Andrew Troemner's page

I know this may seem obvious, but sometimes we forget this. Let me give you a sense of scale.

A typical unskilled laborer in Pathfinder earns 1 sp per day. An unskilled laborer working in the modern day, real-life setting might be working two jobs a day, for 16 hours a day earning maybe $100 (which figures at around $6 for minimum wage, which isn't far off from the truth). So, for the "working poor" in Pathfinder, 1 sp = $100. As 10 sp = 1 gp, 1 gp = $1000. We'll use this as a conversion factor for our comparisons.

A first-level adventurer typically starts out with about 150 gp on average. This would be $150,000 worth of gear. For people who regularly put their lives on the line for fame and fortune, this sounds like a fair amount.

Let's move up the power level a bit. An 7th-level adventurer would have gear worth around 6,000 gp, or $6,000,000. This is about how much it costs for a modern M1/A2 Abrams Main Battle Tank.

Moving up the power scale to 11th level, they have around 16,000 gp, or $16,000,000 in gear. This is comparable to an F-16 American jet fighter.

A 20th-level fighter would command about 160,000 gp worth of gear, or $160,000,000 in modern terms. A group of six adventurers would have just about $1,000,000,000 in wealth, which is approximately the price tag of a space shuttle.

Comparatively, a billion dollars is greater than the GDP (or entire national income) of any of the ten smallest countries in the world. However, to think about it there are many businesspeople who have more wealth than this -- Bill Gates has about $40 billion in wealth, and Warren Buffet has about $30 billion. This means that each of them could probably equip a couple dozen ultra-heroic adventurers in case the Tarrasque ever gets wished to Earth! There's also a fair chance that either of them probably have some pretty mondo-cool magical artifacts kicking around in their attics.

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Now, let's talk about hit points. This discussion depends on a few assumptions about how hitpoints work -- namely that "hit points" represent the ability to absorb damage and wounds. This assumption may be off to many DMs and designers, but many people certainly interpret it in this way.

Take a typical commoner, or in other words a run-of-the-mill common person running around today. Let's say that we stab them with, say, a dagger. Typically, they will fall on the ground and lose consciousness within a few seconds. This means that any serious attack with a dagger or a knife will result in all of a 1st-level commoner's hit points to become exhausted to the point of unconsciousness. Let's say that we're talking about 3 hp, which seems pretty reasonable. There certainly are some people who are stabbed and can run for help, or if they received only a flesh wound.

Now, let's compare this to our 7th-level adventurer above. This fighter, let's say, has a +2 Con bonus, which would result in him getting 7d10+14 hp, or on average 49 hp. This means that a dagger (1d4 damage, average 2.5) could hit a fighter 20 times before he passes out from loss of blood. Or in other words, you could stab a fighter 20 times before he's in any serious danger.

Now let's hit up our 20th-level superhero. He would receive 20d10+20 hp, or on average 120 hp. This means that our dagger-wielding thug could stab our hero 48 times before the fighter drops from blood loss.

Let's suppose that we take our heroes and stab them in the eyes repeatedly (i.e. a crit each swing). A critting dagger does 2d4 damage, or on average 5. This means that you could repeatedly stab a 7th-level fighter in the face 10 times before the fighter is in any significantly worse shape than when he started our venture. Similarly, a 20th-level fighter could be stabbed in the face or in the chest 24 times before he starts to bleed out.

Just imagine a PC exploring how long it'll take him to die if a peasant is stabbing him in the face. He thinks nothing of it, since his cleric best friend is standing right there to keep him from actually dying (or if he dies, to raise him right then and there). For the 7th-level fighter, this will take the commoner a full minute of stabbing him in the face to actually do that much damage. For our 20th-level friend, it'll take about two and a half minutes for our peasant friend to start killing the hero.

Thoughts? Other things that show that adventurers are abnormal?

For reference, here's the SRD for fighter.

This thread is for discussing suggestions to dramatically rewrite the fighter core class. To many DMs, fighters gain power at a slower pace than other characters, and for a character class designated as a master of arms, other characters can fairly easily out-shine him in the role of combat. To this end, the fighter class (to many DMs) need to be dramatically rewritten.

If you are happy with the fighter as written (FAW), then more power to you. As the First Rule of Pathfinder says, you need to Make The Game Your Own, and certainly you can't do that if someone is telling you your fighter is broken. However, there is quite a bit of truth to the saying, Your Mileage May Vary, and from a subjective standpoint what may be a broken fighter to some DMs and designers may seem like a balanced and fun class to others. It's okay to disagree; however, please keep in mind that this is not the place to discuss whether fighters need to be rewritten, but rather if they were to be rewritten, how would it be done.

So, without further ado, let's let some suggestions fly like a quickened fly spell!

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• Increase Will to good save progression
  
• Increase skill points per level to 4 + Int
  
• Add Diplomacy and Perform (oratory) to the fighter's class skill list
  
• Replace the bonus feats at the following levels with the following feats:

  4 - Weapon Specialization, bonus feat
  6 - Disruptive
  8 - Greater Weapon Focus, bonus feat
  10 - Spellbreaker
  12 - Penetrating Strike, bonus feat
  14 - Greater Weapon Specialization
  16 - Greater Penetrating Strike, bonus feat

I really like the direction that Paizo took with goblins -- turning them into murderous little doll-like butchers with a gleam of arson in their eyes.

One thought that really has intrigued me over the past couple of days is the possibility of statting up a swarm of goblins as a single monster. Just imagine -- goblins piled so deep that they're literally crawling over each other to get a chance to stab you and light your clothes on fire. This means that mechanically, the swarm overall might be a a Large creature and would be quite potent up until all the bloody little hoodlums meet their maker. This especially meshes nicely with the idea of a goblin horde -- they wouldn't be nice a lined up like an army, they'd descend like locusts and devour everything in their wake!

Thoughts? Specifically, would a goblin swarm be an interesting enemy?