Quote from: Marleycat;570455:popcorn:

Go on boys I'm mildly interested but would either of you like some cheese with that whine? Just checking.

Apparently I have enough already

This is just the back and forthing while we wait for the GM to find his dice...

Quote from: MGuy;570437Anyways, he beat me in initiative and is too far away and in the air so this changes my tactics quite a bit considering Solid Fog can't reach (If I'm doing the math on his maneruvering right). Instead I'll land near the trees in te center of the battle field (might as well make use of the landscape instead of just flying above it right?). Then I suppose I'll land and cast Silent Image to create a large swirling orb of black with which I can gain Total Concealment and bide my time for now. I'll make the orb have say a... 30ft radius? Yea I'll go with that for now.

This is nitpicking (mostly), but you can't do that. Silent image have a maximum area of 4 10 feet squares +  1 10 feet square for level, i.e 14 10 feet squares foot. a (half) sphere of 30 radius would be bigger than that.
a 15' radius half sphere would be possible or to be more precise, you have 14 10 feet squares to play with.

I don't get it. Spell selection, Feats, magic items, etc.. are essentially random when two people stumble across each other and begin a battle.

Isn't one person going to have a random advantage?



Something a simple as 'how good is the fighters will save, or is he immune to enchantment magic' will make or break the battle.

A fighter that gets a critical early might gank the wizard, etc...

Quote from: Bill;570466I don't get it. Spell selection, Feats, magic items, etc.. are essentially random when two people stumble across each other and begin a battle.

Isn't one person going to have a random advantage?



Something a simple as 'how good is the fighters will save, or is he immune to enchantment magic' will make or break the battle.

A fighter that gets a critical early might gank the wizard, etc...

Yeah a lot of shit can happen. I believe the claim in question is that a wizard will dominate every single time and a fighter stands no chance. IMHO this claim usually comes from people that don't actually follow the limitations and rules of magic which gives them an inflated opinion of the wizard's capabilities.

Quote from: Bill;570466I don't get it. Spell selection, Feats, magic items, etc.. are essentially random when two people stumble across each other and begin a battle.

Isn't one person going to have a random advantage?



Something a simple as 'how good is the fighters will save, or is he immune to enchantment magic' will make or break the battle.

A fighter that gets a critical early might gank the wizard, etc...

 the thing is with his vast selection of spells the wizard needs to worry about one thing, HP damage from weapons but their is a vast number of things the fighter hast to counter with only what he can buy with his wealth by level.

even if he can make fort save vs baleful polymorph and will save vs dominate person still needs to reach a flying wizard in the air, see an invisible wizard, escape solid fog, not be mauled by summoned monsters, and not die in two rounds to maximized scorching ray.

if anyone wants I can write up a 10th level wizard that can do all of that in core

Apparently I've recently gained a few more levels in the Shit-Stirrer prestige class without noticing, if one toss-off observation (with the popcorn smiley ta boot!) manages to bring up a half dozen posts of justifying flying mounts and random accusations of cheese. All entirely accidentally.

Entertain me, motherfuckers.

Quote from: Spike;570473Apparently I've recently gained a few more levels in the Shit-Stirrer prestige class without noticing, if one toss-off observation (with the popcorn smiley ta boot!) manages to bring up a half dozen posts of justifying flying mounts and random accusations of cheese. All entirely accidentally.

Entertain me, motherfuckers.

Isn't the point of the entire hobby, and therefore by extension the point of posting here, shared entertainment?

I'm happy to oblige, I'm enjoying myself :cool:

Quote from: Exploderwizard;570468Yeah a lot of shit can happen. I believe the claim in question is that a wizard will dominate every single time and a fighter stands no chance. IMHO this claim usually comes from people that don't actually follow the limitations and rules of magic which gives them an inflated opinion of the wizard's capabilities.

This isnt exactly the case (bolding mine).

Quote from: PanzerkrakenI'll make that claim. My claim is that a 10th level fighter with a +2 Strength +3 Composite longbow and +2 arrows, without any bow feats or specs (meaning 2nd or 3rd edition, yes) would probably smoke an equivalently statted 10th level wizard in a normal combat environment (meaning that there's more going on than just a duel between the two). And god only help the poor wizard if the Fighter gets in close to him.

That was the original claim.  In retrospect, when we finalized the terms, I didn't stand exactly by that statement, since I said 'without any bow feats or specs', but the terms it was worded as 'my primary focus will not be', and I did take one feat that has to do with archery.

and this was the reply:

QuoteWell firstly while you probably want to exclude 3rd edition from your claim that a fighter stands on even ground with a wizard in a normal combat situation because a straight fighter can't handle higher level encounters in his CR racket in high level play without perhaps being optimized to do so (I say perhaps because if we're talking Core Fighter he's completely screwed) while a wizard operates fine at all CRs. The fact that you bash charOp when the Fighter in 3rd demonstrably needs Optimization just to survive immediately puts your entire post under suspicion. So you may be able to make the claim for 2nd though there've been some arguments against that by people who know 2nd better than I (or at all) that even in 2nd it may not be true.

I didn't say that I was going to be suffering from all of the classic handicaps of a Fighter, though, such as being an immobile lump with a 20' movement and a melee attack.

Magic may seem more advanced, and capable of so many things outside just dealing damage, but then so were the Chinese in relation to the Mongols.  Magic will carry you a long way, but there's honestly no way you can be effectively prepared for EVERYTHING.  So yes, you all can sit and armchair at MGuy and I about our decisions.  You can even make statements about the vague capability and how you could build it better.  But he's in here and fighting it, so I think that's better than not. :hatsoff:

I think that either way though, it's going to be a good showing.  And I promise that I'll give him a nice funeral.

:boohoo:

Quote from: Spike;570473Apparently I've recently gained a few more levels in the Shit-Stirrer prestige class without noticing, if one toss-off observation (with the popcorn smiley ta boot!) manages to bring up a half dozen posts of justifying flying mounts and random accusations of cheese. All entirely accidentally.

Entertain me, motherfuckers.

So why do you have time to post in this Thunderdome thread but not time to post in the Thunderdome that you lost to me by forfeit?

Seems like if you have enough time here you could have posted in that thread since we've been waiting on you for over two weeks.

This has been a misunderstanding. I'm not griping that you used Leadership. I'm griping that I did not and that I had actually thought about doing so. I misunderstood what this challenge was supposed to represent and didn't go full on in bending the system over backwards in order to make my point. I still have the utmost confidence that I will indeed win even if you've given yourself the option of flying.

You being out of range for my my favored tactics just means either I play the waiting game or I just have my wizard leave. Were this an actual campaign I doubt my mission would be "Come to a random open field and kill meaningless fighter" in the first place. If the mission were anything that happens in an actual campaign like "go here find artifact", "defend person from stuff". "Sneak into place", "Take over kingdom" or something that actually happens in a campaign this "fight" would be meaningless in the grand scheme of what my wizard has to do.

What's more is because this isn't a campaign and I am not allowed to expand my spellbook (which is trivially easy to do in 3rd edition if you can find the spells et al') I would have done so and thus had more options which is why if I had used leadership I'd have almost double the options I have right now. Getting a flying mount by using the leadership rules doesn't bother me at all. It's just indicative of how little the fighter can do on their own (and is one of the points I made in the thread). Getting equipment that's more interesting than everything on the fighter's plate is just not something that's off putting. It's what I expect and, again, just highlights the weaknesses of the class. Without fear of ruining the mystique of my character he only has about 2 items that aren't stat boosters and are things that he can't already do with magic. Big hint that one of them is something to heal himself with.

As for the silent image orb you are correct, I made it too big. I misremembered the number of 10ft cubes I get. However, since we're waiting on the judge to determine the actual conditions of this combat I may be retracting my moves wholesale anyway. If nothing changes I'll shrink down to a 10ft radius hemisphere which I believe is doable.

Quote from: Panzerkraken;570479Magic may seem more advanced, and capable of so many things outside just dealing damage, but then so were the Chinese in relation to the Mongols.

...and that story ends with the Fighter turning into a higher level Wizard with wizard henchmen. Let me start from the beginning:

So, Genghis Khan invaded the Jin dynasty in 1211. At that time there were two China's (well three, but everyone ignores the Xia), the Jin and the Song, and they were locked in war. The Mongols invaded, made some headway, but they couldn't conquer the Jin quite like that, and the Jin decided "the Mongols are pretty nasty, but we really gotta focus on fighting the Song", which they did, the Mongols were 2ndary priority. The Jin, in the middle of fighting Mongols in the west and the Song in the south, even had a little civil war to decided the next emperor. In all of that chaos, they still remained the Jin and the Mongols were just sitting at the border.

Genghis Khan dies in 1227 while fighting the Xia dynasty. The Mongols absorb Xia soldiers and gain more Chinese technology. Things start changing.

In 1232, the Mongols ally with the Song dynasty, and their combined force crushes the Jin within a year. They then start fighting each other over the Jin territory.

What happens is, the Mongols absorb all of the Jin troops, gaining the Jin heavy cavalry, Chinese logistical skills, and more technology (like gunpowder and stuff), and begin pushing south. They hit the Song navy... Mongols don't know shit about naval warfare, so they got Chinese admirals to do that for them.

What you have now is the Mongol+Xia+Jin+Song defectors, vs the Song remnants. A large amount of the 'Mongol' soldiers were Chinese, fighting with Chinese weapons and technology. A large amount of their generals were Chinese, pretty much all their admirals were Chinese. The Mongol general who decisively defeated the Song was a Chinese, his name is Zhang Hongfan, he was born in a non-Song dynasty

In 1279, 68 years after their first battle with the Jin, the 'Mongol' (and Jin, and Xia, and Song defector) forces defeat the Song dynasty.

The Mongols won by learning from their foes, turning the defeated into allies, and becoming better Chinese generals than China had. In order to battle a more advanced Empire, they had to become MORE ADVANCED THAN THEM, and they DID.

So if the Mongols are Fighters, they fought the Wizards by getting a ton of Wizard cohorts, then raised their next two generations of kids as Wizards, then fought the Wizards who were also fighting Wizards and got the defeated Wizards to join them. They could only defeat the Wizards by becoming better Wizards themselves.

If anything, the Mongols are Wizards and what they did to Russia, the Middle East, and Europe (who only have Fighters) in the space of Genghis Khan's lifetime is like what happens when a Wizard blows his wad in one encounter (and then he teleported away...)


I like history, and I think the Mongol/China conflict is one of those things that is grossly misinterpreted by too many folks. So now ends this commercial break to return to your regularly scheduled death match.

*and then after 60 years of fighting, the Mongols ruled for 90 years until the Ming rose up and cut their dicks off (they really, literally did that)

Quote from: MGuy;570495

I had a huge response, but I was proofreading it and realized something.  I was getting caught up in the whole participation thing and had forgotten that you have a mind that can't comprehend why we play role playing games.  You're totally focused on the numbers, not the joy or challenge of it, or the purpose behind the characters who aren't casters.

And no, I won't help you understand.  You do or you don't, that's all there is to it.

Quote from: OgreBattle;570500brickotext

sorry for not including a specific date in that, I was pretty much specifically talking about early fights between the Mongols as a cavalry force and Chinese city-states, using the modern definition of China to clearly identify to those people without direct familiarity with the conflicts in question.

for even more clarity, I meant the hit and run tactics they would use prior to their establishment of a dismounted levy force.

So, as a descriptive example: Fighter Rides Horse and Shoots Arrows at Wizard.

Sorry for leaving too much open for interpretation.

Quote from: Panzerkraken;570457This is just the back and forthing while we wait for the GM to find his dice...

And the GM is getting mighty pissed that so far there has been no response on all four of his Yahoo email accounts with Invisible Castle.

I'm going to try and set up a gmail account and try that. Hopefully, they just don't like Yahoo.

Quote from: jeff37923;570511And the GM is getting mighty pissed that so far there has been no response on all four of his Yahoo email accounts with Invisible Castle.

I'm going to try and set up a gmail account and try that. Hopefully, they just don't like Yahoo.

gmail is what I used, it wound up in the spam folder there.