Quote from: gleichman;574347Did you really expect a different outcome?

Nope.

Quote from: CRKrueger;574343Not a single point of damage was done.  

What? Tell that to those poor peasants that littered the entrance to the dungeon, and that knight and his entourage "human mannequin theatre of the macabre".

I'm sure they would disagree.

Wait, so where's the ambush? That was the point of this whole exercise, right?

Did Spike's party even go to sleep and get attacked? Or did they just die of boredom and seppuku? I play In Nomine and routinely know what to do with Demons using Cold War-esque cloak & dagger techniques. But I also know that at some point if I have to ambush... well, I have to ambush. An actual direct attack has to be made, otherwise it is not an ambush.

Because, if running an immortal being with only TPK as requirement, I'd just teleport out of the cave and perpetually cast "Walls of X" upon the entrance until the adventurers die of starvation or thirst inside. However, in IN games I run if your Demon Prince demanded an ambush -- instead of just kill the party at your leisure -- and your bone devil character pulled that, well he'd be in trouble because he wasted his Prince's time. An ambush was expected because your Prince likely has other work for you to do.

(Actually, when I'm truly DMing evil, a Prince requests an ambush to more explicitly reveal demonic presence, which usually has greater ramifications than the Bone Devil's actual success in TPKing the party. Or you pissed the Prince off and you are being jerked around, just 'cuz. You're just a pawn after all. Sucks to serve tyrannical evil. You better work!)

Retrospection: Could have ambushed the party at the first intersection.

Cast wall of ice on the hallway that lead out, cast illusion to the right, and teleport to the left.

The party would only have had one place to run: deeper into the dungeon.

And only 50% chance of picking the real Bone Devil from the illusion, unless someone had an ability to see through the illusion or maybe use that Detect Thoughts amulet to tell which one had thoughts or not, but what is the likelihood that a character seeing not one but two demons flanking the party is going to automatically ask "are these both real? let me check before i defend myself..."

So many "could have been"s...

Quote from: gleichman;574347Did you really expect a different outcome?

Good odds that the other Thunderdome goes bust too. It has however already lasted longer than I expected.

My point has already been proven. I'm just waiting for my dire bats to eat his horse and either he has feather fall and I fight the now grounded and slow moving fighter or my dire bats pile drive him into oblivion.

Quote from: CRKrueger;574343For all the "Bone Devils can WTFPWN a whole party instantly" vibe, I was a little surprised to see "death by boredom (giggle giggle)" from the supposed rule asskickers.  I was kind of hoping mass carnage.  Oh well.

I do not feel responsible for not living up to your strawman. Despite what "vibe" you got, I didn't ever claim that the Bone Devil could kill the party instantly, and never claimed he act that way.

Frankly, neither did the actual writers of the MM: "They freely use wall of ice to keep the enemy divided."

If I didn't try to separate the party using Wall of Ice and engage them one at a time, I would not even be playing the Bone Devil based on the tactics they are described as using.

If nothing else this thread proves that charop fetishists and denners are the most shit boring gamers on the planet. I didn't buy into the 3.5 attracts arseholes debate but Kaelik sure puts up a strong case.

Find some balls and at least attack your opponent for chrissakes!

Bah, I expected the Magic-User to drop like a stone, I expected the Fighter weeping at his own ineffectuality, I expected the wailing and gnashing of teeth, I wanted to see the resulting explosion from space, I expected the skull-fucking of corpses, the Cleric praying unanswered to his God as he is force-fed the heart of the thief, the Bone Devil driving the PCs before it and hearing the Lamentation of their Women.  What we got was Car Wars where one guy takes an hour to plot out his move with a slide rule every time.

This is not Fractions and Fractals, this is Dungeons and Dragons, THIS...IS THUNDERDOME!!!, or I guess not.  Like I said, oh well.

If I'm Mephistopheles and I hear about one of my Bone Devils killing a party by walling them off until they die of hunger, thirst, or lack of oxygen, I'm going to laugh for a decade or so, and then turn the Bone Devil back into a Larva and let a Pit Fiend wipe his ass with it.  Why?  Any Genius level intelligence can win, but with Eternal Existence, the only true crime is being boring and if I wanted Tedious, I'd talk to Asmodeus's personal secretary.

Quote from: CRKrueger;574472Bah, I expected the Magic-User to drop like a stone, I expected the Fighter weeping at his own ineffectuality, I expected the wailing and gnashing of teeth, I wanted to see the resulting explosion from space, I expected the skull-fucking of corpses, the Cleric praying unanswered to his God as he is force-fed the heart of the thief, the Bone Devil driving the PCs before it and hearing the Lamentation of their Women.  What we got was Car Wars where one guy takes an hour to plot out his move with a slide rule every time.

This is not Fractions and Fractals, this is Dungeons and Dragons, THIS...IS THUNDERDOME!!!, or I guess not.  Like I said, oh well.

If I'm Mephistopheles and I hear about one of my Bone Devils killing a party by walling them off until they die of hunger, thirst, or lack of oxygen, I'm going to laugh for a decade or so, and then turn the Bone Devil back into a Larva and let a Pit Fiend wipe his ass with it.  Why?  Any Genius level intelligence can win, but with Eternal Existence, the only true crime is being boring and if I wanted Tedious, I'd talk to Asmodeus's personal secretary.

I'd go talk to Glasya instead.  Nothing like a happy chat with the Boss' daughter.

I decided to look at the cause of all this brouhaha, "By the Book Gaming -- Wow this is Hard," to see what was being contested.

Apparently Kaelik was talking about how busted CR/EL ratings are compared to playing a monster intelligently. Which is a non-starter because yes, anything played intelligently will be a greater CR/EL lvl than the ratings. Y'know, settings and situations matter and all that. Entertainingly enough it's the same argument why fighters can deal with dragons w/o wuxia fightan powerz, just inverse.

But then if that was the case you could have a gaggle of priests do a combined ritual spell or some abjuring ward and seal the bone devil lair, just like a bone devil can seal a party in its lair. It is playing smartly according to setting. And it does succeed. But it also doesn't prove anything above except reaffirm the point that Wizards v. Fighter issue is actually bullshit.

So, doubting Kaelik was arguing against himself from another topic, and suspecting there was more to this, I read further in the topic to find Justin Alexander dissecting Kaelik's reverse-CR contention, that of the near-surety the Bone Devil will TPK the party of four 9th lvls instead of their having 100% chance success according to CR. Which, as someone later points out, argues against Kaelik's demon-morphing bow wielding über-cleric, but we'll leave that alone for now (because that much arguing against yourself is dizzying).

Apparently this continues with a back-and-forth of examples where the party would or would not TPK due to Bone Devil ambushes. And ambushes they were, as characters would be isolated or backstabbed -- always physically attacked in the end in some way. Helpless all characters would be if played by the right clever GM because see in darkness is infinite. White-room theory wanking next persists until BedrockBrendan tells Kaelik and Spike/Justin to get a room and be done with this already.

Thus a great lead up to this match where the Bone Devil stalls out a party's patience waiting for congenital heart failure and Alzheimer's. Which leads back to the above point arguing that actual play in setting matters more, therefore reaffirming Wizard v. Fighter issue is bullshit. And then I realized I could have been watching Hulu.

Quote from: Opaopajr;574508Apparently Kaelik was talking about how busted CR/EL ratings are compared to playing a monster intelligently. Which is a non-starter because yes, anything played intelligently will be a greater CR/EL lvl than the ratings.

This is only true if the designers intend everything to be played stupidly, no?  

Quote from: Opaopajr;574508But then if that was the case you could have a gaggle of priests do a combined ritual spell or some abjuring ward and seal the bone devil lair, just like a bone devil can seal a party in its lair. It is playing smartly according to setting. And it does succeed. But it also doesn't prove anything above except reaffirm the point that Wizards v. Fighter issue is actually bullshit.

Two things here.  First, according to the CR system, the 10th level party should have no trouble ending that creature's miserable little existence.  Using some kind of ritual to seal it away for ever makes sense for 3rd level characters, but not for characters that are an equal challenge.

Second, the rules don't have anything about such a ceremony.  That's possibly some DM pity there.  If you can seal the demon when the party wants to, but you can't seal the demon the rest of the time, how is that consistent. Worse, if NPC clerics can perform some ritual but the players never can, what's the point of having heroes in the first place.  That would just prove that 'you can magical Tea Party anything that's hard'.  

This doesn't have anything to do with the Fighter vs. Wizard debate.  If it did, the contribution of the Fighter would have been minimal while the contribution of the Wizard would have been more significant.  Or not.  But with both of them on the party's side, it wouldn't prove anything.  Individually they could both go against the Bone Devil and we could see how they fare - that might work.  

A well prepared wizard would have had nothing to fear (or at least, not much).  True Seeing would be important, and remember, the Wizard has multiple ways to win.  The easiest is pretending you can't see the Bone Devil until it tries to gank you, then casting dismissal from a scroll, with plenty of objects to raise the DC and overcome SR.  But that presumes knowing what you'll be fighting.  A soloing wizard has to be much more careful than one traveling with a party, but he also can be much more careful.  If the wizard runs off to save every little hamlet, he'll probably get himself killed.  But if he does careful magical research, finds out what he wants to accomplish, what kinds of guardians there are, how to defeat those wards, etc. he can be nigh unstoppable.  Fighters pretty much walk around waiting for someone to jump them.  Wizards don't have to do that.  

Quote from: Opaopajr;574508So, doubting Kaelik was arguing against himself from another topic, and suspecting there was more to this, I read further in the topic to find Justin Alexander dissecting Kaelik's reverse-CR contention, that of the near-surety the Bone Devil will TPK the party of four 9th lvls instead of their having 100% chance success according to CR. Which, as someone later points out, argues against Kaelik's demon-morphing bow wielding über-cleric, but we'll leave that alone for now (because that much arguing against yourself is dizzying).

You know, it's funny...  FrankTrollman is among those that point out that polymorph, as written, is broken.  I get the impression that Kaelik explained his 'build' because he was showing how 'by the rules' you could make a really effective character better than a Fighter.  What this revealed is that most people don't have a problem with polymorph unless the Wizard (or cleric) tries to use it effectively.  This simply reinforces the idea of a 'gentleman's agreement' not to use casters so effectively that they overshadow companions.  This basically saying 'you're angel summoner, but let BMX bandit do things his way, and do just the minimum required to ensure success.  Some people are okay with wizards that rarely (if ever) cast spells - letting the Fighters do all the hard work, but if they can't, swooping in to save the day.  The thing is, if you're okay with that, it tends to be true that if the Wizard DOESN'T wait until things are dire, they can pretty much solve the problems without help.  So, again, this doesn't weaken Kaelik's argument about the Fighter (which, in case you forgot is that it shouldn't exist - people get so upset about Fighters having any kind of useful ability possibly even including just hitting things more effectively that they don't belong in a game about going from a zero to a godling - Kaelik believes that Fighter is a far too limited concept and every class should have some kind of power source - so instead of Fighters, you have Shadowlords and Storm Bringers).  

Quote from: Opaopajr;574508Apparently this continues with a back-and-forth of examples where the party would or would not TPK due to Bone Devil ambushes. And ambushes they were, as characters would be isolated or backstabbed -- always physically attacked in the end in some way.

Look, I understand why Spike was bored.  But this is exactly what Kaelik was trying to do.  A 10th-level party has a lot of ammunition.  Kaelik was going to have them expend some of that ammunition, and he just started to do that.  He created a single wall of ice, and Spike gave up right then and there.  If Spike had broken through the wall of ice, he MIGHT have fought the Bone Devil right at that moment - at least part of his party might have.  The Bone Devil might have tried to separate the first one through the breach (or last one) and each wall of ice they passed through they would take some hit point damage.  He could use major image to create an illusion of himself for the wizard to shoot with disintegrate or scorching ray.  THEN he could continue the attack.  Because he was asserting that a monster played intelligently could TPK the party.  Hit-and-run tactics are hardly contentious when used by an intelligent enemy.  

Quote from: Opaopajr;574508Thus a great lead up to this match where the Bone Devil stalls out a party's patience waiting for congenital heart failure and Alzheimer's. Which leads back to the above point arguing that actual play in setting matters more, therefore reaffirming Wizard v. Fighter issue is bullshit. And then I realized I could have been watching Hulu.

Watching Hulu is a better use of your time.  Personally, I don't watch Hulu until Tuesday because that's when I can catch Monday's episode of the Daily Show and Colbert Report.  I'm sure that this could have been resolved more quickly in a sit-down game.  Play-by-post has some inherent limitations.  But let's be clear here - Spike got bored and quit the moment he finally encountered direct evidence of his enemy.  

He realized that he didn't have a good answer to the devil's longer range of vision in darkness.  He blamed the DM for putting the devil on a map with long unobstructed fields of view.  He didn't try to do anything creative to negate the devil's advantage.  For example, he could have tried to light torches and leave them down the hallways he was exploring.  Illusions couldn't put those out!  If he managed to get the whole place lit up, he'd be able to see the Devil as well as it could see him.  FrankTrollman made people pretty mad when he said something to the effect 'the people over here have been relying on DM pity for so long, they don't even realize that's what they're doing anymore'.  Spike didn't bust out any of that 'vaunted player cleverness' that the folks here have gone on so long about.  I have nothing against Spike here - I understand getting bored.  But it really seems like he quit when he realized he didn't have a very good solution and the game (if it continued) would have been a long drag until he finally did get defeated.

To claim that this did anything other than show that Kaelik's claim appears to be correct strikes me as disingenuous.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;574529FrankTrollman made people pretty mad when he said something to the effect 'the people over here have been relying on DM pity for so long, they don't even realize that's what they're doing anymore'.  Spike didn't bust out any of that 'vaunted player cleverness' that the folks here have gone on so long about.

I have to agree with this part. All true.

Not to say that I would have done better than Spike, I think I would have gotten bored quicker then he (but then again, I wasn't the one to take up the challenge).

I will say that I found it interesting that for all the "you're just a wargamer" comments hurled at me, that compared to the people in this thread (on both sides) I'm actually a very informal and undemanding GM/Player.

Death by ice war & party separation, pulling doors off their hinges, etc...

The Fellowship never did any of that, in fact I can't think of any fantasy work where such things happen. Something in the Horror genre maybe for the Bone Devil's approach, but nothing matching Spike's.

I think in the end it may well be that I'm more of a Story Gamer (if one who doesn't use Story Games proper) than what I see as a very war-game minded set of players here at therpgsite.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;574529To claim that this did anything other than show that Kaelik's claim appears to be correct strikes me as disingenuous.

I wouldn't go that far.

General comments from a person that prefers roleplay to combat but also happens to grasp tactics.


Can't fault someone for using wall of ice; its effective.

I tossed Challenge Ratings, or whatever they have been called over the years, in the trash over twenty years ago.

CR is useless, when you consider the varying intelligence, morale, circumstances, and terrain of a battle.

To get a feel for what will challenge a party, I just take a quick look at To hit values, AC, Saves, and extraordinary abilities.

Most reasonably clever players will find a way to defeat anything that they are able to engage, that is not 'Unhittable' or 'Unhurtable'

I honestly don't see how CR ratings are of any value.

Quote from: Bill;574546I honestly don't see how CR ratings are of any value.

They're not IMO. Nor on Point Buy systems balanced. Basically any attempt to compare the effectiveness of things in a single abstract value like is doomed to failure.

Core failures are:

"The conditional ability": (i.e. "I have immune to normal weapons" which is added to the CR (or whatever score) and is either nicely made worthless by a foe with magical weapons (and thus is now worthless, and should be removed from the CR), or against a foe with nothing but normal weapons- becomes infinite CR.

"The unused ability":...


I don't think I need to go on.

Quote from: Opaopajr;574508But it also doesn't prove anything above except reaffirm the point that Wizards v. Fighter issue is actually bullshit.

So, doubting Kaelik was arguing against himself from another topic,

Why is is that everyone on this forum is dumb as shit and can't read?

Whatever you think I was arguing in WvF, you are fucking wrong. I don't like the conception of the fighter for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with balance, and particularly the 3.5 I find less powerful than 3.5 Druids/Wizards, especially with splatbooks. The fact that I find Bone Devils even more powerful than core Wizards doesn't contradict that.

Quote from: Opaopajr;574508that of the near-surety the Bone Devil will TPK the party of four 9th lvls instead of their having 100% chance success according to CR. Which, as someone later points out, argues against Kaelik's demon-morphing bow wielding über-cleric, but we'll leave that alone for now (because that much arguing against yourself is dizzying).

Why is it that everyone on this forum is dumb as shit and can't read? I even addressed this in the thread you claim to have read.

I said a Bone Devil and TPK a core party. The Archer Cleric is not core. I have no doubt that a non core party can handle a Bone Devil, which is why I specified that one of the ways that a Bone Devil can be beaten is "have a bunch of splatbooks to power up the PCs."

For example, a DMM Persist Cleric could Persist Resist Energy, and then run through infinity Walls of Ice after methodically destroying them.

Quote from: Opaopajr;574508Apparently this continues with a back-and-forth of examples where the party would or would not TPK due to Bone Devil ambushes. And ambushes they were, as characters would be isolated or backstabbed -- always physically attacked in the end in some way.

Actually, I gave a single example of an ambush, and then everyone decided that they wanted to talk 100% about that and ignore my original contention.

Quote from: Opaopajr;574508White-room theory wanking next persists until

I like how you call it White-room wanking, even though in actual play it turns out that I was completely right. I mean, I never expected anyone on this forum to actually be intellectually honest, but you could at least drop the insults that obviously no longer apply.

Quote from: Opaopajr;574508Thus a great lead up to this match where the Bone Devil stalls out a party's patience waiting for congenital heart failure and Alzheimer's.

Um... I cast Wall of Ice. The fact is that I later would have split the party up and attacked them. That Spike realized I was going to win as soon as he found out I wasn't going to start a fight with all four party members in the same location adjacent to the Bone Devil does not mean I never would have attacked them.

Hell, Spike could even have just run away using Dimension Door. But to do so would have also been admitting defeat at the lowly Bone Devil.