mumia.
Basically all your post did is demonstrate that you have never considered how powerful all this is.
Side note to Artanthos: My resources are virtually limitless at level 9 even more so at 13th and 17th.
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The same is true for the fighter or barbarian that deals 400+ damage per round. His opponent will never act again.But the encounter isn't "trivial," in the sense I understand the word. It's easy, but there's still work for the GC and BSF to do, as opposed to a save-or-die spell that just leaves the rest of the party drooling on themselves.If I hit every enemy in the encounter with a Dazing Fire Snake which leaves them standing there drooling for 5 rounds and the rest of the group beats on them like they were some sort of training dummies then I have trivialised the encounter.
The same is true for Glitterdust, Stinking Cloud and the host of other powerful control powers.
this is true. However, if the problem isn't solved with damage, the fighter can't help.
All classes have counters. Most wizards won't do much against a dragon with an AMF up.
Personally: my fighter has options other than pure damage, so yes, she remains useful.
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And again that begs my question of: are people who say all of these things about Wizards talking about "in practice"? Because I've read Treatmonk's guides and have watched a lot of people attempt to mimic what they say; and in all my time I have yet to see one come close to overpower the game.
As a tendancy, wizards are powerful, field-dealing forces; but easy enough to take down. Is this just a problem that happens at high levels?
Those people who are talking about the wiz > Have they witnessed a game shut down by a wizard's uberness? That's the whole point of the thread; to find out if "reality" meets theory.
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I've never had a problem with wizards.
As GM I find enemy wizards can be quite deadly as they don't have to conserve resources as well I can pick the spells for the encounter with knowledge to defeat the entire party if I chose to. So I need to watch that when designing an encounter with casters in general really. But from player point of view I know how handle the casters in a party.
The easiest way to handle caster is give them something to use their spells on. This causes them to eat resources. If caster is getting out of hand target their weaknesses. Typically a caster that is too powerful is one who focused their spell selection and magic items on particular specialty leaving tons of weaknesses. If you don't take advantage of that they get out of hand really quick. Target the weakness and they will start to shore up those weaknesses. In doing that they aren't as powerful as they were before.
Also design adventures to handle what caster can do. Modify published adventures to handle how you caster play.
Don't get carried away with this. Let the wizard have his day to shine. It's a balancing act. I let the wizard pull the I win card at least once per level to let them revel in the power they have. They worked hard to get there so let them have their fun. Just don't let that happen all the time otherwise they will get bored. Sometimes I set up challenge that only the wizard can solve and if he does things are lot easier if not then it's the hard way. Either way the adventure continues on though. It lets the wizard feel clever when they figure out that certain combo of spell just made their job so much easier.
The same is true for the fighter or barbarian that deals 400+ damage per round. His opponent will never act again.But the encounter isn't "trivial," in the sense I understand the word. It's easy, but there's still work for the GC and BSF to do, as opposed to a save-or-die spell that just leaves the rest of the party drooling on themselves.If I hit every enemy in the encounter with a Dazing Fire Snake which leaves them standing there drooling for 5 rounds and the rest of the group beats on them like they were some sort of training dummies then I have trivialised the encounter.
The same is true for Glitterdust, Stinking Cloud and the host of other powerful control powers.
this is true. However, if the problem isn't solved with damage, the fighter can't help.
All classes have counters. Most wizards won't do much against a dragon with an AMF up.
most fighters won't do much against a flying dragon with AMF either.
Personally: my fighter has options other than pure damage, so yes, she remains useful.
Let's see a few examples where my fighters did not do so well, to see how your fighters did. Maybe I can learn a few things.
1) finding a hidden kraken in the bottom of the sea.
2) bringing the whole party to a flying castle in the clouds.
3) learning about the real father of an archenemy
4) raising an ally from death.
5) defeating an army by your own.
6) deceiving a hostile member of the king council to vote for something he is fanatically opposed to.
7) fighting a high level oponent that gly, is immune to ramged attacks, and instantly dispels any "fly","overland flight" and "airwalk" spell in 10' radious of him.
8) infiltrating a cave with several vigilant guards watching the only entrance.
9) continue pushing a rave against vlock dungeon after all weapons have beem sundered.
All of those are real examples that have happened in adventures I have played or DM. And in all of them,a caster trivialized it.
I destroyed the campaign, walking uninjured out of fights that left everybody else dead.
Which is what happens when your GM makes his campaigns out of papier mache.
"you should consider your primary goal to have your BBEG standing in front of your GC and BSF dazed, stunned, nauseated, STR = 1, Dex = 1, Level = 1, and Blind," none of which actually kills him or even does any hp damage.
But the encounter isn't "trivial," in the sense I understand the word. It's easy, but there's still work for the GC and BSF to do, as opposed to a save-or-die spell that just leaves the rest of the party drooling on themselves.
Perhaps you should correct your understanding of the word.
"Trivial" does not mean "Literally no effort is involved". It means very little effort is expended, making the encounter easy (and therefore unimportant).
If the BBEG (the capstone of the campaign, or at least a part of it) is unable to act (x2 with Nauseated AND Stunned), has a 50% miss chance when he DOES get to attack, and is taking penalties in the double digits to his to-hit/damage and AC (if his Dex/Str/Level have been drained to 1), the encounter is TRIVIAL. There is no threat that this BBEG now poses. He is unimportant in the grand scheme, there is no suspense, and he WILL die without a Deus Ex Machina.
When an encounter is turned from a matter of "If" to "When" by the actions of a single person, the encounter has been trivialized.
Similarly, if the Air Force wipes out 99% of the enemy forces and the Army is sent in to clean up the last 3 guys and secure the area, it's pretty damn clear who did all the work even if somebody else laid the finishing blow.
the GM kept a fairly tight rein on the availability of spells in general
So basically the same argument I've seen elsewhere, casters aren't overpowered if your GM nerfs them.
The same is true for the fighter or barbarian that deals 400+ damage per round. His opponent will never act again.
Note the singular.
You've already placed a huge limitation on yourself, here. You've essentially written off all spells except those gained as part of character creation and level advancement.
Let's assume then that you start with a 20 Intelligence. You'll have (we'll assume that you always take the highest level spells you can):
"All" 0-level spells.
8 1st-level spells to start with.
2 more 1st-level spells at 2nd level.
4 spells of each spell level thereafter (e.g. two 2nd-level spells at 3rd and 4th level, etc).That's incredibly limiting, particularly for some of the combinations you want to bring out.
Two spells every level is not particularly limiting when you realize there are quite a few versatile spells you can pick up and rock a whole game with if you need to.
As well, he still has the OPTION to get other spells, and for fairly cheap too.
Leaving aside this spell's abysmal damage, I'm not sure what you think that this does in terms of combat application. I suppose you could say that you take out a parchment with them and shove them in the face of your enemies, which makes them read them and causes them to detonate...but since you're holding it, you'll also be close enough to take the damage with no save.
In other words, having a hundred pages of explosive runes doesn't really earn you anything.
Who said anything about pages?
Corpses count as objects last I checked. Send in the Bloody Skeleton suicide squad.
cheap too.
Which has several problems unto itself.
Leaving aside the issue of the dead bodies, the text of the spell states that "anyone next to the runes (close enough to read them)" - this is important. It can easily be understood that you need to be next to the runes to be close enough to read them...any further away, and you can't.
Why is that problematic? Well, because if you use your plan to have your party members read the runes, they'll also have to be right next to it. Which means that they'll be affected.
Now, you might think that they'll be unscathed, since you can designate people who aren't affected by the runes, right? Wrong. The spell says that you can denote people who can read the runes without setting them off. But that does nothing for them in terms of avoiding the damage of triggered runes.
In other words, either your party members will be too far away to trigger the runes, or they'll be close enough to read them but will be blown up by them anyway, or you'll have them tagged as "safe," in which case they can't detonate them to begin with.
You do realize enemies can read too?
And unless they close or avert their eyes they can't really avoid looking at them.
Seems like a win-win to me. X*6d6 damage or total concealment for your whole party.
Again, this is an excellent way to have your character become an NPC due to being evilly-aligned.
Which is more non-rules supported Fiat, and has no value here. There is no rule that says "Only NPCs can be Evil".
This is without getting into the fact that animate dead flat-out says that you can't keep reanimating a destroyed undead creature.
He didn't say it did. I'm guessing you're unaware what Bloody Skeletons are.
"A bloody skeleton is destroyed when reduced to 0 hit points, but it returns to unlife 1 hour later at 1 hit point, allowing its fast healing thereafter to resume healing it. A bloody skeleton can be permanently destroyed if it is destroyed by positive energy, if it is reduced to 0 hit points in the area of a bless or hallow spell, or if its remains are sprinkled with a vial of holy water."
They're the perfect suicide bombers. They can do it over, and over, and over...
Besides that, it runs into all of the same problems as above.
Theory crafting with Schrodinger's Wizard is one thing.Actual play experience with a competent GM gives a very different set of results.
And ye none of this is Schroedinger's Wizard. These are all things any Wizard can do quite easily. It's not about having the right spell for every conceivable situation, it's having these spells KNOWN (which is easy) since you can cast them on an off day or set it up a little at a time, and then you can also have your specialty and good utility spells every other time.
And again that begs my question of: are people who say all of these things about Wizards talking about "in practice"? Because I've read Treatmonk's guides and have watched a lot of people attempt to mimic what they say; and in all my time I have yet to see one come close to overpower the game.
As a tendancy, wizards are powerful, field-dealing forces; but easy enough to take down. Is this just a problem that happens at high levels?
Those people who are talking about the wiz > Have they witnessed a game shut down by a wizard's uberness? That's the whole point of the thread; to find out if "reality" meets theory.
When I play with wizards, or DM one, we agree to a Genleman's agreement. We leave most the sheaningams out of the game and we keep it fair by decision. That doesn't mean tge wizard isn't really powerful though.
In the campaign we are playing know, our wizard never optimize. He is a very casual player. That said, he could solo the adventure as writen.
Right now, he has or could havr (although never uses them because of him not wanting the spotlight):
2 bloody skeleton of storm giants riding the fast zombies of two freat wyrms.
A planar binded cornugon which rides a Giant Advanced Caern Linorm Bloody skeleton.
The simulacrum of a pit fiend riding the simulacrum of said Linorm.
And that's without even trying. He has just used the stuff he has seen or fought in the game. He could be using dread wraith sheanigans, create a horde of simulacrums, start using planar binding, animate object, polymorph any object, etc.
And notice that I haven't mentioned him yet. He can even cast spells and do stuff, go figure
All this talk about Anti-Magic Field makes me wonder how many people realize Aroden's Spellbane is a thing for high-level casters (it has the wonderful miracle of hour/level duration as well! A++ would cast again). For your selected Spells I recommend Aroden's Spellbane, Antimagic Field and Mage's Disjunction. The other two are at your discretion (If you don't know how to get a CL of 25 read my last post.)
So ya at high levels, even Antimagic field and Mage's Disjunction can't keep a Wizard in check.
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No.
The purpose of the "god wizard," at least according to Treantmonk's definition of the term, is to wield the wizard's power without causing "issues" because you focus on using godlike power chiefly to support teammates who lack such, rather than focusing on hogging all the glory to yourself.
So why would one expect issues? The entire point of the style is to avoid the issues that can come up with other types of arcanist.
And again that begs my question of: are people who say all of these things about Wizards talking about "in practice"? Because I've read Treatmonk's guides and have watched a lot of people attempt to mimic what they say; and in all my time I have yet to see one come close to overpower the game.
Well, one thing that people are ignoring is that Treantmonk's "God" is not an overpowering stack of uber; it's a simply a wizardly focus that is effective in a wide range of situations and that plays better with the rest of the group than many of the other approaches to wizardliness. The save-or-suck specialist such as an enchanter is, for example, generally worse for the game. There are basically three choices -- either you're facing something immune to enchantment spells, in which case the enchanter is useless and everyone else has to cover for him, the opponent makes his save, in which case see above, or the enchanter leaves everyone with nothing left to do.
Treantmonk's God instead makes "your Big Stupid Fighter into a Colossal, Stupid Fighter on crack, and your Glass Cannon into an Adamantium Chain Gun," which in turn means that they have something useful to do (since they're doing the actual dirty work of taking down the 400+hp dragon) and ensures that they have fun (because they're taking down a 400+hp dragon).
As a tendancy, wizards are powerful, field-dealing forces; but easy enough to take down. Is this just a problem that happens at high levels?
I don't think it's a problem at all. In my experience, most of the people who complain about overpowered wizards are theorycrafters, often theorycrafters who aren't familiar with the actual rules. For example, the people who are talking about using the Blood Money spell to cast Wish at will haven't usually thought about the 51 Strength damage.
Not even close.You have no idea how spell casters work.
God I wish this place had an ignore function.
My friend, I have been playing this game since 1974. I played OD&D, AD&D, 3.0, 3.5 & 4th ed, not to mention Pathfinder, of course. I wrote the very first Non-TSR D&D Supplement and have designed spellcasting classes. I have likely been playing spellcasters longer than you have been alive. Tell me again I have no idea of how spellcasters work?
I am well aware of the tier system and of "quadratic wizards vs linear fighters’. As we approach 20th level, spellcasters often get much more powerful than a martial character.
No doubt, a Spellcaster can take out “everything” in some encounters- heck, a fireball against a bunch of rats will likely take them out, even if they save. But a heck, a fighter can take out “everything” in some encounters too.
But against decent foes? Better hope the foes are lumped together in such a way you can target them all with a single spell, none of them have immunities, resistances, SR, ER evasion, high touch attack or whatever protects vs that spell. "Not even close."