But, even our playing experience doesn't typically provide direct knowledge of the issue, since we don't systematically consider the petrification-immunity status of most opponents; there is little need to.
I don't even think systematic consideration of most opponents is even needed. When considering the question, the situation we're looking for is "Gosh, this *single* opponent I really want to instant kill seems to have a lower fortitude save but is immune to Death Magic and NOT immune to petrify -- I really wish I had Flesh to Stone and Transmutation Focus to instant kill it."
That's not a situation I've ever been in. Stuff is generally vulnerable to Death Magic, has very high Fortitude rendering both spells moot outside of fishing for ones (in which case the Foci is moot), immune to both Death Magic and petrification, or Death Magic immune but a lot of weaker enemies (meaning using FtS on a single enemy doesn't accomplish much at all).
I'm certainly willing to admit I've overlooked some situations that I've played and/or there are some cases in modules I haven't played where that situation is found...but it's going to be a very low percentage.
I think I misread your earlier comment. I thought you were proposing that even someone who took feats with no actual combat benefit to the mage would still survive the OC.
That's also certainly true! Technically I did mean both so you didn't misread it per se in a sense.
I was pointing out that such feat decisions were of a different category than focusing in alteration to enhance the effectiveness of a spell which the PC planned to use regularly in combat. But, if you are saying that even marginal feat decisions (e.g. skill focus in intimidate) might have some indirect benefit and that that benefit would be comparable to having the spell focus, then I misunderstood. I don't know of a good way to compare the impact of the two choices.
Which is the entire problem, yes.
A. I'm going to pick a non-optimal style of play (petrify ALL the things) and try to make it as good as possible with the corresponding feats
B. I'm going to pick a non-optimal style of play (skill check ALL the things) and try to make it as good as possible with the corresponding feats
If you want to make the problem even more fun then consider Transmute focus is only two feats pre-epic and a third in epic. So really build two mages with one having Epic Transmute Focus and the other having feats focusing on something else (like Silver Palm, Skill Focus: Persuade, and Epic Skill Focus: Persuade). Given we have all the other feats to shore up the basics, Wizards are low on Charisma, and Wizards don't have Persuade as a class skill...the Persuade feats are probably going to be wind up being more useful in most modules (even if you cross-class to Persuade dump the lack of Charisma will make it hard to make many checks without those feats).
IMO, there is nothing necessarily wrong with arbitrary benchmarks, as long as people understand what they are. If you say that taking spell focus evocation and using firebrand will reduce amount of damage the mage takes per round from a given sample of opponents by 20 HP (because it is helping kill them off faster) and that taking spell focus alternation and casting F2S reduces it by 6 HP, then the reader can make some decisions about his choices. (Or decides that he needs other information, a different set of assumptions, etc.)
I think a major problem with your idea is that most people *won't* understand what they are. You'd need to lay out a bunch of figures for determining how you go those results which will just confuse the hell out of most people -- bringing in sets of enemies, spell DCs, enemy damage, mage level, potential saving throws, checking damage taken per round, and then trying to draw a conclusion at a minimum.
I mean, on the DA:I multiplayer forum earlier a guy made the claims of
"Explosive shot, when not bugged, is an awesome starter ability as it does very good damage, decent aoe damage, and it a very reliable, short cooldown CC.
Even when bugged, it's passable damage for a starter ability, and still an awesome CC."
So I brought in NUMBERS to show how using the bugged ability makes you do *less* damage than you would by ignoring it and the CC (crowd control) portion was terrible compared to similar abilities. His response?
"It seems very important to you that you are right.
So whatevs."
The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of people simply do what they think is cool or feels right. And when one of those people is actually legitimately interested in advice on how to be better, I don't think throwing a wall of numbers at them is the right approach (and if you're wondering, I was *correcting* that guy's bad advice so others didn't get the wrong idea).
