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...huge amount of discussion totally ignored...
Going back to the OP's question/statement, a great rule of thumb is, "Perform your most common full-round action on yourself. If the result is that you are disabled or dead, you do too much damage."
Can your barbarian withstand a full-round attack from himself while raging?
Can your wizard make the obscene Will save to prevent himself from being disabled for the combat?
It's silly, but a great measurement of a gaming system is, "How long would it take you to defeat yourself?"
I know that our particular group would take several rounds to defeat themselves, while I've seen barbarian builds that would utterly destroy themselves in a single round.
So if your build is such that, with a completely average roll on every die, you single-round yourself, then you're doing "too much damage".
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...huge amount of discussion totally ignored...Going back to the OP's question/statement, a great rule of thumb is, "Perform your most common full-round action on yourself. If the result is that you are disabled or dead, you do too much damage."
Can your barbarian withstand a full-round attack from himself while raging?
Can your wizard make the obscene Will save to prevent himself from being disabled for the combat?It's silly, but a great measurement of a gaming system is, "How long would it take you to defeat yourself?"
I know that our particular group would take several rounds to defeat themselves, while I've seen barbarian builds that would utterly destroy themselves in a single round.
So if your build is such that, with a completely average roll on every die, you single-round yourself, then you're doing "too much damage".
Wildly enough this does seem like a valid metric.
If as a player "you don't want me to build critters to do this to you then don't build pc's that do it to me" seems a great basis for a co-op game.
The only time you are doing "too much damage" is when you regularly do more damage than a level-appropriate enemy has hit points. Once you get that far, you really should start investing your remaining resources elsewhere, rather than into more damage.
Min-maxing. :D
...huge amount of discussion totally ignored...Going back to the OP's question/statement, a great rule of thumb is, "Perform your most common full-round action on yourself. If the result is that you are disabled or dead, you do too much damage."
Can your barbarian withstand a full-round attack from himself while raging?
Can your wizard make the obscene Will save to prevent himself from being disabled for the combat?It's silly, but a great measurement of a gaming system is, "How long would it take you to defeat yourself?"
I know that our particular group would take several rounds to defeat themselves, while I've seen barbarian builds that would utterly destroy themselves in a single round.
So if your build is such that, with a completely average roll on every die, you single-round yourself, then you're doing "too much damage".
Wildly enough this does seem like a valid metric.
If as a player "you don't want me to build critters to do this to you then don't build pc's that do it to me" seems a great basis for a co-op game.
Oh, as veterans of at least a dozen gaming "systems" it's the first thing we check.
It's a great sanity check to make sure it's not just Yet Another Rocket Tag Game. (YARTG, which is kind of like a pirate getting hit by a poison dart...)
...huge amount of discussion totally ignored...Going back to the OP's question/statement, a great rule of thumb is, "Perform your most common full-round action on yourself. If the result is that you are disabled or dead, you do too much damage."
Can your barbarian withstand a full-round attack from himself while raging?
Can your wizard make the obscene Will save to prevent himself from being disabled for the combat?It's silly, but a great measurement of a gaming system is, "How long would it take you to defeat yourself?"
I know that our particular group would take several rounds to defeat themselves, while I've seen barbarian builds that would utterly destroy themselves in a single round.
So if your build is such that, with a completely average roll on every die, you single-round yourself, then you're doing "too much damage".
In a gestalt game (Pathfinder Beta rules) our party encountered our "evil" selves via a mirror of opposition. My fighter/rogue 1-rounded the "evil" pally/sorcerer and he in turn 1-rounded my "evil" fighter/rogue. It was pretty poetic. But I digress.
When you calculate your damage, do you assume no crits and all attacks hit? Just wondering how you judge damage. Our party's barbarian has a ton of hps (well over 200 when raging at level 14) and could not in any way kill herself in 1 round (even with critting with her two-handed longsword 3 times) that I can see. Her average standard-buffs non-crit damage is around 35 or so.
My archer bard, on the other hand, has a high AC, lousy hit points, and a lot of attacks. If I assume that all 5 of my arrows per round hit and do average damage with standard buffs up (inspire courage and good hope are generally round 1 buffs) I do over 100 hit points which is well above my puny 94 hit points at level 14 (yes, I have rolled poorly throughout my career). But it is highly unlikely that my character would hit my AC with regularity, while the barbarian is virtually guaranteed to hit herself 95% of the time.
So I like the rule of thumb but wonder how you might judge the two situations above. Thanks!
...huge amount of discussion totally ignored...Going back to the OP's question/statement, a great rule of thumb is, "Perform your most common full-round action on yourself. If the result is that you are disabled or dead, you do too much damage."
Can your barbarian withstand a full-round attack from himself while raging?
Can your wizard make the obscene Will save to prevent himself from being disabled for the combat?It's silly, but a great measurement of a gaming system is, "How long would it take you to defeat yourself?"
I know that our particular group would take several rounds to defeat themselves, while I've seen barbarian builds that would utterly destroy themselves in a single round.
So if your build is such that, with a completely average roll on every die, you single-round yourself, then you're doing "too much damage".
In a gestalt game (Pathfinder Beta rules) our party encountered our "evil" selves via a mirror of opposition. My fighter/rogue 1-rounded the "evil" pally/sorcerer and he in turn 1-rounded my "evil" fighter/rogue. It was pretty poetic. But I digress.
When you calculate your damage, do you assume no crits and all attacks hit? Just wondering how you judge damage. Our party's barbarian has a ton of hps (well over 200 when raging at level 14) and could not in any way kill herself in 1 round (even with critting with her two-handed longsword 3 times) that I can see. Her average standard-buffs non-crit damage is around 35 or so.
My archer bard, on the other hand, has a high AC, lousy hit points, and a lot of attacks. If I assume that all 5 of my arrows per round hit and do average damage with standard buffs up (inspire courage and good hope are generally round 1 buffs) I do over 100 hit points which is well above my puny 94 hit points at level 14 (yes, I have rolled poorly throughout my career). But it is highly unlikely that my character would hit my AC with regularity, while the barbarian is virtually guaranteed to hit...
Most of the time, people assume an average hit & crit rate versus a given AC, such as the Median AC of a CR+2 "challenging" encounter. Stats for that sort of thing can be found here.
Thanks for the links about DPR calculators. It doesn't sound like that is what NobodysHome is using, though. Perhaps I'm wrong. I kind of assumed NH was "eyeballing" it to see, if I attacked myself for 1 round would I deal more damage than I have hit points? Just curious what method he used. Thanks!
Thanks for the links about DPR calculators. It doesn't sound like that is what NobodysHome is using, though. Perhaps I'm wrong. I kind of assumed NH was "eyeballing" it to see, if I attacked myself for 1 round would I deal more damage than I have hit points? Just curious what method he used. Thanks!
I assume every die comes up average.
Every d20 rolls a 10.5. Every d6 rolls a 3.5. And so forth.
If you're a melee character who can one-round yourself under those circumstances, there's really an issue.
If the d20 ends up with nothing but misses, then you start using a normal distribution and calculating average damage and all that, but that's usually way more work than I want to put in.
"Let's see. My hasted fighter gets 5 attacks, hits himself on a 7 or better with his first attack, and crits on a 15-20. So let's assume 3 hits including one crit. Does that kill him?"
You're right. It's much more "eyeballing" and rule of thumb than doing serious probability calculations.
But I've found that in systems where offense is so much greater than defense, combats tend to be too short and lack the excitement of the "ebb and flow" of battle. Or people just drop like flies on both sides and the people who get dropped get frustrated.
I like to see PCs who take about 3 rounds to knock themselves out...
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It's silly, but a great measurement of a gaming system is, "How long would it take you to defeat yourself?"
Even that measure fails when you have a character that deals high damage while maintaining a high AC. You wind up with a character that one-rounds most opponents, but would need a natural 20 to hit himself.
If the d20 ends up with nothing but misses, then you start using a normal distribution and calculating average damage and all that, but that's usually way more work than I want to put in.
Just a note — the distribution of d20 rolls is not the normal (Gaussian) distribution, but the uniform distribution. (This makes a difference; the normal distribution has many 10s and 11s but few 1s and 20s; the uniform distribution has as many 1s as 20s as 10s as 15s etc.)
I find myself wanting to see some actual play from these games, where every combat encounter is resolved in 3 rounds. I'm still uncertain how exactly this stance, that combat is over the moment it starts, has become so prevalent among the boardposters.
-Nearyn
Well... Very often, a spell decides the battle on round 1... But even without that, I've seen a simple 2-handed Ranger with Power Attack consistently one-shot CR-appropriate enemies.
Barbarians and Fighters do it even more often. It's really not very difficult... Martials deal lots of damage, too bad their in-combat versatility is so limited.
I'm of the opinion that damage and SoL effects should be toned down, but martials should get more mobility and in-combat options (e.g.: characters would be able to move and full attack, maneuvers would no longer provoke AoO, Power Attack and Combat expertise would be combat options rather than feats, etc).
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I find myself wanting to see some actual play from these games, where every combat encounter is resolved in 3 rounds. I'm still uncertain how exactly this stance, that combat is over the moment it starts, has become so prevalent among the boardposters.
The one time I saw it, we had 6 super-optimized PCs (everything from any PF book was allowed, and a 25 pt buy) vs standard AP encounters.
Not a style I enjoy.
i wouldn't say it was 6 25 point PCs with access to every PF resource that did it, because the most powerful material is in the core rulebook under the cleric, druid and wizard entries
i would say it is the fact that the AP line is designed to be so easy, that an innatentive 10 year old elementary schooler could clear it on his or her first campaign.
you can get around it by simply having your opposing combatant team use the gear and consumables in their treasure allotment and generally converting unused monster wealth into cheap consumables or magic items.
fights are usually in mop up mode by Round 2, rounds 3 and after usually amount to going through the motions of a janitor. the only time this isn't truly the case, is when the DM fudges dice or tacks on extra hit points to extend cleanup, as Weekly William has done before. but Weekly William is more likely to use waves to extend encounters, but a new wave might as well be a new fight.My experience is totally different. Most intelligent adversaries keep the distance, try to minimize damage and so on.
The fight with the wizard with fly, mirror image, some summoned critter on the door of the room in which he is and several other defensive spells rarely reach the "mop up point" in a couple of rounds.
Same thing for the large number of creatures with darkness or deeper darkness and the ability to see in them.
Incorporeal creatures hiding in the walls and using spring attack.
Etc., etc.No need to fudge dices or hit points when clever tactics are sufficient.
those are mostly corner cases that are rarely used and aren't something you base the theme of an encounter around. i won't say why, but not every group uses those things but i can think of some counters for some of them
the wizard with fly, mirror image, a summoned critter and a bunch of defensive spells, summoned critters are easy to kill, and will buy you a round at best, fly has a short duration that will eventually falter as does mirror image, and well, the wizard would save those defenses for when he expects combat, party just grabs their stop watches and awaits the expiration of the buffs, or turns the wizard into a pincushion, because he can't fly very high indoors, and flight usually denies cover, leading to pincushion, and how many mirror images did the wizard honestly prepare? plus casting a spell from behind a door would entitle a perception check to hear the verbal components and a spellcraft check to identify the spell. flight isn't a good idea indoors
creatures that can see in deeper darkness and spam it, luckily a heightened to 4th level ioun torch is 355 gold pieces and trumps any deeper darkness effects while keeping a hand free. even without the Ioun Torch heightened to 4th level, Darkvision still pierces darkness and deeper darkness, because all they do, is lower the lighting level, they don't create magical darkness anymore. plus even if i couldn't see them due to Fiat, i could still make reactive perception checks as a free action to pinpoint their square and shoot them with a miss chance. but the heightened to 4th level ioun torch usurps any monstrous deeper darkness as a permanent item
incorporeal creature spring attacking through walls, let me show you the ghost touch net, incorporeal foe due to lacking strength autofails any attempt to break free, is entangled by a net that won't phase with it, so it can't hide in walls, and with halved speed, it isn't going to spring attack very well
need to damage the incorporeal foe after i hit it's pathetic touch AC with a ghost touch net? oils of magic weapon are 50 gold a pop or 25 gold to craft, even if we don't craft them, they are cheap to buy and and deal half damage to incorporeal foes instead of half miss chance. so i still hit it normally, for half damage. most incorporeals don't have a lot of HP, and by the round the readied net binds them, they might as well not be able to really do anything, so killing them becomes 5ish rounds of mop up
I find myself wanting to see some actual play from these games, where every combat encounter is resolved in 3 rounds. I'm still uncertain how exactly this stance, that combat is over the moment it starts, has become so prevalent among the boardposters.
The one time I saw it, we had 6 super-optimized PCs (everything from any PF book was allowed, and a 25 pt buy) vs standard AP encounters.
Not a style I enjoy.
Let's say you have a 5 man party. Two are DPR monsters and the rest are casters.<----What I currently have to deal with.
Knowledge money identifies monster and know most if not all of its weakness and strengths.
2 of the caster might go ahead of the bad guys and lay down a buff or debuff as appropriate, or drop an AoE that takes away a decent but amount of HP.
Monsters one and two go. If they try to force saves the party likely makes saves. If they attack in melee the barbarian has so many HP he does not care if he is hit and he has DR.
The super high AC guy does not get hit.
Barbarian pounces and destroys monster one. If he does not die, then he will likely die in round 2.
The super high AC guy either destroys monster 2 or moves into melee range and gets his one attack, but the monster is still up.
Caster 3 might drop a high DC SoS, or drop more damage ensuring that two of them drop in round 2.
At this point at least 1 monster is below 25% of its hit points.
Another is likely below 75.
The third one is likely between 80 and 100%.
Round 2.
Caster 1 and 2 use SoS or drop more damage. This normally takes one monster out of rotation. It is normally the one with the most hit points.
Monsters 1 and 2 attack, and they might even do decent damage, but not likely.
Barbarian kills his opponent.
Super AC guy kills his opponent, or has him almost dead.
Caster 3 finishes off monster 2.
Monster 3 is affected by some SoS. He is either unable to act or not able to be effective so it does not really matter at this point.
Round 3 they focus fire and kill(defeat) him.
Even if the fight gets past round 3 the fight is in mop up stage, and it wont go past round 5 barring some a few nat 1's by the PC's delaying the inevitable. <----That has happened before, but depending on multiple nat 1's is not a good strategy for survival.
We have a 6-man party currently going through Carrion Crown. We use 25-point buy for our characters, but the GM compensates by giving enemies max hit points (side note: when I GM for this group I tend to give enemies the advanced template to compensate). I think in some cases the GM has increased the number of enemies but it hasn't been universal.
We are not super-optimized by any means, but all characters are capable and some are very effective. We have an invulnerable rager barbarian, a cleric/holy vindicator (with a very-high AC most of the time), a bard/fighter archer (more bard than fighter), a life oracle, a universalist wizard, and a scout rogue.
The main reason we have combats that take longer than three rounds or so is due to bad dice rolling on our part (the barbarian once didn't hit her opponent for 2 full rounds while full attacking, poor thing) or the GM throwing several individual encounters at us all at once. It's not hard to be offensively powerful in Pathfinder.
I find myself wanting to see some actual play from these games, where every combat encounter is resolved in 3 rounds. I'm still uncertain how exactly this stance, that combat is over the moment it starts, has become so prevalent among the boardposters.
The one time I saw it, we had 6 super-optimized PCs (everything from any PF book was allowed, and a 25 pt buy) vs standard AP encounters.
Not a style I enjoy.
i wouldn't say it was 6 25 point PCs with access to every PF resource that did it, because the most powerful material is in the core rulebook under the cleric, druid and wizard entries
No doubt those base classes are some of the best, but things like Blood Money can really boost a Wizard. Not to mention Dazing spells, the trick with clear spindle IOUN stones, Crossblooded, and so forth.
No doubt those base classes are some of the best, but things like Blood Money can really boost a Wizard. Not to mention Dazing spells, the trick with clear spindle IOUN stones, Crossblooded, and so forth.I find myself wanting to see some actual play from these games, where every combat encounter is resolved in 3 rounds. I'm still uncertain how exactly this stance, that combat is over the moment it starts, has become so prevalent among the boardposters.
The one time I saw it, we had 6 super-optimized PCs (everything from any PF book was allowed, and a 25 pt buy) vs standard AP encounters.
Not a style I enjoy.
i wouldn't say it was 6 25 point PCs with access to every PF resource that did it, because the most powerful material is in the core rulebook under the cleric, druid and wizard entries
If we're talking about blood money, then we shouldn't forget sacred geometry. They are both non PRD.
... then we shouldn't forget sacred geometry. ..
I just read that. Now my brain hurts.
Seriously. I had to pull out a notepad just to figure out how powerful it potentially was.... then we shouldn't forget sacred geometry. ..I just read that. Now my brain hurts.
Someone over at Giant In The Playground actually wrote a proof that with 14 ranks in Knowledge: Engineering, it is always possible to succeed the check.
Also, the feat that allows you to use d8s instead of d6s makes you less likely to succeed. Bravo, Paizo.
...huge amount of discussion totally ignored...Going back to the OP's question/statement, a great rule of thumb is, "Perform your most common full-round action on yourself. If the result is that you are disabled or dead, you do too much damage."
Can your barbarian withstand a full-round attack from himself while raging?
Can your wizard make the obscene Will save to prevent himself from being disabled for the combat?It's silly, but a great measurement of a gaming system is, "How long would it take you to defeat yourself?"
I know that our particular group would take several rounds to defeat themselves, while I've seen barbarian builds that would utterly destroy themselves in a single round.
So if your build is such that, with a completely average roll on every die, you single-round yourself, then you're doing "too much damage".
1st level Barbarian with greatsword and 14 strength before rage and power attack.
Single swing = 16 average damage while raging. He needs at least a 16 con with only a 14 strength and power attack to not be disabled in one strike.
That's counting rage hp on a barbarian (14 + Con modifier). Anyone else is going to be vastly less. This measurement system doesn't look like it even works at ground floor, much less on up.
DC's on a 1st level spell like color spray with a 16 int and no spell focus or racial is 14. Most pc's don't have a +4 will save at level 1, even when investing points and traits, unless they're already high will save or have wisdom as a casting stat (which means they're always high will save anyways).
So a wizard or sorcerer with a 12 wisdom has a 50/50 shot of one shotting himself with color spray if they take no spell focus and only have a 16, no racial bonus, in their casting stat.
Exactly. None of the other gaming systems I've played with great regularity (Runequest II or 6, Call of Cthulu, Champions) have a situation where a starting character with absolutely ordinary equipment can have mediocre stats, roll utterly middle-of-the-road on all dice, and take himself out.
So the OP asked, "Is damage in PF too high?"
The answer is, "From level 1, PCs put out more damage than they can take."
It's the only gaming system with which I'm familiar where this is true (though I seem to recall high-tech games like Shadowrun suffered from this as well).
And as levels go up, the ability to do damage outpaces the ability to absorb it.
It's just an observation and information with regards to the question, rather than a judgement or indictment of the system.
EDIT: I personally LIKE the notion that you're "badder" than all the other humans/elves/whatever in your village, and it takes monsters to stop you. But it means those monsters have to have DR/lots of hit points to get in your way...
A very nice breakdown of some combat
Thanks for breaking it down wraithstrike. I probably just have to witness some of these games to fully grasp what kind of steamrolling people appear to think is norm. I'll be the first to admit my players are not min-maxers. They optimize, sure, their characters are very good at what they do, but I don't think they're up late trying to find the best way to maximize their output. I say this because usually my players take several rounds to deal with level appropriate encounters, although there is, and will always be exceptions. Some times it takes longer, some times the encounter does end fast.
When I look back through my maptool campaign file (and all the initiative cleanup I have not done #shamefuldisplay), I find that the initiative tracker for most combats nest at around 5-8 rounds.
Perhaps if I find some play-by-post threads and read through them I'll see where the difference is.
-Nearyn
Exactly. None of the other gaming systems I've played with great regularity (Runequest II or 6, Call of Cthulu, Champions) have a situation where a starting character with absolutely ordinary equipment can have mediocre stats, roll utterly middle-of-the-road on all dice, and take himself out.
So the OP asked, "Is damage in PF too high?"
The answer is, "From level 1, PCs put out more damage than they can take."
It's the only gaming system with which I'm familiar where this is true (though I seem to recall high-tech games like Shadowrun suffered from this as well).
And as levels go up, the ability to do damage outpaces the ability to absorb it.
It's just an observation and information with regards to the question, rather than a judgement or indictment of the system.
EDIT: I personally LIKE the notion that you're "badder" than all the other humans/elves/whatever in your village, and it takes monsters to stop you. But it means those monsters have to have DR/lots of hit points to get in your way...
Sorry, perhaps I'm inferring too much but it almost seems to me that you're saying any build that does do such damage is omg powergaming badness and they shouldn't be doing that.
Now I'm not sure if you're saying the players in question or the system is faulty at this juncture.
I just wanted to point out it takes no form of power gaming and that it isn't more damage than you should be doing to kill yourself in a single round.
So I've said, "Pathfinder is an unusually offense-oriented system in that a completely average non-optimized PC can one-round himself," and you've interpreted that as my saying, "OMG powergaming badness."
I'll just grab my coat at this point.
EDIT: OK. That was needlessly snarky, so I'll try once more before wandering off: My observation is that, of all the gaming systems I've played, Pathfinder is one of the most offense-oriented, as evidenced by the ease with which an average character can kill him or herself. It has nothing to do with builds, or optimization, or munchkining, or sacrificing to evil gods. It just is what it is.
A lot of players have this idea in their heads that having competent, reliable defenses is game-breaking. That's why defensive options for non-casters tend to get nerfed.