You do fucking win at D&D.

[Fuchs]

My point is that the GM is always holding back, since if he wouldn't, he'd kill the party each time. How much he is holding back depends on the group in question. And of course some people think anything but their own style is coddling, since they can't imagine anyone playing "more hardcore" than themselves.

Personally I think refusing to accept critism, refusing even to provide facts and arguments to be criticised in favor of self-idolizing one's own preconceptions and delusions is what breeds disfunctional individuals - such as Mr. GC and his crony.

[DSMatticus]

Your complementary barrel of cocks has arrived.

Stop. Just stop. For crying out loud man, you barely made it past hello. Don't you think that's a little premature?

Obviously there are thing's that need to be banned in the name of the game staying playable.

Playable is not the correct term. The Wish and the Word are playable; there's nothing stopping you from playing them. The mechanics and abilities are right there and the game supports them. What you actually mean to say is "in the name of the game staying something I want to play," which is completely subjective and arbitrary. Mr. GC is choosing a balance point based on his preferences (which is fine, it's actually the only way to play D&D because it should be obvious to everyone at this point that D&D has no fucking idea what it's trying to do in terms of balance), and then bragging about how he is so self-entitled and petulant that when people sit down at his table and do not want to play his way he kills their characters until they let him have his way or they leave. And this is okay, apparently, because when GC pulls a balance point out of his ass it's a good one, and when anyone else pulls a balance point out of their ass it's for basketweavers. Because GC thinks he shits gold, apparently.

Most people are coddled by their DM with constant easy mode and in GC's mind the encourages aberrant behavior and to be honest I'm starting to agree with him. I wound say that DM coddling helps create the dysfuntinal individuals we see on the Paizo forums and theRPGsite,

I'm just gonna sum up what you said: "This thing we're talking about. I'm going to handwavily associate it with some things that sound bad to you. Here they are: easy mode. Coddling. Aberrant behavior. Dysfunctional individuals. Paizo. TheRPGSite. These are all bad things, yes? If you don't want those bad things, you should agree with me." That was basically just a buzzword soup and not a lot of coherent, believable argument.

[Mr. GC]

Yeah, that line is probably the funniest thing I have seen on TGD since Orion's line about shadzar innovating on the frontier of punctuation science. That, however, was trying to be funny.

I think that was actually midnight_v he was joking about. It was hilarious either way.

Also, I don't even get this thread. I can't what GC and Fuchs are yelling about at this point, because it's so far buried under vague things and missing details or the pretending that the details totally weren't missing.

Is there someone that can sparknote me?

Fuchs is a standard basket weaver, meaning that he thinks just because he cannot get through an encounter on his own merits no one can, and by extension an encounter where you have certain tools and use them well or die is incredibly easy just because it's beatable at all.

I of course know otherwise, even before seeing and experiencing it myself, and good players think the same. This means that when you need a toolbox full of stuff just to make it through the day, the day is in fact hard. And when if you don't have those things you die... well that's a mistake that the game is punishing you for.

Everything else is just me presenting facts, and him ignoring them for these reasons.

Actually, what GC is arguing is that you should never ever hold back even a little bit as MC, because to do so is badwrongfun.

And then it turns out that he holds back too. (Or is just not very good at D&D, whatever).

GC's main point is fucking stupid for people who MC and are better at optimization than their players. Honestly, it's also stupid for people just as good, because MCs get to use stuff that PCs can't use, like Dragons with Epic Spellcasting feat starting from CR 15, at will Game Disjunction at CR 9, or CL 23 Blasphemy on a Choker at CR 10.

Now, if his point was actually that "you should be hard but fair" he would have to explain a definition of fair that:

1) Involved holding back and not using stuff that is "too good" like what I described above, or apparently Shivering Touch, because he said that of course that is banned.
2) Involves never under any circumstances holding back enough to allow a party of core Druid/Wizard/Cleric/Druid played at only mediocre skill level to succeed in the adventure.
3) Isn't obviously grounded in his own hatred of other people having fun that is badwrong.

Shivering Touch is banned from both sides. Because otherwise every encounter would be a Shivering Touch spam initiative fest. Ever heard of the term overcentralizing? Of course not, you couldn't win a competition if you tried. Ever heard of a minimal ban philosophy? Same reasoning.

A full caster team, even in core wouldn't get far with "mediocre skill".

It's probably Ironybringer or Sacrosanct, since they're the prime idiots but there are several other possibilities.

I'm pretty sure you already knew I had an account here, and there is no need to hide behind a sockpuppet. The Law of Averages clearly hates you, because you are batting .1000 for utterly failing at everything. Purely by accident, you should have gotten something right by now.

Oh hey, came back to get beaten like the bitch you are again, or will you run the fuck away when that happens?

Playable is not the correct term. The Wish and the Word are playable; there's nothing stopping you from playing them. The mechanics and abilities are right there and the game supports them. What you actually mean to say is "in the name of the game staying something I want to play," which is completely subjective and arbitrary. Mr. GC is choosing a balance point based on his preferences (which is fine, it's actually the only way to play D&D because it should be obvious to everyone at this point that D&D has no fucking idea what it's trying to do in terms of balance), and then bragging about how he is so self-entitled and petulant that when people sit down at his table and do not want to play his way he kills their characters until they let him have his way or they leave. And this is okay, apparently, because when GC pulls a balance point out of his ass it's a good one, and when anyone else pulls a balance point out of their ass it's for basketweavers. Because GC thinks he shits gold, apparently.

Get real. Playable game = infinite loops banned, minimal ban philosophy applied (which takes out a few other things, but not many).

Mistborn isn't the most articulate individual but he has it exactly right. The basket weavers will die regardless, but putting things on hard mode keeps the non basket weavers entertained while also killing off the basket weavers more often. Since they are very dense by definition you have to really beat it into them that they are not supposed to be here in their current state so that they will learn to either make adventurers that can adventure or get the fuck out of the way of those that are capable of performing the tasks expected of them.

As a result everyone involved's play improves. Drastically. And if there's one thing the world definitely needs it's more good tabletop players as players are like the writers - talent is near nonexistent.

[ModelCitizen]

GC, I was trying to stay out of this but you're a fucking idiot.

Shivering Touch is banned from both sides. Because otherwise every encounter would be a Shivering Touch spam initiative fest. Ever heard of the term overcentralizing? Of course not, you couldn't win a competition if you tried. Ever heard of a minimal ban philosophy? Same reasoning.

Get real. Playable game = infinite loops banned, minimal ban philosophy applied (which takes out a few other things, but not many).

So I guess minimal ban philosophy is Wish, Gate, Planar Binding, PAO, and... one random-ass melee touch SoL from Frostburn that makes charoppers rub their dicks raw because it happens to play nice with metamagic. Sure, you can build a character around Shivering Touch that's broken by most reasonable metrics. But the fact that you believe building around Shivering Touch puts you head and shoulders above every other rocket tagger build indicates that you are just religiously repeating internet memes from BG. Again, you are a fucking idiot. Just stop posting.

[Mr. GC]

GC, I was trying to stay out of this but you're a fucking idiot.

Shivering Touch is banned from both sides. Because otherwise every encounter would be a Shivering Touch spam initiative fest. Ever heard of the term overcentralizing? Of course not, you couldn't win a competition if you tried. Ever heard of a minimal ban philosophy? Same reasoning.

Get real. Playable game = infinite loops banned, minimal ban philosophy applied (which takes out a few other things, but not many).

So I guess minimal ban philosophy is Wish, Gate, Planar Binding, PAO, and... one random-ass melee touch SoL from Frostburn that makes charoppers rub their dicks raw because it happens to play nice with metamagic. Sure, you can build a character around Shivering Touch that's broken by most reasonable metrics. But the fact that you believe building around Shivering Touch puts you head and shoulders above every other rocket tagger build indicates that you are just religiously repeating internet memes from BG. Again, you are a fucking idiot. Just stop posting.

Bitch please. Shivering Touch makes the list because it bypasses most standard defenses to kill just about anything in a level independent way. It has nothing to do with what the dumbasses at BG think... they call Shock Trooper good, so they can be dismissed out of hand as noobs.

[DSMatticus]

Because otherwise every encounter would be a Shivering Touch spam initiative fest. Ever heard of the term overcentralizing?

That is a lot of very condensed stupid for two little sentences.

1) It's almost impossible to overspecialize by merely adding shivering touch to your repertoire. You learn shivering touch, take some feats to help optimize it if it's going to be a primary attack spell, and still have the rest of your entire spellbook in diversity.

2) Spamming the same thing over and over in combat isn't an example of overspecialization. It actually isn't even an example of regular specialization. Specialization is a measure of the diversity of your available options, and it is totally divorced from the repetitiveness of any given selection among those options.

3) If you are saying that every encounter would be a shivering touch spam initiative fest because that will always be the optimal move, and even granting that you're right to call that specialization (it isn't, see above), that would not be overspecialization. That would be regular specialization and it would be totally appropriate because it would be optimal. If the optimal move is specialization then specializing optimally is not overspecialization. That's just not what overspecialization means, you're being a dumbass. And if shivering touch is not always the optimal move, and you and your players spam it anyway, then you're actually just dumbasses and why are you spamming it in situations where it's not optimal?

minimal ban philosophy

That doesn't mean anything. There is no objective minimal ban philosophy for D&D. There is neither oracle nor algorithm nor authority nor rule nor guideline that can tell you what goes in and what doesn't go in a minimal ban philosophy. Minimal, by definition, means "the least necessary," and the appropriate response to you pulling minimal ban philosophy out of your ass as a justification is: "the least necessary in order to do what?" And the answer is, once again: achieve the particular balance point you wanted to begin with.

I am pointing out that you are setting your own balance point in order to play D&D. And your response was "yeah, sure, but I only ban the things that are strictly necessary to achieve that balance point. It's a minimal ban philosophy!" Okay. I'm glad you don't also randomly ban things that you don't think need banned. That means you're not locked in an internal struggle in your own mind, watching helplessly as you do things you don't think need doing, which would really fucking suck. But that has fuck-all to do with the fact that you're deciding what to ban in the first place in an entirely arbitrary and subjective way based on your expectations of what a D&D game should look like and it doesn't refute that at all.

[Username17]

Because otherwise every encounter would be a Shivering Touch spam initiative fest. Ever heard of the term overcentralizing?

That is a lot of very condensed stupid for two little sentences.

1) It's almost impossible to overspecialize by merely adding shivering touch to your repertoire. You learn shivering touch, take some feats to help optimize it if it's going to be a primary attack spell, and still have the rest of your entire spellbook in diversity.

I'm going to stop you right there. He said "Overcentralizing", not "Overspecializing". Overspecialization is where you invest all your eggs in one basket. Overcentralization is where a competitive environment is reduced to a radically smaller subset because a comparatively small number of options distort the play environment by forcing people to turn to a a comparatively small number of counters.

It's a concept that looms large in competitive play environments like Pokemon and Magic the Gathering. Now as it happens, I find it difficult to see how Shivering Touch could be overcentralizing. You don't need to have specific counters to it in order to win encounters and you don't need to pack it. It's a single target enemy dropper that requires you to bring a wizard into melee and score a touch attack and while it doesn't allow a save, it does do cold-based ability damage that a lot of enemies are resistant or immune to. And without metamagic, it's pretty unlikely to even work because it's just 3 dice and most characters and monsters have a Dex of 12+. It's super good for Dragon hunting and good against several other kinds of popular boss monsters, but in most cases it isn't worth preparing.

-Username17

[Mr. GC]

1) It's almost impossible to overspecialize by merely adding shivering touch to your repertoire. You learn shivering touch, take some feats to help optimize it if it's going to be a primary attack spell, and still have the rest of your entire spellbook in diversity.

2) Spamming the same thing over and over in combat isn't an example of overspecialization. It actually isn't even an example of regular specialization. Specialization is a measure of the diversity of your available options, and it is totally divorced from the repetitiveness of any given selection among those options.

3) If you are saying that every encounter would be a shivering touch spam initiative fest because that will always be the optimal move, and even granting that you're right to call that specialization (it isn't, see above), that would not be overspecialization. That would be regular specialization and it would be totally appropriate because it would be optimal. If the optimal move is specialization then specializing optimally is not overspecialization. That's just not what overspecialization means, you're being a dumbass. And if shivering touch is not always the optimal move, and you and your players spam it anyway, then you're actually just dumbasses and why are you spamming it in situations where it's not optimal?

Clearly you do not understand the term as not only can you not tell the difference between overcentralization and overspecialization as Frank has pointed out but you aren't even using the term specialization correctly!

That doesn't mean anything. There is no objective minimal ban philosophy for D&D. There is neither oracle nor algorithm nor authority nor rule nor guideline that can tell you what goes in and what doesn't go in a minimal ban philosophy. Minimal, by definition, means "the least necessary," and the appropriate response to you pulling minimal ban philosophy out of your ass as a justification is: "the least necessary in order to do what?" And the answer is, once again: achieve the particular balance point you wanted to begin with.

Get real. I was using standard competitive terminology, which Frank has also correctly identified and if you'd know that, you'd know what it means is that you ban Shin Akuma because otherwise every fight would be Akuma vs Akuma but you ban just about nothing else, including glitches within the game.

I'm going to stop you right there. He said "Overcentralizing", not "Overspecializing". Overspecialization is where you invest all your eggs in one basket. Overcentralization is where a competitive environment is reduced to a radically smaller subset because a comparatively small number of options distort the play environment by forcing people to turn to a a comparatively small number of counters.

It's a concept that looms large in competitive play environments like Pokemon and Magic the Gathering. Now as it happens, I find it difficult to see how Shivering Touch could be overcentralizing. You don't need to have specific counters to it in order to win encounters and you don't need to pack it. It's a single target enemy dropper that requires you to bring a wizard into melee and score a touch attack and while it doesn't allow a save, it does do cold-based ability damage that a lot of enemies are resistant or immune to. And without metamagic, it's pretty unlikely to even work because it's just 3 dice and most characters and monsters have a Dex of 12+. It's super good for Dragon hunting and good against several other kinds of popular boss monsters, but in most cases it isn't worth preparing.

-Username17

It's very trivial to make it a ranged attack, and even Maximize + Empower (say, a lesser rod and a Spellshard keyed to it) has it doing an easy 3d3+18 Dex damage from a level 3 slot to anything not immune to cold. Most creatures do not gain Dex with level (and the ones that do are actually Dex based) so this allows for consistent and reliable OHKOing in a level independent manner to just about anything, especially big monsters (which is most of them, not just dragons).

In a game that allows Shivering Touch, every combat is about spamming ranged metamagiced Shivering Touches on anything not cold immune and only using other options if they are because it will more reliably take down just about anything than almost any other attack form.

Likewise, the enemies will be spamming Shivering Touch on you, because even if you're doing the standard stuff with save boosting and so forth to not die to typical threats either you are CI or you die.

Likewise just about every enemy will have Scintillating Scales to convert their high natural armor into something that might help them.

Better to just remove that spell from the game.

[hyzmarca]

I of course know otherwise, even before seeing and experiencing it myself, and good players think the same. This means that when you need a toolbox full of stuff just to make it through the day, the day is in fact hard. And when if you don't have those things you die... well that's a mistake that the game is punishing you for.

I'm not saying that you're wrong, but you're wrong. Difficulty is always relative to the PCs' toolbox.

If you've got a bunch of fighters and are sending them up against opposition that requires magic that they do not have and cannot get in a reasonable timeframe, that is not a very difficult encounter. That is an impossible encounter.

Any time you create a situation in which the PCs must have X and they don't have X, it's impossible, not hard.

Likewise, if the PCs must have X but have X, then the difficulty of your encounter must be judged on merits other than having X.
Your PCs might be required to use everything in their toolbox during a long day of scry and die against several diverse enemies, but that doesn't make a series of one-round teleport ambushes difficult. Any game that can be won by following a script is not difficult.

Tic Tac Toe isn't difficult.
Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma isn't difficult.
Blackjack isn't difficult.

Poker, on the other hand, is difficult if you're playing against someone skilled.
Chess is difficult.
Go is difficult.

The size of your toolbox determines complexity, not difficulty. Complex games are more confusing because it is more difficult to understand the rules, and that can be confused with actual play difficulty. But rules comprehension difficulty is not the same thing as gameplay difficulty. If your players lose because they don't understand the rules as well as you do and thus are trying to play a completely different game, that isn't in any way a victory for your scenario. That's a failure for the guy who wrote the rules and you as a DM for not ensuring that the players all understood everything.

Real difficulty in a game such as this comes from enemy adaptability. Like in Go or Chess or Poker the enemy has to respond to your moves so that you can't just script everything. It doesn't matter how big your toolbox is, Go is a game with literally only one tool, what matters is the ability of opposing sides to change their strategies based on changing conditions.

[sabs]

Except that Shivering Touch is trivial to defend against.

Lesser Globe of Invulnerability
Spell Immunity (which is 10m/level)
Spell Resistance
spell turning
And items that grant such abilities.

Mirror Image will likely keep you alive long enough to kill what ever is trying to spam you with Shivering Touch.

[Mistborn]

So at this point I think I'm going to have to break ranks with GC and revert to my initial position.

Given the unbalances in the rules It's totally possible for GMs to write encounters that are or are close to unbeatable. Given that the GM can also send horde of Balors at a first level party this should be no surprise.

However it's possible for the GM to make the most difficult possible encounters within a set of constraints and play those encounters out with good tactics. This has basically been my DMing style for some time though. There is a degree to which achievement in TTRPGs is illusory but think of it like this. It would be trivial to program unwinnable video games as well, you only "win" games without a human opponent because the developer of the game included a way for those games to be won. That does not make say clearing a Touhou game on Lunatic less of an achievement.

That being said GC is buying into his own personal hype a bit. As much as I acknowledge that he's a better optimizer the way he has been conducting him self is a bit over the line. I would recommend he turn it down a bit.

At this point I'm going to ask GC to start posting statblocks for this encounter or one similar to it so everyone can get a better idea of what his campaigns entail.

[Mr. GC]

Except that Shivering Touch is trivial to defend against.

Lesser Globe of Invulnerability
Spell Immunity (which is 10m/level)
Spell Resistance
spell turning
And items that grant such abilities.

Mirror Image will likely keep you alive long enough to kill what ever is trying to spam you with Shivering Touch.

Spell Resistance is a joke, please get serious.

Spell Turning I am 90% sure does not work on touch attacks.

That leaves Lesser Globe (until you just Heighten it, and Lesser Globe is double edged because many of the good buffs are 3rd level and lower) and Spell Immunity. So... throw a Dispel first, same as you'd do vs CIs and SS users, and Mirror Image which you'd need to pop with some sort of volley attack spell first.

Still, it makes the game revolve around Shivering Touch and the counters to Shivering Touch. This is the very definition of overcentralization.

I'm not saying that you're wrong, but you're wrong. Difficulty is always relative to the PCs' toolbox.

If you've got a bunch of fighters and are sending them up against opposition that requires magic that they do not have and cannot get in a reasonable timeframe, that is not a very difficult encounter. That is an impossible encounter.

Yes, an all Fighter party cannot deal with any situation, even ones where no magic is involved. What is your point?

Any time you create a situation in which the PCs must have X and they don't have X, it's impossible, not hard.

Likewise, if the PCs must have X but have X, then the difficulty of your encounter must be judged on merits other than having X.
Your PCs might be required to use everything in their toolbox during a long day of scry and die against several diverse enemies, but that doesn't make a series of one-round teleport ambushes difficult. Any game that can be won by following a script is not difficult.

IWBTG on Impossible, any bullet hell game = very long exercise in pattern recognition. A bot could probably do it. Easy? Lolwut.

Real difficulty in a game such as this comes from enemy adaptability. Like in Go or Chess or Poker the enemy has to respond to your moves so that you can't just script everything. It doesn't matter how big your toolbox is, Go is a game with literally only one tool, what matters is the ability of opposing sides to change their strategies based on changing conditions.

Yes, and that's why real success comes down to "kill enemies before they have a chance to adapt". Because if you don't keep that pressure on them they will wreck your shit.

There is a huge difference between a dragon getting chain novaed and dying while barely doing anything and that same dragon getting many rounds to fire off ranged attacks while spamming Heal or some shit. The difference? Adaption time.

In D&D success is about how big your toolbox is and how well equipped it is as you have to both have the right abilities and use them (just like in Starcraft, you lose if you need a unit but can't build it fast enough).

[Fuchs]

It's news to me that a game where people try to avoid getting hit at all - which is what many casters are going to do as a prime means of defense in the first place - is a game that "revolves around Shivering Touch and the counters to Shivering Touch".

(As an aside, a number of ToB stuff should work as a defense too, like Wall of Blades and Manticore Parry.)

[Mr. GC]

It's news to me that a game where people try to avoid getting hit at all - which is what many casters are going to do as a prime means of defense in the first place - is a game that "revolves around Shivering Touch and the counters to Shivering Touch".

(As an aside, a number of ToB stuff should work as a defense too, like Wall of Blades and Manticore Parry.)

Instead of many different attack forms, there's just one big one.

Wall of Blades at least is an opposed attack roll and is non spammable, do I even need to spell out why this isn't likely to work? I don't remember what Manticore Parry does, it's probably the same.

[Tumbling Down]

Well, specific defences aside, I don't think your Ultimate Attack is very good, if it's countered by broad concepts like "undeath" and "psionics".

[hyzmarca]

I'm not saying that you're wrong, but you're wrong. Difficulty is always relative to the PCs' toolbox.

If you've got a bunch of fighters and are sending them up against opposition that requires magic that they do not have and cannot get in a reasonable timeframe, that is not a very difficult encounter. That is an impossible encounter.

Yes, an all Fighter party cannot deal with any situation, even ones where no magic is involved. What is your point?

My point is that you know what your PCs are capable of and throwing a challenge that you know they cannot win at them is assholery, not hard mode.

Any time you create a situation in which the PCs must have X and they don't have X, it's impossible, not hard.

Likewise, if the PCs must have X but have X, then the difficulty of your encounter must be judged on merits other than having X.
Your PCs might be required to use everything in their toolbox during a long day of scry and die against several diverse enemies, but that doesn't make a series of one-round teleport ambushes difficult. Any game that can be won by following a script is not difficult.

IWBTG on Impossible, any bullet hell game = very long exercise in pattern recognition. A bot could probably do it. Easy? Lolwut.

IWBTG is a physical challenge. It requires reflexes and dexterity in addition to pattern recognition and memorization. Speed and precision are important factors.

D&D is a turn based game. Actions are resolved via dice roll and player skill doesn't enter into it at all. If you had the players chant the magic words and perform the gestures precisely and penalized them for failure to do so, the comparison might have a point. Or if you did a full-contact LARP.

Real difficulty in a game such as this comes from enemy adaptability. Like in Go or Chess or Poker the enemy has to respond to your moves so that you can't just script everything. It doesn't matter how big your toolbox is, Go is a game with literally only one tool, what matters is the ability of opposing sides to change their strategies based on changing conditions.

Yes, and that's why real success comes down to "kill enemies before they have a chance to adapt". Because if you don't keep that pressure on them they will wreck your shit.

There is a huge difference between a dragon getting chain novaed and dying while barely doing anything and that same dragon getting many rounds to fire off ranged attacks while spamming Heal or some shit. The difference? Adaption time.

That's not adaptation. Adaptation requires an actual change in strategy.
In both cases the strategy is the same, it's just that it fails immediately in the first.

Actual adaptation would be Dragon 2, upon learning that his brother was murdered by a chain-novaing scry-and-die teleporting hit squad, casts Contingency Plane Shift on himself to deal with such an eventuality and possibly buys a wand of Mind Blank.

In D&D success is about how big your toolbox is and how well equipped it is as you have to both have the right abilities and use them (just like in Starcraft, you lose if you need a unit but can't build it fast enough).

In D&D the enemy's toolbox and the challenges you face are totally arbitrary, determined by the DM.

[Mr. GC]

IWBTG is a physical challenge. It requires reflexes and dexterity in addition to pattern recognition and memorization. Speed and precision are important factors.

And if you programmed an Auto It script to press the right buttons at the right times the bot could win it. No one would call that game easily especially when you either flawless victory it or lose and yet it's beatable by a script. How do you explain that?

D&D is a turn based game. Actions are resolved via dice roll and player skill doesn't enter into it at all. If you had the players chant the magic words and perform the gestures precisely and penalized them for failure to do so, the comparison might have a point. Or if you did a full-contact LARP.

At low levels it's pure randomness but beyond that?

That's not adaptation. Adaptation requires an actual change in strategy.
In both cases the strategy is the same, it's just that it fails immediately in the first.

Actual adaptation would be Dragon 2, upon learning that his brother was murdered by a chain-novaing scry-and-die teleporting hit squad, casts Contingency Plane Shift on himself to deal with such an eventuality and possibly buys a wand of Mind Blank.

Who said anything about scrying? Also wand of 8th level spell = loled. Charged item of spell you'll want every day = loled again.

[Orion]

Shivering Touch isn't "trivial" to make ranged; AFAIK Reach Spell is typically a +3 level metamagic. Now, I'm aware that all kinds of ways to stack up metamagic exist, but I do wonder if a single-target attack is the really the best thing you can do with a theoretically level 11 spell effect.

Meanwhile, Shivering Touch doesn't work at all on

• Liches
• Golems
• Angels
• White Dragons
• Rakshasas

Or well against

• High Touch AC -- IE Rogues.
• Miss Chances -- IE Any of a ton of different clerical buffs

Note that none of these things are specfically intedned to counter Shivering Touch. On an unrelated note, anybody who throw in an NPC Psion is clearly not playing Hardcore. Hardcore DM's only use wizards and druids.

[Mr. GC]

Shivering Touch isn't "trivial" to make ranged; AFAIK Reach Spell is typically a +3 level metamagic. Now, I'm aware that all kinds of ways to stack up metamagic exist, but I do wonder if a single-target attack is the really the best thing you can do with a theoretically level 11 spell effect.

Meanwhile, Shivering Touch doesn't work at all on

• Liches
• Golems
• Angels
• White Dragons
• Rakshasas

Or well against

• High Touch AC -- IE Rogues.
• Miss Chances -- IE Any of a ton of different clerical buffs

Reach is +2, but I wasn't talking about that. I was talking about a core spell.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/spectralHand.htm

Liches are undead, which I've already covered.
Golems don't matter because standard basic caster spells like Grease and Glitterdust totally wreck their shit.
White Dragons, being a cold immune have also already been covered.

What exactly prevents it from working on Angels and Rakshasas? And holy shit, did you just say a Wizard would have a hard time with a Rogue?

/dies laughing

Miss chances (other than Mirror Image) you deal with via True Seeing, same as anyone else. And even if not, 20-50% chance to not die... um yeah.

Also, in what way is this not overcentralizing? You know, the actual point?

[Orion]

I didn't say a wizard would have trouble defeating a Rogue. I said that a wizard would have trouble defeating a Rogue with Shivering Touch. Which is the entire point. If you have to use a variety of spells to defeat a variety of enemies, then a niche spell useful for removing certain types of enemies is obviously not overcentralizing the environment.

Also: if you're using attacks that give the enemy a 50% chance to not die, that's the same as expecting them to live 2 rounds. Given that this is high-level, optimized D&D, I can't get too upset about reliably killing a single target in 2 rounds, if they don't deploy countermeasures in between your actions. That's working as intended in the rocket tag metagame.

[Mr. GC]

I didn't say a wizard would have trouble defeating a Rogue. I said that a wizard would have trouble defeating a Rogue with Shivering Touch. Which is the entire point. If you have to use a variety of spells to defeat a variety of enemies, then a niche spell useful for removing certain types of enemies is obviously not overcentralizing the environment.

Also: if you're using attacks that give the enemy a 50% chance to not die, that's the same as expecting them to live 2 rounds. Given that this is high-level, optimized D&D, I can't get too upset about reliably killing a single target in 2 rounds, if they don't deploy countermeasures in between your actions. That's working as intended in the rocket tag metagame.

You're still saying Rogues have a high touch AC. Claiming any of their defenses (except maybe Reflex saves, which no one cares about) are high = /dies laughing

You're also assuming this is a solo thing. Why would it be? What it actually means is you have a 50% chance, then your buddy gets a 50/50 shot, then your other buddy gets to flip a coin and so forth.

Likewise, you're not necessarily fighting one enemy. We're talking about a spell that can go in Spell Storing so the Shivering Touch meta is hordes of OHKO archers. Final Destination.

[nockermensch]

*WANK*

Oh dear, why is this discussion still on? We're not on your level, remember? Go back to D&D Valhalla and keep playing True D&D there. We're not worthy of your presence here.

[ModelCitizen]

Shivering Touch makes the list because it bypasses most standard defenses to kill just about anything in a level independent way. It has nothing to do with what the dumbasses at BG think... they call Shock Trooper good, so they can be dismissed out of hand as noobs.

Attempting to misdirect the conversation like this makes it pretty obvious you've realized you're an idiot. Everyone knows it, even you. Stop posting.

[Orion]

Yeah, this would be more fun if you could pretend to stay on topic. The questions is, is Shivering Touch too good, which requires us to compare it to other comaprable wizard spells--the opportunity cost for using it. As such, talking about the generabl awesomeness of wizards or how you can totally win various encounters with repeated casting is irrelevant. It really shouldn't surprise anyone that if you give yourself unlimited castings of an 8th-level spell effect, you can defeat most opposition. Heck, if I can have hundreds of apprentices shooting wands I'd rather have Magic Missile. At least I could kill ghosts with it. Similarly, its not relevant to point out that a party of 4 can almost certainly disable a single vulnerable foe in one round using Shivering Touch. The relevant fact is this: You're spending 2 actions to remove one enemy from combat, unless they have any Psionics or Spell-like Abilities. The questions is, is that noticeably better than other offensive Wizard options? The answer is no.

On an unrelated note, Spectral Hand sucks because is forces you to use STR. Let's be wildly charitable and give our 8th level Wizard a natural 10 Str, Bull's Strength, Haste, and Heroism. That's a +9 attack bonus. That's fine for punking dragons, of course, but it's absolutely not a reliable kill on appropriate opposition in general. At CR 7-9and below, you have

• Air Elemental, Touch AC 17
• Erinyes Touch 15 (can wear magic items)
• Belker (Touch 14)
• Avoral (Touch 16-18, miss chance)
• and of course the good old "8th level goblin rogue with cat's grace and a +2 ring, Touch AC 19

[hyzmarca]

IWBTG is a physical challenge. It requires reflexes and dexterity in addition to pattern recognition and memorization. Speed and precision are important factors.

And if you programmed an Auto It script to press the right buttons at the right times the bot could win it. No one would call that game easily especially when you either flawless victory it or lose and yet it's beatable by a script. How do you explain that?

If you used an Auto It script to play the game then it would be easy. It would, in fact, be boring because you're just watching a script execute.

IWTBTG is pressing buttons. Pressing buttons is the entire game. If you're not pressing buttons, if buttons are being pressed on their own, then there isn't a challenge. There isn't even a game.

At low levels it's pure randomness but beyond that?

Randomness isn't the point. The point is that players punch you and you don't punch them. There is no physical action and not time pressure. The game is entirely about decision-making and story-crafting.