The Contest Thread

[MrWaeseL]

LOL! Mod Edit: Attack removed.

abusing rules is not what optimization is about.

[Boulie_98]

And thus the poop hit the fan. Sooo.... What the CO board is for, is to point out loopholes and 'broken' stuff, but they're not allowed to post loopholes or 'broken' stuff. I guess the designers make a list of things not discussed at the CO board and assume that's the stuff that needs fixing then?

[RandomCasualty]

1101806177[/unixtime]]

Your level in a spellcasting class is a whole lot of things - it's what kind of save bonuses you get from the class, it's what kind of spells you get, and how many you have. It determines your class features, and it's your level for the purposes of penetrating SR. And on and on. Caster levels, on the other hand, is just your level in the spellcasting class for the spellcasting purposes - not your save bonuses or whatever.

I'm still confused on where you're getting this from.

The wording on classes like the mystic theurge is that you do in fact gain virtual levels in your spellcasting class. The actual wording on the table is "+1 level of existing arcane spellcaster class". So it isn't granting bonus caster levels, it's actually granting a virtual level. Since levels are what determine how many spell slots you get, and what spells you can cast.

But anywhere here's where I'm confused...

Say I'm a wizard 10 with an orange ioun stone, making me caster level 11 with the ioun stone. Normally, without the stone I can't cast 6th level spells.

According to your interpretation are you saying that I should be able to cast 6th level spells with the stone?

It sounds like that's what you're saying when you say levels in a spellcasting class are equal to caster level and everything that affects caster level also affects levels in a spellcasting class.

[User3]

Some items -- e.g., the Strand of Prayer Beads says "casts all spells at +4 caster level", rather than "adds 4 caster levels"; in this case it's extremely clear. Similarly, the Archmage Spell Power ability specifically states that increases caster level by 1 "for the purposes of blah blah blah only". These make it pretty clear that no, you don't get additional spells from using them; the ways in which they add to your caster level are explicitly spelled out.

The orange ioun stone, on the other hand, is (a) a bad idea -- not to imply that other caster-level boosting items are a good one -- and (b) poorly written even if it weren't. It says "+1 caster level", and the only real definition of "caster level" anywhere says "generally, a spell's caster level is the spellcaster's class level". Does that mean that changes to caster level imply changes to the spellcaster's class level? I honestly have no clue. AD&D1 had an ioun stone that actually added one full level of experience, after all.

[Maj]

Wow. I almost replied to a WotC thread. I haven't done that in a while...

It would seem to me that the Character Optimization boards would actually have more 20th level builds on it than not. Everyone knows the game is broken at high levels, and if the WotC people do actually visit that forum in order to solve problems, they will never be motivated to fix the higher level ones because they're not brought up. Furthermore, I'm willing to wager that the reason that a lot of games don't get to higher levels is because it's so horribly broken up there. So, by keeping the level of knowledge and information maxing out around the same time you learn to cast Harm, you end up with an unfixed gaming system that perpetuates the notion of quitting before 15th level.

It's a downward spiral that's causing the rules to plunge into the abyssal maw of crappiness.

[Username17]

Just like old times, eh? Anyone who thinks outside the box is branded as a heretic and attacked until they give up or fight back. Anyone who fights back is banned for having a bad attitude. The net result is that the Char Op board is just a bunch of sycophants licking each other's egos. How anyone is supposed to get valuable playtest data out of that I don't know.

It wouldn't surprise me if Andy Collins thought that things were pretty balanced and functional. I suspect he's still patting himself on the back for putting in Ed Stark's Shapechange "fix".

-Username17

[Draco_Argentum]

Heh, W&W have more votes now than they did yesterday, despite being "banned". Note that I didn't see a mention of it in the voting thread.

[The_Hanged_Man]

I'm getting a headache thinking about the caster level ~ spellcaster level ~ character level thing.

[Draco_Argentum]

First off even a simpleton can see that the builds are illegal. A character with unlimited wishes is so absurd it is laughable.

[Username17]

BTW, just a heads up, we're being watched. WizO_Autumn made reference to my "sycophants licking each others ego" comments in an e-mail to me.

To which I replied:

Heh. You read that, eh? Good. I really think it should be out in the open that I don't like the WotC board, I don't like the current crop of game designers, and I don't like you.

But that's not important. I like D&D. I want D&D to be better, and you're seriously in the way here. You have the opportunity to lead by example, to show the way things are going to be done. And you did. You threw the outsiders out and that's how everyone on the outside sees it.

You keep talking about "next time", or some future plans. There isn't going to BE a next time. We gave you a chance, and you threw it back in our face. We aren't going to spend an afternoon or two going through books looking for things that need fixing the next time you snap your fingers.

It doesn't make any difference if you believe that at some point in the future you're going to give equal time to some actual min/maxxing and destructive testing. Because the people on the outside believe that you won't. It's your court, it's your rules, and we all think you're going to take your ball and go home if we try to play with you. So guess what? We aren't going to try to play with you any more.

-Username17

Probably meaner than it really needed to be, but her double attack of "We value your input" and "You and everything you've ever done has been banned, and it mostly has to do with your attitude and I stand by that" is starting to really get to me.

-Username17

Mod Edit: Deleted copy of Autumn's e-mail.

[Draco_Argentum]

The watched thing isn't news. I expected it since WotC mods have demonstrated they watch Nifty.

Its kinda handy really.

[User3]

The funny thing is that she sent me a nice little message about "forwarding the thread to the R and D guys."

We won the fvcking contest with the best builds, and as a reward were banished.

I appreciate the gesture, I really do, but I have gotten really tired of people changing the rules after I've won.

You see, the problem with WotC is that its a "mom and pop" shop.

Designers are fvcking the web-types, so we get constant updates of new Fey that we don't give a damn about. Open-call contests for settings result in the winner being the guy they use all the time, meaning that we end up with fvcking Eberron which blows goats from a design and flavor standpoint. The online 'zine has a tiny stable of writers, and Dragon and Dungeon(which are WotC in all but the legal sense) have their own equally small stable of writers that write the same tired crap like SS-style monster classes for BS like half-elementals. I've even had Dungeon staff admit to me that they don't know how to write high-level adventures. Link to Dungeon boards, look after my posts

Incest, regardless of the love or best intentions behind it, produces freaks and retards. The best thing that WoTC ever did was release the open gaming license so that some guys could produce some solid DnD books and settings without having to have a kissing cousin relationship with WoTC.
Click here for more on WotC's incestous past. Warning! Real boning described! Read the all the pages of the article.

Honestly, I don't care. The fewer books that they produce that are quality mean that more people buy the actual books made by non-WoTc guys. I like that Rogukan is a better setting than any current WoTC setting, despite its maho-tsukai cheese (which only really breaks when added to WoTCs Ur-priest, MyTh, Sublime Chord,....you get the point, right?).

Right now, even guys at the gaming store. are telling me to bootleg WotC products

I washed my hands of the boards a while ago, since I found that they could not appreciate someone finding wholes in the rules, and they could not appreciate creativity. Since that's the only reason I go to a board, they have dug their own graves. And they wonder why they can't come up with a successful business model!!!

In the end, I don't bear them any ill will. Gamers like us will always have a blast in our homebrew games, and gamers like them will run into us at the Cons and wish they had a group/DM/friend like us.

My only question is this: who's fvcking the the person that writes all the broken psionics stuff?

[RandomCasualty]

I can see WotC getting sick of the old cheese at the CO boards. I mean gate/wish cheese has been around for a long long time. And considering you can do potentially anything with it, it doesn't make for a very useful min/max build, because it's not even a build. Any of the 17th level ro higher wizards in a contest can potentially gate their way to their very own uber valuable magic items, and that's a known exploit since 3.5 came out. I can understand people can get sick of hearing about gate abuse, because it's nothing new.

Once you've identified it, there's really no need to beat a dead horse. Like in M:tG type II, I think you've got to cycle out some of the old stuff so you come up with fresh new broken areas of the rules instead of just reiterating old ones.

[Zherog]

My opinion probably doesn't mean much, but here it is anyway...

I think it's a pretty shitty thing to take a private conversation you had with somebody and post it on a public message board for others to point fingers at and ridicule.

*shrug* Take it or leave it, that's how I feel.

[Username17]

I think it's a pretty shitty thing to take a private conversation you had with somebody and post it on a public message board for others to point fingers at and ridicule.

Would you say that it's better or worse than anonymously listening in to someone else's discourse with a different gorup of people and then alluding to the fact that you had the dirt on them later in an attempt to embarass them? (regardless of whether the person is in fact chagrinned)

If she wants to take my discourse with you here into that conversation, that by defaults puts that conversation into this discourse as well. An email is as private as a message board posting to an audience member who was neither the recipient of the email nor a member of that board.

-Username17

[Zherog]

I disagree, Frank. When you make a post to a message board, you are granting everybody in the world who has internet access permission to read that post. When you send somebody an e-mail, you are granting access to the recipients.

You have your opinion, I have mine. I needed to make mine known - that's all.