Level 20 characters are fucking insane

Man, fighters are fucking fun. I play them more for the narrative of being 'a person skilled with a blade' because those are all the characters from literature and art that I love. That said, it is satisfying to see them work in tabletop games even when casters have dominance.

I'm playing one in 5e at the moment, and Battlemaster is a ton of fun because of all the shenanigans with maneuvers. That, and my DM let me grab the Spear Mastery feat from the UA pdfs so I'm a duelist-centric, armor-wearing, shield-toting spearman who receives charges and holds the front line.

It's not ridiculous or level 20, but it's fun and rules-legal for anyone who can use the playtest material.

>playing a barbarian
>get perfect health rolls every level
>my job is to leap into enemies and just cleave because no one can kill me
>not even our super sayain paladin with his stupid exorcisms

Level 20 Cavaliers my friend. Nothing in the game does more damage than a mounted charge character at level 20.

>20 STR start +4 STR from character advancement (5th attribute increase won't help STR bonus so it goes somewhere else) +6 STR from Belt of Giant's Strength (+6) + Adamantine +5 Lance (add additional things like Flaming or whatever at discretion) Gives you a base of +15 to damage
>Challenge adds +20 to damage at level 20, for +35 damage to target of challenge (which will be just about any major threat, since you have enough Challenges to throw around. Add Chain Challenge and running out of Challenges becomes even more of a non-issue).
>Dog mount (we will assume this is a Small character since that erases the issue of hallways being too small for mounted combat) has 13 STR +4 from 4th level Cavalier advancement +6 from 20th level Cavalier bonus (as per Animal Companion table) +3 from Attribute Advancement for Hit Die (again, give the 4th to another attribute since it won't make an even STR score) for a total of 26 STR, which is +8 to damage. Order of the Sword Cavalier adds his mount's STR to his for determining damage on a charge attack, so now we have 1d6+43 to damage on a charge attack.
>Spirited Charge triples damage on a mounted charge attack with a lance. Furthermore, Supreme charge also triples mounted charge attack damage with a lance, which becomes a total of x5 because of how multiplying works in PF
>This makes a total of 3d6+215 damage on every single charge attack against a challenged foe for a maximum of 233 damage and a minimum of 218 damage
>God help you if you crit

(1/2)

Furthermore,
>Cavalier has +20 BAB, +4 on charge due to Cavalier's Charge, +6 Morale bonus on mounted charge attack rolls against Challenge from Order of the Sword +15 from STR for +45 on all charge attacks against Challenge, meaning you will almost always hit.
>Furthermore, if by some miracle your target survives the first charge, you also get a free Bull Rush, Trip, Sunder, or Disarm check against them. -If- they survive the first hit.

At level 20, a Cavalier is the scariest fucking thing that isn't a full-blown god. The strongest blast spells in the game will do 20d6 of damage (or a flat 150 with Harm), and even if it's Empowered to 30d6, that's a maximum of 180 damage, and that assumes you failed your Reflex save for half.

Let me repeat that, a charging cavalier's Lance will do more damage than a wizard's most powerful spell. The mightiest magic in the game can't beat a charging cavalier.

Granted, a wizard has plenty of other options like Hold Monster-ing you or your mount, but my point remains. Even the fucking Tarrasque only has 525 HP, you can kill that with two charges, maybe one if you crit. Even Baphomet, a demon lord with canon stats in PF, only has 643 HP. You can kill him with three charges (less with a crit, although he has spell-like abilities that make fighting him anything but a gimmie). More importantly, Baphomet does 2d8+28 damage on a hit, meaning with 4 hits he could at most do 176 damage. You -literally- hit harder with one hit than a demon lord, a semi-divine being, can with 4 hits.

Cavalier's man, they're some shit.

...my god, you're adorable.

I usually play a Fighter/Thief multi--class Human if I have to play D&D so that I have more of a Conan character.

Then again, I haven't really played D&D since AD&D 2nd Edition.

> For instance, let's say that a human mage decides, later in life, to become a Fighter, and he wants to be a Gladiator. Well, there's nothing wrong with that. But the DM should insist that the next several adventures deal with that transformation. The character must be hired by (or, alternatively, captured and enslaved by) an arena or fighting-stable owner, trained, and pitted against other Gladiators. The other characters in the campaign could also be entering the gladiatorial arena, or the DM could contrive things so that the current adventure involves gladiatorial elements and still get all the PCs involved.

>To better simulate the wait involved for the character to learn his new trade, the DM is within his rights to insist that the character not receive his Warrior Kit until he's reached second experience level in his new class.

Warrior kits are fucking awesome, and 2E AD&D will always be my favourite depending on DM.

>Level 20 wizard

>I can turn your bird man fighter into a pile of ashes

> evocation wizard

You're really missing out on all the possibilities of being a wizard. Might as well be a cavalier at that point.

What's so adorable about 233 damage in an instant? Unless you're referring to all the tricks spellcasters have to not get hit in the first place, in which case, fair. Although their are work-arounds for a lot of the usual tricks; Goggles of True Sight for Displacement and Mirror Image, Horseshoes of Glory to turn your mount into a flying magical beast to deal with...well, Fly.

>What is a conjuration specialist with Abrupt Jaunt and fly?

>What is disintegration the spell?

A cavalier would get destroyed.

Did you forget that your items can be dispelled as well?

>Playing an evocation wizard
Literally the weakest possible wizard you could be. Evocations wizards are to other wizards what a Fighter is to wizards in general.

>A spell that targets a martial's best save and only does 5d6 on successful save
>Threatening

You funny nigga.

Fair point. Although, generally, when I'm playing a martial and I get to high levels, I almost always get an item that can activate an anti-magic field just for emergencies. Sure, all my magic items won't work, but if the wizard is dispelling my shit anyways I have no reason not to use it. That's just a Draw condition unless the wizard is dumb enough to actually come close with an antimagic field up, but it's better than a lost.

Before they nerfed gunslingers in pathfinder I had a build that could put out around 340 dmg in a round.

youtube.com/watch?v=th_lTwttLXw

Alas, time stop on a contingency is utterly mental.

He would just use something will or reflex based.

The point is that the wizard would win pretty much 10/10 times. With Abrupt Jaunt and a couple of other conjurations spells prepared a cavalier couldn't even touch the caster.

Doesn't work.

Can't contingency a spell higher than the contingency spell level itself - even with heighten spell you still can't contingency 9th level spells.

Boop, Mazed.

Clerics mother fuckers. Persist anti magic field, shape the spell so it doesn't effect you personally or your magical buffs.

Now you can kick ass and use magic to destroy people

I was used to the 3.5 complete arcane BS.

Craft contingent is pricey but it gives the Time Stop on being threatened effect.

Pathfinder restricts it to level/3 round down, but Wizarding 101 involves avoiding being surprised through divination anyway.

I fucking love Mystic Theurges. I know they are pretty weak in the long run, but if you go Tiefling or Aasimar, you can technically get the class at level 4 in PF. The thought of that much versatility is just awesome.

Ray of exhaustion. Touch attack, fortitude save partial. On a failed save, you are exhausted. On a successful save, you are fatigued. It doesn't really matter whether you save or not, though, because both those conditions prevent you from charging.

Or Slow, which prevents you from taking full-round actions, of which charging is one. Will negates though.

Or Hold Person, which causes paralysis, making you helpless to boot. Again will negates.

Or Levitate, or Fly, which you probably have an answer to but I don't think your carpet of flying or boots of levitation allow you to charge. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Basically what I'm saying is a level 5-6 caster of either flavor can negate your cavalier. At level 20, the caster can instead just summon one or several creatures to do this for them instead.

woops quoted the wrong posts, fml

Pouncing characters do more I'm pretty sure.

Then there's shit like the spellslinger magus which can do something like 240d6.

>What's the point? You are basically gods already, why even bother?
3. Edition turbo-autists can rarely tolerate one another long enough to get the full 2 page pile of bullshit you get with a 20th level character.

It's like munchkin nirvana to actually start out with your "Just as Planned" character.

1 Level of Barbarian, 1 Level of Monk, 1 Level of Cleric with the Travel Domain (take an archetype that does not require you to be Lawful) for 3x +3m of Base Movement. Assuming you are a Human or Elf or anything that has a Base Movement of 9m you know have 18m Base Movement.
Now we take 17 Levels in Fighter...
Assuming you have 19-20 Feats altogether in this Build at the end you take: Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack, Improved Charge, Run, Acrobatik Charge and something that lets you use a Lance like a Knight (mounted combat or something) after that all your feats are Fleat footed for +1,5m to you Base Movement (Which states that you can take it multiple times so you take it 13 times for + 19,5 to your BASE SPEED. So know we have a Base Speed of 37,5. Running/Charging makes that 187,5m. Remember you can Travel this distance in 1 round aka 6 seconds!!!

Now you use a Lance as your Weapon which gets extra Damage for every Meter that you charge (Forgot where I read that) and remember thanks to the Run-feat you can run around corners (aka in Circles) to get you moment. But the best thing is. Thanks to Spring Attack you are 180something Meters away after your Charge.

Finally some Math: If you Travel 187,5m in 6 Seconds you Travel 1875m in 1 Minute which makes a Speed of 112.5 km/h. And there are no Magical Items in this Build. You do this all by your Self. You dont Really need teleport to Travel. You nasically are the Flash. With a Lance.

Level 20 hitting just at x3 damage?
You should be ashamed, user. An ubercharger can hit at x5 anywhere as early as level 6.

Haha, this is pretty cool. I've had the idea for a character all made around goingfast for years now.

Shouldn't a level 20 human fighter get 19 feats? 7 normal feats plus 1 human feat plus 11 fighter feats.

Don't thank me, thank my GM. He was the one who had this idea.
It's one of his Joke-Characters who would be effective nontheless. He has a lot of strange class-combinations which always seem to work.

3.5 players that have legitimately made it to level 20 are few and far between yet all these class builds I see all focus on level 20 being the goal. Most of them would suck at low to mid level which is where most games actually happen.

>flies and hits hard
>first things he thinks of is a bird man

That is nothing, my group likes to play by Tome rules, and there is no limit to magic items and their creation, and all third party material (as long as it's "official") is allowed... and I am DM... FML

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tengu

Now take my (You) and go home.

who gets plenty of ass....

>This many people who don't even understand the game they're discussing.

Not surprising really.

even the mightiest lancer can be brought low by treachery....

desu, and not that user, but, this guy is legit.

Yo motherFUCK the Cheater of Mystra/Extraordinary Spell Aim AMF Cleric.

Karasutengu are the flying ones, longnose tengu are the fighty ones. Combine the two, you get Superman unless you are an unsalvageable weeaboo.

Yet they are profoundly shit by product of being a martial in a game where martals are "mundane."

That's the kick to the teeth, even when you build an unstoppable force of nature, you're still only as powerful as the weakest mage.

It was freeform, but I guess it could be paralleled.
>STALKER
>messy group of 19
>16 of these are female
>10'ish are under the age of 18
>my character is a burly giant, the type you would expect to wrestle mutants into submission whilst drinking the worst вoдкa available
>GM and mfw two of the tweens decided to get into 'to the death' fisticuffs with my character
Absolute madman.

Not that guy, but I agree you're adorable.

The thing is, melee characters usually try to achieve high damage attacks then apply them a lot because they can't really do much else.

Your "super amazing charger" is completely broken by a 3rd level spell, Ray of Exhaustion. It leaves you fatigued on a sucessful save, exhausted on a failed one, and then your charges are over. All it takes is a TOUCH attack, which comes from a low level spell that can easily be Split(5th lv), Quickened(7th) or Twinned(7th) to give the caster two chances on an already easy-to-hit roll. And that's only one spell. Waves of Fatigue is a 5th level spell that, although doesn't have the Exhausted boon, leaves you fatigued with no save and no to-hit.

Then comes the real kicker: those are just the first action to disable you. Ray of Enfeeblement can throw your STR to 1 no save, while Summon spells create things way bigger than you to wrestle you to the ground. Even discarding OP spells like Polymorph or Contingency, you're still leagues behind any competent caster. That's the sad true of 3.5, and why most people think it's shit.

I made a 16th level knight who was immune to damage.
> Troll blooded feat, gives regen 1 hp/round.
> Any damage except Fire or Acid was subdual damage.
> Racial immunity to Fire and Acid.
> Class-based immunity to subdual damage.
> My GM when.

Now that's a cool build. Hope your saves are good, because you'll be rolling them a lot.

Time to target ability scores!

There's a 4th edition scythe-assassin build that can do infinite damage by mid epic tier

The sad truth behind 3.5 is that CharOp fags always went for numberwang instead of trying to create group cohesion or even work on practical optimization, so optimization became a pissing contest on who can break the game (as in render it nonfunctional) more. CharOp fags became the main, then only voice for online 3.PF even though their assumptions were useless at best and actively detrimental at worst.

From levels 1 to 12, any type of competently played character over the floor optimization limit for the table is going to be leagues beyond those who aren't.

While I do agree about the CharOp thing, it's undeniable that there's a huge power gap between classes, specially between casters and martials. My point wasn't that overoptimization is good or bad, just that the Cavalier guy was so cocky of his "super amazing optimized character" because he didn't actually knew shit about the game. All his character's tricks can be shut down by a single, common 3rd level spell. The problem with these people that gloat about how awesome their character is is that they only focus on one aspect of a character, in this case his damage number, and ignore all else. See how quick he was to say "I'm more powerful than a demigod, no one can take me down!".

Anytime a martialfag thinks that he's "figured it out," they always feel the need to go on about how much they've transcended humanity.

Which is why it's so funny when mages BTFO their shit with a low level spell that any competent spell will have access to.

It's like I said earlier, a "high level" martial is only as powerful as the weakest mage in the party.

The worst part is that spellcasters have this amazing toolbox for solving puzzles, finding plot points, and general RPing, and it's all lost to having the perfect counter to everything in combat.

The Wizard should be the parties swiss army knife.

thats the rogue.

>instead of trying to create group cohesion or even work on practical optimization

the social wizard was in truth the most broken.

friends, mind control, tongues, all kinds of info-gathering and nullification.
coudn't do shit for damage, but in a story-based game (as opposed to dungeon crawl) they were semi-invincible...

add in buffs and their Mass versions and you also have a wizard with a strong combat presence. You probably won't cast damage spells, but Mass Snake's Swiftness gives everyone in your group an instant extra attack on your action this round, so your spell is worth exactly one attack from each party member in damage. With a 4-man party that's already more than your blasting spell in the same spell slot, and if you have a trip monkey or other maneuver guys, it gets silly fast.

Just finished a short Dark Heresy campaign as a Psyker who fought exclusively by summoning spectral hands to wield weapons (had a bunch of filled knuckle duster gloves) or use telekinetic punches. Willpower bonus (+6) added to all damage rolls and I can attack with two weapons on my first turn, four on my second as the hands last a little while. So basically ORAORAORAORAORA

Don't worry Gali-Gali doesn't seem to be jobbing in his Vidar mode.

Why even bother doing damage with spells at all when a Wall of Stone will cut the number of opponents in half?

>DUDE IF I COMBINE THESE TOTALLY BROKEN RULES TOGETHER I CAN SHIT OVER ALL CHALLENGES

You're like a MTG player who brings a Vintage deck with moxes to casual night and brags about how amazing he is.

Kits are always kinda hit or miss for me. Some are so radical as to completely change the base class while other are so minor that they basically contribute nothing to the game.

I always find it curious how wizard optimisers seem to ignore the fact that a DM limit them to spells they find in game, I've always felt that finding spells in ruins and going on a quest to go and find the spell you want is better then just looking at the rule book and choosing the best spells.

I always find it curious how shitty GMs bring up this point but never realize that the game gives wizards 2 new spells every time they level up.

I mean, you could give them a new spell from going into ruins but realize that you'll only be bolstering their arsenal.

And that kids, is exactly why wizards invest in save or die spells such as power word kill.

The two most popular guides for wizards both explicitly talked about how wizards were the utility class

I always find it curious how some people just assume that something like that should not be impacted by the campaign, should spells just magically appear in the Wizards spellbook, or should the wizard have to go and find somewhere where they can copy them.

If spells have the potential to break the game then how is a DM shitty if they limit the Wizards options to what makes sense in the game. This kind of attitude is why I no longer play D&D.

Because you're altering the rules of the game to artificially limit a class while being too fucking retarded to realize that CoDzilla is a thing.

"Oh I'll just limit the spells they get" only works until the player in question realizes "oh, cleric and druids are just as broken and I have access to the ENTIRE LIST anytime I want to pick which spells I get for the day."

It's a bandaid being applied to a gunshot wound and you're too stupid to realize that having stars and glitter on the bandaid won't make the "hurt stop hurting faster."

Honestly I don't play 3.5 because of this, however, it would work if there were no clerics or Druids in the party to make the wizard less broken in comparison to say the fighter or rogue, you could always just give wizards the spells they want if there were clerics and Druids in the party, as long as everyone is vaguely on the same power level, after all the discussion was about wizards in comparison to Martials, not wizards in comparison to CoDzilla.

Your idea would only work in a vacuum where players weren't allowed to fuck with your campaign.

Believe me, in trying to nerf casters, you either make a campaign where nobody is having fun or a campaign where the wizard forces the narrative on themselves in order to procure all of these amazingly broken spells, with the martials going along for the ride because he-heh wha'd'ya know? The game is balanced around the mages being assholes who liberally use their spells effectively.

I had a campaign where we had a system like yours and let me tell you, having to ferry some wizard to and fro because the GM was stingy with spells was some of the worst shit I've ever experienced at a table.

Just let it go.

Very well, I have better things to do then get into an argument with a random stranger on the internet about a system I don't even play, I'll take your word for it. Just out of curiosity, how powerful is that immune to damage build that some user posted earlier in comparison to mages, would his character still be sidelined or would it contribute to the party?

If you're talking about then he'd still be sidelined quickly.

For one, immunity to damage would still leave him vulnerable to spells that are SoD. He'd also be affected by spells that would target his stats directly. Not to mention spells like polymorph that would change his physiology to lose that torll blooded feat and his racial immunity to fire/acid. To say nothing about actions that would be non-damaging but still cause damage overtime like a high level wizard using GATE to send you into the positive energy plane, where you'd gain so much HP that your character will explode.

Y'see my friend, whenever a martial gets too big for his britches, the game has a wonderful way of making them learn the error of their ways. We had a guy a while ago who would go on about how high his AC was, only to quickly find out how outclassed he was once DOMINATE came into play and he was sidelined for the rest of that particular combat encounter.

Is this thead just a reminder to fighters in pathfinder and 3.5 that they aren't allowed to be proud of anything due to muh utility spells?

Yes, because there is nothing more annoying than a martialfag who "cracked the code" and "stumbled upon a viable build."

They're honestly more annoying than pompous wizards, if only because the wizard has a right to be pompous when they're carrying spells that end encounters in one turn.

The problem for me is that I always get stuck as the fucking tank. Like, it can be fun at times but ffs I would like to do something for the campaign for once.

"I wanna be a druid."
"I wanna be a ranger!"
"I wanna be a rogue!"
"I wanna be a wizard."
"Welp...fuck."

>A fencer who used unarmed blows in addition to her sword.

Please tell me more. I became enamored with this idea for a long while.

>implying CoDzillas don't make the best tanks
????

You could just play other classes that are frontliners and capable of being tough. Paladin, cleric, barbarian, wildshape druid, chevalier/samurai, ranger probably, etc. Or since there is no real need for a tank just play whatever you want and take extra con, I suppose.

I made a fighter/binder centered around being tough as fuck once. At level 2 they had 17 hp and 23 ac with only 15 con since I focused on cha. Though I did use two abyssal feats, one that gave me +2 AC and another to make people vomit at my ugliness.

Kelgores grave mist.

You're fatigued no save. No more charging. Also you take 1d6 cold damage.

I'm going to let my murder bag do the talking right now.

"Opens the bag of holding, inverts it towards you"

>outpours ~200-(I stopped counting) #of shadows who, acting on my initiative, all touch attack you. And your little dog too.

Assuming even a fraction hit you are now a shadow too.

Get in the bag.

Oh yeah, it's rimed too so that lv 1 spell became lv 2 while fatiguing and entangling you. It's also cast as a quick action so as a lv 8 spell I can toss that murder bag down all in the same action.

What's your touch AC with -4 dex?

Basically. I enjoy Martials the most from a roleplaying perspective but in 3.x they get outshines by any caster.

That said 5e and even 4e fixed that for the most part.

Wizards who can end encounters in a single spell do not make for good stories. That's why eliminster typically gets depowered when the write about him, and most (not all) fantasy novels are about martials or at most gishes.

Then play what you want. No really, you arent obligated to baby sit them. If they start dying tell them to roll up a tank.

Unimpressive ive seen pouncing builds doing 700 or so a round that still are consdiered garbage because hitting things in 3.5 isnt terribly efficient especially in games where the DM is already willing to let you build an uber-charge while the Wizard just time traveled and turned himself into an double hardness Obdurium demiplane

If you really want damage look into the Hulking Hurler which makes shredding planets into childs play

This has become a point in any build I make, and a measure of the validity of builds online. Anything that needs 15 levels to finally come together is just conceptual nonsense that has little chance of actually being applied at a table. I try to make sure my characters have good milestones about every 5 levels. So far it's worked out better than when I multiclass all over the place.

>>Get invited by a college buddy to the group at his new school for Pathfinder
>>Met them and get along well with the whole group
>>DM says they have been playing a couple years and are pretty stable
>>Says is going to be a challenging game so bring the best character you can put together at about lv10
>>Challenge accepted
>>In my head decide to not go all out and hit TO levels
>>Make a nice tier two Summoner
>>Get Leadership and draw up a fun backstory that justifies it
>>Backstory is actually a lot of fun and fuels ideas for a Monkey theme
>>Earthbreaker wielding Monkey Eidolon Vanara Cleric Cohort a cult based around Monkey King worship and Mad Monkey spam
>>Meticulously craft whole crew as secret society that prevents countries from falling into tyranny and am really excited about playing this now
>>Finally game time
>>Learn that the group had been playing 4E until a little while ago
>>Several of the characters dont actually have names
>>The DM drops me with them insantly into a dungeon which consists of small 1-2 room floors filled with monsters you need to kill to open the next level
>>Its a fucking video game
>>The "best" built of the players is a Vanara Monk because "Monk-ey get it lol" who punches for 1/3rd my Eidolons damage
>>Because Video game my interesting background is also fucking moot
>>Stomp everything in vengance
>>Players are amazed and actually brofist the Monk-ey-bro
>>Crappy campaign but good people that ill play with under a better DM another day

Not that bad I guess

The wizard shouldn't exist. It's a hodgepodge of a half-dozen different character concepts whose only unifying theme is "learns magic through study." The problem with that is that "magic" can do literally anything, so you need to define your magic classes by their school of magic, not the means by which they acquire magic. Dread Necromancers and Beguilers and stuff are the direction to go not just for balance reasons, but also for fluff.

Don't be gross, Tammy.

One thing I'll ask, why does everything the casters say center around them always having these specific spells just prepared, offhand? At that, if you were suddenly beginning combat, you wouldn't have all of your massive buff spells cast prior to combat, and in order to cast them first (IE, beat those charge builds from earlier) you would have to win the initiative.

To keep things fair, casters would most likely win given the chance to prepare for even one round. Otherwise, if it starts out rolling initiative and going, I believe the martial has more of an edge,especially if they have good dex.

Coming from someone who has played casters (Wizard who really enjoyed his Exploding Rune books, and a Cleric/Radiant Servant who... well, was a healslut), martials (your generic stabby rogue/assassin, a fighter who had more cock than brains, to name a couple), and many joke characters.

Also, if your character build is to be tested against every other player in the party, in single combat as though you were actually to drop everything and fight right where you were, to the death, you are a bad player and do not understand that PCs would protect their allies. That was my That Guy in the group.

Its usually because its very rare to NOT have something prepared that can entirely swing a situation in your favor and its harder for the DM to counter you than it is to counter the Uber-charger who can one-shot anything but only if he has a straight line to charge

Because some spells are pretty much universally good or can solve a lot of situations. And if those don't work you have a lot of other spells and some are bound to be useful somehow. If they still aren't, then it is unlikely the martial has too many more useful options than you do.

It is true that the need to cast buffs hampers wizards a lot more than people give credit for though. The more powerful buffs tend to only be relevant for the encounter they were cast in and can't really be reliably cast beforehand, so needing to stop and spend your turn doing nothing while everyone else is being useful sucks. Though if we are talking level 20 shit then time stop is a thing and there is stuff like permanency and contingency spells.

Well in 3.5, as soon you get access to proper bullshit, As a wizard you generally have a contingency spell on you as a get of jail free card, and are assumed to be abusing the shit out of persistent/extend spell metamagic, shapechange stacking, divining, etc... that and in general as a wizard I found I had oodles more money handy than the fighter ever did, especially given the super cheap cost for extend rods of metamagic and the like. Hell just knowing what to summon can fuck over encounters.

Level 20 is about where you reach the peak of power in a lot of d20 systems.
Level 21 is where you realize that you were climbing a hill and can see the Himalayas properly now.

I'm glad you've had some fun with getting to start up that way OP. When I made my first lvl 30 character from scratch, I'd never played a game at that level either and it made for both a fun experience and a major learning experience when I found out exactly how meek my efforts had come to.

>Make Wizard5/Warlock5/Cleric5/MysticTheurge5/EldritchDisciple5/EldritchTheurge5.

I didn't know that you couldn't use "Advance x class feature from both class" dual progression PrC's to advance other dual-advancment PrC's, but once we figured that out the DM handwaived it anyway. I figured it was nuts.

Then our entire party (Small group at the time, lvl 30 Mineral Warrior Swiftblade, lvl 30 mix as above, and lvl 30 conjuration/evocation blaster sorcerer) got curbstomped by psionic tashalatora vampire monk/psions with anti-magic field items in a campaign without magic/psionic transparancy. We got out because the conju/evo sorc was versed enough to have contingencies so we didn't all get anihilated in one round of monkMcFlurries with all of our arcane might coming to naught.

Since then I've learned a bit more of what to look for and prepare for in dealing with high level games like that, and successfully ran a lvl30 to 35 campaign, finished over a few years, and am DMing another ECL 23ish one now. It's pretty crazy once you get the hang of it too, even after the initial shock and awe wears off.

He deserved better than that treacherous whore.

This thread is why I enforce epic 6.