The Role of the Fighter in a Party

[Nachofan99]

Basket Burner,

Are you a troll?

I posted the average damage of the melee attacks of the list of CR10 monsters.  A standard 30gp Tower Shield with Hardness 5 and 20HP is a really good buff for a basic Fighter because without it he is taking dozens of extra points of damage and losing the Full Round Attack war.  One *cheap* item can help ameliorate that somewhat.  Crack open your Monster Manual, PHB and DMG and do the math yourself.

You seem to make diametrically opposed assertions.  You say that team monster just automatically breaks any shield ever and then the Fighter is out of thousands of gold.  A Large Adamantine Steel Tower Shield +1 has Hardness of 22 and takes 0 damage from almost every single CR10 monster listed *average damage*.  In fact, a hardness 22 shield takes 0 damage from almost every single listed monster's *maximum melee damage*; I grant that monsters with Power Attack and Sunder are better here but Tower Shield is not the be all end all.

But see then you say the the monster just ignores the Fighter and his door.  Well, which is it?  Do monsters always target the door until it's dead, thus making the Fighter waste Team Monster's actions, or do they always just ignore the guy behind the door and directly attack the party?  You seem to think that Colossal Animated Objects with Int score "-" can make tactical decisions - they can't.  Many (but not all, as I stated so many times already) of the other monsters proposed have low int scores - that doesn't mean they automatically attack the door forever, but it does not mean they use good tactics instantly.

The reason those types of monsters attack the Figher and not someone else is - gasp - the Fighter is physically closer than other party members!  Every round the Fighter will continue to put himself into harms way and the casters will move further away and such that charging monsters would have to go through the Fighter or require them to take double move actions to maneuver *around* the Fighter.  That seems pretty effective.

A Fighter with a +1 Valorous Shield Spike on a Large Heavy Steel Shield with Shield Slam should be able to do enough damage to something that "ignores him" such that he dazes it into oblivion.  Or if the target is immune to daze, now the Fighter is up in its grill with Standstill and Thicket of Blades - how is it going to get away?  Again, it's not bending time and space but it's not automatic seppuku.

All a Fighter gets is Feats, so it's not that hard to have enough feats to combine Shield useage+Charge Attacking+Lockdown stuff.  Mix in a couple of levels of other classes like Barbarian for Rage and Crusader and Warblade for a few key Maneuvers and stances and you have a solid chassis.  Tier 1? Hell no.  Tier 3? Probably not.  Way better than "Fighter 20 Core only No items Final Destination?" Fuck yes.

The best part about Basket Burner's post is where he says a Tower Shield might require a seperate proficiency because it weighs alot.  You call me Glenn Beck?  What kind of RAW did you just pull out of your ass for that?

[Basket Burner]

There is no such thing as novas in that sense, and you will run out of wand charges rather quickly.

Example: Fighter fights something, kills it, but gets full attacked once for a hundred in the process. 18 charges gone, or over a third of a wand. That wand likely isn't surviving a single day. Sure he can have more than one, but he's still going to be running out quickly. Especially if he doesn't have unlimited time between encounters, such as fighting one while the guys in the next room hear combat and start mobilizing.

As for Persists, you can manage 4 without any real difficulty with 0 or 1 Nightstick. You might be able to get 6 without Nightstick stacking.

Wow, people use wands of something beside lesser vigor for healing?

Ok. You use 9 charges, which is half as many as 18, but still a lot. It takes you 10 minutes. I hope you weren't needing those buffs for later, and I hope there aren't enemies in the next room getting ready to kill you.

Lesser Vigor is overrated.

Nacho is continuing to be incoherent, inconsistent, deceptive, dishonest, and flat out wrong in addition to being insulting, so he makes the ignore list.

[Solo]

Healing with 1 charge off of a wand of Lesser Vigor takes 11 rounds, or one minute and six seconds, for the record.

[Basket Burner]

Healing with 1 charge off of a wand of Lesser Vigor takes 11 rounds, or one minute and six seconds, for the record.

And 9 takes 99 rounds. Might as well just say 10 minutes, especially since it's a move to get it out and another to put it back away.

[Halinn]

Monster looks around the field. It sees a tin can holding a door, an incredibly squishy looking dual wielder, and a very dangerous looking priest and mage.

You assume it attacks the doorstop. Why would it possibly attack the doorstop, who is readying to hide behind the door?

Remind me to hire commoners, then dress them up as priests and mages. Robes and either a book or a holy symbol sounds fairly cheap. Maybe a quarterstaff or a mace to round things out. Better than displacement, because this apparently gives your character 100% miss chance, since monsters all go for the 'dangerous looking' priests and mages.

[Sinfire Titan]

Nacho is continuing to be incoherent, inconsistent, deceptive, dishonest, and flat out wrong in addition to being insulting, so he makes the ignore list.

Enough of that shit. You are straddling a line, so clean up your act. Adding users to your Ignore list should be done privately. As in "I'm going to put this guy on my ignore list without telling him". While we are very lenient with the rules here, what you are doing is douchebaggery.

Once again, stop or we will take action.

[Basket Burner]

Monster looks around the field. It sees a tin can holding a door, an incredibly squishy looking dual wielder, and a very dangerous looking priest and mage.

You assume it attacks the doorstop. Why would it possibly attack the doorstop, who is readying to hide behind the door?

Remind me to hire commoners, then dress them up as priests and mages. Robes and either a book or a holy symbol sounds fairly cheap. Maybe a quarterstaff or a mace to round things out. Better than displacement, because this apparently gives your character 100% miss chance, since monsters all go for the 'dangerous looking' priests and mages.

Chances are the real priests and mages have already acted. But even so... they die easily, and you quickly reach the point where no one else wants to be your decoy.

And regardless of how the other people look, or what they do, their target will not be the guy hiding behind the door, even though they can break the door in one attack (and likely will, once they're done with everyone else).

At this point one of a few things happen:

The rest of the party does all the work while you hide behind the door.
The rest of the party has one or more people die but wins, while you hide behind the door.
The rest of the party is killed off. The enemies then Juggernaut through the door.

At most, you just made yourself die last.

Which reminds me of the very funny stories I've been told about a poster named Aelryinth...

[ImperatorK]

You mean you are him?
And by the way. You stated a bunch of arguments, but none with real proof that it will or is like you say. So yeah. We can ignore your flailing.

[veekie]

All caster teams are not the slightest bit concerned about traps, and if they are they are doing it wrong.

Minor exaggeration here.
Casters can detect, ignore or bypass individual traps.
Each such trap takes a piece off their resources, and is another preparation that is less useful for combat.
Detecting such traps also takes pieces off their resources.

Casters also do not  generally come with trapfinding in combination with the skill points and class skill suite to make these attempts low cost.

So, for finding traps you can use domain granted trapfinding, multiclassing(which makes you a caster/rogue already), Summons, or Find Traps. The first two require strategic resources at character creation, while the last must be casted multiple times a day during a major dungeon crawl or persisted(which is a bit silly, you have way better things to persist), and uses a cross class skill. Find Traps, fortunately, is low level enough that if you can get Search as class, you can just get a command word item of it at higher levels. Summoning is more of a brute's approach, and certain traps you do not want to activate(such as alarms) in the process of locating.

Then you need to bypass or disable the trap, which requires more effort and spell slots. So like the Fighter, if you have one around, just use the rogue. It takes less effort to repair him afterwards, than it does to find all the traps.

[Basket Burner]

All caster teams are not the slightest bit concerned about traps, and if they are they are doing it wrong.

Minor exaggeration here.
Casters can detect, ignore or bypass individual traps.
Each such trap takes a piece off their resources, and is another preparation that is less useful for combat.
Detecting such traps also takes pieces off their resources.

Casters also do not  generally come with trapfinding in combination with the skill points and class skill suite to make these attempts low cost.

So, for finding traps you can use domain granted trapfinding, multiclassing(which makes you a caster/rogue already), Summons, or Find Traps. The first two require strategic resources at character creation, while the last must be casted multiple times a day during a major dungeon crawl or persisted(which is a bit silly, you have way better things to persist), and uses a cross class skill. Find Traps, fortunately, is low level enough that if you can get Search as class, you can just get a command word item of it at higher levels. Summoning is more of a brute's approach, and certain traps you do not want to activate(such as alarms) in the process of locating.

Then you need to bypass or disable the trap, which requires more effort and spell slots. So like the Fighter, if you have one around, just use the rogue. It takes less effort to repair him afterwards, than it does to find all the traps.

You are entirely missing the point. The solution to traps is not trapfinding. Regardless of whether you have it or not.

The DC to detect any traps that might matter is equal to 24 + the CR of the trap. The DC to disable such traps is the same.

That means that the outcome of the Rogue attempting to deal with traps is either that he discovers the trap by walking right into it, or he does detect it successfully (performing the function of a simple Detect Magic, in much more time) then springs the trap on himself and possibly others. It also takes him a very long time to do this, seeing as he is almost assuredly going to not find anything without a take 20, and that means even a 10 x 10 x 10 room requires 48 minutes to search. I hope you weren't needing those buffs for anything, and I hope there were not enemies mobilizing in the next room... or the next dungeon over.

There is a very small chance he both finds and disables the trap successfully. By very small, I mean literally 1% or so. The Rogue is incredibly squishy as his defenses are very low in every way that matters. The Rogue is the worst person to be finding traps the hard way. Even if you get around that by using a different trapfinder you're still wasting a lot of time making skill checks that will most likely fail anyways.

If you have an all caster team though, everyone has high defenses. Since you're going to be springing all the traps anyways, you might as well do it with those that can take them, and this way you can keep your buffs.

[Sinfire Titan]

You mean you are him?
And by the way. You stated a bunch of arguments, but none with real proof that it will or is like you say. So yeah. We can ignore your flailing.

Stop prodding him, it's just going to make things worse.

[veekie]

Finding traps, it depends on your procedure, the standard trapfinder(if hes insane and not being a Rogue/Wizard or something) would be packing a source of Detect Magic for magical traps(cantrips on command are really cheap) and an item to boost Search, then taking 10 for mechanical trap scans.
Anything that fails against that search is magical in nature and picked up by the Detect Magic(most magical traps don't go so well with lead plating). On both counts, they can then be disabled, destroyed or bypassed.
Routine check procedure also does not cover the entire dungeon, but mainly on corridors and entrances, which greatly reduces search time.

Again, its not that its perfectly effective. Its effective enough to work in many dungeon situations, and conserves resources you'd be wasting by ramming traps head on with your buffs up.

[Basket Burner]

Finding traps, it depends on your procedure, the standard trapfinder(if hes insane and not being a Rogue/Wizard or something) would be packing a source of Detect Magic for magical traps(cantrips on command are really cheap) and an item to boost Search, then taking 10 for mechanical trap scans.

I've already mentioned Detect Magic. It's much better than mundane searching, both because it actually works and because it takes much less time.

Anything that fails against that search is magical in nature and picked up by the Detect Magic(most magical traps don't go so well with lead plating). On both counts, they can then be disabled, destroyed or bypassed.
Routine check procedure also does not cover the entire dungeon, but mainly on corridors and entrances, which greatly reduces search time.

1: The Disable DC is the same as the Search DC, aka too high to hit with any degree of reliability.
2: The process then is still very slow, just not as slow. Still slow enough however that you are wasting buff time while giving any other enemies in the area plenty of time to mobilize against you.
3: Most traps are going to be the kind that are harmless to the natives, either because they aren't directly threatening (alarms and such), or that the natives are immune to or even benefit from. For that reason, they can be placed anywhere safely, and the best places are the unexpected ones. So if you are only searching likely places...

Again, its not that its perfectly effective. Its effective enough to work in many dungeon situations, and conserves resources you'd be wasting by ramming traps head on with your buffs up.

No, it doesn't.

If a trap hits you with all buffs up... it's not going to do that much. You buffed up to deal with whatever is in the dungeon, and the traps are lesser threats than those that set the traps so dealing with them is no problem.
If you waste a bunch of time trying to disable the trap... buffs will expire, enemy buffs will be put up, enemies will move in to attack you before you are ready.

So the best thing to do is just keep going, even if you know for certain there's a trap there because the alternative is worse.

[X-Codes]

Finding traps, it depends on your procedure, the standard trapfinder(if hes insane and not being a Rogue/Wizard or something) would be packing a source of Detect Magic for magical traps(cantrips on command are really cheap) and an item to boost Search, then taking 10 for mechanical trap scans.
Anything that fails against that search is magical in nature and picked up by the Detect Magic(most magical traps don't go so well with lead plating). On both counts, they can then be disabled, destroyed or bypassed.
Routine check procedure also does not cover the entire dungeon, but mainly on corridors and entrances, which greatly reduces search time.

Again, its not that its perfectly effective. Its effective enough to work in many dungeon situations, and conserves resources you'd be wasting by ramming traps head on with your buffs up.

Note that in an optimized dungeon, this strategy is no longer useful.  Magic of Eberron gave us the Hidden Ward spell.  Even if you just employ it throughout your dungeon at CL 1, you're going to miss about 45% of all magical traps with detect magic, and 25% of all magical traps with a minimum-level Arcane Sight.

[midnight_v]

Nacho is continuing to be incoherent, inconsistent, deceptive, dishonest, and flat out wrong in addition to being insulting, so he makes the ignore list.

Enough of that shit. You are straddling a line, so clean up your act. Adding users to your Ignore list should be done privately. As in "I'm going to put this guy on my ignore list without telling him". While we are very lenient with the rules here, what you are doing is douchebaggery.

Once again, stop or we will take action.

Basket Burner,

Are you a troll?

Seeing as this was the post from nachofan99 before the post where he'd be ignored. That "douchebaggery" mod post seems spread unevenly.
...so yeah... you might take action but it's wrong to single him out. When he's giving apprpriate response to bullshit posts like "are you a troll" and "are you a Sunic".
Bad form.

[ImperatorK]

Note that SunicBB is being consistent with it. He deserved himself this singling out, because it's not the first time. Nacho is pretty nice all the time.

[midnight_v]

Note that SunicBB is being consistent with it.

So wait... instead of being mature about it. Instead of addressing his points, right,wrong, or somewhere in between. You want to continue hostilities with this guy, for espousing an unpopular opinion?
You thing he's sunic flames, right, gotcha. . . "two people cannot have similar ideas or voice on the internet?" sure if that's the limits of your understanding sure. Casting everyone with an opposing style isn't in the same light, isn't unheard of, but it is one of the more ignorant things that people do, and it actively makes the board worse when you do it.
So you know... don't. Or rather you should stop.
I'm not a mod but I am a citizen of these boards and thats really NOT what any of us are about. Damn. You just signed the "I will contribute, not be a douche'" manifesto. . . So argue the issues, not the people you don't like.
I don't agree with the "fighter is good enough" crowd, but I'm not gonna be call anyone names or trying to disuade arguments by paining someone as "villian in chief" which is what you do with the "Ooh Sunic thing".
Just saying.

Edit: quick edit work you did there.

[RobbyPants]

My take is: stop calling each other trolls. If you feel they're not listening to your argument, then drop it. It says right in the rules Josh posted to make your point once.

- No flaming or spamming
...
- Don't be a douche.  Don't piss people off just to piss them off, don't be an immature ass
- Get along with the other people on this site
...
- No harping.  This means don't say the same thing over and over again.  After you make a point don't repeat that point again.  Say something new or stop.  This includes making multiple posts.

So, the way I read that:

• Don't antagonize people for the sake of antagonizing. This includes calling them trolls for disagreeing with you or publicly putting them on ignore.

• If they aren't seeing your side, either phrase it a different way to get your point across, or drop it.

• Whether or not you think Basket Burner is Sunic is irrelevant to any arguments at hand. Passive-aggressive quips of SunicBB fall under deliberate antagonizing/douche-baggary.
  

The long and the short of it: argue civilly with each other or stop arguing with each other.

[Basket Burner]

Ahem. So veekie, or anyone else interested. About the manner in which parties deal with traps?

[Mooncrow]

Ahem. So veekie, or anyone else interested. About the manner in which parties deal with traps?

Well, on this one I have to agree with you - as written, the trap rules are an absolute mess.  Even a factotum has a fairly hard time hitting some of the difficulties.  (and can't miss others)   Of course, that is kind of a two fold thing - the CR system being broken, and a good many DMs insisting that mundanes can't really disable magic traps.