Min/Max Boards

The main topic is here: http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=12229.0.

I'm branching this topic off another thread because what I have to say here isn't relevant to the original.

I always find it odd when folks make comments about things being broken, but then encourage rocket tag by having poor defenses.

The degree to which a system plays more like rocket launcher tag or more like padded sumo is a property of the system, not something that can be affected by character-building decisions.  The system determines the optimization landscape in which characters are built.  3.5 is a system with SoDs, if you fail a save, you're out of the fight.  What happens if you build a character with good defenses?  You're diverting character resources to defenses from somewhere, usually offense.  Is this a good trade?  When it comes to your offense, you need to optimize more or less one thing, usually your weapon damage or your save DCs.  At a basic level, this is usually controlled by one ability score, Str or a key spellcasting ability.  When it comes to optimizing your defenses, you need high AC; touch AC; Fort, Reflex, and Will saves; HP; and ability scores, to protect against being taken out of combat by ability damage, drain, and penalties.  AC, saves, and HP are controlled by three ability scores, Dex, Con, and Wis, and that doesn't count the ability damage/drain/penalty problem.  If you neglect any aspect of your defense, there's some monster that will kill you outright.  If you have great Fort and Will saves, that won't stop an ettercap from gluing you to the floor with web.  I have a friend whose gnome druid dumped Str (it doesn't matter, right, because of wild shape?) and died to shadows.  If there are no-save-just-dies in play, not even the above stats will save you, you'll need blanket immunities too.  In 3.5, it's easier to be good at attacking than it is to be good at defending.

That's not the end of the problems.  There are usually three other people in your party, and regardless of how you build your character, nothing will stop one of the other players from building a squishy-as-all-get-out gray elf wizard with high save DCs, good initiative, terrible HP, terrible Fort save, and dumped Str and Cha.  If your opponents have a choice between attacking you and the wizard, they'll hit the wizard and all the resources you spent on your defenses will be wasted.  It's worse than that, though.  If the wizard wins initiative and sticks an SoD, both of you will be fine.  If you win initiative and hit a monster with your less-maxed-out-offense, your opponent has a higher chance of surviving and doing something unpleasant to the wizard.  In 3.5, the best defense really is a good offense.  And, finally, even if your entire party builds defensive (and how often does that happen?), the Monster Manuals are still filled with glass cannons and puzzle monsters.  It's very hard to stop all of those from killing you with defenses, because you have cover every avenue of attack, and easier to strike first and kill them before they kill you since their defenses are a joke.

The DM can change this equation because the DM controls the rules, the opposition, and the world.  However, players can't, not by building defenses.   There is something that players can do, though, to mitigate 3.5's rocket-launcher-tag aspects, and that is avoiding what I call action multiplication, abilities that give extra actions you can then use to attack.

As for WRT [white raven tactics]. It's fantastic. It doesn't have to be broken.

Yes, it is.  The single most important rules change that Tome of Battle introduces has nothing to do with the classes in the book, it's the potential to graft white raven tactics onto the core full casters using Martial Study.  In core + TB only, you can even set it up so you get Martial Study (white raven tactics) with loremaster at the lowest possible level, 10.  By setting up a big white raven tactics circle, four core full casters can throw eight spells with the potential to end combat in the first round.  If they have belts of battle (MIC), that goes up to twelve spells.  With a 5-minute workday, they don't ever have to worry about running out of spell slots, but realistically even if they're fighting four encounters a day, it's overwhelmingly likely that one of the spells will stick long before they need to run through the full twelve, saving slots for future encounters, and there are things like pearls of power they can use to ensure they have sufficient slots.  This is wildly, dramatically imbalancing.  What kind of CR 10 opposition can withstand that?  How high do you have to increase the EL to challenge that kind of party?

Action multiplication increases the advantages of offense over defense, literally multiplying the power of your offenses by giving you more chances to use them, and increases the advantages of going first by making actions lumpier, since everyone is now taking two or more actions in the same turn.  It makes the rocket-launcher-tag nature of 3.5 vastly worse.  Players can make their DM's life easier and the game more fun by avoiding action multiplication abilities, including white raven tactics.

At one point I found a thread or guide that discussed precision damage as a whole, including sneak attack, sudden strike, and skirmish, and had a bunch of suggestions on optimizing it.  I think it was on GitP, but I can't remember the exact title and can't find it with Google, so I'm hoping someone else remembers what I'm describing. 

Edit: Found it, http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=157722.  Why was that not appearing in Google searches for "precision damage"?

I'm trying to get a sense of how useful making enemies flat-footed is.  So far, for abilities that only work on flat-footed targets, I have Iaijutsu Focus, some TB strikes (death in the dark and hand of death), the drow fighter variant, bracers of murder, and Vae School (which also works on flanked targets).  Am I missing anything?  I don't have anything like a complete list of abilities that only work on targets that are denied their Dex to AC, which overlaps to some extent with flat-footedness.  The obvious ones are sneak attack and its near-cousin, sudden strike.  Beguiler's surprise casting only works on Dex-denied enemies.  Is there a list somewhere?  What am I missing?

I'm trying to figure out how much support there is for a niche style, the melee summoner who fights with their summons.  There's Despana School (DU 56), which improves flanking when you're fighting with summons.  I want to say I ran across at least one other similar ability for melee summoners the other day while looking for something else, but I don't remember where.  Am I misremembering?  Is there any other specific support for melee summoners?

As far as I know, exotic weapon master's (CW 30-31) exotic reach class feature is the only means of making AoOs against opponents with cover.  I have two questions.  First, are is there anything else that explicitly works like exotic reach, i.e. lets you make AoOs into cover or says something like, "You ignore cover...?"  Second, is there any case to be made that the abilities that do exist that allow you to ignore the AC bonus one gets from cover should also let you make AoOs into cover?

I have a pretty long history with D&D 3.5 optimization: I started on the WotC 3.5 CharOp board, though I don't know if anyone else is still around or has returned like i have.  At least one of my posts still has high-ish Google rank so at least the Internet hasn't completely forgotten what I've written .  I made an account primarily to post a large-scale project I've been working on, once I finish it.  I enjoy analyzing all sorts of games, though most of my energy these days is going into tabletop RPGs, card-Eurogame hybrids like Race for the Galaxy and Dominion, and very old-school CPRGs, though I also enjoy TBS.