Tomb of Battle ques.

[Dominicius]

So wait, is the crusader bad or is the swordsage bad? I can't tell from this discussion.

Swordsage only needs full BAB and Adaptive Style as a bonus feat and the Crusader has a broken stance progression list which is fixed if you let him learn stances one level later.

[Username17]

So wait, is the crusader bad or is the swordsage bad? I can't tell from this discussion.

Swordsage only needs full BAB and Adaptive Style as a bonus feat and the Crusader has a broken stance progression list which is fixed if you let him learn stances one level later.

Sword Sage is a shitty class that does shitty things. Crusader is a borked class that takes a lot of fiddling to use effectively. But Sword Sage requires you to convince the DM that the class is fucked and needs to be overhauled in order to function. Crusader requires a fair amount of system mastery and a dip of multiclassing to use effectively, but can be used effectively as written with some min/max work.

They are both "bad" in that they shouldn't have cleared playtest in the condition they were in. But Crusader is usable, while the Swordsage is not.

-Username17

[Winnah]

Stupid caster tricks are probably not worth mentioning, but the Ruby Knight Vindicator and Jade Pheonix Mage both offer some specialised tricks. Potentially decent if you wanted to play a second string melee caster.

Lost caster levels is equivelant to playing the game on hard mode though.

[Ice9]

I've had pretty good success using Swordsage actually, especially when multiclassed. In four levels, you only lose 1 point of BAB, and not all the feat chains even care about that (not talking Tome here, obviously). Yeah, you have a crappy recovery mechanism, even with Adaptive Style. But OTOH, most fights don't go long enough for that to matter.

Of course, I wasn't at the level of an optimal caster, and I had to moderately optimize the other aspects like feats and equipment, but that's pretty much par for the course for a non-Tome non-caster.

[Midnight_v]

Um... Because you are stupid?

What an fucking moron you are Kaelik, you can't be like this in real life, you're like that one internet cartoon where all you can think of to say is "Shitfuk".
Even if you're right who gives a fuck what you have to say, you're simply needlessly unpleasant

Why is a Balor standing within charge range of a Warblade and rolling Init?

And seriously if you reduce combat to monsters always having suprise, always having action advantage, always "just" out of range, no one will ever catch up.

Level 20 cage matches are stupid

Fair enough.
Lord knows there are people who scry up all the spell list and yeah so its cage matching in that instance, also the point of the whole thing is to see what can be DONE to let them actually compete. Though honestly right this second I'd be just as happy if you'd go bite the head of your own dick off, as hear your shitty responses.

The Warblade has some neat tricks. But fundamentally at 20th level he can probably pull a successful save out of his ass and do a fuck tonne of damage in melee. That is not deep enough to handle 20th level tactics. Warblades don't matter on a 20th level battlefield. But then, nothing matters on a 20th level battlefield except changing up your super combo enough that whatever you happen to be fighting today doesn't have an answer for whatever doom you have in store for them

While warblades and co, are still figuring out how to "get there" and the such. Though now I see why foil and Primal Assault matter so much. . .

@lago...
Some of that I agree with, some of that, I don't like the comparison, to "all the other classes" and mutlclassing works better with them.

[Username17]

You have an extra close quote tag at the end.

But basically: the higher level you go, the more absolute the effects are and the more you need a broad range of counters. Basilisks and shit exist at low level, but their attacks are gaze attacks and you can fight them at a disadvantage by just closing your eyes and making listen checks. At higher levels, the death effects just happen, and you need some kind of actual ability to not die.

Warblade and Crusader stances just don't keep up with the needs of their level. At first level, "Leading the Charge" is handing out small bonuses to damage when your allies charge. That's pretty nifty, and makes the difference sometimes between dropping a gnoll and not doing it. People are glad you are around. But at mid-level? What the fuck is a 10th level character supposed to get excited about when "Press the Advantage" is giving them a second 5 foot step? It lets them fuck with enemies by using a polearm, but glaive vs. longsword duels are not especially common at 10th level. At 16th level, "Swarm Tactics is giving a +5 bonus to your allies to hit enemies you are adjacent to. But at 16th level, people who routinely concern themselves with making attack rolls don't normally fail, and no one spends much time adjacent to monsters.

The Book of Nine Swords abilities are basically stuff that would be neat to have in the first 10 levels or so, but they are dragged out across 20 for no particular reason.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

Um... Because you are stupid?

What an fucking moron you are Kaelik, you can't be like this in real life, you're like that one internet cartoon where all you can think of to say is "Shitfuk".

Except for the part where I explicitly explained why you are wrong. That part wasn't shit fuck. When people are stupid IRL, I do in fact tell them they are stupid.

Even if you're right who gives a fuck what you have to say, you're simply needlessly unpleasant.

Welcome to the gaming, whether or not I am right is the only thing that matters.

Why is a Balor standing within charge range of a Warblade and rolling Init?

And seriously if you reduce combat to monsters always having suprise, always having action advantage, always "just" out of range, no one will ever catch up.

Some classes are capable of not being surprised by the Balor, those classes do not get surprised. If you class has absolutely nothing that prevents it from being surprised, then you damn well have to be able to win the fight when it surprises you.

If you were fighting a Tarrasque, you wouldn't be surprised, but if you are fighting a Balor, you will be, because you have nothing to detect it before you die.

[Swordslinger]

-Blasphemy: stopping people from casting spells is very easy, so you just do that. Maybe some of you will die, but you live in a world with raise dead so shut the hell up, ok?

I'd think if stopping people from casting spells was so easy, casters wouldn't reign supreme.

Astral projection: You knock out your enemy. Done. Killing him snaps him back to his body, but punching him in the face and then keeping him unconscious is just as good as going to his house on some other plane of existence and stabbing him there.

Of course, you can also charm, dominate, put him into suspended animation underground forever, petrify, drop Int or Wis or Cha to 0, drug him, move his soul into a prison, or use any number of other effects to keep him unconscious or not under his own will.

Knock him out with what? There any spells I know of that actually do that. And those that do will get screwed over by spell turning anyway.

And come on... you're telling me the guy with AP isn't going to have mindblank up to stop domination or charm? Or let alone protection from evil... Yet, you're accusing me of not knowing 3E. The denfail is strong with this one.

I mean, it's not even a coincidence that Gate cheese happens at the same time as True Resurrection, an effect that can bring you back from the dead without needing even a body.

Actually it is a coincidence. The designers never even intended for gate to be used as a death spell, so the idea that they somehow planned for it is giving them WAY more credit than they deserve. Are you that blinded by fanboyism that you really believe that? Seriously dude... wow. That'd be sad.

These are the very same guys that couldn't fathom why people would be playing the game with anything other than fireballs and lightning bolts. Yet they're also the genius masterminds who anticipated an out-of-the-box use of the gate spell and created another specifically to deal with it. Are you actually that deluded to believe that? Because if you are... wow dude, just... wow.

I dunno about you dude, but when I look at the 3.0 ranger or monk, I don't think of game design genius.

[Archmage]

As an aside, I'm pretty sure the "Tomb of Battle" is full of swordwraiths.

[Username17]

As an aside, if you gave out martial adept abilities at the literal character level that they are listed at instead of the levels where you'd get an equivalent spell level, they'd be OK. I mean a "good" 5th level maneuver is a standard attack that does normal damage and forces a save versus one round daze. That's pretty fucking pathetic for 10th level, but it's pretty neat at 5th level. You're fighting like an Ettin, and you could really use an extra round of not getting pounded down.

The truth is, there really isn't anything in the book that you couldn't give out to 9th level characters and feel OK about that. The actual high end - where monsters tunnel out of distant dimensions and have strange magics that take over your mind - really doesn't happen for martial adepts.

It's better than the Fighter, obviously. Because even having abilities that the Wizard would have respected a few levels ago will keep you from getting kicked out of the party at 10th level. But by the time the Wizard gets greater planar binding, the martial adepts aren't really contributing anything.

-Username17

[K]

-Blasphemy: stopping people from casting spells is very easy, so you just do that. Maybe some of you will die, but you live in a world with raise dead so shut the hell up, ok?

I'd think if stopping people from casting spells was so easy, casters wouldn't reign supreme.

Stopping spells is easy. You ready an action for the caster to cast the spell, then hit them with a damaging effect. Chances are good they won't make the Concentration skill and the spell is ruined.

This is assuming you don't just toss down a stun, hold, paralyze, or one of many other effects that stop spellcasting. The list really is too long to even attempt to write here.

Even then, it doesn't matter. Blasphemy is weaksauce when not used by someone with a caster level bonus. This means that when a CR 20 out-of-the-box Pit Fiend tosses out his Caster Level 18 blasphemy, the fact that the PCs are probably level 19 or 20 means that they aren't affected at all.

Sure, if it was a fight with level 17 or 18s vs a CR 20, people are going to get boned, but that's the expected result of fighting anything that's much more powerful than you without special protections.

Of course, at those levels you probably do have SR, random immunities that negate blasphemy's effects, or have your own regular protections that negate some or all of a blasphemy. The spell might not be a threat at all, depending on the party.

Astral projection: You knock out your enemy. Done. Killing him snaps him back to his body, but punching him in the face and then keeping him unconscious is just as good as going to his house on some other plane of existence and stabbing him there.

Of course, you can also charm, dominate, put him into suspended animation underground forever, petrify, drop Int or Wis or Cha to 0, drug him, move his soul into a prison, or use any number of other effects to keep him unconscious or not under his own will.

Knock him out with what? There any spells I know of that actually do that. And those that do will get screwed over by spell turning anyway.

And come on... you're telling me the guy with AP isn't going to have mindblank up to stop domination or charm? Or let alone protection from evil... Yet, you're accusing me of not knowing 3E. The denfail is strong with this one.

Sigh.

Non-lethal damage can be done with any physical attack, and it knocks people out when it exceeds your current HPs. For casters, you probably just have to summon an elemental or something to do the final blow, but nonlethal damage is available to all characters at level 1.

That being said, mind blank and protection of evil protect casters from about four of the thirty or forty effects that could be used to disable a astral projectioned caster, and you'd know that if you knew the game.

I mean, it's not even a coincidence that Gate cheese happens at the same time as True Resurrection, an effect that can bring you back from the dead without needing even a body.

Actually it is a coincidence. The designers never even intended for gate to be used as a death spell, so the idea that they somehow planned for it is giving them WAY more credit than they deserve. Are you that blinded by fanboyism that you really believe that? Seriously dude... wow. That'd be sad.

They didn't, but they did assume that people would be getting disintgrated, changed into other forms, turned into stone, made into the undead, and swallowed and then consumed, etc., several levels earlier.

The fact that gate has an unforeseen lethal effect doesn't mean that the game wasn't ready for total body destruction several levels ago (resurrection is 7th level, and only needs a tiny bit of remains, for example... even the left-over dust from being disintegrated is mentioned in the spell as sufficient).

In a very literal sense, gate comes online when players are personally casting Wishes and Miracles that bring people back from any condition.

As various ways to die were designed, ways to be brought back were also designed. That wasn't even the designer intent, but the result of several editions and a million hours of playtesting.

[Swordslinger]

Stopping spells is easy. You ready an action for the caster to cast the spell, then hit them with a damaging effect. Chances are good they won't make the Concentration skill and the spell is ruined.

This assumes you win initiative. And if you did that, you probably already won the battle, cause this is 3-fucking-E bitches.

Non-lethal damage can be done with any physical attack, and it knocks people out when it exceeds your current HPs. For casters, you probably just have to summon an elemental or something to do the final blow, but nonlethal damage is available to all characters at level 1.

Isn't the whole point of this thread how you're not going to get in melee with a spellcaster in 3E? I don't see where you're going with this. It seems like you're just playing "move the goalposts" denfail on me.

If you think HP damage is relevant at high level... maybe you're the one who doesn't know the game.

That being said, mind blank and protection of evil protect casters from about four of the thirty or forty effects that could be used to disable a astral projectioned caster, and you'd know that if you knew the game.

This is the problem. It turns into a game of guessing what your opponent's defenses are. And there's really no reason you can't run around with death ward, ray deflection, spell turning and mind blank up, along with a ton of other protective spells. It's just the game of hoping you can guess something that beats the enemy's protections. Of course you really have no idea what kind of protections the enemy will have, so you just try to find the most obscure bullshit to cheese your way past it. That's what 3E is about at high levels.

Lets face it dude, it is what it is. I know you're going to keep playing the evade and nitpick game, cause that's what denners do when they want to avoid a main topic.

"oooo, he forgot to mention death ward in his post! Now let me make a huge issue of that and throw some insults in so I can avoid the main topic!"

Denfail.

[K]

This is the problem. It turns into a game of guessing what your opponent's defenses are. And there's really no reason you can't run around with death ward, ray deflection, spell turning and mind blank up, along with a ton of other protective spells. It's just the game of hoping you can guess something that beats the enemy's protections. Of course you really have no idea what kind of protections the enemy will have, so you just try to find the most obscure bullshit to cheese your way past it. That's what 3E is about at high levels.

Lets face it dude, it is what it is. I know you're going to keep playing the evade and nitpick game, cause that's what denners do when they want to avoid a main topic.

"oooo, he forgot to mention death ward in his post! Now let me make a huge issue of that and throw some insults in so I can avoid the main topic!"

Denfail.

It only looks like goal-post moving because you don't know what you are talking about.

Seriously. Enemies don't run around with layers of defenses unless the DM specifically decided to bone you for the simple reason that if every enemy was a 20th level Wizard caster with an identical spell list the game would get really boring.

What you do know about the game seems to be entirely from the player side (and a forum-player-who-doesn't-play player, and not an actual player).

Why do you insist on talking about details you obviously don't know? Nonlethal damage is not some esoteric hidden technique, but a core rule that you learn when you read the core rules. The mechanics of blasphemy when used by a pit fiend is available on the internet in those same core rules, and all you have to do is read them and then you know it's not a big deal.

These are the details of the game, and knowing the details is the difference between understanding something and not understanding something.

I don't like 4e because I read the rules and they bored the shit out of me, but you seem to hate 3e because some guy on some board told you of some broken combo that would never come up in a game and you decided the game was unplayable based on this unreliable, third-hand information.

[Judging__Eagle]

These are the very same guys that couldn't fathom why people would be playing the game with anything other than fireballs and lightning bolts.

uhm, wat?

the fact that evocation spells don't work as advertised is..... a long, well known, fact around the den. While places like WoTC CO boards were endlessly wanking off about how to roll hundreds of d6's of energy damage, on TGD stuff like "spells that fucking kill people" and "spells that win D&D" was written.

Your 4ailcore is showing.

Magic missile is out,
colour spray is in.
I don't know what crack,
you've been smokin'.

As for "doing damage". It's not hard.

Dispater, the Iron Duke, has somewhere around, oh, 1200~ HP. A Xorn Riding Lancer Paladin in the CR 20 bracket can easily ride-by attack and deal in excess of that much damage.

Remember, level 10 is loki and thor figthing Fire and Frost giants; CR 10 monsters. Even stuff like Tiamat and Enlil are in the level 10 zone. Creatures like Achillies and Alexander clock in around level 5, although people pretend they were a level 6 after they pass on. Deification upon death.

Level 20 is bigger scale than most of human mythology, and most people seriously don't get that. Level 20 characters are Vishnu and Deva; Ahura Mazda and Chronos. Motivations are bizarre (collect dead bees), character flaws are staggering (can't remember any power you have), and powers are outlandish (destroy the universe, then remake it; flavour power).

If you can't summon an army of magical monkeys, walk across the planet in three steps, or create a new dimension; or perform equally splendid actions, you're not a true 20th level character. You're just some hobo in a fancy suit with their loyalty card all stamped, saying "you've passed GO twenty times now".

[Swordslinger]

It only looks like goal-post moving because you don't know what you are talking about.

No, it looks like goalpost moving because that's precisely what you're doing. You're suggesting using a tactic that's already been deemed crap and claiming it's a valid counter. If swording something was a valid tactic, then fighters wouldn't be in trouble. It's already conceded that it's a terrible tactic. Unless you have some means of doing sufficient nonlethal damage that doesn't involve hitting it with a charge attack or meleeing it, then I don't see how your argument is at all relevant.

As for blaspemy, I'm assuming you're fighting the pit fiend or balor when it's not the same level as you (because fighting one creature of the same CR with your entire party is supposed to be an easy encounter). A dangerous encounter with a pit fiend involves it being 3 or 4 levels above you (that whole EL deal which yes, I have read). So that means the CR 20 pit fiend is engaging 17th or 16th level PCs. That 18 CL blaspemy is looking a bit scarier now?

I don't like 4e because I read the rules and they bored the shit out of me, but you seem to hate 3e because some guy on some board told you of some broken combo that would never come up in a game and you decided the game was unplayable based on this unreliable, third-hand information.

I've played high level games before. It's just a cheese fest. CL-pumped holy words, astral projection for virtual immortality, infinite wealth tricks, cheaters of Mystra casting in AMFs, uber chargers... The game is just all about finding those overpowered combos and (ab)using them.

The counter system is terrible because only spellcasters can counter anything, so anything that isn't a spellcaster is garbage at high levels. You can wipe out lots of monsters just with a 3rd level spell and a lesser maximize metarod.

That's just what it is. A spellcaster wank edition. Maybe you like that, but dude, call a spade a spade.

[Winnah]

I've played high level games before. It's just a cheese fest. CL-pumped holy words, astral projection for virtual immortality, infinite wealth tricks, cheaters of Mystra casting in AMFs, uber chargers... The game is just all about finding those overpowered combos and (ab)using them.

The counter system is terrible because only spellcasters can counter anything, so anything that isn't a spellcaster is garbage at high levels. You can wipe out lots of monsters just with a 3rd level spell and a lesser maximize metarod.

That's just what it is. A spellcaster wank edition. Maybe you like that, but dude, call a spade a spade.

Okay...So everything you listed has been well documented on the internets for a decade now. Some of those tricks are holdovers from AD&D.

But you're harping on as though you found them? You broke games with these combo's?

I don't fucking think so. Much like your arguments, I suspect they are just a tired rehashing of shit you read on the internet and decided to regurgitate here.

Fucking poser.

[Swordslinger]

Okay...So everything you listed has been well documented on the internets for a decade now. Some of those tricks are holdovers from AD&D.

But you're harping on as though you found them? You broke games with these combo's?

I'm not saying I came up with them dude. But that doesn't mean people in my game didn't look at them and use them.

And yes, I've had people use shock trooper, astral projection, wraithstrike, Superior invisibility, ray of stupidity, shivering touch and a bunch of other crap at one point. I've seen what high level 3E looks like. I've run a couple high level games. I know it's a cheese war. I have seen it.

I don't even see what people are arguing with me about. You guys apparently know these exploits exist too. Besides seemingly getting attacked by a bunch of ignorant fanboys for attacking their favorite edition, I just don't see what argument anyone is trying to make. It seems everyone just resorts to ad hominem here in the absence of any real arguments.

Are you saying it's not broken because the DM can house rule it?

I just don't get it dude.

[...You Lost Me]

Well, you know, when I play I just try to find all of the broken rules and pump them up as much as possible because that's the funnest and most efficient way to play.

It's sort of like how when I'm a DM I always don't let my players do anything good because I'm the best and they should have been the Cheater of Mystra if they wanted to have fun because that's how you play 3rd edition and anyone else who thinks so is stupid.

In other news: Swordslinger, you're wrong and go away.

[K]

It only looks like goal-post moving because you don't know what you are talking about.

No, it looks like goalpost moving because that's precisely what you're doing. You're suggesting using a tactic that's already been deemed crap and claiming it's a valid counter. If swording something was a valid tactic, then fighters wouldn't be in trouble. It's already conceded that it's a terrible tactic. Unless you have some means of doing sufficient nonlethal damage that doesn't involve hitting it with a charge attack or meleeing it, then I don't see how your argument is at all relevant.

As for blaspemy, I'm assuming you're fighting the pit fiend or balor when it's not the same level as you (because fighting one creature of the same CR with your entire party is supposed to be an easy encounter). A dangerous encounter with a pit fiend involves it being 3 or 4 levels above you (that whole EL deal which yes, I have read). So that means the CR 20 pit fiend is engaging 17th or 16th level PCs. That 18 CL blaspemy is looking a bit scarier now?

Direct damage is not an invalid counter in a mixed party of spellcasters and fighters vs monsters, and if you think it is then you must have not been playing DnD 3e.

Second, fighting things 2-3 levels higher than you means that you should be taking so much damage that one character should die, so complaining about danger levels is absurd because "Challenging" is fighting ELs equal to your level (you'd know that if you read the DMG).

Third, your ignorance of 3e is showing again because even in your example blaspemy is still not scary.

At CL 18 vs your level 16-17, you are going to be dazed for a round and suffer a Str lowering (not a strength penalty or a strength ability damage or drain, because those stacking would be a big deal).

And that is going to be the pit fiend's whole action. Sure, he can toss off a few Quickened fireballs, but at those levels you are just going to have FR 15 and make the low saves and probably take little to no damage and then he's out of them.

If the pit fiend does anything with his one standard action like summon more demons or cast another spell, someone can negate his future spellcasting by one of many different means (including 40 points of damage while the pit fiend is trying to use a spell-like, a trivial amount for even an unoptimized fighter at those levels) and the fight goes on.

Even in the worse possible situation where the pit fiend gets unnoticed to within 40', surprises the players and wins initiative, summons some demons, then daze-locks while those demons kills the players is not a worrisome situation because it assumes a monster much more powerful than the party just got two rounds of doing whatever it wanted within combat range after somehow getting within 40' of the party without any prep time by the party. You'd be hard pressed to find any higher-level monster in the CR 20 range in 3e that would not kill the whole party with those advantages, so the pit fiend is not more impressive than anything else at those levels.

Nothing you have said makes me think you've ever played 3e. You might have done some internet play-by-post where everyone takes a cheese build and tries to kill other players with it, but actually playing the game using all the rules is obviously not something you were doing. If you had been, you would know a lot more about the game and how it actually works.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

That being said, I never said that fighters didn't need a big power boost to be the equal of spellcasters. In core 3e, they rank about where summoned monsters rank for how useful they are to spellcasters, meaning that they are often complement spellcasters while never taking away from the spellcasters being the star.

Summoned monsters are useful, though. Sending an elemental to bash an astral projecting wizard into submission really is a valid use of a combat round, and a fighter doing the same is equally useful.

Dropping lots of spells onto a fighter can make them the equal to any spellcaster, but I personally consider it unfair to force the spellcasters to augment a weak concept when the concept should just be good on its own.

That's why Frank and I wrote the Tomes. We wanted to beef up concepts we knew were weak and thus less fun for other players to be in the same party with, not because they couldn't be made useful to the party.

[K]

Okay...So everything you listed has been well documented on the internets for a decade now. Some of those tricks are holdovers from AD&D.

But you're harping on as though you found them? You broke games with these combo's?

I'm not saying I came up with them dude. But that doesn't mean people in my game didn't look at them and use them.

And yes, I've had people use shock trooper, astral projection, wraithstrike, Superior invisibility, ray of stupidity, shivering touch and a bunch of other crap at one point. I've seen what high level 3E looks like. I've run a couple high level games. I know it's a cheese war. I have seen it.

Ummm, those are player tactics. None of the monsters published use any of that stuff.

Are you mad that players win battles? That's..... kind of sick.

You should not run RPGs because you clearly don't understand the idea.

[Winnah]

And yes, I've had people use shock trooper, astral projection, wraithstrike, Superior invisibility, ray of stupidity, shivering touch and a bunch of other crap at one point. I've seen what high level 3E looks like. I've run a couple high level games. I know it's a cheese war. I have seen it.

I don't even see what people are arguing with me about. You guys apparently know these exploits exist too. Besides seemingly getting attacked by a bunch of ignorant fanboys for attacking their favorite edition, I just don't see what argument anyone is trying to make. It seems everyone just resorts to ad hominem here in the absence of any real arguments.

All bar Astral Projection are things that can be pulled off at level 7 or lower. level 3 in the case of Ray of Stupidity and Wraithstrike.

Hardly game changing. Not exactly 'I win' buttons until combined with other tricks in unexpected ways. Who cares if you can one shot an animal or near-mindless thug with RoS, Phantasmal Assailants or Ego Whip?

If the player can get within touch range of a dragon in order to take it out with a Shivering Touch, then they deserve the 'easy' victory. They can use it's hoard to buy specialised pants to hold the character's massive balls.

Invisibility is broken? You may as well say that the concept of stealth is broken. There are so many counters for Invisibility it is not funny.

It seems that you have an issue with the creative use of powers. As a 4e fanboy, i am not surprised you feel this way. But for me and the guys I play with, the creative ways challenges can be overcome are some of the best moments of the game. Even some of the epic catastrofucks that occured in games are still talked about. That feeling of 'beating the system' is part of the appeal of older editions.

[Swordslinger]

Invisibility is broken? You may as well say that the concept of stealth is broken. There are so many counters for Invisibility it is not funny.

Superior invisibility, the spell from the spell compendium. It's effectively immune to all the normal counters to invisibility and crazy powerful.

It seems that you have an issue with the creative use of powers. As a 4e fanboy, i am not surprised you feel this way. But for me and the guys I play with, the creative ways challenges can be overcome are some of the best moments of the game. Even some of the epic catastrofucks that occured in games are still talked about. That feeling of 'beating the system' is part of the appeal of older editions.

There's a difference between being creative and just plain cheesing. As you pointed out, all this stuff is exploits people probably got from reading the CharOp boards. The uber builds and spell abuses aren't things most PCs think of themselves, but rather things they ripped off.

Creativity is coming up with something on your own, not ripping a build off the boards. In fact, most of the super builds took very little actual know how to play. And yeah, they'd just end up spamming the same boring old tactics time and time again. And all it leads to is an arms race. The moment one PC warrior finds Shock trooper, the other PC warriors immediately want to pick that feat up and soon, you have nothing but uber chargers. As soon as one PC starts using shivering touch, every wizard is picking that up. That's not creativity, dude, that's being a munchkin cheeser. That's making the game less fun for everybody.

And sure I could kill off the party by outcheesing them, but I didn't want to turn the game into a crazy dick contest of who knows the rules loopholes the best. But that's the end result of 3E if you play with people with any kind of rules knowledge at all. Sadly, the best games of 3E I've played were with people who were mostly ignorant newbies that didn't understand the rules well enough to exploit them.

[Winnah]

Invisibility is broken? You may as well say that the concept of stealth is broken. There are so many counters for Invisibility it is not funny.

Superior invisibility, the spell from the spell compendium. It's effectively immune to all the normal counters to invisibility and crazy powerful.

True seeing, arcane sight, mindsight and detect hostile intent off the top of my head. Ridiculously high spot checks are a mundane method of detection. As for counters, they are numerous. My preference would be AoE burst effects that simply don't care if the target is visible.

Sure, it's an 8th level spell. Who cares? It has counters and there are a diverse array of options available at 15th level, many of them more problematic than making yourself hard to see.

No counters available? Oh well. Invisible guy gets a surprise action. I hope for his sake he can make it count.

It seems that you have an issue with the creative use of powers. As a 4e fanboy, i am not surprised you feel this way. But for me and the guys I play with, the creative ways challenges can be overcome are some of the best moments of the game. Even some of the epic catastrofucks that occured in games are still talked about. That feeling of 'beating the system' is part of the appeal of older editions.

There's a difference between being creative and just plain cheesing. As you pointed out, all this stuff is exploits people probably got from reading the CharOp boards. The uber builds and spell abuses aren't things most PCs think of themselves, but rather things they ripped off.

Creativity is coming up with something on your own, not ripping a build off the boards. In fact, most of the super builds took very little actual know how to play. And yeah, they'd just end up spamming the same boring old tactics time and time again. And all it leads to is an arms race. The moment one PC warrior finds Shock trooper, the other PC warriors immediately want to pick that feat up and soon, you have nothing but uber chargers. As soon as one PC starts using shivering touch, every wizard is picking that up. That's not creativity, dude, that's being a munchkin cheeser. That's making the game less fun for everybody.

And sure I could kill off the party by outcheesing them, but I didn't want to turn the game into a crazy dick contest of who knows the rules loopholes the best. But that's the end result of 3E if you play with people with any kind of rules knowledge at all. Sadly, the best games of 3E I've played were with people who were mostly ignorant newbies that didn't understand the rules well enough to exploit them.

You're approaching hyperbole here. Why is a clever use of abilities considered cheese? For that matter, why is cheese bad?

An established part of D&D is that characters become more powerful as they advance. More powerful simply does not just mean hitting harder and thowing more dice with your fireballs. The power change should be paradigm shifting.

When Hercules hits level 30, I don't expect him to be using a slightly improved version of the Tide of Iron attack he was throwing at level 1. He should be diverting rivers and dropping the sky on people.

The fact you have gone from bitching about spells to bitching about melee combat ability spam (heh...4e), shows that this is a concept you don't fully grasp.

[fectin]

Okay. You know that a lot of builds that people rip off came from people on this board, right? Like, from the people you're actually arguing with?

Even if your premises were correct (which they aren't), your arguments would still be falling flat.

[K]

Invisibility is broken? You may as well say that the concept of stealth is broken. There are so many counters for Invisibility it is not funny.

Superior invisibility, the spell from the spell compendium. It's effectively immune to all the normal counters to invisibility and crazy powerful.

True seeing, arcane sight, mindsight and detect hostile intent off the top of my head. Ridiculously high spot checks are a mundane method of detection. As for counters, they are numerous. My preference would be AoE burst effects that simply don't care if the target is visible.

Sure, it's an 8th level spell. Who cares? It has counters and there are a diverse array of options available at 15th level, many of them more problematic than making yourself hard to see.

No counters available? Oh well. Invisible guy gets a surprise action. I hope for his sake he can make it count.

But who cares about it in the first place?

Superior Invisibility is a player option. If the PCs have some advantage on monsters out of the MM it doesn't matter. PCs are supposed to win fights against monsters, and in fact are supposed to win entire adventures.

There is no elaborate game of counters because the published monsters usually don't have counters. They usually have some flat immunities and one or two tricks, and the players are the ones with counters.