The Glade 4.0

Yes, because that city would never have another wizard or other spellcaster that might take exception to such crude tactics, or hidden monsters living there like.. a silver dragon in human form or almost anything else. There's all kinds of ways the DM can counter crude tactics like air bombardment with fireballs without a single houserule. The only way that tactic works is if the "city" is a pathetic hamlet, or there are remarkably few wizards and other spellcasters in the world to begin with and the PC is one of them, in which case he should be bombing cities to bits with fireballs because the DM designed a world to allow a wizard PC to do precisely that. If the DM designs a low-magic world and allows a powerful spellcaster PC.. it's his own fault.

The real city-destroying absurdity is the Locate City Bomb and other such rules-lawyering. I don't want to try to reproduce the description of how it works myself because I don't remember the details but I'm sure a quick search should find it. That's where the "the system is broken!" arguments get stupid. The easy answer is: "DM call. You cannot attach energy effects to Locate City or other similar spells that have no physical effect to attach to." Inevitably the RAW-mongers and people who have an emotional need to prove how awful 3.X is start shouting "but that just proves the system is broken by RAW! If it weren't the DM wouldn't need to do anything!"

This is a perfect stolen concept fallacy because the RAW is written to run with a DM managing it who is expected to prevent this kind of absurdity. The system is far too complex to playtest out every possible absurd interaction of rules like Pun Pun or the Build a Victory Class Star Destroyer abuse of the crafting and skill rules or the Locate city Bomb or the combinations of action-economy-breaking contingencies, time stops and what the **** ever else. That's part of the job of a DM; to say "look, yes, the rules, read technically, say you can do that, but I'm making a house rule right now that you can't - and really, don't try to break the game. There's 4 other people here, including me, trying to ahve fun and I spent 6 hours writing up this stuff and you want to just **** it all up in one round for no reason other than to prove you can dig int he books. Stop being a dick or I'm not sharing my pizza anymore."

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That's indeed the intent, but the Law of Unintended Consequences asserts itself when mixed with other spells, especially other ones that defy the normal action economy.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The chances of any given city having a high level wizard is quite low. High level wizards are rare because it takes so long and entails so much risk. Given the equipment difference in NPC and PC's as outlined in the books its very very unlikely most NPC wizards will survive their teen levels if they even make it that far.

And yes DE we are talking about "according to the rules" because that is the only shared standards that exist. I would also find it quite odd if any given DM were to always have a high level wizard around to counter destroying a city because that is unrealistic.

Lets assume a high level fighter and high level wizard both want to destroy X city and both are naked. Both wait or arrange for most or all high level NPC's to be of town (wizard won't care about high level melee's as the wizard will be flying and improve invised). They both wait till night to attack.

At the worst the warrior is swarmed by town guard aiding another and wearing him down. At worst the wizard burns and kills only parts of the city because enough low level people were there to put out fires and swarm the summoned creatures with enough spells that some of them made them poof.

At best the warrior runs around naked with a weapon killing random semi important people and throwing as many fire bombs as he can till he is pumped full of arrows. At best the town is a still burning inferno with a few fire immune gated in demons to ensure the escaping populations are mostly slaughtered and the wizard is currently at home with the most buxom of the city giving him a nice foot massage thnx dominate person.

If your DM is ALWAYS countering things that should be surprises to people with far too many high level NPC's too well equipped for what the world (so far in your gaming with them) showed there to be - the DM is also a problem.


Suffice to say naked high level wizard >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> naked high level fighter.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Again you're ignoring the 'naked high level wizard' totally unable to cast any spells because they lack a spellbook.

Equipment is part of game balance. Thats why wizards have a far more restrictive armor & weapon selection.

If we're going to go 'totally without equipment' the classes that will fare ok-to-decent in a fight without specialized feats:
Monks, Sorcerers or other class that doesn't have to study a spellbook for spells, with spells that dont require material components, and druids.

Of those, druids are probably the most lethal in pure melee.

Furthermore, if your players are raining this kind of destruction on the populace, the GM can certainly let them, but any GM worth his salt will make them pay an even higher price. Assassins in the night, retribution of a deity, or vengeful dragons after the fact.

Wizards don't need a spellbook to cast spells. They need one to memorize spells. A thief who steals a spellbook from a wizard after he's memorized his spells is in for trouble if that wizard happens to have the right spells memorized (and any prepared wizard should be paranoid enough to have huge contingency plans for the theft/loss of a spellbook).

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

The chance of any given city having a high level wizard is quite high in most prepared settings like FR, and in any prepared setting it is whatever the DM says it is. The DMG suggestions for world building are only suggestions, not rules. As for the equipment differences, those are not rules either and do not apply to NPC adventurers, especially if... the DM says so.



"The rules" are written under the assumption of change by the DM and so no, they are not the only "common standards that exist". Proving that a wizard is more powerful than a fighter at a certain level within RAW is pointless. The question is, can we have a fun game where Joe plays a fighter and Tim plays a wizard, and can it be done with a reasonable amount of effort by the DM, or does he have to redesign major game elements to make it work. The answer is no, he doesn't, especially if Tim is not a total *******.

According to who it's unrealistic? Practically every city of any size in FR has a wizard at least capable of countering a flying invisible enemy. I don't find it any more unrealistic than a fantasy setting is in the first place.



What is the point of this utterly silly comparison? If a high level fighter wanted to destroy a city, he'd go A) get himself a weapon and armor and B) get himself an army, in any kind of campaign of interest. Who in the hell plays in a campaign where fighters (or wizards for that matter) strip naked to wipe out a city? Yes, we get it; it's really easy to prove that wizards are more powerful than fighters if you're A) a rules lawyer and B) you invent silly scenarios that make sense only within their own self-contained vaccuum.. and in this case not even then. Really, naked fighter attacks city? What's his wisdom score, a 2?



It's a problem if the DM makes things like wiping out cities a challenge, rather than doing it with impunity? What the **** is the point of playing then?



The fact that you need to specify "naked" in the first place says multitudes about the relevance of this argument and your motives for making it.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I think it's pretty obvious that TheRiov is saying that if the wizard is naked, how did he conveniently have access to his spellbook to memorize spells?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Naked high level wizard vs naked high level fighter comes completely down to spell selection that day and encounter distance. If naked high level fighter can lay a hand on naked high level wizard (even with epic mage armor) naked high level wizard is toast.

A naked high level fighter still gets four attacks (or more) a round, good fort and reflex saves. Yeah if he takes a weird or phantasmal killer to the face it could get dicey.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I think Unicron would in a fight against the Death Star.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Who's crossing systems? I'm trying to point out while wizards have an increased potential for damage and mayhem, they are balanced by being squishy. It takes fewer mistakes/lucky hits to bring down a wizard than a warrior.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Heh. Nah wasn't trying to say that anyone was crossing systems. It was more "the geeky arguing feels like it's starting to get out of control and needs a reality check."

Don't get me wrong, I am the "Rules Lawyer" at all tables. I am that guy who has to be absolutely correct on a ruling and flips through the books, even after the party/DM has moved on, to prove it. I am not so terrible that I refuse to concede RAI over RAW (Rules as Intended and Rules as Written, for those not a part of this world). But I will consult a bevy of other Rules Lawyers on the net in those circumstances.

So, yes, I understand the merits of arguing rules. But there comes a point when every person must say to themselves, "You know... this is just a game and this horse has been beaten into a demilich."

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

if that were possible, the members of this board are responsible for the creation of more demiliches than the entire Legion of Sadist DM's put together.

Wanting to accurately know what the book says to do before making a ruling, and not simply disregarding minor points of the rules as to inconvenient to even look up is not being a rules-lawyer. A rules-lawyer is someone for whom intent does not exist, or at least, someone who cannot grasp that there may be more than one way to read a rule, and who likes to think they have a veto over the DM, or that the DM must anticipate each and every problem that might appear regarding the rules and make an explicit houserule to cover it before a campaign starts or he's "violating a contract" or something. You can usually tell these people because they're either either A) on the internet deeply engaged in RAW arguments or B) are trying in some way to equate DM on-the-fly rulings they disagree with to real or imagined violations of the Constitution of whatever nation suits their fancy.

Yes, it's a very geeky argument. Worse, this "naked wizard vs naked fighter" argument represents the worst of the edition wars debates. Yes, a naked wizard who has been allowed to memorize spells (not even necessarily all of them) can trounce a naked fighter unless we contrive a situation where the fighter can grapple before the wizard can act. However, the "naked" condition is an obvious rigging of the scenario in favor of the wizard in the first place. Most of these arguments based on classes confronting a particular challenge or confronting each other, if you look carefully, have had the situation rigged, sometimes cleverly and subtly, and sometimes in obvious and silly ways like the "naked fighter" example. This is a large part of why they tend to miss the point: they exist in a vaccuum and people tend to rush into the scenario to do battle for their favorite class without thinking to ask "wait a minute.. why are we having a debate over whether a monk can kill a balor in one round if the monk and the balor are inexplicably sitting in the middle of a perfectly open flat field on a sunny afternoon, and how does the monk have surprise in this unlikely event?" Welll, to prove that monks suck of course. Obviously, if a monk can't kill a balor in 1 round at level 20, the entire class must be totally worthless for any purpose whatsoever!

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The naked element was used to highlight the inherent balance difference between the classes which is what we were discussing.

Give me a high level wizard with shapechange naked versus a full equipped equal level fighter and the wizard will still win.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

The strangest thing about these arguments, to me, is that I always thought pnp games were meant to be played among friends. I find it hard to believe that balance would ever be an issue among friends, as long as other classes aren't rendered obselete, since most of the fun is supposed to come from developing a character and a fantasy world. The "overpowered" nature of magic in those settings always made sense to me, since a mage was capable of the supernatural actions, whereas a fighter was only capable of well-executed natural actions, albeit aided by supernatural equipment.

Clearly, I need to play more DnD.

That's what I was pointing out about the DM saying "look, quit being an *******." Or the other players.

Pointing out that a wizard is more powerful than a fighter with 9th level spells in play is rather pointless. That isn't the issue in and of itself. The issue occurs when someone tries to trivialize the other party members and DM effort through combinations of abilities that really weren't supposed to be used that way.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Well yeah Neksar. I pointed out that in games run by good DMs, I've never felt useless compared to other party members compared to the casters.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Minor quibble: Shapechange requires wearing a 1500gp focus on your head. Your naughty bits may still be dangling (though perhaps not far enough to be visible behind your ridiculous wizard beard), but you aren't truly naked.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Does it define which head?

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Holy shitsnacks!

that's not a minor quibble. Give the warrior 1500gp worth of gear (actually add in the cost of a spellbook and the cost of scribing a shapechange spell too)

Well, now he's specifying a wizard with 1500 GP worth of gear (a spell focus) casting shapechange versus a fighter with anywhere between 340,000 and 760,000 GP of gear. That's a significant difference in itself; with an extra 420,000 GP to play with, not to mention 3 additional feats, I'm sure it's possible to dig through the books and come up with a fighter that has a decent chance of countering shapechange at 20th level, even if it's much harder at 17th level.

However, since this is an encounter in a vaccuum, I can easily just cross-class skill points into Use Magic Device, and if the fighter is a human and I ahve a 32-point buy it's not hard to imagine I have at least a minimal charisma bonus for the skill, and my human and minimal INT skill point bonuses (don't laugh; Combat Expertise takes a 13 intelligence) and still have skill points for other skills, which I don't even need anyhow for a one-shot fight, and, using a rather unconventional build, have a decent chance of beating the wizard.

Again, this is silly. Yes, high-level wizards are more powerful than high-level fighters, but at the point that shapechange is available, so what? They're teaming up, not facing off with each other, and it is hardly a foregone conclusion if they did.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

...

If we're assuming fully kitted Level 20 Characters, then Rogue > *.

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Perhaps, perhaps not. Again, comparing characters at level 20 is not terribly productive, especially when you consider the enormous number of PrCs and multiclass combinations you can build as well.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Straight Rogue > * at Level 20 Assuming Max DMG Wealth, Items, etc. 3.x's biggest fault was over favoring the skill monkeys.

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There's no such thing as "Rogue 20." The class is only 19 levels long.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █