Min/Max Boards

correct

Druids... Eldritch Claw Warlocks... Touch attack spell casters... That crazy Paladin who took Vow of Poverty... That naked barbarian who insists on "hugging" every enemy you encounter...

There are a LOT of viable unarmed builds besides just monks and swordsages...

It is always active, any and all attacks using your bare hands or natural weapons will ravage evil targets with golden ice...

It's considered OP because of the following:
1) forces multiple saves if you hit multiple times
2) it is a poison that ignores poison immunity
3) curing it requires a CL check
4) it does more damage to enemies with higher Cha scores...

Due to the way it's damage works it can render most evil creatures helpless before the secondary damage even hits... AND it can stack with other ability damage attacks... the more you analize it the more and more OP it becomes.

as far as I'm aware it does not benefit from Rapid Summoning. Rapid Summoning duplicates the effects of Quicken Spell when a conjurer casts a Summon Monster spell...since this is for all intents and purposes a duplication of a metamagic, it does not affect SLAs...

It's not the dagger example, I comprehend that fine... I have no question about small static bonuses having diminishing value. I was referring to the original post, and even further back to the old threads about "Linear Fighters & Quadratic Wizards"... the numbers for the quantification of their power are as far as I can tell 100% arbitrary.

I provided the math for damage since that's the only actual quantifiable value... well the only quantifiable value that isn't expressly linear across all classes that is (HP & Saves are expressly linear)... a truly accurate graph of power would take all aspects of a class, graph their values per level individually, then graph an average of all aspects for each level and that average would be the accurate level of power for said class... however there are a myriad of non-quantifiable aspects of each class, and numerous other aspects that are difficult to quantify accurately.

Looking at what actually can be quantified both classes, within the confines of the class itself, are in fact fairly close to each other in power. The greater number of attacks per round for Fighters actually works to keep their output on par with the nuking abilities of Wizards. I'm not saying that Wizards aren't arguably more powerful, just that the power gap that is believed to exist is no where near as extreme as it's made out to be. That power gap is a gross exaggeration... I'm also saying that Fighters can actually out perform Wizards in a chosen task within the confines of the class. The main aspect for Wizards that does say that they are indeed higher power than Fighters is the simple fact that they can spread out their capabilities and become extremely versatile with little to no sacrifices, whereas a Fighter must choose to specialize in one field or another or be considered sub-par on all of them.

The damage aspect is likely why I have seen numerous times people push for wizards to take a battle field control perspective since the damage of mundanes is actually on par and can eventually even surpass their own. However, one can make the arguement that a Fighter can actually be more suited to battle field control than a wizard even. When it comes to grapples fighters have an upper hand in initiating grapples, while wizards have an upper hand in the ability to grapple multiple targets... however the wizards ability to grapple multiple targets plateaus and even dies off completely around mid game when their ability to initiate grapples stagnates and reaches a point where it's simply not possible to fail the opposed grapple check. Then there's anything with a saving throw, following class progression alone you lose the ability to reliably use much of anything with a saving throw around lv5 and then almost completely around lv15, that's a giant chunk of wizard spells that are virtually unusable mid to late game... and all of this is before you even factor in optimization for both sides... which BTW the defending end has far more and far better optimization options.

Even with versatility options at the wizards disposal, the action economy quickly reigns them back in. You may be able to play several different roles very effectively, but at any given moment you can only employ a single one of those roles. Sure you may have some options to improve your action economy but that would only really at best double your capability by letting you perform the same role twice or split your effort between two roles. Which I won't argue isn't a potentially huge boost in power, but those options have costs as well. Sure you can overcome those costs, but doing so requires stepping outside of the confines of the class itself.

If we are measuring the power growth of the class then everything must be within the confines of said class. Feats for measuring must be pulled from the bonus feat lists of both classes, feats from general levels and otherwise are ignored, items are ignored unless provided by a feature of the class (such as wizards crafting scrolls, wands, potions etc...), but you have to be reasonable with wizards crafting magic items as well... use the wealth by level chart to determine how much one could spend on crafting at any given level... and probably cut that value in half since they are reasonably likely to buy items as well as craft them... plus within the confines of the class you won't actually be reducing the crafting costs any...

I just feel that there is so much data that is completely ignored and even more that is utterly misconstrued via outside optimization that no one has yet to provide an accurate representation of the power levels for each class... sure you can raise the power level of some classes by a greater degree than others, but in a direct comparison is the disparity between the classes really truly as large as it's commonly believed to be? I honestly don't believe it to be, and from everything I can find they truly are very close in power.


FYI: the reason I dismiss outside optimization is because for every option you've got outside of the wizard class itself to optimize wizards, you've got an equally potent option that can be applied to a fighter. Outside optimization can eventually even blur the lines between classes. A fighter could for example, get access to a small assortment of spells to boost their melee prowess with the right selection of feats, prCs, and other classes. Even magic items provide equal benefit to a fighter as they do a wizard, the difference being that a wizard may come to rely on magic items more often due to having a limited resource for their spells. Outside optimization just muddies the results and can be used to create bias, whether intentional or not. One might believe that a wizard has a greater range of optimization than a fighter, but that doesn't make it true, a fighter can be optimized to be just as powerful as the most optimized wizard if one knows what they are doing. The fact that many believe wizards to be unmatched in optimization and fighters to have little to no optimization options just furthers my point, outside optimization invalidates comparisons of class power due to bias.

I'm sorry, but I just have to say this... where the hell are you pulling these numbers out of for your calculations? Honestly, looking it all over it comes across as an arbitrary set of numbers put into a calculation to create an implied power variance that in truth is no where near as out of balance as you try to make it out to be.

Lets look at this from an ACTUAL numerical standpoint shall we. Both starting at Lv6 with 16 in their key attribute (Int & Str respectively)

Fighter gets 2 attacks at +9/+4 (6bab+3strmod) and deals [w]+3 base damage per hit... You've got at least 7 feats to work with, I'm only going to factor the 4 fighter bonus feats to get the best impression of the classes capabilities.. Depending on if your going TH or TW you will either have Power Attack or TWF as one of those feats... odds are your going to have Weapon Focus & Weapon Spec as two of the remaining feats... so using that as a base we've got two sets of results.

TWF - 3 attacks at +8/+3|+8 and deal [w]+5/[w]+5|[w]+3 damage netting 3[w]+13 damage per round

TH - 2 attacks at +4/-1 ~ +10/+5 and deal [w]+6~12/[w]+6~12 damage netting 2[w]+12~24 damage per round

Not to mention, you still have 3 more non-class feats to further improve that along with any number of enchantments you could add to your weapon(s)...

The wizard with their 3rd level spells is likely using Fireball which they can cast 3x per day at 6th with 16 Int and has 4 feats, 1 from class. Given that you only have up to 3rd level spell slots you're not really going to be able to use any damage increasing metamagics such as Empower or Maximize spell. So your wizard bonus feat choice won't really factor for much at 6th level, at best it'd probably be craft wand to craft low cost wands of fireball with...

Fireball - deals 6d6 damage in a 20ft radius... That gives you a total damage range of 6 (1 enemy, all 1s) to 1,584 (44 enemies, all 6s)... realistically you'll only encounter an average of 5 enemies in radius and an average of 18(6x3) damage each for a net average of 90 damage.

However after 3 rounds that damage is reduced down to the capabilities of 2nd & 1st level spells and any magic items they may have. Assuming they took craft wand they'll have up an extra 50 rounds of 5d6 fireballs giving them an average of 15(5x3) damage per enemy for a net average of 75 damage across an average of 5 enemies.

So at 6th level you've got Fighters dealing up to 3[w]+13 /2[w]+12~24 damage per round vs Wizards dealing 6~90 damage per round for 3 rounds and 5~75 damage per round on subsequent rounds. When put into situations where AoE against more than 2 foes is a factor then yes wizards are indeed exponentially stronger, but in 1ob1 or 1on2 a fighter performs just as well.

If the supposed exponential power growth of wizards is figured via versatility, then a similar set of comparisons can be made for a fighter who again can repeat their action round after round endlessly whereas a wizard has a limited resource. It's not until late game when the limited resource of spell slots becomes abundant enough per spell level as to become negligible.

If on average a fighter were to miss half (bad case scenario) of their attacks and combat were to last for 5 rounds per encounter then we are looking at an average of 8[w]+32 (TWF) or 5[w]+30~60 (THF) damage per encounter for fighters and 84 damage per enemy per encounter for wizards... If we assume the fighter's using a 1d6 weapon then we've got +24 average for [w] per encounter for 68 (TWF) & 54~84 (THF) damage per encounter... and all of this is before even factoring in critical hits.

So the way I see it a Fighter and a Wizard are really on almost equal footing at lv6... The simple fact that a fighter's power level can be almost even with a wizard with 3rd level spells at 6th level is proof enough in my eyes that the power curve for wizards is no where near as steep as it is generally accepted to be, nor is the fighters progression truly linear either.

Comparing at 20th level and even a single hand fighter with 16 str exceeds the strength of an empowered maximized fireball with 160 damage per round vs the 90 damage of the fireball... If you use metamagic cost reductions you can get that fireball up to 180 with by adding Enhanced to make it (20d6)x1.5... if your cost reductions keep that Enhanced Empowered Maximized Fireball below 9th level slot then you could bump it up to 210 by adding in Fiery (20d6+20)x1.5... but that's entirely circumstantial and would involve using non-class feats &/or prC to accomplish... so we're looking at 90-100 within the confines of the wizard class alone.

Also I really have to correct ya'll on that claim of wizards being "quadratic"... you realize if wizards were quadratic their power would peak and then decline at the same rate it originally grew... so a "quadratic" wizard would be strongest at level 10 and weakest at levels 1 and 20... considering that they do NOT ever lose power (no one does) the term ya'll were after was exponential... Fighters I would actually argue to be cubed as they start with an exponential growth that eventually tapers off to a logarithmic growth, thus they are cubic. Properly graphic a fighters power will create an s curve. Here's a resource for ya'll to observe how different types of graphs curve, as you'll notice Quadratics create a parabola, not a simple curve, and cubed (cube root) start exponentially then curve back off again. http://sosanko.weebly.com/uploads/3/7/4/1/37411349/1285243_orig.png

Yea, its a good option, I sure enjoyed it on my Spellthief/Illusionist

reality

d->t

Your welcome. glad I could help

rally

+r