Talk:Wergard Paragon (3.5e Racial Paragon Class)

The Grand Total

All in all, Wergard's, post paragon, are an ECL 10 race with 9 HD, Huge Size, 40ft speed, +18 Str, -4 Dex, +10 Con, -2 Int, +2 Wis, -2 Cha, bardic lore, psionic stomp every 1d4 rounds, stonecunning, some various abilities from their rune, and a lot of languages. Does it work? I hope so. -- Eiji Hyrule 03:12, July 19, 2010 (UTC)

SGT

Let's see how this works out:

• Magic hallway - This would hose a lot of characters with the mind-affecting effects, but we can ignore that with immunity to mind-affecting effects. Beyond that there's damage, but a few belts of healing takes care of that. - Win.
• Fire Giant - Between a strength of 16 (base) + 2 (racial) + 16 (size) + 4 (Magic) = 38 (+14), and a +6 BAB, we're rarely going to miss even with our secondary attack. High strength means that we're dealing on average 4d6+1 (gargantuan magic spiked chain) + 21 damage, or around 36 on average with every attack while having a decent AC due to natural armor. 5 hits and the fire giant's dead. - Probably win.
• Young Blue Dragon - gulp down a potion of fly, and ready a charge. We'll keep it locked down with Stand Still, causing it to stall and fall to the ground, flying after it. Stay out of range with our huge spiked chain, ignore frightful presence with our immunity to mind-affecting effects, and ignore the relatively pitiful damage that the breath weapon possesses. - Win
• Bebilith - while this could be tricky for someone who can't grapple well, that's not a problem for us. Even without Improved Grapple, our base grapple check is 12 (size) + 14 (str) for a total of +26 against the bebilith's +29. After that it's just a matter of locking him down with Stand Still, burst free of web on a 10 (55% chance), and neutralize the enemy no problem. - Probably win.
• Vrock - between teleporting, mirror image, and telekinesis, we'll probably lose this one over time. Unless, of course, we're in an enclosed space, in that case we're going to win. - Probable loss.
• Mind Flayers - easy win, immunity to mind-affecting effects. - Win.
• Evil necromancer - all depends about initiative, how far away we are, and whether the necro tries a mind-affecting effect or not (with fighter-types being traditionally easy to affect with em). On the other hand, once grappled he's not getting away. - 50/50
• 6 trolls - easy win. Lockdown from afar (30' reach), take them out one at a time. Even if they get close, we can basically ignore their attempts at grappling. - Win
• 12 Shadows - Sure loss. Very few characters can actually go against this, it seems, especially when they're played right. - Loss

Now let's total it... 4 wins, 2 probable wins, 1 half, 1 probable loss, and one loss. With 3 wins and one probable win atop the losses, I'd say that's about wizard-level land. --Ghostwheel 04:04, July 19, 2010 (UTC)

If I can criticize this a bit -- the hallway full of magical runes contains more than just damage and mind-affecting effects -- I'm not sure where you got the idea that immunity to mind-affecting effects makes you immune to everything but damage from this challenge, but it's not right. With no way to actually bypass them without taking them, this is still a probable loss. Hell, walking through the acid fog trap with the blade barrier trap sitting as its neighbor isn't going to be nice to anyone who can't disable them. That one is a probable loss.

For the fire giant, your natural armor bonus is offset by the other penalties, giving you only a +1 to AC overall. Actual stats are needed for this one to figure out who deals enough damage first, because the fire giant deals 3d6+15 damage base with each attack.

Young Blue Dragon -- no argument from me here.

Bebilith -- no argument from me here either. Usually characters fail this challenge too.

Vrock -- ditto.

Mind Flayers -- yep. The Wergard Paragon powers through this one trick pony.

Evil Necromancer -- the thing to keep in mind with this is that the necromancer, in addition to being a level 10 wizard with everything that comes with in combat, has both an army of undead and an army of demons. But the level 10 wizard thing is hard to get around too. I mean, we can't even do anything about a solid fog except take it. Grapples aren't a sure thing too -- wizards can win grapples, with either a well-known grapplemancer build or for simplicity and generalization just using freedom of movement or dimension door to get out of that. Even initiative matters less when you have two armies, but even with that wizards are always built for initiative and this class is taking penalties to it right out the door. I question the 50/50 here -- there are too many spells that the Wergard Paragon just doesn't have an answer to, and you already have to get through two armies anyway. I would really put this one at a probable loss.

That moves it to 3 definite wins, 2 probable wins (I'll keep the fire giant here), 3 probable losses, and a definite loss. That's as close as you can get to the 50/50 we're looking for without actually being 50/50. Surgo 14:20, July 19, 2010 (UTC)

As far as the runes go, I checked out the "Symbol of..." spells in the PHB; all the level-appropriate ones that we actually care about are mind-affecting effects, which means that basically glyph of warding is left to deal HP damage. The only non-mind-affcting one is Symbol of Pain, but we don't care about that since all the other level-appropriate ones we can ignore.

For the fire giant, I think you might be forgetting that we have a spiked chain along with Stand Still, which I mentioned above; unless he can make a DC 46 reflex fairly often, he's not coming closer than 30' or so of the character, neutralizing him fairly easily. I just can't see a way to lose this one too easily...

After talking with you on the channel, we'll also be getting some Dimension Stride Boots to bypass the hallway of magical traps. That gives us 6 wins (hallways, giant, blue dragon, bebilith, mind flayers, trolls), and 3 losses (necromancer, shadows, vrock). --Ghostwheel 19:29, July 19, 2010 (UTC)

Using Dimension Stride Boots to beat the Hallways of Magical Trap is not a win for the class, but a win for a magic item. It has absolutely nothing to do with the class itself and is just using the item to get past the challenge, which anyone could do, unless you happen to be taking Vow of Poverty for your character choices. That's not really what the SGT is used to test. Unless, of course, everyone can just be an item wizard to get through the SGT... --TK 10:16, July 20, 2010 (UTC)

Sure, but there are a number of problems with that; first, no one ever defined the hallway, or what magical runes it possesses, or how long it is. I assumed that it was mostly filled with level 6 spells and under of the "Symbol of X" variety as well as explosive runes and the like, and the character runs through them with ease. Second, I'd say that's how the rogue beats the SGT for the most part, using a number of wizard-level spells via wands, and not through an inherent ability of its own--incidentally, saying that the rogue has UMD isn't a good excuse, since any character can get UMD through half-decent charisma, a masterwork item, cross-class ranks, and a magic item to boost it. At any rate, my point is that the SGT should be defined better, and if the prime example character is abusing magic items to beat the SGT, and that's acceptable, one can't exactly level the same complaint at any other character using WotC material to do the same. If it's a problem with the boots that they're not core, we could just as easily have done it with the Cape of the Mountebank--it's not like we're exactly hurting on gold to spend with this character. --Ghostwheel 11:14, July 20, 2010 (UTC)