Summon to your hearts content, although you could make neat and very dangerous summoners in 3.5. Truly a trouble, if you gave them a few rounds to get ready.
It helps that their summons are standard actions. It really allows them to quickly tip the tables to be unfair. The fact they can often solo encounters on their own without being at real risk is a pro in their favor, but they're expected to have a party with them as well which means all they really have to do is tip the scales until your team will win.
Summoners are brutal in conjunction with most anyone. Summoner running interference makes for brutal tanks (they can clog a battlemap really well with stuff that often has high AC, DR, resistances, SR, or all of the above while being 100% expendable).
Since their summons are standard actions you can also throw them down right now and begin using them to control the field. Most enemies aren't going to try something stupid like an overrun attempt on your summons or eidolon (even if they succeeded they're probably wasting turns), and if they fail they get punished hard. Heck, they provide cover so you can interject swarms of weeny enemies to act as moving AoO stoppers.
Okay, sorry to take a while on getting this but I've been running errands a lot over the week and then had to play D&D today with some friends of mine. It's 11:26 and they just left a couple hours ago so I threw this together.
Summoner McSummonpants (15 pb, no traits, human)
Medium Humanoid (human) summoner 11;
Init +3; Senses Perception +9; AC 28, touch 15, flat 25 (+8 armor, +3 shield, +2 natural, +2 deflection, +3 deflection); Hp 97 (11d8+44), Fort +10, Ref +10, Will +11; Speed 30 ft.; Ranged +1 composite longbow +12/+7 (1d8+2/x3)
Special Attacks summon monster VI (11 minutes each, 9/day)
Str 14 (12), Dex 16 (14), Con 18 (14), Int 14 (12), Wis 7, Cha 22 (18); Feats Spell Focus (Conjuration) (1), Augment Summoning (B), Craft Wondrous Item (3), Craft Magic Arms & Armor (5), Toughness (7), Craft Rod (9), Medium Armor Proficiency (11); Skills Handle Animal +23, Knowledge (Planes) +12, Ride +17, Spellcraft +12; Equipment +2 strength gloves, +2 dexterity boots, +4 constitution vest, +2 intelligence circlet, +4 charisma headband of persuasion (+3 to Charisma-based checks), , amulet of natural armor +2 and protection +2 (12,000 gp), +3 celestial armor, lesser bracers of archery and resistance +4 (23,500 gp), lesser metamagic rods of extending (2), +2 mithral breastplate, +2 mithral buckler, 5,000 gp in additional gear
Eidolon (15/15)
AC 33, touch 11, flat 31 (+4 armor, +18 natural, +2 dex, -1 size);
Hp 94 (9d10+45); Fort +13, Ref +9, Will +12;
Speed 30 ft., fly 30 ft. (average)
Melee 6 +1 chain kamas +16 (1d8+10/x3)
Space/Reach 10 ft. / 10 ft (20 ft. w/weapon).
Str 28, Dex 14, Con 18, Int 8, Wis 10, Cha 11; BAB +9, CMB +19; CMD 31; Feats Exotic Weapon Profiency (double chain kamas) (1); Iron Will (3), Multiweapon Fighting (5), Toughness (7), Double Slice (9); Skills Disable Device +14, Fly +14, Perception +12, Sense Motive +12, Stealth +10; Equipment 6 +1 chain kamas, mwk tool (stealth), +4 cloak of resistance,
Evolutions large size (4), 4 limbs (4), natural armor +6 (3), flight (4) plus Biped freebies
The Eidolon?
Barring some cheap weapons and a cloak to improve her saves the eidolon is naked. When making single attacks (such as when moving around) the eidolon 2-hands her chain kamas and attacks with +50% strength at +18 for 1d8+14. Her full attack is 6 attacks at +16 at an average of 14.5 damage per hit. The summoner traditionally casts heroism on the eidolon to bring her up to +18 on all attacks. Given the usual AC of a CR 11 enemy is 25 there's a 70% chance to hit per attack (giving an expected DPR on a full-attack of about 60.9.
Her real strength is her reach (20 ft.) which makes her an excellent bodyguard and murder-machine. She has a 33 AC with mage armor (which lasts 11 hours a day) without a shield (though she has the option of sacrificing some offense to wield a mithral shield for bonus AC). But a shield's not really necessary because according to the creation chart the high-end attack for this level is around +19 and low end of +14, which is a 65% evasion vs high end attacks and 85% evasion vs low end attacks without buffs (shield of faith from a cleric would push them into near-unhittable range, as would a wand of shield, or a barkskin spell, which is fair because in general most front-liners appreciate these sorts of buffs).
The 20 ft. makes it difficult to get out of her reach as well. Withdrawing is not an option, nor is taking a 5 ft. step, so she is very irritating to caster-folk.
With the ability to fly adequately it's also easy for her to ignore terrain problems in most cases. And she's exceptionally expendable. While she has 94 hp (a decent amount at this level) she can be resurrected up to 3 times over the course of an adventure via the summoner's 4th level spell (allows the resummoning of the eidolon at full HP/status, which beats the hell out of the 10,000 gp you need to resurrect your favorite martial when they snuff it).
So what about the Summoner?
The summoner basically just enjoys the casting and buffing. Similar to a bard. The summoner has a pile of offense bottled up but doesn't use it until the eidolon snuffs it big time or something special is needed. Common tactic is cast phantom steed early in the day and rides and during combat cast extended greater invisibility using her lesser rod of extend to spend 22 rounds invisible. She usually then either keeps casting as needed or shooting with her composite bow from on her phantom steed. Or she'll cast the invisibility on her eidolon and let it bring people to ruin.
If her eidolon isn't out she has summon monster VI 9/day for 110 rounds each cast. Favorite summons include:
Lillend Azatas who are armed with magic weapons, have a nice amount of HP, barding music, and a number of nice spells. Ideal summon in a martial heavy group without a bard OR as support for existing summons due to Inspire Courage +2.
Shadow Demons who utterly wreck anything that cannot fight incorporeal creatures effectively (which is a rather large portion of the bestiary). It's pounce is near assured damage against most enemies and due to its flight and incorporeality it doesn't care about terrain stopping its charge (22 average damage on a full-attack) and it's got a large number of useful SLAs, it's DR 10/cold iron or good mixed with incorporeality, immunities, and SR make it very potent tank.
Succubus for spellcasting. Armed with a DC 22 charm monster at will, it can easily fly around bringing ruin to enemies. Makes a damn good interrogator too. It's DR and resistances makes it a solid tank as well for soaking large amounts of damage from enemies while it's mobility through teleporting can allow you to pester enemies. Against enemies immune to the charm, it can cast and hold vampiric touch and deliver it through a claw attack routine.
Erinyes gives us a strong ranged attacker with a bow who also has at-will unholy blight which is devastating vs any good or neutral enemies (it's untyped will-save damage which means it's very difficult to avoid unscathed without specifically being evil). Constant true seeing makes it a powerful scout or spotter and fear at will and their entangling ropes are pretty useful too. Like most of the others here their DR and resistances make for good meat shields.
Will often summon 1d3 of the following creatures to flood the battlefield with meat and actions...
Bralani who have ranged and melee, strong DR against most NPCs, a flight form and a magical non-elemental blast that can be spammed while in wind form. Also has a variety of useful spells, and the ability for each summoned brilani to cast lightning bolt at CL 6 (so frequently due to their long duration she will have some Brilani ready actions to cast lightning bolt at other casters when they cast while remaining summons fight as the concentration DCs vs 6d6 damage are irritating to casters in the extreme).
Babau are also useful to summon en mass against a number of foes. They make excellent meat shields, can see invisible, are armed with reach weapons, have sneak attack (which works well with their reach weapons for supporting party members or tag-teaming with one-another). Their DR and resistances make them powerful meat shields against most enemies. Creatures relying on natural attacks have to deal with their acidic slime. They also have at will dispel magic which is generally sufficient to shut down most potions and consumables (oh sorry, did you need that potion of fly?).
Xill are an offensive monster of choice. Their attack routine is vicious and nothing wants to deal with their paralysis or implant ability. They are also a rather amusing way to banish creatures that you've rendered helpless (either by the Xill or through another effect such as an allied hold person).
Against evil foes, the celestial dire lion will activate smite and pounce to cause some real harm (+8 damage with all attacks while the target or it is alive). A fine subject for 1d3 critters per casting.
Field Flooding...
Bison can be summoned in celestial or fiendish flavor at 1d4+1 per casting. Their trample is 100% guaranteed damage vs most enemies (anyone without evasion) and having the ability to just mow your enemies over unless they waste turns slaughtering bovines round after round is a very useful tool.
Called Creatures
The summoner has lesser planar binding and the will to use it (she has an effective +9 to Charisma checks to command a bound creature) so here are a list of creatures she forces to serve her for a week at a time. She can have multiple instances of these active, limited only by her downtime and cruelty.
Shadow Mastiffs are her go-to punk minions. During downtime the summoner intentionally has them bay until she and her companions have successfully saved against their baying. After that, they just run into mobs of enemies and begin howling and biting at enemies providing a very powerful AoE fear effect (even at high levels this is a pain for enemies because of natural 1s and the fact there is no limit to how many of these little wankers you can have).
Nightmares are useful mooks that the summoner can bind into service for a week or so. The summoner can acquire one for each party member as a mount and allow them to travel to other planes through this means easily. They also make a cheap flying mount (90 ft. per round) if the summoner decides that she wants something more stylish than that phantom steed.
Quasits or Imps are both perfect minions who can serve their master. Both have access to commune and invisibility and make efficient scouts. Imps have the bonus of being able to cast augury. Due to the weenie nature of these guys you can comfortably bind many, many of them to your will and use them for a variety of purposes (the imp poison is particularly nice as a source for parties with alchemists or ninjas in them just 'cause it's free).
Hound Archons are excellent frontliners due to their DR (the frequency of fighting foes with unholy weapons unless they are evil outsiders is very rare) and their constant auras and detect evil can be useful. Their teleportation makes them good errand boys since they can make shop runs for you (you don't even need these guys to fight for you, just have them teleport to shops and the like to buy and sell stuff up to 50 lbs. at a time, which means even if you're like fifteen miles into Mordor you can replace some spell components and/or dump some loot back at your hideout without having to burn through your spells).
Lantern Archons. Everyone remembers these guys right? The ones with the touch attack rays that piece everything in the game (EVERYTHING). Well, yep, here we are again. The golem unmakums are back again. Since we're calling these critters to our service we can amass quite a few of them and have them gestalt if we want to (makes them into a super elemental with 2d6 light rays).
So why do I think it's overpowered?
The eidolon is naked and has a very potent AC and its attack routine can be improved manyfold from where it is now (this is assuming very little buffing here). The summoner itself has plenty of HP, AC, and I'm happy with its saves and has plenty of defensive and offensive tricks (the extended greater invisibility is a dirty trick in many encounters, and stoneskin might cost 250 gp in material components but it can utterly ruin enemy offense against themselves or their eidolon so it's a good backup). Since summoning is offensive I consider them to have plenty of punch as well.
When their #1 critter snuffs it (up to 3 times per day) we can summon a wide variety of creatures for free we have a wide variety of creatures with various strong powers and offensive capabilities. The sheer amount of damage mitigation and problem solving available through summoning is strong enough that the summon monster line of spells has been a line of power spells for clerics and wizards and sorcerers since 3.x.
But summoners get top-level summons at a faster casting time (making it difficult to interrupt and not nearly as risky for the payoff) many times per day with no components (you don't have to do anything, not even wiggle your finger to cast this).
Round this out with their downtime critters they can bind (or later create) and they have a rather wide breadth of skill opportunities (the likelihood that they, their eidolon, their summons, or their bound creatures can't answer a skill problem is pretty low).
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The closest class to this kind of power AND versatility in role I know of is the druid, and they pale in comparison to the summoner in pretty much every role except perhaps blasting (but to be a dedicated blaster/caster druid you traditionally are going to end up giving up on your wildshaping except for mobility, and your pet is going to need way more equipment and buffing to be more than a meat wall). Druid animal companions also take longer to restore when they snuff it (druids need 24 hours to recover their animal companion, summoners can full-restore everytime they recover spells).
And I consider druids to be tier 1 in Pathfinder alongside wizards (wizards have slightly more power but less versatility because a wizard has issues changing their roles and have to emphasize more on defense do to being squishier and not having a free meat-shield).
Summoners are actually stronger at the lower levels where all the extra meat means just mowing over your enemies (3 + Cha mod times per day of summoning monsters and an eidolon means you can probably solo most adventure paths in the early levels).
I'm just online for a bit 'cause my D&D group just made a food run. I just gotta say...again...this barbarian rage thing is really, really old.
Barbarian rage does not kill you. Ever. It never has. Are people so utterly incapable of doing basic rudimentary mathematics?
If you have 100 HP and raging grants you 20 Hp, then you have 120 Hp while raging (both current and max). If during the battle you take 119 HP and then proceed to end your rage, you die.
But here's the funny part. You were already dead. Get it? See, rage doesn't give you HP and then deal damage to you when it ends. You already have the damage. If coming out of your rage would kill you then you were already dead without the rage.
Seriously...this is really irking me. Stop saying this. It's stupid.
I'm not talking about a superstition barbarian, or healing him, I'm talking ALL barbarians have a set point major flaw. There is a set point when they still have POSITIVE HPs in a rage, that IF the rage ends, the Barbarian drops below his Con and auto dies and if they get to zero it's sure death, where even the weakest mook, might still survive if he is koed. But it's the price they pay for being able to go toe to toe with the big nasties and rock them.
I wise man once said:
"If rage would end and you would die, you were already dead."
What's wrong with the spell list? It's essentially full-casting with less slots and lower save DCs.
That's pretty much exactly the problem, combined with a mish-mash of often randomish spells tossed into their list.
The lower spell levels don't really concern them for DCs because most of the better spells they have don't even make use of saving throws, or have negligible saving throw difference (nobody cares about the saving throw DC of greater planar binding because you can just keep spamming the spell until you get the creature). The majority of their spells are buffing spells which also don't matter as far as save DCs are concerned.
Meanwhile it creates some problems. It opens up things like wands of summon monster V, and makes acquiring scrolls cheaper. While it's not unheard of for a couple of spells to make a special appearance on a list at a lower level (Bards get irresistible dance for example) the Summoner's spell list is constantly squeezing high level spells into low level slots. It's lazy, it's dirty (from a design perspective), and it takes little notice of the rules concerning item creation and the like.
If they were going to give it 9th level casting then man up and give them 9th level casting. Or if they're not supposed to be full casters then man up and DON'T give them full casting. They get Summon Monster I-IX as a SLA so they don't actually need anything beyond 6th level spells to do their jobs. I wouldn't care so much if they got some planar bindings a little earlier in spell level, but the huge pile of illusion and enchantment spells they get is overkill (what does Simulacrum and charm monster have to do with being a summoner? Not a damn thing).
I also dislike haste coming at level 4 for them. That's not kosher to me. A half-caster getting spells faster than full-casters and at lower levels (and thus cheaper for wands and scrolls) is poor design IMHO. It's not like they need it and it wouldn't kill them to wait until 3rd level spells like bards.
Bah people keep saying summoners are overpowered, but when you compare them to fullcasters no one has yet to show that they are OP. Yet nearly every critique of the summoner on this thread alludes to them being OP.
If it makes you feel any better, my reservations concerning the summoner have absolutely nothing to do with its upper end strength.
They aren't anchored to a specific weapon type. This is a myth.
1. They get the maximum bonus to one type, but they get bonuses to multiple types. If you take the first bonus on melee and the second on ranged, they are actually more versatile, as they get bonuses to up to 4 different types of weapons.
Weapon Training is a nice feature but it scales very, very slowly and doesn't keep up with the perks that other martials get. It caps at +4/+3/+2/+1 to hit and damage at 17th level which is very mild at that level (divine favor provides up to a +3 to hit and damage and is a 1st level spell. Divine Bond provides similar benefits. Rage is granting similar bonuses and allowing rage-cycling for huge benefits many times per day. Rangers have something like +8/+2/+2/+2 for favored enemies and can opt to make you their best favored enemy, hide in plain sight, quarry, etc).
The only way to make Fighters excel at the raw numbers people boast about is to take the Weapon Specialization feats. It costs 4 feats to get a +2 to hit and +4 to damage. 4 out of 11 bonus feats. And the weapon specialization line is single-weapon only (barring an obscure and specific racial option). So weapon specialization can make them appear to dominate in terms of to-hit and damage or at least make it look worthwhile.
But then you're anchored to a specific weapon and you absolutely need that weapon or else your damage falls back to merely being average and you've lost the benefit of 4/11 of your feats (4/9 at the time weapon training caps at +4). So if you're specced in longswords and find a battleaxe you get no cookies unless the GM wants to take pity on your poor fighter-ness and alter the treasure so you feel better.
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2. Unlike other classes, they can retrain combat feats if they change weapons later.
Except for one really big problem. Feat chains. See, Pathfinder has this gross love of feat chains. Hell, they turned several feats from 3.5 into entirely new feat chains (by splitting most of the maneuver feats into 2 feats). Feat chains are the fighter's bane.
Check this out, strait from the dragon's mouth.
PRD wrote:
Upon reaching 4th level, and every four levels thereafter (8th, 12th, and so on), a fighter can choose to learn a new bonus feat in place of a bonus feat he has already learned. In effect, the fighter loses the bonus feat in exchange for the new one. The old feat cannot be one that was used as a prerequisite for another feat, prestige class, or other ability. A fighter can only change one feat at any given level and must choose whether or not to swap the feat at the time he gains a new bonus feat for the level.
1) You must wait until 4th level, and can only retrain 1 feat every 4 levels thereafter (so the most you can ever retrain is 5 feats).
2) And the feat cannot be a feat that is currently a prerequisite for another feat (which means you cannot swap weapon focus {longsword} for weapon focus {battleaxe} if you have weapon specialization {longsword}).
3) More restrictions occur if you have a prestige class as well.
Now let's think about how we're going to use this.
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"Unlike other classes, they can retrain combat feats if they change weapons later."
Now how are they going to do this exactly? If you have Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, and Greater Weapon Focus {Longsword} (requiring you to be about 12th level) and you find a kickass Battleaxe...
You must wait until you're level 16 to remove Greater Focus Longsword and replace it with Weapon Focus {Battleaxe}. Then you must hit 20th level to replace Weapon Specialization {Longsword} with Weapon Specialization {Battleaxe}, leaving you with Weapon Focus {Longsword}.
If we try it earlier, similar result. You pickup weapon specialization at 4th level at the earliest you can. You will need to wait until 12th level to swap that weapon specialization over to another weapon you found later (a total of 8 levels to go from having weapon focus/weapon spec to weapon focus/weapon focus and then weapon focus/weapon spec).
This mess gets even worse when we try to deal with other feat chains.
Here, I found a generator that can help do the experiment more quickly.
Community Item Generator. Just select "metropolis" and click away.
Now we have a 75% chance of finding a +2 weapon of our choice each time the city restocks by RAW. Anything above that must be rolled randomly or else you may need to GM-fiat a quest for your desired item and thus is outside the point of discussion.
So let's say our Fighter wants a +3 longsword. Specifically a +3 longsword because he wants to bypass some DRs, but he also wants to make use of the fact he's burnt 4 feats (focus, specialization, greater focus, greater specialization) into longswords and doesn't want to use anything else.
Meanwhile any other class doesn't really care. A +3 weapon is a +3 weapon yo.
Shallowsoul: casters were always worse than martials anyway!
Anbody from The Den: PATHFAILURE = CASTER EDITION!
Ciretose: Since it's all Schroedinger, we will never know if those are nerfs or buffs.
3.5 Gitarist: Casters are fine, as long as you require the player to learn spells/pray/meditate 8h per day in real time, like we do. Honestly, does anybody even play this game in some other way?
Lemmy also said your partially filled wands to get around WBL were fine.
That's because the rules say it is fine. You didn't like the rules and you haven't shut up about it since. You like taking pot shots at me and my games - which you have never been part of - because we follow the rules and you don't like the rules. Your answer is that if it's not your cup of tea then naturally the GM will veto it.
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Many people don't want to post a build because it exposes their campaign, such as when you posted partially filled wands to get around WBL. That says a lot about what is allowed in your game and in your philosophy on gaming.
You don't like that you can purchase used wands according to the rules for buying items and you insist GMs would shoot you down for it. I laugh at you because if that's the case you can't sell partially charged wands either (if you can't buy them, you sure as hell aren't going to find anyone to sell them to).
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If you won't post a build, you aren't interested in a serious discussion for one simple reason.
Every PC is, at root, a build entered into a campaign.
While every PC has a build, PCs are not at root a build. A build is just a mechanical representation of an idea that you have for a character. Now talented builders can get around certain problematic limitations due to experience and understanding of the system. If I want to make a Fighter who has respectable saving throws then I can make a dwarf and take a feat that grants me a flat +4 bonus on saves vs poison & magic. That shows up in a build, but when discussing classes is horribly dishonest.
Because a class should not be required to be a certain race to function. Same with archetypes. If I want to make a Rogue, I should be able to make a rogue that functions decently regardless of what race I choose. If I want to make a dwarf sorcerer, I can do that and it will still be a viable character. If I want to make a halfling ranger, I can do that and it will still be a viable character. If I want to make a gnome barbarian it will still be a viable character.
Because those classes are all solid within their classes themselves. Builds only show a snapshot of a lot of different stuff. But the only way that anyone will get anywhere in these discussions is through the experimentation of different facets of their potential and examining how much you have to tip the scales in a given field. I've done this before several times when discussing things like DPR of the monk.
It doesn't help that most of the build-nuts always insist on posting overpowered builds. The standard game uses 15 point buy, no traits, no hero points, no optional rules like piecemeal armor, massive damage, words of power, etc.
I think the fighter problems are much exaggerated by people who don't play fighters.
Which would be false. Most of us have played fighters, and monks, and rogues. We've been at this a very long time throughout multiple iterations of the system and have a working knowledge of the game. As a general rule I don't think those discussing the classes for their failures are inexperienced with those classes.
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As a rule, if someone won't put up a build they are here for attention and not discussion.
An unsubstantiated rule. This discussion has been going on for a long time (pre-Pathfinder in fact) and the Paizo boards are particularly volatile (unlike forums like Giant in the Playground which are much kinder and more heavily modded). We've done the whole build thing. It just creates fights. It has not once, ever, resulted in any sort of agreement. It's just a waste of time and a form of mechanical masturbation as people try to doctor up their statblock to be a shimmering as possible with certain racial combinations or highly specific archetypes and the like.
Or someone whines about someone's build and infers that it's not how they play even when the rules say it's fine. Or leads to people whining about DPR threads until their faces is blue, starting Roleplay vs Rollplay fights and more.
There are plenty - and I do mean plenty - of posters on these boards who have noted a problem with X or Y class that do not post builds. TriOmegaZero is a wonderful poster and someone who is more than passingly familiar with the issues in the game. Same with Kirth Girsen but I haven't seen a build.
Lemmy was on board with the build Bandwagon and he loves building stuff (he even has a very nice thread for martial builds), but even he has acknowledged that posting builds is a fairly futile waste of time.
In fact, it wouldn't be hard. Just as you can add a generic description you could add a small paragraph suggesting other ideas for a class to be used for. For example...
Other Roles: The barbarian class is naturally good for representing someone with a primal ferocity and wild spirit, but it could also be used for a diehard champion of valor, or a samurai warlord who has honed his battle focus through the arts of Bushido. It can make a good model for any diehard warrior who needs some heroic adrenaline.
I see classes as a sort of building block to making a greater whole. Think of it like LEGOs. You could cast plastic into the correct shape for whatever you wanted to make or you could use preconstructed blocks and modular foundation. That's how I see a class based system.
"You must first master the conventions of the medium before you can subvert them."
Going along with what Tacticslion posted, classes are very much the instruction sheets to the mechanic Lego pieces of d20. A new player follows the steps and arrives at the intended design while the experienced player sees a whole other shape that can be achieved with the same pieces.
The trick is breaking out of the idea that the instructions must be followed. But without forcing it before the player is ready to break free.
I agree. A good example would be BESMd20. It's a point-based D20 system but has a lot of "classes" which are 1-20 progressions that have all the points assigned to them based on a theme. There's stuff like Samurai or Monster Trainer and stuff like that, but if you're experienced you can just toss the classes and go full-on point buy system (Kirth might like it actually).
I'd personally rather see fewer archetypes and more suggestions on how to build interesting characters and concepts with what we already have. Star Wars d20 did something like this (it had themed character builds that showed multiclassing progressions to cover certain archetypal characters).
I'm currently playing a dual-discipline psion (shaper/egoist) who thematically is a wild kellid witch with a style that is like a hybrid between a druid and a witch (she is a caster who calls spiritual beasts and changes into a variety of creepy forms). Her psicrystal is her former mentor's eyesocket polished into an amulet with an opalescent gem within the socket (the gem is actually not a gem at all but a concentrated spiritual essence from her mentor). Her psicrystal serves as they eye of her dead mentor on her journeys as she helps her young pupil on her journey.
During a recent tabletop game with her, she transformed into a centipede and began burrowing through the ground. Later she called a "phantom wolf" to attack the orcs who were chasing her. Later still her fetish (her psicrystal) transformed into a black cat. Everyone at the table was like "whoa I love your character, what is she!?".
"A psion."
Everyone else - O.o
Awesome. This is exactly why pathfinder rocks. You could probably build your concept in 6 different ways and still be able to roleplay what you want. Once you get the system, you get to own the fluff.
All my +s are belong to this. :P
One of the best classes in core for playing a samurai is the Barbarian. :P
It's one of the reasons I love psionics. Beautifully robust system, extremely customizable, and incessantly fluffable! My brother used my psionic monk to create a well-intentioned assassin in the spirit and flavor of the assassins from Assassin's creed. :P
I see classes as a sort of building block to making a greater whole. Think of it like LEGOs. You could cast plastic into the correct shape for whatever you wanted to make or you could use preconstructed blocks and modular foundation. That's how I see a class based system.
See, I've tried point systems and they usually come out as being very swingy when it comes to balance. Without really trying you can often make severely under or over powered characters, and there is rarely a method to set out the qualities of powers.
A class system is really attractive from design standpoint. You can create a rather robust and well designed system and by making classes that can handle at least 3 different forms of characters (preferably more) then you're doing very well.
RPG systems have never needed things like Alignment to be good or to allow players to have something. Instead it ensures we cannot have something. Until there is a full BAB 1/2 divine caster that doesn't have the inborn limiting fluff, people simply cannot play such a character no matter how much they want to unless their GM is cool (and even then you're boned in PFS).
I still don't know why Ninjas are such a better fit for "elite goblin scouts and jobbers".
Not better, just "a fit". The mechanics say: This is a mobile stealth class with power points to govern their stealth/striker capabilities.
This sounds like a scout to me.
The fluff says: These are asians in pyjamas who are masters of killing in the shadows with strange abilities powered by ki.
The fluff is a valuable guide to give a player a familiar archetype to role-play, but a different set of fluff can still fit the mechanics. And I don't see it as meta-gaming to reskin a class for those purposes.
I'm currently playing a dual-discipline psion (shaper/egoist) who thematically is a wild kellid witch with a style that is like a hybrid between a druid and a witch (she is a caster who calls spiritual beasts and changes into a variety of creepy forms). Her psicrystal is her former mentor's eyesocket polished into an amulet with an opalescent gem within the socket (the gem is actually not a gem at all but a concentrated spiritual essence from her mentor). Her psicrystal serves as they eye of her dead mentor on her journeys as she helps her young pupil on her journey.
During a recent tabletop game with her, she transformed into a centipede and began burrowing through the ground. Later she called a "phantom wolf" to attack the orcs who were chasing her. Later still her fetish (her psicrystal) transformed into a black cat. Everyone at the table was like "whoa I love your character, what is she!?".
I still don't know why Ninjas are such a better fit for "elite goblin scouts and jobbers".
They can situationally grant themselves an extra attack or a +4 untyped bonus to Stealth. They also increase the DC to track them or notice them when they are stationary and not taking actions (this makes them ideal for both scouting or ambushes). At 6th level they can effectively double-move while ignoring difficult terrain. This also makes them really good as scouts in the swampy or forested locations that you see frequently in the Lord of the Rings.
uhm I see, it seems legal but do not the armored kilt have a maximun dex bonus of +6?
When worn as an individual armor yes. Not sure about when you attach it to another armor (it doesn't mention any special stacking beyond the weight category increase) but I guess if you were really concerned about it you could get it made out of mithral (I think armored kilts are metal plated) for really cheap (it's a light armor so it'd only cost you a tiny bit).
But honestly it's not really critical. You don't need armored kilts to have a good AC, it's just a nice touch. Generally speaking I assume that anything that one class can obtain another can as well (so I'd expect the fighter to be using a similar loadout), which doesn't matter beause the real AC difference comes from the class features.
Barbarian tanks also have the benefit of having much more HP than fighters and are like unbreakable meatwalls at high levels (you have to carve through AC, DR, and then a massive HP pool, and due to their saves CC'ing or one-shotting them with a save or die is a desperate attempt at best).
Tolkien's world is magic heavy. Heavy enough that it took forever before one of the most learned individuals and a literal wizard figured that Bilbo's ring wasn't just a drop in the ocean. That being said, Ninjas are what you make of them. The core rogue has some magical qualities as well, including the ability to learn to cast low level spells better than real mages (SLAs instead of spells, require no components, cannot be countered, etc). You can just choose not to pick those if you want a more mundane rogue.
Ninja is much the same. The majority of their ki abilities aren't particularly flashy and they have many useful abilities that aren't specifically magical (including poison use, death attack, and the ability to periodically get extra attacks).
I need to construct a premade post I can just copy/paste into these things, as I've had to explain this plenty of times. The gist of it is that at low levels barbarian and fighters wear similar armors with similar maximum dexterity scores. Everyone eventually shifts to mithral armor anyway (which is treated as medium armor and just costs the barbarian a feat if he wants AC), and barbarian rage powers can actually give a barbarian a positive AC.
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Ashiel wrote:
Depends on the build. The barbarian I mentioned was just talking Constitution. If if I wanted to go balls to the walls defense optimization I'd probably go with...
Base 14 Dexterity + 1 level increase + 6 enhancement + 5 inherent = +8 Dex.
Beast Totem = +5 natural
+5 Mithral Celestial Plate w/ Kilt = +15 armor
+5 heavy shield = +7 shield
+5 amulet of natural armor = +5 enhancement to natural armor
+5 ring of protection = +5 deflection to armor
-2 when Raging
Net result is AC 53 without fighting defensively or using combat expertise. Add Uncanny Dodge and Improved Uncanny Dodge. Since I'm not counting feats, I could add Dodge & Shield Focus to up to AC 55 without fighting defensively. Using the extra skill points as a Barbarian I'd invest into Acrobatics to increase the bonus from fighting defensively and using a total defense to +3 and +6 respectively. The other skill points above the Fighter could be dumped into UMD to use magic items as needed.
Rage powers I think I'd take are Lesser Beast Totem, Beast Totem, Superstitious, No Escape, Eater of Magic, and that would leave 5 other rage powers to play around with (primarily for offensive options like the one that gives my level to a CMB each time I rage).
I'd trade Trapsense for Elemental Kin which can easily give me near unlimited rage at high levels since each time I take energy damage equal to my level or greater I would gain +6 rounds worth of rage.
I haven't really scratched my feats, so if I was really trying to push the AC thing, picking up Improved Unarmed Strike and Crane Style would be cute to get more AC by fighting defensively at all times (and for another +4 to AC that stacks with dodge & uncanny dodge, which would bring us to about AC 59); but since the high-end hit bonuses of enemies at 20th level generally cap out around +40 (+30 by the monster creation chart but I'm also accounting for buffs and bosses), and still that would give a lot of evasion, before counting evasive buffs like blur or displacement. I could get my AC to the mid 60s with a few more rage powers but since evasion is capped at 95%, there's not really much need. Better to emphasize offense now that I have an incredible physical and spell evasion.
EDIT: Eater of Magic and Elemental Kin is a fun combination as well since you get two saving throws versus spells, SLAs, and supernatural effects, gain temporary HP when if you fail then succeed, and then if you suffer energy damage of level+ then you get lots of extra rounds worth of rage to cycle. At this point your mages can carpet bomb the hell out of you and your enemies and you'll be standing in the middle of the smoking crater with a big glowing grin on your face.
EDIT 2: I also didn't list the damage reduction that I have as a defense, so there's that as well. DR 5/- is pretty significant over the course of lots of attacks.
All that being said, you really don't need to be this focused to do everything that you need to do. Honestly the thing about this that amuses me is that I've still got 4 level up bonuses to put into Strength, tons of HP, and enough Rage powers to make the fighter cry himself to sleep ('cause the Fighter wasted like 6+ feats trying to be good at combat maneuvers and I get to add my level to combat maneuvers every time I rage-cycle with one rage power).
And I haven't actually buffed yet...sooooo...you really don't need to get this extreme to be effective.
I've never been a huge tekken buff (Street Fighter / Mortal Kombat here) but Tekken never struck me as hugely over the top during the time I saw it or the rare instance I got to play it a little while. Just seemed like guys kicking and punching each other with the occasional shocking special effect on some guy's gloves or something.
That being said, I was a huge Bloody Roar fan. I mean, it was this sweet 3d fighter with a roster of lycanthropes! Kickass!
Long was my guy. I got decent enough with him that I rarely had to transform to win a match and relished beating down other zoanthropes while in human form by simply outplaying them.
Yugo was also a favorite. He's the werewolf of the game (though I think his human form looked cooler or at least dressed better in the first PSX title).
Alice the rabbit was pretty epic too and somewhat novel in a game that in itself is novel.
Other lycanthropes (or zoanthropes which is non-wolf specific) appeared in some other titles, such as the Jenny who is a bat.
On a side note, was this really necessary? I don't harbor any sort of ill-will towards you, and I don't see how this affects the price of rice in China as they say.
To keep it simple I'm going to stick pretty much to core classes + expanded options (except archetypes because archetypes always give up something and unless the archetype is unbalanced - IE gives stuff better or worse than it takes - it doesn't matter anyway).
Rogue, Fighter, and Monk. Besides the Barbarian they are the three classes who don't get magic in some reasonably useable form, have poor resources, and are fighting an uphill battle against a system that hates them for existing.
Just curious - What ist he source of this Monk Class description? What are the main differences between this and what is in the PF rule books?
This monk does not have a pseudo-BAB, and so your to-hit doesn't constantly change depending on whether you are moving or not (pseudo-BAB on flurry was clunky and doesn't lend itself well to newbies). Instead it has a 3/4 BAB and gains additional attacks as level progresses (it can even benefit from actual two-weapon fighting if you don't mind the accuracy loss).
Its unarmed strike damage does not increase in die-size. Instead monks get a scaling bonus to hit and damage (if you check the math this increases average damage at the same pace as the monks unarmed did but gives them a better minimum damage) with unarmed strikes and monk weapons (so now you can go unarmed happily or use monk weapons). There's a few options for treating certain non-monk weapons as monk weapons as well (this is ideal for those who want a shaolin-style spearfighter or a ninja-esque monk or an archery monk). The scaling bonus to hit also mitigates their lower BAB at higher levels and creates a nice situation where monks are strongest unarmed or with monk weapons.
Instead of predetermined class features the monk gets secrets (student and master secrets, most similar to rogue talents and advanced rogue talents). These secrets can be chosen to customize your class. Pretty much all the traditional monk abilities are available as secrets. Some are improved as needed (the monk's self healing was basically worthless in core, but is replaced by a useful power).
Instead of a Ki pool and a tiny bit of predetermined ki-powers the monk gets powers from the psychic warrior power list and power points to spend on them as shown on the table in the book (they get bonus power points equal to their wisdom modifier divided by 2 per level, so a monk with a 14 wisdom gets +1 power point each level, a monk with a 16 wisdom gets +1.5 every level, etc). By selecting powers you want you can customize your monk to the most minute detail, which gives plenty of room to create different orders of monks with different mystical styles.
This monk has no alignment restriction (which is nice because sometimes people might want to make a crazed monkey-hermit or some other theme that's not fitting ofr a lawful alignment, and it allows you to use the class for mystical assassins for chaotic evil creatures or organizations).
It solves many of the issues that monks have in core. Many of the selectable psionic powers can do things like allow monks to preform non-combat mysticism (such as fading into their environment). A few selectable powers ensure the monk can be mobile and still use their flurries (hustle allows you to take an extra move action during your turn, so you can move into range and flurry for example).
It reduces the multiple ability dependency of the class and solidifies Wisdom as its key statistic. While other statistics are good to have, Wisdom determines how much energy you have to spend which can be used to augment your other aspects. It is entirely possible to make Strength or Dexterity monks work, and you can even (successfully) play old aged monks who have terrible physical stats but strong mental stats and make them good (one of the prototype builds was an old-aged hermit who had a 7 Strength and a high Wisdom, who fought in melee).
The rules use the 3.5/Pathfinder psionics system that is available for free on the d20pfsrd.com, and you can get it in pdf, hardcopy, or bundled if you want. The rules are slick, well made, and very well balanced (the psionics system from 3.5 was more balanced than core magic and not much has changed in that regard).
If you have further questions just lemme know and I'll try to explain in a Q & A format.
To keep it simple I'm going to stick pretty much to core classes + expanded options (except archetypes because archetypes always give up something and unless the archetype is unbalanced - IE gives stuff better or worse than it takes - it doesn't matter anyway).
Rogue, Fighter, and Monk. Besides the Barbarian they are the three classes who don't get magic in some reasonably useable form, have poor resources, and are fighting an uphill battle against a system that hates them for existing.
Fighters just need to go back to the drawing board. The Tome of Battle would be a good place to begin looking for inspiration.
Rogues are just underwhelming in pretty much all fronts. They are shown up entirely by both Rangers and Bards at pretty much all roles. Rangers are better at fighting and skills that Rogues (because ranger spells also include stuff like pass without trace and nondetection and can craft a variety of useful tools, and have excellent combat ability; Bards rule party face and make a rogue look like a fighter when it comes to skill domination and can also support the party and fight well).
Rogues could potentially be saved by adding a lot of exceptionally powerful rogue talents, though it's an example of a power creep for good, I'd prefer to fix the class itself.
Otherwise I think the core is surprisingly well balanced. Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Ranger, Sorcerer and Wizard all have their pros and cons and are solid throughout pretty much all levels of play. Rarely should anyone be left out with these classes and they have a lot of ways to interact with their world.
Bloodlines. Probably the best thing paizo did for sorcerers was add bloodlines to the class. They add a much needed boost to a class that was (and sometimes, still is) considered the wizard's weaker sibling.
That being said, I often has a hard time dealing with the fluff associated with the bloodlines; it seems every sorcerer gets their power from some supernatural creature fornicating with an ancestor. And that's fine, I guess, but it gets kind of boring.
So if you've ever played a sorcerer, what was the background fluff for his power? Did you go with the supernatural ancestor, or was there something more unique about how you got your mojo?
Mitochondrial hyper-evolution that generates intense bio-energy that is harnessed and channeled into bizarre effects called magic. At the latter stages of this hyperevolution the mitochondrial cells can overtake and become one with the nucleus and this state of fusion allows complete control over the body.
Actually, nevermind, I don't think sorcerer does this very well. XD
What'd be cool is a class modeled after Ms. Brea's abilities and other abilities shown to be possible in the first game. I really liked how the ability set was mostly not just a magical system (see the elemental system from the second game), but also kept thematically appropriate for the story.
I'm 100% certain I could do it with psionics, and psionics is so beautifully refluffable that I could call it parasite-energy and call it a day. Let's see...
Scan = ???. I don't think there's a spell or power in Pathfinder that provides details on creatures. Though ranks in Knowledge could work. A substitute might be detect hostile intent.
Slow = Delayed Response.
Gene Heal = metamorphosis and its greater versions can grant fast healing for 1 minute / level. Alternatively true metabolism grants some gnarly fast healing.
Preraise = Trigger power (gonna die) + Natural healing or Vigor.
Full recover = A combination of the healing powers above, possibly involving a bit of quickening.
Liberate = The entire metamorphosis line is a good candidate here. :P
I'd probably consider something along the lines of Human Ranger / Psion (probably Egoist or a dual-discipline Egoist/Nomad) / phrenic slayer. That would pretty much cover her cop training (gives her a nice skill pool, some detective skills, weapon proficiencies, combat training, etc), the psion levels would give her some parasite power and slowly advance her combat prowess (which could be augmented by powers, especially if she was an egoist) and then phrenic slayer would top her off and begin leveling both her combat skills and powers at a nice rate (allowing her to get some of the more major powers).
Pretty much this. It's the biggest reason monk speed has been rather "meh" forever. In pre-3E monks became immune to slow/haste type effects. In 3.x/Pathfinder their speed bonus is enhancement so it stacks with pretty much nothing except other class features (which isn't so awesome unless you plan to do a lot of multiclassing, and even then it's pretty meh). Other classes just get 'em some haste or longstrider or some other something and they're good to go.
The speed buff isn't actually inherent in my psionic monk but is available as a student secret. If taken you get the Speed of Thought psionic feat (which grants a +10 ft. insight bonus to speed when you're not overly encumbered, with a special ability that makes it scale up as your psionic monk level rises).
I feel morally obligated to link this for those with monk woes.
Monk (Psionic) fixes pretty much every major problem that monks feel, provides options for countless monk themes, doesn't need tons of archetypes or hoop-jumping or specific races to function. Has been frequently used with standard 15 point buy without falling behind. It can be used for everything from venerable masters of an ancient esotetic martial art to elven assassins who use magical powers to stalk and kill their enemies.
Pretty much all the core monk features are present though most have been converted into "secrets" which are selectable class features obtained periodically throughout your career and there are other options for secrets (some of which encompass a few archetypes).
The class lacks a ki pool (because it would be redundant). Virtually everything that someone would need a ki pool for is covered by an expansive list of powers that double as choose-it-yourself class features (by selecting powers appropriate to your theme you can easily produce your perfect monk regardless of your concept).
I don't like you much, but your psionic monk is a really cool idea.
I have a player who really loves monks and used to want to play them frequently. He liked the thematic flavor of them. Unfortunately when it came to the actual game he quickly ended up struggling. It wasn't the kind of struggling of Gimli and Legolas with their "I can get more kills than you!". It was the sort of struggling to survive and/or be relevant against the encounters and challenges that the other members seemed to have only moderate difficulty with.
In essence, he was aquaman and everyone else was somebody. I wanted to help him so I took a good hard look at the monk in 3.5 (which is where this fix started). It was there that I gave the basic 3.5 monk psionics and that alone was plenty to "fix" the monk to the point where he could have fun and contribute. That was enough for us pretty much indefinitely. It was a bit hackish but it was simple enough that we didn't bother going further with it.
Later on the Paizo forums I realized that people were still having huge problems with the monk and that these problems weren't getting any better. So I thought maybe our hotfix would help other people enjoy monks, so I posted the experimental page and showed examples of how we would use the 3.5 monk + psychic warrior powers to create various concepts and mechanically viable characters.
It's in my nature to want to help people, and so I took the time to rewrite the monk with this system in mind and create a unified whole. No longer would you need to patch the class yourself, just grab the pdf and go. I included links to the SRD in the pdf for convenience to the reader. I also enhanced the class by giving the player more variance and opening it up for expansion (either from myself or someone else's homebrew) with the student and master secrets (being a fan of D20 Modern, I really enjoy classes that can fill a variety of roles and allow you to choose your class features).
Ultimately I feel the psionic monk fills every niche that the monk should have - mechanically, flavorfully, and conceptually - and even giving people room to think outside the box to make something more personal for them. Ki/Chi/Psi/Qi/Prana/Mana are all often associated in reality as some form of inner power used to produce a supernatural effect and the psionics system emulates this far better than any competing system I've ever seen. It also doesn't come with the hangups you get with bat poo and whether or not there's a correct deity for your clerical concept (it's refluffability makes it a potent roleplaying tool).
This also makes the monk fill the idealized role perfectly. They are not a full BAB class, and without their unique inner power they cannot stand toe-to-toe with most of the obstacles they face. However, due to their powers they can self-buff and have flesh as hard as iron, a grip like a boa, or move at superhuman speeds, or even - gasp - actually move and make a full-attack (thanks psionic lion's charge)!
FFT Monk was nothing compared to the Sword Tech users.
Very true. Unfortunately, very little was comparable to the sword tech users. I did like Agrias though (her sword techs at least weren't as powerful due to her being female and thus having a better Matk growth than a Patk growth, which actually made her more balanced) and wished she got more "air time" after she officially joins your party (my biggest complaint with the game beyond needing bigger parties was the lack of dialog for special NPCs in latter portions of the game).
Izluda was kind of dicey for me. She was obscenely overpowered against any humanoid you encountered and damn near useless against monsters (due to her arts revolving around shattering equipment, which was also a bummer 'cause I'm the sort who stole anything not tied down so breaking it was sad :P).
Orlandu was a sick joke. :P
If you're good at FFT, it's actually amazingly fun to play through the game with your main character + generic characters only (or some of the less goofy named characters like Mustadio and Agrias).
I couldn't really comment on FFT:A and its sequels. I wanted to love that game and it had all the trimmings to make me fall madly in love with it (it was a FFT-style game about kids finding a magic book taking them to a fantasy world where they become heroes? Sign me up yo!) but became so utterly disgusted with the games stupid judgement system and that *** ****ed judge-knight that I couldn't bear playing this mockery of what was supposed to be at least a spiritual successor to one of my favorite games ever.
All I will say is that monks weren't overpowered in FFT. More like they were "just right". The beauty of that game is most all of the classes have their strong suits and even the basic classes like chemist, knight, black & white mage are solid end-gamers as well. Especially due to the super-multiclassing system.
Overpowered does exist in FFT. One NPC is notorious for destroying any semblance of difficulty in the game, and if you know what you're doing you can set your main character up in such a way that you can nuke everything on the screen including yourself for nigh-insta-kill damage while healing yourself and being immune to pretty much everything. But at the end of the day if you're not trying to squeeze every ounce of juice out of the mechanics you end up with a surprisingly awesome and well balanced game.
The game is also notoriously hard on your first few runs. :P
On the subject of traditional FF games, Sabin from Final Fantasy VI is one of the stronger characters in the game (as is his brother Edgar the Engineer). He was a physically powerful character with a wide variety of useful techniques (which you input similar to a fighting game) with each ability having certain pros and cons (Aura Bolt was a holy-elemental energy blast, pummel dealt moderate damage that penetrated defense, suplex was stronger against larger enemies IIRC, etc).
Final Fantasy I has monks and they are also notoriously powerful characters who don't require equipment to really be good (in fact while they begin the game with nunchakus and some armor, you should immediately de-quip them and watch both their offense and defense rise). When they become a master monk their damage skyrockets. If you check some of the party build guides on GameFAQs the monk is listed as an exception to the golden rule against single classed parties, noting that a party of monks is actually pretty capable of killing most anything in the game and is fairly gear-independent and can make up certain magical needs through the use of consumables (there are rods you can consume to cast a few spells here and there, and healing can be done with potions and such between fights). That sort of party can be pretty boring through (you pretty much just select "attack" for the entire game).
The monk I linked to a few posts back (again found here: Monk [Psionic]) can do both the weapons and the unarmed without weapons shtick very well (they have a scaling bonus to hit and damage with unarmed strikes and monk weapons, can enhance their unarmed attacks with the appropriate powers, and even have a secret that allows them to treat all their proficient weapons as monk weapons - including spears since you like Lu Bu). They can go without wearing armor because of powers like inertial armor (which grants a scaling armor bonus).
One of the more attractive options for the unarmed combatant monk is the rules concerning the delivery of touch spells/powers. You can deliver them through an unarmed attack and do not expend them on a miss. This allows the monk I posted to emphasize chi-based unarmed attacks through the usage of powers such as hammer or dissipating touch to great effect (especially for low-Strength Wisdom-based monks such as those of older ages, who have significantly more energy but weaker physical bodies).
Final Fantasy Tactics did monks pretty well, Lumi. I recommend trying it out if you never have. They were arguably one of the stronger / more reliable classes in the game and humorously wore very little in terms of equipment (no weapons, no shields, no helmets, etc) and had an armor slot (which was reserved for clothing/cloth items) and two accessory slots (so you could wear magic trinkets).
They were exceptionally powerful in combat (mostly due to having an unarmed weapon power equal to their physical power which basically gave them huge returns for just being physically fit). They also had a wide variety of ki-based powers which had no limit to the frequency that you could use them (including strong healing powers, status ailment removal powers, the ability to throw ki/chi/qi/prana/whatever energy at enemies in the form of a ranged attack that dealt damage equal to their physical attacks, etc). They also had strong base statistics and good counter-moves (in fact the counterattack "counter" is a monk-ability).
Their "martial arts" skill granted the barehanded fighting strength to their new class if you shifted them. This was traditionally superior to weapons that you could equip on the class (for example, if you trained a character as a monk, switched them to a geomancer and gave them the martial arts support skill then they were probably dealing more damage than if you gave them a sword).
The only way weapons really come out on top in that game compared to monks as the best weapons in the game (the legendary sort such as the Excalibur, Chaos Blade, etc) is because they tend to have special abilities tied to them (Excalibur grants continuous haste + holy damage absorbtion for example), but on a pound for pound basis monks begin hitting extremely hard and continue to do so right to the end of the game when stuff gets goofy.
During the early portions of the game monks can seem downright overpowered. Since the statistical power of most of the classes in the game are based on their equipment (weapons for damage, armor for hp/mana, etc) the monk's ability to fight without such things make them very powerful at low through mid levels. Especially if you're leveling faster than the plot (random encounters scale and monster growth is far better than human growth, which means you can very quickly get outclassed by random chocobos, goblins, etc, if you're power-leveling early).
I feel morally obligated to link this for those with monk woes.
Monk (Psionic) fixes pretty much every major problem that monks feel, provides options for countless monk themes, doesn't need tons of archetypes or hoop-jumping or specific races to function. Has been frequently used with standard 15 point buy without falling behind. It can be used for everything from venerable masters of an ancient esotetic martial art to elven assassins who use magical powers to stalk and kill their enemies.
Pretty much all the core monk features are present though most have been converted into "secrets" which are selectable class features obtained periodically throughout your career and there are other options for secrets (some of which encompass a few archetypes).
The class lacks a ki pool (because it would be redundant). Virtually everything that someone would need a ki pool for is covered by an expansive list of powers that double as choose-it-yourself class features (by selecting powers appropriate to your theme you can easily produce your perfect monk regardless of your concept).
The most efficient forms of healing I've seen are actually damage mitigation or paladin healing (sometimes the two combine exceptionally well). Damage mitigation usually comes from things like miss %, armor, damage reduction, and energy resistances, but can also include damage passing through the use of abilities like shield other or the psionic share pain which allow multiple players to share their damage between one-another (so if one player suffers 10 damage he and another instead suffer 5 damage each). This spreads damage across multiple party members which in turn makes it harder to remove a single member from the fight and makes out of combat healing more efficient (nobody is lost during the battle and every can be healed between fights).
Paladin healing is potent and doesn't cost them anything real in terms of action economy (thus a paladin warrior-type is ideal because she can heal herself while doing her thing). Paladins also get shield other as a spell. A group with two paladins is extremely difficult to break up as they can cast shield other on each other and split their damage and heal it. Which means that if the enemy team attempts to burst one Paladin down they heal it twice as quickly (the damage is split and healed twice as a swift action).
If you include the psionics rules (and I would because they're damn good and an amazing update to the 3.5 psionics rules which were better balanced than core magic) then you have some other excellent options for damage mitigation and healing. Powers such as natural healing or vigor are both good methods of self-healing or damage mitigation in their own right (temporary HP effectively being pre-healing).
The Vitalist is actually the best designed healer I've seen in a very long time. It is a class that specializes in healing and damage mitigation. It has a very cool option to channel healing to other targets (a vitalist + cleric are very cool together because the cleric can channel energy and the vitalist can move all the wasted healing from X targets to Y target who really needs the healing).
They are also decent at actually delivering the healing without murdering themselves with AoOs. As long as his collective allies are within medium range (100 ft. + 10 ft. / level) he can heal himself and redirect the healing to someone else. Thus a vitalist will usually use natural healing to heal up to 3 HP / caster level to a target from a sizeable distance (at first this healing is mild in strength but it can get to be pretty potent as levels rise). Healing opportunities can get especially nice if you acquire the share pain power so as to split damage further.
I think people believe that a fighter should be the best in all forms of melee and I disagree. They should be good at most, but certainly there are more focused classes to get you a higher DPR or AC or whatever.
This is getting somewhat frustrating at this point. Nobody has problems with the Fighter's DPR or AC. At least I do not and I don't recall anyone else mentioning these as problems. My personal problem with the fighter is that the value of a fighter as a potential party member is very low. They do not bring anything to the table that is not easily replaceable, have little diversity (even their "options" are usually just about hitting things), have poor defenses (physical attack vs AC is not the only means of harming someone by a very long shot), have little out of combat usefulness derived from their class (as the only class who gets absolutely no magical abilities at all they should at least be competent with nonmagical solutions for things).
Seriously. AC and DPR are not issues. But combat is way more than just to-hit and HP damage. Or perhaps other GMs just ignore a good 80% of the game or something. I dunno. (>.>)
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That doesn't leave the fighter as a second class citizen. Their abilities are good across the board where most classes have to give in some areas and take in others.
Except they don't. Paladins, Rangers, Barbarians. All are good martial characters. They are all easily capable of filling out the party's martials. They are worth having multiples in the party even. Each has means and options both inside combat. Each can tank and damage, except doing so does not require them to give up a plethora of other options. The closest to giving up options is probably the barbarian who doesn't cast spells but has rage powers that do incredible things (including suppressing or breaking spells, supernatural abilities, and more).
And before someone rehashes this argument that my posts are entirely within the realm of theorycraft - it's not theory. I've been running 3.x/PF since its launch in 2000. Fighters have continued to be plagued by the same types of problems since the system was released and they are still plagued by these problems today. I have seen countless fighters in my tabletop games, public games, online games, and all suffer from the same problems. The most optimized over them can kill things really well. In 3.5 you could at least make a very competent martial-lockdown through the usage of spiked chains, enlargements, tripping emphasis (in 3.5 you can trip flying enemies causing them to fall prone), stand still (stand still was much stronger in 3.5 and turned a fighter's high damage into a CC ability), etc. However everything listed above was nerfed in Pathfinder so GG guys.
In my years of playing, I've seen 1 Fighter who was actually really exceptional at fighting (not just killing). That was played by a friend of mine who both had an avid love for fighters and exceptional optimization skills and he carefully picked which magic items he would try to acquire to work in tandem with his fighter (he and I frequently discussed interesting strategies, many of which are detailed in my adventuring guidebook). He squeezed out every benefit he could from items, feats, and race, and even at the end of the day he admitted that as much as he loved fighters that he was getting his pro-killing from his fighter and making up the rest through pure system mastery. But he felt it was a nice challenge and enjoyed it.
I've said the point of the class is to fight and that they can fight.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's not get crazy here man. Fighters aren't really that good at fighting. They are arguably good at KILLING 1 enemy in short order, but they are absolutely horrible at FIGHTING.
Dictionary.com wrote:
fight
[fahyt] Show IPA noun, verb, fought, fight·ing.
noun
1. a battle or combat.
2. any contest or struggle: a fight for recovery from an illness.
3. an angry argument or disagreement: Whenever we discuss politics, we end up in a fight.
4. Boxing. a bout or contest.
5. a game or diversion in which the participants hit or pelt each other with something harmless: a pillow fight; a water fight.
In D&D, fighters are subpar at pretty much every instance of the word FIGHT except for #4 & #5 on the definition list. When it comes to engaging in Battle or Combat, Fighters just do not fight very well. Now before anyone gets angry, I'm going to explain why.
In a fantasy world there is a lot more to battle and fighting than attack rolls and AC. A lot, lot more. From open field military warfare to small adventuring-level skirmishes, battle and fighting is a very involved thing. Something virtually all other classes - including Bard - are better at overall.
See, fighting in D&D/Pathfinder involves dealing with a lot of stuff. We have lizards that have natural flamethrowers; alchemists throwing acidic superbombs; women who turn you to stone with their eyes; undead who drain your life away with a touch; giant bugs that eat your toys; living shapeshifters who glue you to the ground and devour you after appearing to be a harmless object; assassins who wear the faces of others; tyrannosaurs that fly and throw lightning bolts at you; wizards who induce comatose seizures on you like you were a Japanese kid watching that one episode of Pokemon; nocturnal predators who control your mind at will; tigers that ambush you from seemingly no-where; aquatic creatures that snatch you and drag you into the depths; flying lizards with poison tails; dogs that smell of sulfur and breath hot death; and countless creatures that can arrive anywhere on earth they want with a moment of thought.
In short, FIGHTING is not two heavily armed individuals standing next to each other pummeling each other until one falls down (though if it is, Paladin is probably going to win unless the other guy can one-shot him a few times since he'll probably outlast him). There is a lot more to FIGHTING than just hitting things. Anyone can hit things. Commoners can hit things. Only real warriors can actually engage in Fighting, and unfortunately Fighter is not a real FIGHTER.
The other classes are well equipped for FIGHTING.
See Barbarians are good at dealing with the pummeling aspect but they also are excellent at resisting the deathly powers of the lich, the dark domination of the vampire, the death rays of the beholder, and can ferret out a wizard through a series of illusions. They also get Perception to avoid falling into ambushes. Barbarians also laugh at the attacks from unseen or invisible foes for they hold no advantage over them.
The Paladin is shielded in incredible resistances and immunities to many things and has a variety of spells and features that make them excel at battle, including the ability to resist energy attacks, block energy drain, or shield their allies from harm.
The Ranger is also good a pummeling and is better suited for dealing with the strains of battle. They have a variety of fighting abilities that allow them to deal with things like spells and traps, have spells like freedom of movement, resist energy, and delay poison that make them excel at fighting all manner of beast or mage. They are exceptionally keen at physical combat, often acquiring high-end combat techniques before anyone - including Fighters - ever had a chance of taking them.
The Bard is also adequate at fighting and functions as a leaderly figure who can use their powerful speeches to lift the hopes and swords of their allies while using tactical combat magic to make it through even the grizzliest of situations.
*continues on and on and on*
Fighters SUCK AT FIGHTING
Fighters do not suck at beating on target dummies with a stick (or sword, or axe, or bow, or whatever). Fighting in D&D/Pathfinder is leaps and bounds over hitting something with a stick. Fighters are horrible at fighting. They are passable - nay even pretty good - at one small facet of fighting in your typical D&D/Pathfinder campaign setting. They are poor at virtually all other aspects of fighting.
These are things you encounter in D&D/Pathfinder fights.
Energy damage (Fireballs, lightning bolts, acid arrows, etc).
Unavoidable attacks (ie - magic missile or "save for half" effects).
Touch attacks (such as acid arrow, or a shadow's strength damage).
Breath weapons (dragons, hell hounds, etc).
Mind-affecting effects (charm person spell, a vampire's dominate, etc).
Fear effects - most which still affect even on a successful save (cause fear, a mummy's aura of despair, a lich's aura of fear, etc).
Poisons (a spider's bite, a wyvern's toxic sting, a pit fiend's unholy bite, drow weapons, etc)
Terrain problems (the evil druid turned the ground into needles, your foes have a climb speed and you don't, water breaks line of effect, etc).
Damaging bodies (an elemental's flames, a babau's acid, a black pudding's body, etc).
Ambushers (a tiger in the grass, an invisible stalker, a wyvern flying in the clouds, goblins in the forest, etc).
Summoned creatures (outsiders paging more outsiders, the cleric's summoned monster, the druid's natural allies, etc).
Gaze attacks (a medusa's petrification, a basilisk's petrification, etc).
"Unfair" tactics (dark stalkers and dark creepers using deeper darkness and sneak attacks, teleporting away to heal, etc).
Ultimately there is not much that a Fighter has that's excellent in Fighting by virtue of being a Fighter in D&D/Pathfinder. Their saves are mediocre at best (actually very poor IMHO), their defenses are meh (all they really have is physical AC), their combat options are meh (they hit stuff and combat maneuvers get less attractive as levels rise), their ability to deal with ambushers is pretty weak (no perception, no special senses, etc), suffer terrible mobility problems (archery helps, as does mounted combat), and so forth, and so forth.
So once again, Fighters are good at hitting things. They are NOT good at FIGHTING.
So, I am thinking of creating a Samsaran PC, focusing on fighting with a Flame Blade.
Not sure how to go about it.
Taking the Mystic Past Life alternate racial trait opens up just about any spellcasting class.
Which one, is still unclear.
Any ideas?
In one of my druid guides I noted how incredibly hax dazing flame blade is. Especially if you decide you want to dual-wield them. Combined with an incense of meditation my high level druid dual-wields dazing maximized flame blade spells while buffed with dazing thorn body. If you hit her, you make a will save or suffer. If she hits your touch-AC you suffer wrath.
It's a very high level strategy. It's not really practical until at least around 9th level when you can craft yourself some dazing rods (and those are usually better used on call lightning).
Maybe opting to allow a full-attack on a half-move when your BAB hits +6. That way you could move up to half your speed and full-attack. Still combos decently with haste since haste gives +30 ft. speed.
Also, Pounce isn't perfect. You can only use it on a charge and it can be a big pain to charge. Anyone or anything in your way? No charging. Did you just slay an enemy and now his corpse lies before you in the path of your next enemy? No charging. Is the ground rough? No charging. Are you moving uphill? No charging. Do you need to move around something or bend during your movement? No charging. Are you unable to see effectively? No charging (yay Blindfight). Are you in water? No charging (at least without a Swim speed).
Pounce is horribly imperfect. But it just looks incredibly amazing because it's the best thing martials have to being relevant at higher levels. The problem with martials is while other characters are getting progressively more powerful, martials are getting progressively WEAKER.
See, it's not "linear fighters, quadratic wizards". It's "downspiraling fighters, quadratic wizards". Relatively speaking, Fighters are getting weaker with every passing level.
Level 1: You can move and attack almost anything with a decent chance to one-shot it. CR equivalent enemies rarely have more than 12 hit points, which means a PC focused on damage can probably one-shot that and every other enemy on a successful hit.
Level 20: You are worthless. If you move and attack you are going to do less than a 4th of your average mook's hit points, and you're surrounded by mooks, summoned mooks, animated mooks, called mooks, and then there's a big bad too.
Ridiculous utility, versatility and overall power should indeed have a significant drawback. Even if that only drawback is "my DM is a dick and specifically targets my spellbook with Sunder/by theives/etc."
My GM is very much not a dick, and yet my wizard is turning her spellbook into a sentient magical trap that will continually fry anyone who isn't supposed to be messing with it. If a thief tries to pick her spellbook out of her possessions, despite it being kept on a metal cord across her chest (not exactly an easy Slight of Hand), the book will freak out with an alarm and shock the snot out of the offender with a CL 5 shocking grasp each round it's being mishandled.
EDIT: But you should see the plans for her arcane bond.
A few things stuck out at me as wrong on both sides of the screen.
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tonight i learned 2 things:
1) rime spell blaster wizards are awesome, just like i always thought and
2) a wizard is useless without a fighter to protect him
it is obscene that my players couldnt beat down the monsters i threw at them, they fought these monsters:
sh*tty kobold
warrior 1
10 hp, ac 15
less sh*tty kobold
warrior 2
17 hp, ac 16
kobold commander
warrior 3
24 hp, ac 19
Assuming we're talking about the same types of kobolds, we're looking at some rather optimized kobolds here. A 1st level kobold warrior should have no more than 5 hp before favored class or Toughness (NPC classes do not get full starting HP as heroic classes do and kobolds have a Con penalty). So we're looking at kobolds with roughly double HP for the minor ones, almost double for the medium ones, and 1/3 too much HP for the commander. As in 5, 11, 16 HP respectively.
Quote:
you begged me to let you wake up in the middle of the night when you got attacked by 4 weak little CR1/2 kobolds, your team member on guard duty was taking them on, and then got upset when you didnt get a full nights sleep and couldnt prepare spells the next day? i even let you roll a d8 just to see if you lucked out and got enough hours anyway, you didnt, and again, im the bad guy
This isn't the rules either, so unless you're ranting about your house rules the party just takes an hour more of rest due to being interrupted. Inventing things to complain about is generally a bad idea.
Now before you feel like I'm ratting on you for being a bad GM, hold up and know I'm not. I think you're the victim here, and I'm not blaming you. I just pointed out these three things as what I saw in the post that struck me as odd.
Now for your players...
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VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING ELSE
Your players have no clue as to how they play their class, or seemingly no clue about anything in the game. Though you seemed to have made a few mistakes about the rules, they were making them in leaps and bounds.
I'm playing a 3rd level wizard right now in a game on Saturdays. In that game I:
1) Keep track of the pages in my spellbook (I'm at 33/100 right now).
2) Pay full price to copy spells into my spellbook (as detailed in the Magic chapter).
3) Only purchase magic items in our town center's purchase limits and check for randomly generated items from time to time (though I haven't had the funds to buy anything special thus far).
4) Craft magic items during my downtime for myself and my party, including scrolls and wondrous items.
5) Prepare for the unexpected, and have put ranks into Perception, Heal, and will be putting ranks into Stealth and Disable Device.
Our group has rested inside dungeons. We find rooms that are relatively safe and defensible, and bar or even nail doors shut (with pitons) to protect against roaming monsters in the dungeon-crawler we're in (the only thing I wish we had a wee bit more of in the game was RPing and character development, but you can't expect too much of that too quickly in a megadungeon so I'm pretty happy with what I've got :P).
In general I'm a cautious wizard. I believe a party of wizards is more than capable of handling most of the challenges that you seem to have put forth. Heck, at 3rd level, all of them could have simply prepared flaming sphere and destroyed those kobolds and their inflated HP (flaming sphere x4 means each round there are 4 3d6 damage balls of fire moving around in addition to what the wizard wants to do or cast, and if you focus the balls on 1-2 enemies at a time you can wipe mooks pretty quickly at low levels). As others mentioned, spells like colorspray or even magic missile would have worked wonders.
I think a single-class challenge like that would be fun, personally. :P
In general it just sounds like your players are pretty whiny. I would have been happy with simply having access to spells as a prize for my backstory, and elated at a 10% discount.
I think your players would probably have problems (at least initially) with my games as well and most on these boards have probably placed me in the "pro-player" category of posters and GMs.
On a final note, while wizards are incredibly strong, when you are playing against their strengths and not acknowledging their weaknesses as a wizard player you are setting yourself up for failure just as a fighter who specializes in swords and wields and axe while insisting on wearing no armor and specializing in Basketweaving. No matter how great a tool is, you still have to know how to use it.
I think it would be better to errata so that infusions mimicing personal spells simply do not work on anyone but the alchemist. >.>
About a year ago I asked JJ if it was meant for the alchemist infusions to allow to share personal spells and his reply was "Yes".
As the original creator of the alchemist he should know what his intention was and, as the rules development team didn't changed how infusion work I think we can reasonably assume that it is an intended mechanic in Pathfinder, not only in James games.
I wasn't commenting on the intent, I was commenting on what I think would be better for gameplay. I still think it was amazingly stupid to take a summoner and give it 2nd tier spellcasting with 1st tier spell progression. It was probably the intent to shoehorn lots of high level spells (which don't require save DCs or target creatures, making their level largely irrelevant) into low level slots. That doesn't make it a "good idea" even if "was intended".
(An example is that while this sometimes occurs in core with the bard, such as with Otto's irresistible dance being an 8th level spell in a bard's 6th level list, bards are casting it at -2 to the save DC compared to the other classes and it was clearly implemented for flavor. Meanwhile the summoner gets lots of spells that require no saving throws appearing early in their list and seemingly for no reason in some cases.
Summoners get summon monster as an improved spell-like ability that scales with their level. Yet for some reason the designers felt that they also needed haste a class level and spell level earlier, and spells like summon monster V a level earlier, and summon monster VIII as a 6th level spell. None of these spells requiring saving throws or even caring about the fact they are lower in level or that it disrupts the norms for item pricing.)
Personally I appreciate that there's something a little bit sacred about personal-range spells. They are traditionally pretty difficult to attain without being that class baring the GM okaying certain custom magic items, and rightfully so. Most personal range spells tend to be very powerful for their level. Shield for example is a flat +4 force shield bonus to your AC which likely lasts all fight. A +4 shield bonus is equivalent to a +2 heavy shield or a +3 light shield except this one is also ghost touch and happens to function as an infinite brooch of shielding. Most any character wielding a 2 handed weapon would just love potions of these things. But the rules in core is no personal range spells as potions.
As much as I myself really enjoy the magic item creation rules, there are a few ways I'd touch them up. I'd like to see more emphasis on things like swift-actions or 1/round conditions (particularly when it comes to use-activated type things), and I'd probably like it if personal range spells were given a price modifier (such as x1.5 or x2) that was higher than normal spells if the spell can be passed around. However, even without these considerations I think that the item creation rules are amazingly good for how much they give you. It is truly rare that you see a system so open to creating new things that is as balanced as 3.x item creation.
But yes. From a designer standpoint and from a GMing standpoint, if the choice was:
A) Go through every personal range spell published and apply new saving throw and SR entries to respond to potential problems or concerns with a class in the Advanced Player's Guide that creates a situation that is unprecedented in the core rules.
or
B) Add a note to the class in the advanced players guide that says something like "Infusion: When the alchemist creates an extract, he can infuse it with an extra bit of his own magical power. The extract created now persists even after the alchemist sets it down. As long as the extract exists, it continues to occupy one of the alchemist's daily extract slots. An infused extract can be imbibed by a non-alchemist to gain its effects. Infusions that function as personal range spells still only affect the alchemist who created them.".
In my humble opinion I think that the game is leaps and bounds over 3.x in terms of game balance. Most of the core martials have been given a very big leg up. Barbarians are currently THE mundane warrior. Paladins and Rangers are both very well balanced and play comfortably alongside spellcasters throughout most levels. Casters have been heavily Stealth-nerfed while having more options built into their classes.
As someone who was very familiar with a lot of the nonsense from 3.x, Pathfinder is a much, much more balanced game with far less troubles overall. I disagree with some of the splat material and Fighters, Rogues, and Monks are still lagging (though monks have gotten a lot of splat-book love which has helped them out from core).
Honestly, I talk with one of my friends (who has only played Pathfinder and is very familiar with its mechanics) about the differences between 3.5 and Pathfinder and we laugh about the idea that the game isn't leaps and bounds more balanced than it was in 3.5.
Is it perfect? No. But it is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay better.
Great post Ashiel!
Thank you Zark. :)
I'm working on a d20 Star Wars homebrew at the moment and one of the things I've been playing around with is scaling base dice as a primary source of damage. This then combines with Vital Strike feats, or dual-wielding, flavor to taste.
If I was to mod Pathfinder in this way, it might look sort of like this. At 6th, 11th, and 16th your base weapon damage would increase by +1 die. So a longsword becomes 2d8, 3d8, 4d8 as you gain levels. The Vital Strike line can then push you to 4d8, 9d8, or 16d8 respectively.
Another thing I did was create a "dual-wield" special attack (similar to the Two-Weapon Fighting special attack in D&D/PF). As a standard action you can swing both weapons at your full BAB-2. Improved and Greater Dual-Wield grant additional attacks.
The conversion would require some attention throughout the system, but it has some interesting applications. Firstly while being very simple it also provides a pretty solid method of dealing damage with a standard attack. So much in fact that I've considered revising the combat system based around it as an assumption.
That's a good question Nicos. One I've never had to deal with because I don't use EXP.
Lets reprhase.
suppose that one of those wizards teleport alongside the babau. Said wiard is level 9th.
Is this a CR 8 encounter?
Yeah it is, assuming the wizard used summon monster V to summon the babau. EDIT: Using another example, if a Bard uses a wand of summon monster # when he notices the party is approaching so that he and his summon can catch them by surprise it's also not added to the CR.
The Balor is burning his 1/day resource to produce a monster. When and how he produces it are up to him and have no bearing on his CR. A balor is supposed to be the same CR as this:
CR 20 Encounter:
The few individual monsters who can actually take on a party do so because they have the means to prepare, and many of them have powerful summons. For example, solars are excessively powerful and could take on an entire party, but they can also gate more solars, chain-spam summon monster VII to call in celestial Tyrannosaurs to swallow PCs and their minions whole, etc, etc, etc, etc.
High level combat is NOT like low level combat. It is a tactical game of dropping nukes and bio-weapons on your enemies while shielding yourself with your star-wars program and hazmat teams. A high level encounter where enemies are using their full resources is a terrifying ordeal. A 20th level party vs a Solar for example is akin to the freakin' Ragnarok on the scale of extreme terror that it would incite in normal humans, as on this scale you are literally hurling meteors at people, calling upon earth shattering storms, and cracking the land and sundering buildings, while the legions of heaven and hell descend or crawl up from their realms to join the battle.
For example...
CR 20 encounter = 307,200 XP
Succubus x 4 (CR 7) = 12,800 XP
Shadow Demon x 4 (CR 7) = 12,800 XP
Nabasu x 6 (CR 8) = 28,800 XP
Glabrezu x 2 (CR 13) = 51,200 XP
Marilith x 1 (CR 17) = 102,400 XP
Vrock x 15 (CR 9) = 96,000 XP
Dretch x 5 (CR 2) = 3,000 XP
This is a demon horde led by a Marilith, who commands their fiendish legions. The entire horde can greater teleport at will, and works together. Most of them can summon more demons as spell-like abilities. Here is a quick rundown of the types of things these demons might do.
Marilith uses telekinesis at range to hurl objects or even other demons at the party, or uses it to grapple an enemy magician. If she sees an opening, she will get in and attack an opponent with her tail and constrict them. Anyone who is constricted must make a DC 25 fortitude save or fall unconscious for 1d8 rounds. At this point she moves on to the next foe, as one of the succubi coup de grace the unconscious character with a caster level 12 vampiric touch, likely killing the victim and buffing the succubus to hell and back with temporary HP. Blade barrier controls the battlefield and makes moving around a pain for those without teleportation.
The Nebasu wander around spamming enervation at targets, especially those in heavy armor, inflicting 1d4 negative levels with each ray that hits, no save. There are 6 of them, so that's a potential for 6-24 negative levels. Every negative level inflicts a -1 penalty to all saving throws. When they are out of rays, they will spam telekinesis to hurl objects at the party, or force DC 19 will saves or be hurled about like a rag doll.
The shadow demons seep through the floor and attack anyone who is on land using their blind-fight feat to ignore the miss %, and since they have cover you can't make AoOs against them, and retaliating against them is something of a pain, since you can't ready a full-attack against them. Your best bet is to take to the air. Each shadow demon of course attempts to summon another shadow demon with a 50% success rate, so 4 demons becomes 6 more than likely. They too can also stand back and spam telekinesis.
The succubi screech about the battlefield charm-bombing enemies and taking pot-shots at downed foes with vampiric touch when they're down. Of course, they all attempt to summon Babau demons with a 50% chance, so that adds another 2 acid-coated demons into the mix as cannon fodder. They also will not hesitate to dominate animal companions, mounts, and similar creatures. They're not difficult to kill, but they will generally spread out and distract the party, and can turn ethereal at-will, allowing them very good tactics. If desired, they can fly around and drop nets on the party to entangle them, as they can comfortably carry plenty of them and still greater teleport around the field.
The vrocks all begin a dance of ruin, spreading out into groups of 4 vrocks for maximum effectiveness. Every 3rd round, each group unleashes a 20d6 blast of lightning in a 100 ft. radius, which all of the demons are immune to. So if you don't break up or crowd control the vrocks, you will be eating up to 4 instances of 20d6 electricity damage, which is an average of 280 damage anywhere the radius's overlap. Alternatively, they can keep flying around the party screeching hellishly, forcing DC 21 saves vs stun for 1 round. Becoming stunned can easily mean death in this battle, and you can get hit by up to 15 of these at once, making saving a harry business. That's not counting the auto-damaging spores they can shake every 3 rounds.
The Glabrezu play hell with the party's counters. They possess at-will mirror image, making taking them out difficult, and they can function as spotters for the team, utilizing their constant true-seeing ability. Each can cast power word stun to screw over any foe with 150 HP or less. All can cast reverse gravity and dispel magic, and won't hesitate to shut down the magic items of the party, since a CL 16 dispel magic can shut down the vast majority of magic items easily. Finally they can drop unholy blight every round without fail, dealing 8d8 damage to all good creatures in an area and forcing saves vs nausea. If pushed into combat, they have a 15 ft. reach and decent natural attacks.
Dretch simply skulk about the battlefield dropping stinking clouds into the fray. All the demons are immune to the cloud, but it forces a 5% chance per round to become nauseated for 1d4 rounds, potentially causing some PCs to lose several rounds worth of actions. They also use it because the 20% concealment it provides to people inside the cloud completely negates sneak attack, and thus ruins any chance a rogue has to sneak attack their bosses. With five of them, they should also be able to summon an additional dretch, allowing up to 5-6 stinking clouds throughout the battle.
All of the above is assuming, of course, that none of them are using any of their treasures themselves (such as the marilith using any superior weapons, or clad in armor, or any of them wearing rings or cloaks or anything cool like that, which may indeed be part of their treasure and thus added to their statblock by the GM).
Contrary to what many people think, I don't believe that being over WBL is such a huge power boost. My studies indicate that this is rarely the case. Instead the opposite is more true. Having an over abundance of wealth rarely overpowers, but having significantly less can quickly underpower.
So, what do you all think? Agree with Paizo's FAQ, or agree with my friend?
Also, would this be enough for you to just not play with him?
Being a bit over...not a big deal (under 150% of WBL). Being a bit under (over 75% of WBL)...once again not a big deal. Outside those ranges...yeah we have a big deal...at least in my experience. The trouble is that with 3 feats (arms and armor, wondrous, rings) you can pretty much double your WBL unless DM adjusted for crafting...which is definitely in the big deal category.
Well even core Pathfinder is calibrated for effectively doubling your wealth gain ("high fantasy") and you're not expected to make any real CR changes for this style of play (though enemies do get proportionally more equipment as well which leads to more treasure).
I've had PCs be drastically and I do mean drastically over their WBL ranges and it's not nearly as impactful as being drastically under. It's very easy for a mostly naked (relatively) PC to end up dead when fighting creatures that are dangerous for their levels.
I have crafting PCs all the time. Heck, my brother doesn't really even want magic items most of the time unless he crafted them himself (he's kind of sentimental like that). One of my largest and longer campaigns was with a party that consisted of 4 spellcasters and 2 non-casters and virtually every caster in question took item creation feats and often collaborated with each other to make big items (such as an airship).
I can't remember the last time I needed to make adjustments for WBL beyond giving players more treasure. I tend to use WBL as kind of a safety net as a GM so I know when I need to throw the party a bone if they've been lagging behind too much. My campaigns also tend to have a lot of downtime since they're sandboxy. If you don't want to adventure then you don't have to adventure. You can quite literally say "We're going to take a week off to practice our skills and our trades" and lapse gametime as needed.
I just really feel like people get hung up on this WBL thing like it was some sort of sacred holy grail when it's little more than a helpful ruler for eyeballing stuff. :\
I have failed my sense motive check. I hate it when I roll a one.
Skillchecks don't fail on a one, are you typing on an android?
I actually don't know that much about 4E. I just know Barbarians learned to Shoryuken. Doesn't sound that much better when you describe it... I feel bad for 4E fighter though. At least he's not 3E monk.
3E Monk: Hey, this isn't working out, suggestions?
Everyone: Be someone else!
Swordsage: Dude, I can totally blow someones heart up! Also I'm a ninja.
Okay, I need to stop doing that. I don't think I can take myself seriously when I do.
Well many of us basically realized the Tome of Battle was a big "we're really sorry" to all the people who had been wanting to play martial characters and be somewhat relevant throughout all of 3.5. Warblade = Fighter/Barbarian, Crusader = Paladin, Swordsage = Monk/Combat Rogue. Multiclass to taste (ToB was multiclass friendly!). It gave three classes which were essentially martial characters who had some techniques you could choose to give them stuff to do other than standard attacks (most were standard actions so it also alleviated the problem with mobility at higher levels) and gave them some fairly decent defenses.
The problem is that then a certain crowd of people insisted that the Tome of Battle was badwrongfun because it "overshadowed the core martial classes". That is to say "was just like everything else", except the Tome of Battle was actually really well balanced (the CharOp boards on WotC remarked at how balanced it was compared to virtually any other WotC product published, with the Tome of Battle and the Expanded Psionics Handbook being the two best balanced in all of 3.5).
Ironically the classes that are actually well balanced today are much closer to the Tome of Battle. Barbarians and their Rage powers are quite similar to the concepts behind the Tome of Battle for instance. Paladins and rangers get decent abilities but also have spells to fall back on (many of which are similar to maneuvers for their purposes).
Codzilla and his brother Druidzilla have been effectively been nerfed down to mortal status.
This is just me being rather anal but this kinda irritated me. There is no "Druidzilla" hi brother, and clerics are codfish. "CoDzilla" means "Cleric or Druid"-zilla. The word specifically notes both clerics AND druids.
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There is a game for you in which that was achieved. It was called D+D 4th edition. Fighters had powers, Wizards had powers. If a fighter wanted to do magical things he took the Ritual Talent and the Arcana Skill and spent a lot of gold doing them,just like the Wizard would.
You really couldn't get more balanced than that. Now if you don't like 4th edition's definition of balance between caster and martial, what is your own definition then?
Um, no they weren't. I have the core 4E rulebooks. I have no idea how much errata they've put out for it but in core Fighters can't even dual wield and Orb wizards can utterly destroy boss monsters while wiping mook battles pretty easily. Rituals in general tend to suck but wizards get their rituals for free. In 4E fighters aren't even good at defending because they don't deal nearly as much damage and their marking system only applies a -2 penalty to your attacks if you ignore the fighter (but since the AC of most of your squishies is still lower than 2 points lower than the Fighter...).
Meanwhile Paladins in 4E actually have a legitimately decent marking system because they burn enemies with divine power if they turn "turn their backs on them" figuratively speaking. With the Paladin he goes:
Paladin: "Okay monster. Feel my divine wrath. I'm calling you out on the feel of battle!"
Beholder: "Hah, as if dweeb. I'ma eat that wizard." *goes to attack wizard* "Ahhhh! IT BURNS!" *is hit with resistance-ignoring divine damage*
Paladin: "I warned you fiend!" *smacks beholder for additional damage and stuff*
Wizard: "Thanks Paladin. You're way more awesome than that silly Fighter over there at melee, and our Ranger back there will deal all the damage. Meanwhile, since this is a boss monster I figure it's time that I..." Activate my Orb-wizard power and cast sleep, putting the boss into a coma unless he can roll 10+ on a d20 with a -13 to his check each time "Make this boss encounter a joke. Okay Ranger, tear him apart with two-weapon fighting or archery or whatever else you feel like today."
Ranger: "Behold my choppy-ness! Oh, and you can't multiclass into Ranger and get my advanced classes. Yeah, they biffed and my multiclass is broken. Good job Wizards!"
Some of those are good, some not so much. Nerfing grapple, for example, might nerf one of a caster's spells, but it nerfs entire martial builds.
Quite the contrary. Grapple favors martials a lot more today. The only grapple builds that were actually any good in 3.5 revolved around casters. That's right. Fighters, barbarians, paladins, rangers? All those classes sucked ass at grappling. The reason was pretty simple. Your size and strength scores meant a lot more to grappling. Every size category above large granted an additional +4 to grapple attempts. This meant that grappling builds actually tended to be shapeshifting casters (druids were good at it) and things like psychic warriors (they could make it work pretty well).
Martials were notoriously vulnerable to grappling. A single summoned monster could easily render you out of the majority of a fight at higher levels. For example, first you make a grapple attack vs the foe's touch AC, then you rolled opposed grapples while you were grappling. Now who exactly do you expect to come out on top in a grapple?
A 20th level Fighter with a 30 Strength has a +30 to grapple. A CR 8 gargantuan fiendish monstrous centipede has a +27 to grapple (+29 with Augment Summoning) and can be conjured at 11th level. It also has a 40 ft. speed and a 15 ft. natural reach and is Intelligent. If it lands its grapple vs your touch attack you can't use a two-handed weapon during the grapple so you have to punch your way through its DR 10/magic 66 HP (90 with augment summoning) or draw a smaller weapon and work your way through.
That's a 20th level Fighter vs an 11th level caster's minion. Minion. Say it with me. MINION. So while the Fighter is like "hot damn I could grapple somebody and make them flat-footed against their attackers while I am also flat-footed against all my attackers too", the wizard says "excuse my while I summon a disposable __________".
Today due to the way grappling works it's actually easier to be a dedicated grappler because you are a martial. Hell all you need to be good at grappling is a full BAB, good Strength, and maybe a buff or two or class feature adding to your to-hit chances. The CMD system means that it's very difficult for martials to be negated by grapples, especially from summons, especially at higher levels.
Grappling is still a good option but in 3.5 it was anti-martial and didn't hurt casters that much (casters just rolled a skill check vs a fairly low DC and cast their spells just fine while grappling). No being grappled is actually damn scary for a caster and it's not a huge deal for a martial in most cases.
Can you elaborate on those stealth-nerfs to casters Ashiel?
Certainly. Concentration was nerfed. Many, many, many of the spells were nerfed (from grease right up to wish). Many spells like glitterdust which were encounter-enders in 3.5 core allow multiple saving throws. Several spells don't provide absolute immunities anymore (death ward provides bonuses on saves rather than strait immunity to Fortitude-targeting death spells). Transmutation spells modify and adjust rather than replace and aren't nearly a closely based on the type of animal that you transform into (while also making it easier to assume forms not already generated in the bestiary such as medium-sized bears) which lowered the power while broadening style.
Many of the CoDzilla spells were toned down heavily. Divine power for example no longer gives you a full BAB. In 3.5 Divine Power actually grants you a perfect BAB and everything that goes with it on top of temporary HP equal to your level and a +6 enhancement to Strength on top of it (if you include non-core material this spell alone made the Cloistered cleric a no-brainer next to the core cleric 'cause you traded 3/4 BAB and a d8 for 1/2 BAB and a d6 for more spellcasting and 6 + Int modifier skills, an extra domain, and more class skills, and then cast this spell to stomp over Tokyo). Today divine power doesn't provide a full BAB and doesn't provide extra attacks next to haste (in 3.5 it did).
Black tentacles is another fine example. It's still a great spell but in 3.5 this spell crushed everything. It was near impossible to avoid getting grappled by it and grappled was a much harsher condition in 3.5 which meant you tended to be limited in your actions, had to waste actions breaking from the grapple, and suffered very heavy penalties for it. Today it's still a good spell but it's not nearly as battle-ending (still good enough that I recommend it though).
Some spells have even been hit with the nerf bat when not necessary. Unfortunately ray of enfeeblement went from a decent single-target debuff spell to being effectively useless (it's now a single target short range ray that applies a small-ish temporary penalty with a fortitude save for half, whereas in 3.5 it applied the penalty with no saving throw if you successfully hit with it).
It's much easier to disable casters in Pathfinder. Unfortunately for casters you currently are hard pressed to cast spells while bound and gagged no matter your metamagic effects like still and silence since casting while grappled means you must concentrate and the concentration DC is equal to the CMD, and the CMD when you're tied up is 20 + the binder's CMB. Since it's a caster level + key ability check, good luck.
Clerics and druids got hit pretty hard in the optimization standpoints. The Magic Domain isn't half of what it used to be (in 3.5 the Magic Domain allows a cleric to activate spell-completion and spell-trigger items as if she were a wizard!). Their biggest loss comes in the depowering of their buffs and/or shapechanging capabilities.
Summon monsters are weaker. In 3.5 you could summon things like Huge Monstrous Centipedes with Summon Monster III. The suckers were huge (it's a living wall with damage reduction) with reach (10 ft. of reach) that had a +15 Grapple modifier (+15 to hit on a touch attack and +15 in your opposed grapple, which is damn hard to beat when you're rolling BAB + Strength as a medium sized humanoid), which means that you can summon the thing outside the reach of most creatures and then begin a grapple from your reach in place of your bite attack and then tie your foe down while also forcing your opponent to carve through 33 HP worth of fiendish centipede ass instead of your party.
Wish no longer allows you to create magic items or wish for money and costs a whopping 25,000 gp to cast. A huge, huge nerf since it was an easily breakable spell since casting wish as a SLA could allow you to create infinite money or infinitely powerful magical items. In 3.5 wish cost 5,000 XP to cast which sounds like a lot but due to the way XP worked in 3.5 it wasn't that bad (you could easily refund all of it from the same encounter and cast it without the need for special material components which made it a strong option for Spell Mastery when you were out of other spells, and if you fell behind the rest of the party from casting it you got bonus XP from subsequent battles until you caught up).
As a side effect "chain gating" is also no longer possible so that is a much needed stealth nerf as well (in 3.5 core you can gate a solar, have the solar use wish to create a candle of invocation and gate in another solar, repeating until you have all the solars you need to help you). Hooray for no-more chain gating. The only thing preventing you from doing this in an actual game was just good sportsmanship and the threat of getting the stinkeye or books thrown at you.
Shapechangep was OMFG-WTF-HAX in 3.5. It allowed you to take the form of virtually any creature each round as desired and you got their powers too. This included a balor's vorpal weapons (which you could legally give to someone else and resume shapeshifting). Notice that you gain all extraordinary and supernatural abilities of the form and can assume incorporeal and gaseous forms as well. With Eschew Materials you could happily fly around as an incorporeal spellcasting Wraith, transform into undead creatures and/or creatures with Regeneration, transform into a Choker to get extra actions each round (chokers have an ability that grants an extra standard or move action each round which is scary if you feel like releasing the kraken...which may actually involve releasing a literal kraken 'cause you might as well have been God).
Lots of stuff like that. The disparity was much, much higher between the core martials and casters in 3.5. Virtually all of the core martial classes sucked in 3.5. Fighter sucked extra hard due to stealth nerfs from 3.0 to 3.5 (in 3.0 haste allowed moving and full-attacking, keen + improved critical stacked, great cleave + whirlwind attack stacked and allowed you to wipe mooks while whiping mooks, etc). In 3.5 core, Paladin is god-awful, Barbarian did nothing useful other than Rage x/day (not X rounds but X/day which meant the barbarian could easily push the 15 minute workday faster than casters ever would). Fighters sucked monkey bolts (the extent of their special features were "bonus feat" and they could take weapon specialization if they wanted to spend their feats on it).
Rangers were probably the only martial class in 3.5 that was actually pretty decent (it was a decent martial, had some spells, full BAB, 6 + Int modifier skills, but it also had a d8 HD and its animal companion was of questionable strength and it lacked its high level teeth like quarry, but it was probably the best core martial in 3.5). Today I'd say that Barbarian, Paladin, and Ranger are all worth playing pretty much right out of the box and Fighters aren't as bad as they once were.
Rogues were even worse in 3.x. Yes...worse. d6 HD, no talents, sneak attack was useless against huge swaths of creature types (no sneak attack vs undead, constructs, elementals, plants, oozes, etc; and heavy fortification was 100% immunity to crits and sneaks).
Essentially in 3.5 core you could have just cut out every class except Bard, Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, Wizard and Cleric (yes I said cleric twice). And even then the Cleric, Druid, Wizard, and Sorcerer had spells that have campaign shattering potential without really even trying. The "tier 1" classes were described by JaronK as often possessing world-changing powers that can break campaigns by sheer accident or with their general use.
Some things have become unnecessarily better in PF. Invisibility is probably the most obvious offender. Simulacrum is still pretty bad (a bit worse actually as now you don't need a hair sample or some other piece of the creature to be cloned). But all in all the game is much more fluid, much smoother, martials are much better, casters are significantly weaker and harder to break the game with, and while I keep a few house rules (I nerfed invisibility, I recommend an alternative Simulacrum I posted on the boards for Wraithstrike, I changed sorcerers a bit) the amount of effort to tweak stuff is really minor IMHO.
Having played 3.x near religiously since it came out I remember a lot of the balance issues innate in the core game. If you got into splat material then god help you. Spells that allowed you to always act first even during surprise rounds, Craft Contingent Spell (wizards simply own the game once this arrives), Divine Metamagic (spend exceedingly useless turn undead attempts to meta-magic my buffs? Yes please), and things like Greenbound Summoning (because who doesn't want to give every creature a druid casts immunity to critical hits, sneak attacks, at-will entangle, huge bonuses to Strength and natural armor and make them immune to spells that don't target plants on top of a +10 racial bonus to Hide checks in wooded areas, damage reduction, and more, right? RIGHT!? :D).
I believe pretty firmly (at least for now) that it's entirely possible to run most of the core classes amongst one another throughout the various levels without anyone getting left sitting on the corner while the big kids resolve encounters and problems. At the very least they made Barbarians, (Anti)Paladins, and Rangers valuable members of a party now.
I've asked this elsewhere, but I want opinions directly from those that most use the system. How is Pathfinder faring with caster/martial disparity these days? The "Linear Fighter, Quadratic Wizard" issue, or the fact that at higher levels (even at mid levels) casters dominate. Another name is CoDzilla (Cleric or Druid). Basically casters can perform as well as martial classes, but then have a whole toolchest of spells on top of it (teleport, fly, Ddoor, etc). Plus a lot of martial functionality relies on full attacks, but a moving opponent prevents such things (a big blow to Monk in particular), whereas a caster has no such issues.
D&D 3.5 had big problems with it, and PF core rules alleviated the rules a bit. But now with the Advanced Players Guide and other mechanic additions, I just wonder if things are better at all.
I'm curious both hypothetically (from a build perspective) and practically. In your campaigns do optimized casters run roughshod over the martial characters?
I remember in one high level (15ish) campaign of 3.5, 4 of the PCs (Monk, Warlock, Paladin, and Ranger) took out 2 Vrocks while the Cleric took out 4 others by himself. That kind of stuff.
Thanks!
In my humble opinion I think that the game is leaps and bounds over 3.x in terms of game balance. Most of the core martials have been given a very big leg up. Barbarians are currently THE mundane warrior. Paladins and Rangers are both very well balanced and play comfortably alongside spellcasters throughout most levels. Casters have been heavily Stealth-nerfed while having more options built into their classes.
As someone who was very familiar with a lot of the nonsense from 3.x, Pathfinder is a much, much more balanced game with far less troubles overall. I disagree with some of the splat material and Fighters, Rogues, and Monks are still lagging (though monks have gotten a lot of splat-book love which has helped them out from core).
Honestly, I talk with one of my friends (who has only played Pathfinder and is very familiar with its mechanics) about the differences between 3.5 and Pathfinder and we laugh about the idea that the game isn't leaps and bounds more balanced than it was in 3.5.
Is it perfect? No. But it is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay better.
While responding to another post on another forum, this topic really crystallized for me.
In the relatively short time that I've been a member of these forums, I've across an underlying attitude that I just flat out disagree with. There seem to be a segment of people who get offended if their GM fudges a dice roll to help a player out. They'll say things like player choices don't matter if there aren't consequences or if there's not a chance of death, the game gets boring. A perfect example is the "instant death on three straight 20's" rule.
I'd like to quickly point out that this is why I don't make up rules like "three 20s = insta-dead", critical fumble rules, etc.
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Meanwhile, there is a segment of GMs who view themselves as impartial arbiters. They are the judges between the players and the opposing forces. If the opposing force outwits the players, or the dice just flat out dictate the death of a character, then it was simply meant to be. The dice will dictate what the dice will dictate, and GMs are helpless to change that. Today I even learned the phrase "sanctity of the dice," which was certainly a new one on me.
I won't say sanctity but I do appreciate the impartial fairness of the dice. I've found fairness is very important in the trust between a player and a GM, and fudging dice leads to mistrust and can lead to hurt or resentful feelings later on (this is especially true if a PC dies and you let them die after fudging for another PC earlier in the campaign, because even if they were "asking for it" {such as a level 3 insisting to find and melee a great wyrm} they'll feel favoritism).
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There are GMs who view themselves as impartial judges between players and the opposing forces. To those GMs I say impartial? YOU designed the encounter! There are GMs who are helpless to change the dictates of the dice. To those GMs I say helpless? You are the one interpreting the dice. Those random numbers are without meaning or value. YOU give them value. The decision isn't out of your hands. You're the person who is making the decision.
Actually, I have to kind of agree with them here to a degree. It is indeed possible to be impartial. I can play a game of chess with myself and attempt to win on both sides without showing favoritism to either side.
Likewise, I design a lot of encounters. I generally keep them within the expected standards of the game with some few exceptions. I root for the party. I want them to succeed. But I don't engineer it that way. I believe - very firmly - that it is a greater honor to them to not rig the game in their favor.
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There are players and GMs who think the game isn't fun without a chance of death. To them I say okay, I actually get this one. You've played the epic slayer of dragons and you've gotten bored with it. But I haven't slayed the dragon yet. My character hasn't been the invulnerable superman waltzing effortlessly through tribes of low level kobolds. I'm not bored with it. I'm actually looking forward to it. And meanwhile, having the character that I've lovingly crafted killed because someone got a lucky crit, or some low level peon rolled three 20's ISN'T fun to me. That's not a challenge. That's just cruel.
Here's the thing. If you don't want any challenge you can have your character erect stick figures back in town and cleave your way through them heroically as a child at play would. It lets you slay lots of kobolds like a superman without breaking a sweat and you can do it daily. The problem is, over in a real adventure, bad guys are using things like metal weapons and they want to kill you. And I'm not going to dumb down encounters because it robs my players of their sense of pride and satisfaction. The only reason people feel gratification from defeating the dragon is because the dragon is hard and they could have been killed. Not because the dragon was made out of paper mache with boffing sticks for claws and teeth.
However, you also illustrate why I don't use stupid rules like multiple-20s = worse effect than a critical. Partially because there's no basis for it but mostly because it doesn't really add anything to the game and favors likelihood of making NPCs kill PCs more often (statistically there are going to be countless more NPCs during your given game than PCs and thus the likelihood of such a special occasion occurring vs a PC is much higher and more meaningful than an NPC).
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Am I saying that there should be no death in Pathfinder? No. That would actually be a fairly interesting campaign world, but no. That's not what I'm saying. My problem is with the sheer Randomness of these kinds of death.
A character dies because a player got stupid with them? The player learns better tactics. A character dies because a player didn't take slay living into account when they dumped Wisdom? The player learns how to design characters better. The player improves. The player grows. A character dies because the role playing demanded it? The player gets to tell the story of their character's epic death, or the fitting epilogue matched to their character's personality and choices. And in the end, the player chooses this death. They could have overridden their character's personality long enough to save the character's hide if the player had really wanted to.
Critical hits are part of the tactics though. There are even several monsters in the game who specifically have feats like Improved Critical or greater threat ranges on their attacks. My brother's alchemist got obliterated when he challenged a bugbear with a greataxe to melee and the bugbear scored a critical (it was his own fault be we were proud of his brave if foolish demise). Roleplaying does not demand player death. It should include the option, but I don't think it should demand it. In his case he decided he wanted his dwarf to challenge the bugbear barbarian because he was a dwarf and the other was a goblinoid champion of sorts and the ol' boy bit off more than he could chew. But he wasn't required to do so, he merely did so.
Meanwhile the critical hit aspect is a tactical consideration. Just yesterday I played in a game that had a random encounter with like 4 bugbears and an ogre. Several of the bugbears were wielding longspears and spiked gauntlets, the ogre was wielding a longspear and spiked gauntlets, and some of the bugbears were wielding shields and battle axes. We were a party of 5 2nd level characters. This was a really nasty random encounter (but it was legit). During the fight my wizard sized up a tactical target and decided to grease the ogre's longspear to remove his reach and critical opportunity. A x3 crit from the ogre would have surely slaughtered anyone in question so it had to go (the ogre spent the rest of the fight trying to pick up his spear and making the occasional spiked gauntlet attack). After that a scroll of burning disarm caught another bugbear by surprise (the one with the spear) and he made his save and threw down his weapon which allowed the party's archer to get up off the ground (the bugbear had tripped him).
But thus far the only really random death I've heard about is your triple-20s commentary. Which isn't part of the rules. If you're complaining that such additions are stupid I sincerely agree with you 100%. As Roberta said, it's arbitrary and dumb.
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A character dies because the bad guy got a critical and one-shotted them? Because the dice rolled a completely random number and the GM chooses to interpret this as "you're instantly dead even though you did nothing wrong"? Because the adventuring party is too low level to cast/purchase a Raise Dead spell?
No.
Just... no.
I can't agree with this fully. We recently lost a PC in yesturday's game the week before. We lost him to a gnoll's critical hit with a spear during an AoO for him moving. Critical hits in 3.x/PF aren't instant death but they can quickly result in death. Of course you have to test for a critical hit (the confirmation roll) which means even if you roll a natural 20 then you still have to test vs their AC to see if it was anything more than a simple hit (which favors increasing your AC). I have no problem with being 1-shot from a nasty critical hit.
But again you cite the non-existent "interpreted as instantly dead" thing. So I'm wondering if your rant includes some things you wouldn't actually have a real problem with if not for being angry over some poorly devised house rule.
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Please don't punish me for something I can't control. Take my character captive. Find a way to get the character Raised and hit me with some negative levels. Introduce a Deus Ex Machina for a last minute save. Set the character at 1 hp above death and stabilize them. Give me an alternate character to play until mine can get back in the game. Do whatever you have to do, but don't make me take the character that I've spent hours building/creating a backstory for and toss it in the trash.
I don't want to play my game on Hard Mode. It's not fun. It's not entertaining. It's not exciting. It just sucks.
Unfortunately I can't agree with a lot of this. In many cases it's just not practical for enemies to take a PC hostage. Nor would I auto stabilize PCs. It just feels dirty to me and removes the excitement and sense of dread about being on the edge of death. To me it cheapens the feeling of success when there is no option for failure.
What astounds me is that most people I've seen already consider the entirety of the enchantment school to be rather weak. It's no wonder why really after reading this thread. You've got a school that entirely (or nearly entirely) is useless against a rather wide assortment of creatures (virtually all mindless creatures, constructs, undead, etc) that are resisted or simply shut down by lots of wards (protection from spells, spell immunity, (lesser) globe of invulnerability, mind blank, spell turning, etc), and then on top of it people intentionally ignore what quintessential enchantment spell actually says it does.
People lament "oh noes, charm person is a 1st level spell and is too powerful!" while ignoring that it is basically one of the poorer spells to have as a 1st level spell option. It has a low save DC (being 1st level), affects only 1 creature type (humanoid), grants a +5 bonus to the save if used in combat, allows an opposed Charisma check to ignore anything that the subject isn't keen on doing with no further attempts allowed, and grants an extra saving throw if you try to push them too far. And that's on top of it being single target, save-negates, and allowing spell-resistance. And is also subject to dispel magic to simply end the effect immediately.
There is no other spell in the game with that many hurdles to jump through to exercise its power. One might think that all those hurdles are to curb the otherwise awesome power that the spell could potentially have (and they do very well).
Example
Let's say we have an enchanter in D&D. We're 1st level and human. We take Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus {Enchantment} as our starting feats, have an 18 Intelligence and a 10 Charisma, and our spell loadout looks like charm person, sleep, and colorspray.
During out adventure we encounter...
1) Some dire rats (charm is useless)
2) Some giant spiders (charm is useless)
3) A skeleton with some broken armor (charm is useless)
4) A pack of hobgoblins (hot damn, we have a target!)
...
So during our encounter with the hobgoblins our mage decides to cast charm person. The hobgoblin is in combat with our mage and so he rolls 1d20+1 and gets an additional +5 on the check. Uh-oh, even our weak-willed hobby has a 50% chance of simply negating the spell outright even with a prime-casting stat and dual-focuses. Assuming the hobgoblin misses it he turns and begins defending the caster.
Later the caster insists to the hobgoblin that he should reveal betray information concerning his warband's route through the forest. The hobgoblin's not keen on giving up such secret information so then there is a roll-off Charisma style. The hobgoblin has a -1 and you have a +0, so you have roughly a 55% chance of beating him on the check, though it's pretty swingy. If you fail then the hobgoblin simply refuses entirely.
Later you insist the hobgoblin poison the food supply of his warband to kill or severely cripple the other hobgoblins. Being violently opposed to this idea he gets both another 45% chance to ignore the order outright and another saving throw to break the spell on top of that (likely resuming hostilities or pretending to go along with the plan before ratting you out to the other hobgoblins).
This is overpowered...how exactly?
If we're talking about in non-adventuring scenarios, do you not think society would not adapt to these sorts of things? I mean, in one AP by Paizo a noble NPC is wearing a necklace that negates attempts to detect the NPC's alignment. Just 'cause they can. Do you really think that nobility or people in power wouldn't safeguard against charm effects? It's not like the Aristocrat NPC class isn't sporting surprisingly good Will saves for no apparent reason.
It's like people who insist that fly ruins campaigns and makes PCs impossibly powerful because fly + fireball with protection from arrows optional = burns down all cities. All it does is show they haven't actually given any real thought to how their world interacts with the magic within it (even without those spells a bag of holding, some alchemist fire, and a flying mount such as a pegasus, griffon, or giant eagle accomplishes the same things). It just shows how incredibly fragile and ill prepared your world is when simple spells like these can lay waste to them.
