Author Topic: Astral Construct vs Fighter  (Read 31409 times)

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Necrosnoop110

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Astral Construct vs Fighter
« on: October 26, 2011, 12:22:15 PM »
(1) Can a non-optimized Fighter take a standard Astral Construct manifested by a non-optimized shaper in an arena fight? What about at lower levels (1-10) versus higher levels (10-20)? (Note: By non-optimized I mean just an average fighter without being designed purposefully weak nor optimized to be overly strong)  


(2) Can an optimized Fighter take a tricked out Astral Construct cast by an optimized shaper in an arena fight? What about at lower levels (1-10) versus higher levels (10-20)? (Note: Neither build at TO levels, just solid, well done, non-broken optimization)  


(3) Who fulfills the role of "beat stick" better for the party, a fighter or an astral construct (assume the astral construct is a natural non-summoned creature with at least average intelligence) (assume equal levels of optimization) What about at lower levels (1-10) versus higher levels (10-20)?  

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« Last Edit: October 26, 2011, 04:15:39 PM by Necrosnoop110 »

skydragonknight

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Re: Astral Construct vs Fighter
« Reply #1 on: October 26, 2011, 12:32:56 PM »
2 is a possible yes because Shock Trooper is level 6 and I don't think ACs can fly at that level.
It always seems like the barrels around here have something in them.

Kajhera

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Re: Astral Construct vs Fighter
« Reply #2 on: October 26, 2011, 12:42:17 PM »
An optimized fighter being like this one, or have I been reading that one guide too much?

[spoiler]Dragonborn Nezumi Fighter
(1) Hidden Talent (Catfall)
(f) Battle Jump
(f) Up the Walls
(1b) Power Attack
(t) Quick
(2b) Improved Bull Rush
(3) Leap of the Heavens
(4b) Combat Reflexes
(6) Leap Attack
(6b) Shock Trooper
...
(tba)

Weaponry: Lance, Armor Spikes[/spoiler]

X-Codes

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Re: Astral Construct vs Fighter
« Reply #3 on: October 26, 2011, 12:46:57 PM »
Fighter across the board.  If you use ACs, however, then nobody has to play said Fighter.

Tr011

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Re: Astral Construct vs Fighter
« Reply #4 on: October 26, 2011, 12:50:11 PM »
An optimized fighter being like this one, or have I been reading that one guide too much?

[spoiler]Dragonborn Nezumi Fighter
(1) Hidden Talent (Catfall)
(f) Battle Jump
(f) Up the Walls
(1b) Power Attack
(t) Quick
(2b) Improved Bull Rush
(3) Leap of the Heavens
(4b) Combat Reflexes
(6) Leap Attack
(6b) Shock Trooper
...
(tba)

Weaponry: Lance, Armor Spikes[/spoiler]
Sounds good to me, that one will obviously take down any AC.
To point 1: Does the Fighter have equipment by his WBL or just a regular weapon?

/edit: (1) Simply compare the AC to a Half-Orc Fighter (17 str, 14 dex, 13 con, 10 int, 10 wis, 6 cha using elite-array).
lvl 1: Fighter has Longsword, Chain Shirt and Heavy Steel Shield and took Weapon Focus (Longsword) and Toughness, total: +5 att (1d8+3), 18 AC, 14 hp
lvl 3: Fighter has MW Longsword, MW Fullplate, MW Heavy Steel Shield and took WF(LS), Toughness (2), Dodge, total +8 att (1d8+3), 23 AC, 33 hp
lvl 5: Fighter has +1 Longsword, +1 Fullplate, +1 Heavy Steel Shield and took WF(LS), WS(LS), Toughness (2), Dodge, +1 to str, total +11 att (1d8+7), 25 AC, 46 hp
Gets more difficult to compare at higher levels because I don't know what items that Fighter (nonoptimized) would have. The Fighter has more HP and AC above lvl 1 and he clearly deals more damage. The AC would have to take Extra Attack from Menu B to stay at the same number of attacks on AC 4 vs. lvl 7 Fighter. So I think the Fighter wins, but it's not by far and shows very easy how much worse Fighters are compared to Psions.
« Last Edit: October 26, 2011, 01:18:40 PM by Tr011 »

Phoenix00

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Re: Astral Construct vs Fighter
« Reply #5 on: October 26, 2011, 12:53:46 PM »

PhaedrusXY

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Re: Astral Construct vs Fighter
« Reply #6 on: October 26, 2011, 12:54:45 PM »
TO stuff
No DM is going to allow that kind of BS in a real game.  :rollseyes
[spoiler]
A couple of water benders, a dike, a flaming arrow, and a few barrels of blasting jelly?

Sounds like the makings of a gay porn film.
...thanks
[/spoiler]

Mixster

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Re: Astral Construct vs Fighter
« Reply #7 on: October 26, 2011, 12:55:32 PM »
1. Define un-optimized fighter, if you are taking toughness at all level, and the Astral Construct chooses its' talents at random, my money is on astral construct.

2. Fighter wins.

3. Either, beat-stick is a simple enough job. Fighter is better at BC
Monks are pretty much the best designed class ever.

JaronK

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X-Codes

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Re: Astral Construct vs Fighter
« Reply #8 on: October 26, 2011, 01:12:51 PM »
TO stuff
No DM is going to allow that kind of BS in a real game.  :rollseyes
No kidding.

Feats aren't as good as class features, but ACs don't even really get feats.  Therefore, Fighters > ACs, but see my caveat.

Tr011

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Re: Astral Construct vs Fighter
« Reply #9 on: October 26, 2011, 01:23:13 PM »
Wow much answers in that short time, plz look at my edit for a try to compare for answer 1. I assume non-optimized Fighters take stuff like Dodge, Weapon Focus/Specialization and Toughness, maybe Power Attack.
And @Phoenix: Remember that Manifester +1 Shruiken are pretty cheap (286gp IIRC) and they grant +5 PPs.

Phoenix00

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Re: Astral Construct vs Fighter
« Reply #10 on: October 26, 2011, 01:23:27 PM »
TO stuff
No DM is going to allow that kind of BS in a real game.  :rollseyes
An arena fight is not a "real" game.

Kajhera

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Re: Astral Construct vs Fighter
« Reply #11 on: October 26, 2011, 02:02:14 PM »
Holy crap those link shard items are powerful.

Phoenix00

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Re: Astral Construct vs Fighter
« Reply #12 on: October 26, 2011, 02:08:25 PM »
Holy crap those link shard items are powerful.
Correct, they let you bypass your ML limit (and thus are really powerful).  Furthermore they are a cheap source of extra pp.  (They do cost money though and each 1 takes 1 hp away, thus 20 of them take up to 20 hp away, finally you are limited to ML for the number of them you can integrate into your body.)

Buy it outright for 3,000 gp.  This gives you what is effectively 6 pp so 500gp per pp.
Craft it yourself for 1,500 gp.  This gives you what is effectively 6 pp so 250gp per pp.
Craft it yourself with extraordinary artisan for 1,125 gp.  This gives you what is effectively 6 pp so 187.5gp per pp.

Kajhera

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Re: Astral Construct vs Fighter
« Reply #13 on: October 26, 2011, 02:20:35 PM »
So how much experience did you spend there, or can we assume experience halfway to 7th level for crafting purposes?

Rebel7284

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Re: Astral Construct vs Fighter
« Reply #14 on: October 26, 2011, 02:30:19 PM »
So how much experience did you spend there, or can we assume experience halfway to 7th level for crafting purposes?

Can't you just harvest liquid pain/ambrosia/sell souls to get XP for crafting? :D

On a serious note: "The XP cost equals 1/25 of the cost of the item in gold pieces."
Negative level on a chicken would make it a wight the next day.  Chicken the other wight meat. -borg286

Kajhera

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Re: Astral Construct vs Fighter
« Reply #15 on: October 26, 2011, 02:35:36 PM »
So how much experience did you spend there, or can we assume experience halfway to 7th level for crafting purposes?

Can't you just harvest liquid pain/ambrosia/sell souls to get XP for crafting? :D

On a serious note: "The XP cost equals 1/25 of the cost of the item in gold pieces."

So 270xp, got it.

Still want to know what we are going with. Neither Shaper nor Fighter has the capability to harvest those items. :P (Also most things the Fighter could do with experience will cost more of it.)

Kajhera

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Re: Astral Construct vs Fighter
« Reply #16 on: October 26, 2011, 02:46:41 PM »
Also, grr, having trouble getting to more than 123 damage dealt before running out of touch attacks, god help me if it grapples.

Still, the fighter can do a lot more damage in one hit.

Phoenix00

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Re: Astral Construct vs Fighter
« Reply #17 on: October 26, 2011, 02:49:01 PM »
So how much experience did you spend there, or can we assume experience halfway to 7th level for crafting purposes?
Quote from: Kajhera
So 270xp, got it.

Still want to know what we are going with. Neither Shaper nor Fighter has the capability to harvest those items. :P (Also most things the Fighter could do with experience will cost more of it.)

It would be 720xp (120xp*6). It is 1/25th of the item base cost and since the item base cost is 3,000 gp, 1/25 of 3,000 is 120xp.

The psion is literally crafting those power links shards.  He meets all the prerequsities via 6th level (or you can get it as early as 5th level depending on what you take as the open feats).

So there are several ways you can assign the differences of xp.

1)  If you want to count the xp cost against the psion.  So we could say the fighter is 6th level (15,000 xp) and the psion is 5th level (14,280).  If you do this then the psion, the two free feats go to Imprint Stone (Psion 1 Bonus Feat) and Extraordinary Artisan is moved to level 3.  Moving these feats around allow you to craft these stones as early as level 5 instead of level 6.  You would only needs 5 power link shards, and he is summoning an 8th level astral construct instead of a 9th level.  The battle would still be practically identical with an 8th level astral construct instead of a 9th level.

2)  720xp is 14.4% of the difference between 5th and 6th level.  A very small amount.  This is why I ignored it in my original post

3)  Or you could make the psion a 6th level character, and the fighter having another 720xp, which means the fighter is 12% closer to 7th level than the psion is.

Also, grr, having trouble getting to more than 123 damage dealt before running out of touch attacks, god help me if it grapples.

Still, the fighter can do a lot more damage in one hit.
I am curious what your build is  :)

amalcon

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Re: Astral Construct vs Fighter
« Reply #18 on: October 26, 2011, 02:50:00 PM »
I played a mildly-optimized wilder with AC in a recent game that also had a mildly-optimized fighter and a mildly-optimized warblade.  At levels 5 and 6, it was generally fighter < AC ~= warblade.

Now, the construct was level 4-5 (due to Wild Surge 2 and a psionic port of the FR Spell Thematics feat) at those levels.  An optimized shaper could plausibly pull off the same (Midnight Augmentation + Improved Essentia Capacity + Overchannel), but an unoptimized shaper would only have level 3 constructs.  Make of this what you will.

Kajhera

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Re: Astral Construct vs Fighter
« Reply #19 on: October 26, 2011, 02:55:34 PM »
Also, grr, having trouble getting to more than 123 damage dealt before running out of touch attacks, god help me if it grapples.

Still, the fighter can do a lot more damage in one hit.
I am curious what your build is  :)
[/quote]

Right now it's as follows, but I don't have anything to deal with continual invisibility yet... or grapples. I may be forced into Leadership by your silly items.  :P

[spoiler]1) Wild Cohort
1b) Mounted Combat
2b) Spirited Charge
3) Natural Bond
4b) Power Attack
6) Improved Sunder
6b) Combat Brute

Race: Water Orc
Companion: Dire Eagle
Weapon: +1 Impaling Lance

Damage on a charge, power-attacking full: ( 1d8 + 1 + 1.5 * Strength + 12 ) x 3 = 3d8 + 66 (average 79.5)
Damage on round after: 1d8 + 1 + 1.5 * Strength + 18 = 1d8 + 28 (average 32.5)
Damage on last round: 1d8 + 1 + 1.5 * Strength + 6 = 1d8+16 (average 20.5)[/spoiler]
« Last Edit: October 26, 2011, 03:31:54 PM by Kajhera »