Everyone wont fail sure, but your 10 str caster can go down in 2 failure.
Yeah but a tiger pounce at CR 4 is likely to kill you outright if you're a squishy caster. I'm not really seeing where is is really all that terrible. Mummies are worse and I don't think they're over-CRed either. :P
EDIT: Actually I'm a little curious. What do you think of Basilisks? :P
Seriously 1D6 str damage on sight in 60 feet for a CR 4 is insane!
Put a group of 4 and watch the carnage as half the PC get to 0 strength
Not to forget the gaze attack that can put you in coma for 3 days, of course.
Mmm...I dunno. It's DC 14. Even with a +0, you've got about a 35% chance to save. Four of them would be CR 8. It seems like the chance of everyone in the party repeatedly failing would be very slim. (o.o)
I'm really interested in this conversation about vital strike with you, but it's 12:48 am here and I need to hit the hay. So I'll come back and continue on next chance I get. Have a good one in the meantime.
I would, but I just got my copy of Ultimate Campaign...
... so I'm going to be a while :)
As finer reason than most. Enjoy your book sir. :)
I'm really interested in this conversation about vital strike with you, but it's 12:48 am here and I need to hit the hay. So I'll come back and continue on next chance I get. Have a good one in the meantime.
My go-to monster for these kinds of threads is the 3.0 Monster Manual II Adamantine Horror. At only CR 9, it has disintegrate, implosion, and mage's disjunction as at-will SLAs :)
If you're only interested in PF-specific monsters, I can't really think of any particularly under-CR'ed ones.
the best part of that thread is the person who yelled at you for not having the ideal oil or potion to deal with a given encounter.
"Oil of shadow slaying, cast down to level 1, only costs 50 gold! What kind of adventurer are you???"
Most L1-3 adventures don't even take place in a situation where the nearby resources would be available for much beyond a few cure light potions. Plus, there's the assumption that the dumb barbarian would even know he needs a potion of resist energy before fighting a wisp.
Do you mean this post? Probably not since there's no yelling involved in said post. Just curious though.
What Ashiel understands better than most is that Pathfinder is an overlay of multiple effectiveness curves: Hit points accumulated versus damage, healing versus damage, To-Hit numbers versus AC. Ash understands the numbers behind the system as a systematic whole.
Thank you AdAstraGames. That is one of the nicest things anyone has ever said about me on the Paizo boards. (^-^)
Have you guys ever considered splitting the group in 2~3 smaller ones? It'd make the GM's work much easier, and reduce the time players spend waiting for their turns.
I'm sure you guys enjoy each other's company, but you can always play side by side, but at different tables, so at lunch break you can still hang out.
That's not a bad idea if possible. Though honestly I've run for some pretty large groups. In a sense it's pretty fun if you're good at moving your actions along (larger groups means I get to include much, much larger and more dynamic encounters and that makes me giddy).
PS. Done the build thing. It gets old. I stopped posting builds after I saw them repeatedly ignored. I've got better things to do with my time, like listen to Lumiere tell me about this bizarre game.
Low wealth doesn't help but it also sounds like he's just strait out ignoring rules whenever it suits him. I imagine he probably didn't take into account that sneak attack on a cat is almost assuredly useless in anything other than a surprise round charge since cats have no reach.
There's also the nature of being unable to purchase magic items but granting NPCs access to them in the form of consumables is kind of a huge steaming pile of auroch patties. Either be consistent with your lack of magic marts or don't. (Pet peeve here)
Also, while I'm actually not opposed to the idea of animals with class levels but within reason. If you wanted to represent a particularly awesome war-animal, I wouldn't mind if someone tossed a level or two of an NPC class like warrior onto it to represent its ferocity or combat training, but animals with heroic class levels just rubs me the wrong way something fierce.
Frankly I wish I could GM for you just a few times
he ignores rules whenever it inconveniences him. but none of us hold any power against him because he can't even be arsed to Run an AP by the book.
but getting used to a new DM on another day of the week would be nice.
and now he moved on to his bastardization of fallout Savage worlds where every NPC we fight is also a wild card and has access to the very edges he banned.
My face and my palm are going to need some alone time together.
then i have apparently never faced the CR20 Demon horde at it's fullest.
but we do spend a lot of time facing humanoids and animals, and when i say humanoids, i'm also including giants, low tier outsiders, low tier fey, and low powered abberrations with a humanoid anatomy and access to such things as templates, gear, class levels, and point buy. the animals tend to be class leveled as appropriate. examples can include housecats with rogue levels or lions with fighter levels.
Base monster CRs rarely exceed 10, but they are often augmented by class levels, gear, point buy, consumables and templates to the point they are level appropriate challenges.
and the highest we go is level 15 if we are lucky.
but decent gear is hard to acquire because "Magic Mart" requires a ludicrously high diplomacy check to utilize (DC20+item's caster level), crafting is rarely allowed, and the DM is often stingy with loot. so a handful of 10th level PCs might have a +1 common backup weapon (such as a dagger) and maybe a suit of cheap masterwork or special material armor such as a mithril chain shirt or masterwork suit of plate.
in Fact, the corpses of newly replaced PCs seems to be the primary source of treasure.
plus with the series of rolls required before a new PC can join, rolls to locate the group and survive the treck. a PC can theoretically die before they join the party.
So basically, you are saying because of your GMs specific limitations they place on your home game, fights become win initiative or die?
Do you think this would still be a problem if your characters had appropriate Wealth By Level for their levels?
it probably would. but Weekly William is very treasure stingy. but yes, in a low wealth game, fights become win initiative or die.
Low wealth doesn't help but it also sounds like he's just strait out ignoring rules whenever it suits him. I imagine he probably didn't take into account that sneak attack on a cat is almost assuredly useless in anything other than a surprise round charge since cats have no reach.
There's also the nature of being unable to purchase magic items but granting NPCs access to them in the form of consumables is kind of a huge steaming pile of auroch patties. Either be consistent with your lack of magic marts or don't. (Pet peeve here)
Also, while I'm actually not opposed to the idea of animals with class levels but within reason. If you wanted to represent a particularly awesome war-animal, I wouldn't mind if someone tossed a level or two of an NPC class like warrior onto it to represent its ferocity or combat training, but animals with heroic class levels just rubs me the wrong way something fierce.
Frankly I wish I could GM for you just a few times.
That makes a lot of assumptions about the campaign to make statements like that. You are also emphasizing only what you might do. You state no summoner is going to buy or craft wands...well, that's fine if you think that but they can and I've seen them do it. You say they won't have item creation time but you are not what decides that and in many sandbox games (and some non-sandbox games) they can do so when they want to do so.
Gear is nice. Of course I also noted that you don't actually have to play dress-up with your eidolon for them to be powerful, and gear is pretty meaningless to summons. Which pretty much just leaves you padding your defenses and possibly getting a weapon to shoot or poke with when you're not doing something grander. Since defensive items are cheaper than offensive items we're in luck here.
As for the consumables such as scrolls, they do count because they are a class feature (the ability to use scrolls and wands and staffs with spells from your class without making a UMD check is a feature of your class and nothing else). I've seen enough to know that having one or two major scrolls can be a get out of jail free card.
I'm also not sure why you seem to ignore all the rods other than extend.
then i have apparently never faced the CR20 Demon horde at it's fullest.
but we do spend a lot of time facing humanoids and animals, and when i say humanoids, i'm also including giants, low tier outsiders, low tier fey, and low powered abberrations with a humanoid anatomy and access to such things as templates, gear, class levels, and point buy. the animals tend to be class leveled as appropriate. examples can include housecats with rogue levels or lions with fighter levels.
Base monster CRs rarely exceed 10, but they are often augmented by class levels, gear, point buy, consumables and templates to the point they are level appropriate challenges.
and the highest we go is level 15 if we are lucky.
but decent gear is hard to acquire because "Magic Mart" requires a ludicrously high diplomacy check to utilize (DC20+item's caster level), crafting is rarely allowed, and the DM is often stingy with loot. so a handful of 10th level PCs might have a +1 common backup weapon (such as a dagger) and maybe a suit of cheap masterwork or special material armor such as a mithril chain shirt or masterwork suit of plate.
in Fact, the corpses of newly replaced PCs seems to be the primary source of treasure.
plus with the series of rolls required before a new PC can join, rolls to locate the group and survive the treck. a PC can theoretically die before they join the party.
That explains a lot. What you are playing is barely anything like the Pathfinder described in the books. And it sounds like it is being ran by a Chaotic Evil GM.
I'm more Lawful Evil myself when it comes to encounters, Lawful Neutral when arbitrating, and Lawful Good when helping players make choices for their characters.
I am not trolling here and don't want to see any negative comments. It is a simple question, are any of you out there just happy with Pathfinder. I know I am, but it seems like all I see is negative thoughts on this game mechanic or that class is over powered or whatever. I just think it would be nice to have one thread out there where people take time to say something nice about Pathfinder, the game, we know the Paizo people are amazing. I see that all over the messageboards and have experienced it myself.
I will start.
I love the class archtypes, I was horrible about multi-classing in 3.5 and never was able to build what I wanted. The archtypes have saved me some serious headaches. Racial substitutions are awesome too, no two (state your race here) need be the same.
I'm pretty happy with it. Pathfinder has the most balanced core of any iteration of D&D I've ever seen before it, and without giving up character building opportunities.
how even is a fight when winning initiative and getting the first full attack is the difference between life and death?
It's not unless there's something wrong going on. o.o
it's usually not even due to the intense amount of rocket tag. making the first full attack could guarantee victory while being hit by your opponents first full attack could spell death for you.
there are some niche builds that can survive to be downed by a second full attack, but it usually means that full attack=death. 2 notable examples of builds that are downed on the second full attack are the invulnerable rager barbarian and the half orc scarred witch doctor.
Not in my games and we're not scared of pushing the system to its limits. Part of love for the Paladin for example stems from its ability to shrug huge amounts of punishment. Survival is something I prize.
If you're following the rules the game tends to set up pretty well. Can you give me an example of rocket tag? Because honestly a battle like this is similar to the crazy s+@* my group takes on at high levels, and we do it on 15 point buy and don't use hero points.
You've Probably Seen This Before:
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).
Even this isn't "initiative, lulz" at even 17th level. >.>
Now that I mentioned Vital Strike, I would like to say that I do agree it should be applied to charges. Unsure on Spring Attack, but definitely charges.
I like the idea of Vital Strike. Unfortunately it diminishes the benefit of class features like Weapon Training and favors big weapons in the extreme. It also generally means you move, attack, get ravaged by someone else's full attack (but then this is a general problem with the move+attack situation).
If you encounter a pair of Ogre Magi (a "challenging" encounter, merely APL+1, each with 95 hp each plus regeneration), moving up and hitting them will deal around 22.5 points of damage on a non-crit. You have dealt about 22.5/190 total HP for the enemy encounter. But since enemies aren't just HP bubbles the ogres move away from you in flight (one takes a withdraw action into the air and heals 5 hp from regeneration). And so on and so forth.
Why is an ogre mage doing basically nothing in a round bad for the group?
It's not bad. But it's not particularly special. In this example the ogre mage is lower in CR than the fighter himself. If the ogre mage backs up and gives some ground, the fighter trades his action for his enemy's.
At 1st level, if a fighter fights an enemy that is CR 1/2, more than likely he traded his action for ALL of the enemy's actions. Because he just killed the enemy or put the enemy into critical condition (where most creatures sentient or not are not going to fight it out unless posed no other choice).
I'm not saying anyone is useless. I'm saying you are relatively less powerful and less capable of doing your job than when you were 1st level. The amount of enemies and Hp that you can meet in fair combats far outweighs your ability to neutralize a threat. Even if that threat is nothing more than a trash-mook.
this is a sample of some of the stuff a fighter or other noncaster SHOULD be doing at 3rd level but for some reason can't. demonstrated by Karasu the 3rd level Synthesist.
he slaughters a horde of CR 1/2 Kappas with one toss of his blade and solos a CR 5 boss in armed combat.
It's important to keep in mind enemy HP. When you're not full-attacking you are not dealing meaningful damage at higher levels. Just as an example to Odraude, let's say you have a 9th level Fighter (+9/+4 BAB).
Now let's say this fighter began with an 18 Strength (do-able on 15 pb with a +2 racial), and has increased his Strength to 22 (2 level increases and a +2 item). Now he's hitting at +15 for +9 damage with his two-hander (let's give him a greataxe 'cause axes are cool). Now let's give him a nice +2 weapon. That's +17 for 1d12+11 damage. Now let's give him Power Attack for another +9 damage, bringing him to +14/1d12+20 damage. Dat is some serious damage you might say! But wait, we're not done yet, we toss on Weapon Training (axes) for +1, and weapon specialization and greater weapon focus!
Muahaha, behold your mighty 1d20+17 to hit and 1d12+23! Mucho damage eh!? :D
Except...you're level 9. The average CR 4 enemy has enough HP to survive one of your attacks (40 hp). The average CR 7 enemy has enough HP to survive a few of your hits (85 hp). The higher the CR of the encounter goes the less you matter because HP scales faster than damage. The more dynamic the encounter you face, the less you matter because the more foes and/or tricks an enemy has the less likely it'll matter.
If you encounter a pair of Ogre Magi (a "challenging" encounter, merely APL+1, each with 95 hp each plus regeneration), moving up and hitting them will deal around 22.5 points of damage on a non-crit. You have dealt about 22.5/190 total HP for the enemy encounter. But since enemies aren't just HP bubbles the ogres move away from you in flight (one takes a withdraw action into the air and heals 5 hp from regeneration). And so on and so forth.
At very high levels it's even worse. You probably won't deal 20% of a mook's HP per swing.
The strongest you will ever be relative to the enemies you face will be at 1st level where a single move+attack has a good chance of removing a whole creature from a fight, even if that creature is near your CR.
Rangers don't need major buffs, IMO... I'd give them the Trapper archetype for free and scaling senses as an alternate Hunter's Bond (low-light vision at 2nd level, darkvision at 6th, scent at 10th level, blindsense at 14th level and blindsight at 18th), but I'm not sure how these senses balance out. They don't seem too much for the levels where they are acquired, but I can't be sure... So I'm still crunching that.
Oh I wasn't criticizing. Just noting that though that sounds like some huge buff it's really not. Even without any buffs I'd still play a Ranger or a Paladin in your games, though now I might consider running a Fighter for some things. :P
It's like punishing a Fighter for using swords or punishing a Wizard for having spells.
And ACP hurts skills of all things. Skills are where a lot of non-caster utility/versatility comes from. Most non-casters need skills to be useful out of combat, and they need armor to stay alive in combat. So I feel like ACP is punishing you for having a class feature!
I was more concerned with the pitiful selection. I just let my Rangers pick any of the valid Druid companions. Boon Companion already fixes the level issue IMO if they choose to remedy it.
As far as I know the only ability that allows a full attack at the end of a movement is pounce, I could be forgetting something, but I'm sure someone will remind me if I am.
It's the only core method I think. There's a magic item in a splatbook that lets you take a move action a few times per day. It caused some hubub as to whether or not it was overpowered (it's not overpowered really, it's just that having it is so critical to actually being able to move and still do something meaningful).
Psionics allows for moving and full-attacking. There's a power called hustle which is a swift action and gives you a move action. It costs some juice but it can allow you to move and full attack in the same round. It's one of the reasons this psionic monk actually makes a pretty solid skirmisher if you want to go that route.
Sill begs the question, is it the monk that's broken or the action economy system? Lets say that a fighter/rogue/monk/cavalier/barbarian/any other martial character, had the option to give up only one of his attacks in order to make a movement up to his movement rate, and still attack with the remaining iterative attacks. Would this drastically change the the balance within the game? I'm just curious you know more about the rules then I, I believe it would, but you may feel different.
It's the action economy. It has been pretty much forever. It was less noticeable in 3E because haste allowed an extra standard or move action (then called partial actions). Since every martial under the sun had some means of haste at at higher levels (and in the iconic 4 person party you probably had it from 5th level and up) you could move and full-attack.
3.5 removed the ability to take an extra move with haste. Martials have been crippled ever since. So much so that martials who get the ability to move and attack seem leaps and bounds better than any who cannot. This is also one of the reasons ranged attackers dominate the scene (they don't have to move to get their full-attack on so it's much harder to avoid them unless you can get total cover).
There is a funny fact that while every other class gets relatively stronger as they gain levels, martials get relatively weaker. You will never - ever - kill things as efficiently as you can at 1st level. At first level moving and using a standard attack can slay a single CR 1/3 opponent in a single blow. By 11th level, moving and using a standard attack wouldn't slay a CR 5 enemy with with any reliability.
This spell progression on summoners, d6 HD, 1/2 BAB, put all their spells back at their correct spell levels and every major complaint I have with them is flushed down the toilet.
I'm not sure anyone cares, but since I was discussing the summoner in the thread earlier, I'd probably prefer to use the following progression for summoners in my games henceforth. Summoner Spell Progression Change. Then give 'em the appropriate HD and BAB to go with it and you eliminate pretty much all my complaints with them in one fell swoop.
It was spell storing, had disintegrate. Also his contingencies kick in.
Anyways, I did make my own suggestion. Combat Maneuvers aren't always the best option. They require large investment, ad they certainly don't help you if the creature is immune. They also don't have a high rate of success at higher levels.
And Schrodinger's wizard appears!
Contingencies aren't schrodinger's wizards. They weren't abnormal for play when I played 3.5. The meat of the post was about you know, combat maneuvers not being the best option and not having a high rate of success, also requiring large investment even to do in the first place. When you fight a giant centipede, you can't trip him, and if you try to grapple him he eats you alive with natural attacks.
Yeah grappling creatures with natural attacks is usually a really bad idea. Hell, grappling creatures with 1-handed weapons is often a really bad idea too (generally they can full attack your face while you have to not full-attack them to continue trying to maintain the grapple).
Base AC 19 at 10th level. Hmm. I guess 9,000 gp for +3 armor bracers, 8,000 gp for +2 ring of protection, another 8,000 gp for natural armor +2 on some other body slot besides neck. I guess that leaves us with 5,000 gp for a [i]+1 amulet of mighty fists[/url]?
That brings use to...
Hp 68.5
+13-16 to hit at 1d10+6.
AC 26.
Stunning Fist DC 20.
Against a CR 10 average that gives him about a 65% chance to hit when using Flurry of Blows, and the enemy has a 70% chance to save. The chances of landing a stunning blow during a flurry are about 45.5%. The chances of him landing it when he's not using flurry are about 35%.
For the enemy, the chances to hit the monk are about 65% for 29.25 per full attack.
That's what the base monster creation chart gives us. It's a little worse in general if you're actually fighting fully fleshed out monsters with actual abilities and such, but it gives us a nice starting point.
As far as I know the only ability that allows a full attack at the end of a movement is pounce, I could be forgetting something, but I'm sure someone will remind me if I am.
It's the only core method I think. There's a magic item in a splatbook that lets you take a move action a few times per day. It caused some hubub as to whether or not it was overpowered (it's not overpowered really, it's just that having it is so critical to actually being able to move and still do something meaningful).
Psionics allows for moving and full-attacking. There's a power called hustle which is a swift action and gives you a move action. It costs some juice but it can allow you to move and full attack in the same round. It's one of the reasons this psionic monk actually makes a pretty solid skirmisher if you want to go that route.
Something I might note is that in a tabletop RPG an "encounter" - random or not - doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to break down into combat. My players frequently find characters (including monsters) doing their own thing out in the wild. Sometimes it's just nice to see that the world is alive around you. For example, I once had a party that was 1st level and traveling through the wild. They saw an Ettin (the two headed giants) hunting deer off in the distance (this actually wasn't a random encounter but just some scenery I decorated the trip with, but random encounters are good for this sort of thing too). Unfortunately the monk player (he was new I admit) decided that Ettins are monsters and if they saw one it must mean they can fight and defeat it and should do so. The monk shall be missed. The Ettin didn't even have to finish his deer hunt, for clearly his gods had delivered a meal right into his arms. XD
In another adventure, a pair of adventurers were traveling and saw some worgs in the distance. They shot at them and caused them to run off. Later during their camping period they heard what sounded like a woman screaming for help. When the pair rode out towards the edge of the forest to investigate the worgs sprang their trap and slaughtered their horses. Frantically the two adventurers scrambled up a tree. They sat in that tree as the worgs teased them for days, living off the trail rations and water in their backpack. The worgs were taking shifts waiting for them to come down from the tree, and would eat their latest hunts in front of the very hungry pair ('cause they're jerkasses like that :P).
However the unusual worg activity attracted the attention of the forest unicorns who came and curbstomped them some worgs and drove them off and allowed the pair to get down. They still talk about that adventure with great glee, laughing about them being stuck in that tree and chucking alchemist bombs at the worgs when they got too close.
Random encounters can be great tools for creating more fun-filled and harrowing adventures. It's really just how you choose to use them.
At what level and at what expectation do we have for what can be done?
Well starting at sixth, you run into this problem if you have full BAB where you lose an attack(possibly half your possible damage!) from anytime you move more than 5 feet in a round. If you use two weapons this can start even earlier, and might possibly be a worse problem.
This is helpful.
So what are we looking for at 6th level. I personally think pounce or the like is excessive.
Well, most solutions end up being a pile of dice, or unreasonable. Its likely a problem with the way melee attacks scale and function. Personally, I like the idea of doing special abilities in that can be used place of an attack at the end of a movement such as tome of battle's maneuvers, or just giving melee more options beyond just hitting it. Pounce is pretty powerful, I've only used an ubercharger once and it was only because it was a PbP and I didn't want to mess with combat.
Frankly I don't put a lot of stock in pounce myself. Pounce doesn't mean a lot in a ton of situations. It relies on charging and there are lists of situations where charging is not viable. Some of the more common ones are situations where you are downhill, on difficult terrain, in the snow, in a swamp, caltrops scattered everywhere, stuff is in your way (even things like tables, chairs, barrels, etc).
One of my groups is preparing to play Reign of Winter and we've all pretty much made peace with the fact charging is going to happen very rarely and our movement speed is going to blow. :P
EDIT: Actually this is exactly what I mean~! Pounce looks good on paper if you're only looking at the DPR in the situations you will get to pounce. Good theorycrafting looks at the environmental rules, the lighting rules, the charge rules, and the combat rules and weighs how frequently you are actually going to get to do this. In any situation where you A) cannot charge in a strait line, B) have hampered movement, C) have a broken path you have to jump over, D) have something between you and your opponent; suddenly Charging is not an option and thus pounce is dead in the water.
That may be worthwhile to know if your GM tends to run games with dynamic environments! :O
On Monk Stunning Fist DC
Ciretose makes a good argument for his view of theorycrafting. He only looks at one tiny facet of whatever he's arguing. For example, he notes that the save DC for Stunning Fist is 10 + 1/2 level + Wisdom modifier, which on paper equals out to the save DC of spells assuming all things being equal. He then declares it fine.
In Reality: Monks are more starved for ability score modifiers so they tend to have a lower modifier by a few points. Monks have to hit their opponents so AC becomes a new form of saving throw against the attack (if you your opponent has a 60% chance to ignore your attack and a 45% chance to successfully save against the attack means you only have around a 22% chance to land your stunning fist), and their effect is wasted on a miss (contrast to a held touch spell which is not expended if you miss on an unarmed attack). Effects that provide evasive benefits such as concealment, cover, mirror image, blur, displacement and so forth can push the chances down even further; where most of these things have little to no effect on most spells. For example, if you have a 40% chance to hit, a 25% chance to save, and a 20% static miss chance (such as from a blur spell or mundane concealment) then your chance to successfully land a stunning blow looks more like 17.6%. With displacement or similar, you're looking at more like 11%.
From a meta-perspective we note that any situation where the monk has to move means that the monk's to-hit chances are lowered. We also can examine and see that the high statistic on most enemies who are going to be willing to engage the monk on his terms (in melee making full attacks) will generally have superior fortitude saves than those that would not. So while this isn't something that is directly within the monk's mechanics it is another common mechanic that influences the monk (these associated mechanics are often where you find the phenomena of the "stealth buff" or "stealth nerf").
What's amusing about this is that in this scenario the monk has a 75% chance of successfully landing the saving-throw effect based solely on whether or not our hypothetical opponent can save against it or not. However the devil is in the fact he's testing multiple times (testing to hit, testing to save, potentially testing to be negated).
In a similar fashion, let's pretend that a caster allowed 2 saving throws for their spell. Even if they have a 75% chance of the enemy failing their saves, allowing the enemy to test twice actually looks something like a 56.25% to actually land their spell.
The Dazing metamagic feat does this in reverse to the enemy by making them test twice to succeed which hits their successful saving % pretty harshly. The lower their chance to save the worse it is too. For example, if you're fighting a caster pushing their save DCs or targeting a weak save (say you have a 40% chance to successfully save) then you double-success or fail will actually look closer to a 16% chance to succeed.
When we're breaking down things in a testing format it is important to look at a lot of different things. When I compared monks vs rangers, I showed the initial formula, explained what I was doing, then once we had the results I ran it again and again and again, making tweaks and notes to show at what point the monk catches up with the ranger.
Those who break down the mechanics behind the games they play who actually respect their own tests and the game will look at it from many, many different angles. They'll look at what effects certain common buffs, conditions, and so forth have on their results. They'll test equipment, ability scores, feat opportunities, investment difficulty, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.
I suspect their Playtest sessions are both more effective and efficient, as well.
In my experience, generally not.
One of the things that happens in small game companies is that the days are long, and you're *staring* at this stuff for hours every day. By the time your "recreational" time comes around, all of your co-workers are also a little crispy around the edges.
What usually happens is someone says "I've got a mod for rule X."
And everyone else is too busy doing the thirteen other jobs they have to do around the office to really give a good sounding board. There will be company-mandated playtest times, often unpaid save for company provided pizza. You get more sounding board time when you're the amateur.
Playtesting isn't as fun as just playing. Playtesting with the guys at the office is a great way to get a serious case of "everyone I know plays it this way" blinders, too. Because everyone "knows" the rules and how they're supposed to work, and the guy who goes "Look! I can kill a Balor in the surprise round!" generally isn't hired by the game company at all, so isn't present in the game company playtest sessions.
Every playtest group needs a small salting of annoying pricks. Not just "power gamers" but actual annoying pricks who get their ego boo out of proving they're "smarter" than the asshat dev who wrote the rule.
Every playtest group also needs a handful of village idiots, the guys who'll read rules and go "OK, what does that mean?" You know, the player in your group who you swear never reads the rules based on what they do.
Okay, answer this for me then: Why does anyone want this job at all? My impression is you really aren't going to be raking in big bucks, or even average middle class money. You are lucky to get full time and 30k a year.
If it isn't a "fun" job, if there is any iota of pita to it, why stay in it? I mean what happens when you get old, and you have bounced from company to company...
Unfortunately there is a lot of truth here. Even if someone can be a designer there are generally better means out there. Especially if you're working for WotC.
Say you had a army of 10,000 conscripted peasants (levels 1-2) backup by 500 mounted knights (5th level average) vs about 500 hundred elite wizards (level 10) sent to teach the world that it is a very bad idea to mess with the collegia magica what would the fight look like? would the wizard rain fireballs, summon scores of monsters, choke the battle with poisonous mist etc?
I am planning a Locke Lamora based setting and want to hammer home the point that messing with the bonds mage is a very bad idea so I want to describe a massacre to the party but I am having trouble imagining it myself.
Actually an army of 10,000 1-2 peasants and 500 5th level knights can be destroyed by a single wizard of 17th level. Probably lower (like 13th even).
Given their levels, the likelihood of the army being armed with lots of magical items beyond a few low level potions. The wizard would likely know of their coming and would have taken some time to create some duplicates of himself via simulacrum. Say about 10 duplicates (giving you a head wizard plus 10 8th level mini-mes).
That's enough. Each cast fly (or in the case of the head wizard overland flight) and begin raining down fire and brimstone from the heavens, spreading cloudkill across the armies, preventing enemies from retaliating with wind wall, etc.
If the wizard has money to spare he can be a douche and have an unseen servant run up to enemy commanders and generals and stuff a portable hole into a bag of holding and sucks all of them within a 10 ft. radius into the astral plane with no save, tossing them out into the endless expanses of planar-space.
If the wizard really didn't like them, he could have a bound Glabrezu dismantle the army for him. Its DR against non-blessed weapons pretty much stifles any attempt to fight it effectively with peasants, and it has peerless mobility and can just keep slaughtering the soldiers en mass with chaos hammer which will devastate any non-chaotic members of the army (likely nearly everyone).
Seriously there are so many ways only a single high level wizard could slaughter this army that he could sit back and file his nails while watching the wholesale slaughter.
500 high level wizards means they insult their enemies by meleeing them to death and never casting an offensive spell.
I think the whole quality is real or not goes back to the fact it is at it's heart subjective. Ashiel labels some feats as "non-functional", while some posters have also referred to the Rogue, Monk, and Fighter as. But obviously some people don't mind those classes and play them, which means that by there definitions those classes are functional.
Actually at least two of the feats I mentioned were basically nonfunctional, and the third was just a gross and unholy thing. Also, I'd like to note, that at least 1 of those feats received revisions making it functional (though no longer anything like it was described) by Paizo because of forum feedback.
If anything, I think the fact Paizo reads their forums is a sign that the company may continue to improve.
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I also feel it's a bit unfair to call out individual feats as if they were independent entities. They were packaged within a 200 + page rulebook. Really you should be judging these products at the level of the book, in which case I would say the developers probably do come off much better than an amateur.
I judge rules based on rules. I've recommended books to people that were 2/3 absolute crap because of some incredibly good rules for something buried in the 3rd portion. As an actual company Paizo has more reasons to not include craptastic nonfunctional stuff. Because it reflects on their standards, and it is a waste of time, money, and space.
But I'll admit it's probably difficult. See, more than likely they probably have a few in house writers working on some things and then get a lot of freelancers. Now freelancers are "professionals" but the quality of their work can vary drastically from writer to writer. I'm fairly certain that this is how a lot of the stinky stuff gets through. On the other hand this is also how a lot of truly golden stuff gets through (the Juju Oracle for example gave many players something they have been longing for since Pathfinder launched, but the devs said they wouldn't have published it if not by accident).
Fair enough. We're definitely going to approach these kinds of discussions from a different perspective (I think balance, consistency and completeness are not terribly important traits in a ruleset, for example - I'm willing to bet that view wouldnt sit well with you).
Well it kinda depends. I don't have any innate hatred towards a game that's unbalanced. I played 3.x for about a decade before Pathfinder came out. 3.x was horribly unbalanced before you even included splatbooks (just with the stuff you can do within the core rules). This is actually what led to me appreciating things that were more balanced more and more.
See, I've ran games from 1st-20th+. I'm the GM who actually enjoys high level play. I'm the GM who watched players who picked certain classes begin dropping off in effectiveness at key milestones along the way until they weren't really having fun anymore. I've watched a fighter get annihilated by an enemy that was significantly under his CR in 3.x (and not a custom monster either, just one out of the core MM which most people tended to agree were pretty consistent).
From both a GM and a player perspective I don't want anyone who is supposed to be a hero to be the aquaman of the superfriends. From my own enjoyment as a GM, I want everyone to be able to have fun and contribute to the game no matter where they go or what they meet. Classes can have their Achilles' heel, but ultimately I believe that good balance makes for a better game. Especially if it's done well.
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I would suggest we hold off on applying labels of foolish or 'understood by a nine year old' as it's hard not to take those things personally. If we engage again, I'll try and make wordier posts - I hardly went to much effort to be complete with rather a lot of 'reading between the lines' being implied. Sorry about that.
Say you had a army of 10,000 conscripted peasants (levels 1-2) backup by 500 mounted knights (5th level average) vs about 500 hundred elite wizards (level 10) sent to teach the world that it is a very bad idea to mess with the collegia magica what would the fight look like? would the wizard rain fireballs, summon scores of monsters, choke the battle with poisonous mist etc?
I am planning a Locke Lamora based setting and want to hammer home the point that messing with the bonds mage is a very bad idea so I want to describe a massacre to the party but I am having trouble imagining it myself.
Yet apparently it was such a big problem for you that I could suggest that someone else could have made something of a higher quality than the endless pages of garbage that haunts 3.5's reputation to this day, unless it had lots of dollar signs attached to it.
Oh - you were talking to me about that "Paizo fanboi" stuff? Pathfinder isnt even my preferred roleplaying game so no, I wasnt objecting to any post you made suggesting that someone else might have done something better. I was objecting to any suggestion that quality was objective - I thought you subsequently agreed with that?
Maybe we were in agreement and I didn't realize it. A lot can get jumbled in the threads sometimes. (-.-)
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My point has always been that, if you're an amateur, you should approach disagreements with the professionals from the point of view that you're probably missing something rather than from the perspective that they are.
That seems fair.
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Misrepresenting? I thought this was your position:
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You think that Paizo do a fine job, but that they occasionally drop the ball. They're only human after all and everyone makes the odd error from time to time. There are various desirable features a ruleset (or subsystem) should have and there are many examples where the amateur fans of the game have produced something which is superior (by that measure) than the 'officially sanctioned' product of the comparable time.
Is that wrong?
Nope, pretty spot on. But I didn't mean to imply that you were misrepresenting my posts. Just that there were many posts that were misrepresented and that I might have missed yours through them.
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Gee how would you have responded if I'd called you foolish or suggested you lacked the comprehension of a nine year old?
I'm beginning to think this is a communication issue. I said don't be foolish, which you kind of were acting foolish when you tried to claim my example of a fanmade product being considered higher in quality by its critics than a similar professional sourcebook was the same as saying "people on the internet agree with me" and making an errant vaccination comment. I don't think this was unfair as it seemed like you were acting the fool to get my goat.
As for the nine year old thing, I never suggested that you lacked the comprehension of a nine year old. I said any nine year old could see the logical conclusion to a situation where one product isn't available versus another. I presumed that you were well aware of this and were just trying to be contrary.
And I'm sorry if I expect you to just be trying to be contrary. Perhaps it is a symptom I've developed posting on these boards. It's not uncommon for people to argue just to argue with no desire for truth or advancement of the conversation.
But I will say I would use the phrase again because it's a correct one. Most nine year olds could tell you the problem with the assumption that X was better than Y based on consumption when Y is not available.
Mileage potentially varying is precisley what I mean by there being no objective measure of quality.
I'll be sure to remember that quality doesn't exist then. If "being functional" vs "being nonfunctional" is not a near universal measure of quality then we can deduce that quality is a myth.
I think it would be silly to say quality doesnt exit.
Well if you can't talk about quality without people jumping down your throat about how insubstantial and ephemeral quality is, where functionality cannot even be a measurement of quality...
Well there's not much left really. The definition includes things such as
"high grade; superiority; excellence" which seems to be the exact opposite of rules that don't work (like prone shooter or antagonize or elephant stomp). Yet apparently it was such a big problem for you that I could suggest that someone else could have made something of a higher quality than the endless pages of garbage that haunts 3.5's reputation to this day, unless it had lots of dollar signs attached to it.
At least, that's basically what I took from your posts. Unless there was some sort of point you were driving at. It's very possible I missed it through the many posts grossly misrepresenting my commentary, or acting like I shot the Paizo golem or something.
If there was something other than just being contrary and trying to muddy any sort honest conversation that you were getting at then I'm all ears. Otherwise I'm just going to leave this conversation alone. Getting hammered by other posters for nothing leaves a bad taste in the mouth - especially when you're just trying to converse about not only your hobby but your community.
Another thing that's probably worth noting is that depending on how difficult and/or played-strait your game is can have a lot of impact on how functional the classes seem. If you're actually following the rules for things like Stealth distance penalties, making use of terrain, using the spell-like abilities creatures have, playing enemies like they have two brain-cells and a survival instinct hidden somewhere in their would-be corpses, then the game's true balance really begins to shine through. Some might call it "hardcore" but it's pretty much just the standard rules.
HOWEVER...
A lot of groups are the "beer & pizza" style group. The ones who the GM just throws stuff down, players often don't track everything, rules are ignored or forgotten, and dragons fight like giant suicidal lizards. It's the sort of game that either everyone has a +5 holy avenger lying around or nobody has managed to get to a +1 armor over 12 levels of gameplay yet. Where people think wizards are underpowered because they've yet to discover spells with names besides magic missile and fireball. The sorts of games where kobolds charge into melee with only some short swords and a fading prayer.
In these sorts of games you can still have fun, but it's a different kind of style. It's often loose and tends to ignore a lot of stuff, or run in weird ways that don't always make a lot of sense (but it's easy to not notice so much when people are laughing around the table :P).
...
And there really is no right way to play. I personally prefer the former. My younger brother enjoys doing things like tracking ammo and worrying about things like whether or not he's going to roast under a desert sun. Most of my players get great satisfaction when they do stuff worthy of being heroes. That means they like there to be danger and lots of it and they don't want me sandbagging. They want the enemies to be like they would be like. :P
I understand, my response was just in general, not really directed at anyone. I remember the whole monk debacle, where suddenly Paizo was the white whale, every monk fan Captain Ahab, and the monk their leg. Suddenly, everyone is crying blood and thunder at the horrific atrocity that Paizo hath wrought on the poor monk. Darfur? Forget that. The Holocaust? Not even close. Like, somewhere in a dark corner, Hitler was crying deeply, tears streaming down his rosy cheeks, eating a large tub of chocolate ice cream and watching The Notebook while Stalin, Osama Bin Laden, and Vlad the Impaler were all trying to console him because for that whole time with the monk, Hitler was no longer the most hated person in the world. It's that reaction that makes me and my friends think so little of this forum and the people on it. Which is a shame, because there are some cool people here and I want to like this place.
*claps slowly* I laughed so much. I also want to commend you because I never thought any post - ever - that mentioned Paizo, Monks, Hitler, Bin Ladin, Stalin, Moby Dick and Captain Ahab would make me smile and laugh so much. Hell, I never thought I'd see a post with all of that in it! (O.O)
You have brightened my day. (^.^)
Mr.Sin wrote:
Its the internet. You get all sorts of opinions. That said, people get crazy about their hobbies sometimes.
And apparently people seemed to take this mentioning as some sort of statement that I hate Paizo, or they are lazy, or that I want to take them out back like Old Yeller. I was trying to figure out what on earth got everyone so riled up and begin insulting everyone who writes anything that isn't Paizo. Bad form it is.
It's how things work around here, sadly.
StreamOfTheSky, page 1 wrote:
This has been pointed out for many years now, right from the start. But instead of addressing it, paizo and its defenders just shouted back and turtled up like they were besieged.
There is no criticism. Just "attacks."
I wasn't even being critical of them which is the amusing part. I was remarking about the quality that many of the fanmade products have. Large or small.
Then I said Pathfinder is a big d20 mod (which it is).
Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!
My response was more in response to how many people criticize Paizo, not the fact that they do. I don't mind telling Paizo that there's something wrong with their rules (Antagonize is a good example for me). But, I'm not going to start insulting devs and outright demanding an immediate response and change. My point it that people are so quick to throw the devs under the bus when there's a rule they don't like, when many times, they do read the responses patiently and listen to people. At least for me, I don't get riled up by rules issues because as much as I love this game, I still understand that it's just a game. And posting angrily at the devs, demanding blood tribute and sacrifice for their transgressions is just not my style.
I'd rather save that for when I want good harvest :)
I don't insult the devs and demand immediate changes either. I'm more interested in playing and discussing my favorite game. I enjoy discussing both the good and the bad of it. Acknowledging a lot of the bad points is the reason we have moved forward in a lot of ways in Pathfinder. In much the same, there was a thread where someone collected some data about unbalanced classes and as it turned out the general consensus is that X, Y, and Z were commonly considered underpowered and at least one class was commonly considered overpowered.
There are things in the rules I'm not a fan of but I have often defended Pathfinder on the grounds of what sorts of things they improved (though according to Steve Geddes I was wasting my breath defending Pathfinder since there's no way to suggest what is quality and I nor anyone else is apparently qualified to say "hey, Pathfinder doesn't suck"). I did so right here in fact.
I'm just irritated at how much backlash I got for suggesting that Paizo is anything but infallible. >:(
Your measure of quality or not quality seems to only extend so far as dollar signs are concerned, which means that we disagree on fundamental levels and there's not much point in discussing it further.
That's not my measure of quality. My claim is that there is no objective measure of quality.
I guess quality as I see it is whatever is more useful as a product. When I see things like prone shooter, elephant stomp, antagonize, and similar things in the books I buy from professionals, I am forced to look at things that actually work from other writers - many of which are fanmade products with no price tag - and accept that they are at least of equal or greater quality.
YMMV.
Mileage potentially varying is precisley what I mean by there being no objective measure of quality.
I'll be sure to remember that quality doesn't exist then. If "being functional" vs "being nonfunctional" is not a near universal measure of quality then we can deduce that quality is a myth.
Your measure of quality or not quality seems to only extend so far as dollar signs are concerned, which means that we disagree on fundamental levels and there's not much point in discussing it further.
That's not my measure of quality. My claim is that there is no objective measure of quality.
I guess quality as I see it is whatever is more useful as a product. When I see things like prone shooter, elephant stomp, antagonize, and similar things in the books I buy from professionals, I am forced to look at things that actually work from other writers - many of which are fanmade products with no price tag - and accept that they are at least of equal or greater quality.
And apparently people seemed to take this mentioning as some sort of statement that I hate Paizo, or they are lazy, or that I want to take them out back like Old Yeller. I was trying to figure out what on earth got everyone so riled up and begin insulting everyone who writes anything that isn't Paizo. Bad form it is.
It's how things work around here, sadly.
StreamOfTheSky, page 1 wrote:
This has been pointed out for many years now, right from the start. But instead of addressing it, paizo and its defenders just shouted back and turtled up like they were besieged.
There is no criticism. Just "attacks."
I wasn't even being critical of them which is the amusing part. I was remarking about the quality that many of the fanmade products have. Large or small.
Then I said Pathfinder is a big d20 mod (which it is).
The idea that sales records are an indication of the quality of a product is an extremely faulty premise and is often more reliant on marketing and financial backing than the actual quality of the product.
Because those of us who buy books are too "foolish" to purchase what we want and instead just purchase what we're told to?
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What you value in a ruleset (consistency, balance, clarity, etcetera) is not what I value. You say "actual quality" as if that's some kind of objective measure, but there's no such thing.
Quality vs Availability is a huge thing here. If 100 people would love X more than Y but only have Y available they are going to take Y. This doesn't seem like rocket science here. In fact I'm pretty sure most 9 year olds could tell you that.
I guess quality is merely an opinion. I suppose I could wear rocks on a string and consider it exceptionally high quality jewelry since I've got plenty of rocks and some string.
So there's not much to say past that. Your measure of quality or not quality seems to only extend so far as dollar signs are concerned, which means that we disagree on fundamental levels and there's not much point in discussing it further.
There are many people here who wouldn't be caught dead publishing something like Prone Shooter, Vow of Poverty, Elephant Stomp, etc.
There also ideas some of these people would never have thought of that are good. Every developer lays an egg sometimes, even after creating something that the masses loves, and even those of us who would never be consistant at putting out quality work will come up with something really good.
Is that why everyone is freaking out? 'Cause I mentioned that devs can write crappy rules too? Sheesh. Apparently everyone missed the entirety of the point. The point was that people are people. There's nothing about being a developer that makes you infallible. If there was there wouldn't be hundreds of unofficial bugfixes for various PC games all over the place (Bioware/Black Isle released some of the greatest RPGs of all time but there are many fan-released bug-fixes that make their games function as intended).
I haven't stopped buying Paizo products. I never said "lulz paizo sucks and dey can't write rulz". I made a passing comment about what Gnomersy said about them being human and commenting that there are lots of people out there who aren't professionals who have better material available and BAM, suddenly everyone's in a tizzy.
But then again I'm also not going to pretend like they don't write some pretty crappy stuff sometimes. And when I say "they" I mean "Paizo's staff (which includes freelancers)" because to my knowledge they don't stamp the name of the designer on each section that they wrote in a sourcebook, which means literally everything they publish regardless of who wrote it or why will reflect on Paizo. That's life.
It's also one of the reasons that I agree being a publisher would not be cake.
I am not freaking out, but your post did not come across the way you intended. :)
Sorry Wraith. I didn't mean that you were freaking out. I just made an observation based on Gnomersy's post and related a thought my brother had concerning games. PC games as I noted. The thought that many times you can find incredibly awesome fan-made expansions or revisions to games that are better than was actually present or released by the developer itself.
I noted that the fans who love it often carry it on and help keep the game strong through the community and often put out great work, and noted that many of them are leaps and bounds better than the worst Paizo has published (which by default shows they're capable of writing stuff worth being published if the stuff they write is better than what's published).
And apparently people seemed to take this mentioning as some sort of statement that I hate Paizo, or they are lazy, or that I want to take them out back like Old Yeller. I was trying to figure out what on earth got everyone so riled up and begin insulting everyone who writes anything that isn't Paizo. Bad form it is.
