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Going after my 9th level PC with a vorpal weapon would pretty much guarantee I built the strongest character I could imagine to replace him. No wonder he focused on AC. It's not a vorpal weapon. It's an inherent power of the Dark Rider, and I ran it exactly as it's detailed in the Adventure Path. In that situation, I suppose you would have stopped attacking the biggest threat who made a tactical blunder, so your players don't feel like you're "going after them"?
The player trusted the GM not to take advantage of his sub-op build to kill his character. The player no longer trusts the GM to not take advantage of his sub-op build. The player's previous character was a reasonably well-optimized archer. The previous death occurred because said player stood his ground and fired a full-round volley into a mounted dullahan rather than fire a single shot and move to safety. The dullahan was able to full-round attack back, knocked him into negative hit points, and then the player failed on his save against beheading (caused by an enchantment on the weapon).
So the designed encounters for the Adventure Paths are useless, then?
What's the point buy you gave your players? I'm getting a 19... 20 point buy. And I still don't see why any of this is obscene. All of the other characters have AC's between 20 and 30, and to hits around +13. This seems to be in-line with the assumed power level for the Adventure Path. Having a single character far outstrip the power level of the others means the encounters are all cakewalks, or I'll wipe everyone making it challenging for him. Is everyone's contention that the Adventure Paths are far, far underpowered jokes that no one would dream of running without massive redesign? Because I'm having trouble reconciling the encounters I'm reading (and posted above) with the idea that the synthesist I posted above is merely an average, expected build.
Spoilers ahead for the Shattered Star Adventure Path. People keep overlooking the fact that I'm running an Adventure Path, and I don't want to have to rewrite every single encounter to deal with this character. The first combat was CR 13, against 9 ettins and 6 hill giants. Given the hill giant's 21 AC and +14/+9 to-hit, he basically soloed it. Upcoming combats are: 4 Redcaps (CR 10). +10 to hit and 20 AC. He'll solo it. Redcap Rogue with 4 Redcaps (CR 12). This will be tough, since the leader has rogue levels, so he's +18/+12 to hit, so at least he's got a 30% to hit in flank (and a 3% chance to crit!) and he'll do about 30 damage/hit with Sneak Attack (or a whopping 96/hit if he crits). Of course, the other members of the party have an AC between 19 and 29, and hit points that top out around 90, so he's a much bigger threat to them. And the other redcaps are just there to provide flanking opportunities. Redcap bard with 4 advanced dust mephits (CR 9): the Bard might get a lucky Hold Person off (30% chance) otherwise the combat's a joke. He'll solo it. 2 Nyogoth Qlippoth (CR 11): +15 to hit and 24 AC. The biggest threat to the summoner is the 1d6 acid they do to all adjacent creatures every time they get hit. He'll solo it. Ettin fighter and 3 ettins (CR 11): +15 to hit and 24 AC. He'll solo it. Male juju zombie bugbear and 3 mummies (CR 11): The boss has +18 to hit and 28 AC. There's a 2/3 chance the summoner is paralyzed by fear and the party wipes. Otherwise, he solos it. 2 Vrocks (CR 9): +13 to hit and AC 22. He'll solo it. Medusa cleric w/redcap and hill giant (CR 12): 40% to turn to stone from the Medusa. Otherwise, the cleric has no damaging spells, and just channels negative energy. He'll solo it. ---- A CR 9 encounter is supposed to be average difficulty for a party of 4 level 9 characters. This single character can handle them without breaking a sweat. Something's seriously wrong, there. And any adjustments I make to the difficulty of the encounter is going to wipe the rest of the party, who *do* seem to be appropriately powered.
I got his build. He's level 9 (not 10). Half-Elf STR 7 (31)
HP: 84 (154) Evolutions:
Magic:
Attacks:
Feats:
I'm just sitting here wondering why 35 AC at level 10 is "obscene". In the Adventure Path I'm running, most of the creatures (making up encounters from CR 8-12) have to-hits of +12 to +18. One has a +19. The main villain at the end of the path has a +20, and is CR 14.
If he is min/maxed, he must have some stat at 7 or even 5. You're misunderstanding the Synthesist. When the Eidolon is summoned, you take the Eidolon's physical stats and the Summoner's mental stats. He literally has no stats below 13, and most of them are 15+.
I'm curious as to how the character is built? I believe somebody posted it could be a misunderstanding of some rule or other error. I'd like to see the build. I've got the breakdown of the AC. I'm waiting for the full character build. 10 Base AC
Second, assumingly the build is legit, how does it compare to the other characters? Maybe the solution is helping the other characters achieve comparable resilience and then scaling the encounters to the new power level of the characters? As I mentioned at the beginning of the thread, I'm running the Shattered Star Adventure Path. I'm running an Adventure Path because I don't want to have to design combats--I don't have the time to design combats, especially at higher levels, and I want to be able to run things "out of the box". So all the advice to "just summon in a bunch of Balors" or "design better encounters" is not helpful. I don't want to design encounters. If I did, I wouldn't be playing Pathfinder. There are other characters which are reasonably optimized. There's a Tetori monk who shuts down pretty much any 1-vs-1 fight in the first round (and boy, do these Adventure Paths LOVE to throw single sorcerers against the party). There's a sneaky invisible goblin alchemist who can blow up virtually any encounter with a lucky stink bomb (make a fort save or take a single move action each round for 1d4+1 rounds). The thing is, with the other characters, I can kind of work around it. I've come close to killing the monk many times. If I make the fort save against the alchemist, he's not doing a ton of damage round to round. With the Synthesist Summoner, I haven't got any outs.
I'm running the Shattered Star Adventure Path, and one of the players has just come back do the game (after having his archer die) with a Synthesis Summoner. We're at level 10. He's got 35 AC, so nothing hits him. He's got 5 attacks doing about 90 HP of damage a round. He's got all good saves, so it's iffy to land a spell on him. I'm reading through the rest of this book in the Adventure Path, and there's basically nothing in the book that has any serious chance of affecting him. Are my only options to tell him to roll a different character, rewrite the entire Adventure Path specifically around his character, or cancel the game? I trusted that Paizo playtested and balanced their rules; I'm really disappointed at how badly designed most of this stuff is.
I assume that the 4 single spellcasters you mean are the "Shorshen", Berkanin, Luonim and Maligast? Not "Sorshen", but the Dark Naga, Silasni. I can think of two party-vs-single-spellcaster fights in the previous book, but they were aided by the fact that the combats existed in a larger space against flying combatants, at a level where the party didn't have access to flight magic. That held true for Berkanin, as well.
As people in this thread have pointed out, every party is different. In this case, your players were particularly adept and well equipped to take on this encounter. Even then, it involved some good rolls (your 50% miss chance). I don't know. We just had another very similar combat (against Malagast), and it went even worse. Turn by turn: 1) Malagast threatens the party. Everyone rolls initiative.
This wasn't fun or interesting. Spellcasters get a single round to do something if they win initiative. After that, the combat is over. And this is the fourth combat against a single spellcaster in the Adventure Path. I'm enjoying the adventure story and design. It's just very disappointing when combats I'm excited about are over before they even start. And it happens again and again.
Combats are designed for "average" parties, which, according to James, are composed of players who have not played the game together for more than 6 months. Playing through a single adventure path surely takes the average party more than six months, doesn't it? We've been playing for a year, every other week, and we're still only about halfway through the third book.
I'm running the Adventure Path because I don't have much time to prep, and the way the adventure it doesn't make sense for the spellcaster to have any minions. I'd really like to know why the adventure writer designed the encounter the way he did. Did he expect parties won't have something like Gitterdust handy? Because the tactics are laughable.
Is anyone else disappointed by the number of combats in the Adventure Path that end up being a single mage standing in the middle of the room? My group just reached Luonim, and after talking to him through the doorway for a couple rounds, the monk charged him. Here's the rounds: 1) Luonim won initiative, and cast invisibility.
Total time in combat: 2 minutes. Who designed the tactics for the bloatmage, and expected him to get to do anything?
I'm just now starting to run some Pathfinder Society events for friends (and train some new GMs so they can run PFS as well). Now that Faction Missions have been eliminated, should I bother to run them in earlier modules? I'm concerned for two reasons: First, they're an added bit of complexity, and explaining to new players and GMs what they are, and were, and why they don't exist any more is something I'd rather not get into right now. Second, I always thought they were an interesting feature of PFS, and I'm worried people are going to really like them and get disappointed playing through the new scenarios without them. Hence, avoiding them entirely. Can they be cut entirely from earlier scenarios? Should they be?
I played a handful of scenarios in Season 0, and haven't played anything since. I'm looking at starting up some Pathfinder Society in my neck of the woods, and I'd like to use that character again. The main problem is that I've long lost the chronicle sheets for those first five sessions. What can I do about getting them replaced? Also, for some reason, my character has 5 prestige for Taldor, and 1 prestige for Cheliax. The Cheliax prestige is wrong. How can I correct it?
I was considering running Dawn of the Scarlet Sun after Curse of the Lady's Light, but then I noticed it's designed for 5th level heroes. The party's supposed to be 8th level when they return to Magnamar. Isn't that grossly underleveled for them?
So I'm just finishing up Curse of the Lady's Light, and I'm having a terrible time making the combats interesting. They're either extremely deadly (the Glass Golem, the Seugathi) or they're pushovers (Quenelle Page, Oriana). I'm seeing two significant problems with the party. First, there's a Tetori monk in the group. He's currently got a +16 CMB to grapple. Just as a reference, the Cave Giant in the adventure path has a 23 CMD. Because of Snapping Turtle stance, if someone attacks the monk and misses, the monk gets a free grapple check against it, and after the monk has a creature grappled he gets two chances to pin it on his turn because grapple checks are a move action for him now with greater grapple. Solo monsters are really boring to run now, since combats are just the monk running up to creatures and pinning them in two rounds. The problem with large groups of monsters is the alchemist. He took the Stink Bomb discovery, so any time there's a bunch of foes he'll just throw a stink bomb and nauseate them, typically incapacitating half of them for 3 rounds. There was a fight with Quenelle Page and 7 Grey Maidens, and within two turns all of the Grey Maidens were nauseated, and the party just beat them to death while they tried to retreat up the stairs. It wasn't very fun. I don't want to rewrite all the encounters. Are the class abilities just that horribly broken?
Oh,I know that. You know that. But they don't know that. And old, metagame habits are hard to break. They're currently annoyed that they "lost" the quest the establish a trade route in the Mushfens because they inadvertently slaughtered the "good" boggards before interviewing the spearwives in the boggard village. Never even occurred to them there might be "good" troglodytes, too.
Question on the "From the Minds of Monsters". My group figures (metagaming) that they aren't going to have the month necessary to have more than one PC read this, so they're planning on selling it. What is it worth?
What adventure path are you running that the main guy can just be grappled all the time? I've never encountered an ap that has things set up that way. Shattered Star. The party fought a couple of larger groups, but the vast majority of the encounters on the lower levels of the first dungeon involve 2-3 creatures at the most.
At low level a lot of the anti grapple standard arsenal (eg freedom of movement) is unavailable, but keep those sorts of things in mind for later. The Tetori eventually gets the ability to negate Freedom of Movement spells, as well as negating any magical bonuses to escape a grapple. That ability becomes a Dimensional Anchor at 13th level, too. With small rooms, I'd recommend barriers. Add a grille of iron bars to the map -- think the classic jail cell in a Western. Well, one of the things I like about the adventure path is how well the dungeon is designed. There's not a lot of random "dungeon architecture for dungeon's architecture's sake". Throwing bars around is going to mess with that. The fundamental problem is that BBEGs by themselves are rather limited in their options. (This is true regardless of grapplers -- a big fighter with a two-handed weapon and Step Up can make almost any lone boss cry badly. Action economy just ices the cake.) That may be true. It just feels like every single battle, no matter what, involves the grappler running in and grappling, and me rolling a couple failed grapple checks to escape.
What level are you playing? I've not looked into the Tetori myself yet, but as a grapple focused player I know that CMD's ramp up pretty high and pretty quickly. They're only 4th level so far. But I'm not sure about CMD ramping up sufficiently quickly; Tetori monks use monk level instead of BAB in combat maneuver checks. Plus his Snapping Turtle stance allows him to make grapple checks if an enemy misses him in combat, and at 8th level he'll gain the Grab special ability. Which particular AP are you running? When you are grappled you are only at a -2 for most things...so you could alter the items carried by the boss to include a potion of Bull's strength or Fly as was mentioned earlier. Take notice where the boss is placed on the map before the encounter starts...Make sure to be out of reach of the Tetori's first round, if possible. Depending on the AP it is not unreasonable for the BBEG to know exactly who is coming and in what order...and as soon as they are alerted it is also not unreasonable that they have something prepared for them as they step in. I'm running Shattered Star. So most rooms are kind of small, and there's not much room for flying around. Also, tactics in general are overlooked for the BBEG. Anything with an Int above 7 would use pretty normal PC tactics...anything with an Int over 10 or 11 would be using some creative tactics. Well, that's what I'm trying to figure out. What tactics should I be using? What tactics are effective?
Some of these suggestions are missing the point. I'm running an Adventure Path. I don't want to have to redesign the encounters to deal with a single pathologically broken class. Especially since I'd essentially be rewriting every single encounter. Is there a way to deal with the Tetori without going to that extreme? Or is the Tetori monk just that broken?
I'm running an Adventure Path, and one of my players decided to play a Tetori Monk. Frankly, I'm disgusted Paizo allowed this class into print, it's horribly designed and sucks the fun out of every encounter. Every combat involves the Monk running into the room at the most powerful creature and rolling a ridiculously high grapple check against middling CMDs. 90% of the time, he succeeds and the creature he's grappling is effectively out of the fight. At this point, my options are:
Since I'm running an adventure path, I don't want to redesign every single encounter because of a single player. But as it stands, every encounter that features a "boss" monster is over within a single round. Are there tactics I'm missing to deal with this?
Improved Familiar says you can take "any type" of small elemental. Does that include a Lightning Elemental? A Crysmal? An Ice Elemental?
Many; I'd sift through the Sorcerer build threads for advice on them. I was hoping for more specific recommendations; obviously some good Wizard spells are going to duplicate spells on the Oracle spell list, while others cover significant gaps.
I'm building an Oracle for the Reign of Winter AP, and I've decided to be a Half-Elf with the Winter mystery. This qualifies me for Ancient Lorekeeper, but as I was going through the build I was a little disappointed. I figured I wasn't going to be losing much, since I'm expecting to face a lot of cold resistant creatures (thus the bonus Winter mystery spells aren't likely to be all that valuable) but the fact that they come in at a higher level (first level spells take up a second level slot) made me feel they weren't a great choice. Is it really that powerful? Are there must have spells on that list?
I've got a synthesist summoner in my game, whose eidolon is a giant wolf. She's taken "Mage Armor" as one of her spells, but I'm having trouble figuring out how she would cast it on her eidolon. In fact, I'm having trouble figuring out how she would cast anything on her eidolon. She can't cast spells while the eidolon is summoned, since it doesn't have hands. When it's not summoned, she can't target it with anything. And if she casts the spell on herself, it doesn't have any effect when the eidolon is summoned. Is this all correct, or am I missing something?
Are the future Chapters coming? I'm planning on running this shortly, and was planning on trying to run combats out of HeroLab, but without the community support I may have to find another way of dealing with combats.
There's also the ranger archetype wild stalker which give rage to the ranger. And takes away the Hunter's Bond, unless there's a workaround I'm not seeing.
I've got a player who wants to play a Barbarian with an animal companion. I'm not sure what builds to suggest for this. Barbarian/Druid? Barbarian/Ranger? Straight ranger and give up barbarian? Are there any feats or prestige classes to think about?
If you're not making an attack, what are you trading away for the AC bonus? You're not trading anything away. You've got a magic sword. Most magic swords give you a bonus to hit and a bonus to damage. A defending weapon gives you a choice between + to hit and + to damage, or + to armor class. No trading involved. You're making a choice how to allocate the inherent magic in the weapon.
It's a little hard to see everything at present (the link to SKRs actual post doesn't seem to be working), but from quoted passages further down the thread it seems to be specifically applicable to effects that are enabled by making an attack requiring the attack to be made using the weapon that grants the effect. Nope. The ruling is in the FAQ, only applies to defending weapons, and it's as asinine and wrongheaded a ruling as I've seen. From the FAQ.
As ruled in the FAQ, you can't really cast spells while using a defending weapon. Or use the "total defense" action. Or, apparently, benefit from it without attacking first.
I'm considering running this soon, but I'm going to have a large number of players. I understand the encounters are balanced for 4 players, and I'm much more likely to have 6 or 7. Do I need to do anything to scale up the encounters? Is it as simple as doubling the monsters involved in most cases? Or is it the case that the party will just level slower than average, and will balance themselves by running through the adventure at a slightly lower level with more players?
It's been confirmed that you can't do anything that doesn't require the use of 4e core rules.Where was that confirmed? Are you suggesting Chris Pramas has better information than Paizo, despite the fact the likely both got the bulk of their information from the same phone call? And really, when you say something is confirmed it really should mean something was confirmed. What you have is speculation, some of it better founded than others, but none of it speaking for WotC as an official or unofficial announcement.
How do You plan on actually publishing your work? I've looked at some of the print on demand places, but the cost is way higher than I think most people would pay, at least for a hard copy. And I don't want to fork out a few thousand dollars to publish myself if I don't have to (but you gotta do what you gotta do right?). We're not currently thinking about hard copies--I'm expecting to use Scribus to do the layout, because it does high-quality, print-ready PDFs. And once you have the PDF, you can always just sell that electronically. If there's a tremendous clamor, we can work out getting it physically printed later. And with the print-ready PDFs, it won't take any extra effort on our part. Assuming I can figure out the right page sizes. I would seriously look long and hard at what I was trying to get out of it before I spent my own money to self-publish. If you just want a couple copies to show off to people or hand out to friends you can publish one-offs at Lulu. You can get paperback, 200 page, perfect bound, black and white books there for about $9 each. They even offer print on demand; charge $15 each and you're making $6 profit on every book. If you really think you have a commercially viable product, you need to find a publisher. I'd contact all the gaming companies and see if any would be willing to take a look at your manuscript. If your campaign setting is good enough they'll be happy to partner with you and help you through the publishing and distribution process. If it's not, they'll tell you that up front. I realize Lolth isn't strictly OGL, though the use of the Drow is, as long as due credit is given, and what is Drow society without Lolth? Hmmm... Easy enough to work around though It think. There's no "strictly" about it. The OGL is very clear about what's included; assume everything else is off limits. Screw this up and no publisher will touch your work with a 10-foot-pole. If you self-publish you could be liable to a fine of $150,000. Realistically, you'd just have to recall and destroy all the copies you had printed, and probably pay a lawyer to do that negotiation for you. Still not a great outcome. Be certain you know what the OGL allows you to do, and what it doesn't. Wizards of the Coast doesn't take kindly to people appropriating their IP. If you're big enough for them to notice--and you're trying to be big enough for them to notice--you need to be sure you're not breaking their copyright.
I would give the characters half-truths about NPC leaders, and have some known heroes actually being self-interested villians, and some eccentric, disenfranchised NPCs being more helpful than advertised. Keep in mind, you have to figure out the target audience for the campaign setting book. If it's aimed at GMs, you can put in the truth and explain how the rumors get it wrong. If it's aimed at players, you should just print the rumors. If it's aimed at both (which is likely) then you have to be clear when what you are saying is fact and when it's just a rumor. That can be awkward. Some General Thoughts: First, I'd look at Eberron as a good example of what works. There's a lot that's spelled out, but there are very specific things left underdefined (e.g., what happened on the Day of Mourning, the Lord of Blades, lots of Xen'drik). You want to leave enough blanks so that GMs can tailor things to fit their campaign. Less is generally more. Second, you'll want to be careful about what you include. Lolth is pretty clearly not OGL, so you can't use her. Getting that wrong is potentially a very expensive mistake. Third, you really ought to decide what your setting offers that other settings don't. A deeply compelling world is necessary but not sufficient. There are literally dozens of settings out there; people need good reasons to use yours. That's a problem we faced on the project I'm working on* as well: we can't compete in name recognition, and it's highly unlikely we'll be able to compete on production quality or artwork, so why would people bother to use the setting? For us, we're building an Adventure Path alongside the setting, so you can pick up the first adventure and start playing without having to absorb all the background material as a player or a judge. We're designing it as a darker setting, but trying to avoid making it as grim as something like Midnight. And our anticipated price-point is fairly competitive as well (free, at least for the first couple adventures). If you can figure out how to differentiate yourself from everyone else, then you'll know what to emphasize and how to market your setting. * ObPlug: The project I'm working on, as I've mentioned elsewhere, is Harvestlands. It's worth checking out for the psychopathic gnomes alone.
However, after reading a few of the things going around I've realized that I really don't want to witness the initial (hopefully quick) Paizo vs. 4E that might go down, especially with this all being high profile right now ... I'll be taking a break from these boards for a while. Seconded. While I'm thrilled that Paizo is fixing some of the problems I have with 3.5 (and I seem to recall some of the most vocal 3.5 defenders on here arguing they weren't problems) I'm afraid a number of my problems with 3.5 are deeper and more structural. Unfortunately, I suspect Paizo's decision will irrevocably fracture the gaming community here. Many people who were already down on 4e--either because they hate Wizards, or they don't like the fluff changes, or they've already decided they don't like the rules based on the little information that's out there--will use the Pathfinder RPG as an excuse not to switch. Others, like me, are going to switch at the first opportunity. I don't see a lot of middle ground. And that means games are going to be harder to find. As for the Paizo boards, I don't know if anyone who's even moderately pro-4e has felt exactly welcome here. With the PRPG announcement, that's only gotten worse, and with Paizo now the de facto anti-4e company I don't see that changing any time soon. I have no desire to discuss whether things 4e is going to fix will or won't be fixed in a hypothetical new system. With PRPG patching a number of the same problems, the debates are just going to devolve to arguing whether Wizards sucks on principle. And that's not a debate I'm willing to have. In short, I'm going back to lurking. I'll be by occasionally, but not with the frequency I have in the past. It's possible I'll start posting with regularity again--maybe in a couple months, maybe after 4e gets released, maybe after Origins or GenCon--but until then I'll just wish everyone luck, especially Paizo and their stellar writing and production team, and I hope Paizo decides to start publishing 4e adventure paths sooner rather than later. Edited to add: Since this seem like the last chance I'll have to pimp my own projects, I'll just say I've been working with a group who have been creating their own 4e setting and Adventure Path. It's called Harvestlands, and it's a darker setting where devils and demons fight a proxy war across much of the land, the elves have disappeared, the dwarves have been overrun by duergar, and the gnomes have started experimenting on humans. We're looking for volunteers who think this sounds interesting to help flesh out the world and plot the Adventure Path. And since we don't have the 4e rules, it's completely rules-free at the moment. And we've no objection to people contributing a 3.5 (or PRPG) conversion, which we could release alongside the 4e one, if anyone's interested in that particular task.
Please cancel my Pathfinder subscription as well.
...sometime around Day 2 of GenCon Indy 2008, 3.5e and 4e will destroy each other in a massive matter/antimatter detonation that will cost millions of lives and leave our world greatly retconned.That's not good ... I was thinking about going. Maybe I'll rethink that. How do you think I feel? I got a room in the reserved block!
However, with roughly 56% of their customers saying they aren't switching (and an additional 18% undecided), it may not be better for the health of Paizo. A not insignificant portion of both those saying they're switching and those saying they aren't switching say they'll buy Pathfinder regardless of edition, so that takes a little bit of sting of either decision away. Assuming you believe them. Paizo's problem is obvious: if 4e is a wild success they'll be stuck with a small and dwindling market if they don't switch. If it's a flop, they'll be stuck with a nonexistent market if they do. If the community splinters, either decision is going to lose a significant portion of their customer base, and I'm not sure their profit margin is such that Paizo can survive on half the subscription base. Add in factors like 4e is likely to sell very well at first, as people look for supplements to the base 4e system in an uncluttered market and Wizards foots the bill for a large marketing push. Also the possibility that people dissatisfied with 4e switch to True20 or go back to 2e or quit playing altogether. And the GSL is currently an unknown quantity, which means it could be so restrictive as to be unworkable. Frankly, I think the only real option for Paizo in the long run is to switch to 4e: if it succeeds it's the right decision, and if it fails I think the RPG market is going to fragment so much that there just isn't going to be a business model for the kinds of products Paizo makes. Given the obvious, that Paizo's decision is going to influence the decision to switch of a number of gamers, they can help it succeed or fail. And it's better for the market as a whole if it succeeds. But then, I'm sure Paizo has thought about all of this, and they're actually sitting with the subscription numbers and production budget to know more about it than any of us. Which means, they'll make a better informed decision than any of us are capable of.
The thing is, people can do that with a firecube as well. The wizard could just as easily spend a large amount of time trying to decide exactly where to place it. You might think that. But frequently at tables I'm at we have to wait for someone to pull out the Steel Squire template from their bag, and then the mage carefully tries to set it so they can include most of the enemies and exclude most of their allies along one of the offset edges of the template. With a square, you can tell at a glance "I'm going to be able to get three enemies, or five and an ally". May not make the decision easier, but it at least lets the mage start thinking about the tradeoff before their turn in the initiative order. Right now, most don't bother without the template. Anyway, I'm in the camp that prefers 1-2-1-2. Have you tried 1-1-1-1? There's a not-insignificant portion of people who decided they prefer 1-1-1-1 to 1-2-1-2 after trying it a couple times.
I'm not sure where you're going here: you say that 3.5 is bad because the frost giant can just move around the fighter to attack the wizard, but then laud 4.0 because everyone gets to move more? Is 4.0 more fun because you can stop people from moving around you, when you can't in 3.5? Giving a benefit to everyone and then taking it away seems a little strange, but that's exception-based game design for you. It's giving a bucketload of advantages to everyone, then selectively giving players ways to negate specific advantages. The problem I have with 3.5 is that, by and large, I know exactly what my character is going to do in 90% of combats. With my dervish, I either 1) stand in one place, preferably with flanking, and full attack; 2) spring attack against a single foe; or 3) dervish dance, once per day. What my allies are going to do is more-or-less irrelevant to my decision--there's virtually nothing else useful I can do. With 4e combat, it seems there's a lot more options and a lot more teamwork. Fighters can stay behind and try to pull the monsters off the artillery, or rush forward and try and bottle them up before they get through. Rogues can move freely around the battlefield, focusing on specific foes, or trying to open up charge lanes or knock creatures into fireball formations. Clerics have to pay attention to everything, and figure out whether they need to throw a save over here or some additional protection over there, or if someone's winding up for a particularly powerful maneuver maybe they should help ensure it connects. Now, does 4e actually do all that? Maybe. I mean, I understand the potential, but without seeing all the classes and all the abilities it's difficult to know how everything fits together. Tactical miniatures games are fun, no doubt about it. But do they feel like D&D? We'll see, I guess. Well, that's the $64,000 question. I think as long as you have some real flexibility in how you build your character, and the out of combat stuff works and works well (meaning rituals, and skill challenges, and the like) everything will fall into place. If they don't get that right, though, I think the game will be D.O.A. And not in the fun '50s film noir way, either.
3.0 prestige class whose name I forgot and ready actions ? 3.5 core rules. Ready actions don't help, all you do is trade a standard action now for a standard action later.
You'd probably make him one of the martial classes with a reach weapon and combat reflexes. A reach weapon does not help the problem illustrated above. Actually from the description, he'd be a hireling or cohort who was made to be a PC's or NPC's bodyguard. That doesn't especially matter, does it? You use the same build rules for both.
You can't tell me that the statement cannot be found mildly insulting at the very least I don't believe my statement was any more insulting than the post I was replying to. I'll gladly grant it wasn't any less, either, but that was a large part of the point. That sounds like a problem with five foot steps and/or the way attacks of opportunity work moreso than the fighter itself. This can be resolved in 3.5 by houseruling attacks of opportunity or perhaps by giving the fighter a feat that may provide options that deal with just this situation. Yes, but I'd rather have a system that gets it right, instead of adding house rules and home-brewed feats to patch it.
You could make a fighter that was built to protect others, especially with the customization in 3.0 and 3.5, but most gamers I know didn't think of him as a "defender". All right. How about this: The "stalwart companion" is a very common fantasy trope. You know, the beefy bodyguard who accompanies the fragile wizard or the beautiful princess. The first to throw themselves in front of any danger, willing to give their life to fulfill their pledge. Using the 3.5 core rules, how would you build this character?
Remember, though, that the 3.5E fighter can do a lot of other things. He can have the high AC, he can dish out incredible damage with a two-handed power attack, or he can dash in and out of a fight from behind the rest of the party with the Spring Attack suite. Fighter also make great archers in 3.5, and archers don't want to be anywhere near the enemy ... If you are looking for a "tank" in 3.5 that controls the terrain around him and can protect his friends in the back, look at the knight, not the fighter. The knight's not a core class, which somewhat restricts its flexibility. But the broader point is that 4e is more tactically interesting than 3.5. A fighter with a high AC dealing massive 2-handed damage is going to be standing still and full attacking. A two-weapon fighter is going to be standing still and full attacking. An archer is going to be standing still and full attacking. Anyone hasted is going to be standing still and full attacking. Granted, a spring attacker is going to be moving in, single attacking, and retreating, but because everyone else on the battlefield is standing still that doesn't really help matters--especially since you can't pack a battle with a lot of low-level monsters to maneuver around without mucking up the CR. Because they've removed iterative attacks, all of a sudden everyone has a free move action every round, so there's more tactical movement from that change alone. Add in racial and class abilities that scoot people around the battlefield, and half again as many enemies on the field, and you've suddenly got a dynamic combat with tactical opportunities opening and closing all the time.
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