Toning Down Offensive Options.


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There is nothing wrong with optimizing your character. The only difference is where you draw the line between creating a useful character and one thats breaks the game through pure cheese and flimsy rules loopholes. This would of course vary from group but as long as everyone is having fun in a game that is actually challenging and not catering to every shred of self-entitlement, stick with whatever works.

As previously posted by some, AD&D is the perfect system for what you want to play.


Err... first, I don't have a problem with Save spells or the game, including optimization, the OP does.

That said, Save spells by themselves do not pose a problem to anybody. A dominate person spell isn't a problem by itself. It only affect a subset of enemies, has a saving throw, and have no "partial" success. It's the "add this and this and this" what make it so dangerous.

A dominate person casted by a enchanter specialist, with one level dip in crossblooded sorcerer of Fey and Infernal bloodline, with both DC increasing feats, the charming trait (and hat of disguise to look whatever gender you need), and then your DC starts to rock into 10+Spell level+INT+7 with the target rolling at -2. Or you could swap one of the bloodlines for serpentine, and your DC would be 2 lower, but you can dominate magical beasts, animals and monstrous humanoids (and later, undeads if you add threnodic spell feat).

So yes, it's "add this and this and this" what make it so powerful. However, that's part of the game. And a part I enjoy. It's the OP who doesn't

Sczarni

upset about someone spending 22k to kill something is sorta silly, they will quickly run out of money doing that.

Also, feel free to make a boss buff that makes them immune to certain types of spells etc.


Bluenose wrote:
gustavo iglesias wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:

Spell DCs are to high. I want a 2nd ed feel to the game where things like fireball look alot better. Thinking of eliminating ability mods to DCs and buffing saving throws like Star Wars Saga. A level 20 fighters base saves would be 12/10/10 instead of 12/6/6. A level 9 spell base DC would be 19 not 19+ ability score mod.

Unless you are getting rid of any bonus to saving throws, that means Spells are utterly useless.

A base save of 12/10/10 means that, with an average of +2 from stats, and a cloack +5 resistance (basic gear at that level), you succeed any saving throw with 2+. And that's without using other mods, such as bard's chants, cleric spells, stones of luck, save improving feats, racial bonus (like dwarf, gnomes or elfs), class bonus (such as barbarians), etc. Simply banning all the spells with save throw is faster and easier, and saves you a lot of useless math and die rolling.

Sounds like AD&D to me. High level/HD enemies are very hard to take out with a spell, so you use ones which still have an effect when the saving throw is made - Evocations, in many cases. In this case you'd want to reduce hit point totals throughout to make spell-casting worthwhile, and remove the bigger damage boosting feats at the same time. Of course you can also reduce the magic item bonus inflation, so an bonus higher than +2 would be very rare. But that would take the game closer to the AD&D feel.

Which of course is best attained by, ah, playing AD&D.

we did play 2nd ed again the other day and the group enjoyed it. We have bought a few of the PF hard covers now and 2nd ed while fun for 1 offs I don't think I would want to go back to it full time except maybe as a break.


I do get the hatred of save or die spells, and they generally don't exist in my worlds. I might use one as a ploton, thoug-- wizard has to quest to create a 'Bob, save or die,' spell, but it only works on Bob, because that's what the story is about. I especially don't like using them on players, since I don't think a characters life should come down to one roll. (But then, coming back from the dead is extremely rare/hard to do in my games, so it balances out)

I really don't understand how a GM could ever complain about damage output. It makes no sense. It is absolutely the easiest thing to balance against. Creatures dying too fast? Abracadabra, creatures now get X bonus hp so they get to live a bit longer! Taking from players to accomplish something that can be fixed by better encounter design is just flat out poor DMing.


With 12 years of being a forever DM I can design encounters fine.

The fact you need to work hard at encounters may indicate the problem isn't with the encounters anyway.


Vestrial wrote:
Taking from players to accomplish something that can be fixed by better encounter design is just flat out poor DMing.

Brave words on these forums but I agree entirely.


DM has to have fun as well though and if players are wrecking house with the same old stuff they have been abusing since forever. 12 years of DMing, 11 years of power attack, spell DCs and rapid shot being involved in most of the broken builds. THose feats are just superior to the other feats hence why I'm looking at toning them down.


I think the easier solution is to talk with the players and ask them to tone down.

If they don't want to tone down, then your effort is pointless. They'll break the encounters regardless, just using other spells (again, those without save such as Black Tentacles, bigby hand or wall of force), or overpowering damage without Power attack. In the apex combat of Kingmaker's campaign, we shut down the BBEEG in one full round (after a couple rounds maneouvering), because the Bard cast Irresistible Dance on her (save doesn't matter, it shut downs you anyways for 1 round) and I, the fighter of the group, cut her in pieces. I made 275 hp of damage, and I didn't even use power attack (her AC was very high, it was better to use regular attacks and let the itterative attacks connect).

So if you aren't happy with current game enviroment, I suggest you to talk to your players and tell them to tone down. Play with 15 point buy characters, (or use iconics), play a low magic item campaign, etc. Talk to them, and convince them to step back. Otherwise, they'll trump over the nerf and just will find another way to wreck your encounters.


My players are very good about it and actually want things toned down. The game usually crashes and burns because I basically don't want to DM anymore past level 10. Used to get up to level 21 or so but it starts taking to much time to design things to make it work.

Evards Black Tentacles is basically banned. Not sure what the bigger offender is. Save DCs or numerous spells. Tweaking the DC was alot easier than rewriting all of the problem spells.

We did actually have a big list of banned stuff and they have toned down the offensive stuff anyway.


Have you checked some other variant? 5th edition playtest might be a place to start, spells are toned down a lot there. I think 13th Age also did it.


I think you should start with changing poor save progression and see how that works for you for a few games.

Honestly I really don't have that many issues with the PF version of power attack which is much simpler than the 3.x version and is much less open to abuse.

Considering that the martial characters pretty much just have one schtick, "killing things", and HPs went up so dramatically between editions I'm pretty much okay with martial characters being able to kill monsters pretty quick.

Honestly while Power Attack is a great feat it's really not that far out of the norm in terms of offensive feats.


vuron wrote:
Honestly while Power Attack is a great feat it's really not that far out of the norm in terms of offensive feats.

In the last fight of Kingmaker, I didn't power attack because Nyrissa has such a big AC (51 to start with). I managed to do 375hp to her in a full round, (admitedly with a bit of luck, yes), but made me wonder why spending a feat in power attack then. There's not that much enemies that can survive 375+ hp per full round anyways, I'd rather have Improved Iron Will :/

Still usefull for rounds where you can't full round, and as a prerequiste for Cleave (that's a damn good feat),so it's a good feat to have. But it's not such a broken thing as the OP thinks. Even without Power Attack, you can stack a damn high amount of passive bonus damage already. I think I was dealing like 2d6+40 or so without power attack (including buffs like the Bard's song)


Zardnaar wrote:


DM has to have fun as well though and if players are wrecking house with the same old stuff they have been abusing since forever. 12 years of DMing, 11 years of power attack, spell DCs and rapid shot being involved in most of the broken builds. THose feats are just superior to the other feats hence why I'm looking at toning them down.

So really it has nothing to do with power. You're just bored with hearing 'I power attack for X,' or 'I rapid shot!' and want to limit the players' options. That's fine, I guess, but don't pretend it's about balance, or that it can't be solved in a less adversarial way than, 'I'm taking your toys and going home!'

I'd probably be pretty sick of hearing a lot of things if I'd been playing 3x-PF for 11 straight years, lol. Take a break, play something else. There are about a million other great games out there...

Grand Lodge

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Zardnaar wrote:

With 12 years of being a forever DM I can design encounters fine.

The fact you need to work hard at encounters may indicate the problem isn't with the encounters anyway.

Once again, just because you have been doing something for a long time doesn't mean you are actually GOOD at it. Nothing you have posted so far leads me to believe that you understand good encounter designs...much less you are any good it. In fact your next couple of posts kinda leads me to think that you are actually NOT good at it.

The fact that you have to work so hard at it may mean that you do not know what you are doing nearly as much as you think you do.


Vestrial wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:


DM has to have fun as well though and if players are wrecking house with the same old stuff they have been abusing since forever. 12 years of DMing, 11 years of power attack, spell DCs and rapid shot being involved in most of the broken builds. THose feats are just superior to the other feats hence why I'm looking at toning them down.

So really it has nothing to do with power. You're just bored with hearing 'I power attack for X,' or 'I rapid shot!' and want to limit the players' options. That's fine, I guess, but don't pretend it's about balance, or that it can't be solved in a less adversarial way than, 'I'm taking your toys and going home!'

I'd probably be pretty sick of hearing a lot of things if I'd been playing 3x-PF for 11 straight years, lol. Take a break, play something else. There are about a million other great games out there...

We have actually playtested alot of the changes either houseruled into 3.5/PF or via Star Wars Saga which uses the extra dice of damage version of rapid shot as opposed to the extra attacks. SWSE more or less stripped out the spellcasting system and that solved a huge amount of problems with 3.5/PF right there. 4th ed tried fixing things but went about it horribly wrong and thats whywe're playing PF as its better than 3.5 for the most part. Saga also used the half level to saves (well defenses) that we have tried before. Its helps but yeah spellcasters still break things.

I can also design encounters fine but its not alot of fun when a spell or critical it can more or less wreck it. At times I was spending more time designing encounters than it takes the PCs to kill everything. I do not like excessive metagaming against the players ie if they all take melee builds use magic and ranged encounters alot. I do it on occasion but not all of the time. Alot of the power gamer builds in the advice section also will not work that well in my games because of the way I do design encounters and have about 1rd combat/1 3rd RP/ 1 3rd world buildingin my campaigns. Being bale to clobber something for 2d4+20/15-20 crit range is all cute and everythig, not so usefull for a DC25 skill check or whatever.

Liberty's Edge

I guess there are two aspects you want to tweak. Save-or-suck spells and melee damage vs hps.

Melee damage is easy. I guess its unwise to tweak the damage side, rather tweak the HPs. DnD 4th did this somewhat, where a 2nd level boss had like 150 hps. I didn't like it, we ended up surrounding the boss for 7 rounds just taking turns rolling attacks, but that's the other way to go. Either 4 DPS characters are going to focus on the boss and take it down quickly, or they beat on the boss awhile. You as a DM can adjust this either direction, and its pretty easy to tweak.

On a surface level, spells are just as easy to tweak, but if you make it so rare to fail a save the players are likely to just stop using those spells. That's a net loss I guess, and probably why people are so against it. Its fun to cast spells, and the players should succeed fairly often. Instead of tweaking success rates, I'd suggest tweaking the status effects. Sleep is no fun for anybody. Maybe the most powerful spell effects should be like shaken - a penalty but not taking someone just out of the fight.

I think the hardest part of high level play comes from stacking bonuses and penalties. A high level char might have natural, enhancement, insight, morale, divine, and then feat/trait bonuses, and then be running with haste, concealment, holy weapons, etc. Now, most players get a lot of fun from finding all these sources and balancing all the options. You could limit this to say only two buff spells can be running at a time, and house rule that there are less sources that can be applied. Roll all those enhancement, insight, divine, etc into "supernatural" and only the most powerful applies. Now you're back to a lower level of optimization, like low-level play when the characters only had access to a few sources.


I think the primary source of the OP's problems is that he likes a different edition of D&D than his players do. Maybe OP and his friends should just find a system that everyone likes and play that instead.


Scray thinking of limiting the buff spells to 1 and reducing stacking stuff.


If you must reduce the buff spells, reduce them to 2. Half the time - or more so, if your players are as obsessive about not having odd numbers with their point-buy as I tend to be - a single-point buff will do nothing because it won't offer any increase. A +2 bonus to a stat at least gives +1 to the related effects - reduced from the normal +4/+2, but not useless half to three-quarters of the time.

Dark Archive

Guilty of not reading whole thread. Sorry if this is repeated.

What do you give your players? You do not give stuff like free extra feats/gear do you? Or other extra like die bumps/free reroll each game/player rewards cards. Point buy value? All that stuff adds up.

I was amazed at how some people give point buys as high as 36. Remember that iconics are built on 15 point buy, Pathfinder society is 20 point buy. You have to have a really good reason to go beyond 20 point buy. Really lucky die rolls for stats are also a formula for troublesome PCs.

Are the players just frequently lucky almost always rolling over ten while you have the reverse?

Do you read the spells/feat/items, ect that your players use or just trust them. I saw games where DMs were nice enough to let players use stuff the DM could not be bothered to read/learn and it resulted in cheating. I like to think it was just misunderstanding and not deliberate but it was cheating none the less. When I pointed out wrong doing, I was accused of ruining the game and dragging things out. You really do have to understand what your players are using and check for both errata and F.A.Q.s on the stuff. Or at least delegate those duties to other players and have them watchdog/cover each other.

You do realize level ten and up is suppose to make the players look like they are incredible right? I don't like playing/DMing beyond level 10 or so but I figure players who earned all that Xperia deserve to play those characters at least a little.


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I hated getting all the way to level 17 only to have the group say 'good job everyone, lets go play somthing else'...

I finally get my character where I want them and now its time to stop playing them? come on!

Pathfinder is notoriously much worse for this. It seems like nobody wants a double digit campaign ever. I swear I'm almost positive I read somewhere that every single class in pathfinder actually has information on levels 8-20... And I've even found stuff in the bestiaries that would stomp an optimized level 8... I'm almost sure of it!


That's largely because the game math basically breaks down after about 12th level and gets more and more sketchy past 15th. You can certainly play past that point but it requires more and more time on the part of the GM to balance encounters. It's also a bear to write APs that handle 15+ effectively which is why most APs tend to end around that point.

PF made some improvements to high level play in terms of logisitics but it still tends to turn into rocket launcher tag after a certain point and most people don't really care for that.

Reducing offensive prowess might solve some of those issues but it's a really difficult balancing act.


I am going to try and be helpful.

Your concerns seem to be focused around the boredom, and seeing the same three items as problems.

I will attempt to address them.

Item 1 (Power Attack):

Suggestion: To solve your objection that you feel "Everyone always takes this" and it is "Overpowered", I would suggest simply banning the feat.

Repercussions: This will lower the damage generated by melee combatants. I suspect it will result in more Archers and other ranged characters in your game simply due to the fact that their damage will now be higher.

Corrections needed: The minimum required for this change is to remove Power Attack as a prerequisite from anything that requires it. You may also need to adjust any pre-made encounters you use and any bestiary monsters, however this should only be done on a case by case basis.

Item 2 (Rapid Shot):

Suggestion: To solve your objection that you feel "Everyone always takes this" and it is "Overpowered", I would suggest simply banning the feat. I would also suggest banning Deadly Aim as well if you are removing Power Attack.

Repercussions: This will lower the damage generated by Ranged combatants. Even with the removal of Rapid Shot, and Deadly Aim, I still suspect that you will see more Ranged combatants than melee.

Corrections needed: The minimum required for this change is to remove Rapid shot and Deadly Aim as a prerequisite from anything that requires them. You may also need to adjust any pre-made encounters you use and any bestiary monsters, however this should only be done on a case by case basis.

Item 3 (Spell DC's):

Suggestion: You seem to believe spell DC's are too high. To address this you have suggested removing the ability modifier from the DC.

Repercussions: Assuming an optimized caster (20 starting Int, Spell Focus, Greater Spell Focus, Best Int Booster at every opportunity) versus a person with a +1 trait bonus, +2 Feat Bonus, +1 Ability Score Bonus, a cloak equal to ((level-3)/2) round down Minimum one starting at level four and a good save, you end up with non-elemental spells having a 75% failure rate at levels 1-10 and a 90% failure rate at levels 11-20. Elemental spells of the type you take elemental spell focus in will have a failure rate of about 65% in levels 1-10 and 80% in levels 11-20. This all starts at level five of course when you can acquire these feats.

This is assuming your casters take all four possible Spell Focus feats.

I would recommend removing those feats as well if you do this however, so as to prevent a player from selecting what have now become trap feats.

I would also suggest removing all spells that offer a saving throw from the game.

This will lead to very different casters however.

Most casters will favor ray or buff spells, simply due to the fact that those are the only spells that can work.

Most pure casters will be completely useless.

Corrections needed: The inflict line of spells will be even more worthless negative energy clerics should be compensated.

All casters will be much weaker to the point where you may need to rewrite each of them individually.

Honestly you will need to remove or rewrite most of the spells in the game.

In short melee damage will drop, and Casters will be pure buff machines.

I believe you will have a hard time getting players to run casters in this game and NPC casters will be worthless.

Liberty's Edge

Zardnaar wrote:
EWHM wrote:
What he wants I suspect are mid and high level conflicts that last more than a round or two before they become a foregone conclusion. The damage output (counting SOS/SOD as 'damage') is really high as a ratio vs the damage resistance compared to previous editions. My suggestion is to either heavily constrain how 'optimized' your PCs are allowed to be (making sure to remember that magic user optimization is largely done at character creation, not so much in feat selection), or alternately go back to 1st or 2nd edition---which I do from time to time.

This. I don't want the 1-3 round rocket tag battles that 3.5 and PF tend to have after a few levels.

A 2nd ed fireball the other day was more or less a mass save or die. PF monsters have more hit points than 2nd ed ones though and DCs on save or dies are kinda high. I don't care if a disnterate spell kills somone out right and turns them to dust but its not looking good for the poor rogue who cops it (or the fighter who gets hit with dominate etc).

Your problem seem to be the characteristic bonuses.

Try removing the magic items giving them and the possibility to get inherent bonuses to the characteristics.
Save DC will not change for low level play but they will by about 2 points at level 10, 3-4 at level 15.
Hit points would be lower but damage output and to hit will be lower too; again it will make little difference at low level but it would have a increasing effect as the character level increase.

You can keep or remove spells like bull's strength or fox's cunning. The duration is short enough that they will be used for important fights, no as a constant boost.

Liberty's Edge

gustavo iglesias wrote:

Will edit the post to change "rules" for "DM's perceived sense of balance".

That said, "intended parts of the game" and "parts of the game under the rules" aren't interchangeable. I doubt the intended design for a BBEG that is the apex of a 17th level AP is to die without taking a single action. It's legal, but it's an unintended subproduct of the rules bad design, not it's intended conclusion. For example, that you can defeat the tarrasque with a portable hole, a bag of holding, mage hand and minor image is legit, but it's not intended. Portable holes and bag of holdings weren't designed to be *offensive* nuclear weapons, that's a side effect of a rule made to avoid stacking dimensional bags ad infinitum.

You know that mage hand can't move magical items?

PRD wrote:


Target one nonmagical, unattended object weighing up to 5 lbs.

More often than not that kind of trick require the use to forget some small piece of the rules.

Other little things that make that trick not working:
- you must put the bag into a portable hole, not vice versa and even the smallish bag of holding weight too much for mage hand;
- mage hand is a tractor/pressor beam, it isn't capable to manipulate an item, so you can't open a portable hole.

Telekinesis can manipulate the items the way that you want, not mage hand.

- last but not least little problem, the 30'*30' Tarrasque will not the sucked in a 10' radius hole.


We use the stat array. Last party that was a start again.

Paladin with keen falcion
War Cleric, power attack, buff, two handed sword
Archer ranger
Rogue IIRC?

Rapid Shot 2.0.
-2 to hit, extra dice of damage.

Power Attack 2.0 (and varients)
-2/+2, -2/+3 w/two handed weapon.

Ditching the idea about no more mod adjustmet to DCs. Buffing saves.

Saves at level 20.

Fighter +12/+10/+10, 4 skill points level, revamped skill list.

Wizard +10/+10/+12

Rogue +10/+12/+10

You get the idea anyway. Probably ban a few spells and keen weapon ability.


Raymond Lambert wrote:

Guilty of not reading whole thread. Sorry if this is repeated.

What do you give your players? You do not give stuff like free extra feats/gear do you? Or other extra like die bumps/free reroll each game/player rewards cards. Point buy value? All that stuff adds up.

I was amazed at how some people give point buys as high as 36. Remember that iconics are built on 15 point buy, Pathfinder society is 20 point buy. You have to have a really good reason to go beyond 20 point buy. Really lucky die rolls for stats are also a formula for troublesome PCs.

This. AP are balanced toward 15 point buys. I one-shoted the BBEG of Kingmaker campaign in a full round, with a 15 point buy character without hero-points, cards, or other stuff except Core and APG. If you let the players build characters with 30 points, or roll 5d6 take 3, 7 times and take 6 better, repeat if you don't get a 17+, then of course they are going to be overpowered.


Raymond Lambert wrote:

I was amazed at how some people give point buys as high as 36. Remember that iconics are built on 15 point buy, Pathfinder society is 20 point buy. You have to have a really good reason to go beyond 20 point buy. Really lucky die rolls for stats are also a formula for troublesome PCs.

The Iconics are built with a 20 Point Buy last I seen. Now the AP/Module Pre-Gens might be on a 15 but the PFS Societies and the NPC Codex versions are on a 20 PBS.


On encounters as a dm I have thrown a variety of enemies at players over the years, sometimes sliding into repetition.

Not the latest game though, ha ha, no I've brought out a lot of old iconic monsters and really varied the types. Sometimes they get countered, other times they are the counter and it is a breeze. Lot of poison, beasts, oozes, beholders, crawlers and ankhegs, great monsters.


I actually have found that the races can be the same, you just need to vary their builds and such.

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